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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/PLancasterJ1501.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/ALancasterJO150406.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
2017-03-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton. The interviewee is Jo Lancaster. Mr Lancaster was a pilot in various aircraft during World War Two and the interview is taking place at xxxx on April the 6th 2015. Apologies for the poor sound quality during various sections of this interview due to static on a tie clip microphone. Talk a little bit about that raid July the 24th 1941.
JL: Well at the time the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were in the harbour at Brest. On that day the Scharnhorst made a run for it down the coast to La Pallice but the Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were still in Brest and a number of Wellingtons, I think of 3 Group were ordered to carry out a daylight bombing raid on the harbour there. We were at Alcon, operating from Alconbury at the time. Near Huntingdon. And we were routed right down to the Scilly Isles. Then doubled back towards Brest and you could see a black cloud of flak smoke from quite a distance away. It was a beautiful, a beautiful clear day and we just had to barge straight in. There was, we only saw two ME109s, one of which went right through the middle and got severely shot up by everybody and the pilots baled out. Everybody claimed it of course but nobody knows who did it. But, anyway, we were in two vics of three. We [weren’t in company?] but our trio sailed through without too much damage. A piece of flak came through the windscreen alongside me and dropped on the floor which I still have and we’d used up a lot of fuel trying to keep formation with constantly altering the engine settings. And so, having, as I say, got away again out over back over the channel we and several others headed for St Eval in Cornwall and quite a number landed there. Many of them in various stages of damage. We’d had our hydraulic system knocked out but apart from flak holes we were intact.
AP: Did the searchlights sort of —?
JL: Well when that happened you were singled out for particular attention by the flak which happened to me several times. On one occasion it was right over the middle of Essen and did some violent evasive action and lost a lot of height and gained a lot of speed and finally outflew the searchlights.
AP: What was the evasive action? Did you corkscrew or did you dive?
JL: Well just various. Mainly sort of spiral diving but keep trying to keep a heading away from the searchlights all the time.
AP: And flying through the flak and the anti-aircraft again.
JL: Well there was nothing we could about that. We heard it and smelled it and when you got back you found lots of holes.
AP: Right. One of the things she was asking about was what it was like when you’re coming in on the final approach to your bomb run. You as the pilot. What are you doing? What’s the crew doing?
JL: I think you made yourself as small as possible. I just used to [unclear] and went in.
AP: So you were just taking orders from the bomb aimer. He was in control. Not the pilot.
JL: Yes. He would take over and he’d say. ‘Steady. Left. Left’ or ‘Right,’ and we would keep laterally level and try and make these small adjustments in heading until he was satisfied and then eventually he would say, ‘Bombs gone.’
AP: And then what?
JL: You felt the thud as they left and usually we had a camera aboard so they had to hold, hold the heading for a few, well about thirty seconds or more. I forget now. Until a camera had, the camera had flashed, had gone off, and then we were free to leave. On the Lancaster we had, usually had cookies and incendiaries. With the Wellingtons the target was usually the Ruhr. That was standard nine, five hundred pounders.
AP: Right. And what was the age? How old were you when you were flying? Can you say a little bit about how old you were? And your crew?
JL: In 1941 I was twenty two.
AP: And your crew. Could you say?
JL: Well, all much the same. I had a Canadian navigator, a Welsh wireless operator, a Canadian front gunner and a New Zealand rear gunner. The navigator, in the Wellingtons the navigator went forward to do the bomb aiming. Later on of course we had the bomb aimers on this, on the way back from Berlin. In a Wellington. And we were rather taken by surprise because you come down with the change in the wind over ten tenths cloud and we adjusted north and we came, we were flying back over Wihelmshaven and Emden and were getting shot at all the way through the clouds and then eventually there was a gap in the clouds and I could see, see through the clouds, the clouds across the causeway across the mouth of the Zuiderzee. And I think we were probably all looking at that and then an ME110 shot overhead and circled around and went into them and I went into a deep spiral dive and he tried to collar us and showed us a bit of [unclear] and I think he should have [unclear] went into the cloud and we never saw each other again so we don’t know what happened to him. In 1941, on a Wellington squadron such as 40 Squadron, each Wellington had its own ground crew. There was a fitter for each engine. That was his engine. And then there were two airframe fitters. And they were more or less permanently with the aircraft so we became very friendly with them. And on operational days they would do what they called an NFT — Night Flying Test and some of the guys would always come with us on that. They were very industrious and proud of their aeroplane.
AP: And other? Other people that you had to rely on? Was there? Can you say, talk about, some other people?
JL: The only people I can think of were the [lovely ladies?] in the parachute section which, on 40 Squadron our parachutes went to [unclear] RAF Alconbury had virtually no buildings at all. A couple of wooden huts and that was about all so all the things like parachutes and things were at Wyton which was our base station. I never went to the parachute section there but at Wickenby on 12 Squadron we had a parachute section there and it was always WAAFs who looked after the parachutes.
AP: OK. Any, any —?
JL: And we had WAAF drivers of course.
AP: Yeah. Ok. Any thoughts about the aeroplanes that you flew like the Wellington or Lancaster? A favourite or, you used to fly? Or —
JL: The Wellington is a well-designed aeroplane but it is grossly underpowered. When they finally put in decent engines in her. The Hercules instead of the Pegasus. It was a very good operational aeroplane.
AP: Right.
JL: But I think everybody loved a Lancaster.
AP: What was so special about it?
JL: I don’t know. It was viceless. It was doing, carried a big load, doing a good job and with the Wellingtons I had two complete engine failures and by the grace of God we were within easy distance of an airfield. On one occasion we took off on operations and the port engine started — oil started pouring out of it and eventually it stopped and we were able to, it was still fairly light and we just lobbed down into nearby Wyton. And the other one I was on in the, actually in the circuit at Wymeswold when I was an instructor at OTU and we were just able to go straight in from there because on the —
[Recording paused]
JL: Oh well. Yes. Well. I was, before the war I’d served an apprenticeship in Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft at Coventry and after the war I went to join Saunders Roe at Cowes but they didn’t have very much going on and I got a bit fed up with that and re-joined Armstrong Whitworth as a test pilot. There were three of us there Eric Frenton was a test pilot and another one — Bill Else, and they had, there was a lot of work going on. Amongst other things we had the AW52G which was a glider, a tail-less glider. Two thirds scale of the bigger versions of the AW52. There was two of those. One with Nene engines. One with Derwent engines. The Nene were more powerful. And the Nene engine one, when I went there, was out of action having the structure stiffened. And then it came out and had the limited speed increased by quite an amount and I was only on my third flight with it and the job was to explore the higher ranges, speed ranges and it’s rather difficult to explain technically but the controls were called elevons. They were combined elevators and ailerons. And in order to get them light enough for the pilot to control them manually they had what they called spring tabs which meant that the connection from the pilot’s control was actually, to the flying control was actually through a spring. And what happened was that while I was doing something like three hundred and twenty miles an hour, we didn’t use knots in those days and a flutter, what they called flutter set in and it became very very violent. Very very noisy. I anxiously estimated the frequency as one and a half cycles per second. The amplitude we don’t know. You could only guess at. It was probably six or eight feet as I was going up and down at that rate and I was rapidly disorientated and I thought the thing was going to break up anyway. But if it didn’t break up I was going to be unconscious so I decided to eject. A thing I’d never even anticipated before and I wasn’t in a very good state by then so I didn’t do the drill properly. I managed to jettison the canopy and I pulled the overhead blind down over my face which fired the seat. I should have put my heels on the, on the rest on the front of the seat which I didn’t do. I just was very lucky I did that because the aircraft had sort of spectacle controls and I think, as an afterthought, they realised that wasn’t very good combined with an ejection seat so they put in another system which jettisoned the hood and fired some cutters which, which disconnected the controls from the stick and I think you was just supposed to push the stick forward too. It was a bit of Heath Robinson system but I couldn’t do that because it was wired off anyway. Anyway, I got away with it with a lot of bruises on my shoulders and on my knees. I landed very badly. I thought I was going to land in a canal and tried to remember the drill we’d been given in the RAF but I only succeeded in making the descent worse by swinging. And when I landed I broke a chip off my shoulder bone and they took me away and x-rayed me and they said that I’d sustained a compression fracture of the first and second along the vertebrae and they said, ‘Not only have you done that but it’s been done before.’ And I have to say that it was in, I don’t remember the date. The 1st of January 1947. We had the SRA1 — that was at Saunders Roe — which has an ejection seat and we went up to Martin-Baker’s and went up on the test rig and after that I had a rather sore tail for a while. That must have been what it was. 30th of May 1949. And after all the kafuffle had died down on it I wrote to Sir James Martin. He wasn’t Sir James then. He was just James Martin to thank him and got a very nice letter in reply and also a custom made little wooden box which came through the post marked, “Explosives — danger” [laughs] which was delivered to Armstrong Whitworth. To me at Armstrong Whitworth. It contained a very nicely inscribed Rolex gold watch and [pause] I’m sorry am I —?
AP: That’s alright. No. That’s alright. Got to watch the microphone. Yeah. The watch. Yes.
JL: [unclear] In 1975 when I was living in the South. In West Sussex. I had a little bungalow with casement windows and some, one of the local villains I think, got in and took that watch and another one and several other small valuables and I presume that both watches had gone straight down to The Lanes in Brighton and by now would probably be melted down but — and just two years ago I was invited to go up to Martin-Baker’s and they showed me around, gave me lunch and I wondered what it was all about. Then they started asking me about my ejection and finally got on to the watch and eventually Andrew Martin produced from his pocket my watch. And the story is that they’d had an email from somebody in New York who had read the — it had my name on it and James Martin and somehow or other they put it together and connected it with Martin-Baker. Whatever company, I don’t know who it was in New York who went over or whoever it was contacted this chap who they said was a very shifty character and they bought the watch back. I don’t know for how much and they gave it back to me.
AP: That’s an amazing story.
JL: What happened then was that I didn’t really want the watch so I asked them to auction it but then they said instead of auctioning it we’ll put it in our company museum and we’ll put five thousand pounds in to the Bomber Command Memorial Trust. It applies to almost everybody. We usually crewed up completely at random and almost always within twenty four hours we were as thick as thieves.
AP: You relied on each other didn’t you?
JL: Loyalty all down the way.
AP: Strong teamwork and trust.
JL: Yes. I was with these two Canadians and a New Zealander. Yes. The two Canadians. I’d never met a Canadian before and I was mildly surprised that they sounded like the Americans I’d seen on the films. And I hardly knew where New Zealand was. But —
AP: I think it’s good to mention that it was an international crew wasn’t it? That they were from all over the Commonwealth.
JL: Yes.
AP: You had Canadians, British.
JL: Yes. And later on on the Lancaster squadron I had an Australian navigator.
[Recording paused]
JL: In the Wellington was to Stettin. That was a nine hours something. And the longest in the Lancaster was to La Spezia which is about sixty miles south of Genoa. A sea port. And that was, that was about nine and a half hours I think.
AP: You were the only pilot. Right?
JL: Yes. We did, we did carry a second pilot but he was just supernumerary. Usually he just stayed back in the astrodome helping to keep the, keep a lookout.
AP: Can you talk a bit about what it was like to fly so long? I mean did you eat anything? Drink. How did you survive on those hours?
JL: I don’t think I ever ate or drank anything until back in, back in safe area. In a safe area. I think most of us were the same. In those days everybody smoked and we sometimes smoked when we were below oxygen level which was ten thousand feet but we probably weren’t supposed to. We didn’t on operations anyway. Once again that would be when we were safe and nearly home.
[Recording paused]
JL: One long drag over France. And we had a thing called Mandrel which was a microphone in one of the engines to the wireless operator and he had, the wireless operators were given a recording of German night fighter RT traffic and they didn’t understand it but they could recognise it and I had a Canadian wireless op, Jordan Fisher, at that time and he was listening out on Mandrel and he was highly excited. He was apparently getting very good results. He could, he could tune in to one of these frequencies where the night fighters were operating and he was doing his Mandrel trick and they get very annoyed [laughs] Shouting.
AP: How did he use it? Did he block their signal? Or reduce it.
JL: Yes. Yes having identified the frequency he transferred the engine noise on that frequency.
AP: I see. So he could block their frequency.
JL: He was having the time of his life apparently [laughs]. Mandrel was a microphone mounted in to, actually in the port inner engine, the [strength of it?] the wireless operator, the wireless operators had been given some training to identify but not necessarily understand German night fighter RT traffic and they would listen out, looking for this RT traffic and when they found it they would tune in the transmitters to that frequency and then transfer the engine noise which blotted out everything and frequently made the night fighter pilots very cross.
[Recording paused]
Having completed a tour you then became a screened aircrew and you went to an OTU where you became an instructor in your particular aircrew job. As a pilot I went to Wellesbourne Mountford OTU and my job was conversion on to Wellingtons which are just circuits and landings, circuits and landings and not only in daytime but at night. And in the winter when I was there the night flying programme was divided into four three hours stints 6-9, 9 to12, 12 to 3 and 3 to 6 and you can imagine what it was like having to get up or be prepared to go down and be ready to start doing circuits and bumps at 3 o’clock in the morning.
AP: Yeah.
JL: It was bad enough at 12 o’clock. So I hated it. I wasn’t a very good instructor anyway. And then they started with these two one thousand bomber raids I was on. They started doing quite regular operations with screened, so-called screened aircrew at OTUs and I thought it was far better to be on a squadron if I had to do all that.
AP: Were you on, did you say a two thousand bomber raid?
JL: I was on the first two.
AP: Two thousand bombers in one raid? Or one thousand bombers?
JL: There were two one thousand bomber raids.
AP: Two one thousand bomber raids.
JL: May the, May the 30th and June the, June the 2nd I think.
AP: Could you say a little bit about what happened? I mean, was that Cologne?
JL: The first one was Cologne. The second one was Essen.
AP: Essen. And so you were flying Wellingtons.
JL: Yes. Wellesbourne Mountford OTU put up about twenty aircraft that night and we lost four. My aircraft still had the dual control in which made it very very difficult to get in and out because the entry was via a hatch under the nose. So in a hurry it would have been very awkward. And the aircraft were generally fairly clapped out. And on the way back I had a screened navigator and a screened wireless operator. And on the way back, when we got back over England the wireless operator came. Came up front and sat beside me. I think together we saw the oil pressure on the port engine just drop off to nothing and fortunately the wireless operator, he was familiar with Wellingtons, knew what had happened. It had run out of oil. We had a reserve oil tank down in the fuselage with a hand pump and he knew what to do immediately. He went scuttling back down. Started hand-pumping oil back in to the engine.
AP: That’s before you got to it.
JL: No. This was on the way back.
AP: On the way back.
JL: What I didn’t say — over Cologne we were quite high and I had two Canadian gunners. You know, they were students and they got very excited and wanted to spray their guns around [laughs]. I told them to sit quiet and keep a good lookout.
AP: What was the weather like on that night?
JL: Clear.
AP: So you had a good shot at them.
JL: Oh yes we could. We were late. Late on target and we could see it from miles away.
AP: It was already lit up.
JL: We were, we were more or less unmolested I think.
AP: A thousand bombers. Did you see the other ones around you?
JL: Oh yes.
AP: Can you say a little bit about what it was like?
JL: Yes. I saw them. Quite a lot. Yes.
AP: There were Lancasters, Halifaxes. Stirlings.
JL: Everything. Most of the ones I saw were Wellingtons.
AP: But you’re not in formation.
JL: No. No.
AP: Loose formation.
JL: Completely random.
AP: But you’re on your course and you’ve got aeroplanes.
JL: Yes. Had to try and keep an eye open. Very occasionally you’d hit the slipstream of one of them [laughs]. There’s one not very far away in front.
AP: So you had to keep a constant picture of that.
JL: Oh yes. There must have been hundreds of collisions we never heard about. Fatal ones.
AP: So when you arrived it was well and truly lit up. .
JL: Yes.
AP: Yeah.
JL: I don’t, I don’t remember actually being shot at.
AP: No? And then the other one was Essen.
JL: Yes. And that was a complete disaster because there was thick haze over the whole area and we just couldn’t see anything so I think we just let them go and came home.
AP: Right. Yes.
JL: Stood down for six weeks to convert. We were operational again on Lancasters on the 1st of January 1943.
AP: The operations that you did then. Can you say a bit about what you did?
JL: I think I did three mining operations. My first operation on a Lancaster was to Norway, to Haugesundfjord, and dropped, I think it was four, fifteen hundred pound mines in the fjord there. When we got caught out by searchlights and the gunners were able to reply and they, they won. Off Emden and the islands. We put a stick of mines there. And another one was at the entrance to St Nazaire harbour.
AP: Oh yeah. That was in France.
JL: Yes. That’s where we did, there’s an island, I think it’s called Belle ile and we had to do a timed run from Belle Ile. Went right up the estuary and let them go. I think the load was four, fifteen hundred pound mines. Parachute mines.
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 Jo Lancaster. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Panton
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-06
Type
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Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALancasterJO150406
PLancasterJO1501
Conforms To
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Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
After leaving school, Jo Lancaster was an aircraft apprentice with Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company in Coventry. After volunteering for the Air Force, he trained as a pilot and completed a tour on Wellingtons with 40 Squadron from RAF Alconbury. Following a period as an instructor at an operational training unit, he flew another tour of operations. After the war Jo became a test pilot and was the first man to eject from an aircraft in danger using a Martin-Baker ejection seat.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Italy--La Spezia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943
Format
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00:30:15 audio recording
12 Squadron
3 Group
40 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fitter airframe
fitter engine
Gneisenau
ground crew
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 110
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Alconbury
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wyton
Scharnhorst
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/477/8359/ABrileyW150522.1.mp3
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/477/8359/PBrileyWG1503.2.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Briley, William George
George Briley
W G Briley
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Briley, WG
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer William George Briley (1586825, Royal Air Force), his log book, service material and a sight log book containing <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/987">18 target photographs</a>. After training in South Africa, George Briley completed 39 bombing and supply dropping operations as a navigator with 40 Squadron flying Wellingtons from Foggia in Italy. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by William George Briley and catalogued by Barry Hunter, <span>with additional identification provided by the Archeologi dell'Aria research group (</span><a href="https://www.archeologidellaria.org/">https://www.archeologidellaria.org</a><span>)</span>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MJ: Now.
WB: My name is Warrant Officer Briley. I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on 22 May 19 - 2015. And we - where I am is at Ruskington in Lincolnshire. I’ll try and see if I can. Well, my first big run to get to a training place was down to South Africa where I stayed for five months and picked up my brevet. And then, where I, I came back down by flying boat which took four days from Durban to Cairo. From then onwards, I was doing all around that area until they had vacancies up on the training field where the temperature of 150 – 120 was very warm. Then we got back down to Cairo and for - picked up me flight to Italy where I went through Naples and out then to Foggia where I stayed with the 40 Squadron the whole time until I’d finished my term, and then I went back to Naples and they gave me a [unclear]. That gave me a lot more places and also I was sent up to Athens where I was a gunner on on private Wellingtons that had been stripped with passengers and freight all over the Middle East. Then then I was – land – I was - oh sorry. After we done all that I was land down – I was down on the ground there until they got me a job back on Egypt where they sent me up to Udine in northern Italy. No no way of getting up there, but I went out and a British army driver took me all the way, which was very good of him, and the little – when I got up there they hadn’t a clue what I was doing up there for, although they knew themselves, 39 Squadron it was and they gave me a leave over the weekend when I got there and there’s a chance I had of seeing and being in Venice in the holiday part of the RAF they had out there. We came back by a big – by a big plane from Bari having had a train journey all the way back. And that landed me on besides the besides the canal on the Suez Canal and from there we were doing I was doing quite a lot of driving which I wanted to do until they found a place for me which was in El Alamein[?] Back to Cairo and on to the flying the flying out to El Adam [?]. And I stayed here that’s where I picked up my WO. And I and I was put in charge, once I got away the driving they put me in charge of a sy – system well, well in in in an where the people going through and also the pilots and that. I had to, had to sign them through. Some didn’t want to do that and but then they had to. They got no signature otherwise. Anyway, from there that’s when I was sent – I was on leave then at the end and I made out. I picked up my brother who was in Cairo or rather he was up in – he was up in Palestine. Picked him up, we went to Haifa and stayed a fortnight. We enjoyed ourselves. I, I was lucky in that ‘cause I – that’s one brother. The other brother I picked up on the way in at Cairo. So I doubt if there were many other brothers who met du – met during the war. So [unclear] in the end it – we came by boat from Alexandria to Toulon. Waited there for the train back to England. And came – got back in June. One of the coldest Junes I think I knew at that time, especially when you’d been at a temperature of a hundred-and-twenty and that. Now the temperature here went across that boat was really ferocious. And then we was sent up to Wednesbury for discharge. They had to make a suit for me I was so ruddy small and out of all proportion and today I’m even worse. The trouble is I aint going in. I was dead on the lowest figure. When I was on the Foggia we took off from Foggia and went down the Corinth Canal or to it, where we had been told there was a big storm up. It’s too high to go over. Too low to go under. So we were given a height which was about the best. As we came into it. Here we go, the thing is we went up like a ruddy express [mumble] express lift, and stopped and went down straight away, and oh my head hit the blooming geodetics. It, it was so loud the pilot put - turned put it hard head round. He said: ‘What was that?’ I said ‘That was my flipping head.’ [Chuckles] It was yeah.
MJ: Yeah yeah.
WB: Yeah, we got through it and carried on. [Chuckle]
MJ: Well, well that’s the sort of thing –
WB: Yeah
MJ: - that you got to remember, you know.
WB: Hmm. [Chuckle].
MJ: What was it about the bridge?
WB: Eh?
MJ: That one about the bridge? You said about the [unclear]. Can you repeat that?
WB: Yes.
MJ: Please.
WB: [Sigh] [Background noise] I done that one.
MJ: So, so what was the story about that one?
WB: No, it’s not. It’s this one. The one with the four-thousand pound bomb. Kitzscher [?] And – our – well I was quite, quite surprised, you know, you see, where this bomb was. It was only a big hole that was there and they – one of the Italians came about and said ‘What you looking at it for?’ I said ‘I got an idea that’s our bomb.’ ‘Oh,’ he said – he said ‘What has happened?’ He said ’There were two trains on that bridge when you dropped it.’ He said ’One of them went into it to– [unclear] into reinforcements and one coming out. He said: ‘The one coming out got the bar –part of it. The whole the back of [unclear] train and that other one run into the hole that was there. [Chuckle] He says: ‘So you done a damn good job.’ [Laughter]. I’ve never been seen anybody about that - the crew I could tell to.
MJ: Well that’s -
WB: Yeah.
MJ: That’s the good part about it.
WB: Apparently in the Blitz –
MJ: Yeah.
WB: The eight months Blitz. Every night. [Chuckle]. And, it’s so much so I managed to get it out of – but other people commanding me. ‘I can’t go on the back of this bike.’ I said ‘Why not?’ He said ‘Well, I’m out in the open.’ I should have sat on mine all the time. [Chuckle] Any rate, in the end, a number of them complained about it and but, they were more or less protecting me. [Laugh]. I can see their point and any way, they said – they asked me whether I’d like to learn how to drive. I said ‘I would very much.’ And so they brought a driver in from a local gas company depot and he said ‘Now, let’s see. What do you wanna learn?’ I said: ‘Anything I can drive. I was able to – so lorries and that.’ ‘Ah, so you want double declutching.’ You know to this day, and that was in the war. To this day, I still use, I didn’t realise it, part of the double declutching.
MJ: Hm.
WB: Right the way through, and it was only my sister who told me that my changing up and changing down and that was smooth, and I can’t see how it – how it can be smooth? And I worked it out. The – I wasn’t doing the whole double declutching, what I was doing – now with double declutching you use your feet as well. That’s all I wasn’t doing. [Mumble] Step in here.
MJ: Here. It’s good. What – what –
WB: What?
MJ: What – what sort of ops and things did you actually stand out for one reason of another?
WB: What you want me to do?
MJ: I’m here.
WB: Supplied it and then I went and got – I went there to be of service there. [Laughter]. All on one aerodrome. We called it Kalamaki Avenue[?]. It was –
MJ: So – what ‘s that bit of paper?
WB: Yeah. [Unclear]. Can’t hardly read it now. [Unclear] Penetration. Frontal conditions. Last night your bombers carried out their mission with excellent results. This attack which – which you carried out [unclear] or in the port of crews participated. Please convey to all ranks under your command my opposition – appreciation of this noteworthy effort. That was from the Group Captain commanding 263 Wing.
MJ: What did you have to do in that?
WB: Hm?
MJ: What what what was the op? Operation? What operation – what?
WB: Oh these aerodromes.
MJ: You say you had to bomb them? Or –
WB: No, it – thing is they were all bombed on one night by different – they sent out the squadron. Three or four to one – three or four to [unclear].
MJ:
WB: I don’t think that was the one that hit me on the head. I hadn’t been given my flight badge then. I was just a Sergeant. [Pause]. 9th to the 10th of October 1944 [turning of pages] 9 10 of October –
MJ: What was that op?
WB: Hm.
MJ: What did you have to do for that one?
WB: [Pause] On the – on the 4th – 4th of October ’44 we went to the Danube and put a mine – two mines down there. Have having had to fly there at thirty foot and then there was a a – I think there was haystacks even higher than we were. So I was expecting anytime that we – that we should get a gun from behind them. Then the next one we went on the 9th we went to Athens, we did that and they were put for us they were pretty long trips. Athens six hours and the Danube was five fifty-one.
MJ: So what – why did you that one to similar to the Dam Busters one. Why?
WB: It was the [unclear] valley. There’s the valley. South, it was south of one of their big cities. I forget which one it was. Began with a B, I know that. [Laughter].
MJ: So what did you have to do that made it similar to the other dams? Did you have to go lower or was it just too hot or what?
WB: While we kept low was to get underneath their mining thing and also we were down there so as we could get in underneath it and without them noticing it, and we didn’t – did manage it seems ‘cause nobody came to try and have a go at us. Then five days later we went over there again. Not this to the Danube which was up south of a – a big city beginning with B, I think it was. And this this second one, our eleventh was on Kalamaki operation bombed over flares. So we had two long ones. [Pause] I know that we bombed one of the American bombings. They gave us a photo of what they had left. When we got there it hadn’t even been touched. So we had to do all the bombing for them. That’s the Americans all along, which I never did quite like.
MJ: [Unclear]
WB: [Unclear]. More modern, modern aircraft and that. I mean the Wellington was a pre-war, but we had it all the way through the war out there.
MJ: So did you fly different aircraft more often or just one particular one? ‘Cause you got –
WB: You could hardly see the blinder[?]. All I know is it was going off track and I couldn’t I couldn’t get the thing to go in at all. In the end, when he when he went ran out of [unclear] I expect and well that’s that. He said ‘[Unclear] Which way you going? I said ‘No, you’re too late to go the back.’ I said ‘So turn on and face, face Yugoslavia.’ And I said ‘When you get - as soon as you’ve seen the mountains over there, turn south. Don’t wait for me.’ I said ‘Then we’ll sort – start sorting out some.’ Anyway I got ‘em back in.
MJ: So what happened when you got to base then?
WB: Then – then I was a bit late when I got, of course, when we got in. But after that on three occasions I got them to go another route because there was a blooming eight-hundred – and sent us out on our own valley, there was a hill eight-hundred foot high and quite often the clouds comes came down so they forced them under the thousand so I sort of – ‘What’s the matter Briley?’ I said : ‘There’s a hill in that valley eight hundred foot.’ Said ‘Yeah.’ So he turned round to his thing[?]and said ‘Go and see if he’s right.’ The bloke said when he came back he said : ‘He’s right.’ ‘Oh, sent him round the end of the peninsula.’ That happened three times. I had to – ‘cause I knew where it was. I was coming in through the valley at two-thousand in the cloud dived down at the end where I knew it’d be.’ ‘Didn’t you – didn’t you see the target?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well how come you came back here half-hour before any others [unclear]. I said ‘’Cause I used the valley.’ ‘But you told us.’ ‘But yeah I know where it is.’
MJ: So you took a short cut?
WB: Yep. You see the second time he was sending me down for – I I didn’t do much on that. I knew it – I knew how it was. So so we had a look down at it and found this thing this hill. ‘Right we can use that.’ I did on three occasions. Got back in. Nice time I was the only one on breakfast. [Chuckle]. Everybody else came in half-hour later. Every time ‘Missed it again.’ I said : ‘No we did not miss it.’ Berh, that was another bleeding officer and then, and I gather from one of our other, one of the crew I saw in Cairo. He said ‘You know what has happened up at up at - up at Foggia?’ I said ‘No.’ ‘ See they sent out those big aircraft, up our valley at a thousand feet.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Three crashed into that hill you told them about.’ I said ‘That’s bloody murder.’ And if I had my way I’d have had him but they took no notice of me, but it was them that - I mean the big aircraft, American aircraft has about twelve people on board. The Wellington only had five. You think it. Three aircraft. Thirty-six. Dead. Before they’d even started.
MJ: ‘Cause they took the wrong route.
WB: Yeah. I wish I could have done but you supposed to be a – on their side. [Laughter]. Yeah. And one or two people told me about it and I said that ‘I said I quite agree with ya. But we daren’t do it.’
MJ: Yeah.
WB: Whether they learned after that when they hit this hill there’s one way to find out. Not the [unclear] of the bleeding crew though.
MJ: Was there any more situations like that you had before? Was it a lot like that?
WB: Yeah well. This is how it is.
MJ: Yeah.
WB: Another time she came down to – oh blimey – begins will L.
MJ: Well –
WB: Yeah.
MJ: Yeah. Well anyway yeah.
WB: Yeah. Anyway, she came down there. I was [unclear] been on there a fortnight and she said ‘That comes off.’
MJ: So you had to lose your –
WB: So my mate said ‘Are you gonna?’ ‘No,’ I said ‘I’ve got home. I’ve worked it out. I want us to have three weeks to see what it’s like.’ Anyway, I didn’t get any in the end. Wasn’t for her, it was for myself. It itched though underneath. [Shudder].
MJ: Yeah I know.
WB: So I –
MJ: Yeah. Don’t go good with a uniform. So I put that on. Ok I’m gonna take a photo. You in 40 Squadron.
WB: That’s 40 Squadron in 3 Group with Wellingtons in 1940 or ‘41. Towards the end of ’41, 40 Squadron moved toward Malta. Moved to Egypt early in ’42 into 205 Group. Moving to North Africa and eventually to Italy. During – I joined 40 Squadron in Foggia Italy in August ’44. First flight 30th of August ’44 and first op 1st of September ’44. And last one 39, 21st of January 1945. Book says last, last 13th of March. Hmm, it’s wrong. Otherwise how was I doing it in ’45?
MJ: There’s there’s –
WB: It was a remake Manchester. Found that the Manchester were two Merlins was like the blooming Wellington Mark II was Merlins. They’re useless, so they took it back, extended the wing, put in two more engines and extended other things, call it the Lancaster, and it was a success. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?
MJ: It does yeah.
WB: I’m lying. I don’t think it’s been made public much ‘cause the Manchester was a dud.
MJ: Yeah.
WB: Hmm.
MJ: This is Michael Jeffery on behalf of the International Bomber Command Historical Project Unit. Thank you to William Briley for his recording.
WB: It won’t. Make it George, George Briley.
MJ: George Briley, it is.
WB: George, it’s what I’m known as. You’ll find on here that no one knows about a Duckworth[?]. It’s George everybody.
MJ: Well that’s good.
WB: Yeah.
MJ: Well, it’s very nice to meet you George. Thank you very much for you co-operation and your photographs and such like and I hope to meet you again. On behalf of the International Bomber Command, thank you again. On the 22nd of May 2015.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with William George Briley
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Date
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2015-05-22
Format
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00:28:49 Audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABrileyW150522
Conforms To
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Pending review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-10
Contributor
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Gemma Clapton
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
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After training in South Africa, William Briley flew operations as a navigator with 40 Squadron flying Wellingtons from Foggia, Italy. One of his operations involved the dropping of a 4000lb bomb which derailed two trains. He was also involved in mine laying in the Danube.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
Greece
Italy
Italy
Danube River
South Africa
Greece--Zakynthos
Italy--Foggia
Greece--Corinth Canal
Danube River
40 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
mine laying
navigator
training
Wellington