1
25
29
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38399/LJolliffeFSW197221v1.1.pdf
5ebbe4cf55d4bb3df97af95b62af5f33
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
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Jolliffe's flying log book. One
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-09-20
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-10-14
1944-10-21
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-27
1945-02-28
1945-03-01
1945-03-04
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-09
1945-03-11
1945-03-12
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-05-01
1945-05-04
1945-05-10
1945-05-11
1945-05-16
1945-05-29
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Log book and record book
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LJolliffeFSW197221v1
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
Germany
France
Manitoba--Brandon Region
Ontario--Ashfield Region
Scotland--Wigtownshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Rutland
England--Norfolk
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Suffolk
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Hampshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
France--Pas-de-Calais
Germany--Celle
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Kamen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Recklinghausen (Kreis)
Germany--Salzbergen
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Manitoba--Dauphin Area
Netherlands--Hague
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Netherlands
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Manitoba
Manitoba--Rivers
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for F S W Jolliffe, bombe aimer/navigator, covering the period from 11 December 1942 to 29 September 1952. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, instructor duties, Post war flying duties with 35 and 98 squadrons and RAE Farnborough. He was stationed at RCAF Rivers, RCAF Paulson, RCAF Port Albert, RAF West Fraugh, RAF Market Harborough, RAF Husbands Bosworth, RAF North Luffenham, RAF Feltwell, RAF Mepal, RAF Methwold, RAF Tuddenham, RAF Graveley, RAF Bishops Court, RAF Leeming, RAF Wahn, RAF Manby, RAF Celle and RAF Farnborough. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Bolingbroke, Hampden, Wellington, Martinet, Stirling, Lancaster, Oxford, Hornet, Warwick, Mosquito, Dakota, Viking, Dominie, Storch, Devon, Lincoln, Harvard, Meteor, Valetta, Firefly, Athena, Hastings, Prentice, Canberra, Beaufighter, Avenger, Sea Fury, Pioneer, Chipmunk, Blackburn GR17, Sea Venom, Sea Hornet, Brigand, Balliol, Barracuda, Varsity, Provost, Fortress and Packet. He flew a total of 20 operations, 6 with 75 squadron, 11 with 149 squadron and 3 with 138 squadron, 13 were daylight operations and 7 were night operations. He also flew 2 Manna operations and 4 Exodus operations. Targets were Pas de Calais, Neuss, Cap Griz Nez, Duisburg, Flushing, Dortmund, Dresden, Gelsenkirchen, Kamen, Wanne Eickel, Saltzbergen, Dessau, Essen, Datteln, Merseburg, Kiel, The Hague and Juvincourt. His pilots on operations were Flight Sergeant Mcritchie, Flying Officer Winter, Flying Officer Friedrich, Flight Sergeant Sturgess, Pilot Officer Kerville, Squadron Leader Stanton, Flying Officer Nicolay, Flight Lieutenant Davidson, and Flight Lieutenant Claring.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cara Walmsley
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
138 Squadron
14 OTU
149 Squadron
1653 HCU
35 Squadron
75 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
Beaufighter
Bolingbroke
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
C-47
Dominie
Flying Training School
Hampden
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Martinet
Meteor
Mosquito
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Farnborough
RAF Feltwell
RAF Graveley
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Leeming
RAF Manby
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Paignton
RAF Tuddenham
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38232/PJolliffeFSW17100011.1.jpg
93715f42050b7e30edd3fba65661477d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38232/PJolliffeFSW17100012.1.jpg
82c1631346bfad938daa8dee986d9d5a
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
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Kiel
Description
An account of the resource
Target photograph for an operation to Kiel. It shows light trails and smoke, including multiple Flax bursts but no ground detail. It is annotated '5B' and captioned:
'2493. TUD. 9/10-4-45. //NT. (C). 7". 19,000'. 081 º 2243. KEIL. F.
1HC4000IN. 8 ANM64DT. 4MC500DT. 34SECS. S/L STANTON .F.138.'
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kiel
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PJolliffeFSW17100011, PJolliffeFSW17100012
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
Stuart Cummins
Andy Fitter
138 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Lancaster
RAF Tuddenham
target photograph
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38162/SJolliffeFSW197221v10027-0001.2.jpg
c56c214ba549af7ddf2ecc3df69b9e3e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38162/SJolliffeFSW197221v10027-0002.2.jpg
76b5c8b47f83bf7c44d2b7ca6c2b6e76
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/38162/SJolliffeFSW197221v10027-0003.2.jpg
51306b2a15569e3ff0a477881b59e5ef
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
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Jolliffe's recomendation for an Emergency Commission
Description
An account of the resource
An application made when flying as an Air Bomber on Lancasters with 138 Squadron, Tuddenham.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-03-19
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Service material
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Printed form with handwritten annotations
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJolliffeFSW197221v10027-0001, SJolliffeFSW197221v10027-0002, SJolliffeFSW197221v10027-0003
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-19
138 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
promotion
RAF Tuddenham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/37278/SJolliffeFSW197221v10048.1.jpg
8d192d50d380adb3e0db3ba43357d3f0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/37278/SJolliffeFSW197221v10052.1.jpg
dbbe442ec404a622c50ce8532c2dc130
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
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Jolliffe's F 1369 for 1945
Description
An account of the resource
Frank's first confidential report, asked for by the Air Ministry.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946-01-29
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Printed form with handwritten annotations
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJolliffeFSW197221v10048, SJolliffeFSW197221v10052
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1946-01-29
138 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
Lancaster
RAF Tuddenham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/37267/SJolliffeFSW197221v10166.2.jpg
a58243bd0eb25bebe9897b1f97af26a7
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
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Has requested deferred release post war to apply to remain in the service.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-09-28
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Duplicated page with handwritten annotations
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJolliffeFSW197221v10166
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Jolliffe application to defer release
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-09-28
138 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
Lancaster
RAF Tuddenham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1937/37254/SJolliffeFSW197221v10172.1.jpg
d10b1cd7c923fbe29b6887f45b105cdc
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
Jolliffe, Frank Sidney Walter
F S W Jolliffe
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Jolliffe, FSW
Description
An account of the resource
129 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Frank Sidney Walter Jolliffe (b. 1923, 1314311 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Margaret Lowe and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Acknowledgement that Frank had joined 138 Squadron.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-05-17
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Printed and typewritten form
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJolliffeFSW197221v10172
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Jolliffe joining 138 Squadron as an officer
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-05-17
138 Squadron
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1254/36057/MBakerWB1392752-161128-06.2.pdf
7f72644b2513fb7c0e933579896ba4e2
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
Baker, William Benjamin
Biff Baker
W B Baker
Description
An account of the resource
45 items. The collection concerns William Benjamin "Biff" Baker DFC (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents art work and and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 115 and 626 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Pamela Baker and catalogued by Nigel Huckins and Peter Adams.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Baker, WB
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
Crew photograph and list of operations
Description
An account of the resource
First page - photograph of seven airmen wearing battledress with brevet standing in front of a Lancaster. Captioned 'Lancaster - 138 Squadron, Alf Warren (3rd from the left) mid upper gunner'. Then follows a list of thirty-one operations between 2 December 1943 and 7 July 1944. In all cases F/L W Breckenbridge was the captain and in most (not in 10) P/O Baker was the mid upper gunner. Mentions operation to Berlin on 30 January 1944 when three crew, including Baker, were wounded and the wireless operator Sgt J Hall was killed.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-12-02
1943-12-16
1943-12-23
1944-01-14
1944-01-21
1944-01-27
1944-01-30
1944-04-18
1944-04-20
1944-04-22
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-05-03
1944-05-07
1944-05-09
1944-05-19
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-27
1944-06-06
1944-06-09
1944-06-12
1944-06-15
1944-06-17
1944-06-22
1944-06-25
1944-06-27
1944-06-30
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
France--Bruz
France--Normandy
France--Merville-Franceville-Plage
France--Orléans
France--Paris
France--Flers-de-l'Orne
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Maubeuge
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Abbeville
France--Mailly-le-Camp
France--Vaires-sur-Marne
France--Vierzon
France--Caen
France--Reims
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph and six page (3 duplicate) printed document
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MBakerWB1392752-161128-06
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Baker list of operations
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
138 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of the Boulogne E-boats (15/16 June 1944)
flight engineer
killed in action
Lancaster
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
pilot
tactical support for Normandy troops
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/25279/LMossH3041799v1.1.pdf
a610b6faea5aec12ee53fb0ae13c4a6b
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
Moss, Henry
H Moss
Harry Moss
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty items. Collection concerns Henry Moss (1925 - 2020, 3041799, Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner with 138 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his flying logbook, documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Henry Moss and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-10-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Moss, H
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Henry Moss, Flight Sergeant, served in the RAF between 22 October 1943 to 10 April 1946. He trained as an Air Gunner and was involved in bombing Kiel, Potsdam, Heligoland, and Bremen before taking part in Operations Exodus, Manna and Revue with 138 Squadron. Henry was demobilised in 1946.
Henry left school in Bradford aged 17½ just before the outbreak of war with no qualifications . He worked in a variety of jobs including a garment fitter where he made waterproof clothing for dispatch riders. Henry passed his National Service medical board and joined the Air Transport Corps which led him to choose to join the Royal Air Force.
Henry was ordered to go to Viceroy House in London to be fitted with his unforms and receive his inoculations before moving on with his next stage of his training. He was then posted to RAF Usworth in February 1944 for his primary training. This was made up of marching and learning to salute, and basic tests on arithmetic and writing to place recruits on their trade path. There were people from many different places around the globe. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/28928
Henry learned how to strip down and re-assemble a Browning gun blindfolded but found this a pointless exercise as at altitude, it impossible to manipulate the small parts of the weapon with gloves on.
After RAF Usworth, he was posted to RAF Pembrey to the Introductory Gunnery Course at 1 Air Gunnery School flying Ansons. He did not experience air sickness and enjoyed flying. While here Henry learned about ‘offsetting’ the release of the bombs and how to aim accurately. He was surprised to learn that from his own records that he had scored 98.5% in the exam. Over his time at RAF Pembrey, he fired a total of 300 rounds. Henry was finally selected as an air gunner/wireless operator.
Henry’s next posting was to (26 OTU) RAF Wing on the Vickers Wellington, where he crewed up. His first pilot made a mistake during a landing and while the landing was safe, the pilot was sent home. His second pilot was Sergeant Crawford who he felt safe with for the rest of the war. From here Henry went to the 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit RAF Langer on Lancasters, and 138 Squadron RAF Tempsford. Henry flew to Kiel twice; both flights were at night and while he was involved in the sinking of the German ship Admiral Sheer, he did not see anything. Henry flew operations to Potsdam and a daytime operation to the Naval base on the island of Heligoland. He can remember being able to see the other aircraft and watching the torpedo boats below; he thought the operation was a bit of a ‘dead duck’. Henry’s final operation was to Bremen when they were hit by flak but ‘nothing vital was hit’. Henry referred to Operation Manna as ‘Spam Runs’
After the war ended Henry was involved, as a camera operator, in Operation Revue which was the creation of a digital map on mainland Britain as an aid to town and country. Henry was demobilised from Personnel Dispersal Centre 100 having achieved the rank of Flight Sergeant. In total he completed 436 hours 20 minutes flying. He went straight back to his previous job as a garment cutter in Bradford, but he did not stay in contact with any of ‘his’ crew.
Claire Campbell
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Henry Moss's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Air gunner’s log book for H Moss covering the period from 10 July 1944 to 20 March 1946. Detailing his flying training and operations flown as air gunner. He was stationed at RAF Pembrey (1 AGS), RAF Wing (26 OTU), RAF Langar (1669 HCU), RAF Tuddenham (138 Squadron). Aircraft flown in were Anson, Wellington and Lancaster. He flew a total of 3 night and 2 day operations (total 5) with 138 Squadron, targets were Kiel, Potsdam, Heligoland and Bremen plus several Operation Manna and Operation Exodus and Cook's Tours flights. <span>His pilot on operations was</span> Pilot Officer Crawford.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMossH3041799v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Potsdam
Wales--Carmarthenshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
1945-04-18
1945-04-22
1945-05-03
1945-05-08
1945-05-29
1945-06-04
1945-06-05
1945-07-08
1945-07-24
138 Squadron
1669 HCU
26 OTU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Langar
RAF Pembrey
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Wing
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22535/MCurnockRM1815605-171114-010.2.pdf
ceca0a67127007a05d837a67b8652f2f
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
Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Curnock, RM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Kriegie March 2007
Description
An account of the resource
The news-sheet of the RAF ex-POW Association. This edition covers the award of an OBE to the Association's President, the Prisoners of War memorial at Hendon, Trooping the Colour, the annual parade of the Air Cadets, a visit to RAF Cranwell, Lunches, the Long March Re-enacted, the retirement of Robbie Stewart, an obituary for Frank Harper, requests for lost friends, Book reviews, and Recco report on ex-POWs
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
The RAF ex-POW Association
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-03
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
16 printed sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCurnockRM1815605-171114-010
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Hampshire
England--High Wycombe
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Mannheim
Malta
Germany--Duisburg
Belgium--Antwerp
Belgium--Brussels
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Żagań
North Africa
Libya--Banghāzī
Poland
Libya
Germany
Belgium
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Buckinghamshire
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.
102 Squadron
103 Squadron
138 Squadron
139 Squadron
150 Squadron
18 Squadron
207 Squadron
32 Squadron
50 Squadron
625 Squadron
7 Squadron
77 Squadron
78 Squadron
83 Squadron
9 Squadron
97 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
Blenheim
bomb aimer
ditching
Dulag Luft
flight engineer
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Hurricane
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
memorial
mine laying
navigator
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Cosford
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halton
RAF Marham
RAF Northolt
RAF St Eval
RAF Wittering
Red Cross
Special Operations Executive
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
Typhoon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22507/MCurnockRM1815605-171114-004.1.pdf
7f988e11cd713fb18e3bb9057ddea4e7
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
Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Curnock, RM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Kriegie June 1995
Description
An account of the resource
News Sheet of the RAF ex-POW Association. Articles describe The Great Escape Memorial Service, held in London, the Memorial to Sir Arthur Harris and the aircrews of Bomber Command, an account of a visit to Sagan, March 1994, obituaries, a visit to RAF Honington in October 1992, a reunion in Vancouver, Recco Report - stories about Kriegies and books written by former POWs,
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
The RAF ex-POW Association
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1995-06
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
12 printed sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCurnockRM1815605-171114-004
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Poland--Żagań
New Zealand--Auckland
Canada
Ontario--Toronto
Canada
British Columbia--Abbotsford
British Columbia--Victoria
England--Headcorn
Australia
New South Wales--Penrith
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Leipzig
England--Stafford
England--Nottingham
Poland
New South Wales
Ontario
Germany
New Zealand
England--Kent
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Staffordshire
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.
106 Squadron
138 Squadron
42 Squadron
460 Squadron
78 Squadron
aircrew
Beaufighter
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
Dulag Luft
escaping
evading
flight engineer
Fw 190
George Cross
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Harvard
Lancaster
Manchester
Me 110
memorial
Military Cross
prisoner of war
RAF Alconbury
RAF Biggin Hill
RAF Honington
Scharnhorst
Spitfire
sport
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 4
the long march
Victoria Cross
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1254/16729/MBakerWB1392752-161128-060001.2.jpg
dcfccffae95480e1636d184cc20521b1
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
Baker, William Benjamin
Biff Baker
W B Baker
Description
An account of the resource
45 items. The collection concerns William Benjamin "Biff" Baker DFC (Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, documents art work and and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 115 and 626 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Pamela Baker and catalogued by Nigel Huckins and Peter Adams.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Baker, WB
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
Seven air crew and a Lancaster
Description
An account of the resource
Seven air crew in uniform in front of the starboard wing of their Lancaster, on grass. Caption reads, 'Lancaster - 138 Squadron, Alf Warren 3rd from the left, Mid-upper gunner'. Airfield buildings can be seen in the background.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MBakerWB1392752-161128-060001
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. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
138 Squadron
aircrew
Lancaster
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/675/11897/LArrowsmithHL571013v1.2.pdf
9539208f01ecad14d6e070dfeb268511
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
Arrowsmith, Les
H L Arrowsmith
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. The collection concerns Flight Sergeant Les Arrowsmith (b.1920) who flew operations as a bomb aimer with 576 Squadron from RAF Elsham Wolds until his Lancaster was shot down 21/22 May 1944 and he became a prisoner of war. The collection includes his prisoner of war diary, his log book, photographs, a scrap book and correspondence. After the war he continued to serve with the RAF and remustered to become a navigator.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mike Arrowsmith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-09-22
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Arrowsmith, HL
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
Les Arrowsmith’s flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Warrant Officer Les Arrowsmith’s flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers, from 28 January 1946 to 18 July 1950. Mainly records his training and various postings in the Far East as navigator within Transport Command, with references to Singapore (Changi), Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, Saigon, Hong Kong, and Jakarta. Described as “A very reliable and conscientious navigator”, one of his assessments refers to him as an “Ex POW”, and a note on the first page says “1st Log Book lost by RAF 22/5/44”. His final posting was with Bomber Command, 138 squadron at RAF Wyton. Aircraft flown were Oxford, York, Auster, Anson, Harvard, C-47 and Lincoln.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LArrowsmithHL571013v1
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
China--Hong Kong
Indonesia--Jakarta
Malaysia--Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia--Kuching (Sarawak)
Singapore
Vietnam--Ho Chi Minh City
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
China
Indonesia
Malaysia
Vietnam
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
138 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
C-47
Harvard
Lincoln
navigator
Oxford
prisoner of war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Bramcote
RAF Netheravon
RAF Snaith
RAF Wymeswold
RAF Wyton
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1190/11763/AWebsterJK161004.2.mp3
f9224f5c0c2f75e44c5edc90e00ebe87
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
Webster, Jack
Jack K Webster
J K Webster
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Jack Webster (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 514 and 138 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-04
Rights
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Webster, JK
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Transcription
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DK: Right. It’s David Kavanagh on the, I think it’s the 4th of October 2016, interviewing Jack Webster at his home. If I just put that there we’ll try and ignore it. If I keep looking down I’m just making sure it’s still going.
JW: That’s right.
DK: I’m not being rude. That’s looks ok. Ok. Could I just sort of ask first of all what you were doing immediately before the war?
JW: I was working in the Public Analyst’s Office.
DK: Right.
JW: Clerical more than anything. And it was a reserved, or it got known as a Reserved Occupation and did I want to join up or not and of course, I said no. Anyway, suddenly, when I was eighteen I suddenly changed my mind.
DK: So, what year would that have been? You were eighteen?
JW: ’25. ’42.
DK: 1942.
JW: December ’42.
DK: So, was it the immediate choice to join the Air Force then? Or —
JW: Oh yes. Yeah. I suddenly decided. The idea of flying suddenly appealed to me.
DK: Right. So, what, what did you, where did you start your training then at with the RAF?
JW: Well, I went to a selection board first.
DK: Right.
JW: At Cardington, and they offered me wireless operator air gunner. They said they’d got too many pilots. And, and they sent me to sort of deferred. Sent me back home and told me to hang on. And then in June ’43 I finally joined up.
DK: So that was a letter through the post was it that you got?
JW: Yes.
DK: From the joining office.
JW: And went to Viceroy Court, in St John’s Wood. Was there about three weeks I suppose and that was the start of the career so to speak. But I mean from there I went to ITW, Initial Training Wing at Bridlington and I can’t remember how long we were there but —
DK: What would you have been doing at the ITW?
JW: It was drill mostly. Drill and admin lessons. And then from there went on to Number 4 Radio School at RAF Madley in Herefordshire where it was more or less all day long Morse more than anything because they suddenly had done away with the air gunnery part because the Lancaster didn’t need the, they had the separate gunners so they just had a straight signaller or wireless op.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And any road I don’t know how long I was at the Radio School but I finally managed to pass out at eighteen words per minute Morse.
DK: Did you enjoy Morse code? Was it something you could do easily?
JW: I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it or it wasn’t easy. We got fed up with it in the end. I mean, I think some of them almost went crazy with it. I mean all day long the instructor would set up a creed machine and he’d sit back and read his paper while we sort of sent messages and things to each other. But anyway, I finally passed out there and got the brevet S and then I was sent to Dumfries Advanced Radio School, Advanced Flying Unit and we, that was on Ansons. They were just the pilot, navigator and the bomb, and the wireless op.
DK: Was that, would that have been the first time you had flown then?
JW: Oh no. I did flew, we flew at Radio School.
DK: Right. Ok.
JW: In, first of all in the old Dominie and I was sick the first time. And then after that we went on to Proctors. They were just the pilot and the wireless op and we had the pilots who were on, had sort of completed their tour. They were on rest period really but they were just flying I suppose and they were fed up with flying anyway. And of course, we had the trailing aerial which used to allow, there was a case of one of them tried to shoot up a plane in the led weights that went through the windows of the trains. They had a strict instruction. No shooting up the planes. But anyway, going back to, I went to Dumfries and, on Ansons and it was the wireless ops job there to reel the undercarriage up which —
DK: Oh right.
JW: By hand which was quite a job. And we flew up and down sort of the Irish Sea, over the Isle of Man and all this sort of thing. More or less more for the navigator than the wireless op because the wireless op was the same as what we were doing all the time really.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And, and then from the, we went to OTU at Chipping Warden.
DK: Can you remember which OTU it was? The number?
JW: I can’t. I don’t know if I’ve got it down in here.
DK: I can check later.
JW: I can’t think where I would have it. Oh, yeah. I have it.
[pause]
DK: That’s ok.
JW: Number 12 OTU.
DK: Number 12 OTU. Ok.
JW: At Chipping Warden. That’s it. And then from there —
DK: What type of aircraft were at the OTUs?
JW: Wellingtons. And that’s where we crewed up and I finished up with a, at the time all the rest of them were all Canadians.
DK: Right.
JW: Until we got to Heavy Conversion Unit when we picked up the pilot engineer.
DK: So how was the crewing done at the OTU? How did you meet your pilot?
JW: We just sort of walked around and I think somebody came up to me and said, ‘Have you got a crew?’ I said, ‘No.’ That was the pilot and he said, ‘Well, you know do, do you fancy joining me?’ So, I mean one was as good as another as far as I was concerned. That turned out he’d already had the two gunners, the navigator and bomb aimer. All Canadian. So, he said, ‘If you don’t mind Canadians.’ So, no. I didn’t. That didn’t worry me.
DK: Can you remember his name? Your pilot’s name.
JW: Yeah. Flight Lieutenant Elwood. Keith Elwood.
DK: And he was Canadian.
JW: Canadian. Yeah.
DK: So what did you think of the Canadians then? As you met them there.
JW: Oh, I got on alright with them there. Yeah. We always went around as a crew. Yeah. Yeah. We picked up the engineer at Heavy Conversion Unit.
DK: Right. Can you remember where the Heavy Conversion Unit was?
JW: 1668 at Bottesford. Between Grantham and Nottingham. Yeah. And —
DK: He was English, was he? The flight engineer.
JW: Yeah. He was English.
DK: So you were the two English and the rest —
JW: Two English.
DK: Were Canadian.
JW: Five were Canadians. Yeah. And, and then, and then from there we were posted to Feltwell. Yeah. RAF Feltwell which was the 514 Squadron at Cambridge.
DK: 514.
JW: And we were, we were only there for one operation and then we got posted to Tuddenham with 138 Squadron.
DK: So where, where was your first operation to with 514?
JW: That was to a synthetic oil works in the Ruhr at a place, I don’t know how you pronounce Hüls and I always remember that some of the plane, it was bombed up and had a four thousand pound cookie and fifteen five hundred pounders and it was a disappointment really. It was a GH bombing through cloud and where the pilot sort of, you fly in a rough formation and the pilot had the equipment or that, the leader had the equipment to determine when to drop that and when he opened his bomb doors you all opened yours. When he dropped his bombs you dropped yours. It was all very well until we nearly over the target then all the planes suddenly made contrails and it was like flying through cloud and after a touch you couldn’t see a thing. The navigator, I said, ‘I think they must have dropped them by now.’ So the pilot went up above the contrails and you could see and they were there. They’d turned off. So we circled around and the navigator, he said, ‘Well, we’re roughly over the target.’ So he just let them all go.
DK: So you never bombed with a GH leader then.
JW: No.
DK: You just —
JW: No. It was —
DK: And this was in daylight presumably.
JW: This was in daylight.
DK: Yeah.
JW: How I don’t know what. When we got back obviously they got interrogated. They didn’t interrogate the wireless op because there’s nothing we could see anyway, really. But what happened with them I don’t know what they, whether they said anything. Whether that was why we suddenly got posted I don’t know [laughs] but 138 Squadron had then converted from special duties. They were at Tempsford. They’d converted the special duties on to heavy bombing.
DK: So just going back a bit presumably it was at the Heavy Conversion Unit that you saw, first flew on the Lancaster was it?
JW: That was when we first flew it. Yes.
DK: So, what were your feelings about flying on that compared to the Wellington and —
JW: Well, that was, that was quite an upgrading so to speak. I mean that was a heavy bomber compared to the Wellington. And you know, everything. It seemed more spacious and yeah —
DK: So, then you’ve got on to 138 Squadron. That’s Lancasters again presumably.
JW: That was Lancasters again. Yes.
DK: And where were they based? 138.
JW: At Tuddenham. Just, we were settled at Mildenhall. In fact, I think we did have one pilot that came back with a bomb load and landed at Mildenhall by mistake instead of Tuddenham. In the night time I suppose that was easy because the two dromes, the drem lighting you know it sort of entwined one another.
DK: So when you were flying out on an operation then what, what’s your role as the wireless operator? What? What do you do when you’re —
JW: Well, the main thing is you just listen. The main thing was you had to listen in every half an hour to base and if they hadn’t got any message they would transmit a number and you had to record that number to prove that you’d heard the —
DK: Transmission.
JW: The transmission. But apart from that it was possibly the navigator might need a loop aerial bearing. Or the Group might transmit a wind, a different wind speed and if there was any recall or cancellation they would, that would come through them.
DK: So, once you got a message you would immediately tell both the pilot and navigator.
JW: If there was, yes.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Yeah. It, it was very rare to get a message. Obviously, there was no verbal messages. They were —
DK: What about your Morse Code training? Did that come in useful when you were once on operations?
JW: I didn’t really use it a lot. It’s funny that all these things you learn, you are taught, they don’t come in to use. I mean, I suppose had we got in to trouble Morse would have been handy then.
DK: What would have been your role as wireless operator then if the aircraft was in trouble?
JW: Well, to send any emergency position that we were at.
DK: Right.
JW: Or if we were coming down in the sea. But other than that there was not much you had to do.
DK: So how many operations did you fly?
JW: I only did five.
DK: Five. So, one with 514 and three with —
JW: Four with —
DK: Four with. So, five altogether.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
JW: But the, I suppose the, the one I remember most is a daylight on Bremen. The allies were waiting. We were going to go in to Bremen and we were supposed to go and soften them up and they routed us over Wilhelmshaven. And the Met man said before, and when we took off, before we took off he said, ‘There will be ten tenths cloud so you should be alright.’ Of course, when we got over there it was clear. It was. And we were then sort of getting near the target and the rear gunner suddenly, the light came on on the intercom and the rear gunner came on. He said, ‘Oh skipper, the kite behind has been hit.’ So, I got a bit, in the astrodome to have a look just in time to see two of them baling out. I thought well this is, this is getting too close. And we’d hardly got clear of them and suddenly we got hit. Not a, it was just a thump more than anything and the pilot called up he said, ‘Everybody alright?’ Everyone was alright. He said, ‘Can anybody see anything?’ And nobody could see anything. No damage and it wasn’t until we landed that we saw the, there was a hole in the fuselage just near the elsan and the trimmer tab on the rear elevator had been got. It was gone. Of course, he knew there was something wrong because it didn’t fly quite right and there were holes under the, in the wings. Under the wings. But apart from that just after that the master bomber cancelled the operation anyway because the target was obscured with smoke and cloud so —
DK: So you never bombed then.
JW: We bombed.
DK: Oh, you had.
JW: We had bombed.
DK: Oh right. Right.
JW: Yeah. But they stopped it after. I got a, I got a report on the one there somewhere [pause – pages turning] Yeah. The raid [pause] Yeah, the raid was hampered by cloud and by smoke and dust from bombing as the raid progressed. The master bomber ordered the raid to stop after a hundred and ninety five Lancasters had bombed. The whole of numbers 1 and 4 Groups returned home without attacking. So, I found out. I got the result off the internet. That was the, oh we went to Kiel. That’s when we capsized the Admiral Scheer and the Admiral Hipper and the Emden were badly damaged.
DK: Did you manage to see the battleships down there? Or —
JW: No. It was dark. It was night.
DK: It was dark.
JW: Night. There was five hundred and ninety one Lancasters and eight Mosquitoes. There was only three Lancasters lost. And at Bremen there were six hundred and fifty one Lancasters, a hundred Halifaxes, seven hundred and sixty seven aircraft altogether.
DK: Have you got the dates of those? Can I —
JW: Yeah.
DK: So, it’s the 9th 10th of April 1945 was Kiel. And then 14th 15th of April Cuxhaven.
JW: No. That was —
DK: Oh, Potsdam. Sorry.
JW: Potsdam. Yeah.
DK: So, 14th 15th of April 1945 Potsdam.
JW: Yeah.
DK: And then 22nd April 1945 Bremen where your aircraft was damaged.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Do you remember the Potsdam raid at all?
JW: That was night time. That was very [pause] We expected it to be a lot worse than it was. But —
DK: Just outside Berlin isn’t it? Potsdam.
JW: That’s a, that’s the suburb of Berlin.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: That said that was, that was the first time Bomber Command four engine aircraft had entered the Berlin defence since March 1944. But there was only one Lancaster shot got down by a night fighter.
DK: Were you ever attacked by any —
JW: No.
DK: Aircraft.
JW: No.
DK: So just that one incident of damage. Yeah.
JW: One damage. That was the only time we, yeah.
DK: So, moving on then. Presumably you were then involved in Operation Manna.
JW: Manna. Yes.
DK: And how many operations?
JW: I only did, we only did one Manna drop because it was a job to get on. Everybody wanted to do it and some of them were lucky. Some did quite a few. But we only got the one.
DK: Can you remember whereabouts in the Netherlands you dropped the food?
JW: The Hague.
DK: It was at the Hague.
JW: At the Hague. But I think it was probably the race track. They had a big cross out on the ground. And I can always remember as we got there I sort of looked out and you could see a German soldier standing there with a rifle and people were waving sheets and things. The words of my navigator, ‘Gosh,’ he said, ‘Look at those poor bastards.’ Yeah.
DK: So how did that make you feel dropping the food to the —
JW: Oh, that was, that was good. And I mean after that we, I only did the one but in 1983 there was, in the little booklet we used to get every sort of I can’t think what it was called now. I’ve got loads of them. Oh, “Intercom.” That’s right.
DK: Right.
JW: That’s, we used to get that every so often and there was a piece in there about anybody who took part in Operation Manna, if they were interested in having a reunion to contact this chap. So, I thought, I said to my wife, ‘Oh I don’t know. I’m not going to bother.’ ‘Go on. She said, ‘You don’t, you never know.’ So anyway, I contacted him and we had a smashing time in Holland for the weekend. I got a huge piece. I know I typed it all out and on the way back we decided we would meet the following year at Droitwich and we had quite a good weekend there. And then we got invited back to Holland by the Dutch people and we went back there in ’85. Sorry, in ’83. ’85. ’89 and 2000 and gosh they wouldn’t let you pay for anything.
DK: They, they were pleased to see you were they?
JW: Oh, they were. And the first time when we went there we went in to the sort of hotel they’d booked for us and the room was full of sort of chocolates and sweets, drinks and a little thing you know, ‘Thank you for what you did.’ I mean we got more thanks from the Dutch people than we ever did from Bomber Command. It was, yeah and they had one, they actually had a reunion last year but unfortunately I wasn’t in, couldn’t go anyway. But I don’t think there were many of them left.
DK: So, were, were you involved in Exodus as well then?
JW: Yes.
DK: The picking up of the POWs.
JW: The POWs. Yeah.
DK: So, what, can you remember where you landed to pick them up?
JW: Yes. At Juvencourt. There was, we did six I think. Five or six. And brought them back twenty four at a time. And it was there that one of them from 514 Squadron crashed on take-off and they, they lost the whole lot.
DK: Oh dear.
JW: They never did know what happened. They wondered whether the prisoners moved about and upset the balance of the aircraft. They don’t know.
DK: Did you actually see the aircraft crash?
JW: No. No.
DK: Ok. Just —
JW: No.
DK: So, what was the, what was the prisoner’s reaction when they saw you and they were, you were flying them home?
JW: Oh, they were quite pleased to see, I mean it’s funny we, we had, we had to hand them out five cigarettes, a little packet of boiled sweets and a sick bag. And we, we didn’t have any parachutes then. They said it would look bad to have parachutes on when the prisoners didn’t have so we flew without parachutes.
DK: And were they mostly Army POWs?
JW: They were Army POWs. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And some of the them were, I can remember one chap when, as we saw the cliffs at you know, the white cliffs come in to sight tears came in to his eyes. He was, he’d been away quite a while I think. But oh, they all had trophies. Helmets and bayonets and things. But —
DK: So, what, after the war is finished then what, what —
JW: The war was over. Yeah.
DK: So, what were you. What did you do immediately after that? Did you stay in the RAF for very long?
JW: Oh, they kept us on because they kept us on for what they called the Tiger Force for Japan. And it wasn’t until, well then after that we then did what they called Operation Review which was flying over different parts of the country, and different flying up and down taking photographs. It was as boring as anything. I mean, I think one of them was nine hours we had.
DK: What, what was the point of that then? Just —
JW: They were make, forming new maps I think.
DK: Oh, for map reading.
JW: I think it was. We never did really know why but that’s all we could assume. That they were making some new, new maps.
DK: So that was Operation Review.
JW: Review. Yeah.
DK: The only reason I asked you that is just literally yesterday somebody was asking me what Operation Revue was and nobody knew.
JW: Oh.
DK: You’ve answered the question.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Thank you. So you never really found out what it was for.
JW: Not what it was for. No. We saw a lot —
DK: Were all the squadrons doing this or just yourselves?
JW: No. I don’t, I honestly couldn’t say.
DK: Yeah. So, you were just flying up and down the country taking photos.
JW: Yeah. I mean it was hard on the navigator. He had to work out exactly when to turn and of course they all had to, the photographs all had to overlap.
DK: Right. I’d better tell. I’m going to tell them now what it is. Oh right. Thanks. So, so when did you actually leave the RAF then?
JW: 1947.
DK: Right. If I could just go back a stage you said that you were earmarked for Tiger Force.
JW: Yes.
DK: Going off to the Far East.
JW: Yeah.
DK: What was your feelings when the war, the war suddenly ended?
JW: Well, I suppose we, you know I think we knew. Or you could see it was going to end I think. But they wouldn’t let us go until I don’t know when. That must have been [pause] No. I can’t think. I mean, suddenly they just said, oh you’re redundant and they posted us. They posted. I got posted to [pause] God, I can never remember numbers. My memory for names now. It was RAF Molesworth. That’s it. And there was only, there was nobody in charge there. A, I think a flight sergeant. The bar was open all night. You know. It was, the Americans had left a radiogram there with one record and this one record was, “Off We Go in to The Bright Blue Yonder.” Gosh. And, and that record went and in the end somebody smashed it. But I was, I don’t know what. I was put in charge or asked to look after the cycle store. And that was a huge Nissen hut full of bicycles. And nobody wanted a bike anyway so I [laughs] —
DK: So really the, the war has ended and they really didn’t know what to do with you.
JW: They didn’t know what to do with us.
DK: So, after you’ve left the RAF what did you do then? What was your career?
JW: I went back to the Public Analyst for a very short time. I mean, the thing that, I think when I finished in the Air Force I was earning fifteen and thruppence a day which was pocket money because clothes and food was all found. And when I went back to the work I was earning five pound a week which was nothing really. But —
DK: Was your job left open for you then?
JW: Oh, yes.
DK: So, they —
JW: Yeah
DK: They had to take you back.
JW: They didn’t have to. No.
DK: Right.
JW: Because I left on my own.
DK: Oh ok.
JW: But I wasn’t there that long when I then got a job with the Norwich City Council as a rent collector. And from a rent collector I got to a housing inspector and that’s when I finished.
DK: So, looking back now, seventy odd years later how do you feel about your time in the RAF?
JW: Well. I must say I enjoyed it but when I, it’s funny at the time you don’t think about it but when I look back and I think of the times we took off. Look, every time we had a Cookie on board and a load of bombs and a full load of petrol and you then realise if anything had gone wrong on take-off that would have been the end anyway and —
DK: Did, did you think about those dangers at the time then?
JW: No. That’s what I’m saying. I didn’t.
DK: Yeah.
JW: At the time.
DK: It was full of petrol and high explosives.
JW: Yeah. I didn’t think about it at the time.
DK: Yeah.
JW: But it’s looking back now and —
DK: Do you think that’s because you obviously were a lot younger then? And —
JW: This is it. It was. Yes. Definitely.
DK: Don’t feel the dangers.
JW: And it’s the same I suppose over the target. You think it isn’t going to happen to us you know.
DK: It’s always going to happen to somebody else.
JW: Somebody else. Yeah.
DK: So how, did you stay in touch with your crew then afterwards?
JW: Well, it’s funny. I tried. I tried to contact them and I couldn’t and I, it all happened. I got, this is a long story really but I got an email from a girl whose father was at Waterbeach.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Oh, I said Feltwell. I meant Waterbeach.
DK: Ok.
JW: And she came over here with her mother. Her father had died. She came over here with her mother. Oh no. Her father hadn’t died then. She came over with her father and her mother to visit old places where he’d been and while they were here, her mother they were waiting for a train and her mother had a heart attack and died. And anyway, she then told me that she’d been in touch with several people at Waterbeach and as she heard that we’d been there did I remember her dad who had since died? But I said no. I pointed out that we were only there a short time. And anyway, she suddenly contacted me and said she had heard from a chap who was stationed at Waterbeach and he was trying to contact me. And she gave me his email address and I, I got in touch with him and he had moved from Canada to New Zealand. He’d married and moved over to New Zealand and he gave me an address, email address of someone. A museum in Canada where I might be able to contact the rest of the crew. So, I went on to this email and I couldn’t. There were pages and pages of people wanting to contact. And so I left a message. You know, “Anybody in Flight Lieutenant Elwood’s crew of 138 Squadron —” And I forgot all about it and suddenly I got an email, “I’m Flight Lieutenant Elwood’s son. Unfortunately, my dad has died.”
DK: Oh.
JW: And so —
DK: Do, do you know when he passed away? Your pilot.
JW: I don’t. No.
DK: No. No.
JW: No.
DK: Right.
JW: And at first, the pilot. The engineer had also died. I don’t know how I got in touch with his wife but no, I tried no end of times to try and get in. Even when I met Canadians over in Holland. So I left messages with them to, they were going to try and contact.
DK: You never got in contact with any of the crew then.
JW: No.
DK: No. That’s a shame.
JW: Only the navigator who —
DK: Oh right.
JW: He then, he couldn’t remember a thing about what we’d done.
DK: Oh right.
JW: He’d, he’d shut everything out.
DK: Can you remember the navigator’s name?
JW: Yes. Keith Evans.
DK: And was it Keith Evans who had gone to New Zealand then?
JW: Yes.
DK: Oh, right. Ok.
DK: Yes.
JW: And then he, it was Keith Evans who got you in touch with the Canadians.
JW: No, not Keith. Johnnie. John Evans.
DK: John Evans. So, it was John Evans who went to New Zealand.
JW: Yeah.
DK: He was the navigator.
JW: He was the navigator.
DK: It was he who put you in touch with the Canadian Museum.
JW: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
JW: So, did he, is he still alive or —
JW: No. He’s dead.
DK: Right.
JW: He died of cancer.
DK: Right. And, and he totally blocked out everything.
JW: He blocked out everything.
DK: So you never actually met him then.
JW: No.
DK: Just emailed communications.
JW: Emailed. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even remember us getting hit. He’d shut out, he said right from the start he had, he was seeing a psychiatrist or something. He’d shut everything out. All he could think of was the people he might have killed.
DK: Right.
JW: And he shut everything. In fact, he said, ‘Can you tell me about the hit? When we got hit.’ So I tried to tell him on an email as best I could but he couldn’t remember anything.
DK: Did you hear from him again after that? Once you two had —
JW: Oh, we corresponded.
DK: Right.
JW: Backwards, and you know quite regularly.
DK: And did any of it come back to him do you know?
JW: No. No. It’s funny. Operation Manna did.
DK: Right.
JW: He remembered that.
DK: But the, but the actual operations over Germany he’d blocked out.
JW: He couldn’t. No. Or he didn’t know. Whether he didn’t want to I don’t but —
DK: But you say he’s since passed away.
JW: He’s, he’s since died. Yeah.
DK: Ok. I think that’s probably enough. If I stop this now. Well, thanks for that anyway.
JW: Yeah.
DK: That’s really interesting. Thanks for your time.
[recording paused]
DK: So, your crew then. Left to right. So that’s you.
JW: That’s me. He, we called him Sealevel he was so short. He was Clark. L Clark.
DK: Al Clark. Yeah. So what, what he was then?
JW: He was the bomb aimer.
DK: Bomb aimer, so and —
JW: Curly Watson. He was the engineer.
DK: So, he was the other English.
JW: Pilot. The other English chap. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. So you’ve got sergeant.
JW: The first names I don’t. Bulward. his name was Bulward, definitely.
DK: Bill Ward.
JW: Bul, Bulward.
DK: Bulward. Right.
JW: They called him Bull, I think.
DK: Right. Bulward.
JW: That’s Keith Elwood.
DK: That’s, that’s the pilot.
JW: Pilot.
DK: Yeah. And then —
JW: That’s John Evans, the navigator.
DK: Yeah.
JW: And there’s Dave Richardson the rear gunner.
DK: Right. Ok. I notice on here. You mentioned a couple of the Cook’s Tours.
JW: Oh, yes. Yes.
DK: So, what did they involve then?
JW: That was, that’s funny. I had a, I don’t know whether I’ve still got the letter. I had a letter from, oh here it is, from a woman at Downham Market. It was in the book. Have you seen the book, “Yours.” There was a letter in there from this woman that when she was in the WAAFs she flew on a, what they called a Cook’s Tour. She said, “But nobody will believe me.” So I wrote back. Wrote and told her and said that was quite right and and I got a letter to thank me.
DK: So, did you do a number of the Cook’s Tour’s?
JW: Only two.
DK: And did, was there WAAFs on board yours?
JW: No. I can’t. In fact, one of them, one of them had ATC boys.
DK: Oh right. So, and can you remember whereabouts in Germany you went to see the damage?
JW: Oh, we went to Cologne. I can’t really remember now. Actually, it didn’t sort of —
DK: Right.
JW: I I can’t remember other than Cologne. Obviously, we went. What I can remember is coming back we flew, we circled around the Eiffel tower. I said, ‘Well that’s something nobody else had done.’
DK: So, what was people, what was the, the people on board, what was the reaction when you saw the damage on the cities down there?
JW: Well, I honestly, I can’t say what they because I suppose most of them were in the, they weren’t where I was because I was sitting at the, at my place and there’s no room for anybody else there but, so they were either in the cockpit standing where the pilot, behind the pilot or in the bomb bay or even some of them had a ride in the upper turret.
DK: And were they mostly ground crew then on the Cook’s Tours?
JW: Most of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can’t remember any WAAFs.
DK: Right. But you were able to confirm this WAAF that written it in. She’d written a letter then.
JW: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
JW: I’ve got the, if I can find it here. That’s such a —
DK: Right.
JW: Picture. [pause] Oh you never, I don’t think you’d ever read it now. Oh, I must have thrown it away, I think. She put, “Dear Mr Webster, thank you for writing to the editors of, “Yours,” regarding the Cook’s Tours. I’ve received thirty letters from people who either went on one on the trip or verified they did take place. It brought back a lot of memories. One lady wrote to me from — ” I can’t see what it is, it’s gone. And told me there is a table in the Crown Hotel there with names of crews carved on it. I’d love to go back. I wish I had written down the names of the crew I flew with and the WAAF corporal. She passed out going over the Channel. It was quite [pause] especially when —”
[pause]
DK: Right.
JW: “When the pilot dived down at a ship. I’ve often wondered what the message was in code. I could see flashing. I also remember seeing Cologne Cathedral and Essex.”
DK: Essen.
JW: Essen. Oh yeah. Essen. I thought it was Essex. Essen. “I was posted to Bletchley Park after the trip and I was demobbed on the 11th of April ’46. I said I would never volunteer for anything again.” [laughs] Oh it goes on. It’s torn out.
DK: Does it have her name there? The lady’s name.
JW: Yours sincerely, Mrs K Dorrington.
DK: Dorrington.
JW: Queens Road, twenty. That’s from Epping in Essex.
DK: And what’s the date of the letter?
JW: 9.9.’95.
DK: Right. So, a while ago.
JW: Yeah. She was probably in a worst state than this letter you know.
DK: So you mention here Operation [Sun Bombs]. A trip to Castel Benito.
JW: Oh yes. I think that was to give us a holiday more than anything. We were there about three days. All we did was sit around the swimming pool and, well, and went swimming. And it’s funny there was a Flight Lieutenant Banbury who was in 138 Squadron and I’ll always remember he stood on the diving board and he did a dead man, you know where they [pause] I’d never seen it done before. But the funny thing is after I was demobbed I happened to see in one of the local papers that a Flight Lieutenant Banbury had been killed at Watton flying an Anson with some ground staff on board and he hit the caravan coming in to land.
DK: Oh right.
JW: To think he’d flown a Lanc and all that and got crashed off in an Anson.
DK: There’s two more operations here. You’ve got Operation Sinkum.
JW: Oh yeah. That that was just flying out over the Wash dropping a lot of the spare bombs. Old bombs.
DK: And then Operation Spasm.
JW: Yeah. That was a trip to Berlin.
DK: Oh right.
JW: The first ones that went they were lucky. They took cigarettes and bought them for marks and they came back and they could change as many marks as they liked. When we went we could only change back to marks what we’d changed. Took out.
DK: Right.
JW: Yeah.
DK: Can you remember where you landed in Berlin?
JW: Yeah. What was the name of it?
DK: Was it Templehof, was it?
JW: Temple. I think it was.
DK: Yeah.
JW: Yeah. That’s the only one I can —
DK: So, you flew to Templehof and landed.
JW: Landed.
DK: In a Lancaster.
JW: In Lancs. Yeah.
DK: Oh right. And so what, what did you think of Berlin now the war’s ended and you’ve landed there in the centre of the city?
JW: I can’t remember much. We saw the Reichstag. We went to the Olympic Stadium. But apart from that I, I know I went in somebody’s bedroom. The chap, I was after stockings and he took me in to this, his wife was still in bed and he fished under the pillow and came out with these nylons for cigarettes. But —
DK: Was Berlin damaged? Was it?
JW: Well, it was what we saw of it. Yeah.
DK: And you didn’t see any Russians there or anyone or anybody else.
JW: No.
DK: So you were just in the British Sector.
JW: Just in the British Sector. Yeah.
DK: And was there many Lancasters on this trip to Berlin then to land there or, can you remember?
JW: Well, not from my squadron there wasn’t.
DK: No.
JW: I don’t know whether. I suppose other people, I don’t know if other people went there.
DK: Ok. Well, I’ll stop that. Thanks again. I’ll stop and turn it off.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jack Webster
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWebsterJK161004
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:48:28 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Jack Webster applied to join the RAF in December 1942 and attended a selection board at RAF Cardington, and was eventually called up in June 1943. After initial training he went to 4 Radio School at RAF Madley passing out from there with eighteen words per minute on Morse Code. From RAF Dumfries Advanced Flying Unit flying in Dominies and Proctors he was posted to 12 OTU Chipping Warden where he crewed up with a Canadian crew, his pilot Flt Lt. Keith Elwood. After completing their heavy conversion on to Lancasters at RAF Bottesford, they were posted to 514 Sqn at RAF Feltwell where they completed one sortie to a synthetic oil installation at Huls. He and his crew were then posted to 138 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham and carried out a further four sorties with them. He and his crew also took part in Operation Manna and Operation Exodus. He left the RAF in 1947.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-12
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Herefordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
12 OTU
138 Squadron
1668 HCU
514 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bombing
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Bottesford
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Dumfries
RAF Feltwell
RAF Madley
RAF Tuddenham
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1018/11475/MPettsHN[Ser -DoB]-150414-01.jpg
177dd408dbdeef9350284784bbf967e2
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
Wynn, Ian Archer
I A Wynn
Description
An account of the resource
146 Items. Collection concerns Pilot Officer Ian Archer Wynn (1908 - 1943, 146838 Royal Air Force). After training as ground crew he remustered as a flight engineer and flew operations with 100 Squadron. He was killed 25 May 1943 on an operation from RAF Grimsby to Düsseldorf. Collection consists of a diary, a memorial book, an official report on what was his final operation, photographs of his crew, his family and the squadron as well as official correspondence from Air Ministry and British Red Cross, letters of condolence and a large number of letters from Ian Wynn to his wife Kathleen. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Patrick Anthony Wynn and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Ian Archer Wynn is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/126116/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Wynn, IA
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
A Carpenter’s Bungalow with a Military Past
Built by and for the tradesmen of Bankview, this house is a 551 square foot bungalow that has undergone extensive transformation. Today, all that remains of the original house is the cedar siding and the defunct radiant gas fireplace with porcelain bricks.
The bungalow’s first resident was Alex Dunbar, a carpenter who likely built the house. In 1914, Harold Lewis a bricklayer moved in followed by WM Cowie who was in active service during World War I. The house remained vacant throughout the Great War and what became of Mr. Cowie is a mystery. Mr Perry C Allard was a trucker with the CPR and lived in the house for two years until William H Siborne bought it in 1920.
During World War II, the Petts family, Charlotte Maria and John Thomas, lived in this bungalow, likely with their two younger sons, John Russell and Henry Neville. However, this once happy home tells a sad tale of a double tragedy.
On 28 December 1941, Flight Sergeant John Russell Petts, 138th Squadron RCAF, was killed on an operation of special duties at the age of only 21. Flying a Whitley V, he crashed on return to the base. On 26 May 1943, his elder brother, Flying Officer Henry Neville Petts, 100th Squadron, RCAF, suffered a similar fate at age 25. Henry’s Lancaster III was hit by flak and crashed near Vlodrop (Limburg), a village on the Dutch-German border. Separated in death as seldom in life, Russell is buried in England, and Neville in the Netherlands.
Although short on closet space, the home suits the current owners and their two cats well. With a painting studio in the basement ( [blank] ), and a great back deck for parties with neighbors [sic], this carpenter’s bungalow still stands proud on 16 A Street in Bankview.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A carpenter's bungalow with a military past
Description
An account of the resource
Relates that Petts family lived in the bungalow during The Second World War. Mentions that two brothers of family were killed in action. Flight Sergeant John Russel Petts of 138 Squadron was killed on operations in Whitley V on 28 December 1941. His elder brother Flying Officer Henry Neville Petts of 100 Squadron was killed after his Lancaster was hit by anti-aircraft fire near Limburg, Holland.
Format
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One page printed document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MPettsHN[Ser#-DoB]-150414-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Netherlands
Netherlands--Limburg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-12-28
1943-05-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Bradley Froggatt
100 Squadron
138 Squadron
final resting place
killed in action
Lancaster
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1060/11454/PBowmanFA1801.1.jpg
1d7624307c14646291928d3f0ff29a34
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1060/11454/ABowmanFA181121.2.mp3
f07920709970bb07c32383225c44434c
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
Bowman, Frederick Arthur
F A Bowman
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Fred Bowman (1924 - 2020, 429212 Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 138 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-11-21
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
Bowman, FA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JH: This is John Horsburgh and this afternoon I’m interviewing Fred Bowman and we’re at [buzz] in Sydney, New South Wales. This is part of the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincolnshire. The Oral History Project. Today is the 21st of November 2018. So, good afternoon, Fred.
FB: Good afternoon. How are you? Lovely to meet you.
JH: Likewise. So, a very interesting interview we’ve, we’ve got coming up I’m sure. Fred was a wireless operator with 138 Squadron and Fred, maybe we can start with, right from the beginning. Your date of birth and where were you born.
FB: 17th of June 1924. Born in Paddington in Sydney.
JH: And you went to school in Sydney.
FB: Yeah. Sydney Boys High.
JH: A Sydney boy.
FB: Yeah.
JH: All through.
FB: And I made up my mind. I just didn’t, this business of running around sticking bayonets into people didn’t appeal to me. So I made up my mind that I was going to join the Air Force when I turned eighteen [laughs] and so I did.
JH: And was that because you were in the —
FB: ATC.
JH: ATC.
FB: Yes. Yes.
JH: When you were growing up.
FB: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. That’s that was.
JH: Yeah.
FB: I had this interest in it, you know. Like most boys of that age, nineteen, twenty, they all imagined themselves to be Paddy Finnucane or somebody, you know. He was a fighter ace. I don’t know whether you remember the name, do you? Paddy Finucane.
JH: No. I don’t. I have heard about it.
FB: Yeah.
JH: But I can’t remember any details to be quite honest.
FB: So that’s where it all started.
JH: So, you were following the progress of the war. So what made you join up and when did you do that?
FB: Well, I knew after I joined the ATC and everything. Of course, when you turn eighteen, if you don’t join up in the Air Force or the Navy or something they conscript you in to the Army and I couldn’t imagine myself in the Army sticking bayonets in people so [laughs] So I, for my eighteenth birthday I went down to Bourke Street or somewhere. Somewhere in Sydney and signed on the dotted line. And most of the call ups were on a, for a Saturday and I got this one for the Thursday and they said my name had been accepted and so the next move is that you’ll be sent up to Kingaroy in Queensland to do your ATS, and the train leaves at, sets off at half past seven tonight and you’re on it.
JH: That’s unusual, going to to Kingaroy rather than —
FB: Yes.
JH: New South Wales.
FB: They must have been short of numbers you know to make up the intake. So I finished up in Kingaroy in November and the dirt and the red mud and the red dust. Shocking climate.
JH: And what sort of training were you doing at Kingaroy?
FB: You don’t do any flying at Kingaroy. It’s all ground stuff, you know, medical stuff and discipline and all that sort of thing.
JH: Some square bashing.
FB: Square bashing. That’s right. There was no flying at all until we went to Maryborough to do the wireless course, and they, you get flying instruction in the, in a Wackett trainer. A little single engine thing. Used to be a sort of a, do a competition amongst the crews there to see which of the first one that would have to do a crash landing because these things [laughs] they wouldn’t last. They were always sort of having to have a forced landing somewhere. These little CAC trainers there.
JH: So this would have been, correct me if I’m, if I’m wrong, in 1943.
FB: Yeah.
JH: This second training. And —
FB: The end of 1942 I went.
JH: ’42.
FB: Went to —
JH: Kingaroy.
FB: Kingaroy.
JH: Yes. Yes. And I presume you would have been hearing some of the stories of the Bomber Command effort.
FB: Oh yes.
JH: In Europe.
FB: Yes.
JH: Did that put any second thoughts in your mind?
FB: Well, it didn’t put any negative thoughts in there because you thought you’d, you know, ‘I’m here to win the war.’
JH: Invincible. Yeah. Yes.
FB: Personally.
JH: Yes. And —
FB: You just think you were [pause] you were just quite sure that you were going to survive it all and that’s it.
JH: Yes. But tell me a little bit about the final training. Maybe you did some gunnery training as well.
FB: Yes. We finished up. We did our wireless course and [pause] at Maryborough in Queensland and then we went on to Evans Head. That was the Bombing and Gunnery School there and they were flying Fairey Battles. One plane would have a drogue, dragging a drogue and then the guns that we were using were from the First World War. A Vickers GO Gun. GO meaning gas operated and two, two gunners went up in this plane and they used to, your bullets were in a round canister sort of thing with the tips exposed and I dipped mine. Two of us went up. They dipped the tips of these things in red for you and blue for me, and they could then work out how many hits you’d got with this Vickers GO gun thing. And that was our gunnery course at Evans Head.
JH: So it sounds like you passed that ok.
FB: Oh yeah.
JH: Main colours as they say.
FB: The worst part of it was the smell of that glycol. It’s a sort of a, like a burnt oil smell. Boy, it makes you feel a little bit ill just smelling it.
JH: Fred, at what point did you learn that you were being posted in, in Europe rather than the Pacific campaign?
FB: Well, when, when you finished up at Evans Head that was your last training post. And I think they told us right then that we were going to get leave and we’d be issued with another uniform I think and, and said, ‘You’re going to be posted to the UK.’ Joining Bomber Command over there. We didn’t think that was terrible. ‘We’ll fix Hitler,’ you know [laughs] ‘We’ll, fix Hitler.’
JH: Sure. So I assume an adventurous trip to the UK.
FB: Yeah.
JH: By steamer.
FB: Yeah. Straight across. We went across the Atlantic. Not the Atlantic. We went across the Pacific on the Matsonia which was a cruise ship. American cruise ship. No escort. It just did a few sort of zigzags as it went across. Went across. Went across the Pacific to San Francisco and then they put us on a train in San Francisco and we went across America by train in a sleeper. Lovely.
JH: And how many of you were there in the group?
FB: I think that course there was fifty of us I think in that course. Fifty Australians. And we went across to leave and had a week’s leave in New York. Spent every penny we had plus drew some of the next week’s pay and [laughs]
JH: Yes.
FB: Really whooped it up.
JH: Then you had to run the gauntlet crossing the Atlantic.
FB: That’s right. That’s right. The first thing we saw when we got, took us to the, in the, whatever the docks are in New York I just forget what they are there was the Lusitania that was scuttled or something in in, in the harbour. And as you get on to the boat the Queen, we went across on the Queen Elizabeth at that point and you get on there, you look straight down and here’s the remains of the Lusitania on its side. A very nice welcome, you know. This could happen to you.
JH: Back to reality. Yeah. Yes.
FB: This went across the Pacific, across the Atlantic on its own, just zigzagging.
JH: Zigzagging. Yeah.
FB: But no, no escort. We never saw any allied planes or allied —
JH: Yes.
FB: Boats or anything. Just should be alright mate.
JH: Yeah. So was that to Liverpool?
FB: No.
JH: Or up to Scotland?
FB: Greenock.
JH: Greenock. Yes.
FB: Greenock in Scotland. Yes.
JH: Yes. And still you had no idea exactly where you were going to be posted or what squadron at that stage.
FB: Not at that stage. Then you were sent, the Australians had a holding camp over there. Listen to this. A holding camp over there called 11 PDRC. Personnel Dispatch and Reception Centre, and do you know where this camp was? Where the, where the 11 PDRC was?
JH: No.
FB: It was in the, in fact it was in two hotels. Two of the best hotels in Brighton [laughs] Right on the sea front. You could look out your window and there was the sea front and all that. You weren’t allowed on to the seafront of course but that was the 11 PDRC. We thought how long has this been going on? And then, and the town was not open to civilians so we had all the town to our, to our own self. The town of Brighton. And we had a ball there.
JH: And then the Nissen huts was it?
FB: No. No. We were staying in these two hotels.
JH: Yeah.
FB: The Grand and the Metropole.
JH: Yes.
FB: But then after the war, well first of all we’d been there a few weeks, they said, ‘Listen, you blokes need a bit of toughening up.’ So they sent us up to a toughening up course at Whitley Bay that was run by the RAF Regiment. The RAF Regiment was a sort of a semi-army unit.
JH: Yeah.
FB: Operated by the RAF, and it was a toughening up school. You know, running up and down on the seaside.
JH: Sergeant majors. Yeah.
FB: With your signet on.
JH: Yes.
FB: Yeah. 11 PDRC.
JH: Yeah. So, so from there did you go to an OTU?
FB: Well, the first one you go to is an AFU.
JH: AFU. Yeah.
FB: That was at Millom. You go up there and just flying in an Avro Anson and getting accustomed to British radio expertise and so on and that. So that was about adjusting to English sort of operational —
JH: Yes.
FB: Conditions.
JH: And at what stage did you crew up? Was that after that?
FB: Yes. From OTU. No. Not OTU. From AFU they sent you to an OTU.
JH: Yeah.
FB: And that was down in Bed, yes in Bedfordshire and the CO came straight out when we got there. He said, ‘Now, look,’ he said, ‘The way we do this — ’ he said, is we all, you sort of get together at the White Angel Hotel or something in Aylesbury.
JH: Yeah.
FB: And you, you know talk around the blokes and you say, you know, you’re a wireless operator or I’m a navigator and how about crewing up? And so you crew up.
JH: Yeah.
FB: And they said, ‘It’s not binding. When you wake up the next morning and say, ‘I couldn’t possibly fly for that bastard, [laughs] So what?’ The raids were just cancelled. You were, you crew up again with somebody else.
JH: I wonder where it was in Bedfordshire.
FB: Oakley. Oakley and Westcott.
JH: Oh, ok. Yes. Yeah.
FB: Westcott was the holding —
JH: Yes.
FB: Station.
JH: Yeah. And was this not just Australians. This was British and —
FB: British and —
JH: Commonwealth.
FB: New Zealanders. Yeah.
JH: Yes. Yeah. Ok.
FB: South Africans. We had South Africans on the squadron.
JH: Yes. Yes.
FB: All on the OTU.
JH: Yes. And, and then how did you end up at, in Tempsford with the squadron?
FB: Well —
JH: How did that happen?
FB: I really don’t know whether we were asked to do it or not but we had a very conscientious bomb aimer and bomb aiming was very [pause], good bomb aiming was very necessary because we did a lot of map reading. But we were doing mostly low level trips into the occupied countries. Very low level. And so the bomb aimer used to go down in to the nose and then he’d actually map read.
JH: Yes.
FB: Map read.
JH: Not the navigator. The bomb aimer.
FB: The bomb aimer. Yeah. The navigator would keep the overall —
JH: Yes.
FB: Navigation but the bomb aimer would be specific. He’d be sitting in the nose.
JH: Yes.
FB: And he’d be directing the pilot.
JH: Yes.
FB: ‘Left. Left. Right. Right.’ And so on.
JH: So, I mean the reason I asked about that is that you ended up with a very unusual almost top secret.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Squadron.
FB: We were.
JH: And maybe that was one of the factors in the, in the selection of your crew.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Do you think it was?
FB: I’m sure. I’m sure our bomb aimer, our bomb aimer was one of those conscientious blokes. He wanted to be, he wanted to be involved and he was very very capable of map reading and so forth. He had all the attributes. So I’m sure he had something to do with it.
JH: Yes.
FB: And so we were just, when that finished we were posted to Tempsford.
JH: Yes. So, so what was it? How did you get there? You ended up in Bedford or Cambridge and then across to Tempsford.
FB: Well, I don’t know what, what trains or anything.
JH: Yes.
FB: If we couldn’t make it, find you somewhere to sleep for the night and they tell you nothing and it’s not until the next day that they get you assigned and tell you exactly what’s going on at Tempsford and the secret work they’re doing and all very hush hush, and hush hush and don’t say a word to anybody. So whether, I’ve got an idea our bomb aimer might have sort of asked a few questions as to whether we could go on this special duties squadron. He was that sort of a guy. So that’s where we finished.
JH: How different was it to other bases do you think? Presumably there wasn’t a signpost, “SOE —“
FB: No. No.
JH: “This way.”
FB: Well, I suppose the main difference was that it was all single flights. You’d be in a different crew to me and you’d be in a target to Norway. I might be out that night and I might be on a target up to Denmark and you didn’t know. But I didn’t tell you where I was going and you didn’t tell me where you were going. It was all terribly secret stuff.
JH: So —
FB: Say nothing.
JH: Yes.
FB: Don’t tell anybody sort of thing.
JH: Yes. So what, what sort of aircraft were used for these operations?
FB: Well, at that stage we had our first, the first operational aircraft we went on to were Stirlings because they were doing all low levels to the Resistance movements. We were only flying at a few hundred feet.
JH: Yes.
FB: And we used the treetops and so —
JH: Is it true you only went out on, you know like full moon?
FB: Yeah.
JH: Or moonlight.
FB: Yeah. That’s right.
JH: Yes.
FB: Well, you had to you see. Which was more important? You did your [pause] going, go out on a moonlit night so as you can see where you’re going and low level. You know, you had no accompanying, no accompanying planes with you. You were on your own, low level and there was no fighter escort or anything. You was just low level from here. It’s a long haul from Tempsford up to somewhere in Norway and you burst. You, well it’s hard to believe but when you leave Tempsford it’s all low level from then on ‘til you get to the drop zone, and it’s, you know, you actually, your objective is a field no bigger than a paddy field. And that’s where the drop zone is and that’s where the Resistance guys are. And you, if you think you’ve got to the drop zone they can hear you coming. The Resistance group can hear you coming and they’ll come out and flash a torch. A signal. And you, you just opened your bomb doors and let the stuff go and wave them goodbye and off they go and get rid of it the best way they can.
JH: I would guess the Germans on full moon or moonlit nights would be —
FB: Watching.
JH: On full alert.
FB: Watching for it. Yeah.
JH: And would, did they ever try and decoy these signals?
FB: Yes. They would. Yeah. They would. Yeah.
JH: Yes.
FB: We never struck it.
JH: Yes. So this was dropping off agents I presume.
FB: And supplies.
JH: Parachuting. And supplies.
FB: And supplies. Yeah.
JH: Were you on operations? I guess a smaller aircraft where you actually land and picked up people?
FB: Well that’s, that was, we were 138 Squadron based at Tempsford.
JH: Yeah.
FB: And there was 161 Squadron based at Tempsford and they were flying Hudsons.
JH: Hudsons. Yeah.
FB: Which was a twin engine —
JH: Yes.
FB: Plane. They wouldn’t land unless it was, it would have to have the proper provisions for them to land.
JH: Yeah.
FB: The main planes they were flying in, these were mainly operations in to France was a, was a Lysander.
JH: Single engine is that?
FB: Yeah. It was a single engine.
JH: Yes.
FB: And that would actually land and drop off these Joes in a field. Or pick them up and take them back to Tempsford. They would actually land on the —
JH: Yes. So, that was 161 also.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Not 138. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
FB: 138 was confined to the Stirlings, and 161 had the Hudsons and the —
JH: Yes.
FB: The Hudsons and Lysanders there.
JH: I would guess the problem for the Lysander if they’re landing and get stuck in the, in the field.
FB: Well —
JH: Did that ever happen?
FB: Not that I know of.
JH: No.
FB: I suppose they could have picked a muddy field.
JH: Yeah.
FB: You had to put in a report when you got back from these operations as to what, what you thought of the landing site that they’d given you. Whether you thought it was suitable for future. For use.
JH: Yes.
FB: Or whether it was a little bit dickie or so on so —
JH: Yes.
FB: There was full cooperation with, with the Army and the other [unclear] concerned —
JH: Yes.
FB: As to whether it was going to work or not.
JH: Yes.
FB: There’s some funny stories come out of it. I don’t know whether you’ve heard this one or not but [laughs] they had one where, I could go back to the start. Yes.
JH: Tell me a bit about the agents. I I would think that you didn’t know their names, for example.
FB: No. You —
JH: You couldn’t really talk to them too much.
FB: Yeah. You could talk to them. You could talk to them. We spent the night with one in particular. We took him over to Denmark and we came back, heading back to England across the North Sea and we had a radio message to say, ‘Don’t go back to Tempsford. Go to Lossiemouth.’ Up in the north of Scotland. So we went to Lossiemouth and just put us all, the whole seven crew plus this agent, they put us all into one hut and we had a great old talk to this bloke about it. We said to him, ‘Well, what happens when you, when you, if they catch you.’ He said, ‘Well, first of all— ’ he opened up his coat and he had this great big Luger pistol in his, in his coat and he said, he said, but he said, ‘They’ll interrogate me,’ he said, ‘They’ll torture me to find out more.’ He said, ‘Then when they are finally satisfied they’ll shoot me.’ He said, ‘I am not covered by the Geneva Convention in regard to prisoners of war.’
JH: Yeah.
FB: Because it’s not a, it’s not a wartime project that that they’re on. So I don’t know what the Germans would have categorised them as but they would just shoot them when they’d finished with them.
JH: Yes. Well, what about you and the crew, Fred? If you were shot down and captured by the Germans if, if they had any inkling that you were involved in special operations was there a feeling that you could get, could get harsher treatment from the Germans?
FB: I don’t know what happened. Some of my friends were taken POW but I don’t know. I’ll say this for the Germans they stuck by the rules of warfare, you know. They stuck by the, whatever the Geneva Convention said about that. The Germans stuck by it. They were very, well, they were a military nation and if that’s the way it should be done that was the way it was going to be done but —
Other: Mr Bowman.
FB: Yes.
Other: Oh, hi John.
JH: Hello.
Other: Happy hour upstairs Mr Bowman.
FB: Oh, I wouldn’t mind.
Other: You can bring your friend upstairs.
JH: Yeah. We’re just doing an interview then we’ll come up.
Other: You can carry on drinking as well while you’re interviewing.
FB: You’re trying to lead me astray aren’t you?
Other: Or maybe the other way around.
JH: [laughs] Thank you.
FB: Oh, deary me.
JH: Ok, I’ll leave that in there Fred. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we were talking about you had some friends that were captured and you know in general the Germans were, were pretty good.
FB: Yes. They were.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
FB: They stuck to the rules of the game.
JH: Yeah. One thing I’d like to ask you. I think you’ve touched on it is, is the number of countries that you went out to on these operations. You mentioned Norway.
FB: Norway. Denmark. Norway.
JH: And France would have featured quite a bit —
FB: Denmark, France, Holland mainly.
JH: Holland and Belgium. Yeah. Yeah.
FB: But I didn’t become operational until July 1944.
JH: Yeah.
FB: Of course, in July 1944 it was all France.
JH: Yes.
FB: But then as, as the British Army swept across France the operations converted then up to Norway and Denmark.
JH: Yes.
FB: Which was a long way away.
JH: So were you kind of following the lines? Keeping ahead of the, the front lines in operations to some extent.
FB: Yes. Yes. Yes. There was no point in getting behind them. You had to be in front. We had to be in front of them all the time and they had a special identification. They had armbands. I’ve got one sat in the window frame there. You’ll see it. The Cross of Lorraine. And there were armbands that we dropped to the Resistance movements and they had the Cross of Lorraine and when they decided that they would come out and surrender. Well, not surrender but join up with the advancing —
JH: Yeah.
FB: British and American armies. That they would wear these armbands to say that they were friends and —
JH: Yes. So the nature of the operations sounds like it was changing. The Resistance. As the front lines were going east they became more open.
FB: Yeah.
JH: More overt. The Resistance.
FB: Well, towards the end of that stage the only two German occupied countries left were Norway and Denmark, the others had all been liberated.
JH: Yes.
FB: And that’s when they, that’s when they said to us, ‘Oh, listen fellas. You’ve been [bludging] around for too long. We’re going to stick you on main force.’ [laughs]. So we finished up at a Lancaster Finishing School.
JH: That’s interesting. Just before we get on to that I read somewhere that the peak effort with the SOE work was about June, July ’44 which is —
FB: Yeah.
JH: Which was when you arrived there.
FB: Started there. Yeah.
JH: So it was full on then.
FB: Yes. Yeah.
JH: And so these operations were there occasions where you go out to say some, some target field in France and you couldn’t find the target area? Or you know, did you hit the target area every time?
FB: Not every time. No. No. You see, it could be any number of reasons. The whole drop area, drop zone might have been taken over by the Germans. They might have found them and no doubt they shot them and so that was one reason. They [pause] but —
JH: So a pretty good success rate to your, your missions.
FB: Well, I think we did. Yes.
JH: Yeah.
FB: I mean we didn’t have any of this flash blooming navigational equipment that they’ve got today.
JH: Yes.
FB: And we actually had to find, say in Norway an actual paddock. And in the bushes around that paddock was the Resistance group waiting. Waiting to hear an aeroplane.
JH: Yes.
FB: A Stirling coming. And then when they were identified as being a Stirling they’d come out and start waving to you. We’d make the drop and off we’d go. So —
JH: Was there radio contact with the people on the ground?
FB: There could have been. There was what they called S phones I think they called them.
JH: Yeah.
FB: But we never used it.
JH: Yeah.
FB: But, but we did carry this sort of portable phone to contact them but we never saw any reason to have to use it so —
JH: It would be quite dangerous I should think, communicating with the ground crew with the Germans trying to vector in.
FB: Yeah. No thanks.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
FB: It opens up too many avenues.
JH: Yeah. So, of all those operations, Fred maybe give me one or two examples of ones that really stick out for whatever reason.
FB: Well, I think at that time when we dropped those two Norwegians in to Norway stands out in my mind.
JH: Just finding them. Finding the place to start with.
FB: And they did.
JH: And that’s a long, one long trip.
FB: Normally there’s somebody to meet them but they said, ‘No. Nobody will meet us. You get to the drop zone, where you think the drop zone is and kick us out.’ You know, out you go. ‘And we’ll find our destination from there.’ They carried their skis with them. They were sent out when they were shot out of the aircraft and they just teamed up with somebody that they would have gone to. So we had to be a hundred percent accurate when we were dropping so as they knew where they were.
JH: Yes.
FB: And knew which way to go to meet up with their, with their mates.
JH: Yes.
FB: And the next day SOE contacted us and said that the drop was successful.
JH: Yes.
FB: They were landed safely. You got them in the right place and everything else.
JH: Yes.
FB: So we were rather pleased with that. And that, that same people that I made contact with after the war.
JH: Yes.
FB: Mr and Mrs, well he was Mr Fosse.
JH: Yeah.
FB: I just, through the Norwegian Embassy in Canberra and they told, told me that yes they had got in touch with Mr Fosse. First of all to see whether he was happy to talk to me and he said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘But I’m deaf. I’m not very good but my wife could take all the messages.’ And so I got on the phone to Norway and this voice answered the phone. A woman. And I said like a couple of, you know. She only speaks Norwegian so this is going to be a bit of a problem [laughs] So, I said, ‘Oh, are you Mrs Fosse?’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Well, look, Bowman’s my name.’ I said, ‘You’ve probably been expecting a call from me.’ She said, ‘Yes. Yes.’ I said, ‘Oh, I can’t speak Norwegian,’ I said and so, you know, ‘What do we do? Speak English?’ She said, ‘Don’t worry, mate,’ she said, ‘I’m a Scot.’ [laughs] So, I said, ‘Look, that’s great. That’s great,’ I said, ‘So my name’s Fred. What’s your name?’ Whatever it was. And we had a great old conversation and he was sitting down beside her and I asked about the drop and she said it was spot on.’ She said, ‘They landed in the snow and it sloped down towards a lake.’
JH: Yeah.
FB: She said they would have rolled down that snow in to the lake, she said only they came up against a tree which saved them from [laughs] saved them from freezing to death. Honestly, I had a great conversation with her.
JH: Yeah. Did you ever meet up face to face?
FB: Not meet up.
JH: No.
FB: But I had a lot of, a lot off the telephone conversations.
JH: Yeah. How marvellous.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Gosh. Yeah.
FB: That’s why. So she was the one I said that, I said that sort of Mr Fosse went up to the north of England to do his training to become an agent and he met this girl and he went back after the war.
JH: Yes.
FB: And married her.
JH: What a story.
FB: They got married.
JH: What a story.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah. Well, Fred, why don’t we move on to when you went on to heavy bomber conversion. Lancaster conversion. What, what happened there?
FB: Well, the [pause] at that stage when we did that all the other work, the other type of work was, was finished, you know. I mean virtually the whole of occupied Europe except Norway and Denmark had been relieved or released or whatever the word is.
JH: Liberated. Yeah.
FB: Liberated. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
FB: And they said to us, well look, you know, over you go to Main Force Bomber Command. So we went and did a conversion course up at Blyton I think it was.
JH: Yes. Was this the end of ’44 or 1945 now?
FB: No. 1945.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
FB: And so we went up there and did this conversion course on to, on to Lancasters and joined Main Force which was an entirely different thing because on this special duties thing that we were doing with the drop zones in to the Resistance movements was all low level and of course the other Bomber Command is all twenty thousand feet.
JH: In formation. Yeah.
FB: Oh no. Not formation. When I say not form, not the strict formation that the Americans used to do.
JH: Yes.
FB: You [pause] it’s a sort of a loose formation. You sort of congregate up around the Wash somewhere and you don’t fly in formation but you leave there in a group.
JH: Yes.
FB: And they used to divide at least, suppose there were six hundred planes on a job
JH: A stream. Yeah.
FB: There might be four meeting up times.
JH: Yeah.
FB: You say, you know when there was one group and then another ten minutes later the next group of that group sort of —
JH: Yes.
FB: Come to the fore and —
JH: Yeah. So, so were you assigned to a new squadron or was it your squadron en masse?
FB: No. No. It was our squadron there.
JH: Yeah. Ok.
FB: Which of course, it was, it was our squadron and they sent us to a new base. [unclear] Anyway, it was, it was a new base.
JH: Was it Lincolnshire or in Cambridgeshire?
FB: No. No. East Anglia. We had Cambridge groups.
JH: Yes.
FB: Bury St Edmunds. That sort of area.
JH: Was this Number 3 Group.
FB: Yes. All Number 3.
JH: Yeah. Still Number 3.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
FB: But as I say all the operations were initiated by SOE but Bomber Command —
JH: Yes.
FB: As such didn’t come into it.
JH: Yes. What the hardened bomber, Bomber Command crews what did, what did they make of you guys coming out of the blue?
FB: There was a little bit of a [laughs] there was what you might call a settling in period [laughs]
JH: Yes.
FB: Because we went over. Oh, I forget where we were based then, and of course this bomber crew was already, you know was already there and we were the sort of new boys on it.
JH: Yeah.
FB: The new boys. A lot of bloody skites you are.
JH: Yes.
FB: The usual story.
JH: So, was it sorted out in the pub?
FB: Yeah.
JH: On the dartboard.
FB: Oh yeah. It doesn’t take long. The old, the old pub solves a lot of problem. You probably asked me that question, I think. How you crewed up? Did you?
JH: Yes, I did. Yes. You went to the pub.
FB: Went to the pub.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. Not a bad place to start.
FB: I mean the CO told you to do that. He said, ‘Go to the pub. Meet up, crew up and if you wake up the next morning and say, ‘I couldn’t possibly fly with that so and so, just tell them you can’t. You won’t be joining the crew.’ And find somebody else.
JH: These, these days you’d do psychological profiling and see who matches up.
FB: Oh yes. There would be a lot of, a lot of tests.
JH: Yes. Yes. So, so, so you got on to some operations from there.
FB: Yes, we did. We did. Funny, I think we only did three or four bombing operations.
JH: Yes.
FB: It, it was right at the finish of the war.
JH: Yes.
FB: And, but we, we did one that was probably worth recording.
JH: Yes.
FB: And it was to Kiel.
JH: Submarines. Yeah. Submarine pens.
FB: Kiel. Kiel Harbour.
JH: Yeah.
FB: They said, they said —
JH: Yeah.
FB: We were bombing dock installations and so on.
JH: Docks. Yes.
FB: So we went to Kiel and we were making our run in and the Pathfinders had been there ahead of us and so forth and the, all of a sudden we had this terrific explosion or something go underneath us because we were about twenty thousand feet.
JH: Yes.
FB: And this explosion would have been on the ground. Anyway, we got back and reported it to intelligence at the interrogation and they said, ‘Oh, all the crews are talking about this.’ Anyway, so a day or so later the headlines, “RAF sink the German pocket battleship the Admiral von Scheer in Kiel Harbour.” Somebody, some plan ahead of us must have dropped the bomb down the funnel.
JH: Down the funnel. Yeah.
FB: And up she blew in Kiel Harbour.
JH: Yes.
FB: Boy. Yeah.
JH: Yeah. And in those operations I’m, I’m guessing that the fighters and the flak were manageable at that stage.
FB: Oh yes. It had eased off considerable. I mean, I’d have hated to have been doing the same operation in 1943 as what we were doing in early 1945. Early 1945 the Germans were —
Other 2: Sorry Fred.
FB: That’s alright.
Other 2: Come up for a drink you two if you like.
FB: Pardon?
JH: Yes. So, so then it was all over I guess pretty soon after that. Were you in any operations bringing the POWs back?
FB: Yeah.
JH: Or Operation Manna.
FB: Yeah. Manna.
JH: For example. Yeah.
FB: Yeah. We were in the one, the one bringing the POWs back was called Exodus, wasn’t it?
JH: Yes.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Exodus. That’s it.
FB: That we flew them back from Juvencourt.
JH: You might, you might have flown my father back.
FB: Oh, for goodness sake.
JH: He was a POW. Yeah.
FB: We flew a lot of Sikhs back.
JH: Yes.
FB: And they were very very disciplined too and I, one came up to me with a little box brownie which was quite illegal [laughs] And I said, ‘You line up. You line up there and I’ll take a photograph of you.’ Oh, he yelled out two few commands and this whole group, twenty four I think we took, yes so they all lined up outside the aircraft.
JH: Yes.
FB: And —
JH: And what about Operation Manna in Holland.
FB: Manna. Yes. That was, that was very interesting. That was —
JH: Yeah.
FB: That was dropping the food into, into Holland.
JH: Yes.
FB: And it was all dropped. Mostly it was either in sacks.
JH: Yes.
FB: Where they had just, we dropped them on to a muddy football oval or something and something went falling into the mud didn’t do any damage to them.
JH: Yes.
FB: And then we just dropped them there and, and went on our way. But the thing that struck me was the first one we did the war hadn’t finished. It was a couple of days before the war finished.
JH: Yes.
FB: But the Dutch people arranged with the German High Command or something to allow us to go ahead and drop this food.
JH: Yeah.
FB: To the Dutch people and the Germans said, ‘Yes, we’ll let you go in but you’ve got to keep at a certain height.
JH: Yes.
FB: You’ve got to have your guns pointing northwards.
JH: Yeah.
FB: And do this. Do this.
JH: Yes.
FB: You get one warning signal otherwise bang bang.
JH: I’ve read about this. I’ve read about this.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
FB: And, and the thing I that always remember the first time we went and the war hadn’t finished. They had to, before the war officially finished over there and the Germans were in command and it was all done very Germanic, you know. Disciplined. The next day we went after that the Germans had gone. They’d said, let’s get back to Germany and the Dutch people had taken over.
JH: Yes.
FB: And along an embankment as we flew in on the starboard side on an embankment they’d put, they’d got old sheets of paper or just sheets of —
JH: Yes.
FB: Bedding sheets or something and they had this sign up, “Thanks RAF.” And, and honestly that sort of brought tears to your eyes to think of it, you know.
JH: Yes.
FB: One of the very few decent jobs of Bomber Command, I think.
JH: Yes. Well, my wife and I used to live in Holland in the ‘70s and we met people that still talked about Operation Manna.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Because there was absolutely no food.
FB: That’s right.
JH: They were eating, they were eating tulip bulbs, and they were very thankful of this Operation Manna. These people we talked to.
FB: But I’ve never forgotten that sign. It was quite big letters.
JH: That would have —
FB: “Thanks RAF,” you know.
JH: Yeah.
FB: That’s the first time any, anybody’s thanked us for what we’d been doing [laughs]
JH: That’s as good as a campaign medal.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Well, tell me a little about what happened then. I know, I know a lot of Bomber Command air crew especially the Aussies all went down to Brighton at some stage.
FB: That’s right.
JH: And my, my father went down. He was there on his honeymoon.
FB: Yeah.
JH: And he met up with his mates from prison camp.
FB: Oh, for goodness sake.
JH: So my mother wasn’t that impressed because they were down the pub.
FB: Yeah.
JH: On their honeymoon.
FB: I agree with your mother [laughs] Yeah. N [pause] Yes they were, they sent us to a place called Gamston I think it was. Gamston, somewhere. It was a holding unit and we just, they said to us, ‘You can go on leave. You can go on leave for as long as you like as long as you keep us informed where you’re going.’ So we had free rail travel and —
JH: Marvellous. Yeah.
FB: Yeah.
JH: And then, and then you were allotted a berth in a, on a ship.
FB: On the Andes. Yeah.
JH: Yes.
FB: Yeah. Boy.
JH: Was that through the Suez Canal?
FB: Yeah.
JH: That way.
FB: Yeah. Through the Suez Canal.
JH: Yes. Yeah. You weren’t on the same ship as Don Browning, our friend.
FB: Well, I could have been.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
FB: I could have been. You wouldn’t know. There was —
JH: Yes. Yes.
FB: I mean as I say we were packed on. Goodness me.
JH: Yeah.
FB: I don’t know how many people were on a ship.
JH: Yes.
FB: Yeah.
JH: So what was the feeling? So where did you arrive? Was it in Sydney?
FB: No.
JH: Your landfall. In Melbourne?
FB: We went to Melbourne and then it was going on to New Zealand. It had a lot of New Zealand —
JH: Yes.
FB: Airmen. So it was going on to New Zealand and we had to change ship on to the Stratheden.
JH: Yes.
FB: To come up to Sydney.
JH: Yeah. So you came in through the Heads and —
FB: Beautiful day. Beautiful.
JH: Yeah, and family waiting.
FB: Yeah. At Bradfield Park.
JH: Yes.
FB: Yeah. So [unclear]
JH: Yes.
FB: It didn’t take long to find them.
JH: Yeah. So, so what happened? I suppose you had to get a life. Get a career.
FB: Oh, no. I’d started in the accountancy business and I’d passed.
JH: Oh, yes. Yeah.
FB: One or two intermediate examinations and —
JH: So you took off where you left off.
FB: Thank goodness I had enough sense at that stage to say well I must persevere with this and get, get qualified.
JH: Yes.
FB: And I did in that sense to do that.
JH: Yeah.
FB: I didn’t have much sense to do anything else.
JH: Yes. Yeah. So then you started a family. You married.
FB: Yeah. All those things. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
FB: But I really didn’t have many troubles settling down I don’t think.
JH: Yes.
FB: You did get your odd outbursts, you know.
JH: Yes. Yeah. One I was going to ask you whether the kind of very secretive operation you did, did you have to sign a secrecy form, you know.
FB: No.
JH: Thirty years or something.
FB: No, didn’t have to sign anything.
JH: Yeah.
FB: You were told. You were told that was top secret.
JH: Yes.
FB: And don’t you dare infringe it.
JH: Yes. Yes.
FB: Or else.
JH: Yeah. Yes. Because I know my father didn’t talk about hardly anything.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Until later on in life.
FB: No.
JH: Yeah.
FB: No. All the stuff at Tempsford in those days was top, top secret, you know.
JH: Yes. Have you been back to Tempsford?
FB: No. I’m not able to travel like I used to.
JH: Ok.
FB: It’s a bit of a problem.
JH: Well, I’ll tell you what. Because I go back there to right there where, every so often where I was born and I’ll visit it for you and I’ll have a look.
FB: Well, thank you.
JH: There’s probably not much there.
FB: They, they have a yearly get together. I’ve probably got —
JH: Yes. Yeah.
FB: Some of them there.
JH: Yeah.
FB: So do you want to make yourself known?
JH: Yes. And is there a pub there? Well, maybe you weren’t allowed to go to pubs in Tempsford. Did, was there a local pub?
FB: Sandy. At Sandy. Sandy is in —
JH: Sandy. Yeah. Yes.
FB: There was a pub at Sandy.
JH: Yes.
FB: We used to call it the Sandy Battle.
JH: Well, I can’t believe it. My, my people used to farm all around Sandy and, yeah.
FB: For goodness sake.
JH: So I’ll do that. So —
FB: I just wish I could travel.
JH: Yes.
FB: And go back to Tempsford and have a, because they do have a big reunion there once a year.
JH: Yes.
FB: It’s amazing really how many people will —
JH: Yes.
FB: Must have got together to preserve the story of Tempsford.
JH: Yes.
FB: Incredible. And prince what’s his name? Prince Charles is a great supporter of them.
JH: Yes.
FB: He goes to their functions, of course.
JH: Yeah.
FB: So, I don’t suppose, I suppose the other squadrons, Australian squadrons, and they probably have much the same thing. 460 Squadron.
JH: Yeah. I don’t think you hear so much about Tempsford as the other bases.
FB: No.
JH: Mainly because it was probably, you know very secretive.
FB: Yeah.
JH: In the war.
FB: It sort of got something to do with royalty too because the commanding officer of Tempsford was the King’s pilot, Group Captain Fielden.
JH: Oh right.
FB: And he was, he was station commander.
JH: Was he the station commander?
FB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
FB: Group Captain Fielden.
JH: Fielden. That’s interesting. So there’s a special interest from Prince Charles. Yeah.
FB: So he became, he was knighted so I don’t know whether they call him sir now. Like they did with me [laughs] Yeah.
JH: Well, Fred this has been very interesting. I was going to ask you, you participate in veteran’s activities?
FB: Oh yes. I do, and I’ve had quite a bit to do with them because I don’t know where it all started but a lot of people have been writing books and writing articles on, on the special duty squadrons and Tempsford squadrons, and I guess I’m probably one of the very few still above the ground.
JH: Yes.
FB: And so I well get involved.
JH: Yes.
FB: Tell them what was is.
JH: So is there an Association here in Australia or are you linked up with a UK Association?
FB: Well, no. I think that was, what did they call them? ATVA. The Australian Tempsford Veterans Association, I think. ATV.
JH: Ok. I didn’t know there was one quite to be quite honest.
FB: Yeah. There is one. Yes.
JH: Yeah.
FB: But I haven’t, physically speaking I haven’t been able to travel.
JH: Yes.
FB: So, that’s my only regret. That I haven’t been able to go. Because they are big events. Once a year they have it at Tempsford.
JH: Yes.
FB: They come from near and far.
JH: Yes.
FB: I don’t think there’s too many of us left who served on the squadron operationally.
JH: Yeah. Yes.
FB: But Prince Charles is a great supporter of it. He, he goes to all the functions and of course his, he, he would know Group Captain Fielden of course.
JH: Yes. Yes. Well, Fred I’ve really enjoyed this interviewing you today and learning about this special duties.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Type of operations that you were on.
FB: It is very interesting, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve had some very interesting discussions with these agents at times, you know saying, ‘What happens if this happens? What will you do?’
JH: And I believe you had a word for them.
FB: Joes.
JH: Joes. Yeah. Yes. That’s it. I’d read that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
FB: I, I did write a book on it as a matter of fact.
JH: Oh, you have. Show it to me and I’ll mention it in the interview here. Yeah.
FB: Look, if you promise to give it back to me.
JH: Yes.
FB: Having said that where is it? Deary deary me where is it? [pause]
JH: Is it in these shelves here?
FB: Yeah.
JH: Let me see.
FB: Yes. Joes.
JH: What’s it called? The book.
FB: Oh, there’s been quite a few books written on it really. See what a shambles this is. Oh blimey. That’s, I don’t know whether you saw this or not. That’s the book that’s for me.
JH: Yes.
FB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah. I I had a copy the other day for you but you’ve got it. Yes. Is it up here? Is that it?
FB: No.
JH: SOE.
FB: Yeah. Look. SOE. Oh, that’s one of them. I’ve probably got all sorts of books on it.
JH: Yes.
FB: Oh, deary me. What’s over here? [pause] That’s the book.
JH: Oh, thank you. Yeah. For the interview Fred has shown me a book he has written. It’s called, “You’ll Be Too Young.” And it’s his memoirs and —
FB: If you promise to return it you can take it and read it if you want.
JH: Well, thank you very much. Yes. So, it was published in 2005 in Sydney.
FB: And it’s all true.
JH: Well, thank you very much.
FB: No bulldust [laughs] Now, if you —
JH: Thank you Fred.
FB: If you promise to return it.
JH: We’ll sign off now. Thank you very much for the interview.
FB: Oh, you’re welcome.
JH: So, I’ll stop the tape here.
FB: That’s all I ask is that it gets returned because —
JH: I will for sure.
FB: I’m going to have to approach them any day now to see if they can give me a reprint on all this.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frederick Arthur Bowman
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Horsburgh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-11-21
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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ABowmanFA181121, PBowmanFA1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:59:00 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Denmark
France
Germany
Great Britain
Norway
England--Bedfordshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cumbria
Germany--Kiel
New South Wales
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick Bowman was born in Sydney in 1924. He was a member of the Air Training Corps, and when he was eighteen he joined the Air Force. He went to Kingaroy for basic training, and did his wireless course at Maryborough, and Evans Head for bombing and gunnery training. He arrived in UK at No. 11 Personnel Despatch & Receiving Centre RAAF in Brighton, and was posted to RAF Millom to the Advanced Flying Unit flying in Avro Ansons. He was posted to RAF Westcott where he crewed up, and was posted to 138 Special Duties Squadron based at RAF Tempsford where he flew on operations to Scandinavia. Close to the end of the war he joined Bomber Command on bombing operations flying in Lancasters, notably to attack the docks at Kiel which resulted in the sinking of the German Pocket Battleship the Admiral Scheer. He published his memoirs in a book titled, “You Will Be Too Young to Die.”
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944-07
1945
138 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
Bombing and Gunnery School
crewing up
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Millom
RAF Tempsford
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/754/10752/ACoulsonW180207.2.mp3
0e9d5b6e44f81a7e472aa3fe9680857b
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
Coulson, Bill
William Coulson
W Coulson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Tony Coulson about his father, Warrant Officer William Coulson (1921 -2018). He flew operations as an air gunner with 138 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Coulson, W
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TC: Right. We’ll do some of the stories. The, the [pause] the ones that do the personal bit and then let me just think. I need to do the Clarkson story. The Duraglit one and the, my mother’s and the, my mother’s and that would —
MG: Ok.
TC: Some of the incidents that Bill has told us through the years concern, and reactions to the flights or the operations that he’d been on. And one particularly bad operation coming from Norway they’d been beaten up by a lot of flak and they managed just to scrape into an emergency runway in, on the coast of England. They got there and they were debriefed, and they were sent to the mess to get something to eat and they were eating there with their aeroplane, you know being rescued from the mess that it was in and they went in to the mess, ate and Bill Clarkson thought I’d like some more bread. He said to the other lads, ‘Anybody else want some more bread?’ And some of them said yes. So he went up to the young WAAF who was on the counter and said, ‘Excuse me, can I have some more bread please.’ And she looked at him and looked at the lads and then said, ‘More bread? Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ It took the rest of the crew about ten minutes to calm Bill Clarkson down and to inform the young lady that yes indeed they know. The did know there was a war on. Another incident that occurred was when they were sent out to take a spy over to France and they were returned because of bad weather. The operation was cancelled and [pause] Sorry. It wasn’t France. Another operation was when they were sent to send a spy over to Norway and the operation was cancelled due to bad weather and so they had to fly and they ended up in Kinloss. They had their flying gear on and they were received until the, everything went well until the next morning when they’d taken their flying gear off and they were standing by the Lancaster and a particularly officious Red Cap came along and said, ‘Why is that guy in civilian gear?’ Because obviously he was a spy and he’d been dressed to land and blend in to the Norwegian background. ‘Where’s his papers?’ And obviously being a spy he didn’t have any. And so then they mustered the guard to come to this aeroplane and it took all of Heck’s persuasion and finally pulling seniority and phone calls before they were able to fly off and take the spy back where, to Tempsford where he’d come from. Another one concerns my dad’s marriage to my mother in February of 1944 [pause] They got married on February the 8th. February the 8th 1944. Sorry. Another story concerns my dad’s marriage to my mother in February 1945. They got married in Scunthorpe. The crews came up to Scunthorpe and helped with the celebrations and my mother was walking along again with a pilot on each arm and about fourteen young men surrounding her going to the dance hall in Scunthorpe saying, ‘I can’t decide who I’m having the first dance with.’ And my dad piped up, ‘Yes, you can. It’s me.’ And later on they honeymooned in London, again with both crews because they were all on leave together and it didn’t seem unusual that they should all stick together even on their honeymoon. And previous to the trip out in London my dad had said to my mother, ‘Oh, it’s important I get some Duraglit. I’ve got to actually clean my uniform and so she said, ‘Right. We’ll do that and make sure. I’ll remind you later.’ And so the two crews are walking down a side street in London and they see a barber’s shop. And above it was the legend, Durex, which was a well-known prophylactic. But in my mother’s rather confused and maybe over excited mind she’d mixed that up with Duraglit and so she piped up, saying, ‘Bill, you said we’d need some of that for later.’ Bill’s comments to me on the event was, ‘And you know neither of those crews ever repeated that story to me for the rest of the time that I knew them.’ Yes. Another rather tragic bit of that story was the second week. Dad was at Tempsford and it was obviously a secret aerodrome. Even people in the area didn’t know about its existence and my mother knew that.
[ringtone – interview paused]
Another sad aspect of that honeymoon was the second week that my mother spent in digs near Tempsford. Sorry. [unclear] again. Sorry. I’m not thinking.
MG: That’s not a problem.
TC: Another sad aspect of that honeymoon was mother was staying in digs near Tempsford which was obviously a secret aerodrome. They were dealing with SOE and other nefarious organisation and so the locals, many of them didn’t even know it was an aerodrome. Many of them just thought it was a farm. Or at least that’s the story we were told. She was going to the market in town and she got on the bus. Now, out of the window she saw a Stirling on training exercises. Now, she knew that my dad was on training on that day and this was February 1945. The 14th. And so she thought, ‘Oh, that might be Bill up there on training. There were only three of the Stirlings on training that day so she knew Bill might be one of them. Unfortunately, an American Mustang pilot at the same time who’d been involved in the training exercises decided to try one last attempt at a low-level attack on the Stirling and he misjudged the timing and actually took the tail end of the Stirling off as he crashed into it. And both aircraft fell to the ground and were, nobody survived obviously. My mother was twenty one, married for a week and she’d just witnessed a tragic accident that meant that possibly she had a one in three chance of having lost her husband. You can imagine how distraught she was. Furthermore, there was no way that she could get in contact with the aerodrome because it was a secret aerodrome and therefore had no contact with the public whatsoever. And so she had to wait until 6 o’clock that night to find out when my dad came out of the camp to see whether he was alive or not. One interesting story with that was that as the bus went along and my mother was in tears and being comforted by some other stranger that she didn’t even know was the local bobby was riding on his bike to investigate the accident and he flagged down the bus and put his bike on it and said, ‘Take me to Tempsford.’ Right. That’s two stories. What’s the name for it. Do you want just the last one of course. I’ll just finish. Right. Bill’s war career must have been an extraordinary event for a young lad from Scunthorpe. Never been out of town. No formal education. Left school at fourteen. And it was something that I know did shape him as a person but something also that he didn’t ever really talked about other than at the ludicrous level when, when I used to ask him as all little kids did, ‘Dad, what did you do in the war?’ And he said, ‘Well, I used to fly in aeroplanes and me and Churchill used to have a cricket bat and used to fly over Germany and hit people on the head.’ I said, as I grew older I said, ‘That’s ridiculous. Come on. Tell me.’ He said, ‘Well, I used to drop mail and supplies.’ And he said, ‘I didn’t mind dropping the supplies but the mail was difficult. Especially when they had the lower letterbox.’ And it was that kind of facetious attitude that dad had all the way through until about twelve, fifteen years ago and he’d reached eighty odd. We’d taken him to RAF Duxford for his eightieth birthday and he just wanted another flight. So he paid all his birthday money. In fact, quite tragically he said, ‘I know you’ve given me this money. Do you mind if I spend it on this flight?’ And it was a 36 de Havilland that was doing joy rides around Duxford. And we said, ‘No. Of course not.’ And he went up there and that kind of triggered things, the trip to Duxford and he did start talking more and more about it. And even then when he went to work part time, at eighty he was working part time at Scunthorpe United on the gate and he used to tell some of the older gate men some stories and he became affectionately known as Gunner Bill. And even to that day I still work at the ground and they ask me about, ‘How is Gunner Bill doing?’
MG: Ok. Thanks very much Tony. That’s been really helpful and obviously thanks to Bill for allowing us to be, to be here with him and I’ll stop now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Tony Coulson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Michael Grant
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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ACoulsonW180207
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:12:07 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Clarkson was flying on operations from RAF Tempsford dropping agents and supplies over occupied territory. On one occasion they were recalled due to bad weather and had to return with the agent on board. Obviously, he was in civilian clothes and caused a security incident at the aerodrome. On another occasion when the aeroplane Bill had been flying on had been badly damaged and they had been forced to make an emergency landing. When Bill and his crew asked for more bread with their meal they were met with the incredulous words of the WAAF, ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on.’
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02-08
1945-02-14
138 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
crash
Lancaster
love and romance
RAF Tempsford
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/10626/PMossH1801.2.jpg
8fef87e0bf60954cc3caced45b9ca9a0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/10626/AMossH181114.1.mp3
010bf15446d62b4b91fa96ccbdb97bc0
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
Moss, Henry
H Moss
Harry Moss
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty items. Collection concerns Henry Moss (1925 - 2020, 3041799, Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner with 138 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his flying logbook, documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Henry Moss and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-10-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Moss, H
Requires
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Henry Moss, Flight Sergeant, served in the RAF between 22 October 1943 to 10 April 1946. He trained as an Air Gunner and was involved in bombing Kiel, Potsdam, Heligoland, and Bremen before taking part in Operations Exodus, Manna and Revue with 138 Squadron. Henry was demobilised in 1946.
Henry left school in Bradford aged 17½ just before the outbreak of war with no qualifications . He worked in a variety of jobs including a garment fitter where he made waterproof clothing for dispatch riders. Henry passed his National Service medical board and joined the Air Transport Corps which led him to choose to join the Royal Air Force.
Henry was ordered to go to Viceroy House in London to be fitted with his unforms and receive his inoculations before moving on with his next stage of his training. He was then posted to RAF Usworth in February 1944 for his primary training. This was made up of marching and learning to salute, and basic tests on arithmetic and writing to place recruits on their trade path. There were people from many different places around the globe. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/28928
Henry learned how to strip down and re-assemble a Browning gun blindfolded but found this a pointless exercise as at altitude, it impossible to manipulate the small parts of the weapon with gloves on.
After RAF Usworth, he was posted to RAF Pembrey to the Introductory Gunnery Course at 1 Air Gunnery School flying Ansons. He did not experience air sickness and enjoyed flying. While here Henry learned about ‘offsetting’ the release of the bombs and how to aim accurately. He was surprised to learn that from his own records that he had scored 98.5% in the exam. Over his time at RAF Pembrey, he fired a total of 300 rounds. Henry was finally selected as an air gunner/wireless operator.
Henry’s next posting was to (26 OTU) RAF Wing on the Vickers Wellington, where he crewed up. His first pilot made a mistake during a landing and while the landing was safe, the pilot was sent home. His second pilot was Sergeant Crawford who he felt safe with for the rest of the war. From here Henry went to the 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit RAF Langer on Lancasters, and 138 Squadron RAF Tempsford. Henry flew to Kiel twice; both flights were at night and while he was involved in the sinking of the German ship Admiral Sheer, he did not see anything. Henry flew operations to Potsdam and a daytime operation to the Naval base on the island of Heligoland. He can remember being able to see the other aircraft and watching the torpedo boats below; he thought the operation was a bit of a ‘dead duck’. Henry’s final operation was to Bremen when they were hit by flak but ‘nothing vital was hit’. Henry referred to Operation Manna as ‘Spam Runs’
After the war ended Henry was involved, as a camera operator, in Operation Revue which was the creation of a digital map on mainland Britain as an aid to town and country. Henry was demobilised from Personnel Dispersal Centre 100 having achieved the rank of Flight Sergeant. In total he completed 436 hours 20 minutes flying. He went straight back to his previous job as a garment cutter in Bradford, but he did not stay in contact with any of ‘his’ crew.
Claire Campbell
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. So this is, I’ll just introduce myself. This is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Henry Moss at his home on, what’s the date? Right. The 14th of November 2018. I’ll just put that there.
HM: Yeah.
DK: If you just speak normally. Yeah. That’s looks ok. So, if I can ask you first of all Henry what were you doing before the war?
HM: [laughs] [coughs] I had all sorts of jobs before the war. I left school just before the outbreak of war. Being in, I lived at Bradford at that time.
DK: Yeah.
HM: I was just leaving school. The boys without any qualifications went into the mill. Worked in the mill. From the mill I worked in a greengrocer’s shop. From the greengrocer’s shop I worked in a dye works. And then I went into garment cutting. Making waterproof clothing for the Army.
DK: Right.
HM: Cape down sheets, and dispatch rider’s waterproofs. And I stayed in that until I was called up at seventeen and a half.
DK: So what made you decide on the RAF then?
HM: Oh, I always fancied the RAF. I was in the ATC.
DK: Right.
HM: Previously to the RAF. And from the RAF at seventeen and a half it must have been November time 1943, got my call up papers to report to Viceroy Court in London.
DK: Right.
HM: That was a big block of flats that overlooked Hyde Park.
DK: Viceroy Court.
HM: Viceroy Court.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: I forget what the district was now.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But it looked over Hyde Park. And the mealtimes, part of the building went to the zoo in Hyde Park —
DK: Oh right.
HM: And were fed. And others, like myself stayed in the building. We got kitted out there with uniforms, inoculations and all that stuff. And I think it must have been sometime early December we moved up. We moved up to Usworth. A primary training. Normal primary training. Marching, saluting and all that stuff. To let, to let you know you’re in the Air Force.
DK: How did you take to that? Did you like it or was it something you, because you would you have done it in the ATC?
HM: Oh, it was something entirely new.
DK: Right.
HM: I was a bit apprehensive at first going down to London. First time really away from home.
DK: Yeah.
HM: In Bradford. A small town. Well, I’m saying it’s a small town. It’s a big town now. All on my own in a strange, trying to find this Viceroy Court. I found it rather daunting. But once I got there I was alright. When it came to moving of course we had transport from Viceroy Court to the station. Train laid on for us to go up to Usworth.
DK: Right. That’s where you did your —
HM: Northumberland.
DK: That’s where you did all your square bashing was it?
HM: Did all the square bashing.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Initial training.
DK: So at this stage then do you have any idea of what trade you wanted to do in the Air Force?
HM: I hadn’t a clue about it.
DK: So you hadn’t been divided out yet as to pilots and —
HM: Pardon?
DK: You hadn’t been divided out. Pilots, navigators, and —
HM: Oh no.
DK: No.
HM: Not up to this point.
DK: No.
HM: No. You hadn’t a clue what. What it was all about. You did various tests. Arithmetic tests and a bit of writing and so on. They decided I could go as a wireless operator/air gunner.
DK: Ok.
HM: I forget the name of the place we went to now. Anyway, whatever it was we did basically wireless operator or learning the Morse Code.
DK: Right.
HM: Practicing that.
DK: So, so these took the form of classes then were they of Morse Code. Morse Code classes.
HM: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Mostly. Yeah. There were Morse Code classes.
DK: And how many of you would be in there for the class?
HM: I should think about a dozen.
DK: Right.
HM: All tapping away going beep beep beep beep beep.
DK: And was it something you took to then was it? Something you found easy.
HM: I didn’t find it particularly easy but I managed it.
DK: Right.
HM: And also between the learning the Morse Code was learning about the Browning machine gun. The 303 Browning. Taking it to pieces. What it did. How many shots it fired. What the effective range was. And learned all those bits and pieces. I didn’t think a lot of that was necessary because if you got a fault with your guns if its more than just cocking and trying it again.
DK: Yeah.
HM: You can’t do anything because it’s so cold up there and you’ve got your gloves on and the tiny pieces. I found some of that was a bit superfluous.
DK: So what did the gunnery training consist of then? Were you, were you actually firing the guns at targets?
HM: Not at that time. No. It was just sort of introducing us to the gun.
DK: Ok. Right.
HM: Learning about it.
DK: And just taking them to pieces [unclear]
HM: Taking them to pieces and putting them together again.
DK: Yeah.
HM: We got so we could do it blindfold. And that was —
DK: Did they, did they time you then as you were?
HM: Oh no. They didn’t time you but as it got near the end of the course you’d have done it blindfold and somebody would take a piece out and you’ll be feeling all over for it. But the Morse Code. I passed on that alright. Passed on that, and we went to [pause] I can’t remember the sequence we went in but eventually we went to —
DK: Was it the Operational Training Unit?
HM: Burry training. Burry Port in South Wales.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
HM: To an airfield there. And that was gunnery training.
DK: Right.
HM: More or less a first shooting.
DK: So what, what —
HM: The, it was a Martinet aeroplane. That was a single engine type towing a drogue.
DK: Right.
HM: And you’d go up in an Anson. I think it was four of us went up in the Anson. Took it in turns trying to shoot at the drogue. The way they could sort out who’s was what, the bullets were painted differently on the —
DK: Oh right.
HM: On the bullet itself so if it hit the drogue —
DK: You’d know whose it is.
HM: Red was yours. Blue was somebody else’s.
DK: Yeah. So did you, did you find, presumably that was the first time you’d flown then was it? In an Anson.
HM: That was the first time I’d actually flown.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So what was that like then?
HM: Well, then again it’s exciting.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Starting to fly. And that was, that was the feeling most of the time. When are we going to fly? What’s it going to be like? Will I be sick? Will I get airsick or —
DK: And, and were you?
HM: That was a worrying thing. Some did.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Most of us didn’t but —
DK: You didn’t then.
HM: I wasn’t airsick at all.
DK: So what was the Anson like? Presumably it was a bit cramped in there with four of you at the back there.
HM: It was a little bit. Yes. I remember that it was each side of the fuselage there was a little table and two of you sat at the table. You did this shooting at the drogue to see how well you could aim it and fire it.
DK: Yeah.
HM: They told you about offsetting for the distance.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And one thing and another.
DK: And was it, was it something you were, you were quite adept at? Could you, were you quite a good shot? Or —
HM: Not particularly [laughs] I must have been adequate because I passed through all right.
DK: Right. So —
HM: Then again we did a bit of Morse Code but not much of it. You just keep refreshing yourself.
DK: Yeah. So, so at this stage you could have still been —
HM: Oh, I could have been turned down. Yes.
DK: Turned down. Yeah. Or you could still have been a wireless operator as well then.
HM: I could have been a wireless operator.
DK: Yeah. So after your training then in Wales where did you move on to next?
HM: That [laughs] I can’t remember these places.
DK: Don’t worry. Yeah. Would this have been the, the OTU?
HM: Yeah. It would have been the OTU.
DK: It might actually be in the logbook.
HM: It’s probably in my logbook.
DK: Let’s have a look.
[pause]
DK: Right. So just for the recording then I’ve got number 1 AGS Pembrey so that was Gunnery School.
HM: Pembrey.
DK: Pembrey. Yeah.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Air Gunnery School. It’s got your results here. You look like you’re quite good.
HM: Are they?
DK: Yeah. Exam result ninety eight point five percent.
HM: Oh, well that’s not so bad [laughs]
Other: Wow.
HM: Yeah. Is that the —
DK: So you’re —
HM: Oh, that’s when we went to OTU is it?
DK: That’s the OTU.
HM: The Lancaster.
DK: Ok.
HM: Yeah. They were the actual flights.
DK: So that’s the flights in the Anson then.
HM: That was the flights. Yeah.
DK: So they’re from June 1944 and it’s got how many rounds you fired here.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Three hundred rounds. So one to three tracers. Two hits.
HM: [laughs] Two hits.
DK: You’ve got eighteen hits here.
HM: Yeah.
DK: It says total flying nineteen hours and forty minutes. All in Ansons.
HM: In the Anson.
DK: Yeah. So that’s at the end of the training.
HM: That’s the end of the training at Pembrey.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yeah. Then we went to —
DK: It doesn’t actually say does it?
HM: It doesn’t say does it?
DK: So you’re on Wellingtons.
HM: Operational Training Unit.
DK: Right.
HM: In Wellingtons.
DK: So for —
HM: Then you did the crewing up.
DK: Right. So can you say a little about the crewing up then? How you all got together to form a crew?
HM: Well, you were all in a room. You chatted with various people and somebody you got on with and you’d say, ‘Oh you’re a gunner. Shall we crew up?’ ‘Yeah. We’ll be alright.’ Then you look for a navigator, or the navigator were looking for gunners. Or a pilot was looking for gunners. You finished with a crew.
DK: So, and can you remember your pilot’s name?
HM: Yes. Colin [Runji?]
DK: Right.
HM: He was an Australian.
DK: Australian.
HM: He was evidently quite a sportsman in Australia. Although being English we’d never heard of him.
DK: So he was quite famous in, in Australia then.
HM: He was quite, yeah something in Australia.
DK: Oh, here we go. At the back it says it’s 26 Operational Training Unit.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Does that ring a bell? 26 OTU.
HM: That doesn’t mean a thing to me.
DK: Right.
HM: But if you look in the records —
DK: Yeah.
HM: You’ll probably find it.
DK: Yeah. That was on the Wellingtons then.
HM: Yes.
DK: So that was between July ’44 and November ’44.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So can you remember much about flying in the Wellingtons? What it was like?
HM: Yeah. Well, we did a lot of take-off and landings. Training for the pilot. The air gunners had nothing to do. They just sat in the turrets.
DK: Right.
HM: And hoped for the best.
DK: So were you, for these training flights then were you sitting in the, in the rear turret?
HM: In the turret.
DK: Yeah.
HM: In the rear turret or mid-upper turret.
DK: Yeah. Would you be in the rear turret when you took off then?
HM: If I was in the rear turret. We used to swap around.
DK: Right.
HM: Sometimes be in the rear. Sometimes the mid-upper.
DK: Yeah. So how did you find the Wellington then as an aircraft? Did you feel quite safe in it?
HM: Oh yeah. Yes. No problems with flying with it.
DK: Right.
HM: They [pause]
DK: But you felt quite safe.
HM: What can I say? Oh yes.
DK: ’Cause you mentioned earlier about an incident where the pilot landed and he shouldn’t have done.
HM: Yeah. That’s in the Wellington.
DK: Right. Can you just repeat that? What happened?
HM: Well, I don’t, I don’t think I made a comment about it because we didn’t know that until after the flight.
DK: Right.
HM: He just disappeared. And when making enquiries we found that he’d been sent home or whatever it was.
DK: So what, what had he done wrong?
HM: Well, coming in to land he was doing a circuit. He come into what they called funnels. The pilot’s flying nice and steady ready to land. Got the gear down, the flaps down, and you as you were approaching you’re supposed to watch for a verey pistol.
DK: Right.
HM: Or you’re supposed to notice it if was fired. Well, this particular flight there’s a red verey pistol fired and evidently the pilot didn’t seen it.
DK: So if he had seen it he should have gone around again.
HM: He should have gone around again.
DK: Yeah. Because why would, do you know why it was fired? Was there something on the ground?
HM: Well, it would only be if there was somebody on the runway.
DK: Right.
HM: Ready. Getting ready to take off.
DK: Right.
HM: So he was sat at the end of the runway. You sort of went over the top of him.
DK: So there might have been a collision then.
HM: Oh, quite possible.
DK: So he just, he went. So you got a new pilot then.
HM: So we, started well basically we went to the end of that course and then crew up again.
DK: Oh right.
HM: With another. Make another crew.
DK: So you had to crew up all over again.
HM: All over again. And then really start the course again.
DK: Oh. So this is, this is when you would have then got the Australian pilot
HM: That’s when we got —
DK: The second time around.
HM: No. The first time.
DK: Oh the first time. Right.
HM: The first time it was an Australian pilot.
DK: Right.
HM: Then we [pause] I put my glasses away, I want them.
DK: Have you’ve got his name there?
HM: Yes. [Runji]
DK: [Runji]
HM: Lots of different pilots.
DK: Yeah.
HM: As [Runji] Then flew there. Warrant Officer Wild. [Runji] [unclear] [Runji] Watkins. But, but [Runji] was the main pilot at, in the OTU.
DK: Right.
HM: [ ] [pause] at the end of the course as I say we crewed up again.
DK: Right. So that’s the second time.
HM: This is the second time around.
DK: Right.
HM: When we flew with somebody called [Adey?], Flying Officer Bond. Then we got Sergeant Crawford who ended up our pilot.
DK: So —
HM: We flew with him for the rest of the time.
DK: So Crawford became your pilot.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Second time around. Right.
HM: Yeah. And he was a sergeant.
DK: Right.
HM: Evidently, as far as I can make out he was in the Air Force when war broke out. He was an engine fitter on one of the [pause] no, on one of the [pause]
DK: A pre-war thing was it?
HM: The [pause] big water platform.
DK: Oh the Flying Boats.
HM: The [pause]
DK: Seaplane?
HM: Just had a new one. Must have been commissioned just recently.
Other: Aircraft carrier.
DK: Oh aircraft.
Other: Aircraft carrier.
DK: I’m with you. I’m with you. Right.
HM: He was on an aircraft carrier.
DK: Right. Ok.
HM: Somewhere out east.
DK: Right.
HM: And as soon as war broke out and he asked to be remustered.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
HM: And then he came back to England. Then he went out Canada for his pilot’s training. Did his training in various aeroplanes.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Then he came back to England and then finished up.
DK: At the OTU.
HM: Yeah. The OTU.
DK: So that was Sergeant Crawford then.
HM: Sergeant Crawford.
DK: And was he a good pilot?
HM: He was. Yes.
DK: Yeah. You felt confident then with him did you?
HM: I felt very confident with him. Something else. I wish I’d made more comments.
DK: Yeah.
HM: About what went on.
DK: So how —
HM: On one of the [pause] No. It’s not there. On one of the flights, it was a night time flights everything was going all right. Taxied round, end of the runway. Started taking off. Just got off the ground and he had to close one of the engines down. There was something overheating or something and Mayday. Mayday. And he just flew around and landed again on one engine. So he must have been a reasonable pilot.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: That was a bit scary. You didn’t know whether the aeroplane would fly with the one engine or not.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But he made a very good job of it.
DK: Yeah. So you felt quite confident with him after that.
HM: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
DK: So did you have a conversation with him about what had happened to the engines, do you know or did you just —
HM: Well, it wouldn’t mean a thing to me.
DK: Right.
HM: It was a runaway prop.
DK: Yeah.
HM: I didn’t know what a runaway prop was. I still don’t.
DK: So after, how did you feel then about having to do the training twice? And have to go back again.
HM: Not very happy because it —
DK: No.
HM: The crewing up with [Runji] then having to go through it again.
DK: Yeah.
HM: That was annoying. But once we got —
DK: Crawford.
HM: Our pilot. Crawford. We were quite happy. We’d got a, we’d got a crew. We got on very well together.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And that’s the one on the, on the picture there.
DK: Ok. So just for the recording then just looking at your logbook then it says here you then went on to 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit.
HM: Yeah. That’s when we converted to the Lancaster.
DK: Right.
HM: And that was at —
DK: Langar.
HM: Pardon?
DK: Langar.
HM: Langar.
DK: Langar.
HM: Yes. Up in Nottinghamshire I believe it is.
DK: So that was at the Heavy Conversion Unit then and we’re talking February 1945. Is that? Or was it ’44?
HM: February. Oh it might have been.
DK: Yeah. Because that’s ’44.
HM: I joined the squadron in early March.
DK: Right. So the Heavy Conversion Unit then would be February.
HM: Langar, yeah. That was converting to the four engines.
DK: Right. So how did you feel? That was the first time you saw the Lancaster then was it? Close up.
HM: Yeah.
DK: And what did you think?
HM: Oh, we’re going up in those [laughs] How does it stay up there? But —
DK: So was it quite a change after the Wellington then?
HM: Yes. Because the Wellington, two engines it was a smaller aircraft. You think fine. But when you get to the size of a Lancaster. And in the Wellington you did evasive action.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But it’s hard doing evasive action in the Lancaster. A big aeroplane doing acrobatics. You wondered how it’s going to go but it went very well.
DK: Yeah. So you felt quite confident in flying in those.
HM: Yeah.
DK: I see here you flew as the mid-upper gunner.
HM: Yeah.
DK: What was that like then? What were the views like?
HM: Oh, the views was fantastic. I would say you could look all around.
DK: Yeah. And presumably it’s here that you got the extra crew because there’s more crew in a Lancaster than the Wellington.
HM: No. We still had the full crew.
DK: Oh right. In Wellingtons.
HM: We just had the same crew in the Lancaster as we had in the Wellington.
DK: Oh ok. So that was, that was just training then on the Lancaster just to get —
HM: Just training on the Lancaster
DK: Yeah. Yeah
HM: And getting used to it.
DK: Yeah.
HM: How to evacuate quickly and that sort of thing [laughs]
DK: Right. And then it’s got, looking at your logbook here we’ve then got March 1945 you’ve got to 138 Squadron.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So can you say a little bit about 138 Squadron? What they were?
HM: 138 Squadron is a mysterious squadron. As I say it was a Special Operations Unit before I joined. They were flying Lancasters. Before we joined they were basically Halifaxes.
DK: Right.
HM: And Lysanders. Their job was to take ammunition and food to the Resistance. So instead of going out in a bomber stream.
DK: Yeah.
HM: They’d go out in a single Lancaster to a field somewhere in France and drop the supplies to the Resistance.
DK: Oh right.
HM: Or the Auster. That was the single engined. Do you know the Auster?
DK: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
HM: Yeah. Fixed undercarriage. Single engine. If there was a special agent wanting to be picked up and brought back to England then they’d use the Auster.
DK: Right.
HM: Then again find somewhere. Find a field somewhere in France. Land. You’d probably drop an agent. Pick another agent up.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Pick one coming back then take off and bring them home.
DK: Right.
HM: Most of it was at night. Well, it was all night time. The nickname for 138 Squadron at the time was The Moonlight. Moonlight squadron.
DK: Right.
HM: Or Tempsford Taxis. Obviously they were based at Tempsford.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: And with the taxiing service in and out to France or Germany whatever. You got the taxi then.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But when, when I joined it was decided that they were not, it was after D-Day, that it was no longer needed because they take the agents in on the ground from there.
DK: Yeah.
HM: So they reverted to Bomber Command.
DK: Right.
HM: And that’s when I joined them.
DK: So by that point it was an ordinary bomber squadron.
HM: It was an ordinary bomber squadron. Yes. Whereas before, reading about it now when I, in the bomber squadron all the crews went to the briefing. With that there was just a pilot, navigator and bomb aimer.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Only those that need know knew where they were going and what they were doing.
DK: Right.
HM: So the air gunner would go along. Not knowing where they were going. They might discuss it amongst themselves.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But they weren’t supposed to. Go out and come back again but they weren’t allowed to discuss it with another aircrew.
DK: Right.
HM: Missions were never discussed between aircrews.
DK: So —
HM: It was very secretive.
DK: Yeah. So what, what then is kind of your role as an air gunner? What are you supposed to do?
HM: Yeah.
DK: On an operation.
HM: On an operation you just sit there in the turret scanning, looking for any enemy aircraft. Which I never saw.
DK: No.
HM: Never fired my guns in anger.
DK: Right. You’d have tested the guns presumably on the way over did you?
HM: You could do but we never did.
DK: Right.
HM: Well, we didn’t.
DK: Is that, I notice when you joined the squadron you’d gone on some training trips. One with an H2S radar.
HM: Yeah.
DK: And another one with GH bombing. Was that the GH bombing on?
HM: Yeah. That, that is basically for the navigators. Navigators —
DK: Yeah.
HM: GHS or HS2 and the Gee were all navigational aids.
DK: Right. And you’ve got something here. Just special training. You can’t remember what the special training was can you?
HM: Special training.
DK: Bit mysterious. Maybe you can’t tell me.
HM: I haven’t a clue.
DK: Ok. So looking at your logbook again then it’s got your first operation here was to Kiel.
HM: Yes.
DK: So what was it like then when you finally —
HM: Kiel?
DK: Got an operation?
HM: Well, it’s exciting. We hadn’t been in long enough. We hadn’t experienced a bombing raid. We didn’t know what to expect. I was excited. And well, we flew out. Nothing, nothing untoward happened.
DK: Yeah.
HM: There were searchlights and the flak but you expected that.
DK: Yeah. So you’ve gone out as the mid-upper gunner on this raid.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. And can you remember seeing much of the target itself when you were over Kiel?
HM: Yes.
DK: What was that like?
HM: Basically if that’s Kiel you flew across, it’s like, where Germany and Denmark. It’s —
DK: The border.
HM: What do they call it?
Other: Jutland?
HM: The prominence of Denmark.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: A strip of land.
HM: There’s a border it goes across.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Well, we flew across the part of Germany which was close to the border with Denmark. And as you’re flying along you could, you could see the fire, ‘That’s it. That’s it.’
DK: Yeah.
HM: That must be the target.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Now, yes. And no. That’s not it. And we were flying along and the navigator made a mistake or something. We flew past the target. When navigator realised that he’d gone wrong we had to do a loop.
DK: Right.
HM: The pilot wouldn’t turn around and go that way because he’d be joining the bomber stream. He’d be flying against them.
DK: Yeah.
HM: So he went around that way and joined the stream again.
DK: Right. So you went over the target.
HM: So we then flew towards the target.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Bombs away. Let’s go home.
DK: Could, when the bombs were dropped did you notice any turbulence or whatever.
HM: Oh yeah.
DK: You were flying up.
HM: The result was that bit of lift.
DK: Yeah. So you’ve come back from your first operation then though it hadn’t gone according to plan.
HM: Yeah.
DK: How did you feel when you got back?
HM: Oh, it’s hard to remember [pause] We just thought well that’s that.
DK: Yeah.
HM: That’s it.
DK: Job done.
HM: That’s done. The job done.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Wait for the next.
DK: And did you have to go along to a debriefing, or anything? Were you debriefed?
HM: Yes. When you landed you went to debrief. And the intelligence office, officers there. The crew was all there. What was your experience? Did you notice anything? Did you? How did it go? Or as I say we’d no experience. Just a, just a normal flight. Just flak.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: Just searchlights. But nothing affected us.
DK: Yeah.
HM: It was all going on around you but —
DK: So your aircraft was never hit by flak then.
HM: Not that particular time. It was later on.
DK: Oh, ok. Ok.
HM: That was on the [pause] about a few days later we went again to Kiel.
DK: Right. I’m just looking at the logbook here. This is —
HM: Yeah.
DK: Just for the recording. You’ve gone to Kiel on the 9th of April.
HM: Yeah.
DK: And it’s
HM: That was our first one.
DK: And you’ve actually got here the German ship the Admiral Scheer sank.
HM: Oh, that was the second.
DK: Was that the second one?
HM: That was on the second one.
DK: Ok.
HM: No. There’s two there. And the Admiral Scheer was sank the second. That’s why we went back a second time.
DK: Right. And did you see the battleship down there?
HM: No.
DK: No.
HM: No. We were too high.
DK: Yeah. So you did, let’s say Kiel on the 9th of April. Then the 13th of April Kiel again.
HM: Yes. That was when the Admiral Scheer was sunk.
DK: Right. And then 14th of April you’ve then gone to Potsdam.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yeah. The following night. We thought that was a bit rough is that. Two. One after the other.
DK: Yeah. And then —
HM: But then thinking about it ‘43 and ‘44 when the bombing was really going, they’d be doing that every week. Three or four times a week they’d be flying.
DK: Yeah. And then looking at your logbook again you’ve then done a daylight raid because it’s in green.
HM: Yes. Heligoland. Heligoland.
DK: Heligoland. So that was on the 18th of April.
HM: Yeah.
DK: ‘45.
HM: That was [laughs] A bit of a dead duck.
DK: Right.
HM: Heligoland, I don’t even know where it is. It’s just, as I say Denmark land. Germany. And it’s just a little island.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Evidently, it was a naval spotting station and spotting transport where our ships were.
DK: Right.
HM: And there again, there was a little bit of flak. There wasn’t a lot.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Because it was such a small island. No searchlights evidently because it was daylight.
DK: Yeah. Could you see a lot more of the other aircraft then in daylight? What was the —
HM: Yeah. You could see them around you.
DK: Yeah. But presumably you couldn’t see them at night time.
HM: At night time you couldn’t.
DK: No.
HM: I did once.
DK: Right.
HM: Then again I should have made a note of it. At Heligoland you could see the torpedo boats feeding away out from the island. The island was just one cloud of bomb bursts.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: You couldn’t see much of the land for the smoke and debris from the bombs.
DK: So that was hit quite hard then.
HM: Pardon?
DK: It was hit quite hard was it?
HM: Yeah.
DK: You say you saw an aircraft at night.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Was that quite nearby?
HM: That was a night flight. There again I don’t know which flight it was.
DK: No.
HM: Because I never made a note of it. I was in the mid-upper gun, mid-upper turret and suddenly there was this shadow went up. We were going and it went up in front of us.
DK: Right.
HM: I recognised it as a Lancaster. At night time. No lights. No nothing but there was this shadow went up in front of us.
DK: Right.
HM: If it had gone up a minute or two later or we’d been a minute or two earlier we’d have —
DK: Collided.
HM: Real come to.
DK: Was that, was that a bit of a frightening thing to see then was it?
HM: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
HM: He was doing evasive action. I don’t see why they should do it at night.
DK: Right.
HM: Because you’ve got, I don’t know how many aircraft were on that raid but if you could have five or six hundred or the thousand bomber raid going over the target for some time. Granted the aircraft are stacked and the first ones would be higher, the ones behind them should be a bit lower.
DK: Yeah.
HM: But you’ve always got that creep. Someone’s got there a bit early. Some had got there a bit late. So there’s bound to be some mix up.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And if you start weaving about in a stream of aircraft. He, he couldn’t see any other aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
HM: All he is doing is just hoping for the best. His gunner must have seen something and told the pilot to corkscrew. But that was it.
DK: Yeah. Could have been, could have ended a bit disastrously couldn’t it?
HM: It could have done.
DK: So after that you’ve then done on the 22nd of April ‘45 a daylight raid to Bremen. Do you remember going to Bremen?
HM: Yes.
DK: And you’ve got here in brackets flak holes. Is that when you’ve been hit?
HM: Came back with some holes in it. Yeah.
DK: Right.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So what was that like then? When your aircraft was hit?
HM: Well it, quite normal. There’s plenty of flak, plenty of [pause] plenty going on and suddenly and there’s click click. ‘Has somebody dropped something?’ [laughs] No answer from the crew. Just as though you were driving along and somebody threw a stone at you.
DK: Yeah
HM: Or there was a mob throwing stones at you. But fortunately nothing, nothing was hit that was vital.
DK: Yeah.
HM: None of On the controls or oil pipes. It was just a hole in the fuselage.
DK: Right. Right. Was that anywhere near you? The hole in the fuselage or—
HM: I think it was actually by the bomb bay.
DK: Oh right. So almost underneath you then.
HM: Well, near. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Just forward of the mid-upper gunner.
DK: So, so then you’ve got one more raid. What does that say? Operation the Hague. You see that one there. It’s a daylight one again. It’s a [unclear] one.
HM: Oh yes. Holland was starving.
DK: Right.
HM: They were all, they wanted some food. Somehow they made communication with the Germans. We could go in and drop food in Holland as long as we drove on a, or flew on a specific line.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Course. At a certain height. They’d let us go in and drop food and nobody would fire at us. Hopefully [laughs]
DK: So this this —
HM: So that was dropping food at the Hague. Holland.
DK: Oh right. Right. It is the Hague then. So that’s what became known as Operation Manna then.
HM: Operation Manna.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: We did that a couple of times I think.
DK: So that to the Hague then was the 3rd of May. And then you’ve got another one. Operation Manna on the 8th of May.
HM: Yeah.
DK: It looks like you’ve done two trips there.
HM: Yeah.
DK: Right. So could you see the people on the ground as you were dropping the food?
HM: Oh yeah. Yeah. You could see them walking about. There were civilians waving.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Looking up at you.
DK: So how did you feel about that then? Dropping the food after dropping bombs. It was it a bit different.
HM: Well, it felt a bit strange really seeing the Germans down there walking about [laughs] and you’re flying.
DK: So you could actually see the Germans down below as well.
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah. So you were very low level then.
HM: Yeah. I think it was about a thousand feet.
DK: Right.
HM: Something like that. And then there was after that there’s Exodus.
DK: Yeah. Operation Exodus. So what was Operation Exodus like?
HM: That was bringing prisoners of war back.
DK: Right.
HM: We flew out. We flew to a base at Juvencourt in France. Picked up I think it was about twenty. Twenty ex-prisoners of war.
DK: Right.
HM: The sat around in the fuselage. We’d land. They’d come and climb in and find themselves a perch. Then we’d fly back again.
DK: Right. So how many of those trips did you do?
HM: About four or five I think.
DK: Right. And did you speak to the ex-POWs? Were they —
HM: Well, what we’d called, I mean to say you didn’t get much chance because you was in the turret. As soon as you landed it was basically loading them on
DK: Right
HM: And then taking off and coming home again.
DK: Right.
DK: So they were quite relieved to be going home were they?
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah. Had some of them been a prisoners for a length of time do you know?
HM: I would imagine so. I’ve no idea. Like I said, we didn’t really get a chance to speak to them. Then again when you’re flying you can’t have a conversation.
DK: No.
HM: Because of the noise.
DK: Yeah.
HM: We could be this close. I could shout at you and not tell what I was saying unless you were watching me and could do a bit of lip reading.
DK: No. Just going back to that what were the conditions like then as a mid-upper gunner? Presumably you’re were very cold up there.
HM: It was cold. Yeah.
DK: What were you wearing?
HM: Well, you were wearing your normal clothes. In fact you got issued with some special underwear. Long johns and long sleeves.
DK: Yeah.
HM: There was a mixture of wool and silk. Climbed in to that and then your normal uniform on top of that, and then you’d have a padded, padded overalls thing on
DK: Right
HM: Like a boiler suit done up the front. And then you got your overall. The one that you see us wearing on some of the pictures I think. It’s just sort of a canvas flying suit.
DK: Right. So, so altogether then you flew well one, two, three, four, five. Five. Five operations.
HM: Five. Five operations. Yes.
DK: And then a couple of Manna trips and the Exodus trips.
HM: Yeah. Well, they weren’t counted as operations.
DK: No. No.
HM: The five as you go along. That would have been counted towards you —
DK: The tour.
HM: Tour.
DK: Yes. And that would have still been thirty if the war had gone on.
HM: Oh, it would have been thirty.
DK: So how did you feel then as the war’s ended? Were you quite relieved at that point?
HM: Yeah. I suppose we were.
DK: Yeah. And did —
HM: The airfield just, just erupted. I don’t know where they came from but there were verey pistols firing off all over the place.
DK: And just go back a bit. Did you meet any of your crew off duty at all? Did you get to know them?
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah. So what did you do?
HM: Yeah.
DK: On your off duty time.
HM: We’d usually go along to the local pub. You get to know the locals.
DK: Yeah. And, and did you keep in touch with the rest of the crew after the war?
HM: No. We didn’t.
DK: No. No. So you’ve all gone your separate ways then.
HM: We all went our separate ways.
DK: You haven’t been in touch with them since.
HM: No.
DK: No.
HM: When I got married the wireless operator, I sent invites to them all but there was only the wireless operator turned up.
DK: Right. So —
HM: I heard later Howard, he’s always on the internet looking at things. Our pilot evidently emigrated to Canada.
DK: Right.
HM: And there was an obit. I’m presuming it was our pilot. There’s an obituary to a Flying Officer Crawford who had died in a nursing home. He was a bit older than we were. I think he was about twenty eight, twenty nine.
DK: Yeah.
HM: When we was only, I was nineteen.
DK: Yeah.
HM: So he was an old man.
DK: Yeah [laughs]
HM: Evidently this pilot officer Andrew Robertson Crawford had died in this nursing home in Toronto.
DK: Oh right.
HM: Who’d emigrated from England after flying with the RAF. That’s all that’s all there was it.
DK: Sounds like it would probably be him them.
HM: And a bit of what he’d done in Canada. He’d gone to college and qualified as some sort of engineer.
DK: Right.
HM: Although he was qualified with the RAF as an aero engineer.
DK: Yeah.
HM: He’d qualified as something else over there.
DK: So presumably you left the RAF quite soon afterwards then did you?
HM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah.
HM: When I came home on leave I used to visit the place where I worked beforehand. The garment cutter.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: And one time I went the boss asked me, ‘Would you like to come out?’ I’d just met the wife then, or girlfriend and I said yes. He said, ‘I’ll try and see what I can do.’ Of course, if you’d got a job to go to and the boss enquired can you come home you were allowed early release.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
HM: So within about a week of that, seeing the boss and him saying yes I was on my way home. Demobbed.
DK: Wow. So it happened quite quickly then.
HM: Oh, it did.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Yes.
DK: Quite, quite unusual from some of the people I’ve spoken to. Hanging on for months before they got demobbed.
HM: If you, if you got a job to go to I believe it could be, could be done.
DK: Oh, ok. Ok.
HM: And evidently he wanted me back so —
DK: So, so how do you after all these years how do you look back on your time in the RAF? How do you feel now about it?
HM: Quite happy about it. I thought it was [pause] I thought it was a good spell.
DK: Yeah.
HM: It’s an experience you couldn’t have anywhere else. Yeah. It was quite, I found it quite a good experience.
DK: Yeah. You found it useful in later life then did you? Sort of that experience.
HM: Not really [laughs]
DK: Oh [laughs] Ok. I’ve just got your photo here.
HM: Yeah.
DK: I wonder if, are you still able to name, name the crew? So that’s, that’s to the recording here that’s a Lancaster of 138 Squadron.
HM: That’s a Lancaster of 138 Squadron.
DK: And that’s the one you flew on operations.
HM: Yeah.
DK: So do you know, can you name them all here?
HM: Yes. There’s —
DK: So that’s, that’s the ground crew presumably at the front there.
HM: That’s the ground crew. I can’t remember their names.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: That’s Ted Bramsgrove. He was the navigator. Then there’s me. Then there’s Tom Kelsall, he was the engineer. That was the pilot, Flying officer Crawford.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Eric Scott. He was the bomb aimer. Oh, what’s his first? Fry was his surname. He was the wireless operator. And Duncan MacGregor he was the other gunner.
DK: So he would normally be in the rear gun turret would he?
HM: Yeah.
DK: For the most part. Though you did swap over didn’t you, at times?
HM: We did swap over. Yeah.
DK: So they were a good crew then were they?
HM: They were. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
HM: Yes. He was a farmer. He was a school teacher. He was a shop assistant. I don’t know what Mac was.
DK: So quite varied.
HM: He was Irish. He’d come from Northern Ireland.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Belfast.
DK: So quite a varied background then.
HM: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah. And that’s your ground crew there.
HM: That’s the ground crew.
DK: Yeah.
HM: Which looked after the aircraft.
DK: So did you have much to do with the ground crew at all? Or —
HM: Not a lot. No.
DK: No. You just wanted to make sure the aircraft was ok.
HM: You’d chat to them when you went out to dispersal to climb in.
DK: So that’s you there then. Second from the end.
HM: Yeah. Second on the left.
DK: Second on the left. Ok then, that’s —
HM: I’m thinking you must, I think Howard had that.
DK: Yeah.
HM: And he asked me what all the names were.
DK: Yeah.
HM: I think he sent that.
DK: Yes. If he hasn’t I’ll make sure he does.
HM: Yeah.
DK: That’s a great photo that. Ok then. I think that will do. I’ll, but thanks for that. I’ll turn off. Turn this off now. Thanks for your time.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Henry Moss
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-11-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AMossH181114, PMossH1801
Format
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00:55:40 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Henry grew up in Bradford and left school just before the outbreak of war. He had various jobs like working in the mill, a greengrocer’s shop, the dye works and then garment cutting for the army. At 17 and a half was called up in London where he was kitted out and had the necessary inoculations. He had been in the Air Training Corps so chose to apply for the Royal Air Force. He was told he could be a wireless operator air gunner, trained in Morse code and learned about the .303 Browning. The recruits were sent to RAF Pembrey in South Wales for gunnery training where they worked on Martinets and Ansons. They then went to 26 Operation Training Unit to crew up and fly on Wellingtons. Henry spent time at 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit in Nottinghamshire to train on Lancasters as mid-upper gunner. He was posted to 138 Squadron which was a special operations unit working on Halifaxes and Lysanders aircraft dropping supplies to the resistance. They also dropped off or picked up agents in France. Their first two operations were to Kiel. Henry recalled a daylight operation to Bremen in 1945 when they suffered a hole in the fuselage from anti-aircraft fire. During the war they did five operations in all, plus trips for Operation Manna and Exodus. The crew did not keep in touch after the war. When Henry was demobbed he went back to work for the army garment firm.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Bradford
England--London
Wales--Carmarthenshire
France
Germany
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Kiel
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
138 Squadron
1669 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lysander
Martinet
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Langar
RAF Pembrey
RAF Tempsford
Resistance
Special Operations Executive
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/307/9640/PMooreWT1508.2.jpg
46d70c19f0283282b575e00c8060bca7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/307/9640/AMooreWT150728.2.mp3
c01c152b10f0fbf9438d9f8a3ee5b0c3
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
Moore, Bill
William Tait Moore
William T Moore
William Moore
W T Moore
W Moore
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Three oral history interviews with William Tait "Bill" Moore (1924 - 2019, 1823072 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He served as a navigator with 138 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
2015-07-28
2016-03-18
2016-07-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Interview Agreement Form - Moore, WT, William Moore-03
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Moore, WT
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
This is Andrew Sadler interviewing Mr. William (Bill) Moore at his home in Woking on Tuesday 28th July 2015 for the Bomber Command Archive.
AS: Thank you Bill for allowing me to come and interview you.
BM: You’re very welcome indeed.
AS: Can I start with some background information, where and when were you born?
BM: I was born in Dunoon in Scotland on 26th August 1924
AS: And um, can you tell me a bit about your family background?
BM: My, my father was a regimental sergeant major in the Invergyle Southern Highlanders, my grandfather was a chief petty officer in the Navy, we’d twenty two children, I am one of a family of five and, um, I first got in touch with the, err, Royal Air Force as a cadet with the Air Cadet, Air Cadet Association, which was the forerunner of the Air Training Corps.
AS: And presumably your father, was your father involved in the First World War?
BM: Yes my father and my grandfather was in the First World War, my grandfather was also in the Boer War and he was also in the First and Second World War, and my father was in the First World War and he was called up for the Second World War to the Colours and, um, later stood down when the BEF went to France, and he later took over the, what became the Home Guard for the whole of the County of Argyle in Scotland.
AS: Did he talk about his experiences in the First World War?
BM: Yes he um, he was a Royal Scottish Fusiliers and um, he was in quite a number of the big, of the big battles, and, um, then he was taken, he was taken prisoner in late 1917 and he was shipped out to Poland then and, he was wounded in the legs, he was given very good treatment by the German, um, medical people at that time.
AS: And how did you come to join up into the Royal Air Force?
BM: Oh that was through the, the Air Cadets which was the forerunner of the Air Training Corps. The reason for that was I had been a drummer boy in the band of the Argyle’s and um, I fancied the Air Force after having two flights at a place called Montrose quite a long time before the war started.
AS: Can I just stop what, - okay we are restarting now after closing the windows
BM: Right
AS: Noise outside, sorry you were telling me about how you came, you joined the Royal, the Air Cadet Force.
BM: That’s right the Air Cadet Defence Couriers
AS: And why did you do that, what made you interested in?
BM: So it was after I had two flights we’er with the Argyles as a drummer boy in the Band at Montrose on the east coast of Scotland.
AS: And that made you want to fly?
BM: That’s quite correct.
AS: So what year did you actually join up to the Royal Air Force?
BM: Well for the, well it was 1940-41 when I was in the Air Defence Cadet Corps and then of course when the Air Training Corps started I joined that immediately and, err, on the Monday night I joined up and um, of course naturally I had no rank and then the Friday night of that week I was made a flight sergeant in the Air Training Corps, within one week.
AS: And can you tell me how that came about?
BM: Oh the experience of the Air Defence Cadet Corps, that was why.
AS: So can you tell me about your training?
BM: Oh the training in the, in the Air Training Corps. Yes the Air Training Corps we, um, we attended night school classes in the school along with students who were actually full time students of the school, also members of the Air Training Corps and this was taken by Mathematics teachers and English teachers all the way through, and they had become officers in the Air Training Corps, and one gentlemen Mr. Ozzy Broon, he was the maths teacher and very good in navigation and um, he made it all very, very interesting for us and, um, later on I met up with him but that will come into this later on, um, but he was a person who really gave us the foundation in navigation and bringing us up through math and made it interesting for us.
AS: So what age were you at this time?
BM: By that time I was sixteen.
AS: And um, when you joined the Air Force could, you were immediately made a flight sergeant and what sort of work?
BM: No that, no that was just the Air Training Corps I’m talking about, and that was made immediately. Now what happened was that um, we um, when I was, um, seventeen and a quarter I actually volunteered for the Royal Air Force and um, because of my background in the Air Training Corps I, um, had all certificates following examinations that was, um, especially orientated towards air crew, and with that I was selected at Edinburgh to actually join air crew formally and I was given the silver badge and um, became a member of the Royal Air Force on reserve which was actually the, um, Auxiliary Air Force.
AS: And what year would that have been?
BM: That was, that was beginning, the beginning of ‘42, ‘41-‘42 yes.
AS: And can you tell me how you came to be in Bomber Command?
BM: Well that’s quite a story, but I’ll cut it short as much as possible, we, we were invited to London to Lord’s Cricket Ground where we were given the medicals etcetera and passed all these things and tests, various inoculations etcetera, etcetera, and um, we were billeted at Avenue Close, um, and fed at the, at the Zoo there, and of course, um, after a few weeks we actually were sent to Scarborough where I, I joined number 17 flight, of the air crew selection, and um, that was at, that was the beginning of our formal training with the air crew, Royal Air Force, the Royal Air Force. They, um, that was when we conducted drill, navigation, signals, um, engines, everything that you had to do in preparation to become a member of air crew, but not a specialist at that time, you were given that particular course so that you could be able to fit in somewhere along the line, we were actually called PNB, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, at that time. That’s what we were, PNB. We um, I had at that particular time I had a flight and that flight, it was a mixed flight of British, French, Belgians and we graduated, we graduated from there and were given various jobs around Scarborough until I was posted to Scoon, now at Scoon in Scotland that was where we got, we got training on Tiger Moths, and then from there, after that was we, we seemed to be doing all right, we were sent to Brougton in Furness where we, where we did a commando course on, in other words it was an escapees course. If anything happened and you were on the other side then you knew what to do to try and get away, and that was where my army training had come in very good and I was appointed a section leader. After that we were posted to, to Heaton Park, Manchester and that is where we were either billeted on homes around the perimeter of the park or actually in the park. Firstly we were actually on the perimeter with a family and, um, that lasted for about two weeks, and then for about three weeks we were actually billeted in Heaton Park in Manchester, and um, then of course we were given various courses etcetera, etcetera, and, um, during that , during that time you got selected for, for to go for training in different parts of the Commonwealth and Empire. At the beginning I was actually getting posted to go to Rhodesia and the reason we knew that was because of the kit that we were getting, not South Africa but Rhodesia. We got on board the ship in Liverpool and um, on the Mersey, and we got on, we got on board the ship there and, um, it happened to be a ship that I knew very well which was brand new at the beginning of the war and I’ve actually got a model of it here, and um, we, we set sail and, um, one evening I, I was presuming that we near the Bay of Biscay, I turned round and I said to my friend, Alec Kerr, I said ‘Alec this ship is going the wrong way’, he said ‘you and your [inaudible] navigation, how do you know?’ I said ‘I’m looking at the stars’ and we landed back up in Liverpool again, we presumed then of course that the word had got out, that was probably a fleet of U-Boats hovering round about the Bay of Biscay and um, they changed their mind about sending us on that ship, which was called the Andes [spells it out]. We got back into Liverpool and we were there about um, two days on board the Andes, and the next thing we were told that we were being transferred onto another ship and um, I looked across and there was a three funnel boat over there, and, I said to this chap Alec, Alec Kerr, I said ‘Alec that’s a five, three, four over there’ he said ‘what’s a five, three, four?’ I said ‘I’m not telling you that’s a secret’. Well the five, three, four was the Queen Mary, the five, three, four was the number that the Queen Mary had in John Brown’s yard in Scotland, in Glasgow when she was getting built. Anyway we got on board that ship and the next thing we knew that we were in New York and we were there overnight, and the next thing we knew we were on the train and we were bound, bound for Canada and we went all up the, the East Coast of Canada and we arrived at Moncton, New Brunswick, and that was the home station in Canada for air crew who were going to be training under the Commonwealth Air Training Scheme. We were there for ten or twelve days, um, not in winterwear as it was six months of the year in Canada, you get a lot of cold weather and um, they just said ‘oh we don’t know anything about you, we’ll get a message one of these days and we’ll give you some uniform’ , so we walked around there um, at one time I used to say like a [inaudible] nanny, but as I say, in Canada there we walked along like squaws because we covered ourselves in blankets to keep warm, but that was only, that was only a gimmick, once you were inside you were nice and warm. Eventually we got kitted out we with Rhodesian Air Force kit which was very good indeed, it was far superior and a lot more modern than what we had previously, for items like shirts the collars were attached instead of getting two collars with a shirt, the great coats were extremely different and the average cloth was a lot finer, anyways that was one of the good points that we had there. The next thing we knew was that we were, I’d say sent across country and um, that was to be going on to various stations now – this was where our actual training began and we had landed in Moncton and then from there, as I say, we travelled by train across to Dauphin, Manitoba, and Dauphin, Manitoba was just a little bit bigger than a village at that particular time but it was really getting populated with the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force, and um, that is where we had bombing and gunnery courses on Ansons and Bolingbrokes. The Bolingbrokes, of course, was the Canadian/ American version of the Blenheim Mark IV which was a very good aircraft. We graduated from there and we went from there to aye, err, Portage la Prairie, Portage la Prairie, I’ve got photographs here and there we are at Portage la Prairie which is, and was, and still is today, one of the major stations of the Royal Canadian Air Force. I said today because I have met wing commanders and group captains who have just recently been in charge of Portage la Prairie, and that is where we did the Air Observer School, that was Air Observer School Number 7 which is navigation etcetera, etcetera, and that was on Ansons and Cranes. We, err, we had a mixed bunch there of New Zealanders, Canadians, and British and we actually graduated from there and um, that is the photograph of it there see.
AS: And you’re on the front row, second from the left.
BM: That’s right [laughs] yeah. That is when I became an air observer, the air observer, of course, has got another name but in this interview I won’t say what it was called.
AS: You told me before.
BM: [Laughs] that’s exactly what it was, yes. Anyway, as far as we were concerned we err -
AS: I think could I, could I maybe I could say it
BM: Yes
AS: For the record you were known as the flying arseholes.
BM: That’s quite correct [laughs], that is quite correct, yes. Now um, with that, we were, we were given our wings there and that was a great occasion because we were made up to sergeants which was, the lowest rank by that time that you could have as air crew. Quite a lot of people don’t understand and don’t know was that right through, for a couple of years the war was on, there was fellow air crew were either AC2’s or AC1’s or LAC, leading aircraftsman and it was only after a while that the rank of sergeant was introduced for minimum rank for aircrew, there’s quite a number of people never knew about that but um, having come through the air cadets etcetera, etcetera, we knew people who were actually flying in operations who were leading aircraftsman and had done quite a number of operations as such and were never recognised as anything else. If they got shot down they never got promotion, they were still at the end of the war leading aircraftsmen. Then um, from Portage la Prairie, um, we got a jaunt down, down to America, I think it was just a matter of, they didn’t know what to do with us for a while and we went down to Florida, and we were flying on Catalina Flying Boats and doing maritime navigation which, from a place called Pensacola. We were there a few weeks and the next thing we knew we were back to Moncton, New Brunswick in Canada, and of course there wasn’t six feet of snow this time, it was a lovely spring cum summer day in Canada. We, we were there for just a few weeks and um, we were told we could have two kit bags and we said ‘why two kit bags?’, ‘well one kit bag you can travel with and if you get a flight back to the UK then that other kit bag will be sent on to you later on’. I was quite happy in one way, I didn’t need to fly back, I got on board a ship and then we were taken from Moncton, New Brunswick to Halifax, Nova Scotia. And when we got to Nova Scotia I recognised the ship and I said to my friend, I said ‘oh I don’t like that one’ and he said ‘why is that Bill?’ I said ‘because that’s the Empress of Japan’, he said ‘what!’, I said ‘yeah that’s the Empress of Japan’. Anyway we got on the ship and by that time it was called the Empress of Scotland, they had changed its name during the war from the Empress of Japan to the Empress of Scotland, and we boarded that and we were put onto D deck which is a long way down and um, when we, we tried to get up for the, for the boat drill for emergencies we found that we were only halfway up, so anyway we thought of a plan. If there is going to be an emergency and they want us up on deck why don’t we try and get a place to sleep on deck because it was summertime, anyway we weren’t allowed that. Anyway we eventually landed in the Clyde and from the Clyde we, we got on the train and we went to Harrogate in Yorkshire, and we were held at Yorkshire, in Harrogate for a short time and um, from there I was sent over to Halfpenny Green. Now Halfpenny Green was a mixed unit it was, a normal navigation advanced school for navigators so and there was also an advanced school navigating on, what will I say, um, yeah, this was to become a specialist on map reading, not just normal navigation a specialist on navigation by map reading and that was the section that I was detailed for. When I asked the ‘chiefy’ why I was a chosen, he said ‘why’ he says ‘because we found out that you’re a country boy’, ‘Oh,’ I said ‘that’s nice’, he said ‘also you’ve been around quite a bit’, I said ‘oh thank you very much’. Anyway, ‘chiefy’, the reason I called him ‘chiefy’ was because he was a flight sergeant and the reason you called them a ‘chiefy’ was because when the Royal Air Force and the Naval Service had been amalgamated during the First World War, a lot of the people from the Naval side came across and they were Chief Prison err, Chief um, Chief Petty Officers and they were the chaps who became the first flight sergeants in the Royal Air Force and the name ‘chiefy’ has been there ever since, ‘cos’ if you called someone a ‘chiefy’ today they wonder what the hell you are talking about, but anyway we could often make a few bets on that one, that’s on the side. But Halfpenny Green, we were flying there on the advanced Ansons, Mk V Ansons, which um, had completely closed bombing doors etcetera, etcetera, and of course it was ideal for map reading because your maps weren’t getting thrown about in the lower part of the cockpit when you are trying to do the map reading, but we didn’t realise why it was done, but in the Air Force, once you joined up, you volunteered ever after that, you did what you was told. Right now, I managed to go through that course, came through with very good marks and um, I was then posted to Desborough, um, at Desborough. We were crewed up and that was part of a Wellington crew and um, also flying there I was flying as second dickie, in other words we only had one pilot and um, I got the job within the crew of being the person to be able to, err, take off and land and of course do a bit of flying in between, in case of emergency I could always land the Wellington. That was because of the position and the type of training that we had got in the past. Now from, from Desborough we um, we were transferred to various stations and where I went to, I went to a place called Tempsford. Now Tempsford was one of Churchill’s most secret aerodromes, airfields, when you got there you had to, you had to sign the Official Secret Act which was slightly different from the one that you normally took. In other words this was top secret, anything you said outside of that aerodrome you could be held responsible, and taken into custody, or shot, if it was got the wrong way. The reason for that that came up during your last week of being at Tempsford. Now at Tempsford we, we were crewing with various people, the reason I say that is because being an observer from time to time I wasn’t with the, the same, same pilot, although for some time I was with a chap called Neil Noble and also with err, a young PO who was a chap called Murray, anyway that was very good indeed. Noble was from New Zealand, and err, he was an excellent chap and he was also a country boy and he was excellent for the type of flying that we were doing and likewise was Murray. Now what happened was that during that time at Tempsford that is where we did flying of taking people out and into France, quite often it was on, it was on Lysanders and you didn’t have much room in Lysanders because err, it being a small one engine aircraft and you were flying low and you were actually taking these people into France. It wasn’t the first time that we had to bring people back from France and on various occasions, the group had actually brought back four gentleman who later on became Premiers of France and they actually also were leading lights in the resistance movement, what we called the Maquis. Now one of the things that happened at Tempsford was that um, we later on had an aircraft and this aircraft was called a Hudson, now that Hudson was an aircraft, American one, which was designed to land on the prairies in America. It was heavily undercarriaged and it was ideal for what we did, it was a way from the Lysander with the single engine and was a twin engine aircraft and what was happening there was that we were carrying a lot of heavy goods for the Maquis. That was the bombs, sticky bombs, all sorts of bombs like that, grenades, ammunition, weapons, oh up to medium sized weapons which they could use without using vehicles to carry them about. Now there was one particular trip when we were on the Hudson and we were on one of the airfields that had been selected by the Maquis, now what had happened was the Maquis people, quite a number of them, had been brought over to the UK and they were given special training as to get airfields that we could land in, the idea being was that the drop zones or picking up and laying down of agents, and it was essential that they were kept on this secret list ‘cos only a few minutes normally that we were on the ground. On this particular occasion what happened was that we came into land and we landed very well, we got to top of the, I call it run section, we turned round and as we turned round we began to sink in the mud, well it felt like mud to us, I suppose it was only a wet piece of ground, and we sank down, and um, I said to the skipper, ‘oh were in trouble’, he said ‘oh we’ll get off all right’, so anyway the Maquis arrived and they got all their stuff out and um, the leading agent there was a lady and she cleared an area, got all the Maquis away and we were ready to take off and then we realised that we couldn’t get out the mud, or whatever it was. So anyway we were about ready for to put the bomb in the air trap and blow it up and then get the hell out of there, but anyway she said ‘no’ she said, ‘we think we’ll get you out of there all right’ and she got the people from a nearby village to come to try and help us out because they were on their way up they met what they call the German sergeant who was in charge of the village and he said ‘right where are you people going?’, ‘oh your big black aircraft, your big black aircraft is on the ground there and if we don’t get it out of the mud the Gestapo is going to shoot us and they’ll shoot you as well’. So his retort was back to hers was that he would look after the village, they could go and get the aircraft out, so anyway the people got all sorts of equipment and we managed to take off again, that was the longest that we were ever on the ground until a few years later, it certainly felt like hours and hours and hours but was, it was just over an hour and a quarter on the ground which was an extremely long period and we got away.
AS: Was this work part of what was known as part of the Special Operations Executive?
BM: We were working with the SOE, yes that’s exactly what we were doing. Now that was one of the moments where various escapades like that but that that was the one of the longest times on the ground. Quite often we landed in a field and of course one or two of the fields had been used in the past for gliders but of course nobody had been near them in years, not even the Germans had used them and that was why they, the Maquis, had actually selected them for us, and they had um, they hadn’t done any work on them as such just hoping that the odd tree stump or that, that we landed in was, would be avoided which they were quite good. There was quite often a brush, as we called it, on the ground but we managed to sweep that aside when you are landing and take off. Now the thing about that was that um, the area dropping and picking up and laying down of agents was essentially an extreme secret list and only a few minutes were allowed between knowing the target area and the take off and only the crew members concerned knew exactly where. As little contact as possible was allowed between any agents and the crew, I don’t care what people say, Americans and different books nowadays I will call them ‘Joes’, as far as we were concerned we had as little contact as possible so that if anything happened to them or happened to us we couldn’t divulge anything and neither could they, because later on Hitler had said that anybody with knowledge of the situation would be shot as spies, so as little contact as possible was allowed between any agents and the crews. The airfield contacts or landings were seldom used again and again, although there were one of two were very suitable among them was Paris and Chateauroux and various other ones, these were the favourite ones that they were ones that were used quite a few times.
AS: When you were working, when you were on those flights you were acting as an observer?
BM: An observer yes.
AS: And what was the role of the observer?
BM: An observer was, it was a navigator but also you did everything, you did everything.
AS: So, you were a backup if something?
BM: That’s right. The observer learnt to fly, that was one of the other things an observer did, later on of course that was taken over by, on the bigger aircraft, by the flight engineer, but in the early days that was the observer that did that, aye. Now later on, later on during the war once it became apparent with the advance of the allies in France, the role of 138 Squadron and 161 Squadron was diminishing so what happened then was that 138 Squadron we went back to Bomber Command and with that we went to Langar where we actually um, we actually flew on Lancasters and then the Lancasters and then of course we were, I’d say we were part and parcel of the Bomber Command operations and that was from Tuddenham, and at Tuddenham we lay alongside 90 Squadron which was one of the main, main squadrons that occupied Tuddenham right through during the war.
AS: And what year was that, that you became part of Bomber Command?
BM: That was beginning that was the beginning of ‘44-‘45 and that was from, we started there, the actual squadron according, according to the history, was that everything came into being in March of 1945 but of course it was long before that we were [inaudible] but that’s just from the history books. Later the events all changed and we were sent to Langar to receive conversant to Lancasters, which turned out to be the light of my life as the aircraft which was the one that I favoured best, and from Langar we went to Feltwall, Mildenhall, Methwold, and Stradishall for other special duty training and eventually to Tuddenham. We took part in many of the operations but on the big one to Potsdam our Wing Commander Murray took over as captain of the night. Now that Wing Commander Murray was a pilot officer that I flew with, aye, early in my career with 138 Squadron and he became eventually the, the squadron leader, wing commander for 138 squadron, he took charge of that. Along came the Operation Manna which gave us great pleasure in being part of and likewise to Juvincourt where we brought home many of our fellow air crew members who had been prisoners of war, and after a few weeks of PRDU work at Tuddenham we were allowed to transfer to RAF Benson where we took over our own Lancasters and became part of the operating across Europe and photographing the whole of Europe for um, the secret stations that Churchill had wanted when he was Prime Minister. So that was there crew there, the other air crew in Bomber Command where we did all our operations.
AS: And were you still working as an observer at this stage?
BM: Yes, yes
AS: You were still an observer?
BM: Aye
AS: And this is your crew next to a Lancaster?
BM: Yes, that’s the crew that we eventually had, yes.
AS: And which one is you Bill?
BM: [laughs] Probably go with the height you’ll maybe get me, [laughs] can you recognise me?
AS: I think you are the one on the left on that side on the right.
BM: Yes that’s me [laughs], that there the tallest one actually became the rear gunner .
AS: And were you always with the same crew?
BM: Once we, once we got to Tuddenham we were all with the same crew yes.
AS: So these are the same, so this is the same people?
BM: That’s right yeah.
AS: And obviously you all made it through the war?
BM: Oh yes.
AS: ‘Cos a lot did not.
BM: No, that is quite correct we were lucky.
AS: So when you were on the bombing raid can you tell me exactly what your role would have been?
BM: Oh we were, there were two things so we acted as a full navigator and sometimes as an electronic navigator and also a bomb aimer as well ‘cos we were qualified to do all these jobs.
AS: So you moved from one role?
BM: One role to another yeah.
AS: To another.
BM: In our crew everybody could do everything else except on the Lancasters. The skipper Neil Noble and, and myself were doing the flying, and also our flight engineer ‘cos he only joined us on the Lancasters ‘cos when we were flying in the Wellingtons and that we didn’t have, we didn’t have a flight engineer. The flight engineer were only brought on when we started with the Stirlings and Halifaxes and then the Lancasters.
AS: Can you tell me what it was like to fly the Lancasters as opposed to the Wellingtons?
BM: Oh yes, it was a much easier aircraft to fly than even the Wellingtons and the Wellington was a good one to fly.
AS: In what way was it easier?
BM: Well the, the, the controls were simpler, it was easier to control them than it was some of the former aircraft.
AS: And can you describe the procedure when you went on a bombing raid?
BM: Right, well what happened was once you were crewed and once you had done a few operations like mine laying and things like that, minor operations and then of course you were selected by crews that you moved up the ladder a bit and then of course you were formally taken on to the, I would say, the senior strength of the squadron, but our squadron did not like to put rookie crews onto the heavy stuff at first, you got a baptism of fire by, as I say, doing the mine laying jobs and various other ones which you weren’t so likely to have been involved in heavy enemy fire etcetera, etcetera. We were thankful for that because you were given that training and there was actually training in the actual thing. So what happened was that once you, once you were there then of course you had briefings where the whole crew was together, then of course you had briefings where there was selected sections of the aircrew, mainly the pilot, navigator, and quite often the flight engineer and radio operator were involved. When we were doing special duties with Lancaster’s we had the whole crew together ‘cos we felt as if everybody should know exactly what’s going on and not be a surprise to anybody with what we were doing because quite often there was raids that was known to only a section of a squadron and sometimes a full squadron, whereas if it wasn’t a joint operations with the other squadrons, or the other squadron are out and you lay down so that was how it went, but you were actually given as much information as possible about the targets, about where you were going, the flight, the enemy aircraft etcetera, etcetera.
AS: How many missions did you fly with Bomber Command?
BM: About thirty six.
AS: That was quite a lot wasn’t it?
BM: Yes it was quite a lot.
AS: It sounds as if you were lucky to pull through because?
BM: I was extremely lucky, I was extremely lucky, because with 138 Squadron we had, we had quite a [long pause, shuffling papers], with 138 Squadron, 138 Squadron had taken in nine hundred and ninety five agents, they’d taken in twenty nine thousand containers and they’d taken in over ten thousand packages. We lost seventy aircraft and three hundred aircrew, our motto was ‘for freedom’, that was 138 Squadron you know.
AS: Yes you had different people on different stations?
BM: Right, now also what did happen was that with 138 Squadron we had a flight of Poles, Polish chaps. Now what happened with them was that they was declared by the German forces that if the Poles were shot down they were to be treated as spies, so I didn’t like the idea of that and all the ones on our flight I taught them a bit of Gaelic, I gave them little addresses from on all the outer isles on the west of Scotland and I gave them Scottish names, and I told them if they got shot down they would have to use them as identification plus their rank and number, and I, ‘cos I do know that quite a number of them actually survived like that because they pretended to be Scottish, Gaelic, and where they pointed to on the map was where they came from and it was a real island but I gave them all different islands, and of course when they were on the squadron if they spoke to anybody they had to say who they were and not who they were in Polish.
AS: And why the Poles singled out for special harsh treatment?
BM: Oh because their country had been occupied by the Germans. They took it that they were, if they did that they were actually against them that was the end of it.
AS: Mmm, when you um, when you were flying with Bomber Command how often, you said you had thirty six missions, how far apart were they, were you?
BM: Well sometimes you might be on three nights in a row, sometimes it might be two, two in one week, but it was surprising just how much, just how of course some operations like mine laying and things like that were considered quite minor ones so you probably fitted them in in between times.
AS: And went you weren’t actually flying when you were on the ground how did you occupy your time?
BM: We kept ourselves fit, we played a lot of squash or we played a lot of rugby that was the two things we did as a crew because we could play together, and we were together, we were a crew.
AS: And when you were not flying you stuck together as a
BM: As a crew yes. We used to have, in the Nissen huts, we normally had two crews to the hut and we pretty well stuck together.
AS: And what sort of conditions were you living in, was it, were they good conditions or?
BM: Well, well when we were one squadron there was err, there was a Nissen hut set of accommodation which was two crews, as I say two crews about fourteen men to a hut and a potbelly stove in the middle and then of course your, your, your mess and that on the squadron was a Nissen type building. There was one or two squadrons which were peacetime ones, the RAF Benson was a peacetime one and there’s still peacetime one, but Methwold and quite a few of these other ones were established pre-war and the accommodation was slightly better, but anything that was rushed up during the war time was normally the Nissen huts.
AS: Now after the war, what, how did you, what happened after the war?
BM: Well what happened after the war, like what I said earlier on, was that we did some PRDU work from Tuddenham.
AS: What’s PRDU work?
BM: That’s Post RAF Reconnaissance.
AS: Ah.
BM: What we didn’t realise it was like a programme to see if we were suitable to do the job and there was three crews were picked, three, with their aircraft and we were sent over to RAF Benson and we then came under PRDU people there and, err, we photographed the whole of Europe, north to south and east to west, and we photographed the likes of the city of London, and other big cities from two thousand feet. Towns like Woking and this area would be from about five-six thousand feet and um, then the general countryside was anything from ten to twenty thousand feet, and we did that for the whole of Europe. We also had bases all over the country and also had bases in Norway, bases in South of France and various places like that, so what we actually did was that at one time, one time we landed at one, one particular station and it had been used as a transit camp and we woke up in the morning scratching like hell and we found out we had scabies so of course that was us isolated. We go back to our own station and we were isolated by the, by the medical people until we got rid of it, and then we, what we said, wherever we went after that we took our own kit with us so we didn’t get scabies.
AS: And this would have been after 1945 you were doing this?
BM: Yes
AS: And how long did you stay in the RAF for?
BM: Middle of 1946.
AS: And, and what did you do after you left?
BM: Well I went back into the building industry, and um, it wasn’t that long before I went to Rhodesia where I was supposed to have gone with the with the Royal Air Force and the idea there was that a federation was starting up between Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, and um, I went out there and I went out as a general building foreman, and instead of staying four years with the company that I worked for I stayed fifty years. I built schools, universities, colleges, hundreds of local houses, all over the territories, and then of course gradually it worked out that Rhodesia was the only one that didn’t get its independence, Nyasaland 1963, Nyasaland was given independence then and became Malawi, and more or less at the same time Northern Rhodesia, which had been a Crown Colony run from Britain, they also had theirs, but Southern Rhodesia, which became Rhodesia, had been a self-governing colony since 1926 and they were not granted independence. And what happened was in 1926 there had been a vote there to say if whether they were going to pick up as a province in South Africa or stay as Rhodesia as an independent self-governing colony and the vote was to stay as Rhodesia self-governing colony, so if they’d had went the other way it would have been a province of South Africa.
AS: So what year did you come back to the United Kingdom?
BM: I only came back twelve years ago.
AS: Oh gosh. So have you, after the end of the war have you kept in contact with your crew mates?
BM: Oh yes, well I’ll tell you what, Jimmy Dugg, his great grandson is Israel Dugg who played full back for the All Blacks against the Springboks on Saturday and various other ones.
AS: So you kept in contact with them?
BM: Oh yes.
AS: Did you, um, I mean after the war?
BM: What happened in Rhodesia, put it this way what happened there was that I had, in the short term, I had reinstated the family business in the building trade, I found out that the contracts were not being run honestly as far as I was concerned and that’s when I said to my brothers ‘you can have the company I’m going abroad’, I had thoughts for Canada, I had thoughts for Australia, I had thoughts for New Zealand, and at the time they wanted people to go to what was going to become the Central African Federation, um, and that’s where I decided to go to. I had no regrets, no regrets at all. I was there from 1952-53 right up until I came here, came back here and that was in 2003, but during that time, as I said before, I built schools and hospitals and other things all the way through. I even, in 1960 the Queen Mother had come out previously and laid the foundation stone of the hospital in Blantyre, Nyasaland which she named the Queen Elizabeth Hospital then she came back in 1960 and declared it open, now of course it wasn’t just a hospital it was like a major township around the hospital that we built that what took us so long, anyway what did happen when we had a ball at Zumba, the capital, after she had declared it open etcetera, etcetera, and the following the morning the Governor, Glynn Jones came to me and said ‘I’ve got a job for you’ I said ‘No, no, no I don’t need no freebies sir’, he said ‘it’s for the old lady’, I said ‘what’s that’, he said ‘I want you to build a racecourse for her,’ I said ‘what! I don’t know anything about building racecourses’, he said ‘go and find a plan somewhere’ he says ‘I want you to build a racecourse for her’, I said ‘all right how long have I got?’ he said ‘you’ve got ten days’. So anyway I got my own crew which was about fifty-sixty chaps and I went along to Zumba Prison and I got hundred bandits from there, short term bandits, and I asked for all the ones who had been Queen Victoria men, or King George men, or Kind Edward men, people like that and I got volunteers and I looked after them. I said they would be rewarded which they were, properly and kindly, etcetera, etcetera, and we did the job, and instead of what you do today, putting up things in canvas, I did it all in pole and thatch, and um, she, what happened is that she went on the Ilala which is the ship that plies up and down Lake Nyasa, and Lake Nyasa is three hundred and sixty five miles long and fifty two miles wide and there are various ports along it that the Ilala used to either go into or stand off and it used to take cattle, people passengers, VIP’s everything, there were ten or twelve cabins on it so it wasn’t a small one. It was actually built in, in Scotland and taken out in pieces to a place called Monkey Bay where it was put back together again and floated on Lake Nyasa and she has been going there ever since [laughs].
AS: Excellent. Can I um [end]
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Bill Moore. One
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Andrew Sadler
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-28
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01:10:53 Audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
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AMooreWT150728
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
William Moore was born in Dunoon, Scotland in August 1924 and joined the Royal Air Force after spending some time in the Air Cadet Defence Corps and in the Air Training Corps. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force at the age of 17 and completed his training in Canada, after which he qualified as an air observer.
William flew Ansons and Cranes and learned navigation in America on Catalina flying boats. He also tells of flying Lysanders and transporting agents for the Special Operations Executive into France. He also tells how he helped Polish airmen with different information to keep them safe if they crashed.
William flew a number of aircraft including the Lancaster, Stirlings and Halifaxes at different locations and was on 36 operation with Bomber Command, taking part in Operation Manna. He served with 138 Squadron and 161 Squadron. He also tells of his life after the war, when he went to live in Rhodesia where he helped to run the family business before returning to Great Britain in 2003.
Please note: The veracity of this interview has been called into question. We advise that corroborative research is undertaken to establish the accuracy of some of the details mentioned and events witnessed.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
United States
France
Germany
Netherlands
England--Bedfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--Staffordshire
Zimbabwe
Africa--Lake Nyasa
138 Squadron
161 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aerial photograph
aircrew
Anson
Catalina
flight engineer
Halifax
Hudson
Lancaster
Lysander
navigator
observer
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Photographic Reconnaissance Unit
RAF Benson
RAF Desborough
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Tempsford
RAF Tuddenham
reconnaissance photograph
Resistance
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/656/8929/AWilsonJ161231.1.mp3
930df0a00d934d17a8714a098fe71eb3
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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Wilson, Joseph
J Wilson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Wilson, J
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Joseph Wilson (1923 - 2019), 1486434 Royal Air Force), his log book, identity card and a photograph. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 102 and 76 Squadrons before being posted to 624 Special Duties Squadron where he dropped supplies and agents to the resistance in Southern Europe.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jenny Wilson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2016-12-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Joe Wilson at 3.15 in the afternoon on Thursday 29th of December 2016 at his home in Billinge. Joe, can you confirm for me please when and where were you born?
JW1: When and where? Oh, I was, I was born in Orrel Road, Orrel, 18.5.23.
BW: And how many other family members were there in, in your family? Did you have any brothers and sisters?
JW1: Oh yes. I had, I had a brother and sister.
BW: And were you the middle child or —
JW1: I was the youngest, the youngster [slight laugh].
JW2: You, you had step-sisters and brothers.
JW1: But they weren’t —
JW2: They were older, weren’t they?
JW1: Oh yeah, they weren’t — as you say, step-sisters. They weren’t my —
JW2: They weren’t yours but they all lived together.
JW1: All lived together, yeah.
BW: With me during this interview —
JW1: I beg your pardon?
BW: With me in this interview is Joe’s daughter Jenny, who will also be, um, prompting further information and assisting Joe with, with some of the answers just to help his recall of memory. So what was your early life like Joe, growing up round here?
JW1: What was?
JW2: What was your early life like? How would you describe it, growing up round here? Was it a normal happy childhood or —
JW1: You mean, as a civilian you mean.
BW: yes.
JW1: I had a very, very — I was getting five bob a week as a —
JW2: As a child?
JW1: As a child, yeah.
JW2: As a child — is it OK for me to — as a child you, um, your father was a miner.
JW1: Pit. Yeah.
JW2: And your mother —
JW1: A school teacher.
JW2: Was a school teacher.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: And your mother married her sister’s widower.
JW1: My mother married —
JW2: Your mother married your sister’s, your, sorry, her sister’s widower.
JW1: Who was that?
JW2: So, um, that was Nellie died and William married Agnes, your mother, and then had three more children and you lived in a semi-detached house, 176 —
JW1: Orrel Road.
JW2: Orrel Road. That was when you were five. Before that you’d lived in a, in a terraced house. So when you were five you lived in 176 where you stayed for quite a long time.
JW1: That’s OK.
JW2: That’s right, yeah. But you had a happy child — would you say you had a happy childhood?
JW1: [slight laugh] Not really.
JW2: No?
JW1: No.
BW: Were your parents strict Joe?
JW1: I beg your pardon?
BW: Were your mum and dad strict with you?
JW1: Not really. My father worked in the pits, down the pits, five shillings a week and my mother was a school teacher, wasn’t she?
JW2: Yes.
BW: And where did you go to your school yourself? Do you remember?
JW1: Nearby, yeah. It was a Catholic School, St James’s, Orrel, yeah.
BW: And what did you like learning there? Were you there until age fourteen or did you leave? Was it a primary school and you left to go to another school or what?
JW1: I was, I was there most of the time I suppose, yeah. Not altogether.
JW2: Do you recall that you, er, left — when you left St James’s do you remember which school you went to then?
JW1: After St James’s. You mentioned the name [unclear].
JW2: I think there was three children from St James’s from your year that went to West Park Grammar School.
JW1: Grammar School, St Helens, yeah.
JW2: And one of them was John Orell, who was your friend from Rock House in Upholland, and the other was Brenda Green.
JW1: Brenda Green.
JW2: And John Orell also went into the RAF during the war.
JW1: Was he lost in the war?
JW2: He was. You told me that the, um, time you had at the grammar school was limited because a lot of your teachers were conscripted. Would you like to say something about that?
JW1: Conscripted? What do you mean by that?
JW2: They went into the war. They, they had to sign up for the war when you were at West Park Grammar.
JW1: Oh yeah, yeah.
JW2: You told me that you wanted to leave school because you didn’t like art and you had to do art and lost some of your favourite subjects.
JW1: That’s true.
BW: What didn’t you like about art Joe?
JW1: I couldn’t draw.
JW2: Didn’t like it.
BW: Didn’t like it. What were your favourite subjects then?
JW1: Mathematics, I suppose. My mother was a school teacher.
JW2: And her nickname was?
JW1: Eh?
JW2: What was her nickname?
JW1: I don’t know.
JW2: Mrs Metric.
JW1: Was it? I’d forgotten.
JW2: And she was very literary, as you are, and you loved poetry.
JW1: Oh yeah. Loved poetry. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall what were you doing when war was declared? Were you at home that day?
JW1: Well, I was at school that day wasn’t I when war was declared?
JW2: I don’t know.
JW1: 1939. Born ’23. I was probably in the top class, sixth form, er, sixth form. I was —
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Joe Wilson on the afternoon of Thursday 29th of December 2016 at his home in Billinge, Lancashire. With me is his daughter Jenny Wilson who will also be adding information, prompting and asking questions of Joe to help clarify some of the information. So, we were just talking before, in the first part of the interview Joe, about you being a trainee pharmacist and you’d heard that war had been declared and you decided to join the RAF and there were two reasons. One of which was pay and the other of which you thought was glamour. Is that right?
JW1: Probably.
BW: And you thought the uniform would help you attract more girls?
JW: Yeah.
BW: I believe you wanted to train as a pilot?
JW: Yeah. I was, I was in a reserved occupation there but yeah, pilot only, yeah. In fact I wasn’t allowed to — because I got, I got [unclear] I wasn’t allowed to apply for anything else. Pilot or observer, they were both the same, er, price, wage, same wage.
BW: And it was more money than what you were on as a pharmacist?
JW1: As a pharmacist. It was do you mean fully trained?
BW: Yeah.
JW1: I was about, I was getting about two pounds a week then but, er, I worked till half past seven through the week and, er, 9 o’clock Saturday night. That was what I should have done but I, I always had plenty of — what do you call them? What do you call them where they —
JW2: I’m not sure. Oh, they had a lot of outlets?
JW1: The Air Force.
JW2: Oh, the Air Force. I’m not sure. Barracks?
JW1: Eh?
JW2: The barracks.
JW1: Before I joined — I’ve forgotten. I was, I know I was a, I was a, so they say a laughable airmen [?] really.
BW: Where did you sign on or sign up? Did you sign you in Wigan? Was the nearest recruiting office in Wigan?
JW1: Yeah, oh yeah.
BW: And where do you go from there? Do you remember where did they send you for training?
JW1: It, it was overseas but I can’t remember where?
JW2: Initially, I don’t think it was overseas. I think you started your training in this country.
JW1: I probably started, yeah, but I didn’t finish.
BW: Did you actually get on to do pilot training in the first stage or were you drafted to be an observer instead?
JW1: Well, I was, I had, um, I wasn’t considered good enough to be a pilot really.
BW: Did you actually get to learn to fly a plane at any stage or were you just told that at the beginning?
JW1: No, I never saw, never saw an aeroplane in those days.
JW2: He did [emphasis] get to fly.
BW: I think you said you flew a Tiger Moth, didn’t you?
JW1: Oh, well yeah. Yes. What do they call it when you do a couple of hours just to see whether you were going to be air sick or, you know, not suitable, really. That was the idea. It wasn’t, it wasn’t to teach you anything really. [JW2 talking quietly in the background]
BW: So, you started on a flying course in this country doing a couple of trips on a Tiger Moth and then you were told you weren’t suitable to be a pilot. Is that right?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And from there you went on to train as a bomb aimer instead. Is that correct or did you go into air gunnery?
JW1: No. I wanted to be a — no I wasn’t a gunner because the pay was terrible. It was terrible as a pilot but it was better than an air gunner’s pay.
JW2: Joe, your grandson recalls you saying that you learned, you were learning how to fly in Hamptons and Wellingtons?
JW1: Hampdens.
JW2: Hampdens, sorry. And Wellingtons. Is that correct?
JW1: Yeah. I know I went solo as, as, er, training to be a pilot when I was about, well I’d only be eighteen, that’s all.
BW: You were flying solo?
JW1: I was, I did, to be in a flying job really. I was but I only did a very, very short time.
BW: What do you recall about your training to be a bomb aimer?
JW1: I didn’t like it [slight laugh]. I didn’t like joining it but after a while it became a better, better paid job, slightly paid better, but that was about all really.
BW: And I believe you went up to an Operational Training Unit at Lossiemouth, number 20 OTU?
JW1: Number 20. Yeah.
BW: Would that have been 1942?
JW1: Probably. Yeah. ’42. I was born in ‘23. I was nineteen then.
BW: What do you recall of your time up in Scotland? Anything?
JW1: Well, I had relatives close by. My wife was a Scot, eventually.
JW2: Event— but you hadn’t met her then.
JW1: No. I hadn’t.
JW2: You hadn’t met her then. Later on you had relatives in Scotland but when you were nineteen I don’t think you had relatives in Scotland.
JW1: I didn’t like it then [slight laugh]. I’m surprised anybody cares these days about it.
BW: From then on I believe you went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Pocklington, 1652 HCU is that right?
JW1: Pocklington. Yeah.
BW: And do you recall the people you met there? The crew you met there?
JW1: I don’t recall it but some— somebody, one of them was here and mentioned it to me to bring it back to me, I suppose. That’s all. Five bob a week wasn’t much working about fifty hours or more. That was all I got. Five shillings.
BW: Your log book shows that you were training on Wellingtons and your pilot was Sergeant Griffiths.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: What do you remember about Griffiths?
JW1: Nothing really but if, if somebody mentions something it would bring it back to me. He was a Scot, I know that. I don’t remember. I don’t remember.
BW: You did a lot of cross country training and some of it was at night, flying Wellingtons.
JW1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And you’re up at the front in the nose.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: What, what was like that?
JW1: Bloody cold. It was — we got all the breezes there. It was considered, it was quite laughable to everybody that I was a pil— I was going in for a pilot, yeah. I’m trying to think what we called it. Nobody has ever talked about it since then so I don’t remember.
BW: So, from your log book you left training on the Wellington on the 20th of September 1942, having done just under twenty-three hours day flying and thirty-one, sorry, forty-seven hours night flying?
JW1: How many years, forty-seven?
BW: Forty-seven hours, forty-seven hours. You then joined the conversion unit early in 1943 and you learned to fly Halifaxes. And your pilot on the Halifax was a Sergeant Griffiths. Do you remember the names of the other crewmen at all?
JW1: Not off-hand, no, but if anybody mentions them it would bring it back to me.
JW2: Can you remember anything about somebody called Marsh, Wilf Marsh?
JW1: Wilf Marsh. He was an observer. He wasn’t very athletic really. He was quite a fat lad.
JW2: He was married wasn’t he?
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: Was he the only married one on your crew?
JW1: As far as I recollect, yeah.
JW2: Right.
BW: There was another crewman, Flight Engineer Charles Walker?
JW1: I don’t remember that.
BW: No. Navigator, er, Anthony Holmes, or Tony Holmes.
JW1: Do you know, I don’t remember that even.
BW: No [clears throat].
JW1: I don’t know why they are interested.
JW2: It is interesting dad.
BW: It looks like your regular aircraft was code letter P. Do you have any recollections of P? Did you have a nickname for the aircraft at all? Was it —
JW1: I don’t recollect P. I’ve forgotten what you were —
Other: Is he talking about the nickname for the aircraft?
JW2: Yes.
Other: It was something ghost. Something ghost related.
JW1: What’s that?
JW2: Can — did you call the Halifax — did you have a name for, a nickname for your aircraft? Your grandson seems to remember that it was something related to ghosts.
JW1: I don’t remember.
JW2: You can’t remember.
JW1: I don’t remember.
BW: So, you haven’t done many trips. You’ve done about nine or ten trips maybe, in the early part 1943, most of them in March. Do you remember where you were flying to, what your targets were, in March ‘43? Were you flying to the Ruhr, Ruhr valley?
JW1: I can’t [clears throat] recollect them but if someone jogged my memory and told me, gave me a name, I might.
JW2: Do you recall that you did — you got some time off when you did a reconnaissance trip. Can you remember that?
JW1: I got what?
JW2: You took some very good photographs of a target or your plane did and, um, they were so helpful that they gave you some time off. Can you recall that?
JW1: No.
JW2: Well, you told me it was an armaments factory at Essen?
JW1: Essetene [?]
JW2: No Essen.
JW1: Oh, Essen. Oh yeah.
JW2: And you told me they were so pleased with the helpful photographs for target information that they gave you some days off.
JW1: I can’t remember.
JW2: You can’t remember that, no, no. It might have been Krupps.
JW1: Krupps.
JW2: Might have been Krupps. Does that sound —
JW1: I think we lost, if I remember rightly, fifty-five one night, from, mostly from —
JW2: Bombing.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: There are some details, some brief details here. Your second operation, in March 1943, was gardening.
JW1: Was what?
BW: Gardening. Which means mine laying.
JW1: Oh yeah, gardening, yeah.
BW: Do you remember anything about dropping mines in the water?
JW1: No. It was cushy but no. I mean, we were not didn’t go on trips anything like as dangerous as that was. They, they were all mine laying operations, just round, round the drome, that’s all.
BW: And then your third op at night was to Essen, followed by three days later Nuremberg.
JW1: We lost about fifty aeroplanes.
BW: On the Essen raid?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And then you went a few days later to Nuremberg.
JW1: Oh yeah. That was a long one.
BW: That’s deep in Germany. And then the night after that you went to Munich which is in the south of Germany.
JW1: I remember the name but I don’t remember anything about it really.
BW: You then had one raid at Stuttgart, followed in April by another trip to Essen and this is, I believe, is interesting because your comment in your log book says you were coned for eleven minutes. You were in the searchlights for eleven minutes. Do you remember that?
JW1: No.
BW: And you got back to base and you had to go and see the CO, the station commander, following that and he took you up for a flight. His name was Gus Walker.
JW1: Oh, ay. I don’t remember. I remember the name, that’s all. Yeah.
BW: I believe what happened, you were lucky to survive the raid over Essen, being in the path of the searchlights for so long.
JW1: Lost fifty, fifty planes.
JW2: But then when you got back the station commander took you and the rest of the crew up for a flight to show you how to, to show your pilot Griffiths how to take evasive action.
JW1: Oh yeah. I don’t, don’t remember anything about that either.
JW2: I think, I remember you saying that, um, you weren’t sure — you wanted to call him, ‘Sir,’ and he said, ‘Call me Gus.’ Can you remember that?
JW1: Who, who was that, Gus? Who was it?
JW2: Who do you think it was?
JW1: I don’t know.
JW2: Gus Walker.
JW1: Oh yeah. Little fella.
BW: Air Commodore with one arm.
JW1: Was it? Oh yeah. He was quite well famous then, really. Gus Walker.
JW2: He showed you how to do evasive action.
JW1: Yeah. Throwing the plane about, yeah.
JW2: You told me that you that you’d waggled your plane before you learned how to do evasive action.
JW1: Yes. I did that. That were evading.
BW: Just dipping the wings.
JW1: Yeah. Yeah. Why do they want to know all—
JW2: Can I — I think that it’s something that would be quite interesting for — you were doing your bombing trips and you, you had a strategy that you think helped you, your crew to survive. Can you remember what your strategy was because I think Brian would be interested?
JW1: Just dropping markers, you know, that’s all really. We, we didn’t bomb anything then, we just gave the impression that we were going to go that way and they all turned and went that way and we went the other.
JW2: You told me — is it OK to — you told me that when you were in the briefings you always took a great interest in why they would navigate a particular way and you asked a lot of questions so sometimes you would say so why, why would we take that route and not this route and you seemed to be asking pertinent questions about the route.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: You did use the stars. You said that you used the stars and sextants to work out where you were and you felt your mathematics helped with the navigating because your role was a navigating as well, wasn’t it?
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: But you told me as well that your aim as soon as you knew where you had to go to was to get there as quickly and efficiently as you could. So I don’t think that you always went with the column when you flew with your crew. Can you remember?
JW1: Well, I only remember it as much as you’re, you’re talking about now but —
JW2: Tell me what you remember about not flying with the column.
JW1: Well nothing really accept —
JW2: That’s a shame.
JW1: Where was it? Where was that?
JW2: You told me that you had that as a strategy that you would, you didn’t fly with the column.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And that it was such large numbers that did happen, that people would go astray and then return to the column further on. You told me that on occasion you would still be circling the target when the Pathfinders arrived so by the time the target was marked — do you remember what would happen? What you would do?
JW1: No. Go on.
JW2: You told me that you would bomb it and you would be on your way back when the rest of the column was arriving.
JW1: Yeah. I [clears throat ] I wasn’t — I hadn’t been in the Air Force but I knew more about navigation and, you know, the work of the pilot or whatever, flying, in those days. Yeah.
JW2: There was a question about why you were chosen to do — work with 624 because 624 was special ops and the dangers were very different. You could fly into a mountain if you did not know where you were going so there was a question about whether you were chosen for the special ops work because your navigation was so good.
JW1: I think that’s probably true.
JW2: Because you tended to reach your target and come back before the others.
JW1: But I was a bomb aimer, not navigator. Bomb aimer.
JW2: No you weren’t but you told me you that helped with the navigating.
JW1: Oh probably.
JW2: So you were the bomb aimer, yeah. And you felt that your matriculation helped you with the navigation.
JW1: Oh yeah. I just got —
JW2: Was the observer not bomb aimer and navigator.
BW: Observer was a generic name. The trades tended to be, um, how can I say? Co— combined, in that you could be called a — it dates back to the First World War when the pilot was also listed as an observer but then the trades began to separate and some of them retained the old title of observer as well but, strictly speaking there would be, in the Halifax, there would be the pilot, navigator, wireless operator, um, bomb aimer and three gunners, front, back and mid upper so —
JW2: Did I speak too much then? Was that too —
BW: No, that’s alright. That’s alright. [clears throat] I believe when you were flying on operations before you went to, um, the briefings that you would take communion as well as a Catholic?
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: So did you attend services every time or just occasionally?
JW1: Well, all the time then, yeah.
BW: And do you feel your faith gave you comfort or, um, support?
JW1: I think so, yeah, yeah. Support, yeah.
BW: Did the other crew members go with you or not?
JW1: No, they didn’t. They were — I was the only Catholic there. I don’t know what you’d call them.
BW: But they I believe also felt reassured when you —
JW1: They what?
BW: They felt reassured when you’d been you to the service and had communion as well. Is that right?
JW1: Say that again. They felt what?
BW: They felt reassured that you’d had communion before you went flying.
JW1: Oh they liked that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
BW: Did that make them feel they feel like they had God on their side?
JW1: They thought it was a safety movement really.
BW: So you was bit of a talisman for them. You were a bit of good luck charm.
JW1: Very likely, very likely, very much likely because I was quite young then. In 1940 how old would I be? Twenty-three? Born in ‘23 to ’40. Oh, phew —
BW: Seventeen.
JW1: Seventeen would it be?
BW: But you were slightly older than that. You were nineteen and twenty when you were on these operations.
JW1: On ops, yeah.
BW: Did the rest of the crew have good luck charms or mascots?
JW1: I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.
BW: No? But with that and your skill as a bomb aimer/ navigator they must have felt they were going to come back every time with you on board.
JW1: Oh yeah. It was, it was the relationship with the pilot and the bomb aimer and the navigator in between, yeah.
BW: And when you were over the target didn’t you have control of the aircraft?
JW1: Oh, I sat next to the pilot to help him with it. He sometimes he’d take so much evasive action he, he would be out of action, you know. He’d lose control of it really.
BW: And were there any instances over the target when you had to take control if he lost it?
JW1: Well, no. I was alongside, alongside the side of the pilot. I’m trying to think now. We were the first to bomb there usually, you know, because I was — well I’d been in the sixth form at the grammar control, you know, as a mathematician so what they thought was difficult wasn’t to me.
BW: You obviously have a logical or engineering type, mathematical type thinking pattern or brain, don’t you? You were a, um, pharmacist before the war but then you had this mathematical/ logical skill to see them accurately and quickly to the target and come back. And what was it like for you over the target being in the front, very front of the Halifax? Can you remember what you would do?
JW1: Well, not really but bomb aimer, navigator or observer was two people.
BW: Did you feel you worked well as a team then?
JW1: Sorry?
BW: Did you feel you worked well as a team?
JW: I think so, yeah. I knew more mathematics than any one of them in the crew, even the pilot ‘cause I’d been in the sixth form at the grammar school.
BW: You had to lie prone in the front of the aircraft, looking through the nose, looking through the glass canopy down at the target and tell the pilot to stay on course or to manoeuvre so that you could drop the bombs accurately. You also had to keep the aircraft on course for another thirty seconds so a photograph could be taken, didn’t you?
JW1: Yeah. Yes.
BW: And did you take the photograph?
JW1: Pardon?
BW: Did you take the photograph?
JW1: Well, I told them when they should be, er, marking the, you know, the ground, what you call it? Phenomenon, ground — I don’t know what you call it really but they weren’t con— weren’t considered worth talking about, um, bomb aimers, you know — they thought we knew nothing about navigation and flying, flying an aircraft.
BW: And do you recall what you might have seen on the ground below you when you were over the target? Could you see searchlights and fires?
JW1: Oh, searchlights, yeah, yeah. They would very often have, where the target was, um, stations nearby where they could light the, you know, they could light the searchlights in the hopes that anybody up, up above would think they were the target. I weren’t. I didn’t. I knew more navigation than the navigation officer because I’d got through to sixth form in grammar school in mathematics.
BW: But you could tell the difference between decoy fires, which is what you’re talking about, and the actual target you were aiming for.
JW1: Yes. The fires and the decoy would still be there after we’d done about half a dozen or more of them trips because it would still be there lit but, er, I don’t think any of the others knew anything like as much navigating as I did you know. They, they just obeyed, obeyed the lights really.
BW: Do you recall the different colours of searchlights that you would see over the target?
JW1: No. No recollection, no.
BW: There was one, called a master beam, which was a blue beam and it was radar controlled so if it locked onto an aircraft all the other yellow or white lights would, would lock on, would switch over and lock onto it.
JW1: Yes. That’s true, yeah.
BW: Did it happen to you at all?
JW1: Sorry?
BW: Did it happen to you and your crew at all?
JW1: I don’t remember really.
BW: You talked of a raid on Essen when there was over fifty aircraft were lost. Did you see any of the other aircraft being shot down?
JW1: Yes. All the time. All the time but, er, we made a good partnership, the pilot and observer and myself and we used to go higher up than they did so really the anti-aircraft shots were at a lower level really.
BW: So you flew above the level of the flak. That’s what you’re saying. You flew above the range of the guns.
JW1: Did I say that? I don’t remember that.
BW: Well you flew, you say that you flew higher than the rest of the aircraft presumably because you were then higher from, above the guns.
JW1: So we could dive down and allude, well, the defenders, you know, down below, really. Yeah.
BW: And when you were briefed about the target did you question the height and the positon at which you were going to bomb these targets? Did you think you could do better?
JW1: Did I question what?
BW: Did you question what they were briefing you about when they, when they told you where you should bomb the target, what direction you should come from and what height? Did you try and do it differently?
JW1: Did I what?
BW: Did you try and do it differently?
JW1: I forget really. We were a lone aircraft. One, you know, we — and all the rest of the bombers went on the official target I suppose but I didn’t.
BW: And what made you do that? Why did you decide to do that?
JW1: Well, I’d been long before I joined the Air Force we studied the tactics, you know, we knew what was expected of us really, I suppose, so very often I could go in and out of the target and be on my way back from the target and not have any anti-aircraft anywhere near us, you know.
BW: So your aircraft never got hit?
JW1: Never got hit? I’d forgotten about that really.
JW2: You did say, you did say that you got shrapnel in your face.
JW1: I did yeah. Little sparks, yeah, but I could have been on my way, not at the target but defence, on the way to the target. I could have been miles away.
BW: Do you recall when that happened?
JW1: No.
BW: But it wasn’t serious enough for you warrant you spending time in hospital?
JW1: Well, I didn’t tell them I was hit. I didn’t lead the life that was expected of me from the rest. I was keeping clear of the rest of the bombing — what did we call the list of, tier?
JW2: The column yeah.
JW1: Did we call it a tier?
BW: I don’t know.
JW1: T I E R.
BW: So while everyone else is flying the official route, while everyone is flying the official route and doing what they were told presumably you’ve given the instruction to the pilot as where to go and what to do, to stay out of the away from the main force?
JW1: Tell the pilot to stay away from — oh the pilot of our aircraft you mean? Oh yeah. I was in and out of the target before the rest of them had started bombing really, very often.
BW: Even before the Pathfinders arrived.
JW1: Yeah, yeah. It was handy being a, a Pathfinder because we got extra defence, if you like, and we could bomb the target and then go and mark nearby and, you know and a lot of them would bomb where we dropped these markers, really.
JW2: We need to clarify this but you told me that you had advised that it would be a good idea to drop false markers.
JW1: Oh, we did that. Yeah.
JW2: Who did that? Did you do that as, first of all, you requested that, that as a strategy? You put it forward?
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And what happened then?
JW1: Well it meant there were fewer bombers going to the target, fewer who should have been on the target, dropping bombs nearby and they were glad of it because it kept them out of serious anti-aircraft fire. I’m surprised they’re interested in this so many years after [slight laugh].
BW: That, that was about your time on 102 Squadron and you then moved to number 76 Squadron at Linton on Ouse and according to your log book you changed pilot. You then had Sergeant Povey.
JW1: Yes. Les, Les Povey.
BW: Les Povey. And your original crew at 102 Squadron apparently were shot down and killed after you left.
JW1: Shot down what?
BW: They were shot down, they were brought down and killed on a mission, weren’t they?
JW1: Were they killed? Yeah.
JW2: You were supposed to go on that trip and we, we —
JW1: Which trip?
JW2: It was a, a raid on an armaments factory in Stettin and it was a birthday present for Hitler.
JW1: For whom?
JW2: For Hitler. It was on the 20th of April 1943 and you were supposed to go on that trip but you had cold sores on your face and couldn’t wear your oxygen mask.
JW1: No. I wasn’t allowed to go.
JW2: You were not allowed to go but you did go to the briefing.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And someone else went to that briefing as well. We met him later. Tom Wingham wrote about it in a book called, um, “Halifax Down” and he said that people were very anxious about the trip because it was a full moon and they were advised to go high over the Channel and low over Denmark to evade anti-aircraft. So we, we read about that afterwards. So your crew were lost. You waited for them to come back. You waited on the runway for them to come back.
JW1: And why wasn’t allowed? Tell me again why wasn’t allowed to go with them?
JW2: You had cold sores on your face and you couldn’t wear your oxygen mask. Can you remember waiting for them?
JW1: It’s coming, coming back to me yeah. Just a very slight recollection that’s all.
JW2: You told me that beyond a certain time you knew that —
JW1: They couldn’t get back, yeah.
JW2: That they were either going to be prisoners of war or the plane had come down or there was a vague hope that they’d landed somewhere else in the country but you waited.
JW1: That’s true yeah.
JW2: Can you remember what happened when you saw your name with another crew after you lost your own crew?
JW1: It was the pilot that was —
JW2: No. After you lost your crew and you saw your name was put on a board with another crew ready to go off again. Do you recall what you did?
JW1: No.
JW2: You put it in your back pocket. You put your name off the crew list and in your back pocket and then what did you do?
JW1: I don’t know.
JW2: You went home.
JW1: Did I?
JW2: And when you walked down the front path your mother had just received a telegram saying you were missing in action.
JW1: In action, yeah. They thought I’d gone with the crew, yeah.
JW2: This was the same period of time that someone at The Stag asked if you were dodging the column.
JW1: And he was chucked out the pub.
JW2: He was because your father and the landlord knew why you were home. You were absent without leave because you’d lost your crew.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: Can you remember seeing your crew’s families, going to see the crew members’ families?
JW1: No, I can’t remember it.
JW2: I think you wanted to tell them what had happened because you knew they wouldn’t learn for a long time.
JW1: I can’t remember.
BW: If I read you the names of the crew that were lost would that help?
JW1: Go on.
BW: Your pilot was Wilfred Ambrose Griffiths, the second pilot on that raid was Thomas Samuel Eric Bennett, a New Zealander.
JW1: A what?
BW: A New Zealander. He was from New Zealand.
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: The flight engineer was James Thomas Smith.
JW1: I don’t remember any of them really.
BW: There was Wilfred Charles Marsh.
JW2: Wilf Marsh.
JW1: Wilf Marsh, yeah. I do remember him. I do remember.
JW2: How do you remember him?
JW1: I remember Wilf Marsh but I need some, for somebody to remind me what —
BW: He was one of the oldest of the crew.
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: He was thirty-one.
JW1: Thirty-one?
BW: The same age as, er, Tom Bennett. The other observer on the crew list was James Campbell, James Kenneth Campbell. You knew him as Ken.
JW2: Ken Campbell. What do you remember about him?
JW1: Nothing.
BW: The — you mentioned this guy before, the wireless op, the wop, AG, Sergeant Arnie Jenkinson.
JW2: Jinxy [?].
BW: Arnie Jenkinson.
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And the two gunners were Alex Cuthbert Weir. He was Canadian. Do you know if he was the mid-upper or the —
JW1: Pardon?
BW: Was he the mid-upper gunner or the rear gunner? The Canadian?
JW1: I forget.
BW: And the last one was Sergeant Bertram Charles John White.
JW1: John what?
JW2: White.
JW1: I don’t remember.
JW2: Can I try and jog your memory about Arnie Jenkins?
JW1: Son.
JW2: Son, yeah. You said that his mother had a haberdashery shop, 360 Ashton New Road.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: Do you remember?
JW1: It’s coming back to me when you mention it.
JW2: What about your Magdalene? Your Magdalene used to make clothes and she knew that family didn’t she?
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: Or she met them through you, I don’t know.
BW: Well, I had so many that I had to recall and the crews, but she would, I would expect this one to remember, you know, the one you — that parents, do remember, yeah.
JW2: Ken Campbell was from Widnes.
JW1: Was he?
JW2: Yeah.
JW1: I went there didn’t I?
JW2: I think you went to —
JW1: And they didn’t want to know me.
JW2: You went to 360 Ashton New Road but that was Arnie Jenkins’ house.
JW1: Jenkinson.
JW2: Jenkinson, yes, sorry. But he was an only child and it’s a shame you didn’t go back.
JW1: Was he lost?
JW1: You, you told me his mother couldn’t speak to you. She was so upset and she had to hurry off the doorstep and when you got muddled up in your older age and you thought it was because you’d replaced, they’d replaced you but Arnie Jenkinson wasn’t replaced, wasn’t the replacement for you. Ken Campbell was and he was from Widnes.
JW2: I’ve forgotten.
JW1: I think it would be hard for anybody to see a familiar RAF uniform on the doorstep and know you weren’t going to see your son coming back.
JW1: Yeah. I can understand that.
BW: So, you went drinking in the local pub when you were at home called The Stag?
JW1: Yes. They said I was dodging the column, the other people, yeah, so I left and didn’t go back there.
BW: And was your dad a regular in the pub as well?
JW1: He was but he wasn’t — he worked down the pit. He wasn’t a member of the crew really.
JW2: Was he proud of you?
JW1: Eh?
JW2: When you came home in your uniform was he proud of you?
JW1: Oh yeah, yeah.
BW: Did your family ever worry about you when you were on the raids?
JW1: Well, they wouldn’t acknowledge that they were bothered, you know, but they were.
BW: And you used to cycle home to Wigan from Pocklington.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
BW: Did your family make a fuss of you when you went home each time?
JW1: Well there was only my parents really there. The rest were based either in the Army or the Air Force. I don’t know where they’d be.
BW: So, you being the youngest, when you came home you were spoiled by mum and dad were you a bit.
JW1: A bit yes.
BW: Did your dad take you out drinking?
JW1: Did what?
BW: Did your dad take you out drinking or not?
JW1: He did after a while but he, you know, he didn’t like me being in the pub really.
JW2: You told me that he used to ask you to put your uniform on.
JW1: Yeah, I know he liked it. You got special treatment in the pub even if they didn’t know you personally, you know.
BW: Did people buy you drinks when you went in the pub with your uniform on?
JW1: Phew. Not really, er, occasionally one might but, um, it was, er, it was —
JW2: What can you say about the bottles of whisky that you used to bring home?
JW1: I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.
JW1: You told me that you were given bottles of whisky and you used to bring them home in a kit bag and give them to your dad.
JW1: Where did I get the whisky from?
JW2: I don’t know. I don’t know.
JW1: I’ve forgotten myself.
JW2: From Pocklington somewhere.
BW: You were based at Yorkshire with 102 Squadron at the time the dams’ raid took place.
JW1: A what?
BW: The time the dam busters’ raid took place.
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: Were you feted at all because you were part of bomber crews?
JW1: Was I what?
BW: Were you feted at all? Did people make a fuss of you when you went home at that time, simply because you were in bomber command?
JW1: Oh yeah.
BW: And did the uniform pay off? Did you attract many girls?
JW1: No. I had a girlfriend of my own, Cathleen McGraw.
JW2: I’ve been told that your half brothers and sisters had children who used to dote on you. So they would be your nieces and they used to dote on you and there was photographs hanging up in your brothers and sisters houses of you in your uniform. They all recall a particular photograph of you in your uniform.
JW1: I can’t remember.
JW2: But I was also told that you wore leathers like Marlon Brando and you had a motorbike. Can you remember having a motorbike?
JW2: Did I have a motorbike?
JW2: Did you have a motorbike then?
JW1: I had a motorbike once upon a time but it was only for a few days and then —
JW2: Oh right. OK.
JW1: I got a little aeroplane [slight laugh]. I was lucky to survive really.
BW: And you had a few months flying with 76 Squadron at Linton and then Holme on Spalding.
JW1: Holme on Spalding where?
BW: Do you remember much about that base?
JW1: Pardon?
BW: Do you remember much about that base?
JW1: Not really.
BW: There were some accidents, um, at Pocklington and at Holme on Spalding by Halifax crews coming back that crashed. Did you see any or hear of any crashes?
JW1: No, I didn’t realise that. We were usually the first back because I, I’d studied navigation and mathematics at the grammar school, you know. I knew more about it than the navigation people on the squadron.
BW: From your log book on the 10th of August 1943 you started flying with 138 Squadron at Tempsford. Now that’s down south in Sussex and it was a special duties squadron. Did you volunteer for special duties?
JW1: No but I was — but they thought I was good enough for it I suppose.
BW: So, somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said you’re going down south?
JW1: Yeah. Mind you, it wasn’t as a hazardous a place as the squadron, going from the squadron, you know, up north. The German fighters would be patrolling along the coastline waiting for them to go.
BW: Waiting for you to go out?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And did they patrol waiting for you to come back as well?
JW1: They would be, yeah, but we were, didn’t come back as a —
BW: A squadron.
JW1: Yeah. We came back individually all over the place.
BW: Did you see any action with night fighters or —
JW1: Oh yes. We saw them. We saw planes going down sometimes but my pilot, the second pilot I had, could get higher up than they, they were.
JW2: Can you, can you recall why Les Povey was such a good pilot?
JW1: No.
JW2: Because he’d been a gold prospecting pilot before the war, in Africa.
JW1: Was he? I’ve forgotten.
JW2: That’s what you told me. He was a gold prospecting pilot so he was a very experienced pilot before he joined up.
JW1: I’d forgotten that.
JW2: And he was older as well.
JW1: He was almost forty then.
JW2: And he looked like Errol Flynn.
BW: And you moved with him down to Tempsford.
JW1: Yes.
BW: So what happened to the rest of the crew? Did they just keep you and Les together?
JW1: I don’t recollect what happened to them but they, very often, with other crews a very experienced person, trying to get them out of that aircraft and, you know, with the special squadron and we came in that category.
BW: And you moved then in August ‘43 abroad. You went and flew to Blida in Algeria.
JW1: Blida, yeah.
BW: To join 624 Squadron.
JW1: Blida was in, er, I don’t know what you’d call it now, with a lake. What do you call it now?
BW: So, we were talking just before Joe about your transfer to the special duties squadron, when you flew to North Africa, to Blida in Algeria. What do you remember about that?
JW1: Very little, if anything really, but because I’d been learning maths at school and, you know, they used to, even though I was one of the least experienced, er, air people, air crew they, er, still wanted me to tell them about it, you know.
BW: And you conducted operations, again in a Halifax, but you were dropping supplies and spies I believe in different parts of Europe.
JW1: Oh yeah, yeah. I’d forgotten about those. I’d forgotten details of them.
JW2: You told me that you can remember, um, dropping agents that were also dangerous people.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: And that they —
JW1: They were let out of jail you mean?
JW2: Yes and you told me that, that one of them — do you remember one particular case where he was dropped with handcuffs and when he landed he would be able to access the key to unlock himself because it was zipped up inside his outfit? Do you remember that, um, Jim Rosbottom was the despatcher?
JW1: I’ll just have a sip.
JW2: Jim Rosbottom was the despatcher.
JW1: Jim. It wasn’t Jim.
JW2: Jim Rosbottom.
JW1: It wasn’t Jim though was it?
JW2: Yes he was the despatcher and you said that he was the despatcher and you said he used to tie himself to the fuselage when he was dropping some dangerous people to ensure that he didn’t get pulled out of the plane as well.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: And he also used to, he used do his own form of bombing sometimes by throwing whole packets out, of leaflets out instead of cutting them up sometimes.
JW1: Oh yeah [slight laugh].
BW: Did you ever talk to these agents that you were dropping?
JW1: I forget that really. I think they were kept apart from us, you know, in the aircraft so we wouldn’t do.
BW: Were they put on at the last minute after you’d all been briefed and got in the aircraft?
JW1: Not really. They’d been let out of jail to do that job. Is that my tea, love? Is that mine? I’ve got a recollection of it, yeah.
BW: What did you do?
JW1: I don’t know. I just put it inside my satchel with my shirt over it [slight laugh].
BW: So, you were told to leave your log book with the CO and you took it instead when he wasn’t looking. He nipped out the office and you slipped it under your shoulder and put your jacket over?
JW1: Very likely.
BW: And you flew, on these missions you flew to quite a few different places. You flew to Yugoslavia and you flew to the south of France, Corsica and Italy as well.
JW1: And what?
BW: And to Italy as well. Do you remember how you dropped the supplies to the resistance, the partisans?
JW1: Not really. I’ve not thought about it. I’ve not kept the memory going. I used to know it.
BW: But there was another member of the crew, Jim Leith.
JW2: No he was a different. He was in 624 but they were not dad’s —
BW: In a different aircraft.
JW2: But dad, you told me about when you went over the — is it the Samarian Gorge, is that right?
JW1: Go on.
JW2: Is that right. Is it called the Samarian Gorge in Greece?
BW: I don’t know to be honest.
JW2: And you told me, you told me that your Halifax was so heavy with your load that you had to jettison it and when you got back you had a lot of explaining to do because you discovered what your heavy load was. Do you remember what your heavy load was? It was gold bullion but you didn’t know you were carrying it.
JW1: No.
JW2: I wonder whether that was an orthodox war practice and I wonder who found it.
JW1: People used to, if you were dropping money or gold, they would to take a bit of it for themselves.
JW2: Off the flight, yeah. Well, you would have crashed into a mountain, you would have crashed into the Gorge, if you hadn’t dropped it because you were losing height.
JW1: Oh, happy days [slight laugh].
BW: Were all of these flights at night?
JW1: Yes, as far as I remember. I think there may have been the odd one, overseas ones, that were in daylight.
BW: How did it feel when you were flying these missions as opposed to being over Germany?
JW1: Oh it was a lot easier.
BW: Just because it was secret did you feel any heightened sense of danger?
JW1: Not really, no.
BW: Did you treat it like any other sort of job?
JW1: Yeah.
BW: And what was it like when you on the base in North Africa. What were the facilities like? Can you remember? Was it a rough strip?
JW1: Not really but it was fairly close, you know, to Britain.
JW1: Do you remember that you almost got into trouble one night because you snuck out somewhere to go drinking and, er, or for a night out and I think you missed your transport back and you had to come through territory that you didn’t know very well but you had to walk all the way through the night to get back on for parade the next day.
JW1: I’ve forgotten.
JW2: You’ve forgotten that? Do you recall, um, do you remember that you got fined and you thought it was a miscarriage of justice?
JW1: No.
JW2: What do you remember about the, the revolver that you left on the plane, the Halifax overnight?
JW1: Nothing. I know, er, I took a revolver, you know, in case we were shot down and we —
JW2: You left it on the plane and it went missing.
JW1: Oh yeah.
JW2: And you got hauled up for questioning about it and I seem to remember that you said in your defence — well they said you should not have left it on the plane because it was in your care, and you said, ‘Well maybe we should have taken the Browning off the plane as well.’
JW1: Take what?
JW2: Maybe we should have taken the Browning off the plane as well because there’s an armed guard there. Anyway, they, they didn’t accept your response and they fined you. So you had to pay. Can you not remember what your fine was? You were fined a few pounds for losing that revolver or not looking after it so somebody took it but you were very annoyed about it.
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: Because there was an armed guard and it still went missing.
BW: Your CO, when you were in North Africa, your CO was Wing Commander Stanbury. Does the name ring any, ring any bells with you?
JW1: Oh, [unclear] . I remember the name, Stanbury, yeah. Because they had a shop or something then didn’t he?
BW: No. No.
JW2: Clive Stanbury?
JW1: Clive, yeah.
JW2: What do you remember about him?
JW1: Not much.
JW2: Do you remember him asking you to do another mission when you done your two tours?
JW1: What did I say, ‘Bugger off?’
JW2: I’m not sure [slight laugh]. I think you said you didn’t have to do it. You told me at the time that you felt this particular one would be suicidal.
JW1: I’ve forgotten that one. I’ve forgotten the incident.
BW: So it was a case of one more trip but you said, ‘No.’
JW1: I bought these carpets while I was there.
JW2: That was much later.
JW1: Eh?
JW2: Yeah. That was much than that, dad.
JW1: Was it?
JW2: Yeah.
JW1: I thought it was from the Air Force?
JW2: No, no they weren’t.
JW1: Are you sure?
JW2: Yeah.
JW1: I’ve forgotten then.
BW: Your last operations were in early March 1944 and then you flew back in a Dakota by quite a circuitous route, by the look of it. You got lifts here there and everywhere through Egypt and then you went down to Bulawayo in Rhodesia.
JW1: Oh, yeah. Was I instructing there?
BW: It doesn’t say so but did you come an instructor after the war.
JW1: Afterwards yeah. For a bit until I was demobbed.
BW: And what do you recall about being demobbed? Were you happy the war was over?
JW1: I think I must have been but I don’t recollect much. Do you do many operations with people such as I?
BW: Yes.
JW1: And did as many aircraft, as many trips as I’ve done?
BW: Some have but not many because usually after thirty ops that was it. That was the end of their service but you went on to do forty-seven.
JW1: I did forty-seven trips? Amazing.
BW: In total.
JW1: Amazing.
BW: And were you ever injured at all during that time?
JW1: Sorry?
BW: Were you ever injured at all during that time?
JW1: No.
BW: You mentioned that you received some shrapnel in the face.
JW1: I don’t remember.
BW: At one point.
JW1: It’s gone out of my head.
BW: It must, it must not have been a serious injury. What happened after the war? Did you continue in the RAF?
JW1: Not really. I was chucked out. They didn’t want me then after the war. Well, I say they did but a group of them from the local squadron, er, knew who I was, you know, and I’ve forgotten anyway.
BW: Do you remember when you left the RAF?
JW1: No. What does it say there?
BW: Would it be about 1946?
JW1: ’46?
BW: Would it be about that or was it ’45?
JW1: Oh, forgotten.
BW: What did you [clears throat] what did you do when you returned home? Did you —
JW1: What job did I do?
BW: What — did you meet up with your girlfriend?
JW1: I’ve forgotten that even. What did I do when I came out of the Air Force?
JW2: Well you’d broken up with Cathleen McGraw because you were a Catholic and she wasn’t and it was, it was irreconcilable I think and you went to teacher, you went to teacher training.
JW1: Where at?
JW2: Strawberry Hill in Twickenham.
JW1: Where?
JW2: Strawberry Hill. Richmond was it?
JW1: Yeah.
JW2: And you met my mother when you were teacher training. You were in her classroom. You were an assist— you were learning how to be a teacher and she was already a teacher.
JW1: Where is she now? She’s not with us?
JW2: No. Its twelve years since —
JW1: How long since?
JW2: Twelve years.
JW1: Was it?
JW2: Mm. [background noises]
BW: [pause] Do you remember anything else from your teaching days?
JW1: Did I what?
BW: Do you remember anything from your teaching days? Did you back come up here to teach or did you stay down south in London.
JW1: What’s he say?
JW2: Well, you fell in love with my mum.
JW1: Where was she?
JW2: Well, she was down south and you decided to go, when everyone else was on rations, you decided to go and live in Rhodesia and you, you got married secretly in London. Your family didn’t know because you’d — it was complicated because you had broken up with your — someone who was still visiting your mother’s house and, um, you got married and then you went to live in Africa for five years, Rhodesia, and then you came back and had my brother John. And so after that you were teaching in Rhodesia, in Cyprus, Limassol, and Korea.
JW1: I’ve forgotten that.
JW2: That’s what you did.
JW1: Runcorn [?] before you retired.
BW: OK.
JW1: That it?
BW: What do you, er, what do you think of the commemorations being given for Bomber Command?
JW1: What do I think about what?
BW: The commemoration, the remembrance that’s being given to Bomber Command now?
JW1: I don’t know. I think I went to one and I wasn’t allowed to — for some reason or other. The first one, early in the — I wasn’t allowed to join the rest of them because I, I was in civvies really. You know, to be in civvies, they wouldn’t acknowledge that, what we’ve been talking about now.
BW: So did they not mention Bomber Command? Was, were you sort of side-lined a little bit?
JW1: Yeah. They didn’t mention it. They were glad to see the last of me ‘cause I knew more about it than what they did, you know, being left in England.
BW: But what about the respect or the commemoration that’s being paid to veterans of Bomber Command now. How do you feel about that?
JW1: Never thought about it.
JW2: We went to it dad. Were went to the celebrations. A statue showing several airmen on the way back from ops looking tired and dejected and, and, um, exhausted that was unveiled and it was very powerful. We went up there when the Queen opened it at Bomber Command and we, the whole family went with you to that and you went, you went up to the statue. After all the fuss had gone down and we had a few, we had some beers at the area where we were, and then we went just to look at it when the crowds had gone down but the crowds were still there. And there were a lot of people asking for your autograph and they wanted you to shake hands with other veterans and lots of photographs were taken. I think you were surprised at all the fuss then as well. But there was a big campaign to, to, um, to acknowledge the role that Bomber Command played in the war because some people think you were ignored or that you were demonised. Bomber Command did not get a campaign medal.
JW1: No.
JW2: And it took till a few years ago for you to get a clasp.
JW1: I never got it.
JW2: I need to apply for it yet.
JW1: Eh?
JW2: You are entitled it and I need to apply for it for you.
JW1: You can have it if you get it.
JW2: Right, thank you. I’ve got it on tape now.
BW: It’s official. OK, well that’s all the questions I have for you and thanks to you Jenny for all your help.
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 Joseph Wilson
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-12-31
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWilsonJ161231
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Joseph Wilson was training to be a pharmacist when he volunteered for the Air Force. He trained to as a bomb aimer and completed 47 operations with several squadrons. He recalls flying a Tiger Moth early on in training and discusses mine laying and bombing operations. He later flew with 624 Special Duties Squadron dropping supplies and agents to the resistance in Southern Europe. He became a teacher after the war.
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Format
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01:27:34 audio recording
102 Squadron
138 Squadron
624 Squadron
76 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Halifax
memorial
Pathfinders
RAF Pocklington
Special Operations Executive
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/561/8829/PStonemanWJ1605.1.jpg
889a4d1d0af552221054f861e73b2214
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/561/8829/AStonemanWJ161114.2.mp3
2dfa9efaf8411e162dbfb9dd0d0d01ba
Dublin Core
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Title
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Stoneman, William James
W J Stoneman
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Stoneman, WJ
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An oral history interview with Squadron Leader William James Stoneman (1923 - 2017, 186627 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 138 Squadron.
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Date
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2016-11-14
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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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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Rod Pickles, the interviewee is Bill Stoneman. The interview is taking place at Bill’s home in Newquay, Cornwall on the 14 November 2016. Also present is Pam Roberts who is Bill’s carer. Well good morning, Bill, and thank you for inviting me in, it’s lovely to be here with you.
RP: Pleasure.
RP: The story we want to hear is yours and the voice we want to hear is yours, so I’ve just asked the initial questions and let you carry on.
AS: Yes.
RP: So, can we sort of go back to the time, you’re approaching leaving school and thinking about what to do with your life and what prompted you to join the RAF?
AS: Yes. It was when the war started, 1939, I was 16 years of age so it was like all the other boys, wanting to join the service at the time but being under age, I couldn’t so I had to wait until I was 18. Ah, when I was 18, I went to, I had a girlfriend in St Leonards, I lived in the Cley area at St Leonards. My hobby was music, I played in quite a famous silver band, St Leonard’s Silver Band, and won trophies, very well known throughout the band world. I also played in dance bands. The girl I was in love with, a girl called Barbara Hale, her father owned a restaurant, believe it or not, in a small village in St Leonards. There was a restaurant with one big room on the first floor, which was used for weddings and things by the local people, and I was engaged by him for a very small amount of money, but when he wanted a band to play at the weddings, I would get five or six musicians and provide the music and, of course, to be near this girlfriend Barbara who, of course we were married in 1947. I then left St Leonards to go to Bristol, because they moved to Bristol. He was given a job, he was asked to take over, he had a catering background, my wife’s father, and he was asked to take over, umm the catering at a large place in Bristol, which was used for trainees in the engineering and electrical engineering world. They always had a big restaurant there he took on the job, and I went with the family and lived with them. I then went to the local government training school to become an instrument repairer or instrument maker. Whilst I was there, I saw chaps in uniform, especially round the Bicester area and there was a lot of flying going on, especially with Bristol Aircraft who made the Beaufighter and the Beaufort and that. So, I went along to the recruiting centre and joined the RAF with the idea of being an instrument maker. However, ahh there was a hold up on training, I was posted to Elsham Wolds, which was in Lincolnshire near Barnaby/Scunthorpe, that area, with a very famous squadron, No. 103 Squadron and I was just a gofer, just helping out at the armaments section waiting to come, which I thought I’d become an instrument repairer. However, then I started flying with them because they wanted air testing, to do with, they were testing the aircraft for its airworthiness and I was pinching every few minutes I could to be in the air, and I said to my Warrant Officer, I remember the chap very, very, very well, always with a bicycle this man, pair of bicycle clips cycling round the field after his men, I said ‘how do I become aircrew?’ ‘Well,’ he said ‘that’s simple, you know, go along to the station headquarters, fill in a form’, which I did and oh, it was days, they were obviously short of aircrew at the time and I ended up at the Aircrew Reception Centre at Cardington in Bedfordshire. Had interviews, medicals and so forth and um arithmetic test, English test, that sort of thing, general knowledge and when I came out the chap, there was an old, he must have been about 50/60 years of age which was very old to me at that time in, he’d obviously been in the First World War because he had First World War medals on his chest, and he said ‘you’ve passed as a PNB’. I had no idea what he was talking about so I said, ‘but I don’t understand’, so he said ‘pilot, navigator or bomb aimer’. That’s what PNB — so I said ‘grand, lovely job, when can I go?’ He said ‘oh it’s a few months, could be five or six months’ and I said ‘I want to go now’. He said ‘the only way to go now is to become a rear gunner or a gunner’. I said ‘that’s for me’, and believe it or not ahh Rod, that was the best choice I think I ever made in my life because how, the courage of pilots, navigators, wireless operators, engineers ahh, who couldn’t do anything about an attack, to sit there in an aircraft relying on a chap with four Brownings in the back and a chap in mid upper with four Brownings, I just don’t think I’d have had the nerve to do it. After, so I was sent for air gunnery training, which was at Bishopscourt, Northern Ireland. I can’t tell you, I can’t remember the number of the course, but very early on in the course, they were short of motor transport there, I don’t think we had a dentist very early on. It was building up, yes that sort of thing. There were a few, some WRAF were posted in, they were WAAF at the time, W - double A - F, and there was no transport to get them so we walked, we marched four miles from there to the nearest railway station to carry the WAAFs’ kit bags to their quarters that had been built for them. Of course, we all were tickled pink, young men of 18/19 years of age, we all made dates on the way of course, this was fun. The aircraft they had there were Ansons, so you climbed onto an Anson with a pilot there who’d probably done a tour of operation, I don’t know, I didn’t know too much about the RAF at that time, but the undercarriage had to be wound up by hand, it was not automatic. I think it was five revolutions to an inch or something like that. I know, but he would get you doing this so you sat there winding and towards the end, he would say ‘oh for goodness sake, give it here’, knowing damn well you were on the last four revolutions you see. And that was the undercart up and we flew over the Irish Sea and we met a Manchester aircraft. Manchesters came from the Isle of Man, I’ve forgotten the name of the airfield now, it was on the Isle of Man, it will come to me in a moment, probably after you’ve gone [laughter] but the Manchester would come out towing a drogue, which is a bit of rope with this long bit of ahh, drogue on the back which we were to fire at. I never shot down an aircraft as far as I know, but we were out one day and there was a Manchester in the water with a drogue and we stood by, it was quite thrilling actually to fly around, and they launched an air sea rescue launch from RAF Jurby, or wherever they were stationed in the Isle of Man and picked the crew up, which was, it was quite an exciting thing to see actually. Anyway, finished the course at Northern Ireland at Ardglass and I was posted to Turweston.
RP: Oh yes.
AS: Which was an operational training unit which came under the Silverstone, which is now a famous race track. It was a satellite of Silverstone. I must tell you while I was on the air gunnery training, I met a chap and we were crewed together as air gunners, a chap called Bob Wilmot, and he was from Hinckley in Leicestershire and he had been in the Air Force quite a time so he had switched from ground crew, I can’t remember what trade he was, but he was, he came from Iceland, from Reykjavik where he was stationed to er, for training. So Bob and I paired off and we went through air gunnery training together, when we got to Turweston, we were collared a billet and we were going to a hangar where we were going to be crewed up. This is where we meet the pilot which we, we were all green, we hadn’t a clue what was going on, but as we wandered towards the hangar, the hangar doors were open and two Canadian officers ran out, a pilot and a navigator, that was Sid Godfrey, pilot and the navigator was called Don Lenny, a Flying Officer, both Canadians, and grabbed us, ‘fly with us’. It appears, we didn’t realise that British air gunners were rather prized, I probably shouldn’t say this but we were. It seems that the name had got around that if you could get yourself a British tail gunner, you had a good chance of surviving [laughter], which was nice to hear.
RP: Nice to hear yes.
AS: Nice to hear. However, from there we went to the um operational training unit, flying on Wellingtons.
RP: So, this is still part of your gunnery training?
AS: Still part of the gunnery training, all part of the, except you’d fly as far as Belfast and pretend that Belfast was the target, you know, and err other places, training all the time of course. It was good training for the pilot and the navigator and everybody in the crew. Ah, so that was that bit of training, I’m trying to think —
RP: So where, from the operational training unit did you have any further training?
AS: Yeah, then we went to the conversion unit, ah which was up in Yorkshire.
RP: They sent you to a few places then?
AS: Dishforth.
RP: Dishforth yes,
AS: Dishforth, No 1664 Conversion Unit.
RP: So, what were you converting to there then?
AS: That was from Wellingtons on to Halifaxes.
RP: So, you were nearly at the end of your training?
AS: That’s right, yes, towards the end of the training then. From Wellingtons on to Halifaxes at Dishforth and er, which was a satellite of Topcliffe, and err that was very interesting because that was going from Wellingtons, which was a Frazer Nash Turret, rear turret where like you fired your guns, it was like handlebars. Frazer Nash was like driving a motorbike but the Boulton Paul was a single thumb on the —
RP: On the button.
AS: On the button, you know the turret moved with the control column, you know left, right, up, you know down.
RP: Which did you prefer?
AS: Hmm?
RP: Which did you prefer, the Boulton Paul or the Frazer?
AS: Well listen, I think, I felt very happy with the Frazer Nash because I’d got so used to it, but once I’d got used to the Boulton Paul I was, you know. I had a feeling that the Boulton Paul turret was slightly smaller and seemed to be more cramped than the Frazer Nash though someone might correct me. Uhm, so that was at Dishforth and I must tell you a story. We were coming back and the pilot who I trained with, ah, I’ll get to the story later but I never flew with him on operations because on his first flight, all pilots when they were posted to an operational station which was 138 Squadron at Tempsford in Bedfordshire, had to do a second dicky flight, because we weren’t dropping bombs, we were dropping agents and supplies and it was a tricky old business, because he had to drop on three torches and so he had, it was low level flying, coming in at low level and dropping the supplies at about 800ft, and I think if it was a live body to be an agent, it was dropped from 1000ft. But that was what he went on, and he went on the very first flight and they got shot down by a, we found out later it was a Night Fighter that got him. He was the second dicky, he wasn’t flying the aircraft he was there for an experience flight. So him, I understand, I may be wrong but it was only him and the mid upper gunner survived that crash so he was a lucky man. But we didn’t so we were a headless crew, we were. A navigator, a bomb aimer, a wireless operator, gunners with no pilot, so I was asked by the Station Commander would I like to go back on to training again and be re-crewed and would I stay at Tempsford as a spare gunner, that’s a ‘spag’ SPAG ([laughter] because, in case another gunner got toothache or was wounded err, which was fair. So I stayed on the squadron and did 32 operations, I’ve got the logbook to show you Rod, which includes Germany, France, Belgium and um Holland, Norway.
RP: These are all special ops?
AS: They’re all special ops, dropping to the agents much needed supplies, ammunitions, cameras, food, explosives, whatever they need to carry out their dangerous work.
RP: So, so what was, Norway, ah —
AS: Norway you see was an occupied country and was very, that was dangerous flying because as you know, it is a very mountainous country and to drop supplies, you can’t drop from 20,000ft, I mean you have to go down lower to drop them and you dropped on torches, torchlight or, even bonfires if it was safe, if they were far enough away and they knew the Germans weren’t near, they would light bonfires to guide us in.
RP: So every operation you were on you were more or less liaising with a resistance group in that country.
AS: Always a resistance group yes, and all been organised previously by the British Broadcasting Company, you know with clandestine —
RP: Cryptic messages.
AS: Cryptic messages, music, different tunes being played ah, quite fascinating really. We’d, in fact I was ignorant of a lot of things that were so clever, the British at this, subterfuge, of making sure that the people on the ground got the required stuff to do their damage.
RP: Were you ever attacked on any of these missions?
AS: No, very, very lucky. Saw aircraft looking for us but because we flew so low, I’d see JU88 which was famous fighter, twin engined German fighter, going the other way, searching for us. They obviously had us on radar or something but missing us. That was quite frightening [laughter], you sat there with bated breath for 30 hours because you’d seen one and you’d think are they coming back? But we obviously, we were very, very, very lucky people.
RP: So on a normal trip, say to France it’s, you don’t always fly on through, you sometimes, you return to Tempsford but obviously you had one incident where flew on to North Africa.
AS: Yes, that was it.
RP: Was that a deliberate fly through there?
AS: If it was a long flight, for instance in the South of France, it was for conservation of fuel and so forth, it was better and safer to fly on to North Africa to a place called Blida, RAF Blida and stay the night, refuel the aircraft and then also add ahh, pre-arranged for guns replace, canisters replace for us to do a drop on the way back. It was very, very well thought out, and also we had pigeons, that seems funny—
RP: I’ve heard about those.
AS: Yes. And when I’ve taught, I’ve taken Pam to the schools, I’ve given talks in schools and the children are always interested when I talk about the pigeons.
RP: Yes, a lot of people don’t believe it but I know about them yeah.
AS: Yes, pigeons were in a little cardboard, pressed cardboard container with a parachute, that’s a miniature parachute and in the container would be a bottle of water and a packet of seed and also a pencil, a special pencil and paper with a questionnaire which was all events of war, and the commanding officer’s name, all sorts of things, motor transport nearby, airfields, what sort of airfields, you know and these pigeons they had to fill in this bit of paper, the children all burst mad on what we’d found in occupied country, put the paper back in the pigeon’s canister on his leg and release it and back it would fly to Tempsford with some very, very interesting information, you know ahh. I don’t know if it’s true but I understand that the first information that Rommel was dead came back by pigeon. That was the rumour going around at the time.
RP: Yes, sometimes they carried them on aircraft to release if you did ditch, didn’t they?
AS: Oh yes, we had that as well yes. A cage inside the aircraft in case of a ditching. I think we were the only aircraft that did have pigeons on board for that. Yeah.
RP: Because if you had time to put your reference you could be rescued.
AS: That’s right, the navigator would put yeah — Now apart from the wireless operator giving away the position of the crash, they’d also have the pigeons with the, as you say, with the reference of the area where the aircraft was going to go down.
RP: So, tell us about this incident when you did go down, it must have been —
AS: Let’s see, we went to ah North Africa with the idea, we did a successful drop on the way out and stayed the night at North Africa, RAF Blida, with the idea of going back, I can’t remember the target area but we were going back to the South of France near there and drop our supplies and agent, no agent, just supplies this time. However, when we took off, it was getting dark, very nearly dark and all we know was a bang. We were flying along, I didn’t see it but later on I was told like, l can tell you the full story that a JU88 had been seen in the area and they flew, they had a gun which could fire upwards through the top Jaegermeister or something it was called.
RP: It come underneath you.
AS: Schräge yeah. And this is obviously what happened because we were flying along at dusk and then there was a bang so that was all, and nearby lucky for us there was a hospital ship, an Italian hospital ship with an Italian crew, I understand the Italian Captain called Principessa Giovanni and this, having wounded on board there was a British sergeant medical sergeant. There was no smoking on board and he was, I understand, he was, the story came out he was behind the lifeboat on the deck having a crafty fag [laughter] and he actually saw the incident.
RP: Oh right.
AS: So —
RP: He knew there’s been a crash.
AS: He saw, he saw us go down. He saw the flame, and he saw flames and it was still light enough to see what happened, and he had the courage to go to a senior officer ‘an aircraft had just been shot down’ he said because he’d seen the incident.
RP: So, they knew you’d crashed, but obviously, when you were ditching you weren’t aware you’d been spotted, so what was it like when you hit the sea?
AS: That’s right, so we hit the water not knowing that anyone — that, that’s it. The navigator was in the aircraft with us and we were, you sit at crash position, the pilot said you know ‘get in ditching positions’. There was a main spar runs through the aircraft which with the wings, strengthen the wings and you brace yourself against that. The pilot stays at the control and the flight, and the flight engineer assisting him the rest, cos he’s watching the engines and everything like that in case he requires help. The pilot was a chap called Highwalker, Flight Lieutenant Canadian, already had a Distinguished Flying Cross and he got the Distinguished Service Order for this err, probably got the result for his flying before and this crash because how he controlled that—
RP: Once you put it down and not break up.
AS: Fantastic, it was like a sycamore leaf, it was completely out of control it had been hit, you know, badly damaged.
RP: But normally you would expect it to break up.
AS: At the very last moment it flew, super [unclear] but you’re given, they say you’re given extra strength at certain times.
RP: Yes.
AS: Anyway, he landed but obviously he’d couldn’t land gently, it smashed the front of the aircraft in and water rushed, the salt, the sea came straight away, and the navigator was obviously washed towards my rear turret where I’d climbed out of, and was back in the same position. But it was all, a huge inrush of water. And so I got out, I was lucky, I got out, there was no dinghy, it should come out by an immersion switch but it didn’t, you know the water should get it out, but it didn’t come out. But the bomb aimer, a Canadian Officer, held my, I still had my parachute harness on, and held me. I went back towards the aircraft, I could see the D, it’s illuminated, it’s got a handle just a normal handle to, and a D on it. I could see it so I reached it and I turned it and it was so still by that time, luckily the Mediterranean was not rough at that moment. I could hear the hiss for while I was carrying it over the aircraft, I got a hiss of a dinghy being inflated automatically, and it came out, I had got a frangible chord which holds it and you can cut it when you get in. Unfortunately, in the crash, the frangible chord must have broken, must have snapped because the dinghy was on its way. [laughter]. Luckily being ahh, a Cornish boy and always in the sea swimming, I was a strong swimmer, though fully dressed with flying boots it was quite easy for me to swim and get the dinghy and get it back to the aircraft. Loaded people on it, the pilot had hurt his hands and so forth, you know. We all got on it quite safely, all but the navigator. If I remember correctly, the engineer damaged his hands as well but er, and then we looked towards the aircraft, we were then I suppose say 40 feet away about that from the aircraft I think the dinghy drifted away. All that was left was two fin and rudders from the Halifax together with water and my turret, and two shouts of ‘help’ came but there was nothing we could do then and then he gurgled under the water with the navigator in the turret.
RP: So he must have been knocked unconscious and just come round.
AS: Yes I think he’d just come round because he did shout ‘help’. And his son has been here to see us, he’s been here to see me and um, I’ll tell you the story about it. Anyway, that was the crash, ah, fortunately the ship, the Principessa, the hospital ship, the sergeant had witnessed this, British sergeant
RP: So they were already on their way to you.
AS: Otherwise we’d never have, I don’t think, ‘cos the wireless operator whether his message was received we will never know, no. I never saw the Court of Enquiry or formal investigation into the crash, uh but there must have been one of course. However, we were picked up by this ship, given a slug of whisky and looked after and err, the engineer hadn’t come round, he was still, not unconscious, but he’d been very, he’d been knocked about and when he came to, on the ship there were black troops on board, they’d been fighting, I can’t remember the name of them now, it’s amazing, like our Ghurkhas anyway, they were fighting for the Americans and the French. They were French troops anyway and when he came to there were these men dressed in white swats with black faces standing around the engineer and he thought he’d died and gone to hell [laughter]. He did, he told us afterwards. That’s it then.
RP: Someone came in to reassure him then?
AS: Yeah, well we all came in yeah.
RP: So where did the ship dock, where did they take you?
AS: They took us to err, out to Oran and at Oran there’s the American hospital Number 6 General, it was called Number 6 the American General Hospital and they um, we was in sodden clothes, my uniform was green, I suppose some dye had come out of the aircraft somewhere from some stuff we were carrying. However, they gave us a dressing, pair of pyjamas, pair of slippers and a nice velvet dressing gown which we wore all the time we were there and err, that’s where we did our recovery and on the bottom of my bed, I felt OK, but the doctor wrote ’shock and exhaustion’ so I must have been you know worse than I thought I was.
RP: So how did they get you back to the UK then?
AS: Well that was it so there we were in the hospital in Oran and they err, we would be trying to get back again and a Liberator, an RAF Liberator was up in North Africa, must be at Blida or somewhere, came to Oran and picked us up and took us back to the UK and we landed um, in Kent. I’m trying to think of the airfield.
RP: Manston?
AS: Hmm?
RP: Manston?
AS: Yeah, that’s it yeah. And err, there, we made our way back you know, we were given warrants we went back to the station as though you know, that was it.
RP: It was back to work, no leave.
AS: I’d been given a spot of leave and that’s it. ‘Well done mate’, shook your hand — [laughter]
RP: And you were back flying then were you?
AS: That’s is yeah. That was my thirteenth operation.
RP: So you still had another?
AS: I did another —
RP: Nineteen.
AS: I completed thirty-two
RP: So you still had another, almost the same to go.
AS: Exactly, yeah, yeah.
RP: No more incidents after that? I mean that’s enough for anybody.
AS: Not of that nature no, no, nothing like that.
RP: That is enough for anybody though really.
AS: Oh yeah. No, I had a very trouble-free tour, very lucky I had a very trouble-free tour really.
RP: So where was your last op then? The last op you did, can you remember the last one?
AS: I’ve got the log but I can’t remember where it would be, it might have, I’ve got it in my log with me to show you.
RP: OK Bill, you were going to tell us about, you went back to base after the crash and you were straight back to flying, but it’s a different aircraft though, isn’t it?
AS: Yeah, they changed the aircraft to the Stirling. Now the Stirling had a, was not really suitable to Bomber Command’s high altitude flying, but the ones we had had been reconditioned and we went over to Northern Ireland to pick them up. As crews we all flew over there, went with the crew and flew them back from Belfast to the UK to Tempsford. I found the Stirling an excellent aircraft as a rear gunner, brilliant rear turret Frazer Nash rear turret, four Bristol engines which gave you great confidence. You could see flames, you sat in the rear turret you saw a little bit of flames, but two engines each side. But for, I had great confidence in the Stirling. I thought they were very well suited to the work that Tempsford did, dropping agents’ supplies. Plenty of room in them, ah they had a nickname in the Air Force, called the Flying Solenoid for some reason, had a lot of electrics in them.
RP: Oh right.
AS: That’s why but ah, I thought completely reliable and it’s amazing, in all the time I flew, a lot, never had an engine failure with them. What you’d normally get, come back with a wing and a prayer as they say.
RP: [unclear]
AS: No, no a very solidly built —
RP: So when you’re dropping supplies, are you dropping them out of the bomb bay?
AS: Yeah, no, the —
RP: Or are they going out of the door?
AS: They cut a hole in the floor of the aircraft, we called it a Joe Hole because the agents we dropped off were nicknamed Joes.
RP: They went through the same hole?
AS: The same hole. It was quite a big hole, two flaps, the mid upper gunner had been to Ringway and done a course and become an expert dispatcher going into … to dress people in harnesses for their, with their Mae West and their parachutes, and the mid upper gunner became a dispatcher and he would open up the Joe Hole, throw back the two things, the lights of course would give, the pilot would show where the agents would drop over the dropping zone and err, they would sit on the edge of the Joe Hole and as the, the tap on the shoulder and so they would jump. And as a rear gunner, you would sit in the back and the slipstream takes the body, the jumper and he seems to level out and if it was you Rod, jumping I’d recognise you for a split second with a terrified look on your face [laughter], you know what I mean, and he’d lay on his back it seemed to be, for a split second, I’d know the person who had jumped from the rear turret , yeah. And you’d see the bag, you know because you were—
RP: Did you circle round?
AS: We’d be circling round, you’d see them going in.
RP: But you’ve obviously done the important thing of dropping them in occupied territory. Was there ever a follow up, did you find out what happened to any of them?
AS: No. I wish we could have done because it is so, it had been ages as well. They were brought out to the aircraft at the very last moment ahh, they had a farm on the um, it was called Gibraltar Farm, it’s still there at Tempsford, I’ve taken Pam to it, you can go and visit it. There’s photographs there, there’s names, there’s a plaque about the work.
RP: So there’s a Veterans’ Association for Tempsford isn’t there?
AS: That’s right, yeah and err, it’s quite an interesting place to go to. And they’d be dressed at Gibraltar Farm and then they’d be put into a closed vehicle so the crew wouldn’t see them till the very last moment your doors would open of course, they would climb in, sit down. Not a nice comfy chair for them, just a canvas seat.
RP: I’m assuming the crew were briefed at the last moment as to their target then?
AS: Oh yeah, we knew the target, we did the target in the afternoon.
RP: Oh right.
AS: We knew exactly where they were going. We knew um —
RP: By that time of course you were restricted to base I assume.
AS: Exactly, we couldn’t go out, no phone calls off the base or anything, restricted. You had your, you’d go and have your bacon and egg you know, your meal sort of thing, draw your rations and err, yeah. Get a flask of coffee.
RP: Yes. So, Stirlings up until the war ended you were on the Stirling, until your last op?
AS: Yeah.
RP: So the war ends —
AS: It’s funny because people didn’t associate Stirlings with —
RP: I must admit I thought it was Halifaxes and Lancasters.
AS: Yeah, no and then the Stirling was, that was —
RP: But when you’d done your last op, can you remember the day the war ended, where you were? Were you at Tempsford?
AS: Yeah, I, no I was on a codes and cipher course when the war, we’d all been, when you’d done a tour you retreaded, you know they’d give you a job. I was given admin and accounts I was trained, I was given, but that codes and cipher is included so I was sent to Yatesbury
RP: Oh yes.
AS: For the codes and cipher course. That was eight weeks, eleven weeks though I remember.
RP: And of course, very modestly, haven’t told us that during this time you were now a commissioned officer.
AS: Right.
RP: So what rank were you when the war ended?
AS: Ahh, a Flight Lieutenant. Yes
RP: So you were a Flight Lieutenant at the end of the war.
AS: Yes, I was a Flight Lieutenant um, training as a gunnery leader at that time, you know. At Turweston I was a Flight Lieutenant. I was a senior air gunner on the station training chaps which was err —
RP: So if the war ends, are you given the option to leave or stay?
AS: Yes I stayed on, you know. I’m glad I did because I love the service and I ended up with the rank of Squadron Leader, should have gone higher but [laughter].
RP: They didn’t recognise brilliance when they saw it though, that’s what it was. So, so obviously the war ended and you’re staying in an admin job now then?
AS: That’s right, admin and accounts, yeah.
RP: Yeah ok.
AS: And I was, err, where was my first posting, I’ve forgotten? Anyway, I went to Cyprus, Singapore, Germany. Oh, my first trip was immediately after the war in Germany, Belgium first on this Missing Research and Enquiry Unit. Number twenty — This is where we’re looking for crashed aircraft and bodies, because parents still believed that their boy was walking round lost somewhere.
RP: Yes.
AS: The finale was, you know they formed this Missing Research and Enquiry Unit. I was at the one in Belgium and we cleared up Belgium and Holland. That was going around to the cemeteries and making and, not exhuming graves but making sure that people were in there and we found lots of crashed aircraft, in fact what we would do, we would go to a, there were twenty-three, I think there were twenty-three chaps in Belgium, Holland and Germany. I had a Land Rover, no I didn’t I had a Jeep.
RP: Slight difference I know [laughter]
AS: I had a Jeep and err, a pipe to keep my nose warm [laughter] and that was, and err a Wing Commander, commanding officer, Canadian who been an evader himself and err, we just went to a Town Hall, put a notice up, we had an interpreter given to us by the way
RP: Yes.
AS: And the idea was, that we were coming to that town, could anyone come forward with any news of any crashed aircraft or aircrew? It was amazing the people you found.
RP: You’d get a good response from them.
AS: Yeah. It was amazing.
RP: And this was to verify, so you could then verify to the parents that you’d located their son.
AS: That’s right. One of my friends err, we were together, we were working together, and he had a pastor came, he put his notice up and a pastor said ‘A nun, a nun [unclear], a nun came he said. Behind the nunnery there’s an RAF chap because he was shot and put into the ground so they followed that. She, they took my friend by the Austin to the spot, he got some grave diggers, they exhumed the body, it was just under the ground and it was a Flight Lieutenant and he had a hole in the middle of his forehead.
RP: They’d just shot him, out of hand.
AS: And I didn’t understand, I wasn’t privy to all the facts but the British Army took that case over and they got the killer.
RP: Oh good.
AS: They, through finding out through, in the pubs and that, who the people who were stationed, Germans in that area, at that time and they got the culprit, so I understand.
RP: That must have been a very err, sort of depressing job,
AS: Oh yeah.
RP: But you must have felt satisfied at the end.
AS: Exactly, oh yeah.
RP: The satisfaction of actually finding people.
AS: Pam loves this story. This Wing Commander aha, a Canadian had a —
RP: Please tell us.
AS: Churchill accent. You know a Canadian and a Churchill [unclear].
RP: Slight lisp, yeah.
AS: I took the me I think. We were stationed at a place called Schloss Schonberg and this castle we were stationed in had lovely steps, and we were billeted there, a whole gang of us. And I’d been out for a whole week living off a, being in cemeteries, finding bodies, listing work, at night you might get a room you know, tucked away in a hotel, pub general pub somewhere. So I came back, obviously, a bit smelly and there they were, my friends having a drink at the bar, lovely little bar we had and the steps going up. So I was taking the mickey out of the commanding officer, I said ‘I think it’s disgusting, young officers drinking at this time of the day’ and they were going like this [laughter]. Too late, I was going up the stairs and the Wing Commander, there he was, he wasn’t a Jack McLean, he got off his chair put his newspaper down so I went to, I had to go to his bedroom. Still as that, he sat on his bed and gave me the biggest bollocking I’ve ever had. Lovely, he could really give one, he ended up as a Minister in the Government.
RP: He didn’t see the funny side of it.
AS: No, no but he but, but it’s funny, when he left the err, when he left Germany to go back to Canada, as his tour expired, the Adjutant a Welsh feller came to me ‘the CO wants to see you’. I said ‘Christ I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve been good as gold’. And he, charming, went in, he said ‘Bill cheerio, why don’t you come to Canada, you’re just the sort of chap we could do with‘. So all of that was forgotten, it was all about play you know it was—
RP: So having done that, at what point did they decide to the wind the operation up, about finding crashed aircraft, how long did they–
AS: Probably when they found, when they must have found them all I suppose
RP: And so you came back—
AS: As near as dammit. Couldn’t do any more, the graves were all, I can’t remember the timing.
RP: But you came back, you came back to the UK then?
AS: That’s right, yeah.
RP: Where were you then? What did you do then?
AS: I’m trying to think. No — That’s when I was in codes and cipher I think, yeah.
RP: So—
AS: I came back, I was sent to Compton Bassett.
RP: Ahh, Compton Bassett.
AS: Yeah, Compton Bassett. On a code and cipher course, and err, which you’re mad after six years so I did nine so — [laughter] But funnily enough I quite enjoyed it you know, it was an interesting job. So I did codes and ciphers in Singapore and Gibraltar and it was quite interesting, you get to meet, you throw stones at the CO’s window at 3 o’clock in the morning, always gives you a glass of whisky [laughter].
RP: So how long were you in the RAF then, how long did you stay?
As: Thirty-seven years.
RP: So that’s a long time.
AS: That’s a long time yeah.
RP: You stayed on,
AS: I stayed on, yeah, yeah.
RP: And that was sort of on the admin branch.
AS: Yes, I think I finished at St Mawgan as OC Station Services, you know works and bricks working with DoE sort of thing.
RP: Yeah, but err, out of those thirty-seven, I’m guessing the first three or four were the most interesting.
AS: Yeah, right.
RP: That’s that. You were going to err -
AS: I was going to tell you the story about York
RP: About York. Tell us the story about York Minster then, coming back in the snow.
AS: Oh yeah, yes.
RP: You were going to tell us the story.
AS: Yeah, that’s all, and this pilot he came back, he came back to see me in Cornwall which I was quite thrilled, when you think that err, what he’d been through as a prisoner of war and err, we were walking out in the sunshine at the time, reminiscing and he remembered his old Cornish air gunner. I said he was a Freemason and talking all over Canada, he said I told the story, your ears should have been burning you know.
RP: Tell us the story about the church, the York Minster.
AS: Ah yes.
RP: You were coming back from a training flight I think was it, coming back from a training flight to York Minster when he was telling you about going to church?
AS: That’s the one.
RP: That’s the one, yes.
AS: Just flying in the area of, and we were coming back from the North Sea, and err, very low unfortunately because it started to snow, just climbing over the, coming over York and that, and the wireless operator could actually see people in the cinema queue but as we went over York Minster, which we didn’t realise we were so low, I said ‘guys’ I said, ‘I haven’t been to church in bloody years’, but we could see err yeah.
RP: Well I think that that, the thing about your crews at Tempsford, I think there was obviously great camaraderie with all the various people there.
AS: Pam likes me to tell the story when, because when you’re in the rear turret you can, in a Frazer Nash, you’d like a motorbike, when the Boulton Paul I’d put a flask of tea, I took a flask with me and it would just fit, there’s a little ledge on the right hand side of the Boulton Paul turret which just takes a flask just nicely so it won’t roll, but unfortunately, we err, I’ve forgotten which country we were over, I think Belgium, I saw a Night Fighter so I threw my guns to the left and I saw him disappear. I went to try to find out where he was, I had my turret and guns going everywhere, I didn’t hear any fire but all of a sudden, I had the most red hot feeling in my stomach. It took me ages to have the courage, I thought, well they tell me you don’t feel when you’ve been hit, it’s just, just get a wound and you know that was it. Hot. So I put my hand and what had happened, my gun, the solenoid underneath the gun had picked the flask up, pierced it and it dropped in my lap.
RP: So it was actually hot tea.
AS: Hot coffee.
RP: Oh hot coffee.
AS: Yeah.
RP: Oh dear, so that was a relief in one way then. That was definitely a relief.
RP: What you haven’t told us but you’ve been very modest about your medals. What medals have you got then, what were you awarded after the Halifax?
AS: Ah, I’ve got the Distinguished Flying Medal which was awarded in um err, July 1944 which was the result of the ditching in the —
RP: That’s a lovely medal, isn’t it?
AS: Yes it is, which I’m very, very proud of.
RP: Quite right and I think we needed to mention that, but I think the hot coffee story is a good point to bring our interview to an end I think. Thank you for telling us all those lovely stories.
AS: Ah well.
RP: It’s been a privilege and pleasure. Thank you very much, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with William James Stoneman
Creator
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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
2016-11-14
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AStonemanWJ161114
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:48:17 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
William James Stoneman was posted to RAF Elsham Wolds before Aircrew Reception Centre at RAF Cardington. He chose to become a rear gunner as he did not have to wait. Air gunnery training followed at RAF Bishopscourt in Northern Ireland on Ansons and Magister aircraft. He was posted to RAF Weston and the Operational Training Unit (OTU). Bill describes crewing up and flying Wellingtons at the OTU. He then went to the Conversion Unit at RAF Dishforth and flew Halifaxes. Bob compares the Frazer Nash turret with the Boulton Paul rear gun turrets.
Bill joined 138 Squadron at RAF Tempsford. He carried out 32 operations in Belgium, France, Germany, Holland and Norway. Flying low, they dropped agents and supplies. He describes the clandestine liaison with resistance groups. On long flights to southern France, they would refuel at RAF Blida in North Africa. He also discusses carrying pigeons for intelligence gathering. Bill recounts how their aircraft was shot down on one occasion, returning from RAF Blida. On his return, Bill changed to Stirling aircraft which he very much liked. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal in July 1944.
Finishing the Second World War as a flight lieutenant, he was sent to RAF Yatesbury working on codes and ciphers. He went to Belgium, Cyprus, Germany and Singapore. He worked at the Missing Research and Enquiry Unit in Belgium and finished at RAF St Mawgan having been served for 37 years.
Temporal Coverage
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1944-07
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Lincolnshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Belgium
Cyprus
France
Germany
Netherlands
North Africa
Norway
Singapore
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Vivienne Tincombe
138 Squadron
1664 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
air sea rescue
aircrew
animal
Anson
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Medal
ditching
final resting place
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Magister
memorial
military service conditions
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Cardington
RAF Dishforth
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Tempsford
RAF Turweston
RAF Yatesbury
Resistance
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
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ba450a2587f7d4bdd809b39eda3c5fa9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/307/8757/AMooreWT160318.1.mp3
06f88d173f760d9f30a9e3038f1f9794
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
Moore, Bill
William Tait Moore
William T Moore
William Moore
W T Moore
W Moore
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Three oral history interviews with William Tait "Bill" Moore (1924 - 2019, 1823072 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He served as a navigator with 138 Squadron.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-28
2016-03-18
2016-07-06
Rights
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Interview Agreement Form - Moore, WT, William Moore-03
Identifier
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Moore, WT
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 18th of March 2016 and I’m meeting with Bill Moore who was an Observer with the RAF and he is accompanied by his friend Tony Boxall. And we’re going to talk about Bill’s life from the earliest days to the periods after the war. So, Bill, could you start by telling us about your early days?
WM: Well, I was, I was born in a town called Dunoon in the West of Scotland in 1924 and I was, at that time, I was the eldest of three children, I became that, and then of course what happened? We moved house from a little single ended cottage and we moved in to a brand new council house. And of course we gradually became a family of five. I was the eldest of course, as I said, with —
CB: Keep going.
WM: With two sisters and two brothers. My, my father was a slater and plasterer, Builder, and my mother had been what later on in life people called them Land Army girls because she’d done that during the First World War and my father had been in the Royal Scots Fusiliers right through, right through the First World War. And later on he, he was, he was taken on ship board to India where they, they actually were the garrison at various towns for a, for a few years up to there, you know. Alright. And then, and then of course what happened was that he came back to Dunoon and met and married my mother and as I say he also then went back into the building trade, you know. That is the sort of life that people did, they were in the army and then back into Civvy Street and later on in life that’s exactly what happened to us. Now, I, I attended Dunoon Grammar School all the way though, Right from the infant class right through into, into High School and I enjoyed it. I was never a person who didn’t enjoy school and at the same time after school I worked in various sort of capacities like in butchers shops and deliveries and all these sort of things that, in those days, people had to do to help augment the family incomes. I left, I left school when I was thirteen. The reason why was because the incomes that they could draw at that time wasn’t sufficient to keep the family going and being the eldest one I was out of school, as I say, at thirteen and I [pause] I was employed. I was employed by people called the Richmond Park Laundry which is, or was at that time, the biggest laundry in Glasgow but which is now gone. Then what happened then was, was that the war clouds were coming and I joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps. The Air Defence Cadet Corps was the forerunner of the Air Training Corps. And of course to do that we had to go to Abbotsinch, which is now Glasgow Airport and that was where we, we got the feeling for the Royal Air Force. Also that was where I saw my first Wellington and we certainly fell in love with it because all the other aircraft that we had seen from there, there on for many years was all the old ones that had been scattered around the country. Then of course, when the, when the Air Training Corps started we changed over, we volunteered for that and on the, on the Tuesday night I joined up and signed up. I went back again on the Friday night and the Friday night I became a flight sergeant which was instant promotion. And the reason for that was, was that I had been in the Air Defence Cadet Corps. We er, what we did was we, we had courses run in the Dunoon Grammar School by teachers who had become officers in the Air Training Corps and one particular gentleman there — Mr D. J. McDermid was the one that I’d looked up to for many years through the Boys Brigade and other organisations like that. And also a Mr Oswald Brown. And Mr Oswald Brown was the mathematics teacher and of course he was the one who actually taught us the rudiments of navigation. And we did that until we were old enough to, to volunteer for the Royal Air Force. Now, during, during that time we sat the examinations and all the way up through till we were actually ready for the aircrew selection. When I was old enough I went to Edinburgh and I was on the selection course there. I come out with very high marks and I got my little silver badge and I then became a member of the Royal Air Force. We, we didn’t get a number but we had various facts and figures written down about what we were. Then of course you had to wait your turn until such times as, as they had space for you. Well that’s what they said. So you got called up and then of course you were VR. And we eventually went to London and, of course, with that of course that was ACRC and that was at Lord’s Cricket Ground along with many other people which was quite strange. I met one or two chaps that day from all over the country, Some of them that I was with for quite a long time and before we actually finished at ITW. From, from London of course we went to ITW and my ITW was Number 17 in Scarborough based at the [pause] now what was it? Based at one of the, one of the hotels in Scarborough. And likewise of course in Scarborough there was about five other different ITWs. My, my hotel that I eventually landed up with was the Adelphi Hotel which was right above the Italian Gardens in Scarborough itself. In the Italian Gardens there was all the swimming pool and all the little offices attached to the swimming pool and that is where we did all the navigation and training like that, in the actual [pause] actual course at Scarborough. The gymnastics, the PT and all that other stuff was held at Scarborough College which was a very good asset. We had our own swimming pool in the Italian Gardens so that was also very good for us. Most of our drill and disciplinary actions was taught on the esplanade in front of the Adelphi Hotel and above the Italian Gardens. We [pause] we had a small, a small flight, and a few days after we were beginning to settle down, we got quite a surprise and we had a group of Belgian boys came across and joined us. They joined us there and it was a very good experience because most of them had been through High School and their English was very good compared with our limit in French or whatever dialect they said that they spoke. But it was very good because we got a good background of the continent which most of us had never had. Well, on completing of the ITW course I was given a job which was a temporary thing, I became the rations officer and I used to deliver all the foodstuffs from the main offices in Scarborough to all the different ITWs and that lasted for a couple of weeks. It was very good to get a responsibility like that because you really had to make sure that everything was right on the button. Otherwise, the sergeants and people in charge of all the kitchens as you went around certainly were very tough on you. During, during that particular time we, we went round all, all the various ITWs in Scarborough and as a matter of courtesy we actually visited one after the other and they did the same to us. And then of course we used to always go on a journey, see all the different church parades, you know. And an aside to one thing was my great friend here — and Ernie Taylor his name, who later became a fighter pilot in Spitfires and Hurricanes and Mosquitos, and although we were in Scarborough at the same time and been on parades at the same time and did various other things we never actually met up and we didn’t meet up officially until I came here in nineteen eighty — [pause] I beg your pardon, in [pause] yeah, 1983, when I returned from Africa. But that’s a different story, I can come back to that one. When people had vacancies for us then we went to different places from Scarborough. Well the first place that I went to was to Scone, Scone in Scotland. Just outside of Perth, and that was where we were, we were flying on Tiger Moths. We did the course there And anybody who has ever been to Scone Airport always remember that they had a bump in the, in the runway and when you went down there you lost the horizon, then all of a sudden you were airborne, and if you missed the bump you were always in trouble. But that was it, it was a good thing to know. And the instructors there were mainly, mainly chaps who’d, who had served all over world with the Royal Air Force. A lot of them had been out in the desert, various ones, And they had been recalled for to train people like us. Especially at Scone near where we were. Well we, we actually graduated from there and in those days you said that you were a LAC, Leading Aircraftsman, Which was quite good, It meant that you got a few more shillings in your pocket but that was about all it was. Sometimes they didn’t even have time to issue the propeller to you, but before you knew where you were you were away doing something else. But anyway, what happened to us, I say us because there was a few from 17 ITW, we, we went to a place called Broughton-in-Furness. Now Broughton-in-Furness — that, that was a, like an escape course, or a commando course or whatever you wanted to call it but really and truly it was like an escape course and you were taught all the rudiments of, of the bush. Well, as a matter of fact being a country boy I quite excelled in that and I got the red lanyard again which I already had when I’d been at Scarborough which gave you a little bit of authority, but as soon as the parades were off you took the lanyard off and that was it. But the lanyard, lanyard was just to give you that bit of authority for parades etcetera, etcetera. From, from there we went to, to Manchester, to Heaton Park. Now, Heaton Park you were either billeted in the Nissen huts which was standard accommodation, about fourteen men to a hut, or you were lucky enough to be billeted outside in somebody’s back room, Or front room, And we enjoyed that for, for a couple of weeks. We were actually put in to a lady’s front room, Two of us, And that was a chap called Alec Kerr and myself, And Alec was one of the ones that, from Peterborough, that I had met on that first, first day in London. It seemed to be that we kept bobbing up wherever we were on, maybe because Kerr and Moore was near enough on the alphabetical list. But anyway we shared the room there and if we gave the lady a half a crown a week each she used to leave the window open so that there was no bother about coming home at night time. But that was, that was more or less just across the road or nearby to Heaton Park. We never took advantage of it, always made sure that we were in before midnight although you were supposed to be the same as the camp, in about half past ten, you know. Well once we got over that stage we were called up into the park and put into a Nissen hut, the same as everybody did, and then we did some more drill and discipline and listened to the Royal Air Force tunes that was drummed into you so that you’d know whatever was being sounded was what you did. And of course if the, if the tunes came up to a certain degree then you had to — whatever you were doing — you had to march to attention, and if you got caught not marching to attention when these tunes were being played you found yourself on KP or something else like that. I managed to avoid that so I was quite lucky. Maybe it’s because it was drummed into my head that you always smartened yourself up whenever these tunes were played. Anyway, we, we eventually got we didn’t really do a lot of, we had a lot of talks on various things but we didn’t do any stuff for examinations. But all of a, all of a sudden you began to, you began to assemble in to different groups, your name was put here and then was put there and it wasn’t alphabetical either and the next thing you knew that you were ABC or DEF or whatever else it was, and eventually these groups were how you were going to be posted away from, from Heaton Park. And with that at Heaton Park — Heaton Park I was, I was KL and KL and M was quite good for me, I didn’t know too much about it and neither did anybody else. But one day, one day we were fitted out with kit and we were told that we would probably go to Rhodesia, And everybody said, ‘Oh. We’re going to Rhodesia. Oh that’s — that’s a cushy number there. You go all the way in the boat and then you go to Cape Town and then you go on a train and you go all the way up to either Salisbury or Bulawayo.’ Well everybody thought oh this is, this is good, anyway , that was a special uniform you got for going to Rhodesia, it was different from those who went to South Africa. Anyway, what happened then was that we, we started assembling in these groups. So the groups one day were 12 o’clock noon, the bell went and we formed up and the next thing we were told, ‘Get your kit together. You’re off.’, ‘Oh. We’re off. Where are we going?’, ‘We’re not telling you where you’re going. You’re off.’ So we got all this kit and we went to Liverpool and [pause] a little memento here of a ship called the Andes, A N D E S, which was a brand new ship just before the war. That ship had come up the Clyde in to the Holy Loch in all its glory because it was supposed to be on the South American run. And it was a beautiful ship, all brand new, And we boarded this ship in Liverpool. And who was beside me? Alec Kerr. Oh, ‘Alec. How did we manage this?’, He said, ‘I don’t know.’ He says, ‘Just the names seemed to come up again and we’re here together.’ I said, ‘Oh good.’ So, anyway we went down to K deck, I thought it wasn’t bad, it was well down in the ship but being a new ship it was quite good. Anyway, we, we stayed there overnight. The ship didn’t move. And we had another fellow with us there and his name was Ted Weir, and Ted Weir was thirty three. Thirty three. And we were only leaving UK. So he said, ‘My God,’ he said, ‘my wife’s expecting a baby,’ and we said, ‘What? You’re an old man for having a baby.’ He said, ‘Yes. I’ve just got word.’ I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ He said, ‘I’m going to slip off tonight and go and see the baby. In case I never get another chance.’ I said, ‘Alright. Alright Ted. How are you going to do it?’ He said, ‘I’m going to go down the anchor [inaudible].’ I said, ‘Well if you don’t come back you’re in big trouble.’ Anyway, about 2 o’clock in the morning and he came back. We hadn’t moved. So Ted Weir, thirty three plus, had seen his baby, a little boy with ginger hair like him, so he was quite happy. But we never saw the baby, we never saw photographs but we were told plenty about him. So anyway around about mid-day the next day the Andes took off. So anyway away we go, away we go down the Mersey and around the top of Northern Ireland. We were sailing well and it was good weather, we went, ‘Oh this is a piece of cake. Nice cruise we’re on on a ship.’ So there we go. Judgement, you know. I said, ‘We’ve left. We’ve left Ireland now. We’re heading for the Bay of Biscay.’ Anyway, that night we were up on a deck and I said to, I said to Alec and Ted, I said, ‘This ship’s going the wrong way.’ And they said, ‘You and your Clyde navigation.’ I said, ‘Me and my Clyde navigation. We’re going the wrong way.’ So, in the morning we were back in Liverpool, right back where we left. Anyway, we wondered what was going to happen there, so we were told to keep our kit all close together and all the rest of it. Anyway, I looked across from where we were, out and I said to, I said to Alec, I said, ‘The 534.’ And Ted Weir said, ‘What’s the 534?’, I said, ‘I’m not telling you. You might be a spy,’ you know. He says, ‘Come on Bill. Tell me. What’s the 534?’, ‘Oh a 534’s got three funnels hasn’t it?’ He said, ‘Yes.’, ‘Well that’s the Queen Mary.’ [pause] So we, we were twelve hours later, we were on the Queen Mary and the next thing we knew we were heading west. So where did we go? We landed up in New York. We were only in New York about twenty four hours, a bit longer. We had a great crossing, everything was fine. And as I say we got in to New York and we had a bit of shore time which was unusual. We were given strict instructions that you would be in the chucky if, if you didn’t come back in time. So anyway they trusted us so off we went, came back, and we, we were taken to the train station as they call it there. And we were all put on these lovely trains with beds and everything, you know, so, oh this is ideal. Anyway, it was American trains and sometime, sometime the following morning we pulled out and we wondered where, where we were going. There was all sorts of bets on, we were going to Arizona, we’re going to this, we’re going to that. No, no, we didn’t go there. We went to Moncton, New Brunswick, in Canada. And that’s where we, where we started getting a bit of trouble because we, we didn’t have much uniform. Some of it, we’d changed some of the stuff, you know. Typical Air Force . You weren’t allowed this if you had that and things like that. Anyway, we walked around there and the saying up there was like a squaw and later on in life I used to call like a ‘Matabeleland nanny,’ you know. Anyway, we got up there and Moncton, Moncton, New Brunswick was the centre in Canada where, where people were sent all over Canada and sometimes down to the States etcetera, etcetera, you know, so once we get up there then we found out what we were actually going to do. Anyway, Alec Kerr and Ted Weir and myself, we were still together and, well it was more luck than judgement, and we didn’t do much there. As a matter of fact we learned, we learned all the names for Canadian names, American names for things. Pie a la mode for a sweet and this, that and the next thing. All the fancy things which we thought we might be getting to eat. Although the diet there was terrific compared to what we had in the UK, the UK diet was excellent. Plain Jane and no nonsense but when we got to, we got to New Brunswick we even got ice cream and things like that. Anyway, one day we, our names appeared on, on a notice board and we were deftly got different parades as people called it in the Air Force , you know. Now, when you join the Air Force you volunteer, butthat’s the last time you ever volunteer for anything, so by this time we were just told what we were going to do. So some people were down for pilots, some people for navigators, some people for wireless operators, all sorts of different things come up, you know, and then of course there was various other bits and pieces that came up, you know. Anyway, we went off in the train and about five, about five days later we got to Winnipeg. We changed trains in Winnipeg, all the way across to Canada to there. We’d actually been in one train and one bed and we used to get off and stretch our legs and get an hour or so while they put new coal and stuff on the, on the train and then we went back on and away we went to the next station. And we had quite a wee bit, and there was one, there was one time I was off and somebody says, ‘You’d better have a haircut’. I said, ‘Alright. I’ll have a haircut’. So I went in and typical me, you know, I went in and I said, ‘Can I have a haircut please?’, ‘Yes. How would you like it?’, ‘Oh I don’t want it, I don’t want it too short and I don’t want it long otherwise I’ll be in trouble’., ‘We’ll give you a Canadian one’., ‘Ok. Fine’. Anyway, I got settled back in the chair and the next thing I knew it cost me fifteen bucks because I went to sleep. I’m still a person who could go to sleep with just sitting, sitting around for a few minutes. Anyway, when I woke up, he says, ‘Yes. You agreed. Every time I told you what you wanted you nodded your head’. I said, ‘Oh. Thank you very much’. So I was fifteen bucks short. Anyway, that was alright. Well, eventually from from Winnipeg we went up to Manitoba. Dauphin, Manitoba. Right up, right up in the top of Manitoba itself, right up north, Dauphin and Paulson and various places like that. And we looked around for the town. It was a hamlet. Dauphin wasn’t too bad but Paulsen, I think it was twelve, twelve houses that was there, you know and we had, we had more people in the camp then there were civilians around us, you know. Anyway, that was quite good. We, we went training there and we did, we did the basics of gunnery there, and started off with the, we had 22s and we did a lot of clay pigeon shooting in the hangars because by this time there was six feet of snow outside, you know. And we didn’t, we didn’t go very far, but we got one or two flights in those Ansons, the early ones, so that wasn’t bad. Getting us accustomed to, to flying as they called it and then, and then of course what happened after that was that they began to tell us what we were going to do. Well some of the chaps, some of the chaps were down as pilots and they went off to another ‘drome nearby. Some of us took in navigation, and some, some took in wireless and gunnery. But what we did was we did the whole lot, we did POSB, you know. And that was, that was the, we all took the full course pilot — pilot, observer, navigator the whole thing, you know. We were beginning to find out what it was all about. It was very gentlemanly, there was civilian pilots and civilian instructors, things like that. All sort of chaps in their early thirties — early forties or thirties and they were our instructors. Anyway, about a few weeks later we were divided up again and this time it was a full, a full gunnery course that we did, everybody had to do that. We had a full gunnery course, and then we had a wireless course, and that kept us the whole time. Even the gunnery course kept us going the whole time. And you might, you might have, instead of maybe having five or six courses for gunnery or something like that they slackened down so you were beginning to realise what you were actually going to do. So what we did then, what we did then was we went across to the pilot’s school. They never told you whether you failed or otherwise. They would say we need seven pilots and that was seven pilots. The first seven in the list became pilots and the rest of us then went in for, for navigation and bomb aiming, and we still carried on with the wireless and we still carried on with the gunnery. Then of course we went up and the next thing, the next thing what we knew was we were concentrating more on navigation than we were anything else although we still carried on every now and again, keep our hand in at wireless, at wireless and gunnery. Well we actually graduated in each of these places and were passed on to different, different sections there and then we had a big change. We went over to Dauphin. Dauphin, Dauphin was quite, quite a town by their standards, there were shops in the village and places like that and we got quite friendly with the local people, and I got friendly with a couple who’d come out from Scotland many years ago. And they had a grown up family of a son who was already in the Air Force and a daughter and there was another girl who stayed with them and she was the fiancé of the son. Anyway, that’s another little story. Anyway, we were quite friendly with them and visited them when we could and had the usual, we had our Christmas lunch there for a start. We went to dances, we went to everything in our spare time, the usual sort of thing. Made ourself, we were told to mix which was very good. And then of course we went up through and you actually, you actually graduated or you failed. If you didn’t graduate and you failed then you were sent to a straight gunnery school and that was, that was to be, that was just to be on a gunnery course. There was no shame to it, it was a good course. Other people went to wireless operator and gunnery, that was also a good course but certainly a little bit different. Anyway, we did, we went on to the straight navigation course and that was, that was fine. Then of course we graduated. You didn’t get any, any stripes, you didn’t get any. You just, just moved out and of course by that time they had, they had AC2s and AC1s instead of the, instead of the LACs so we never did get these props, but we were changed from LACs to AC1s. Anyway, the next thing we knew we had, we had a week’s leave, a week to ten days leave and which was very nice. We got rail warrants for where we could go and all the rest of it, that was ideal. And then we came back and when we come back from there we actually got posted to different places and I got posted to a place called Portage la Prairie. Now Portage la Prairie is a very special, a very special school. Portage la Prairie was Number 7 Observer School. In other words you are doing things slightly different from navigation and we concentrated a lot on [pause] on different, different subjects and one of them of course was low flying and be able to map read. That was quite easy in Canada but, anyway, later on it was a different story. But that was, that was Portage la Prairie. Now Portage la Prairie is still going today and every four years the commandant of Portage la Prairie comes across here to the UK and he and his family take up residence here, and I have, I have met three different families now that came from Portage la Prairie. Anyway, going back, going back to Portage we did this specialised training, navigation etcetera, etcetera like that and observer training and then we, we went in to, we went into Winnipeg. We went to Winnipeg and we attended various courses in there which we didn’t really know what it was all about but it was courses that we were really specialists in. That was what it was, we were specialists in different things, you know. Then we went back of course to, we went back of course to the main station again, and then we got leave. We got some leave and I managed to, I managed to get to see quite a bit of Canada. And then the next thing we knew we were back in Moncton. Moncton, New Brunswick. In Moncton, New Brunswick we had, we had maybe a week or a couple of weeks or whatever, whatever was, until we actually got sent back to the UK. Now, when, when that, when that happened you were called in to a room and we were allowed two big full size kit bags. One that you could take your Air Force kit in and one that you could put all your civilian stuff in, including all the things that you’d bought when you were in Canada and the States and things like that. [pause] And then of course what happened, you were told that you might have a preference of flying back which meant that you could only take one, one kit bag with you and that would, that would be your service kit bag and the other one would come later. On the other hand if you, if you went by sea, returned by sea, you could take the two of them. So at that time everybody thought, ‘Oh well. Everything we’ve saved up for is in that other kit bag.’ [laughs] So we opted to try and get back by, back by sea. So anyway that did happen and we went down, we went down to, [pause] we went down to the railway station this day with all our kit and there we were heading towards the sea. So we went down and when we went down there, there was a ship there. And this ship that was in the dock, I recognised it, and I was just saying to the fellows that were with me, my other two friends had gone, but other ones, I said, ‘This looks like the Empress Line, you know’, ‘Oh. Empress. How do you know that?’ I said, ‘They used to sail down the Clyde every Friday night and we used to watch them, you know. So, anyway, this one turned out and it was named the Empress of Scotland, you know. As I was walking around it I picked up a little bit of information. It used to be the Empress of Japan and during the war they had changed it, changed it from the Empress of Japan to the Empress of Scotland. So, that was Halifax that we were in. So what we did was one day we up-anchored and away we went and of course as we were going out there we were, we had some little ships, something like the corvettes that we had in the UK, and they followed us out quite a bit in to the Atlantic. Then one morning they weren’t there, so you were on your own. Anyway, we, we were sleeping once again away down in the depths of the ship and we said, ‘You know, if we go down there and we are in the mid-Atlantic and we get torpedoed I don’t think we’d ever get out of there you know’, because we timed it and the timing was pretty good because we’d done two or three different runs. And we said, ‘Oh bugger it. We’ll try and sleep up on deck’, but by this time it was summer weather so we actually slept up on deck. And then one day I looked up and I said, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I know where we are’, I said, ‘We’re heading for the Clyde’. And we did. And we sailed right up the Clyde, up to Gourock and we lay off Gourock there and I saw a lot of the older men who were working on the boats there that I knew from my home town. Dunoon area. But we weren’t allowed to talk to anybody. We were told, ‘No, No, No, No, We don’t want anybody to know where you’ve come from or anything like that.’ So we got down and got onto a boat which was called the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Mary 2 was a passenger boat that used to ply between Gourock and Greenock and Dunoon on the Clyde but she was bare by this time and she was painted grey the same as the rest. But she was used to ferry people from the liners across to Gourock or Princes Pier, and what happened then was that you went on a train to somewhere, you know. And of course eventually, eventually we did that. And we landed up, landed up in, we landed up in Yorkshire, that’s where we got to, you know. And we got there and we were billeted in one of the colleges and that was great. There was running hot and cold water and things like that and at night you could get out and you could go up to the pub because you’d already been given some money, British money, and we had two or three days there, you know and during this time this friend of mine and I’d met up with Alec Kerr again and we, we went in to this pub and I looked in this big mirror, you know and I said, ‘Look, I know that chap, that Canadian over there’. He said, ‘No you don’t’, I said, ‘Look. I’ll bet you a couple of pints’. He says, ‘Are you sure? Alright I’ll take you on’, ‘Alright’. I said. I said, ‘Yeah. I’m sure. Are you betting against me?’ He said, ‘Yeah. You don’t. There’s so many Canadians here’. Anyway, I went up to him and I said, ‘Oh by the way that was a nice wristwatch that you gave to your girlfriend at Christmas’. He was just about ready to put his [inaudible] up. He said, ‘Why?’ I said ‘Because I took her to a dance’, you know. And I said, ‘Draw that back’, I said, ‘Your names Nicholson, you know. And your, your girlfriend is staying with your mother and father because your parents are working on the railway’, you know. [laughs]. So what he was going to do to me, you know. Anyway, it was quite fun. We had, we had these couple of pints and we had a good night and he had to go his way and we went ours, I never saw him again after that. But it was quite strange. By the time I got home my mother and his mother had been corresponding, you know and she knew all about him and all the rest of it and that was it, you know. And apparently, apparently, the other one knew all about me, you know. [laughs] But from there, from there we, we were, we were back in the Royal Air Force, you know. It was entirely different again you know. Back in the Royal Air Force. This time we were shipped, shipped down to [pause] where would we call it? [pause] My kid’s staying there at the moment. I’ll get back to it. Let me get this. [pause] What — it was a station. The station is Halfpenny Green, you know and we, there were several of us went there, about a half a dozen, but other ones were scattered all over the place, you know. And once, once we get into Halfpenny Green we discovered that we were on specialised training of low level flying on the, on the new Anson, you know. And we did all sorts of stuff but this time of course it was Royal Air Force pilots and they were a lot of chaps who had actually been on service and they’d been lucky enough to have done a tour on something or someway and landed up there on the same as us, low level flying. But as I say most of them were actually stationed there and knew they were there for a while. Anyway, we went, we went there and we actually wondered why we were doing this because really and, really and truly it was just about the only thing we did. We did the night flying and we did this, we did that. We was also a lot of it was either moonlight or daylight. Anyway, what happened then was, of course what we didn’t know was that we’d been selected, selected for duties where, where your low level flying and stuff like that was good, you know. Of course, anyway, by that time that was one of the things we wondered why but you never asked too much. And then of course you had some night flying where you’re up flying low over Wales and all the rest of it and going, actually doing bombing runs under different bridges there and things like that just to keep your hand in, and then eventually we went to, we went to different, different stations again, you know. From [pause] from there [pause] sorry about that.
CB: Do you want to stop for a mo?
WM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
[Recording paused]
WM: I had a break there.
CB: We’re re-starting.
WM: Fine.
[pause]
CB: Ok.
WM: From there we were actually transferred to a secret ‘drome. We didn’t believe it was secret until we got there. As a matter of fact on the way everybody was saying it must, it must be like an ordinary station, and then as we, as we get nearer there with the talk that was coming back to us it really was secret, and that turned out to be Tempsford. Now, the big thing about that was, was that the first thing you did when you get inside you get lined up and you had a nice, sort of friendly talk. And they said, ‘Right you’ve now got to sign the Secrets Act again but this time it’s for real.
CB: Right.
WM: If you talk about anything and it gets out anywhere you will be shot, that’s how serious it is. And as a matter of fact a couple of times the little pub there — The Wheatsheaf — was closed because they thought that it might have been that some information might have been getting out through the pub. There was always the chance that somebody might have said something, although , as I say, we were sworn to secrecy. Now, what we didn’t realise at the time was what we were going to do because nobody told us and nobody would tell us. Now, after, after about a week I think what had been they were actually assessing our characters as they could see them there. They began to take confidence in us and give us that little bit of confidence, you know, and then we found out what it was all about. At that time the CO come in and he spoke to us and he told us what it was all about. And then we realised to what extent the secrecy was demanded because not only was the fact was that the people you were taking in to the occupied countries were in danger of their life but you also were. And what was given to us was, ‘You don’t communicate with them, and they don’t communicate with you’. I do know for a fact that the Americans later on when they started getting into things they used to call the people Joe’s and things like that, but we were not for that at all. We did not say, we did not take, if you turned around and say, ‘You’ve got a bunch of Joe’s there’ well right away people would know you had a bunch of people and where they come from. But the big thing about it was that in most times you just went out on one aircraft to one airfield, and that wasn’t too bad at all. Although there was a couple of occasions where about twenty agents who had been rounded up and all shot out of hand by somebody who had given, given them away, and that happened to be a person of the same nationality. We don’t like to say exactly what it was, I know people have written about it. But on the other hand is this, that we don’t like to think that, that the people helping our agents once on the ground was people that gave them away but it’s a sad story to say that it was. The worst part of that from time to time was in Holland, you know. And the bad thing about it was that the man who was responsible for so many deaths at one time was actually based in London, you know. He was, he was a, he was a Dutchman, yeah, and of course the Dutch people are still horrified about that, you know. That their own people could give them away, you know. Anyway, what did happen was that we were told exactly what was going to happen was that you would be allocated a pilot because then by that time I was classified as an observer. You had your pilot and you and he actually spoke over about what was going to happen. Once we knew where we were going and how many people we were liable to be taking. Well the thing is this. You can all imagine about Lysanders, they can’t carry very many people, but the lighter the people were the more we could actually take and that was a fact. And of course we were, we were told all sorts to keep our weight down. Now, I can assure you that it wasn’t too hard to do that but at the same time you had to make sure that you kept within limits. Now, when, when an operation was on, whatever was going to happen, however you wanted to count it or name it then everybody, everybody who was concerned once again knew what was going on. They knew how secret it had to be, they knew that people’s lives were depending on it, whether it was the team flying them out or the people going out. Now, what did, what did happen was that going back, going back to the time of navigating and taking everything on the map-readings and being able to do that. Nine times out of ten we were jolly lucky but sometimes you might have been landing in a field which was next door to the one that you were supposed to be landing, and the ground wasn’t exactly good. But, of course, the fields that we were landing on had, nothing had been done to them since the pre-war days and one or two of them had been glider schools that people had been taught to glide from, because then these fields had been disbanded and walked away from, you know, and people kept away from them. But they were the kind of fields that were the best for landing on. They had been, they had been more or less gone over in early days because gliding, gliding in Europe was quite a sport before the war. It wasn’t too, too strong in the UK but in, in Europe it was very strong from time to time, you know. And of course, as I say taking, taking people in it was the big thing was to make sure where you were going, how long it would be and as much as possible you had to be exactly on time because a few minutes either way could have cost people their lives because there was people that was coming in to meet the ones that was being taken in and there was also people further along the lines to receive them, so everything had to be timed exactly. If you had strong headwinds going across to the continent and you might have lost twenty minutes or things like that. That was too bad but at the same time, at the same time you had to try and do something about it. And the best thing that we used to do was to try, try and get that little bit extra speed and keep down as low as we could, then of course you had, you had more dangers than you normally would have with wires and all the rest of it, you know. But everything was done more or less by moonlight and that was as best as we could do it. The big, the big thing about it was trust. Now, with the early, the early days there was quite a few of the chaps who were flying there had, had been flying over that area either as people who had money and could fly about etcetera, etcetera or they were people who had been in flying clubs, so they were the best people to get some of the ideas from of how you could do it. Now, the big thing too was that we had, we had some officers with us who were exceptional in whatever it was, whether they were pilots or whether they were navigators or whether they were doing exactly what we were doing, you know because [pause] when they, when they told you about things you certainly listened to them.
[pause]
WM: After a while we actually got, we got some twin-engined aircraft from America and with them they were quite good because they were actually designed to land in the Prairies in Canada or America and their undercarriage was strong. That the likes of the fields that we were operating on they could be taken in and that was, that was one of the good things that happened there. Now there was one particular night and we were loaded up with guns and ammunition and all these sort of things for the Maquis and we had our target where we had to take it to. Anyway, we set off and we had just the three of us in the aircraft. There was the skipper, myself and another chap who, well, nowadays you would call him a loadmaster or something like that. He was the chap that made sure that the load was alright, well maybe that was where the name came from, I don’t know, but that was what he always had to do. Anyway, this particular night we came in to this ‘drome which had been an airfield for, for the [pause] I beg your pardon, an airfield for the gliders. As we came up and we turned around we began to sink. And we felt, well, that would be alright. Nobby turned around and said, ‘Its alright Bill. Once we get rid of this stuff we’ll rise alright’. you know. So Jim, in the back, shouts, ‘Well I bloody well hope so. I don’t want to be kept around here for a while’, you know. Anyway, what did happen was that the Maquis came there with their person in charge, they got all their stuff away and off they went into the bush and that was the end of them. They were gone. Anyway, we tried to get out and we hadn’t got out at all, we’d got out a little bit. Not bad. Anyway, the leader of the group on the ground, and it was a lady, and what she says was, ‘We’ll get you out. Don’t worry. We’ll get you out.’ And we said, ‘How?’, ‘Oh we’ll get you out’. So she actually went to the village and she rounded up everyone in the village and of course they weren’t supposed to move, they weren’t supposed to go out after dark, but man, woman and child all came out to help get us out and of course they had to try and find articles that would help. Anyway, when they were half way up they met a German sergeant, and the German sergeant said, ‘Right. You people. You shouldn’t be out at night time. What are you doing?’ Or words to that effect. And she says, ‘We’re trying to get your big black aircraft out of the mud and the Gestapo’s going to shoot us all including you if we don’t get the job done’. So he says, ‘That’s alright. I’ll go and look after the village and you can get the aircraft out’. So, anyway, he went back to the village and they got us out, but that was about an hour and a half on the ground instead of, at the most, twenty minutes. And as I say when we took off that was one of the best take-offs we ever had because we made sure that she was up and ready to go. But the only thing, time, well, what used to happen to us was we used to get the odd chap on the ground who heard an aeroplane coming and you used to hear ‘bang, bang’ and he would shoot at us with a rifle or something like that, or sometimes even thought it was somebody with a shotgun because we didn’t know it at the time but when you got back again you found the results on your aircraft. And these old aircraft, they could take it you know which was, which was a big thing. But that that was the nearest that we got to ever being interned because we were, we were very lucky. I put, I put it down to each of us doing our own work, you know and able to do the job that we set out to do. There’s the big black box down there if you want to take it home and use it. Would you like to use it?
CB: Yeah.
WM: [laughs] Do you know what it is?
CB: No. What is it?
WM: What is it Tony?
TB: I don’t know. What are we talking about?
WM: In there. Around this side. [pause] Down.
TB: That. No. Where am I looking?
CB: We’ll have a look in a minute.
TB: Yeah.
WM: Over there.
TB: Ok.
WM: No. The big thing. The big thing down there.
TB: I don’t know.
WM: It’s alright. It’s been shifted. The girl shifted it. Sorry. I beg your pardon for this.
CB: That’s alright.
WM: It’s —
TB: Not this.
WM: No. It’ not that, Tony.
CB: We’ll have a look in a minute.
TB: Yeah.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Sorry. Sorry about that.
CB: That’s alright.
WM: Ok. Not to worry Tony.
TB: Oh.
WM: I know where it is now.
TB: Oh.
WM: She shifted it. I’ve got somebody that comes in, I beg your pardon, anyway , as I say between, between our training and respect for each other and what we did, I reckon that is why we survived. And not only that but the code of silence that we had. Now, what did happen was that later on, later on, once, once it started getting where they didn’t need so many people on the ground in Europe then we moved over to Tuddenham and then to Bomber Command, you know. And then later on all the station and everything else moved away from Tempsford across to Tuddenham, you know. And what happened was that the chap that I was flying with in the beginning, a chap called Murray, by that time he was, he was our wing commander. And he was the wing commander for 138 Squadron after the war as well for quite some considerable time, you know. Now, what happened, what happened to me was that on Bomber Command we did, we did thirty six ops on Bomber Command over and above what we did for the other ones but from time to time, our people just called them trips, there was no such thing as tours with us. It was if the old man let you off for a few days you got off for a few days. If he couldn’t afford to let you go you didn’t get, that’s how it was and you also had to make sure that you didn’t talk about what you were doing there. And that wasn’t just on the oath but that was also on the comradeship that we, that we had there, you know. Anyway, after that, after the end of the war the next thing we did was to fly back, fly back all our ex-prisoners of war and we were flying them back and also we were designated to take displaced persons down through France, down to the South of France, you know, and they had special camps there for them, to help them get rehabilitated, you know. And one of the biggest ones was at Istres you know.
CB: The who?
WM: Ist ISTRVS. In the south of France.
TB: Istrvs.
WM: Then of course, after a while there was three crews selected with their Lancasters and their ground crews and we went to RAF Benson. And we didn’t know what we were doing at first but eventually we found out what it was and one of the things that Churchill wanted was to have everything photographed from the air. The likes of London and cities like that we photographed them all from two thousand feet, then smaller towns. went I down gradually to about ten, fifteen thousand feet, and then of course the countryside was at twenty thousand feet. We didn’t only do the UK and Ireland but we also did right from the North of Norway all the way, right down to the Mediterranean and as far around to the east as we could go and come back on the fuel that we had. And that was an operation that had been put in place by Churchill when he was still in office, you know.
CB: So this was coastline? Coastlines?
WM: Sorry?
CB: Just the coastlines.
WM: No. No. Internal cities. Everything.
CB: Right.
WM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Ok.
WM: Now we had bases, we had bases in Norway, we had bases in France, we had bases all over. And that was 138 squadron.
CB: Then what?
WM: Then I went. I was told I wasn’t going to get made up to another rank that I thought I was going to get and —
CB: What was that?
WM: A warrant officer then. And I didn’t get that and by that time instead of going out on class A, I took class B which was an early release for anybody who had been in the building trade and essential industries like that and that’s what I did from there, I took that and back in to the building trade.
CB: So what did you do in the building trade?
WM: Well we, we started, we revamped the family business and carried out many jobs, many contracts, but in the end we were finding out that all the spivs were getting the jobs instead of honest contractors. And then one day I decided now that enough’s enough and I said to the family, ‘Right’, the younger brothers, ‘You can take over the business. I’m going’. I didn’t know where I was going to but eventually I landed up in Africa with the African, what it was, was that the, the Mandela, Mandela, which was a trading store in Africa had started up a building section and they recruited me to go and take over a dozen sights there, you know. And that’s when we started building the schools and the hospitals and the universities and all sorts of things like that. First of all in the Nyasaland, as it was and then, and then in the Rhodesias and then that became the Federation. And then that went ahead by leaps and bounds until the UK government gave the countries away. And then eventually I came back here after fifty years.
CB: Where did you retire to?
WM: Well I retired here because I retired supposedly in 1980. What happened, my wife didn’t want me around the house so I went consulting, and I was a consultant for the Zimbabwe government, Zambian government and Namibia and Mozambique and Northern South Africa wasn’t it? [pause] Yeah.
CB: What made you choose this area?
WM: Well, what happened was that I came, I used to fly around here but also the fact was that I came back here in 1991 when one of my nieces and nephews were staying here and he’d been given, got a job as a bank manager from Africa to be here. And I rather liked it, and eventually my wife and I decided to come here, you know, and now that all my family are either in here or down in the Bournemouth area.
CB: How many children have you got?
WM: Three. Three children and then six, six grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. Yeah.
CB: What was your wife’s name?
WM: Phillis. P H I L L I S. Like that.
CB: Yeah. Ah fantastic. Yeah. And when was she born?
WM: On the 1st of February 1926.
CB: When were you married?
WM: The 3rd of January 1947.
CB: So when were you actually demobbed?
WM: The end of February 1946.
CB: Ok. You talked about a lot of interesting things and one of the questions really is, we haven’t touched on is, what were the planes you were using when you were with 138? On the agent’s side.
WM: The twin engines were Hudsons.
CB: Right.
WM: Yeah. And then of course we had the single engines then.
CB: Did you, did you fly in Lysanders?
WM: Yes.
CB: You did. Right.
WM: Yes.
CB: How many people could you take in a Lysander?
WM: Well it all depended on the weight that you were carrying, you know. Yeah.
CB: But if it was just agents.
WM: Well that was, well that was, you could get three in, you know.
CB: As well as you and the pilot.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Ok. And in the Hudson?
WM: Well the Hudson mainly was, we took quite a few people on board, yes, about ten of them but we were mostly on the Hudsons taking in supplies to the Maquis.
CB: So how often did you air drop the supplies? Or how often did you land them?
WM: Well on the air drop, on the air drop was between, between fifteen and twenty, yeah, and then the land drops. The land ones, we landed with them, the special stuff. That was about five or six. Five or six.
CB: Six people.
WM: No, No.
TB: Six times.
WM: Six drops.
CB: Six drops. Yeah. Right.
WM: Yeah.
TB: How many Lysander trips did you do?
WM: Eh?
TB: How many Lysander trips did you do?
WM: About twelve altogether.
CB: Twelve Lysander trips. Ok. And Hudson? Because sometimes you didn’t find the location did you? So —
WM: No, we went, no well, we always seemed to, always seemed to be quite lucky that way. We were, you know. You know turn around and say it might have been the field next door or something like that but it wasn’t far away. We always managed to get our targets and get our stuff away.
CB: But it took exceptional navigational skill in the dark to be able to get to these places.
WM: It was.
CB: So what was the, what was the real key to that?
WM: Well they told me I had a countryman’s eyes.
CB: Because not everybody could do it.
WM: No, that’s right. As I said right at the beginning when I told you about the Clyde and the Clyde navigation.
CB: Yeah.
WM: The stars and things like that. You know, as a, as a boy I used to wander the countryside in the dark and it didn’t matter what the weather was.
CB: Right. So you had an eye for it.
WM: Oh yes. Aye.
CB: So the navigation itself. What were you flying? What height were you flying on the transit?
WM: Well the, no more than a thousand feet.
CB: Right. So that made it difficult.
WM: It did.
CB: To see laterally.
WM: That’s right.
CB: And when you got to the target then, where you were going to land, how did you do approach that? Did you do a straight in or did you fly over and around or —
WM: It all depends. If you recognised it and the code looks right you went straight in. Sometimes you buzzed it a couple of times because you weren’t sure whether it was a decoy or not. Because once or twice where the Jerries had set up decoys.
CB: So you were warned off were you?
WM: Yeah. Well it was the people on the ground you know.
CB: That’s what I meant, yeah.
WM: They always seemed to manage to do something that upset the Jerrie’s decoys. However, there were one or two chaps [pause] that didn’t.
CB: Yeah. The, so you’re coming at a thousand feet. Is this a wooded area or does it tend to be open country?
WM: Well most of them were open areas that we landed in, you know. Oh yeah.
CB: And how would they know you were coming in practical terms. At the last minute.
WM: Oh well. I would say they had a rough time of when we’d be there. That was what it was.
CB: So were they using lights to identify?
WM: Sometimes you had lights because we used to even take the lights in to them, you know. And sometimes the remote areas — sometimes they, they had little bush fires.
CB: Right.
WM: I call them bush fires. That’s from Africa, bush fires.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. So in landing they were fairly small strips.
WM: Oh yes.
CB: So how did you know, because you’ve got wind to consider?
WM: Yeah.
CB: How would you know which direction to approach for landing?
WM: Well, well you’d try and find your winds on the way through.
CB: Right.
WM: Yeah.
CB: And what navigation aids were you using?
WM: Well mostly, mostly, most of it was the navigator’s computer. There was a computer on the knee. But nine —
CB: The Dawson Computer.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Nine times out of ten, nine times out of ten it was just the old fashioned hit and run, you know.
CB: You didn’t have Gee.
WM: Oh no, not at that time. We never got Gee until we were flying in, we never had Gee until we, we flew in Lancasters.
CB: Right. Ok. So when you, when you were loading up to leave in the winter what was happening? Was the aeroplane sinking in? Is that what you were talking about earlier?
WM: Yeah. That’s what you had to watch out for.
CB: What did they do to help that?
WM: Well our people were very good because you know they made sure everything was alright for us but the ones on the other side as much as possible they had firm ground for us, you know.
CB: So you land the aeroplane. You had to taxi back.
WM: Yeah.
CB: In order to take off again.
WM: That’s right.
CB: How long are you on the ground between?
WM: Well, as I say, about twenty minutes.
CB: Right.
WM: Well, some, some of these trips. Other ones were a wee bit longer you know.
CB: The Lysander could get in a pretty small spot could it?
WM: Oh yes. Yeah. As a matter of fact most of the first groups — they used to land on the roads.
CB: Oh did they?
WM: Oh yes. Aye. Used to land on the roads.
CB: Between the trees.
WM: Yeah. ‘Cause you could do that with the Lysanders. Aye.
CB: What was the loss rate? Did people tend to —?
WM: Well I’ll tell you about it if you give me a few minutes.
CB: Yeah.
WM: I’ll give you it exactly, you know.
CB: Right. I’ll stop just for a moment.
WM: Yeah. Sure.
[Recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re talking about the loss rates in 138 in the flying over Europe.
WM: 138 Squadron. The Royal Air Force Association. The Royal Air Force, I beg your pardon. Royal Air Force. At Tempsford, during the time we were there we lost nine hundred and ninety five agents.
CB: Blimey. So when. When’s that from when to?
WM: That was right through the war.
CB: Right.
TB: When you say lost do you mean —
WM: Lost.
TB: What? Captured by the Germans.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
WM: We dropped twenty nine thousand containers.
CB: Yeah.
WM: We dropped seventy, we dropped ten thousand packages.
CB: Yeah.
WM: And there was seventy — seven zero aircraft lost.
CB: On the SOE operations.
WM: Yeah. And there was three hundred air crew lost. The motto for 138 squadron is “For Freedom”. “For Freedom.”
[pause]
CB: Right.
WM: It may be that you’ll come across some day — the United States Air Force 7th Airlift Squadron came to be with us and they actually adopted our motto — “For Freedom.”
[pause]
CB: Now, what were the aircraft used? Because we’ve talked about the Hudson —
WM: Yeah.
CB: And the Lysander.
WM: Oh yes.
CB: But were you using bigger planes as well?
WM: Oh yes. Of course. We used, used Stirlings and Halifaxes.
CB: In the squadron.
WM: Oh yes.
CB: Part of the same squadron.
WM: Oh yes.
CB: So they had lots of different aeroplanes. Yeah.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
WM: Yeah. We used Whitleys. We used everything.
CB: Yeah.
WM: We used to say that the junk that the old man didn’t want they used to pass it down to us.
TB: How did the Stirlings and Halifaxes get off then because they needed quite a long runway didn’t they?
WM: Yeah. Well that was, that was fine there at Tempsford.
CB: Tempsford had a long runway so that was ok.
TB: But the other end?
CB: It’s a standard A airfield.
TB: The other end then. How did they didn’t actually — they didn’t actually land in those?
CB: They didn’t land those.
WM: No, no .
CB: They didn’t land at the —
WM: No. They were for the heavy stuff they were dropping.
CB: Yeah. So fast forward then to going to Tuddenham.
WM: Yeah.
CB: That was because the SOE bit stopped.
WM: That’s right.
CB: What did 138 do from Tuddenham?
WM: Well we were on Bomber Command.
CB: Yes. So what type of bombing were you doing there?
WM: Well we were on a lot of the big ones that was available at that time. Yeah.
CB: Right.
WM: Including, including the various ones like [pause] Where was one? There was the Kiel one.
CB: Yeah.
WM: The Kiel. Then there was, was —
TB: Did you do Cologne?
CB: And a, so you did a lot of different raids there.
WM: Yes.
CB: What, what about D-day because you got the Legion of Honour.
WM: Yeah. On, well, apart from the Legion of Honour wasn’t only just for D-day.
CB: No.
WM: That was for all the stuff we were doing for the French, you know.
CB: Right. Ok.
WM: But during D-day time what we were doing, we were dropping H2S. It seems a funny thing for us to be doing a thing like that, but H2S and you did so many trips during that particular time they just called it one. One day. One day. They didn’t call it, didn’t call it so many trips.
CB: Right.
WM: That was one day.
CB: Right. Ok. So what were you actually doing? What were you actually doing at that time?
WM: That was, we were dropping, we were actually dropping, dropping —
CB: Window.
WM: Window.
CB: Yeah.
WM: But at the same —
CB: Not H2S.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Because H2S is the radar isn’t it?
WM: That’s right.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Well H2S is our side.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Whereas, whereas the window was against the Germans so —
CB: Yeah. Quite.
WM: But of course, on the other hand we’d divert and do a short bombing run somewhere else. Somewhere, somewhere else.
CB: Oh as well.
WM: To try and convince them that we were all over the place.
CB: Yes. Yes.
WM: So one flight might go off after twenty minutes, another one after half an hour and go and drop something, and things like that.
CB: Right. Ok.
WM: Yeah.
CB: So just on timings. When did you start with 138 squadron at Tempsford?
WM: When?
CB: When was that?
WM: When. In Tempsford? Well we went back to Tempsford at the beginning of March.
TB: What year?
WM: Yeah.
CB: Nineteen forty —?
WM: 1945.
CB: Right.
WM: Yeah.
CB: But originally when did you go to Tempsford?
WM: Oh Tempsford. Not Tempsford, no, that was Tuddenham.
CB: Yeah.
WM: That was Tuddenham.
CB: Yeah. So when did you go to Tempsford?
WM: ‘41, ‘42
CB: Ok.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Right. And from then you went to Tuddenham.
WM: Tuddenham was at the end.
CB: Right. What did you do in the middle?
WM: Tempsford.
CB: Always Tempsford.
WM: Always Tempsford.
CB: Yeah. Ok. Good.
WM: It didn’t matter what job come up, we were a Tempsford squadron. Yeah.
CB: Ok. Good. Thank you very much.
WM: And that is, that is and that was very important was that we were. Well 219 Squadron came and joined us from time to time you know but I had nothing, I had nothing to do with them, you know.
CB: The same idea. You don’t talk to each other.
WM: Much the same idea. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Right. So when you were at Tuddenham and you were in Lancasters, how many sorties? How many ops did you do?
WM: That was thirty six.
CB: That was thirty six. Ok.
WM: Yeah.
CB: So that that until the end of the war.
WM: That’s right.
CB: Ok. And how did the crew get on?
WM: Oh, we had a great crew. What we, what we did, we went back to a place called Langar.
CB: In Nottinghamshire. Yes.
WM: In Nottingham. And that’s where we, where we picked up the rest of the crew.
CB: Right.
WM: And also there was one funny one we picked up, and what he was, he was the youngster, just come right out of university and we didn’t know how many languages he could speak but he could speak just about everything on the continent. And he used to carry his black box with him wherever he went and he used to, he used to speak into that. We never knew exactly what he was doing but we had an idea that he was talking to the German control.
CB: Yeah.
WM: And everything else like that.
CB: Yeah.
WM: A very important job, but as I say he was just straight out of university.
CB: But he was completely detached from the rest of the crew.
WM: No, no, no.
CB: On the ground I meant.
WM: He was a part of the crew.
CB: No. On the ground.
WM: Oh, on the ground. On the ground, yeah. He’d his own, he had his own station on the aircraft. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Where was that?
WM: Yeah. He was behind the radio operator.
CB: Right.
WM: Because they had to work together on it.
TB: But you dropped food stuffs into Holland as well didn’t you?
WM: Oh yes. That, we were on, we were on that drop.
CB: On Manna.
WM: Oh yeah.
CB: Operation Manna. Yeah.
WM: Yeah.
CB: How many drops did you do on that?
WM: We did, at the beginning we did three in one, three a day.
CB: Right.
WM: We did that for about fifteen days.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Aye. Yeah.
CB: And what height would you be flying for that?
WM: Well some of it we were just over, some of it, at the beginning there was about a thousand feet, then it was down to six hundred, you know. But there was one, one little story which is quite, quite a good one. We, it was the first Sunday we were on the run and we were on our second, second run, anyway what happened, As we were flying up, you see what had happened the ladies, we called it ladies, we used to call it ladies they had made white crosses like that.
CB: The WAAFs.
WM: Yeah. Well we said that was.
CB: Yeah.
WM: We didn’t really know but the women used to say it was them.
CB: Yeah.
WM: And what it was that became our drop zones.
CB: Oh I see. Right.
WM: And that was inside —
CB: In Holland.
WM: Football grounds and thing like that.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
WM: Enclosed areas. Anyway, what happened was as we were coming in and just about ready for the drop and I saw this other Lanc coming in like that.
CB: Oh.
WM: And I said, ‘You’re bringing sprogs, you know’, and we went a little bit that way and dropped because we couldn’t do anything else, we’d already gone, you know. More or less gone. Top they went and the stuff went outside and landed here.
CB: Right. On the outside of the designated area.
WM: On the railway, you know.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Yeah. Anyway, what happened was that years later we’d just opened a rugby ground in Africa and I was saying, I said, yeah, I said one of the stories I was saying, ‘And there we were, we dropped the food’. This lad came across. ‘And the stuff fell outside on the bloody railway line’, you know. And I said, ‘It looked like a whole lot of little black ants around a sugar lump, you know. In Africa that was.
CB: Yeah.
WM: All of a sudden I had a hand on my shoulder, and I looked around and somebody bigger than Tony, or he seemed bigger than Tony. I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘You nearly killed me’, I said, ‘What?’, ‘You nearly killed me’. I said, ‘How?’ He said, ‘That was, I was that first lot of black ants’. And there’s another lady here, she was at church with us on Wednesday and she was five year old then and what happened was that her mother heard the bombers coming in and she, her granny said, ‘Hide under the table. Hide under the table. We’re going to get bombed. Going to get bombed’. And her mother said, ‘They’re very low’. The next thing they saw these funny things coming down because that was before the arrangements were made.
CB: Oh.
WM: And that was on to like a golf course. An open area. It wasn’t any good for landing.
CB: No.
WM: It was undulating stuff, you know. And what, what happened was that as I say she was five year old and that was the stuff landing right in front of her, you know.
CB: Amazing.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
WM: And she’s here.
CB: Is she? What an extraordinary thing.
WM: And the number, the number of people that I’ve met is terrific. Well Tony was with us.
TB: Yeah.
WM: Tony was with us. I had a photograph here. Well it’s not a photograph.
TB: Yeah.
WM: There’s a painting done by a Dutchman, you know that was bigger than that.
CB: Right.
WM: No. It’s not there now Tony. It’s gone, my daughter’s got it. Like that. A great big mural, yeah. And he had it, he gifted it that day we were up there at Lincoln and it shows you the Lancasters all coming in, dropping the food and all the rest of it, you know and he actually gave me one just bigger, a little bit bigger than that envelope there.
TB: But the Germans were allowed to eat the food as well that was meant —
WM: Oh yes.
TB: There were people.
CB: They were starving too.
WM: Oh yeah. Well that was one of the reasons why, why, well, do you know the story behind it? Right. The people in Holland, both indigenous ones and members of the German armed forces, were starving and two young Canadian officers, lieutenants, had been talking to their CO and said, ‘Hey man, can’t we do something about that? These people are starving’. And he says, ‘We’ve got plenty of food’.
CB: These were army officers.
WM: Yeah. ‘We’ve got plenty of food. Let’s give some to them’. He said, ‘How are we going to do that?’ He says, ‘Let us go in and see the German. See if he’ll allow it’. He said, ‘They might, you never know’. The two of them. No guns, no nothing like that, no knives, and they went in and they walked right into the German headquarters and demanded to see the number one. So they got in there and they put their case to them that the aircraft coming in wouldn’t drop bombs as long as you didn’t shoot at them, and we’ll drop food and you can share it. Of course he thought that was a good idea. You can share it. Anyway, that happened. So the first thing that people said was, ‘Where are we going to get containers?’ Everybody said, ‘138 squadron. They’ve got hundreds of them’, you know. And so we had. And what they, did they next thing we knew there was American, American trucks, Canadian trucks, all of that coming on to our secret ‘drome, you know, with food. And of course they were all loaded up and taken to us and put in these containers. That’s why I’m saying about contained looked like. They must have had quite a job trying to get into it of course, you know.
CB: Yeah.
WM: But that, that was the first lot of containers that were been dropped. Then they used to drop them in the reinforced mail sacks, you know. Well they were, they were run up special. People were running up up them special night and day to drop, so we could drop, so we could drop them.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
WM: Some of them were great big things. They weren’t small, you know. Aye.
CB: So even at six hundred feet the power of the drop would have been —
WM: Oh well.
CB: Difficult for the —
WM: Well that was, that was —
CB: They were breaking.
WM: Well, that was the chance. Yeah. But most of our containers were alright because —
CB: Yeah.
WM: They were used to being dropped, you know.
CB: No. Quite.
TB: [inaudible] Lancasters were dropping the food?
CB: Eh?
TB: Were they using Lancasters?
WM: Lancasters. Yeah.
CB: Lots of squadrons did it.
WM: Oh yes. There was.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Aye.
CB: Right. What was the most memorable thing about your experience in the RAF?
[pause]
WM: It was when we were dropping the food to Holland and the response that we got. Yeah.
CB: What? What was the response?
WM: Oh terrific.
CB: In what way? How did they demonstrate it?
WM: Oh well. The crowds. Hundreds of people come out and waving to you and everything like that. And the, and the messages that was coming across, illicit radios and everything else. The airwaves were full of it. Aye.
CB: Were they?
WM: Aye. Oh yes.
CB: And then after the war did anybody go back to Holland to see? What?
WM: Oh yes. Yeah. Not only that, for quite a number of years they held food drops there, cheese drops. I was, in the beginning, alright but then I was away for fifty years. It still carried on during that time, and what used to happen was that the Dutch people came, came across on light aircraft and they brought all these little parachutes with these, you know these wee round cheeses and used to drop them at the various Royal Air Force Association homes on one special day at one special time. Yeah. And that was the food drops.
TB: ‘Cause you’re got a Dutch reward haven’t you as well? As well.
WM: Aye. I’ve got a Dutch medal. Yeah.
CB: What’s that called? What’s that called?
WM: Would you like to see it?
CB: Yeah.
[Recording pause]
CB: So we’re talking about your Dutch award for Manna. What’s that called?
[pause]
WM: I’ve got it. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it.
CB: What’s it say?
WM: Thank you. “Thank you Canada and Allied Forces. Awarded the Medal of Remembrance. Thank you Liberators. 1945. To Mr W.T. Moore.”
CB: This is a plaque on the wall.
WM: Yes.
CB: Yes. Framed.
WM: Yes.
CB: Yes. And then after the war there were regular contacts but you were abroad.
WM: Yeah.
CB: So you didn’t get involved.
WM: That’s right.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Since I’ve returned I’ve been highly involved with them.
CB: Yes. That’s really good. And this year, on the seventieth, last year just gone, the seventieth anniversary. Did you go to Holland?
WM: No. I didn’t. I didn’t manage to go.
CB: Right.
WM: But I had quite a number of Holland and Dutch people come here and saw me.
CB: Did you? Fantastic.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Can I just wind things back a little. Tell me about the crew. How, at Langar you crewed up. How did that happen?
WM: Well [laughs] it was an old RAF system.
CB: Go on.
WM: Open the hangar door, everybody goes in and they shut the hangar door and you’re told to, to crew up. In other words you have to try and find a crew. And well we were alright, Nobby and I were alright, we knew each other.
CB: That’s the pilot.
WM: That’s right.
CB: What was his name?
WM: Noble. Noble.
CB: Noble. Right.
WM: Yeah. Because I had a few pilots before that but he was the one they were going to fly Lancasters with, you know, and so then we —
CB: Who took the initiative in selecting the rest of the crew?
WM: Well, it just happened that, happened to be we that were standing around and this old man came around, you know and we said, ‘Oh he looks alright. He’s got experience. What’s your name?’ ‘Graham. Graham Wilson’, ‘What are you?’, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m a tail gunner’, We said, ‘Oh bugger off. We don’t want, you’re six feet and odd and you don’t tell us that’, you know. ‘You’re something else’, you know. Anyway, Graham Wilson became the tail gunner. He was, he was already twenty five plus twenty six.
CB: Yeah. An old boy. Yes.
WM: I know about that but —
CB: Yeah.
WM: And of course, then of course we had we had Jimmy Dagg. Jimmy Dagg from New Zealand and he became, he became our, [pause] well what he, what he actually did was he was our radar man. He was a radar man. He looked after all the radar equipment, and operating that as well. And then we had, we had radar, we had the wireless operator. We had a wireless operator and he was a signaller, Wireless Op/AG. He was a signaller as they called themselves, and he came from across the Clyde from me and his name was Dave Mitchell. [pause] Then of course the mid-upper, the mid-upper gunner, well he come from Canterbury. Peter. Peter Enstein and he and the family have a, have a hotel in Canterbury still, you know.
TB: You met up with one of them at the ITV do didn’t you?
WM: Sorry?
TB: You met up with someone at the ITV do.
WM: Yeah.
TB: Who was that?
WM: Well, that was that, that was the same ones that we met later on in life. Yes.
CB: Who was the flight engineer?
WM: The flight, the flight —
CB: Flight engineer.
WM: The flight engineer was Gus. He come from, he came from London, you know.
CB: Gus.
WM: Yeah, Gus Mitchell. Not Mitchell [pause] Oh what was his second name. Gus. Oh I’ll come back to him in a minute.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
WM: Sorry about that.
CB: Right. Now, anything else that we need to cover that comes to your mind particularly?
[pause]
WM: Well, just about [pause] Well I think we’ve been covering it in general. We’ve covered in general, you know.
CB: Yes.
WM: We haven’t gone into designated drops and designated flights and —
CB: Ok.
WM: Where people got shot up and things like that.
CB: Yeah. Well that’s —
WM: I haven’t done that.
CB: No. Can you do that?
WM: I haven’t done that on purpose.
CB: Oh right. Ok.
WM: I haven’t done that on purpose.
CB: Yeah.
WM: We were quite lucky. We were quite lucky. We went in, in to Bomber Command as a crew and we come out as a crew. We were lucky.
CB: Yeah.
WM: We, the pilots I had earlier on for the small and light aircraft and things like that the most memorable one to me was this chap as I say when I started off he was a, he was a pilot officer, you know, and he finished up as the, as the wing commander. And with that he [pause] he actually, well to me he was a person who deserved everything he ever got because he was, he was a first class team leader, he was a first class gentleman. If he told you a thing then he meant it, he didn’t elaborate on it, you know. And his name was Rob Murray. Of course he had various, various high decorations during his time.
CB: Yeah. Such as?
WM: Well he got all the high ones.
CB: DSO, DFC.
WM: That’s right.
CB: And bars?
WM: Well he did. He did, yes.
CB: So, when you were on operations, what was the most challenging thing on that? So you’re on the Lancaster —
WM: Well on a Lancaster the main challenging thing was to watch out for night fighters.
CB: Right.
WM: You know, by that time your navigational aids were good but the worst thing about it was the German night fighters. Because there were so many young crews, as I call them, shot down before they even left the UK. The likes of chaps just about ready to shove off the cliffs there, you know, they got shot down, you know.
CB: The night fighters were in that close were they? On the way to meet you.
WM: Oh yes. Now then and also at night time on the return trips. That was also the night fighters rejoice.
CB: Right.
WM: Oh yes. You don’t hear a lot about that but there was a lot of chaps were actually shot down here.
CB: Yeah.
WM: On the return.
CB: Yeah.
WM: On the return journey.
CB: And what about the British night fighters that were counteracting those?
WM: Oh well that was up to my Jimmy Dagg and our boffin boy to do that. To try and, try and keep our special signals going. Aye.
CB: So Jimmy Dagg was, where was he operating? Behind the signaller.
WM: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: And who was your bomb aimer?
WM: I did the bomb aimer as well as that because I did, I did the navigating and the bomb aimer.
CB: Oh did you? Right.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Ok. Right. And so when you were on the sorties in the night obviously.
WM: Yeah.
CB: In the squadron. Then what, you were in a stream.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Did you ever see other aircraft while you were there?
WM: Oh yes, yes. Oh yes, we did.
CB: How close did any of them get?
WM: Well I think sometimes within a hundred metres. And other than that you had to watch out for chaps who were either too low or too high. Or too quick on the bomb release. Yeah.
CB: Any coming down from above you?
WM: Oh yes. But you know the thing is that if you went straight through on the guidelines of what you were told to do you were much safer than if you tried to do something different.
CB: Right.
WM: Aye.
CB: So because you’ve got the extra person on board then you’re doing the bomb aiming as well as the navigation.
WM: That’s right. That’s right.
CB: So the practicality is on the run in. How far out from the target are you doing straight and level.
WM: Well a lot of that depended on the territory and the terrain and how it was at night time you know. But generally, generally in later days when the pathfinders were going it was twenty, thirty miles and more.
CB: And you are, you are not. You are releasing the bombs as the bomb aimer.
WM: Yeah.
CB: But you’re not controlling the aircraft. Is that right?
WM: No. Well you did control the aircraft.
CB: Oh.
WM: Because you were controlling the pilot.
CB: That’s what I meant, you’re telling the pilot.
WM: Oh yes.
CB: Rather than having the remote.
WM: Yeah. Oh yes.
CB: Yourself.
WM: Oh yeah. The thing is as I often joke about coming out of the road here at night time I say to people, ‘Left. Left. Left. Left. Right.’
CB: Yes.
WM: You know.
CB: And then you had to do the photoflash afterwards. So how soon would that be after you’d released?
WM: Well that. All that, that depended on how the target was.
CB: Right.
WM: But what you did was you counted in. You say each, each lot of bombs were [pause] were going to go off at different heights because they were different types of bomb types you were going. It wasn’t just all the same type
CB: Ok. So what were the types?
WM: Well you had everything from the small incendiaries, well the nuisance bombs, you know.
CB: Yeah.
WM: The big incendiaries that used to drop and probably set two or three buildings going you know.
CB: Right. So your load would be a mixture of high explosive.
WM: That’s right.
CB: And incendiaries.
WM: Normally was.
CB: So the photoflash was to illuminate the target.
WM: Oh to try and, yeah.
CB: And when did the camera fire. How did that happen?
WM: Well that was timed, that, we didn’t —
CB: Automatic.
WM: We didn’t actually do the timing.
CB: Right.
WM: That was actually arranged ahead of time you know.
CB: So if you weren’t at the right height for the original calculation.
WM: Yeah.
CB: What happened?
WM: Well then, then of course they could give you, could give you, you know say whether you were actually within that area or not, you know.
CB: Yes.
WM: Oh yes.
CB: Ok.
WM: A lot of people turn around say now that it was scattered and all the rest of it but a lot of them didn’t realise that you might have had a change of wind. The wind might have went up from fifty or sixty knots to about a hundred knots.
CB: Right. And how did you detect that change?
WM: Well, well what you did was you were finding your winds all the time and that. You had to try and allow for that you know.
CB: But you’re not using a sextant.
WM: That was the old days.
TB: Looking out the window.
CB: So you’re using Gee.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Are you? And GH.
WM: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: And GH?
WM: And of course. Yeah. And otherwise H2S, you know.
TB: H2S. Yeah. Just a quick one —
WM: Once you, once you started on H2S you know it was a different story entirely.
CB: So what could you see with H2S?
WM: Well if you had water around you it was excellent. If you were going up alongside a canal you had excellent because the more water you had around you the better it was.
CB: The contrast.
WM: Yeah.
CB: So how did you use H2S? For navigation? Or could you use it for the actual bombing?
WM: Well we could use it, could use it for navigation. You could use it for bombing as well. Oh yes.
CB: But what was the downside of using H2S?
TB: The tracking.
WM: [laughs] You should know what that was.
TB: Yeah. Yeah.
WM: That was as bad as the night fighter.
TB: Yeah. Yes.
CB: So the practicality of it is that you’d only switch it on occasionally.
WM: Well the trouble was the better you were on the other instruments, the better your crew were on the other instruments, the safer you were.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Once you got the run ups and different things like that you then you were taking your chances.
CB: Yeah. To what extent were you aware of the German system of upward firing guns in night fighters?
WM: Well the thing is, the thing is this. With that —
CB: The Schrage music.
WM: It was something, it was something your rear gunner was dreading because after a certain angle he’d no control over that at all but if he, if he was on his, on his proper lateral defences for the aircraft, fine . Now, it’s, you couldn’t turn, you couldn’t turn around, turn around and say that the rear gunner missed something you know because it was a big bit of sky you know.
CB: How many times did you get fired on from a fighter?
WM: Very seldom. I dare say we actually got fired directly on with the other ones but we were aware of them, you know.
CB: And did you do many corkscrews?
WM: Oh yes, quite a few. Quite a few of them. Yeah. That that was a lot of the targets like Kiel and places like that that was when you did a lot of corkscrews was on that.
CB: Yeah. And they were using box flak were they?
WM: Yeah. Well you see, along, along the canals and that you had your pockets because, you know, the canal was where there had been several good attempts or big attempts at different things. Like one night we went out on the Friday nights and we bombed this battleship, you know and we actually put it on its side, you know. And the Sunday night we were called up again and somebody said, ‘you’ve got to go and so and so’. And a voice chipped up and said, ‘Hey are you wanting us to right and put it back up the way it was before?’ [laughs] That was a fact, that’s what he said. That was actually recorded as being recorded. [laughs]
CB: So when you were bombing shipping what bombs were you using?
WM: You had a medium height bomb you know but we weren’t in for the shipping direct we weren’t in a lot of these special ones.
CB: Right.
WM: But dropping bombs. Dropping bombs in the submarine pens, nowwe had the big ones for them as well.
CB: You did carry the big ones.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
WM: But you see the thing is this. We had a modern, we had a modern Lancaster, the most up to date one, yeah, And the thing about them was, was that you were, you were dropping. Later on what we were doing although we thought we were dropping on submarine pens, it wasn’t. We were dropping them because the V2s and the V2s were in there and at the beginning we didn’t even know that there was V2s and V1s, we just thought they were submarine pens because the amount of damage that the government believed was going to come on the London area was going to be horrendous and there could have been, you know. It was bad enough the likes of people down this area knew about the V2s and V1s and things like that.
CB: Yeah. Sure.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Right. Do you want to stop there for a mo?
TB: How did they discover, the Germans discover —
[Recording paused]
CB: What was the role, the difference between you, sorry, the wireless operator and Jimmy Dagg. So Jimmy Dagg —
WM: Well the wireless operator had, as you say wireless.
CB: Yeah.
WM: He had his official work to do.
CB: Yeah. Signaller.
WM: Yes.
CB: Right.
WM: When Jimmy was doing this other thing you had, you had lots of stuff that was introduced that Jimmy used to use, you know. A lot of it, we never touched it, we never touched it, you know. Same as the, same as the youngster with his black box, we never saw what was inside that.
CB: So, Ok. Who was the youngster then?
WM: Eh?
CB: Who was the youngster?
WM: Well, he was young Weir.
CB: Oh he was young Weir was he?
WM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
WM: But we never, well maybe a bit [laughs] [coughs] we didn’t, we didn’t treat him as a kid, you know, but we did actually look after him, you know, because by the time we were doing that we were, you know, we had quite a few things under our belts sort of thing, you know. Yeah.
CB: So he only came in later did he?
WM: That’s right.
CB: Right. Ok.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Where did you meet your wife and when?
WM: Oh I met my wife in 1944 in Dunoon, in Scotland.
TB: Up there.
WM: There it is. There. Up there.
TB: Yeah.
WM: That’s the picture up there.
CB: Yeah.
WM: But what it was, was we got, we got some leave and I managed to persuade the old man to give us a few days extra. And I said, ‘It takes us two days to get there and two days to get back again, you know’. And he said, ‘Ok’. So we got about ten, got about ten days and that, and that was the July of ‘44. As I say we thought we deserved a, we deserved a bit of a rest after what we’d been doing for D-day and all the rest of it, you know.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
WM: Yeah.
CB: And how many other bombers did you see blow up?
WM: Quite a few actually but you were never sure whether it was your ones or the enemy that had been got at, you know.
CB: How do you mean your ones?
WM: I mean, I mean our aircraft. Some other Lancasters.
CB: Which, whether it was a German plane that blew up.
WM: Yeah.
CB: Or a British one.
WM: That’s right.
CB: Ok.
WM: Sometimes they went, they went puff too. Yeah. But no, no, it was hard to say.
CB: And your rear, Graham Wilson in the back.
WM: Yeah.
CB: At six feet he was squashed in. Did you have the later .5 machine guns in the rear turret?
WM: Yeah. Yeah. We had that. I’ll tell you what we did, I never mentioned this with —
CB: Previously.
WM: At one time from [pause] this was one of the sort of trips that we did from [pause] from Tuddenham. We, we went up to Abbotsinch and we got new engines put in, you know, and , well they turned around and said these ones were getting a bit old and so they were but we got these new engines put in.
CB: More powerful.
WM: Powerful. We could fly faster, fly further, fly higher, all the rest of it. Anyway, there was only three. So anyway we went up there and we got up to Abbotsinch which is now Glasgow airport, you know. I knew it as Abbotsinch as a kid, you know. Anyway, we left that aircraft. We had taken our own ground crew with us.
CB: Oh.
WM: We were told to do that, they also got leave, and we went home and all the rest of it. We didn’t scatter because everybody came and stayed with my mother, you know. Anyway, we got back and they had these new engines and the ground crew were back. They also had a couple of Scotsmen in the ground crew and we had to test these new engines and fly them around and give a report. So we used to take the chiefy, if you know what a chiefy is. Do you know what a chiefy is?
CB: Yeah. The chief technician. Yeah.
WM: No, no.
CB: The ground crew chief.
WM: No.
CB: Oh. Which one?
WM: No. A chiefy was a flight sergeant.
CB: Oh.
WM: [laughs] That is where it came from.
CB: Yes.
WM: The equivalent from the, from the Navy.
CB: Right.
WM: Was the chiefy.
CB: Right.
WM: And the flight sergeant became a chiefy. But anyway their chiefy came along and we got these engines back and had to run them up, so we did that and we had a couple of days flying around and one night in the, in the mess and the naval boys were shooting a line about HMS Forth and the submarines in the Holy Loch and they said that nobody could get near them, you know. Well, I’ll tell you what, I just, I never said a word and I’d told the crew already you don’t mention anything about. They might have guessed my accent a bit but, you know. Anyway, so anyway what we did we went into Paisley and we got a whole lot, a whole lot of little bags of lime, you know, and we loaded it up in the Lancaster and we took off. So, we had, we had permission to fly anywhere we wanted as long as it wasn’t in one of these defensive barrages, you know, whatever they call them. Anyway, we decided that we’d go and see The Forth. So we got in, we revved her up, we took off, we went across the Clyde to Erskine. We went up in to Loch Lomond and flew up Loch Lomond and flying low, used to flying low, then we jumped. We jumped over the section where the Norsemen used to draw their boats across Loch Lomond to Loch Long. And we jumped across there, down Loch Long, moved over into Loch Eck, down Loch Eck, Glen Massan and then we just opened up the throttle. Full throttle right down the Holy Loch and dropped all this stuff on HMS Forth and all the submarines and got the hell out of it, you know. Anyway, we got, we did, we went away down the Isle of Arran and all the way around about, the bottom of the Clyde, you know, and back up again about an hour later, you know. So, eventually we landed and this lieutenant commander sent for us, and we paraded in front of him, all scraggly buggers, you know. None of us had proper uniform on, we’d just what we used to use around the aircraft you know. Anyway, he says, ‘You’re all on a charge’. ‘Why sir?’, ‘Well it’s my Lancaster that did this, AC-Charlie, and I won’t have it’. I said, ‘What do you mean your Lancaster, sir?’ He said, ‘Well they’re based here and they’re my Lancasters. I’m in trouble for them’. I said, ‘Oh. Why’s that?’, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You made a mess of the Forth’. ‘Don’t you remember the other night in the mess? All these naval boys were saying it was impossible, you know’. ‘Well. Dismissed. We’ll see you later when you come back from your next job’. So we went up and went up north and we loaded up with bombs and eventually the idea was to go up into Leningrad, you know, so called Leningrad then, you know and the siege. A lot of people thought the siege was just like across the road there you know but it wasn’t, it was about forty or fifty miles away, you know, but at the same time old Jerry had it all wrapped up, you know. But the Russians had their great bunkers there that you could land a Lancaster on. Well they had, they used to say, ‘Watch the bloody holes in the runway’. But they used to fill them in all the time. Anyway we landed there, got under this big, what was supposed to be bomb proof shelters, you know. Well we knew what we were doing the other side but anyway that was it. So we stayed there until the wind changed because we couldn’t have the wind that we came in on otherwise we’d be flying over the Jerries’ lines immediately, you know, at low level. So we waited until the wind changed, right, Gulf of Finland, away, good.Back up were Russian bombs then, Back right down we dropped the Russian bombs. Now this was all his majesty’s ideas and I don’t mean the King either. This was Winston Churchill’s ideas to show what, what we could do, you know. Anyway, we went back to Lossiemouth and back again and back again and we were lucky, you know. We had a few chips and things like that. Anyway, the last time we got to Lossiemouth they said. ‘No. It’s finished. You did enough’. ‘Oh thank you very much. Where do we go now?’, ‘Go back to Abbotsinch.’ Back to Abbotsinch and all the boffins came up from the, from a factory which is, well the factory’s about twenty minutes in a motor car, you know. About five minutes in a aeroplane, you know.
CB: Yeah.
WM: But that’s where they used to make these engines, you know. Anyway, all the boffins were there. Took the, took the engines off, took them away again and then we went up to see the old man as we call a lieutenant commander. So we got up there and I knocks on the door. No lieutenant commander, full commander. And I said to the boys, I said, ‘Oh this is alright. He’s been posted somewhere’, you know. He wasn’t posted somewhere, he’d been promoted to full commander which is just under a captain in the Navy . Yeah. So I saw his secretary, a very nice young lady, I got on well with her, you know. Anyway, we said to her, ‘When can we see the boss?’ Well, she said, ‘I’ll make an appointment for you’,’ Alright’. The next morning appointment everybody had their best blues on, shining, buttons polished, boots polished. She led us in. He was out in his other office. ‘Come in. [pause] Morning gentleman. Why are you here?’ I said, ‘Beg your pardon sir. You’re the one who told us to come back here when we come back and you would sentence us to that escapade that we had’. ‘Don’t know anything about it’. I said, ‘But —‘, ‘I don’t know anything about it’. He said, ‘Good trips boys?’ ‘Yes’, ‘And they had theirs?’,’ Yes’. ‘My Lancasters’. So there it was. Nothing happened about it.
CB: That was lucky. Yeah.
WM: But the, there was a great friend of mine. He’d got a book, another book I think over there somewhere. Anyway, he’s written it. Peter. Peter Lovatt, you know.
TB: Oh that’s the bloke you met at the what’s name isn’t it?
WM: Sorry?
TB: That’s the one you met at —
WM: Oh right
CB: Is it there Tony?
TB: Yeah.
WM: Eh?
TB: Yeah.
WM: One on submarines, and one on this, and one on that.
CB: Yes. Lots of captains on HMS Forth.
WM: That’s right.
CB: Yes.
WM: And [pause] and of course as I say what happened was that I lost touch. And you know the Millies? [pause] Well the Millies are sponsored by the ITV and The Sun newspaper and one of the first ones that was done I was asked to go on it. Anyway, I’d been, I’d been speaking to a young lady at the Bomber Command luncheon on the Sunday.
CB: Yes.
WM: And this thing was going to happen about ten days later, you know. But at that time I didn’t know. So, anyway, what happened was that I couldn’t, I couldn’t find him anywhere. I’d written to him, we’d lost touch and that was it, you know. Anyway, I even got a letter from him. It took fourteen years to come to me, I got it though. Fourteen years to come to me. Anyway, I tried to find him, couldn’t find him. Anyway, on the, on the Saturday [pause] no, I’ll tell you a sad thing that happened was on the Sunday I’d been at the Bomber Command luncheon and my wife was dead and my children said, ‘No dad. You must go and we’ll see to everything at the moment.’ So, anyway on the Friday we had the service and on the Saturday morning my daughter got a phone call saying that I was wanted for something special for the Millies. We’d never heard about the Millies. Anyway, she got to know a bit more than I did and then apparently this lady went to work to try and find Peter and she found his son playing golf and then that led to them finding Peter. And then of course on the Wednesday I got a car that came here for me. I was warned about this. First of all they said black tie and wearing black tie is fine. The next one was lounge suit, yeah, that’s fine. Next one was blazers and badges, that’s fine, you know.Anyway, what did happen was that I took the whole lot and I got dressed here in the dickie suit. All the way down to London, just myself in this green tomato carriage. The next thing I knew we stopped at this hotel. ‘No. Keep in where you are’. ‘Where are we going now?’ ‘Just you wait and see. I’ve got my orders not to lose you’. I said, ‘Oh. Thank you’. So they took us to Number 10. So that was fine. So we had a photographic session and shaking hands and all this. And then we got taken back to the hotel. We went to the Dorchester first and we, we had drinks there and then they said, ‘Time up. Everybody in’. And we had buses by this time, great big buses, you know, and the driver had already told us that, ‘You sit in the place where you are because I’ve got you on camera and you don’t dare go and move. Or another bus’. Anyway, we got back to the hotel and somebody says, ‘How about dinner?’ ‘No. You’ll get dinner where we’re going’. ‘Where are we going?’ ‘We’ll take you there’. So we don’t know where we’re going. So all done up in dickie suits and medals and this, that and the next thing. And we get there and we’re at the War Museum and it’s all lined up like Hollywood. All these searing lights and all this thing and we get escorted up. Once again, in the bus they said, ‘Have you got your number?’ The bloke next to me, he keep talking away to me and he turned out to be with, he was the boss of the Royal Navy you know. And he was down in the dumps because they’d just took his aeroplanes away that day, you know. He wasn’t very happy with them, you know. On the other side of me was a young pilot officer who’d a brand new DFC up here, you know. Anyway, that was fine. Anyway, we got there and they said, ‘Right. As you come up if you get a green ticket you go to the right. You get a red ticket you go to the left.’ Alright. I got a red ticket. I’m going this way and all these film stars and all these other high [unclear] and had a great run ‘cause you meet everybody because that’s the idea of the two lots. Then all of a sudden somebody shouts out. ‘Ready. The doors will be open in five minutes ladies and gentlemen. And after you get in through the doors there’s toilets on the right and the left that you may use’. [laughs] Anyway, we get there and then of course they tell us what table we’re at. Then I find out that I’m with another five Bomber Command boys. Bomber Command. Five. Five and one is six. Something wrong. Anyway, we go back. We go, we sit down and we get our nibbles and this, that and the next thing and that’s the beginning of a good evening, you know. Plenty of wine coming around you know. Very nice. Good stuff. Then the next thing I noticed that there were people going up to the platform. So this man went up and this lady went up and this man went up and eventually, ‘Bomber Command. Table Thirteen.’ We go up. There’s still six. Anyway, we get up there and as we get up one of the chaps, about his size, what does he do? He falls down through the trapdoor. Honestly all you could see was he was down to about my size. [laughs] So, anyway, what happens then is that we’re beginning to get the idea there’s presentations going on. So we got this presentation, a beautiful glass ornament we’ll call it, a beautiful thing. We’ve got it. Anyway, what happened, we got that and everybody else had moved away when they got theirs and this presenter, that fella, same height as me, white hair and this young blonde girl. She was here and he was there and wouldn’t they let me move. No. Then the next thing was the roll of the drums. ‘Brrmbrrrm brummmm brmmm’. What happens?
TB: Peter comes in.
WM: They have it like that programme, “Your Life.” Eventually what happens, I get to see something. I thought to myself it can’t bloody well be. There’s Peter Lovatt there and of course they said to me, ‘What would you like to do tonight?’ I said, ‘I don’t know but I’m beginning to think my imaginations’, you know. Anyway, apparently my accent was broader than it should be. Anyway, what happened, It was Peter. They’d found him and they had him dickied up and they had him there after all these years. Yeah.
TB: [inaudible]
CB: Extraordinary.
TB: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’re restarting. So what you’ve got is a plate here.
WM: Right.
CB: Yeah.
WM: Now —
CB: So they presented to you.
WM: Now, when we went in to the, when we went in there, on the table, there were lovely sets of plates were all on the table and of course everyone was admiring them and reading them. And then of course when we came back from being on the platform they had disappeared, you know. But unbeknown to us they’d made up bags. Extremely heavy, strong, beautiful carved out, set out plastic bags. Now in the audience was my friend. Who?
CB: This is your pilot?
WM: Camilla.
CB: Oh Camilla.
WM: Camilla and her husband.
CB: Right.
WM: So, anyway, what happened during the time we were going around and they went outside and then everybody came back inside after the toilet, you know. What happened then was that we were at the tables and the VIPs came around to greet us although everybody told us we were the VIPs and not the ones coming to greet us. So, anyway, the Prince of Wales and his good lady was coming around and they got to me and I was told that, you know, we could talk to them. They’re here, we could talk to them. You’re the VIPs and you can tell them any stories you like so long as you don’t go on too long, you know. Maybe they knew me. Anyway, what happened, when they came to me I said, ‘Good evening ma’am. Good evening sir. Thank you very much for coming tonight. We’re very happy to see you here’. I said, ‘By the way can I tell you a little story about your granny’. That’s to him. And Camilla takes out a wee book, I’ve got one of them here, yeah, h, a little book like that, you know, and her pen. I said, ‘This is a story’, I said, ‘In 1960 I built a race course for your granny and I was given ten days to build it while she went on a cruise up and down Lake Nyassa in Africa’, and of course then the ears were going but I hurried the story up. So, anyway, anyway Camilla’s busy writing and she says, ‘This is going to be our story at Christmas’. Christmas is only a few days away, you know. ‘This is going to be our story. Nobody knows that one’, you know. So, anyway she writes down all this stuff about what I told her and all the rest of it, you know. And I said, ‘I hope you can read that’, and she said, ‘Yes. I better’. I says, ‘Ok’. And Charles is watching her. Anyway, the next thing that happens, the next thing that happens is he says, ‘Is that all?’ I says, ‘Aye. I can tell you a lot of stories about your mum if you like too’, you know. He says, ‘Another time’, he says. I said, ‘Alright, we’ll make it another time’, [laughs]. Anyway, I’ve met them several times since. Anyway, what did happen the people on the platform turned about to these ones? Yeah. Now, he’s a secretary for Bomber Command and has been for generations. There’s myself there and this was my nominated girlfriend for the evening. Well the thing is this, she’s married now and got a baby now. [laughs] And this is the one that fell down the hole. Well there you are.
CB: Fantastic.
WM: This is us shaking hands on the — yeah. That’s my friend Peter Lovatt.
CB: Yeah.
TB: Have you heard from him since? Have you heard from him since?
WM: Oh yes. Aye.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Bill Moore. Two
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-18
Type
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Sound
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AMooreWT160318
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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02:45:48 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Moore joined the Royal Air Force after spending time in the Air Defence Cadet Corps, qualifying as an observer. He tells of his family history in wartime and his transatlantic trip, landing in New York before heading to Canada for his training. He went to 138 Squadron and tells of his time flying Lysanders from RAF Tempsford, taking members of Special Operations Executive over the France and also of dropping supplies to the Resistance. He also tells that on one of these operations, his aircraft had to be helped by local villagers to get airborne again. As well as Lysanders, William flew in Hudsons, Stirlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters in Bomber Command. Bill tells about 138 Squadrons part in Operation Manna - he received the Legion of Honour from France and also a Dutch Medal of Commendation. He also tells of his time after the war when he returned to the building trade working in Rhodesia and Zambia.<br /><br /><span data-contrast="none" xml:lang="EN-GB" lang="EN-GB" class="TextRun SCXW153699638 BCX0"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW153699638 BCX0">Please note: The veracity of this interview has been called into question. We advise that corroborative research is undertaken to establish the accuracy of some of the details mentioned and events witnessed.</span></span>
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--Scarborough
Canada
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
France
France--Istres
Netherlands
Zimbabwe
Zambia
138 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
displaced person
Gee
H2S
Halifax
Hudson
Lancaster
Lysander
observer
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Benson
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Tempsford
RAF Tuddenham
Resistance
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/450/7970/AHarrisonR151116.1.mp3
78c4628fae306c070946abd90f7380e4
Dublin Core
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Title
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Harrison, Richard
Richard Harrison
Dick Harrison
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Richard Harrison (b. 1924, 1833947 Royal Air Force) a page from his log book and documents about gunnery training. Richard Harrison flew operations as a B-24 air gunner with70 Squadron, 231 Wing, 2015 Group in Italy.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Harrison and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Harrison, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay then so, this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command centre and Lincoln University, and today I’m with Dick Harrison in York, and what I’d like you to tell me is, first of all, is just date of birth and just a little bit about your family and your, your upbringing, what your parents did, that sort of thing.
RH: Yeah, I was born of the 5th of February 1924, I was born in Köln en Rhine, Deutschland, Cologne, Germany and er yeah, Dad English, Mother German, we came back to England in I think it was 1926, I was two years old.
AM: How did your Dad meet your Mum then if she was German?
RH: He was in the army of occupation.
AM: In? In Cologne or?
RH: In Germany.
AM: In Germany, yeah.
RH: Yeah, because he’d been on the Western Front from 1915 to 18, he was a regular soldier when he was in Cologne and various other places in the Rhineland, but he met my Mother in Cologne.
AM: Right.
RH: I think they were married there in 1922, something like that.
AM: So, what did he do when you came back to England? What did your parents do?
RH: Well he was a regular soldier and he carried on being a soldier.
AM: Right. Right through, yeah?
RH: Yeah until 19, yeah 1936.
AM: Oh blimey, right.
RH: He left the army and became a civil servant.
AM: Ah, me too, well that’s another story.
[laughter]
RH: And me too.
[laughter]
AM: So, tell me a bit about your school years then.
RH: School years, well Dad’s camp was near Salisbury, Winterbourne, so I went to a primary school in Winterbourne, and although people say today, you know, how good the schools were back then, this was a truly appalling school [laughs] well, and from there, I can’t remember what it was called, you sat the exam when you were eleven. And from there I went to Bishops school in Salisbury which was a local grammar school, then unfortunately my Dad left the army, the civil service post was in Gloucestershire, so we had to move to Gloucestershire, and I went to and I had to transfer schools, from a very [emphasis] good and excellent school in Salisbury to certainly a below par one in Gloucester.
AM: Right.
RH: Near Gloucester.
AM: What age were you when you left?
RH: When I left what?
AM: When you left school.
RH: Sixteen.
AM: Did you do schools certificate and everything?
RH: No, I didn’t.
AM: No.
RH: No, I had enough of that school.
AM: Right. [laughs] So what did you do when you left school?
RH: Worked in an office.
AM: Yeah, doing?
RH: Pardon?
AM: Doing just normal administrative?
RH: Yes.
AM: Office work.
RH: Yes, just clerical work, that’s all.
AM: Yeah.
RH: It was a company that, it was a [unclear]company so I was dealing with invoices and things like that.
AM: Right. So what year are we up to now? Sixteen, nineteen, I’m just trying to work my own arithmetic out, if you were sixteen?
RH: I left school in 1940.
AM: Right, so the war had started.
RH: Yeah and I was already involved.
[background noise]
AM: Right, and I’m looking now at the County and City of Gloucester air raid precautions, and this is to certify that mister Richard Harrison completed his course in anti-gas training, under the auspices of County and City of Gloucester air raid precautions central authority and has acquired sufficient knowledge of anti-gas measures to act as a member of the public ARP service. Tell me about that then, what was that like?
RH: Erm, and that’s what I—
AM: Oh, I’ve missed a bit, nature of the course attended was—
RH: Was a cycle messenger.
AM: Right, what did that mean?
RH: We were about ten miles north of Bristol, so when they were attacking Bristol, you know I was very interested, the first time I saw flak [laughs] but—
AM: What was that like then?
RH: Well, I mean as a kid it’s all very interesting, isn’t it? I mean we, the village hall was our local ARP post, and every Friday night that was my job, even when I was at school, every Friday night, get there for six or seven o’clock, I think it was, until six, seven o’clock the next morning, with my bike ready to go anywhere. And all over Bristol, it was a fantastic sight really was, searchlights, flak, German bombers coming over lit up, one crashed about a mile away from us here, but no it was quite a, quite a sight, and when they attacked Avonmouth and the oil tanks were set on fire, the whole of the horizon was red, yeah amazing sight.
AM: So, where were you sent off cycling? Taking what sort of messages?
RH: [sighs] Well we was just, I can’t remember the details. I remember one, one regular one was to cycle down to the pub and bring them back a pint of cider or something, and that was a regular run.
[laughter]
AM: Right, so the message was, how many drinks?
RH: Yeah.
AM: So, so when, so that was it, you did your cycling in your messenger training.
RH: Yes.
AM: And then what?
RH: What?
AM: What made you join the RAF? Oh, what came next should I say with regards to?
RH: The Home Guard.
AM: Right.
RH: I joined that when, yeah before I was seventeen I joined that and despite what people say and that, because there’s that film—
AM: Dad’s Army
RH: Dad’s Army. I mean, it was one of the most useful things ever because I was in a platoon where the officer commanding was World War one soldier, my Father was a platoon sergeant, World War one soldier, there were several of them, I mean when I went into the RAF, foot drill, arms drill, using a rifle, shooting on the range, using a machine gun.
AM: You’d already done it.
RH: It was easy, yeah, it was easy. I also joined the Air Training Corps about the same time.
AM: Right.
RH: So, at one time I had three balls in the air [laughs] ARP, Home Guard, Air Training Corps.
AM: And [unclear]
RH: And in addition to that, I took a St John’s, St John ambulance first aid course and got a certificate for that, so—
AM: Right.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Blimey. So, when you joined the RAF, but I think Gary said RAF regiment?
RH: Pardon?
AM: I think Gary said you joined the RAF regiment?
[phone rings]
RH: Excuse me.
[interview paused]
RH: Where were we?
AM: So, where were we?
GR: You were juggling three balls, ATC.
AM: We were juggling all those balls with your ATC, and your Home Guard.
RH: In the end I packed up the, one of them became civil defence from ARP, so I packed, I packed that up, I couldn’t get—
AM: Right.
RH: Otherwise I was chasing round four nights a week [laughs] and weekends with the Home Guard.
AM: And working in your office.
RH: And working as well.
AM: And working as well.
RH: Yeah.
AM: So, you’re coming up to eighteen, why the RAF? Where did you join? What was, what was you’re, what was it like?
RH: For a young lad I mean it’s, it’s just the glamour of the thing. King and country had nothing at all to do with it [laughs] don’t say that—
[laughter]
AM: We’ll cut that out.
RH: All I wanted, well I mean, one saw a war films didn’t you, ‘target for the night’ and all the rest of it. But unfortunately, I had a heart condition and my, on my medical records which I saw, because I wanted to go into aircrew, I wanted to be a wireless operator.
AM: Right.
RH: Wireless operator [unclear] because I’d been, Father had taught my brother and I morse code, and in the house, he’d rigged up two keys and we used to use that, even when we were ten or eleven years old we knew the morse code, and in the Air Training Corps, when the CO discovered I already knew morse, I became the morse code instructor for the squadron.
[laughter]
RH: And, but when I went for the medical, I think I was, temporarily unfit for aircrew duties, they said that would right itself eventually, and I remember being interviewed by the, this officer, he said, ‘well, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘ that you’re fit for ground crew duties but you’re not fit for aircrew duties,’ I said, ‘right, in that case I don’t want to join the RAF, I’m going to join the army,’ [laughs] because I was fit enough for the army, and I had a mate, a school friend who was up at Catterick driving a tank, saying how great it was and I could picture myself in that, so I said, ‘I’m going to join the army, the Armour Corps,’ ‘no you’re not,’ he said, ‘no you’re not,’ he said, ‘we’re not going to waste, what was it twelve months or more Air Training Corps and then you go in the army,’ he said, ‘you’ll be called up,’ and that’s what happened. I got, yeah, before Christmas it was, 1942.
AM: Right.
RH: And I got my call up papers and went to Penarth in South Wales where they sorted you out, and because I’d been a clerk in civvy street, I went through trade tests, maths, English, I could type, type writing, book keeping, and that took all morning, and then at the end of it they said, ‘alright you’re now a trade group for clerk general duties,’ but it did mean that whereas a lad going in without any trade at all was getting three shillings a day, I got four shillings and threepence a day because I was a trade [laughs] and of course guys like one of the guys I sort of chummed up with, he had been a metal worker, and I can’t remember what trade he went into, but I know he was getting sort of, six shillings and something a day because he was a group one trade as against group four. Right, so what do you want next then?
AM: Ooh, well, what happened next? Tell me about it. What were you actually doing then? So, you got three a day—
RH: I can think, in my eight weeks I think it was, square bashing and then I was posted to RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire.
AM: Right.
RH: And, that was the base for the special duties squadrons, 161 and 138, and they were dropping supplies and people for the resistance.
AM: Right, okay.
RH: And it was all top secret, I mean I suppose I didn’t know what they were doing.
GR: There was Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins.
RH: Well, maybe so, Wing Commander Pickard, DSO, a couple of bars and all the rest of it, he was, he was the C.O. and, but I knew something about aircraft, and so what struck me was these Halifax’s, they had no mid upper turret, and I thought well that’s strange, and bomb trolleys were parked alongside the hangar with grass growing through them, so they weren’t being used [laughs] but no one told you anything. Eventually one of the guys in the office said, ‘Dick, do you know what we are doing?’ and this was after a month or so, I said, ‘yeah, I reckon you’re dropping agents into, into France,’ I said, because I had to do a what, a sort of duty every now and again, overnight, man the phone and so forth, and during that time, you would see a couple of black saloon cars going, going by, and they were going over to, what I discovered later, was a farm, an old farm where they were kitted up before they did their jumps. And, yeah, very secret, so I remember a guy crashed on take-off and they were all killed, and that night or the next night the father was calling and I answered the phone, and I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything,’ you know, ‘was he on the raid to Berlin?’ I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ [laughs] I knew what had happened to him but wasn’t allowed to say. And another little story, no need to record, as I say it was all top secret, this Halifax was missing, so that was seven guys as well, so into the HQ, came their, the NCOs, their pay books and in the pay book was a next of kin listed. Now the wireless operator in that crew had listed his next of kin as a girl in Sandy village, which was four or five miles—
AM: Yeah, I know where you mean.
RH: Away, you know?
AM: Yeah, I know exactly where you mean.
RH: You know where I mean? So, the Padre and another officer went down to give her the bad news, sort of thing he was missing, but I mean I wasn’t witness to this, I only heard about it afterwards, and apparently when they gave her the bad news, she said, ‘well he’ll be alright wont he?’ they said, ‘what do you mean?’ ‘well I mean, they are dropping supplies to the French resistance and they’ll —
AM: Oh God.
RH: Get him back. Which they didn’t. While I was there, not him, but while I was there a guy came back, but the only thing I saw was her arriving with an RAF police escort in a car, and she was wheeled in to see Wing Commander Pickard, and I suppose he read the riot act to her, keep your mouth shut.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And some years ago when I was caravanning down there, I went back to see if I could get onto Tempsford, but it was all wired off, but you could see the huts in the background, and I met, a local woman came out of her house, and as a wee child she remembered this place and she said, ‘you see that hedge there?’ she said, ‘we lived up on the hill and we weren’t allowed to come below that hedge, no civilians were allowed below that hedge line,’ it was so, so secret.
AM: It’s amazing isn’t it.
RH: On one occasion Wing Commander Pickard, flying a Hudson, that’s that one up there, that was—
AM: I’m looking at, I’m looking at models here.
RH: Yeah, that was his aircraft, and he’d taken people down to the south of France to a landing ground down there, and when it came to take off, he’d bogged down, because it was just a field, and so they had to turn out local farm horses and so forth and pull him onto hard ground so he could take off. I remember next morning in the HQ, one of the guys said to me, ‘have you seen the CO’s Hudson take off?’ I said, ‘no,’ he said, ‘well go and look at hangar so and so,’ and there it was parked up outside, still with mud up into the engines themselves, and he got a, I think he had three DSO’s, was it, Wing Commander Pickard? He was shot down in the end on another raid, yeah. So, there we are, what’s next then?
AM: So that’s that, well you tell me. What came next?
RH: I must have been the worst clerk general duties that the RAF ever had, because I wasn’t a bit interested in what I was doing [laughs] and I was always on the—
AM: Wanting to be up there.
RH: Back in front of the adjutant flight sergeant being given a lecture about something I’d done wrong. Then one day two guys came into the office and I knew they’d been in north Africa, and they said, ‘can we have a form to volunteer to go overseas,’ I said, ‘but you’ve only just come back.’ [emphasis]
AM: Two aircrew this?
RH: Pardon?
AM: Two aircrew you talking about?
RH: No, they weren’t aircrew.
AM: Oh right, okay still—
RH: They were two groundcrew. Said, ‘we’ve only just come back,’ and I said, ‘you want to go back out there again?’ ‘well, [emphasis] England, terrible place isn’t it, full of Yanks and all the rest, no, the sooner we get out of here the better,’ so I thought, what a good idea.
[laughter]
GR: Get me one of these forms.
[laughter]
RH: Get me one of those forms, yeah. And then I had a medical and this medical officer said, you know, as I said to you on the phone yesterday, he said, ‘right, condition no longer, so I’ll put you forward shall I, for the aircrew medical?’ I said, ‘no, no thanks I want to go overseas.’
[laughter]
RH: Did you read that letter?
GR: This one?
RH: Yeah, the one, the regiment one?
GR: Yes, I’m reading it, yeah.
AM: I’ll take a copy afterwards. So, you went overseas rather than aircrew?
RH: Yes, I volunteered to go overseas, it was all very quick, in fact I was sent on what they called, embarkation leave.
AM: Hmm, hmm.
GR: Yeah.
RH: And I think that was one week or two, and while I was at home in Gloucestershire, a telegram came telling me to report back to Tempsford, and I’d only been home two or three days, and so I went back and there was my posting notice, and I think, I thought the RAF were taking their revenge on me for not carrying on with aircrew because they posted me to an RAF Regiment squadron. And believe me in 1943, to be in the RAF Regiment, you know, I mean today, yes, they’ve got a good reputation, but that was really the backend of everything. And there were about a dozen of us, tradesmen, clerks, cooks, vehicle mechanics, armourers, wireless guys and so forth, and all resentful [laughs] at being posted to the regiment.
AM: Where was that though? Where were you posted to?
RH: Oh yeah, that was near Peterborough, near Peterborough. And, when I arrived there, there was a corporal clerk in the, what do you call it? Orderly room, in the orderly room. And as soon as I arrived, he sent off a signal under the adjutant’s signature, under who was away at the time, to the airman’s records at Innsworth in Gloucestershire saying, that Corporal so and so, can’t remember his name, was unfit for overseas duty. And so about, a couple of days later a signal came posting him out, didn’t get off kindly. [laughs]
AM: So where, where from, where did you go from Peterborough?
RH: Overseas.
AM: Yeah, but where though? Whereabouts?
RH: Sicily.
AM: Sicily.
RH: We went to, yeah it was a, it took a month altogether, although I think it was three weeks to Algiers on a troop ship as a convoy—
AM: I was going to say—
RH: As it was, but— Yeah, although in my letter I said, not eventful, in fact it was interesting at times because a U-boat got in amongst the convoy, and there were destroyers dashing up and down dropping depth charges. [laughs]
AM: It’s probably quite exciting when you are eighteen, nineteen.
RH: It was, when you are a kid, when you are a kid.
AM: You’re still a teenager, really aren’t you?
RH: Yeah, I remember saying to one of the seamen on our, on our troop ship, you know, ‘why is that, why are they flying a black pennant?’ he said, ‘that’s because they’ve detected a boat,’ he said, ‘they’ve detected a U, U-boat.’ Then we went to Algiers, and then we left Algiers, still didn’t know where we were going at that time. And then, I was in what was called the headquarters flight, which all the tradesmen were in that flight and we were called up for a briefing by the adjutant, and then we knew we were going to Sicily, and there were maps passed round for us to look at, and we were going to takeover, it was a light anti-aircraft squadron by the way, it had a twenty-millimetre cannon.
AM: Okay.
RH: We were going to take over defence of the Gerbini airfield near Cantania in Sicily, and that was the plan. But unfortunately, the Germans, you know, didn’t know what our plan was—
[laughter]
RH: And so, when we got to Sicily they were still there. [laughs] And er, yeah, we landed, we went to Malta first, I think we stayed there overnight or a couple of nights, and then we went to Sicily, and it was over the, over the side, down scrambling nets onto the landing craft and then onto a little [old?] pier sort of thing. And then we formed up and marched up into an olive grove and we were there for about a week. We were waiting for our trucks to arrive and the cannon, but they’d all been sunk. It was funny when we were en route from Algiers to Malta, there was a, ‘boom,’ bang and a great column of smoke over in the distance, that was the ship going down, and we heard later that was our ship [laughs] with all the trucks on.
AM: Blimey.
RH: So when we got to, then we were posted and moved to Lentini and that was a new, new landing ground, and we were sent there for anti-parachute troop duties. The Germans had dropped paratroopers into Sicily, not, not straight into combat, they dropped them as reinforcements to the guys who were already there.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And, but some of them were dropped too far south, and when the 8th Army had pushed up and they were left behind.
AM: I’m just looking, thinking about the geography, so you’re in the south of Sicily?
RH: Pardon?
AM: I’m just thinking about the geography of Sicily, so the Germans were on the island?
RH: Oh yeah, and eventually, eventually they had four divisions there. They had three to, three to begin with and then, then they dropped in two regiments from the 1st Parachute Division, and they were dropped in as reinforcements, behind their own lines. But they were the guys who eventually who stopped the 8th Army, you know, getting any further. But, and so when we got to Lentini, they were forming patrols of about a dozen guys and an NCO, and they [unclear] [laughs] searched the local olive groves and go through, and as I said in, in the letter, you know, God help them if they come across any German para’s because I’m sure we would have been sending out the first missing in action signals.
[laughter]
RH: Because they wouldn’t have stood a chance, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against those guys. So, that was that.
AM: So, how long were you there for, on Sicily?
RH: Pardon?
AM: How long were you on Sicily for? Ish?
RH: Yeah, we landed there a week after the invasion began, July, August, and then, when did we go into Italy? September the 3rd? So, we went into Italy on September the 10th, something like that.
AM: Right, so, so the Germans had been pushed back?
RH: They evacuated.
AM: They evacuated.
RH: Yeah, they got everything away, they got everything away, they had a defensive line sort of thing, and they just took it step by step back, and meanwhile they, I think forty thousand men all their guns and tanks, everything they managed to get across the Straits of Messina. And, [pause] the regiment squadron, we were on, we moved from Lentini to the Scordia landing ground, again it’s only a rough strip through, through the fields and that was the American 57th Fighter Group. They were equipped with P-40 Warhawks and they used to go out day after day trying to stop the Germans evacuating the—
AM: Getting across the Straits.
RH: Their, their stuff. And that was the first time I’d come across American, Americans and they were great guys, [emphasis] they really were. And later on, we were on the same airfield, when I was in aircrew and again, you know, they really are first, first class blokes, I thought.
AM: So, you’re on, we’re on the push now, what, what month did we say we were? August? What, what—
GR: No, September into Italy.
AM: And September into Italy.
RH: September into Italy.
AM: So you—
RH: I’ll just tell this little story while we—
AM: Go on, yes.
RH: At Scordia, I mean they were suffering losses because I mean they were having to make quite low level attacks with their fighter bombers. And we were watching these guys coming back, and, and one of them he came in rather high, banged [emphasis] down onto the ground, up in the air, bang [emphasis] and then turned over onto his, onto his back, so the pilot was trapped under, underneath. But I mean, they were very, very quick, in no time there was a, the er, a fire tender, an ambulance, and a mobile crane. And the mobile crane lifted the aircraft up, turned it over—
AM: [inaudible]
RH: And they forced the canopy open and out [laughs] got this young lieutenant, stepped on the wing, walked away a few paces, reached into his overalls, pulled out a cigar—
AM: [gasps] Oh no.
RH: Lit it and went on walking.
[laughter]
RH: And I thought, well there’s, there’s a nerve for you, [laughs] there’s a nerve for you. But on the other side of the coin, I remember, I used to like going out into their dispersal and watch them come in. And, they’d taken off—
[background noise]
RH: And then one of them left the formation, came round, landed and then taxied up to where we were, we were, sort of thing, switched off the engine, pilot got out and he walked over to the, the er. There was a sergeant who was a sort of an engineer mechanic, whatever, and I can’t remember the words after all these years what the pilot said, but he was complaining that there was a fault in the, in the engine, there was something, something wrong, and then he walked away. And I said the sergeant, I said, ‘what do you thinks wrong with that then?’ Now, you’ll have to excuse the language.
AM: It’s alright. [laughs]
RH: He said, ‘nothing he’s just shit scared,’ he said.
[laughter]
AM: Fair enough.
RH: So then we went into Italy, [pause] now tell you, this was a regiment [laughs] with a squadron, and so I knew [emphasis] very well, being, being in the HQ, the squadron had been told they had to go to Crotone landing ground which was sort of under the, that part of the—
AM: The heel.
RH: Italian boot.
AM: The heel.
RH: And of course, and we were following a Canadian division along the coast. They were way, way, way ahead, we never ever saw them. When we got to Crotone landing ground, nothing there at all because it had already been evacuated. Now the same time as the 8th Army landed on the toe and moved up on the north coast, the Canadians were moving along the south coast and the British 1st Airborne Division came in by sea to land at Taranto to push up on the Adriatic coast. And when we were somewhere west of, of Taranto we came across the Airborne guys, and, and they were stopping our convoy. Now in our convoy would be about a dozen three tonne four by four Bedfords, three or four jeeps, two Italian trucks that we had pinched, stolen and, and motorcycles and so forth. Yeah, we spotted these Italian trucks in a little town called Catanzaro down on the toe and the C.O. had seen them, two big Fiat trucks, and so he said to our corporal fitter, engine fitter, ‘do you reckon you can get those going?’ he said, ‘yeah right.’ So sometime around midnight he and another mechanic went out and started them and drove them up the road a bit and then we found them [unclear]
AM: Appropriated them. [laughs]
RH: And then painted them in RAF camouflage and off we went. And then so, yeah, we met the guys with the, with the red berets and from what they were saying is, ‘go careful, keep your heads down because there are German para snipers in the area,’ [laughs] and I thought to myself, we shouldn’t be here, we had no business to be there with just our, just the C.O. You know, woo, let’s just going, you know so think you can imagine we were some kind of Panzer unit or something. And then we drove into Bari, you know that?
AM: Yeah.
RH: Well as we went to Bari, there were people on the pavements, waving and cheering and then passing out bottles of wine.
[laughter]
RH: And I thought, well this can’t be right, and, and where are our guys? I didn’t see any British soldiers at all, and we drove through Bari, and I can’t remember the name of the town now, but about ten miles north of Bari on the main coast road, we came into this little township, and again, [emphasis] people came out and they were waving and saying oh—
AM: Italian civilians you mean?
RH: Yeah, [emphasis] Italian civilians, I thought it’s got to be something, it’s got to be wrong you know, and then the word quickly came down the, the line, the Germans left here this morning.
[laughter]
RH: Well that decided the C.O., all the trucks were turned round. [laughs]
GR: You were the spear guard you were, you were out in front.
[laughter]
RH: We go back to, we went back to Bari, and he looked at his map. Bari airport which was an Italian air force base then, we’ll go there, and we’ll the, we’ll take over the airfield, we had no business—
AM: Is this just you the RAF Regiment, you’re talking here?
RH: Yeah.
AM: Right.
RH: No business at all to be, to be there. And we drove up to the entrance and there were gates and as we drove up, there were armed Italians carrying their funny little carbine rifles, they shut the gate. Now I wasn’t there I didn’t hear what, what was said but they refused to let us in. So, then the order came down the line, ‘get your rifles out men and load them, and stand by the trucks.’ And of course, in our headquarters truck, where are the rifles?
[laughter]
AM: We’re laughing now, but I bet you weren’t laughing at the time.
RH: Scrambling, put ten rounds in the magazine, get out the truck. Meanwhile the Italians, a lot of them, had crossed the road and were in the olive grove in that side, so I thought, God, we are going to be between two lots here, but I think that fact that they saw a hundred guys or more getting out the trucks with their rifles ready, and that decided the Italians to open the gate and let us in.
[laughter]
RH: Yeah, so.
AM: Blimey.
GR: So you’re fighting your way up Italy?
AM: And your C.O. wanted you to be fighting your way up.
RH: Pardon?
AM: And your C.O. wanted you to be fighting your way up.
RH: And the, what do you call it? SWO, he was, he was another sort of, you know, let’s get up there and we’ll, all the rest of it. But, yeah then we went up to Foggia and there were several airfields there which the Germans had used, and yeah, we were, I think on two different airfields there, if I remember rightly, well airfields, landing grounds it was just a single strip. But I can’t remember anything worth reporting there. And by that time, we were subordinate to Desert Air Force, and so you’d get the daily orders from Desert Air Force. And on one they were appealing for air gunners, air gunners, now I thought right—
AM: This is it.
RH: We’ll have a go at this, and so I, you know, I applied and went to Desert Air Force headquarters to get the preliminary medical as such. And, it was, it was quite interesting, because they had my records there and the first officer to examine me, flight lieutenant or squadron leader, doctor or whatever he was, he said, ‘I can’t understand why you were failed in, a year ago,’ he said. He said, ‘there’s nothing wrong,’ and I said, ‘well it says temporarily unfit,’ ‘I can’t see nothing wrong, well, we’ll get a second opinion,’ and he called in the chief, the group captain, and he came in and checked me over, ‘yeah,’ he said, ‘no,’ he said, ‘I can’t think,’ he said, ‘why you were failed a year ago,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with your, with your heart.’ I used to think afterwards, they failed me because when they looked at my background, they realised in fact, that Mum was a German.
[laughter]
RH: I’ve thought that might be a—
GR: That’s possible.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah, yeah, possible.
RH: Yeah. Because when it came to the aircrew selection board, that was the next thing.
AM: Are you still in Italy at this point?
RH: Yeah, oh yes.
AM: Yeah.
RH: The, the aircrew selection board, and they asked, they asked that question, ‘what if you were ordered to?’ I mean there was no possibility for me to fly from Italy all the way to Cologne, but still, [laughs] They said, ‘what if you were ordered to bomb Germany, bomb something in Germany, you know, you were born there and your Mothers German, what, what if you were ordered to do that?’ [laughs] And I said, ‘I would obey orders.’ [laughs]
[laughter]
RH: Yes, so then there was, I was still with the Regiment Squadron, but I mean they hadn’t, they hadn’t fired a shot in anger and they were anti-aircraft, there was no need for them, so they found a new job for the RAF Regiment. That was to go up to the, our artillery gun line which would be a three, or four miles behind the front line, and by day if our guys were flying and bombing, they would put out smoke indicators to show where our front line was, so that our guys didn’t bomb in it. And by night they would put out flares and I was only there less than, less than, less than a week and but apparently, they did have some casualties later, later on. But, so that was it, now I went to Desert Air Force headquarters, and I had three or four weeks there, and then before I went back to the Middle East. Desert Air Force headquarters was the best posting ever I had in the RAF of a, really good guys to work with, we had an Australian flight lieutenant who was our, the C.O. of what’s called the organisation section where I worked. And he used to share his food parcels with us and he knew I was sort of going through them and I was going on for air, aircrew training and he called me in one day and he said, ‘Harrison,’ now I know this sounds like a line shoot, but he said, ‘Harrison, you’ve done a really good job here,’ he said, ‘we’re very pleased at the way you’re, you’re working.’ That’s because I had a gen, I wasn’t responsible to anyone even though I was only an airman I was doing my own, my own job, sort of thing, which was location of units.
AM: Right.
RH: And briefing people who came in asking questions about you, he said, ‘now why don’t you forget this aircrew thing,’ he said, ‘and I can guarantee,’ he said, in a few months you’ll have your first stripes,’ he said, ‘and I can see you going on from there,’ and I said, ‘no thank you, very much.’ [laughs] And so that was it, now I went back to Egypt
AM: Right. Where did you do your training, your aircrew training then?
RH: Air gunner training.
AM: Air gunner training, where did you do that?
RH: Yeah, a place called El Ballah.
AM: In, in Egypt?
RH: On the canal zone.
AM: Right. And how long, so how long were you training for?
RH: Right. [pause]
[paper rustling]
RH: You can take these away.
AM: Okay.
RH: Later. There were three six-week courses.
AM: Right.
RH: The first one was at 51 Air Gunner Initial Training School, and they’re all the subjects.
AM: Yeah.
RH: Then you had a forty-eight-hour pass into Cairo and then you came for another six weeks—
AM: Okay.
RH: At 12 Elementary Air Gunner School.
AM: Yeah.
RH: From there are all the subjects again.
AM: So, I’m looking at, I’ll, I’ll copy this, and but I’m looking at things like, different gun turrets, the Frazer Nash, the Boulton Paul, the Bristol.
RH: Yeah that’s right.
AM: Pyrotechnics, the Very pistol, the flares, forty flashes. Smoke floats?
RH: Yeah, smoke floats, yeah.
AM: Yeah, what’s a smoke float?
RH: Well it was, about, about that big and the idea was that, that in daylight, over the sea, over, over water, the navigator would ask someone to drop a smoke float, okay? And then the tail gunner, the rear gunner—
AM: Yeah, yeah.
RH: Himself. You see that smoke float and you take a bearing on it with your sight, and there’s sort of a compass ring—
AM: Right.
RH: And you say,’ okay, it’s at so many degrees,’ and then the navigator would count off so many seconds and say, ‘okay take another reading,’ so you take another reading and it shows you your drift.
AM: Right.
RH: The difference between the two readings.
AM: Yep.
RH: Yeah, smoke float by day, yeah.
AM: Oh.
RH: And that’s 13 Air Gunner school where you finally get to fly.
AM: I’m looking at this one because I was, I was going to ask you, what were, what did you actually train in? And we’ve got Avro Anson’s?
RH: Yes, it’s up there, somewhere.
AM: One of those up there? Dinghy drill. Did you all have individual dinghies at that point?
RH: No, seven-man dinghies.
AM: Because—It was a seven-man dinghy. Right.
RH: Then we trained in, in the Suez Canal, and the canal was only a couple of miles away from the, from the air field, so the instructor would tow an inflated dinghy out into the middle of the canal. And that was another, another thing and I’ve never come across it before and I’ve mentioned it to other aircrew types and they’ve never heard of this before. You had to swim fifty yards [emphasis] and if you did not swim, if you couldn’t swim that fifty yards you failed.
AM: That was it, you were out.
RH: You failed the course. So, I mean you had a life jacket on which was a damn nuisance believe me if you’ve got a Mae West and you try swim. [laughs] So you went out, two of you at a time, went out to a dinghy and righted it.
AM: Oops.
RH: Sorry. Righted it, then got into it, and then when the instructor was satisfied, when you got out you pulled the dinghy over you so it was upside down for the next pair.
AM: Right, and swam out from under it.
RH: To go out, yeah.
AM: I can’t imagine what the canal was full of?
RH: Oh yeah, [emphasis] yeah. Now and then whistles are blowing and everyone would have to get out if a ship came by. [laughs]
AM: Theres, there’s crocodiles isn’t there?
RH: No, no.
AM: Is there not? No. Alright then.
RH: There’s far more—
AM: I was thinking about horrible [unclear]
RH: Theres worse stuff floating in the canal, believe me.
AM: I can imagine.
[laughter]
AM: So, you’ve done your training.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Then what?
RH: Then we’ve went to [paper rustling] from Egypt—
AM: Hmm, hmm.
RH: To Palestine.
AM: Right.
RH: For the O T U.
AM: Right. [pause] So, I’m looking now at the, it was the 76 Operational Training Unit.
RH: That’s right.
AM: And you were on Wellington medium bombers at this point?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Tail gunner you said you were, weren’t you?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Tail end Charlie.
RH: Yes, we formed up of, as you may know, you know, the people weren’t detailed, we all assembled in a hangar.
AM: You did the crewing up.
RH: And we sort of—
AM: No other end.
RH: Pardon?
AM: No other end, is an expression—
RH: Is it?
AM: An expression, I’ve heard.
RH: Yeah well. And Joe, the other gunner, he, he eventually found a pilot who wanted two gunners, and so we met this Eddy who came from the Midlands, and he said to us, ‘who’s best at aircraft recognition?’ and Joe said, ‘he is,’ pointing to me.
[laughter]
RH: ‘So, right you are the rear gunner then.’
AM: So that was it? That was how that was decided. But then, so when was heavy Conversion Unit, were you still in Palestine at that point?
RH: No. We went back to Egypt for it.
AM: Back to Egypt for that, right.
RH: That was only four weeks I think at that point.
AM: So this is the 1675 Heavy Conversion Unit, into B-24 Liberators.
RH: B-24 Liberator, yeah. At least we got into a decent aircraft.
AM: Yeah. What, how many crew were on that? Was there seven or more? Seven.
RH: Well, seven. We trained as a crew of seven but operationally on the squadron, you carried an extra gunner, who manned the two waist guns.
AM: Right, so there was waist guns on there?
RH: There was also these, yeah, I did two or three [unclear] trips as a beam gunner, but you were the odd job. I’ll come to that when we get to the squadron then.
AM: Alright, okay. So, carry on—
RH: Well, [unclear, interviewer speaks over]
AM: Tell me about that and what happened and any stories about the conversion unit course or on to what happened after that?
RH: I can only think of a funny story on that. Sometimes, the nose wheel of the Liberator wouldn’t come down. And so, someone would go from the flight deck, for landing on the flight deck was a pilot, the engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and top gunner, six of them all on the flight deck in that area. If the nose wheel didn’t come down, there was a, a drill for it. One of them would go back into the nose and help to pull the thing down. Well, we’d been on a night exercise, and Joe our top gunner, a Lancashire lad, he always had intercom trouble. He was an electrician by trade, but he was a real jinx [emphasis] when it came to in, in, intercom. And the nose wheel hadn’t come down, so I mean I’m hearing everything on intercom, so the skipper said to, I think it was the bomb aimer Ron, ‘Ron go on down into the nose right and see if you can do it,’ and so Ron goes down there. Then the next thing I here, Ron’s on the intercom, ’no, I can’t do it and I need some help,’ ‘ah yeah, okay,’ and so the navigator is sent down. So, now there’s two of them in the nose trying to pull it—
AM: Yank the thing, yeah.
RH: And get the wheel down, and then they come back on the intercom, ‘no I can’t do it,’ so skipper, Eddy turns to Taffy our engineer and says, ‘Taff, go down and sort it, will you?’ So, Taff gets out of his seat and goes down. Theres a hatch in the flight deck that goes down into the nose. Now, Joe the top gunner, knows that the nose wheel hasn’t come down, and then his intercom goes dead. And one after another he sees the bomb aimer—
AM: Oh God.
RH: The navigator and the engineer all disappearing through that hatch down below, and what does he think? He thinks they’re all baling out. So, his seat release is a wire handle and he pulls that, drops out of his turret, goes straight through the hatch into the end of the bomb bay.
AM: Oh no.
GR: [unclear] [laughs]
RH: He just had a few bruises that was all.
AM: I was going to say, I thought you were going to say he went right through and had to pull his parachute. [laughs]
GR: Well, the thing is to anybody listening, obviously Lancaster, Halifax, B-17 all land, and land tail down, but the B-24 was one that landed, and landed with its nose up.
RH: Nose wheel
GR: The same, yeah. So, it landed, straight—
RH: Yes.
GR: As opposed to sitting back on the tail, so when you were on about the nose wheel coming down that’s—
AM: That’s why it’s important.
GR: Yeah
RH: Well, I— [unclear, interviewer speaks over]
GR: In fact that was the only bomber that, that—
RH: Yeah.
GR: The only, only four engine bomber that, that happened.
RH: If I remember rightly in HCU and I mean, I knew guys who were ahead of me and so forth, and Norman, and he came back and he came up to the truck as we were getting off it, and he said, ‘have you heard Mick Berry’s gone?’ Now, Mick Berry had been a corporal armourer and he was in our tent at gunnery school—
AM: Right.
RH: And he taught us more about the machine guns than the instructors. After all, that was his, his trade, he was a, I can still remember, he was a great [emphasis] man, he really was a good lad. And there they had, had crash landed and burst into flames, and Mick was in the mid er, top turret. Now that was held by, I think it was four bolts and it was a common fault that bang [emphasis] on, on the deck and that turret would drop out, and he was trapped and he couldn’t get out, yeah.
GR: Oh God.
RH: Mick Berry, he’s buried in the cemetery near Cairo.
AM: Oh, right. How big is it? I’m looking at a model of the Liberator here. How big is it in comparison then to the Halifax and the, and the Lancaster?
RH: [unclear] it’s a hundred and ten foot wingspan, the Liberator and the Hal, well Lanc, well it’s just over a hundred feet, in total.
AM: I was going to say, it looks a bit bigger to me.
RH: Yeah.
AM: On the, on the model, I know [unclear]
GR: Well at the same scales, they’re actually, the Liberators on a par with the Lancaster, probably slightly bigger.
AM: I’m showing my ignorance now, is it American?
GR: The B-24 was originally was an American bomber.
RH: Oh yeah.
AM: Oh.
RH: Yeah, consolidated to the aircraft company, yeah. [pause] Nice aeroplane to fly because after flying in the Wellingtons as the rear or tail, tail gunner, the heating system, well, didn’t really exist. And, in O.T.U. going out on a flight at night, and we’d six hours, six and a half hour flights sort of thing in freezing [emphasis] weather and you’d have long johns and, and then your shirt and your pants, and so forth. And your wool, pullover, woolly, the battle dress, then over the battle dress, the, an inner flying suit—
AM: Right.
RH: Which was sort of kapok something or other, brown silky, you put that on. Then over that, the outer flying suit which wasn’t padded at all, then over that your life jacket, then over that your parachute harness. Now, some of the gunners at O.T.U. there was only one entry hatch and that was in the nose, so the guys used to take their kit with them and get dressed when they got down into the fuselage. But I had an arrangement with the navigator, and the bomb aimer, and the armourer who would turn the turret of our aircraft to a hundred and eighty degrees, so I could get in from the outside. And they would lift [emphasis] me up into the turret, and then when we got back I would turn the turret a hundred and eighty degrees, open the doors, fall out—
AM: We’re talking about the rear turret then?
GR: Yeah.
RH: Pardon?
AM: Yeah.
RH: Yeah. And they would—
GR: Tumble out.
RH: And they would get me out.
GR: [unclear]
RH: The advantage of the Wimpy of course, and the rear, and with the Lanc and the British aircraft wasn’t it, you opened the doors as a tail gunner and you just bale out and go backwards—
AM: You just flipped out.
RH: Couldn’t do that on the Liberator.
AM: So, we’ve done Heavy Conversion Unit, you’ve got your crew, you’ve done your training with your crew, when was—
RH: I can’t think of any incidents.
AM: When was your first operation then?
RH: In February 45.
AM: Right, and where, where was it too?
RH: That’s a very good question, I think—
AM: Germany somewhere?
RH: No, I, no we were in Italy.
AM: Oh, oh.
RH: Yep, I think that’s just March, isn’t it?
GR: That’s just March, yeah.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Can you remember what it was like going up? Right because now you’re doing it for real instead of training? Did it make a difference?
RH: It was just a job. I think, you know guys of our age at that stage of the war, nine, you know, coming up to the end of the war, and you, I can’t think of the term really, indoctrinated or whatever, and you are used to it, you are used to it.
AM: So, were you scared?
RH: No I wasn’t, no.
AM: No.
RH: Because I didn’t have enough up there to be scared.
[laughter]
GR: Am I right in assuming that the, the bomber force in Italy at the time, was doing things like marshalling yards—
RH: Yeah.
GR: In northern Italy.
RH: Yeah.
GR: Austria.
RH: Yeah.
GR: Southern Germany? I think that there was a couple of trips.
AM: I think, yeah, I thought, I thought you went to southern Germany?
RH: No, we there were, I never went on a trip into Bavaria.
GR: But that was some of their, their area of operations.
RH: Yeah.
GR: There was the northern Italy marshalling yards, the Turin’s, that sort of thing, Verona, to try and stop—
RH: It was mainly the railway lines coming down through Bremen.
GR: Yes.
RH: And also down to Trieste and so forth.
GR: Which was the main supplier [unclear]
RH: And also, we, yeah, we bombed, what was it? Monfalcone, a little port, Ancona and Assa [?] yeah, they were, they were where the Germans had ships and used to supply their troops by night by running these boats along the coast, sort of thing.
GR: Did you normally fly with an escort? With a—
RH: On daylight, yeah.
GR: Daylights, yeah.
RH: Yeah, yeah. We had the Americans.
GR: Yeah.
RH: American B-51’s.
GR: Tuskegee, Tuskegee airmen?
RH: I don’t know who they were.
GR: They, they were the black—
AM: Yeah.
RH: I remember on one, on a trip to Monfalcone in the daylight, I mean we didn’t fly in formation, I mean our guys didn’t know how to fly in formation I never, not on heavies. And it just the usual stream, and so there were, sort of sixty, eighty aircraft in a stream. And we picked up the American escort, this was at the top end of the Adriatic, Trieste.
AM: Yep, yep.
RH: Right, it was the port next to Trieste.
AM: Yep.
RH: And, we picked up the escort and it was coming up, and our wireless op was listening out on their frequency, there had to be some sort of contact for, for, I didn’t hear this. But I remember we’d said, said afterwards, he said, ‘when they saw us coming,’ he said, and they were [laughs] saying about look at those sort of God damned limeys they’re not in formation, you know, all that how do we protect this lot and all the rest of it. [laughs]
AM: It’s like herding sheep.
[laughter]
RH: Yeah.
AM: Or herding—
GR: Are the Luftwaffe putting in much of an appearance?
RH: No.
GR: Towards that stage of the war?
RH: No, no.
AM: Were they not?
RH: No, they had, they were 109’s on the Italian, northern Italian airfields, but I think most of those were in what was called the Italian Republican Airforce.
GR: Yeah.
RH: You know, Mussolini’s lot, so you did see them, you did see them. Right and I remember seeing a strange sight one night as we were coming away from wherever it was in northern Italy. It was all a tremendous glare of course and, and looking out I saw these three Lib’s flying in and they were in [laughs] formation more or less and then at the back end of the [unclear] was a Bf 109. [laughs]
GR: Oh.
[laughter]
AM: Following you.
RH: Following the—
AM: Did you ever get shot at?
RH: With flak.
AM: With flak, but not, not as Gary said, not from a fighter?
RH: No, no, I saw, yeah there was a, we were 70 Squadron, 37 Squadron operated from the same airfield. I mean I didn’t know who they were, were at the time but and coming back at night from somewhere, Austria I think it might, might have been, the, and then suddenly seeing green tracer which I knew it was German. And then red tracer [laughs] sort of thing, and then ‘woof’ [emphasis] up went the Lib and down he went, yeah and that was 37 Squadron. Liberator, all lost.
AM: All gone. Did you ever shoot your guns at anything?
RH: No.
AM: Never?
RH: No, no you even if, and we were tailed one night by a fighter coming back from Trento I think it was, Trento, Trento marshalling yards you know, and I just reported it to the, to the crew, it was a 109. And he was sitting out and sort of, sort of four hundred yards or so away, you’d just see them occasionally with the glare in the background but he didn’t close and I certainly wouldn’t fire at him because it would show where we were.
GR: Were you were.
AM: Other people have said that, why would you fire—
RH: Yeah. Quite.
AM: And you know, mark yourself out to them.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Effectively.
RH: Yeah. Yeah, no you never, never fire unless you’re fired at. Okay?
AM: Yeah. I think, have you got any more questions?
GR: No, no.
AM: How many operations did you do in the end?
RH: Bombing, eighteen.
AM: Eighteen.
RH: And then we converted to supply, as the war was coming to an end—
AM: Okay.
RH: And the bombing stopped, and then they put some sort of racking inside the bomb bay so we could carry four-gallon cans of petrol and things like that.
AM: Right. So, what did you do between the war ending and demob?
RH: Er, yeah, we carried, you see although the war ended we’d already converted to transport.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And so, yeah for two or three weeks after VE Day we were flying, we were talking up supplies up to the north of Italy. And then after that they converted the bomb bay so you could carry bodies, troops, we could carry twenty-two.
AM: Live bodies?
RH: Yeah.
AM: Live ones.
RH: Twenty-two in the bomb, bomb bay. Poor blokes, [emphasis] I mean they just had to go down into the, down onto the catwalk and then climb over the back of these seats and then sit down. And there was the aircraft fuselage wall, just there sort of thing, and they had to sit there and on flights back to the UK, it took six and a half hours.
AM: You can’t imagine, can you?
GR: No.
AM: Were these troops or did you take any prisoner of war back?
RH: No, no—
AM: It was troops.
RH: These were troops. The ones we were flying back were due to be retrained and reformed to go out to Burma. These were the, I remember, you see they didn’t need the air gunners as such, so you became an odd bod sort of looking after these soldiers and so forth. And I remember on one occasion we were flying back with some guardsmen from a guard’s regiment, and the truck arrived and this lieutenant got out with his twenty odd bods. And they piled around and he said to our skipper, ‘we were all NCO’s, we were all senior NCO’s, he said, ‘have you anything to say?’ to the men sort of thing, and he said, ‘no.’ Since I was Harrison, generally I was called Harry, and so Ken said, ‘now Harry will look after you,’ well that wasn’t good enough for the, for the lieutenant. He turned around and he said, ‘when you are in the aircraft I don’t want you putting your hands out and grabbing any wires or anything.’
[laughter]
RH: So I saw them on board and we were flying up to Peterborough, Croughton, just south, it was an American base at that time and I used to bring them out one at a time and with the beam hatches open they could have a smoke—
AM: Right.
RH: Sitting there. And I think it was one of the last guys, came out and he sat on the other beam gunners seat, and he didn’t have intercom of course, we could only talk to each other by shout, shouting really, and he shouted, he said, ‘do we go through customs?’ he said, I said, ‘well I don’t.’ Crewmen didn’t, you just went straight through, [laughs] I said, ‘you, yes you will have to go through customs,’ and I said, ‘why?’ and he pulled back the sleeve of his battle dress and [laughs] there were watches—
[laughter]
RH: On, on there. And I said, oh, how did you get those?’ and they disarmed an SS unit or something and so, and relieved them of all, of all their odds and ends. And er, and then he reached into his blouse, fiddled about and pulled out a pistol, and I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t think you’ll get through with that,’ he said, ‘I’ve got another one in my kit bag.’
[laughter]
AM: I thought you were going to say you took them through for him.
RH: No, no, no.
AM: If you didn’t have to go through customs.
GR: They’re here.
AM: [laughs]
RH: No, after, after we’d landed and I got my travel warrant, and had a forty-eight-hour pass to get back to Bristol.
AM: Right.
RH: Or near Bristol. And so, it was late evening when I caught a train from Peterborough to Kings Cross, and Kings Cross to Paddington, and Paddington to Temple Meads, then Bristol. Which, I arrived about seven o’clock in the morning, then I had to walk over to the bus station and get a bus, and I arrived at my parents’ house I think, yeah it must have been about nine o’clock in the morning. Knocked them up, then I had, since it was a Saturday, I had to leave next day, just after lunch—
AM: To get back.
RH: To get back, yeah, so my forty-eight-hour pass in fact was about thirty.
AM: In the middle.
RH: Oh, so, anything else I can help with?
AM: Yes, this is, just out of interest this question. So, your Mum was German, how was she treated during the war?
RH: Yeah, okay.
AM: Were people okay with her?
RH: Yeah, you see we were, when I say Dad went in, into the civil service, he did, he and a lot of other guys including the major commanding who is based and so forth. Some of them were sort of even if they hadn’t given their time were said, okay you’re finished, because now you’re going to an establishment in Gloucestershire where you’ll be training police, fire, in what today are called civil defence duties. And so, you know, my environment from a child and all the way through to the time I left home was, was semi military because all the other guys were like Dad, they all ex-army.
AM: Right.
RH: They were all ex-army and some of them I remember when we lived at Salisbury, I remember a couple of German women coming there to visit Mum and they were again were wives of soldiers and so forth. But, no and of course we had relatives in Cologne and at the time of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, we had a telegram which came through the Swiss Red Cross, from Mums sister Gerda, in Cologne, asking if we were all okay. [laughs]
AM: Were they all okay, did they ask to—
RH: No.
AM: Did your relatives not survive?
RH: No, no they were, they lived, well as most Germans do in the cities, they live in an apartment block and the block was, was—
AM: Blown up.
RH: Hit, and Uncle Johan as he was, he died of phosphorus burns. And my aunt and my two cousins, saw one cousin, they were evacuated into, into central Germany. The other one, my, he was about a year or so younger than me and had been like you know like all the rest of them in the Hitler movement and so forth. And then when he was sixteen I think, he volunteered for part time duty on a flak battery, and then when he was seventeen he became a full-time member of the Luftwaffe [emphasis] on a flak battery. When I met him, you know after, we used to have a joke about it.
[laughter]
GR: That’s a, well at least you had the opportunity.
AM: At least you never shot at me.
RH: Never fired at me because you were in, on the Rhineland and in the Ruhr, yeah
AM: Yeah, Happy Valley, the Ruhr.
RH: Pardon?
AM: Happy Valley, I’ve heard the Ruhr described as.
RH: Yeah, yeah. But they’re all, my cousins and my aunt are not, they are all dead now so, no contact.
GR: What I’ve just found amazing is, you’ve saying like yeah, during the Battle of Britain, and Bristol was being blitzed and all that, and a family in Germany sends a telegram [laughs] to a family in England saying are you okay?
AM: Are you okay?
RH: Yeah.
GR: And that’s just like, that’s incredible.
AM: Ordinary people in the war.
GR: Yeah.
AM: As opposed to the Nazis and all the rest of it.
GR: But the fact is, so you are in Germany, and you’ve got Hitler, yeah, we’re going to invade Britain and do this, do that, but you can send a telegram. So, it goes from Germany oh yes, certainly a lot of it went through Switzerland through the Red Cross.
AM: [inaudible as speaking at same time]
RH: Yeah.
GR: But you got the telegram in England, are you okay? Is everything alright?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: What did you do then after the war then, after you’d been demobbed?
RH: I became a civil servant.
AM: Which bit? Which, which department?
RH: The Home, Home office—
AM: Oh.
RH: Was the governing training department but again [coughs] it was, it was, it civil defence training I sort of followed on, I and my brother we were lucky having a father in it. [laughs]
AM: Not what you know, but who you know.
RH: Yeah, well yeah, well you had to go through selection board.
AM: There was always full fair and open competition and all that, allegedly weren’t it. I’m just looking at this, the warrant on the wall here, which is?
RH: The what?
AM: I’m looking for the year, 1962.
RH: That was commission—
AM: You became a, well you tell me what it is?
RH: Yeah, I was commissioned in the volunteer reserve training branch here.
AM: Ah ha.
RH: The Air Training Corps.
AM: As a pilot officer.
RH: Yeah. Eventually I was a flight lieutenant.
AM: Yeah, crikey. Well I think on that note we’ll switch off.
RH: Have you been recording all—
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Richard Harrison
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-16
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:07:06 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHarrisonR151116
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Italy--Sicily
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1965
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Harrison was born in Cologne in 1924 to a German mother and English father. His desire to be aircrew was thwarted initially by a failed medical, something he later surmises could be on account of his mother’s nationality. A member of the Air Raid Precautions, Home Guard and Air Training Corps, he was called up in 1942. He was posted to RAF Tempsford, base for Special Duty Squadrons 161 and 138, who dropped supplies and people for the resistance. In 1943 he was posted to Sicily in the RAF Regiment Squadron for anti-parachute troop duties and then to Italy. He successfully applied to join the Desert Air Force and had air gunner training at El Ballah in Egypt. He went to Palestine as a rear gunner on a Wellington for the Operational Training Unit, followed by the 1675 Heavy Conversion Unit in Egypt with B-24 . His first operation was in Italy. After VE Day, they transported supplies and troops. After the war, he worked as a civil servant in the Home Office. In 1962, he was commissioned as a pilot officer in the Air Training Corps and eventually became a flight lieutenant
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Gary Rushbrooke
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cathie Hewitt
Sally Coulter
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
138 Squadron
161 Squadron
70 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-24
bombing
civil defence
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Operational Training Unit
RAF Tempsford
Resistance
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/178/5757/LBriggsR1893726v1.1.pdf
d1312b0386b0e78b8ed0110246e7101f
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
Briggs, Roy
R Briggs
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. One oral history interview with Roy Briggs (1893726 Royal Air Force), his logbook, service material, training material, official documents and 12 photographs. Roy Briggs trained as a wireless operator and flew four operations with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton. He also took took part in Operation Manna and Operation Exodus as well as Cook’s tours over Germany.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Roy Briggs and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-28
Identifier
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Briggs, R
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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
Roy Briggs' flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBriggsR1893726v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cuxhaven
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Plauen
Netherlands--Delft
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Netherlands--Valkenburg (South Holland)
Wales--Gwynedd
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-04-10
1945-04-11
1945-04-14
1945-04-15
1945-04-18
1945-04-22
1945-04-29
1945-04-30
1945-05-01
1945-05-02
1945-05-03
1945-05-07
1945-05-16
1945-06-05
1945-06-30
1945-07-04
1945-08-15
1945-08-17
1945-08-26
1945-08-28
1945-09-13
1945-09-15
1945-10-01
1945-10-03
1945-11-07
1945-11-09
1945-11-23
1945-11-24
1945-11-26
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers flying log book for Roy Briggs. The log book covers the period 30 December 1942 to 17 March 1947. Roy Briggs trained as a wireless operator in Great Britain. He flew four night time and daylight bombing operations and six operation Manna supply drops in April and May 1945 with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton. His targets were Bremen, Cuxhaven, Heligoland and Plauen. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Roberts. Aircraft flown were Anson, Dominie, Lancaster, Proctor, Stirling and Wellington. He also took part in Cook's tours and the repatriation of troops from Italy as part of Operation Dodge.
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
1660 HCU
30 OTU
35 Squadron
576 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Balderton
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Catterick
RAF Cranwell
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Graveley
RAF Hixon
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Madley
RAF Seighford
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/295/3615/AWallerT151027.2.mp3
fabda2f9ca0e4a33deecf28b4415ef22
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
Waller, Tom
Tom Waller
T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Corporal Thomas Waller (- 2018, 1096366 Royal Air Force) a memoir and photographs. Tom Waller was a fitter/armourer with 138, 109 and 156 Squadrons and served at RAF Stradisall, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, and RAF Upward.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Thomas Waller and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Waller, T
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Thomas Waller. It’s at his house in Swanland. It’s the 27th of the 10th 2015. Approximately 10 past 10. My name is Dan Ellin and this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. So Mr Waller could you please tell me what you did before the war and before you joined the RAF?
TW: I left school when I was fourteen. Worked on the fish docks. I left there when we came to Swanland in 1936. I went to work at the Blackburn’s which is now British Aerospace at Brough. I couldn’t stand being penned in there so I came and worked in the local village grocery shop. Wednesday was our half day so when I was in town one Wednesday I went in to the recruiting office and joined the RAF. I came home. Mother said, ‘Why did you do that for? You’ll not pass your medical.’ So I said, ‘Ah. Let’s see.’ So I went for my medical and passed A1. And she said, ‘Well you couldn’t have done.’ But I never found out why. So I joined up. Went in for MT driver but I’d joined up just at Dunkirk and they’d lost a lot of armourers in Fairey Battles so I became an armourer. Hadn’t the vaguest idea what it was – came home on leave, home and my brother he was a flight engineer. Ground crew. I said, ‘What’s an armourer?’ He said, ‘Oh guns and bombs.’ ‘Oh I don’t want to do that. I’m not doing that.’ He said, ‘It’s good pay. Good promotion.’ I said, ‘Money’s not everything.’ Anyhow, I went. Got on the course. And the lad next to me said, ‘Well, I don’t want to do this.’ So we filed up and down. Up and down. The tutor came around and said, ‘You two can stop messing about. Get on with it because we know you can do it.’ So we did. So we passed out flying colours so went out there in the armoury after it had finished. An officer come along and says, ‘Those whose names I call out please step forward.’ My name was called out. Go for fitter armourer to Credenhill in Hereford. So my mate said, ‘We didn’t want to do that, did we?’ I said, ‘No. But we’ll have to go won’t we?’ So we went and we enjoyed it and we got through that course alright and then I was posted to Stradishall. 138 Squadron. SOE Squadron. I wasn’t there very long because Tempsford was its main base and they decided to put all the SOE section together. So they transferred me to Wyton. But instead of Stradishall sending me to Wyton they sent me to Upper Heyford. So, when I got there they said, ‘Where have you come from?’ I said, ‘Stradishall.’ ‘Well you’re not supposed to be here mate.’ I said, ‘Well I have a railway warrant for here.’ ‘Well, we’ll fetch you up a bed for the night and feed you and see.’ I was there for a week and then they said, ‘We’ve found out where you should have been. You should be at Wyton.’ So they said, ‘Get your kit ready and come down to the orderly room tomorrow morning. Half past eight. We’re flying you over in an Anson.’ Oh, I thought lovely. My first flight. Here I go. I got to the orderly room. ‘You’re going by train.’ It’s got a snag. They took me to the station. Stood there. Thought got to get rid of him and make sure he gets on the train. So when I got to Wyton they said, ‘Where have you been?’ I said, ‘I’ve been at Upper Heyford.’ ‘Well what did you go there for?’ I said, ‘Well that’s my railway warrant.’ You know. So he said, ‘Well have you come through King’s Cross?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said. ‘Have you been stopped by the police?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’ve got them at your house looking for you.’ So I said, ‘No wonder my mother was agitated.’ So I settled down there and then, you know [pause] I eventually got to Wyton and the lads said, ‘Oh you’re our new armourer are you?’ So, I said, ‘Yes sir.’ They said, ‘Right.’ So we got settled in. Got working on the aircraft and then came home on leave. Got back off leave. Just got to the guard room and there was a terrific explosion. All the people came out the guardroom, the guard chaps. There’d been an explosion there, hadn’t there. Now had I been, not been on leave I wouldn’t be here now. So I’m one of the lucky ones and the billets at night with all the empty beds. It was really horrible to see it, you know. So we plodded on. Carried on. And then I was transferred from Wyton to [pause] from Stradishall. I went to Wyton and from Wyton I went to Warboys. To 156 Squadron. Start of Pathfinder force. And then they transferred over to Upwood and I went over to Upwood. And then I was there till 1946 and I was sent to a satellite drome near Stratford on Avon. With a dummy four pounder in the bomb dump, fifty rifles in the armoury. I was a corporal and there was me and another lad there with nothing to do. So when demob come I was glad to get out. But if I’d been on a proper station I would have stopped in because I really enjoyed the life. So I came home. Went back to my job in the village. And then at that time I was engaged to a WAAF in London so I got a job with Barclays Baking Machines. Went down to their factory in London and trained to be a mechanic. Service mechanic for the area. So we came back home again. But my lady friend said, ‘I’m not going to Swanland to live.’ So that brought that up. So I did it but I had to give it up because I didn’t have the money to buy a car or a motorbike and doing all the villages. And I walked from Holme on Spalding Moor to Easingwould carrying a wooden box with all my kit in. And I were going, and I went to one place, Newbold. And you’re allowed an hour and a half to service a machine and when I got there I had a new blade to put on. There were only a bus in the morning and one at night [laughs] so I panicked. I got it on. So I gave the manager my address. I said, ‘If anything happens send me a telegram and,’ I said, ‘I’ll come over,’ you know. Anyhow, everything was alright, thank goodness. So, but it was having walking from one village to another and buses it was that awkward so I gave it up. And I came back to the local shop again. Met a local girl and got married. And then I went to work for a local multiple store. Cousins. Down in Ferriby. And I used to go into the shop on the corner, a big shop on the corner where, down where we lived on a Sunday morning to do the bale machine for him and sort his yard out for him. So one day he said, ‘Would you like to come and work for me? I’ll give you a pound more than what you’d do down there.’ A pound in them days was a lot of money. And I had four children then. So I said, ‘Oh yes. Yeah.’ So I came and I was there for nineteen years. And then he brought his nephew into the business and of course he fell out with everybody. Fell out with me. It was horrible to work in. I was fifty five then and I thought where I go from here. Anyhow, Everthorpe Prison was advertising for a canteen manager’s assistant storeman. So I applied for the job. Went for the interview and then I got a letter saying no. The other man was there. He’d been a manager but I’d never been a manager. Anyhow, on the Monday they rang me up. Was I still interested in the job? I said why. Well the manager walked into the canteen on the Friday dinnertime and walked out. He said, ‘I’m not doing this.’ So he said, ‘The job is yours if you want.’ So I did nine and a half years there and took early retirement. So then my hobby was decorating. So I had a little business decorating.
DE: Right. I see. So you, going back to when you were working in, in the grocer’s shop and you had your early day off on Wednesday afternoon.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Why did you decide to join the RAF?
TW: I just did it on impulse. No real reason. I just, I just thought I’d go, you know. My brother was in the RAF so maybe that was one of the things as well, like, you know.
DE: Did you consider any of the other services?
TW: No. Never. If anything it was always going to be the RAF. So I got what I wanted but I didn’t get the job wanted.
DE: No. Because you wanted to drive.
TW: I wanted to drive. Yeah.
DE: Why. Why did you want to drive?
TW: I was always interested in driving and I learned to drive when I was at the village shop so. But I never passed a driving test. Because when the war came in 1939 just, just as I was taking mine and I’d only done driving down country roads and I did my test in the town. And I’d never been in front of a policeman before. And in Hull, there was a street in Hull where it was just a snake of people because when we had the ferry you’d see people going down , down the outside to the ferry. The policeman was waving me on you see and saying, ‘You’ve got to go hadn’t you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, They’ve got to move for you,’ you know. He said, ‘Well, your driving’s alright but you need more experience in the town.’ Well the war came so I kept my licence going and it became a full licence after the war so –
DE: I see.
TW: So me being a clever man, I taught my eldest son to drive. So I said to him, ‘Well we’ll finish you off at a driving school because I’ve never passed a driving test.’ So I got these people to come. So I said, ‘No. I’ve never passed a driving test. But,’ I said, ‘I’ve done my best so will you take him and finish him off.’ So they went and they came back and they both got out the car and folded their arms. He said, ‘You taught him to drive.’ I thought – here it comes. He says, ‘We can’t fault him anywhere. We don’t know how he didn’t pass the test. He said, ‘We’re putting him for his test straight away because he’s brilliant.’
DE: Wonderful.
TW: I always say to him now, ‘Now you didn’t listen to what I said to you? Did you?’ He borrowed my car once. He said he wanted to follow the RAC rally. I said yes. It was in November and it was snowy and icy. I said, ‘Go to Harrogate and Howard House but whatever you do do no go on the moors.’ ‘Ok dad.’ 3 o’clock in the morning a neighbour came down, ‘They’ve had an accident.’ ‘I’ll kill him,’ I said, ‘I’ll kill him when he gets home.’ Looked out the window when I heard this wagon outside a few hours later. Looked out. I said, ‘Look at my car. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.’ ‘Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.’ I said, ‘What did I tell you?’ ‘Well.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘But when you was driving the car you were in charge of the car. You should have done what I told you.’ So every time we go up on to the moors there’s an archway. ‘That’s where I had my crash dad.’ I said, ‘Don’t keep reminding me.’
DE: Oh dear. So the RAF didn’t want you to be a driver. They sent you on the armourer’s course.
TW: Sent me on the armoury course because at that time – Dunkirk and we’d lost a lot of armourers on Fairey Battles apparently. So, and they were short of armourers so that was it.
DE: So what did the course entail?
TW: Well, it entailed making little parts for guns and that and then you sort of went on to turrets and how to look after guns and how to sort the turrets out and that, then finished that armourers course, called out outside. Then this officer calls through, ‘These names please come forward.’ So we stepped forward. We all went to be fitter armourers. I went to be fitter armourer. Should have been general if I wanted to go on bombs but I was just fitter armourer but I ended up doing everything. You know. Bombing up and everything. So [pause]
DE: And what was it like on an, on an operational station?
TW: Oh it was fantastic. The spirit amongst the lads and that. Yeah. They were brilliant. And the aircrew were brilliant as well. Especially if they’d been in a hangar for a service. You saw the pilot, ‘Are you going up for a flight? Can I come with you?’ ‘Yeah.’ So, the first time I went up it was in a Wellington. Well that was by mistake because it had been in the hangar for a service and they took it out on to the airfield and revved the engines up and then they usually took the crew down to the dispersal points. So I thought well I can go down. Get a lift back. So I went and I thought he’s revving his engines up. Well it was running up. ‘I haven’t got a parachute.’ ‘Don’t worry. None of us,’ there were two other bods there, ‘None of us have parachutes. Don’t worry.’ So any chance after that I got. So the Lancaster was next. So I said to the pilot, ‘Are you going up?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ So I went with him. So I was felt real happy and light headed. I thought oh this is lovely you know. I got a tug on my leg and this chap said, ‘How long have you been up there mate?’ I said to ten. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘Plug this into the intercom. Plug this in to the oxygen because if we come down quickly it’ll blow your ears out.’ Got on to the pilot, this, told him I was up there. So, anyway and then we got out over The Wash. I thought – panic. Only one engine. I thought, what’s happening? What’s happening? So when we got back I said, I said to the pilot, ‘How did you manage to fly on one engine?’ ‘Oh don’t worry.’ He said, ‘That Lancaster can fly on one engine.’ He said, ‘Guy Gibson’s done it.’ I thought, I said, ‘Thank God for that.’ I said. But he said, ‘I’d forgotten you was up there mate. It’s a good job the chappie saw. Saw your legs hanging down. Because,’ he said, ‘It put me in a spin because I could have damaged your ears if I’d come down too quick.’
DE: Where were you? In the mid-upper turret?
TW: In the mid-upper turret. Yeah. Lovely. Lovely sight from out there. And then when D-day started we was called out because previous to D-day – well about six months before we took all the front turrets out of the Lancasters because it gave them twenty five miles an hour more speed. So when D- day started we was all called out of the aerodrome to put these turrets back in again. Drizzling with rain. Just getting, it was just getting light. So I was out of the nose of the Lancaster guiding this turret in and the sky turned black. And all these aircraft come over with the white markings on and I shouted, ‘D-day’s started, D-day’s started.’ The most fantastic sight. So, we got, we got all the turrets put back in again. We had to – the time I was in the pilot’s cockpit. No scaffolding. Health and safety today would go up the wall because the only scaffolding they had was for the engine people. So you had to climb out over the and crawl along a little but to the turret to guide it in and check if you wanted. If anything had happened inside. Check nothing loose. It was moving slow. Check that there were no oil leaks. So you had to take the cover off and check the oil pipes and that and put it back on. They’d grab you by your collar and turn you around and you’d go back in head first.
DE: That sounds like a really interesting job that.
TW: It was. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. As I say had I been on a proper ‘drome when the war finished I would have stopped in. I did really enjoy it.
DE: What other sort of things did they have you doing then?
TW: Being a gunner armourer I should never have been on bombs. But I was put on to a bombing up crew. I mean I didn’t know anything about the fuses or anything but I was putting fuses in and then we got – when we got Mosquitoes they couldn’t get four target indicator bombs on. So I had to shorten the tails till we could get four target indicator bombs on. So we got that sorted out.
DE: What were target indicator bombs like then?
TW: They were, well I think they were about two hundred and fifty pounds and that and they had about a hundred candles in. So when it dropped all the candles came out and should have burned but they didn’t. But we’d be, we got pressed for – Professor Cox came down and we helped him to perfect this so that when they dropped if they snapped everything burned. So we used to go to Thetford Forest. Got it on to a Lancaster. Go to Thetford Forest. Wait for it to be dropped. Go and see. Our fourth attempt was a successful attempt so we achieved something.
DE: So did you have four different prototypes then? Is that how it, how it worked?
TW: Yeah. You did one and put it to one side. Then marked it number one. Then number two, number three, number four. And of course when number four dropped it cracked but with having the metal rods down the cap it didn’t – it didn’t snap the rods. So it all burned when it fell.
DE: I see.
TW: Yeah. So, so we was coming back from Thetford when the war finished, one time, we said, ‘What’s everybody cheering for?’ You know. We stopped and asked somebody. ‘Well the war’s over.’ So that was nice surprise for us coming back again.
DE: So what were the conditions like on the stations that you were working on?
TW: The worst one was Stradishall because it wasn’t a proper ablutions. It was more open than that. Very basic. But the rest of them were fantastic. Beautiful toilets and showers and everything. And the barracks were good as well. There was, you used to get each station I’d been on after that there were the parade ground and then there was four blocks at each corner of the parade ground. Four blocks of houses. For people, for the crews. The airmen to be in. So then you went off to your, on to the ‘drome and then you went on to your armoury and did your business.
DE: Right. So could you describe a typical working day then for me?
TW: We’d have breakfast and then start about 8 o’clock and you’d sort of check your turrets over and then go and have your dinner and then come back. And if there ops on you would, I would be bombing up which I shouldn’t have been and then you stood there for them to go off and if you was conscientious you were there for when they came back again. But that was the worst part. Waiting for them to come back again. ‘Cause you would think if yours was the last one in and it hadn’t arrived. You’d say, well there was another one to come in yet? Another one to come in yet? And he’d come limping in. Probably be shot up a bit and a bit of damage on the wings and that. Our aircrew were good. They never made any bones or anything if they were hurt or anything. Because one day we had the Americans come in. The fighters shot the ‘drome up right down the runway. Then the B17 came in. Got out, ‘Where’s the blood wagon? Where’s the blood wagon?’ Kissing the ground. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. My brother, my brother was all for, all for the Americans. I said, ‘Well, you can have them. You can go over there and live with them.’ I said, ‘From what I’ve seen of them I think they’re pathetic.’ Then we used to go to the pictures in Huntingdon. We was coming out one day and Clark Gable, the film star, was walking in. Oh there’s Clark Gable there. With it being Americans there you see. Huntingdon was the nearest with a cinema so they used to come there.
DE: So what other things did you do when you had an evening off then?
TW: Well, when I had an evening off we, sometimes my mate and I would go right around the villages and then we got to this little village of Benwick. So we stopped and went in to the pub and got a drink and went outside at the back because they had a lovely bowling green at the back. And we sat and there was a couple sat next to us. So they asked, ‘Are you from the local ‘drome?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Would you like a game of bowls?’ So I said, ‘Oh I’ve never played bowls.’ My mate said, ‘Oh come.’ We won them [laughs] and so they said, ‘Are you sure you’ve never played before?’ So I said, ‘No.’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve managed to get the right bias on the bowls because you managed to get them through, you know.’ So, anyhow they invited us over to, for supper. And we used to go over regular and they had two boys and a girl. Now, the girl she’s what, she’ll be in her seventies now. We’re still in contact with one another. I made her a doll’s bed. She had two boys. Her boys had boys but she’s still got the bed. She said, ‘I might get a great granddaughter one day so I’ll pass it on to her.’ So we were regularly in contact with her because the family were fantastic to go to. You come home on leave, ‘Are you going on leave?’ He said. ‘I’ll come around night before and we’ll give you some eggs.’ Come home with some eggs. And sometimes you’d come home with a chicken. My mother didn’t know she were born. When I was going with a WAAF in the telephone exchange and they used to cook for themselves so if they got kidneys and I was coming home on leave they‘d give me the kidneys because they never ate them.
DE: Right.
TW: So mother would have my kidneys which was a luxury in them days. Couldn’t get them from the butcher and that. So she did well did my mother with eggs and that. But my brother was a rogue. I came, on the first leave I came home on leave he was home on leave. So, I gave my mother my ration card and the money. She said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘Well, my ration money.’ So she said, ‘Well Maurice never give me it.’ Give it me back. And do you know what he said? ‘It’s something that’s just started.’
DE: Oh. I see.
TW: I said, ‘No. It’s been going on since you’ve been in the forces so don’t talk daft.’ But her blue eyed boy could do no wrong could my eldest brother.
DE: And what was – what was he? Did you say he was –?
TW: He was an engineer but he had a painting and decorating business before the war.
DE: Right.
TW: But he was stupid. Get a lad to. Employed a lad to work when he should be working himself. And of course when the war started his business flopped because he had a load of credit. So after the war my mother said, ‘If anybody asks where Maurice is you don’t know.’ He went into partnership with a chap and I used to work with a chap at the bottom of the road here and his partner used to come to me for a box of matches and look at me because before the war I didn’t wear glasses. After the war I were wearing glasses. He’d look at me and he’d go outside and he’d be pondering. And he came every week. I thought well I know who you are mate but I’m not going to make myself known to you [laughs] Oh dear. So those were the days.
DE: You, you mentioned a bit earlier on about an, about an explosion.
TW: Yeah. That must, must have been when they were bombing up. Because I was coming back off leave so it had to be an evening one. And I just got through the gate and there was this terrific explosion. And the chap said, ‘By. Something’s gone up there.’ You know. So the next day we had to go out on to the drome. Looking in the crater. See if we could find anything. And three Lancasters looked like they’d been made of corrugated iron. All, every bit of them but I don’t know, as far as I can remember I don’t think the tyres had gone down. In the crater you couldn’t find a thing. And the only funeral from there was a WAAF driver. And she was stood at one of the Lancasters with a crew wagon and she was the only one that was killed. She was buried in Bransby churchyard.
DE: I see. And what had happened? Did you ever find out?
TW: All I can think of – it was a barometric fuse. ‘Cause they were very delicate and if they got knocked they could have gone off. And we had a lad from London and I don’t know how he became an armourer because he was thick. And he wasn’t in the billet at night so two of us said, ‘I wonder if it’s him.’ Tried to tighten it up and hit it with a hammer. ‘Cause if he had have done it would have gone off, you know. Because it was the only explanation we could think of ‘cause it couldn’t have gone up otherwise. But never did find out really. There was nothing to piece together to sort things out.
DE: Right. How did that make you feel when you were loading up the bombs?
TW: It didn’t bother me. You don’t. You don’t feel fear. I mean when you’re sat on top of the Lancaster you don’t think about falling off. In them days you didn’t have any fear in you. You was, you was bravado, you know. Fearless. No. It was a good job. I enjoyed it.
DE: How many people worked in the team that were bombing up these aircraft?
TW: It would be about four. It would be one upstairs winding the winch. Two or three downstairs. Especially if it’s putting the four thousand pounder on. To guide it so that it didn’t swing. Otherwise three could have done it because one upstairs doing the and the other two just guiding the bomb up till it got in to, as far as it could get. Until it go into its – I forget what they call it now. It’s anchorage.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do. Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do because you had to get in the back and wind the winch. Nearly crippled you.
DE: This was, this was by hand.
TW: All by hand. Yeah.
DE: Right.
TW: Everything was done by hand. Even the winches in the, winching them up in to the Lancasters. All hand winches. We weren’t modernised technically in them days.
DE: So it was quite hard physical work as well.
TW: It was. Yeah. But it didn’t bother you. You just took it as part of your – what you had to do and you just, you didn’t think about it. It was a job to do and you did it and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it anyhow so.
DE: Did you have any particular friends on any of the stations?
TW: One friend. But we lost contact after the war but we used to go out when we had time off on night time. We used to go out and cycle around the villages and as I say, going to Benwick. This couple. But that was the only one I had. But, I mean, in the group, the armourers, we were all friends and that. But you see you all go your separate ways and your lives change when you go into Civvy Street.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
TW: So you’ve got to adapt.
DE: What about the WAAF? Did you have anything to do with, with them?
TW: Well we’re still, we got engaged. We were still engaged when the war finished. And she came down for a holiday and she said [pause] I’d arranged for take her to see Richard Tauber in Old Chelsea. At the theatre. So we went there and when we came back there used to be an old man sat outside the Station Hotel. And I used to always give him a coin when I passed through. He was a really nice fella. And when, getting off the bus I wanted a halfpenny change but she wouldn’t get off the bus until the conductor come downstairs and give me a halfpenny. Then when we got home she said, ‘What did you waste money for? Going to the theatre.’ I said, ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘I didn’t waste money.’ I said, ‘I treated you.’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen you for months,’ you know. I said, ‘Well what about you? I didn’t complain about you when you said you’d been here, there and everywhere.’ I said, ‘I’ve sat at home knitting a rug. I haven’t been wasting my time. But you’ve been gallivanting. You blamed me because you lost a pen because you had to write to me.’ I said, I’ve stood in – the girl’s on the phone, ‘Ringing you and you weren’t there.’ ‘I was.’ I said, ‘No you weren’t,’ I said. On Edmonton Green apparently there were four telephones and the girls on the exchange used to know me. ‘I’m sorry Mr Waller but there’s nobody there. We’re trying them all.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said I’m wasting my time. So it fell through. So we had a friend who’d been engaged and she’d packed in so she had, when you got engaged you could get dockets and units if you were going to get married. So we got our dockets and units so I managed to get a bedroom suite and two fireside chairs. I bought them. So it’s just before I went down to Edmonton. So I went down to Edmonton. She stood outside the gates of the factory, followed me home to my lodgings and then knocked on my door. And then they said, ‘There’s a lady at the door for you.’ I said, ‘There can’t be.’ She said, ‘Well she’s asking for you.’ ‘What the devil do you want?’ ‘I wondered if you’d like to take me to the pictures tonight.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Clear off.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking you anywhere.’ She sent a great big Pickford’s van down to my, our house to pick some stuff up. I mean the fool. She must have been a fool because I mean, she didn’t know what she was going to send for. And my mother didn’t know anything about it. When this chap got to the front door. ‘What do you mean you –?’ He said, ‘You mean to tell me I’ve come all this way for nothing.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re supposed to be collecting like.’ Anyhow, I wrote to her and said, “Why did you send a Pickford’s van down to our house for?” I said, “You didn’t want a Pickford van. A little pickup would have been done.” So she wrote back, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, don’t forget I paid for the bedroom suite. I paid for two fireside chairs. I paid for the tea set we had.” I said the rest of the stuff will just go in a cardboard box.” I said, ‘Just send for a little pickup.’ But you see her father was a police inspector and she thought it might frighten me a bit but it didn’t. So the Pickford van come. He said, ‘This is all I’ve got to pick up is it?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ It was the same man that came before.
DE: Right.
TW: So he said my God. I thought I was coming to fetch a great big mansion box but a little portmanteau thing, you know. But she was [pause] I don’t think I’d have ever married her if it had gone on. She was a bit a one for herself. You know. Yeah.
DE: Sounds like it.
TW: And I was always wrong. And there was me. I had sore fingers from knitting. ‘Cause you couldn’t get canvas in them days so you used to wrap wool around a wooden ruler. Cut it. And then you got the right set. So you knit, put it in, knit a stitch and turn it around. Made some lovely rugs. I was very good at knitting. I knitted my first son’s christening shawl when he was born. Yeah. My sister was useless but I’ve got, I’ve got my mother’s genes because she was court dressmaker was my mother. But she would never help me because when I was growing up I wanted to be a dress designer. Oh no. No. No. No. I’ve dressed dolls as brides and they’re all over the world. I can make them ever week. People wanting them but my mother wouldn’t help me one little bit.
DE: Oh.
TW: And my sister couldn’t even, couldn’t even knit. It took her all her time to sew a button on. I could do the lot. In fact up until my children starting school I made all their clothes for them.
DE: Ok.
TW: Yeah. I was an industrious little lad. Used to have a nice decorating business. Go out at night decorating. And then when I retired I was with the prison service. They said, ‘Are you going down to London for a retirement course? They’ll explain all the things to do for getting a job and that.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘No. No. I’m not going.’ I said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ ‘What do you mean?’ they said. ‘Well I’m going to do my decorating.’ ‘Oh, you’re going on this course.’ I said, ‘I’m not going on a course.’ I went on the course and I made twenty seven quid. I said, ‘What?’ Because I went to the cashiers. They said, ‘How did you get the tools?’ So I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ They said, ‘No. You went by taxi.’ ‘I didn’t,’ I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ ‘No. Taxi. You got a taxi back as well. When you go to London where do you get a taxi to?’ I said, ‘I didn’t. I walked.’ ‘No you didn’t.’ I said, ‘I walked.’ He said, ‘What hotel did you stay at?’ I said, ‘I didn’t stay at a hotel.’ I said, ‘My brother lived at Hatfield so,’ I said, ‘I commuted each day from there.’ ‘Oh no. You stayed at a hotel. Now that looks a good one. You stayed there’ And I thought, afterwards I thought well that’s all over the country happening. It’s an eye opener sometimes. And that was in the prison service. No. I don’t know.
DE: Strange.
[pause]
DE: I’m just having a look at my notes.
[pause]
DE: Was the, did the different stations feel particularly different? I mean you say you worked with an SOE squadron and you worked for Pathfinders.
TW: No. They’re all types sort of thing, you know. There was no sort of difference in it. The only difference was Wyton. The bomb dump was at the other side the main road.
DE: Right.
TW: But the rest of them were all on the ‘dromes.
DE: I see.
TW: No. But they were all the same, there was no difference in them. Just because they were different squadrons. There were no, the routine was more or less the same all the way through.
DE: Ok. And the target indicator bombs that you were experimenting with in Thetford. Were these the sky markers? Or the –
TW: The sky markers. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Some some used to drop them in the cloud. A break in the clouds. And others used to drop down on the ground. And they were in different colours so there was a Master Bomber up above directing so if Jerry lit a decoy they’d change the colour. ‘Don’t bomb on red. Bomb on green.’ ‘Don’t bomb on green. Bomb on yellow.’ I wouldn’t like the Master Bombers job. To be up there all the time when the raid was on. Circling around.
DE: Yeah.
TW: No. I enjoyed it though.
[pause]
DE: And you say you, you chose to be demobbed because –
TW: I chose demob because I was on a satellite ‘drome. I had nothing to do and you just got bored. There was nothing you could do about it so you were glad to get out of it in the end. But that’s to say if I’d been on a proper ‘drome I would have stopped in.
DE: Right. I see.
TW: But I wasn’t so –
DE: What was the demob process like?
TW: Dead easy. Mind you I’ve always had a query with it. My demob. Because the medical officer examined me. Went and fetched another doctor. And I wondered why. So I’ve now developed an irregular heart beat so whether that was coming on then I don’t know but I’ve had this sepsis into regular rhythm.
DE: Right.
TW: When I was ninety two. Put me in the cubicle. ‘My God. We’re sorry. We shouldn’t have done that to you at your age.’ The cut off point’s ninety. I said, ‘Well it’s too late now isn’t it?’ He said, ‘Well you won’t get it done again. It’s back to normal. Its back to its regular beat again.’ Yeah. So they can’t do anything about it.
DE: Did you have much to do with the RAF medical services?
TW: No. Never.
DE: No.
TW: I’ve never bothered anybody. British Legion or anybody. I’ve bought my own wheelchair. Bought my own mobility scooter. I’ve a step son won’t part with a thing. He had a leg off. We’ve a wheelchair in there. We’ve a zimmer outside. We’ve two stools. I said, ‘You want to send those back.’ ‘Oh I might need them.’ I said, ‘You won’t need them.’ He won’t part with a thing.
DE: I see.
TW: They’re stood there. Brand new.
DE: Some people are like that though aren’t they?
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. You were showing me before we started the interview this research that you’ve been doing.
TW: Yeah.
DE: About the Halifax bomber crash. Could you tell me a little about that?
TW: Well it happened. We lived in Swanland. We came to Swanland in 1936. My parents left in March 1944. So I came back and knew nothing about it and then and a guy in the village wrote a book and there was a bit about it in there. And we were out one day with the church on an outing and yon side of Gilberdyke there was this model of where Halifaxes had crashed and there was two sort of intertwined. So I said, ‘Something should have been done about those two chaps who were killed in our village. Anyhow, a week or two went by and nothing happened so I thought I’ll take it on myself you see. So I thought he’s buried in Bury so he’s got to be a local lad. Got on to the paper and that. No. Couldn’t find anything about him. There was nothing about him at the cemetery and nothing about him at the War Graves Commission. No address or anything. So I got on to the records office and they rang me up and said, ‘He comes from Nottingham.’ I said, ‘Well, its seventy years since it happened. Can you tell me where?’ ‘Oh no. He came from Nottingham.’ So I wrote to tourist the board in Nottingham and they gave me the address of the radio station and the paper. The local paper were like the Daily Mail in Hull. They were useless. Two little pieces at the bottom. One, the modern Nottingham paper was in the Bygones letters in back of the paper. Two lines at the bottom. And the radio station at Nottingham were brilliant. They did a magnificent programme. But they rang me up to say would I go on the station but I was away on holiday and my son took the call. They said, ‘Well, tell your dad we’ll read out his letter out he sent us. We’d have liked to have him on it but we can’t change a programme now.’ So they wrote to me to tell me what they’d done and then [pause] I’ve got a blockage [pause] So, I got on to the tourist board and they said he’d come from Nottingham. So Radio Nottingham put a programme out and I heard nothing. Now, the other pilot, he came from Tottenham and he’s buried and I knew he was buried near his parents. Now, the War Graves just had the address of the church where he was buried so London University took it over from me but they couldn’t trace any relatives at all then. And then about four months after I started investigating I got a telephone call one night. ‘When are you having the service? I said, ‘What service?’ ‘For the airmen you found.’ I said, ‘I’m not because I haven’t found anybody.’ ‘He said, ‘I’m a nephew.’ He said, ‘We’ve just found out from Australia.’ I said, ‘Australia?’ He said, ‘Yeah. Eastern Australia.’ So how it got over there. Whether he’d been on the internet and that I don’t know. So he said can you arrange it. So I arranged a new service and about fifteen came down. They said, ‘Oh we owe everything to you. We thought he’d been killed over Germany.’ And they said, ‘But we’re grateful to you for what you’ve done. We’ll keep in contact.’ So Christmas come. I got a Christmas card. I’ve written letters. I’ve never heard a thing from them. Now, on the Monday night after it was on television a cousin who knew him – she rang me up. She said, ‘Oh I wish I’d known. I would have been there. Can I come over and see you?’ So she came over and we took her over to show where it crashed and the plaque in the church. And we took her to the cemetery to his grave. And then she said, ‘When was you born? And we found out we were born on the same day so it seems as though fate decreed that I should find him you know. His relatives. And we were keeping in regular contact with her. And we found out that he was with the 1160 Heavy Conversion Unit from Blyton near Gainsborough where he was killed. And so he was killed just up the road from where we live now.
DE: I see. And what, what was it that made you think it was important to tell this story?
TW: Well I think everybody who was in the air force should be recognised if it can be. And being out on this car ride and seeing that I thought well something ought to be done so that’s when I set about doing it. But I didn’t think I’d come against so many brick walls. But you do but you get through in the end you know. But the point I can never understand why his wife had him buried in Beverley. Why she told his family he’d been killed over Germany. There’s something funny there.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And you see all those there was about fifteen came. None of them knew him. There was his sister in law and his brother. Well not his brother because his brother had been killed. But his sister in law there and his nephews and that. But none of them knew him. Even his sister in law didn’t know him. But this cousin she’s brilliant. She keeps in, there’s a photograph in there of her and she always readily comes. What I want now when this gets seed I don’t know how they’re going to work it at the spire. In the plaques. But he’s Cumberworth and so whether they’ll put 1160 Conversion Unit in or not or whether it will just be a plaque with C’s on. Names of C’s.
DE: It’s alphabetical. Yes. I mean –
TW: Yeah. Cause I know a lady in the village she’s been down and she’s found her father’s name. And hers is J so I thought C must be up if J’s. J’s there.
DE: What’s there at the moment is 1 Group and 5 Group.
TW: Oh he must have been in one of them. She’s got – they gave me their memory card to put on the computer and there’s a picture of her pointing to her dad’s name.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So I think this gentleman will be on –
TW: Cumberworth.
DE: Cumberworth will be on the next lot of names that go up. Yeah. Yeah. Leslie Cumberworth.
TW: So if I can manage to get a photograph sometime I’ll get one.
DE: Yeah.
TW: I can get and get a photograph and send it to his cousin. She’d be really grateful.
DE: Yeah. I’m sure we can arrange that when the names are up.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So you said earlier you’ve never joined any squadron associations or any, any groups.
TW: I’ve joined the RAF Association.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Hull’s useless. Right from the very start, useless. They said they were short of money. So I did a mini market for them and I raised five hundred pound. And the lady who did the catering she did everything. Paid all her expenses like I do. Pay all expenses so everything you get is profits. I handed that money over to a flight lieutenant in cash and I’ve got a letter of thanks for a receipt. Where did that money go? I’m sure they’d have sent me a receipt if they’d got the money –
DE: Yeah.
TW: But I didn’t realise it at the time. It was afterwards I thought about it you know. And then I went down and I said I’d organise a competition. They said, ‘Oh you can’t do it because you’re not on the committee.’ I said, ‘I’m not joining the committee because I know what would happen. I’d end up doing everything.’ I said I like to everything. So, I said so I was working at Everthorpe then so I got a thousand copies done. So I said if you give every member ten copies you get a pound from every member. That’s a tenner each. If I give you a prize for the winner. So I gave them a lovely Parker, Parker pen and pencil set. That got pinched. ‘Cause they said I said to them when I went down I said, ‘Well you’ve got a prize to go with it so,’ I said, ‘Parker pen and pencil set.’ But it wasn’t there upstairs in the office.
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said, ‘Well have you started yet?’ So they said, ‘No. No. They said, so I started, ‘Oh you can’t start it. You’re not on the committee.’ So I said, ‘Have you started that?’ So she said, ‘No, not yet but,’ she said, ‘We’ll buy a prize out of what we make.’ I said, ‘No. I’ll give you another prize.’ When I do a thing I stand the expenses myself. I always have done. So I saw her a fortnight after. Four pound. I said, ‘You what? Four pound?’ I said, ‘I’ve done it twice and I’ve made over fifty pound each time.’ Then in 19 what 60s 70s fifty pound was a lot of money in them days. So I stopped going then ‘cause my son has joined as associate members.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And my daughter in law. Well the third time I went my daughter in law won the jackpot. You should have heard them. ‘You’ve only been here three weeks.’ I said, I went to the bar, I said, ‘Is this the way they go on?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, I said we’re supposed to be an air force group,’ I said esprit de corps, where is it?’
DE: Yeah.
TW: I said we’ve joined and paid our money. So I went in one night and I sat in this chair and this woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, she said, ‘That’s my chair.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ She said, ‘That’s my chair.’ So I got up. ‘Well it hasn’t got your name on it.’ So I said, ‘I’m not moving.’ And this was how good our club was. We had a trip to [pause] the memorial down in London. Castleford invited us back for supper. And they did a fantastic spread. Absolutely brilliant. So we invited them down to our club. I went down on the Wednesday night when it was due. There was only me and another fella in the club. The chap behind the bar, he said ‘We don’t usually see you here on a Wednesday night Tom.’ So I said, ‘Well, where is everybody?’ ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Castleford are coming tonight.’ ‘No they’re not.’ ‘Yes they are.’ With that the door opened. They all walked in. So I said, ‘I do apologise but I said, ‘You’ve picked the wrong club to come to because this is useless. This club.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: I said, ‘I’ve just come in,’ I said, ‘And it’s obvious they’ve forgotten.’ So they had to dash out and buy pie, pea and chips. No. I wouldn’t join no committee. I used to run a coffee morning every Wings week. We raised quite a lot of money. Got some good, one prize we had was a Hornby Double O train set. Folks said, ‘We like your coffee mornings because you always have a good raffle.’ I said it’s the people that you know they can get something from me. Where you go to you know.
DE: Yes.
TW: Very generous. You know.
DE: So apart from that Association what do you think about the way Bomber Command’s been remembered over the last.
TW: Very poor. Very poor. I mean the spire when it was opened. Did BBC do anything about it?
DE: I think –
TW: No. Only local stations. But BBC, I mean there’s all the people around the country in bomber command. BBC should have been doing that as well. I think their biased.
DE: Why do you think that is?
TW: Well, why weren’t they there? I mean you don’t seem to get much about the RAF or anything like that on the BBC.
[pause]
TW: I’m an old man. I do things differently. If I get a letter I answer it straight away. Anything that I’ve done I do it straight away but today it’s so lackadaisical. I mean this cousin of the airman. I sent some things about the Association and some photographs. A month ago. I’ve never had, I rang her up and said I’m sending you this parcel. I’ve never had a telephone call, an email or anything to say she’s got it. I just can’t understand folks.
[pause]
DE: Hello. I’ll just pause it there a moment.
[recording paused]
DE: That’s fine I’ve just started it recording again. Sorry about the interruption. Is there anything else? Any other stories that you think you’d like to tell us?
TW: I don’t think so because we covered it pretty well cause my memory is not as good as it was and I get, I’m talking and I go blank.
DE: I think you’ve done very very well.
TW: Yeah. So but I think no I think we’ve covered it really well.
DE: Just one other thing I think you covered it in the phone conversation when we were arranging this. What do you think about the stories of people like yourself and ground personnel have to tell?
TW: Pardon?
DE: What do you think about the stories of ground personnel? How well do you think they’ve been remembered?
TW: They haven’t. Because somebody was saying if it wasn’t for ground crew the bombs wouldn’t have gone off. But we haven’t been remembered. You never hear anybody talk about us. We’re just a forgotten crew. But I’m not worried because I did my best so. They rewarded me with a mention in dispatches so I can’t complain.
DE: Oh. How. What was the story behind that?
TW: I’ve no idea.
DE: No.
TW: All I can think it was because we helped Professor Cox design his target indicator bomb and alter the tail fins for [pause] to get the bombs on to Mosquitoes. I can’t think of anything else that I’ve done that’s deserving of it. Because getting out on D-day I mean that was just part of the job I think.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So [pause] and my grandson has my medals and my certificate because he’s a keen, very keen on what his granddad’s done. So he said, ‘Can I have your medals granddad.’ So I said, ‘Yeah. You can have that as well.’
DE: That’s wonderful.
TW: Because I know you’ll look after them.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So this is I’ll be able to tell my son. Show his photograph of his granddad and what he’s done. And he’s got my war memoir so he’s got that so. So I’ve got something to show him when he grows up.
DE: Wonderful. Right. So I’ll press pause there and thank you very very much.
TW: Pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Thomas Waller
Date
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2015-10-25
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWallerT151027
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.hh:mm:ss
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00:56:09 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
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Thomas Waller volunteered for the Royal Air Force and hoped to be a driver. However, he undertook training as an armourer and was based initially at the Special Operations Executive 138 Squadron. He was posted to RAF Stradishall, RAF Wyton and RAF Warboys. He returned from leave on one occasion and had just arrived back on the station when a massive explosion occured. He helped to develop and test target indicators with Professor Cox. He recently undertook research into the details of a Halifax crash to make sure the airmen were remembered.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Cambridgeshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
bombing
bombing up
crash
final resting place
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
memorial
military living conditions
Mosquito
Pathfinders
RAF Stradishall
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
sanitation
Special Operations Executive
target indicator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/295/3609/BWallerTWallerTv1.1.pdf
cd2cdd3683f81e91523da9c0cbc4fe91
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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Waller, Tom
Tom Waller
T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Corporal Thomas Waller (- 2018, 1096366 Royal Air Force) a memoir and photographs. Tom Waller was a fitter/armourer with 138, 109 and 156 Squadrons and served at RAF Stradisall, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, and RAF Upward.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Thomas Waller and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-27
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Waller, T
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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THE WAR MEMOIRS OF 1096366 Cpl. T. WALLER MID
[black and white photo of a young man in uniform]
15-5-1941 to 15-6-1946
[page break]
In March 1936, my family moved from Hull to West Leyes Road in Swanland where we lived at West Lodge which had formed part of Reckit's [sic] walled kitchen garden before the demolition of the manor in 1935, but unfortunately the garden was sold in 1944, so in March of that year we moved to Cottingham.
I worked for J Waites and Son at their grocer's shop in Main Street Swanland, which today has been modernised and converted into a mini-market and on Wednesdays I had a half day off.
When in Hull in April 1940, at the age of 18, I had the impulse to go to the recruiting office and volunteer for the Royal Air Force, hoping for training as a transport driver. I duly signed on the dotted line and then returned home and explained to my mother what I had done, to which she responded "What did you do that for, you'll never pass the medical".
In due course a letter arrived informing me that I had to attend the medical examination, which I did and passed as A1 (fit for active service). When I arrived home I told my mother what had transpired, to which she replied "But you can't have!" so I responded saying "Well I have" but to this day I never found out the reasons behind her remark.
Not long after, I received the papers telling me that I had been accepted for service in the RAF and to report to the assessment centre at Cardington [sic], which I did, only to be told that I would be trained as an armourer and not a driver as I'd hoped.
It was disappointing, however I returned home as I had been given a week to sort things prior to starting my enlistment. when I arrived home my eldest brother was there on leave, he was already a mechanic in the RAF, and I told him that I was soon to begin training as an armourer. He told me that this would involve bombing-up and servicing aircraft guns, but he also went on to say that many experienced armourers had been re-assigned to act as air-gunners, in Fairy Battle aircraft, during the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk. Unfortunately many of them were killed in action, creating a shortage of skilled armourers, and that is why I had been assigned for this training.
I said my goodbyes and left the following week as I had to report to Blackpool for kitting-out with uniforms, cutlery, etc and I also had a vaccination and inoculations before starting basic training. This was followed by a day trip to the Derby Road baths and then a week of various lectures before being sent to Morcombe [sic]. It was there that the military training (including square bashing) commenced, this being carried out on the seafront promenade and down the side streets which provided a great spectacle for the local residents and tourists alike.
Next it was out into the fields to practice bayonet drill which involved attacking straw filled sacks suspended between wooden frames. Following the command to fix bayonet the drill went something like this, 'on guard - rifled poised' 'thrust - stick the bayonet into the sack', twist bayonet and 'pull it out' and so it went on.
I and some of my fellow trainees were billeted in a large house with two attic rooms which were used by the owner's sons when on leave from the Royal Navy. The owner and his family were the kindest people you could wish to meet, providing us with good food, comfortable accommodation and they also allowed the married men to have their wives stay over for weekends, this made it a home-from-home for us all.
-1-
[page break]
If any of us were feeling off-colour we would be pampered and well looked after, as one of the daughters was a nurse at the local hospital, and if you happened to mention that you had heard the latest record they would have it within a few days, for you to play on the radiogram.
After the war my sister, brother, his fiancée and I had a lovely holiday with the family as they had re-opened as a guest house again.
After Morcombe it was posting to Kirkham in Lancashire and this was where the work really started with the commencement of the armourer's course. It was found to be nose to the grindstone however I and many of the other trainees didn't really want to be there, for various personal reasons, therefore when it came to filing-down metal for gun parts we would file the metal in the wrong way. When the instructor came round and saw what we were doing he retorted "You can stop that lark! None of you are getting off this course but if you put your backs into it you can do it". After that we had no choice but to knuckle down and get stuck in, which we did and eventually we found that we were beginning to enjoy it, that coupled with the fact that it was quite easy to get to Blackpool, this made life better.
We managed to venture into Blackpool on several occasions and enjoyed some of the various shows at the Opera House, we also found a nice pie shop near the bus station and on the bus journey back to camp it would be a raucous sing-song, what a life!
Once the course was completed we all had to line-up outside the armoury, an officer then came along and said "When your name is called, step forward", my name was eventually called and I duly stepped forward. As selected minions the chosen few, we were informed that we had been posted to Credonhill in Herefordshire, for further training as fitter-armourers we had to go there was no choice.
Down to Credonhill we went and began the new course, which again was nose to the grindstone, however after getting stuck-in the work became enjoyable and the effort paid off as we passed with flying colours. It was there in the September of 1942 that I celebrated my 21st birthday although I was all alone in the billet listening to classical music and from that time on I became hooked on that type of music.
Whilst there we were fortunate in that we could visit Hereford at the weekends, with its fine cathedral, canteen and the river Ouse which gave us a chance to relax and go boating, so I would say that on the whole our stay there was not too bad.
Seven day leave followed which meant a taste of civilian life again and a semblance of normality, that is to say no sergeant bawling at you to come at the double, your own bed to sleep in and a private bathroom with no one making rude comments about your appendage, but alas it was over all too soon.
My first operational deployment came in late 1941 with a posting to Stradishall, (now High Point prison), to 138 Squadron, which was part of the SOE (Special Operations Executive), and I remained there until March 1942 at which time I should have been transferred to Wyton.
At this point it is worth noting a few details about 138 Squadron and its work as it operated for three and a half years, ranging over Europe from Norway it [sic] the north, at times deep into Poland and to Yugoslavia in the south, transporting agents and dropping supplies to the various resistance movement [sic] throughout these countries.
-2-
[page break]
Operation aircraft included the venerable Lysander, affectionately known as the Lizzie, and the Whitley bomber, both of which were originally based at Stradishall before being transferred to Tampsford in March 1942.
Our job was to pack cylindrical supply canisters with whatever was needed, such as arms, ammunition, explosives, radio sets and other vital equipment and supplies, and then load them into the Whitley bomber's bomb bay. The bomber then delivered the canisters to saboteurs and resistance movements in the various countries, dropping them by parachute into rendezvous points where a reception committee of local underground members would be waiting to receive them.
The agents were usually flown to and from their destinations by the squadron's Lysanders, which were quiet aircraft capable of landing and taking off from rough short unprepared airstrips, only staying on the ground for very short periods. You never knew the agent's identity, due to the secret nature of operations, and to preserve their anonymity a telescopic cover was used, extending from the rear of the transport vehicle to the aircraft. Very few people knew in advance of these flights so in winter it was not unusual to be called out in the middle of the night to clear snow from the runway to enable aircraft to take off or land.
My first leave from Stradishall was quite an experience as the train station at Haverhill was well over a mile from the camp and I arrived there just as the train was about to depart, this was when it all started. The station porter asked 'Do you want this train?' so I said 'Yes', but as there was little time he suggested that I obtain my ticket at the other end and virtually pushed me into a carriage. As we approached Hull the ticket collector came round, I had my railway warrant but no valid ticket therefore he more or less accuse me of trying to get away without paying. A dear old soul got up, who I thought was going to hit him with her umbrella and she said 'This lad is fighting for our country' to which I responded 'Don't start another war we have enough with this one against Hitler'. Once in Hull's Paragon station I was taken to the station master's office where the ticket collector explained that he thought I had tried to get away without paying, so I told my side of the story and said 'If you don't believe me ring Haverhill station and they will confirm what I have said'. I eventually got my return ticket.
Not long after returning to Stradishall, 138 Squadron was transferred to Tempsford and I was issued with a travel warrant to go to Upper Heyford in Northants. On arrival I reported to the guard room to present myself and they directed me to the orderly room where, after a while, an officer entered and asked 'Where have you come from ?', 'Stradishall' I replied. The office [sic] then informed me that I was not supposed to be there and said 'We will find you a bed until we can ascertain where you should be'. I was then taken to the cookhouse [sic] for a well deserved meal before being shown to my temporary billet.
Whilst at Stradishall I had written home to let the family know that I was being transferred to another camp and would write again when I got there.
I was at Upper Heyford for about a week before being informed that I should have been transferred to Wyton in Huntingdonshire, so you can imagine my mother's surprise when the police came to her house to see if I was there as I had not arrived at my designated camp on time.
After a while I was told to collect my belongings and that an Anson aircraft would fly me to Wyton. 'Good' I thought, my first flight, so off I went to the orderly room where I was surprised to find out that the aircraft had developed a fault and that I would now have travel by train. I was issued with a railway warrant to Huntingdon, which happened to be the nearest station to the camp, and then driven to the station where I was seen onto the train and off I went, thinking that they were glad to get rid of me.
-3-
[page break]
I eventually arrived at Wyton in late 1942, to join 109 Squadron of the Pathfinder Force, only to face a Court of Enquiry over the fiasco of my transfer and in simple terms it went something like this - Where have you been? your [sic] telling us that you passed through Kings Cross station and were not stopped although we have had the MPs (Military Police) looking for you, they were puzzled! Following my explanation a called[?] was placed to Upper Heyford to verify that I had been telling the truth.
I then settled into my new billet which was occupied by other armourers and when I told them what had happened they all had a good laugh, they knew a new armourer had arrived.
My first order of business was to write a letter home to let them known [sic] that I had arrived, give them my new address and an idea of what had happened to accounted [sic] for the delay in writing.
When I arrived home on my next leave my mother was in a very agitated state as she wanted to know where I had been and why MPs were looking for me. I explained what had transpired and that it was the fault of the orderly room at Stradishall, as they had sent me to the wrong RAF camp, she was pleased that her son hadn't gone AWOL (Absent WithOut Leave) as was first thought.
Following my return to camp the work really started with my first job on an aircraft being fit [sic] a new cartridge chute in the rear turret of a Wellington bomber, affectionately known as the 'Wimpy', which had been brought into the hanger for inspection. It was then taken out onto the runway apron so that the engines could be run-up before it was taken to the dispersal point and knowing I could get a lift back to the hanger I went with the aircraft to check that the turret operated correctly. While onboard [sic] I thought that the pilot was revving the engines up as a test however when I looked out through the rear turret I saw the runway moving away, we were airborne, and it was at this point that panic set in as I didn't have a parachute. I then made my way unsteadily up the fuselage and said to one of the Bods, our name for airmen, "I haven't got a parachute" to which he calmly replied, "Don't worry, none of us have". That was reassuring up to a point, so I made my way back to the rear turret and climber in to enjoy the tail-end Charlie's (rear gunner) view of the countryside. Once we had landed one of the lads asked "Have you flown before?" to which I replied "No that was my first flight", he was surprised and remarked "You're the first one I've seen that was capable of walking in a straight line after his first flight".
Once while working on the front turret of a 'Wimpy' I looked out and saw the Commanding Officer and the Duke of Kent standing on the tarmac.
Wyton was a nice location being handy for the Huntingdon headquarters of 8 Group Pathfinder Force and I also found out that Oliver Cromwell had attended the grammar school in Huntingdon.
My elder brother was medically exempt from service so he and his future wife came down for a holiday at Godmanchester, which was just down the road from Huntingdon, making it possible for me to visit them twice while they were there.
Professor Cox, the inventor of the Target Indicator Bomb and Barometric fuze [sic], came to work at the base and it was the duty of my mate and I to assist him to perfect these, this resulted in us being exempt from postings for three years. The problem we had to overcome was the fact that when the bomb was dropped from an aircraft only half of the 'candles' would burn and it took many attempts before we overcame the problem and got all the 'candles' to burn. On each attempt the bombs were loaded into a Lancaster bomber which then
-4-
[page break]
flew over Thetford forest where an area had been designated onto which the bombs could be dropped. After each bombing run we would travel to the forest in RAF transport so that we could check the results of the drop, first hand.
Another project we had was to redesign the bomb's tail fins so that four could be carried in the small bomb bay of the Mosquito bomber, as it was their task to mark targets for the main bomber streams.
We also made a device known as a 'screamer' which drove the aerodrome mad with its [sic] noise.
The professor received £20,000 for his inventions, which was in great part due to my mate and my self [sic] helping him to perfect them.
On one occasion the professor put some pieces of 'candle' on a work bench in the armoury and ignited them, talk about technicolour. It also produced a thick black smoke that billowed through the hanger, housing Lancaster and Mosquito bombers, causing someone to call the fire brigade thinking that the hangar was on fire. Following this incident we could have been brought up on charges but fortunately the blame fell on the professor who received a serious dressing down for his antics.
Whilst at Wyton I unfortunately contracted oil dermatitis and was hospitalised for quite a while during which time my face was regularly painted with a violet liquid however it didn't do much to help the condition but it did stop it spreading. When the senior Medical Officer went on leave a junior Medical Officer asked "Will you be a guinea pig for me?" and as I had nothing to loose said "Yes". He later came back with a pot of cream, he had concocted it himself, which he then smeared onto my face and miraculously by the end of the week all that was left on my face were red blotches. When the senior Medical Officer returned from leave he found out what had happened and the junior Medical Officer and I got it in the neck however I pointed out to him that the dermatitis had cleared up and with that he stormed off. Some while later the junior Medical Officer came back to to see me and apologised for getting me in to [sic] hot water, he had brought me another jar of him cream but fortunately I didn't need to use it again. I was given a week's sick leave and hoped that the junior Medical Officer would make his fortune after the war.
It was a lovely walk from Wyton to St. Ives, passing through Houghton, across the meadow to Houghton water mill, along the river bank and through a bird sanctuary where on a summers evening bird songs could be heard. On the way we would stop off at Hemmingford Grey which had a good canteen and from here, as in St. Ives, you could go boating. One Sunday my mate and I went to an evening service in St. Ives after which the minister invited us back to the vicarage for supper and this was followed by a game of bowls, on a lovely lawn.
Wyton was the only base I was stationed at that has a bomb dump across the road from the camp, the road being the one from Huntingdon to Warboys, fortunately in those days there was very little traffic about.
In early 1943, 156 Squadron, the second on the base, moved to Warboys which was just down the road from Wyton therefore it was still handy for a cycle rise to Huntingdon.
Our billets were Nissen huts dispersed throughout the woods however if you were in them when all the aircraft took-off the huts would vibrate however to me the noise of the aircraft was a lovely sound.
One evening my mate and I went for a cycle ride and came into a small village called Benwick where we stopped at the local pub for a drink. We wandered out to the back of the pub where we met a lovely family
-5-
[page break]
with whom we started chatting and they asked if we would like a game of bowls, we said that we hadn't played before and they told us it was easy. Off we went to a well kept bowling green for our match and we won as my bowls rolled into the right place, to which they remarked "You must have played before, you have the knack for it and got the bias right", "No" I replied "Beginners luck". They invited us back to their home for supper and said we were welcome to visit whenever we had any spare time. When we were going on leave they would asked [sic] us to come over if we had the time and they would give us eggs and sometime [sic] a chicken to take home.
They had two small sons and a little 18 month old daughter for whom I made a dolls bed, which she still has, and after the war I spent a holiday with them, including a day trip to Hunstanton. Unfortunately the daughter is now the only member of the family left however we still keep in touch regularly and I send flowers on her birthday and at Christmas, this is the least I can do after all the family's kindness shown us during the war.
While stationed at Warboys I got engaged to a WAAF who worked in the telephone exchange where I worked the switchboard once or twice, and here they used to cook for themselves so if they got any kidney when I was going on leave they would give me it to take home, as they didn't like it, this made a tasty treat for my family.
When an aircraft came into the hanger for servicing I would ask the pilot if he was going up on a test flight and if he was I would ask his permission to go up with him, under the pretext of testing the turrets, etc. These were exciting trips as the pilot would hedge-hop the plane, flying low over the meadows and at times you would see a train almost level with you. Near the coast was a farm house and if there was any washing hung out the pilot would fly low over the Ouse and then nose-up so that the washing would blow off the line if it was not pegged tightly onto it, by which time we would be out over the Wash.
On my second flight in a Lancaster the pilot knew I was going up with him and I positioned myself in the mid-upper gunner's turret to enjoy the view. After a while I began to feel really light headed when suddenly there was a tug on my leg from one of the crew, he asked "How long have you been up there" to which I replied "Ever since take-off". "Hell" he retorted "Quick, plug this in to the intercom so that I can speak to the pilot", he then gave me a mask to put on and told me to plug it into the oxygen system. There was no wonder I was feeling light headed and exhilarated as we were flying at a fairly high altitude which meant that I had begun to suffering [sic] from a lack of oxygen and if we had descended quickly it would have damaged my ears.
I soon recovered and once out over the Wash I tested the guns and began to traverse the hydraulic turret, it stopped working and I thought what's wrong now, so I started to traverse the turret manually. At that point I noticed we were flying on one engine and once again panic set in as I wasn't wearing a parachute but fortunately the other engines started up and we were flying on all four engines again. Once on the ground the pilot came up to me and said "Sorry about that, I forgot you had come along, it was a good job one of the crew found you when he did otherwise I could have done you a lot of damage". I then asked him about flying on one engine and he responded "We often do that because the Lancaster can fly on one engine". That was a flight I will never forget and I later read a book by Wing Commander Guy Gibson in which he mentioned flying his aircraft on one engine.
As armourers we were an ingenious bunch so in our dinner breaks we would fabricate cigarette lighter [sic] out of 0.303" and 0.5" calibre 'rounds' and other odds and ends. Firstly the bullet was removed from the cartridge case and the propellant charge (cordite) tipped out, next came the dangerous part, the end of a file was
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placed on the percussion cap in the base of the casing and then wrapped in a large wad of rags before the file was hit with a hammer, which would detonate the percussion cap with a bang, but unfortunately my mate lost a finger doing this as he didn't use enough rag wadding. We also fashioned Spitfires from halfpenny pieces, these looked nice when polished and crafted model planes from pieces of clear perspex. Another profitable business was making Dutchess [sic] Sets using square and oblong frames into which nails were fixed every half inch and silk threads criss-crossed between them and knotted, they made lovely presents.
I made my nephew a fort out of old ammunition boxes which I took home in pieces, it was that solid you could stand on it, and also managed to obtain an old parachute for my mother, who being a seamstress made good use of it.
Another perk of the job came when a new Lancaster arrived on base as it had thermos flasks, so it was a mad rush to be one of the first to the dispersal point to grab one, which I managed to do.
While serving at Warboys I was promoted to corporal and asked if I would like to go back to school to learn about bombs and fuzes [sic] as this would mean another promotion to sergeant and an increase in pay. At that time I was a fitter armourer (guns) and already involved with bombing-up and de-bombing plus having worked with Professor Cox I already knew a great deal about the Target Indicator Bomb and the Barometric fuze [sic] therefore I declined the offer, I thought to myself that money wasn't ever thing but good mates were, especially at the height of the war, and anyway it would be a waste of my time plus it meant moving into the sergeant's mess.
[/bold] March 1944 [/end bold] 156 Squadron moved to Upwood however my mate and I were still able to visit our friends at Benwick.
One day on camp, while aircraft were being bombed-up for an operation, there was a terrible accident as a bomb exploded with horrendous force, creating a massive crater and the intense shock wave that followed rippled the structure of three Lancasters [sic] making them look as if they had been made from corrugated iron. Fortunately I was in the guard room, having just returned from leave, as the force of the explosion hurled debris over the building. They [sic] following day the crater was searched but nothing was found and we never really knew what had happened, although one train of thought was that someone had accidentally knocked a barometric fuze [sic] causing it to detonate the bomb.
Following this incident the billet was a very sombre place with so many empty beds, so many mates lost, and there was only one funeral from the camp, that of a WAAF driver who was buried in Upwood church cemetery.
When at Upwood it was possible for me to go to Ramsey and board a train for Peterborough, which connected to the main line, and at that time this journey cost around two shillings which in today's money would be around ten pence. From Peterborough I caught a train for York and then one to Cottingham station, but it was late at night when I arrived and there was no one on duty.
The next day I though [sic] I could get back to Ramsey cheaply so I got a single rail ticket from Hull to Brough and was on my way, or so I thought, because just as I was about to board the train I got a tap on the shoulder, it was an inspector and at this point panic set in. He asked "Why are you catching this train" and with a bit of quick thinking I replied "Argyle Street was bombed last night and my boss brought me home to make sure everything was OK and I have to be back on duty by 12.30". The inspector then asked "Which side of the train will you get off at Brough" and as I had local knowledge I replied "That side", pointing to the opposite
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side of the train, he then let me get on. Once onboard [sic] I went right down the train and hid it [sic] the toilet until the train departed, just in case the inspector had got on. I managed to get all the way back to Ramsey on that ticket and it was fortunate that there was no one at the other end to check it however all the way back my nerves were on edge in case a conductor came round and asked to see my ticket, needless to say I never did that again, once was enough.
One date of note was the 10th February 1944 as this was when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited the base and it was a bitterly cold frosty morning. The armoury was opposite the officer's mess outside which the guard of honour had formed-up and because it was so cold the officer in charge decided to take them for a run up the road to keep warm. However, just as they turned back the royal party came into view so they had to make a hasty dash back, at the double, to be in place for the royal salute and as we had a great vantage point it gave us a good laugh.
There was a lot of hard work prior to the visit as we painted the curbing stone white, painting them black again after the visit, cleaned the inside of a Lancaster, which was due on ops that night, and washed a hanger floor with petrol, all this for a royal visit, it would have been better for them to have seen it as it was. Somehow what we had done made the papers and we were all confined to camp for a week.
On the 6th June 1944 all the armourers were called out at first light to refit the front turret back into all our Lancasters. We had removed the turrets some months earlier, which gave the aircraft a 25mph increased [sic] in air speed, however the Germans had caught-onto this and began attacking the aircraft from the front because the mid-upper turret guns could not be depressed enough to give adequate frontal covering fire.
The turrets had to be fitted as quickly as possible during that day as the aircraft were needed for ops that night. Cranes were used to lift the complete turret but as we had no scaffolding the only way to fit then [sic] was for us to go in through the pilot's escape hatch and out onto the front of the fuselage to guide the turrets into position, no health and safety rules to follow in those day [sic] which meant that one slip and you would end up head first on the concrete. Once a turret was in position it was fairly straight forward job to connect up the hydraulic lines, fit the covers and check its operation however due to the urgency of the job we had to work without normal breaks so our food was brought out to us and surprisingly we completed the task in time.
I remember it was a cold day with light drizzle however our spirits were lifted when we saw the sky fill with aircraft of all types, some towing gliders, we all shouted "D-Day has started", and I thought it was the most magnificent sight I had ever seen. Due to that days hard work all our aircraft took off on ops that night and we were given the following day off, which we needed as we were bone weary and very wet.
On the 1st January 1945 the New Years Honours List came out and I was surprised to see that I had been mentioned in despatches, quite an honour, and much to mu mother's delight.
At the end of the war, if I had been serving on a permanent aerodrome I would have remained in the RAF, the service that I loved, but unfortunately I was posted to a satellite aerodrome at Stour-on-the-Wold near Stratford-apon-Avon. Here life became tedious with nothing to do but look after 52 rifles in the armoury, a dummy 4,000lb bomb in the bomb dump, there was no paperwork to do and nobody seemed to know what was going on. Somebody delivered a further 20 rifles to the armoury and I asked him "Why have you brought them here" to which he replied "We don't want them" and off he went, this was now the nature of the job.
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Later when demob came I was glad to leave, so off I went to Cardington where I was given a medical and a demob suit together with my discharge papers, a book of money orders to cover demob leave and a rail warrant home. After several weeks of demob leave I once again became a civilian, back to a so called normal life.
In late 1946 I returned to my job at Waite's grocery shop. then in early 1947 I broke off my engagement with the WAAF girl, who was a Londoner, and later started dating a local girl called Lucy Ann Baitson, who also worked in Waite's shop. She lived at Mill Lane in Swanland and we eventually got married at All Saints church in North Ferriby in 1949, but tragically she dies in 1979.
After a long and varied career I finished my working life as chief storeman [sic] at Everthorpe borstal.
Just a note about Wing Commander Don Bennet, a great man who unfortunately never received the recognition or honour that he deserved for his efforts during [the] war. On the 27th April 1942 he became the Commanding Officer of 10 Squadron and while flying a Halifax bomber on a raid over Norway, to bomb the German battleship "Turpitz" in Trodhiam [sic] fjord, he was shot down. Fortunately he managed to escape capture and reached Sweden from where he returned to England via the BOAC Courier Service, ensconced in the bomb bay of a Mosquito bomber. On his return of duty Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris made him the Commanding Officer of 8 Group Pathfinder Force and later after his death his ashes were interred under the RAF Memorial on Plymouth Hoe.
Now, nearly 70 years on, having been ignored after the war by Winston Churchill, the man who said "We had to bomb Dresden", a remark which many still remember today, our brave bomber crews have finally been given the recognition they readily deserve. In Green Park, London, a splendid permanent memorial has been erected, consisting of a sculpture depicting a bomber crew mounted on a large plinth and housed in a grand stone built structure, open on two sides, complete with a dedication to those men.
Having spent the war years serving with bomber squadrons and in hind sight I am now of the opinion that these heroic men should have received the military's [sic] highest awards for what they had to endure. Going out night after night on bombing missions over mainland Europe, particularly Germany, knowing that they would face the ferocity of the German flak guns, night fighters and searchlights. I saw first hand the severe damaged [sic] inflicted on a lot of those aircraft returning from missions, unfortunately many planes and crews never did return and to be honest I don't know how they did it.
Dublin Core
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Title
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The war memoirs of 1096366 Cpl T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Memoir covers early life, joining and training as a Royal Air Force Armourer and his subsequent wartime career. States that he served on 138 Squadron at Royal Air Force Stradishall and describes its Special Operation Executive operations. Goes on to talk about his postings to Royal Air Force Wyton on 109 Squadron and mentions work on the development of the target indicator barometric fuse. Covers his subsequent move to Royal Air Force Warboys with 156 Squadron and then on to Royal Air Force Upwood and records armourer activity including those on D-Day. Finally talks about the end of the war and decision to leave as well as note about Wing Commander Donald Bennett and the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park.
Creator
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Thomas Waller
Format
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Nine page typewritten document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BWallerTWallerTv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
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.
109 Squadron
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
166 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb dump
demobilisation
final resting place
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground personnel
Lancaster
medical officer
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Kirkham
RAF Stradishall
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
Special Operations Executive
training
Wellington
Whitley