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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/888/11127/AHughesWH151021.1.mp3
33613f53da69484a983e122f2ed1e463
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Title
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Hughes, Harry
William Henry Hughes
W H Hughes
Description
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An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM (- 2023, 159079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron and then with a Mosquito Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-21
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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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Hughes, WH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HH: It’s all in the book, I think, mainly, isn’t it?
AS: Most of it is, but we need to get it on tape. I think. This is an interview with Harry Hughes, flight lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM, a navigator in wartime Bomber Command on 102 Squadron and then later on Mosquitos. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Harry’s home in St Ives. Harry, thank you ever so much for agreeing to this interview. Perhaps we can start by going over a little your early days. I believe, you were born in Dorset.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. Did you have brothers and sisters?
HH: A sister, yeah. But I went to school in Sherborne, the Grammar School in Sherborne not the big school, not the public school. And, it was a good school but there we are, I think it was a good school anyway but they’ve, in their wisdom they’ve closed it down now and they amalgamated with the Lord Digby school, ‘cause the Lord Digby school is gonna cost too much to repair or something and I think some builder wanted to get hold of their building anyway and make flats out of it. You know, usual thing.
AS: Yeah. How did you get on at school? What were your subjects? What did you do well at in school?
HH: Mainly in maths. I got a distinction in Maths and a distinction in Physics and Chemistry. Otherwise I got all passes except English language in which I got, I didn’t fail, I got a pass, just got a pass so I didn’t get my ‘tric. Did so⸻
AS: Sorry.
HH: Anyway that’s beside the point. Anyway I left there in 1940 and my very first job was a night watchman for some lady at Lewisham Manor near Sherborne, who lost all her staff and she wanted somebody to be in the house at night and to patrol the grounds. While I went round the grounds once, no, never again, it was too bloody scary [laughs].
AS: Things that go bump in the night.
HH: Yeah, there was hooting and things [laughs]. Anyway that’s beside the point.
AS: But this was 1940. Was this, was the Battle of Britain going on over your head or had that finished?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: What, was that what pushed you towards the air force or?
HH: No. Well, I think. Well, what pushed me towards the air force was the fact that I went, my father wanted me to join the navy and I, I went down to Portsmouth to sit an exam to be a writer or a supply probationer [unclear] his own clerk, and I didn’t fancy that, but anyway they gave you twelve blocks of pounds, shillings and pence to add up that way and then you had to add up that way and then you had to add them all up across and then the figure you got down here and the figure you got down here should have been the same. Mine was nowhere near. Anyway.
AS: But your maths were good so, you threw it really, didn’t you?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Did you deliberately mess up, because your maths were good.
HH: Yeah. Yes, I know, but not the accountancy type [laughs]. Anyway, we then, coming back on the train, I was pretty certain I’d failed, so, coming back on the train, I had to change at Salisbury and I had about an hour to waste, wait at Salisbury so I went in the town and I saw an RAF recruiting office. So I went in there and saw a sergeant there and I signed on for aircrew.
AS: Just like that?
HH: Yeah. And they took me on as a pilot or navigator and then I had to go to Oxford for attestation and I went there and with all the gunners from South Wales and what have you became gunners rather, from the mines, you know, and so that’s how I came to be in the air force.
AS: Okay. Did you go through the aircrew recruiting centres in London at Lord’s and?
HH: Yes, I was the first one there.
AS: Really?
HH: Very first one to go there, I think. In July ‘41, I suppose, yeah.
AS: That’s pretty early. What, what happened then? They’ve taken you into the air force at that stage, I suppose, you didn’t know what you were going to do.
HH: Well, we went to ITW and⸻
AS: Where was that?
HH: Down Torquay, which is very nice and, I’ve got my bloody reading glasses on, no wonder I can’t see, and then I was sent down to America to train.
AS: Okay.
HH: In the United States Air Force.
AS: Straight from Initial Training Wing.
HH: Yes. Straight from ITW. We didn’t get a chance. Later on they used to, they did a little course on Tiger Moths up on somewhere in the world, somewhere up that way.
AS: So, you hadn’t actually flown in an aircraft when you went to.
HH: No.
AS: How did you, obviously they wouldn’t fly you over, but how did you get across the Atlantic, in a convoy or?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. What was that called?
HH: I went out on a ship called the Highland Princess, which I ended up selling. I sold the Highland Princess, the Highland Brigade and the Highland Monarch.
AS: Presumably not during the war when you got there.
HH: No. Four of them, I sold them in about ’51, or ’52, something like that
AS: Okay. So, you’re going across the Atlantic in convoy. Was the ship crowded? What was the conditions like?
HH: Well, we were in hammocks, you know, on meat hooks in the, you hung your hammock on meat hooks in the lower hold, you know?
AS: Gosh.
HH: And we are right up on the stern of the ship because every time the, I think she was twin screwer if I remember rightly, because every time the ship rolled the prop shoot [mimics a sound] [laughs].
AS: Is that the prop coming out of the water?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh! Gosh, and so, there must have been hundreds of men on the ship with you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: All [unclear]
HH: The one thing you found out, you had to hang on to your four and a half hat because one went missing, what did he do? Go and pinch another one. So, it went all round the ship [laughs]. [unclear]
AS: Like measles, isn’t it? Yes, yeah, absolutely.
HH: Yeah, I remember that so, I hid mine, anyway.
AS: So, you went across in uniform with
HH: Yeah.
AS: Hundreds of other people.
HH: No, when we got to, we were being issued with, at Wilmslow I think it was in Cheshire, we’d been issued with a grey flannel suit to wear in America, ‘cause we all had to go down grey worsted suits, you know.
AS: Ah, ‘cause America wasn’t in the war then.
HH: ‘Cause they weren’t in the war then, yeah.
AS: Right.
HH: So, and so we went down to Maxwell Field in Alabama first of all for acclimatization.
AS: Wait, where did the ship come in?
HH: Halifax.
AS: Oh, so you landed in Canada.
HH: Went to Canada first, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: And then, I think, yes I think we were there, we were trained down to Toronto, I think, and then we went from Toronto down to Alabama, to Maxwell Field, to Montgomery, Alabama.
AS: Okay. Was the whole journey really well organised⸻
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: Or was is the usual service mess up?
HH: No.
AS: No. It was good?
HH: It was good, yeah, everything seemed to go to plan I think, pretty well.
AS: How were you received at Montgomery, at Maxwell Air Force base?
HH: Oh, pretty well. In fact, the very first Sunday we were there, first weekend we were there, the American officer came round and, when we were having lunch, and he said, there’s a fair in town at the moment and they’ve heard that you boys are here, so we’d like you, they’d like you to come along and be their guest. So we thought we were going there but no, it was a scam, we were all scammed out of our money. Yeah, so we woke up in the morning, everybody had lost all their money, it was a real American type scam you know and I saw a coach loading up with American service people all in uniform. So I said, ‘Where is this coach going?’ ‘Oh’, he said, one of them said, ‘We are going to a little village called Prattville just outside of Montgomery and we’re going to church and if we’re lucky we will get invited out for lunch afterwards.’ So, I said, ‘Can we come along?’ Then the three of us got on board anyway. And we went in and sang all the hymns [laughs] and, real gospel stuff too it was, yeah.
AS: Deep South, isn’t it?
HH: You know, happy happy-clappy type of fellows, kind of stuff, you know, and anyway afterwards all the American were all invited out to lunch and we were there, standing there, wondering what the hell to do, because it was a long walk back to Maxwell from Prattville ‘bout twelve miles I should think and then suddenly this lovely blonde comes up, she says, ‘You all from Maxwell?’ I said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, we are.’ ‘Oh’, she says, ‘Matter of fact what sort of language is that?’ she says. ‘Well’, I says, ‘Well, you probably wouldn’t understand but we are English’ [laughs]. ‘Oh’, she says, ‘English, you are English?’ And she rushed around and she got all the Americans to cancel so that we were all invited to and she was a daughter of a, she collared me anyway and the other two were taken off somewhere else, I don’t know where. And then, we had lunch and her father was the local judge and he said afterwards, after we had lunch, he said, ‘I guess you would like to take my daughter out for a drive, would you? We gotta a nice Buick in the back. Buick with a steering column for your change’ and I didn’t even have a licence [unclear] never mind [laughs]. Never mind, and I got in anyway and I drove her out, bit of snogging and came back. And that was that and I never saw her again, she, I heard later she married an American navy pilot, who got killed in the Pacific. Yeah. So I could have followed it up if I wanted to but I didn’t but by that time I was back in Canada anyway.
AS: So when did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Well, when I go to, we went down to, we were posted from Maxwell Field down to Albany in Georgia to an aerodrome called Darr Aero Tech, that was the owner of the aerodrome, I think, Darr Aero Tech. And it’s still there, I was there not long ago. And so, I suddenly had to do a flight commander’s check and he decided, he decided to wash me out so I went back up to Canada and trained as a navigator.
AS: On the flying piece, how much flying did you do? Do you think it was fair that you got washed out?
HH: No.
AS: How did that come about?
HH: Well, they wanted, they, the Air Ministry wanted as many people washed out as possible who could train as navigators, bomb aimers and gunners and what have you. They weren’t too short of gunners but they.
AS: I believe you had an instructor with a German sounding name.
HH: Oh yeah. Schmidt.
AS: Schmidt.
HH: Yeah, that was a joke really. That was in the book, wasn’t it? Yeah.
AS: So maybe he sabotaged your flying career, your piloting career. So, I presume that a lot of people were washed out at this stage.
HH: They were, but [unclear] was never washed out.
AS: Wow.
HH: Over eighty percent. I know it was a whole lot of us came back. And on Pearl Harbour, the day of Pearl Harbour we were giving an exhibition rugby match in the town. And suddenly over the tannoy came an announcement that Pearl Harbour had been attacked by the Japanese and so everybody went home, they all packed up and went home. So we went home as well. And that night, I had a place I used to get under the wire and go into town at night, you know [laughs] and when I came back to get under the wire there was a man there with a gun [laughs]. And he was trying to shoot me because he thought I was a Japanese. He said, look mate, I don’t like your look, you look like a bloody Japanese [laughs].
AS: Did you go out of through the gate after that?
HH: No. Well, I didn’t bother after that.
AS: So.
HH: I went back, well, the following day we were on the train to go back up to Canada.
AS: Is that quick?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Flight commander’s test and then pack your kit and off you go.
HH: About for, about a week later I suppose I was back, I was on the train going back up to Canada. And it’s quite an experience travelling by train out in America, isn’t it? In those days with the dining cars and everything, and the bars and but we had to change, we were on what was called the Chattanooga Choo Choo, but going the wrong way [laughs]. We were going there, were going north but the Chattanooga Choo Choo goes, comes south, doesn’t it? But we were on that line anyway. And I remember we stopped off in Boston and we had a bit of a wait there so we decided to go into town, we never did see Boston because we got on the way into town, we got attacked by these Irish Americans.
AS: For being British?
HH: We had taken them into the war.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s our fault but [laughs]. And they were at war now. And they’d be getting called up and be killed. And then anyway we got away with that alright.
AS: You were physically attacked?
HH: Yeah, yeah. They had knives and God knows what. They weren’t very nice people. Anyway, I say Irish American but I imagine they were Irish Americans, being in Boston, wouldn’t you?
AS: Big population there, isn’t it?
HH: So, then I went to Trenton where I was interviewed by a group captain and he was Raymond Mass‘s brother.
AS: God lord, Raymond Mass of the Agfa?
HH: Yeah. It was his brother. He looked just like him too. Yeah. And.
AS: Was that a sympathetic interview?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: You wanted to be a pilot and then suddenly that stopped. Was the system generally sympathetic to you?
HH: Oh yes. So they were quite keen to take me on as a navigator. And so then I went from there to Quebec City, L’Ancienne-Lorette. And from there up to Rivers in Manitoba. Which was a dry town, that was, Prohibition there.
AS: Oh dear. Good lord.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Were you in uniform by this time? RAF uniform?
HH: Yeah. Wearing a Canadian uniform in fact [laughs]. They issued us with a Canadian uniform, which were quite smart actually. And they were very similar to ours but the cloth is a little kinder, shall we say?
AS: So, you’re in Prohibition and you went out, presumably looking for a drink, do you?
HH: Well, we knew that Mont-Joli was dry but there was a little, there was a port just down the river called Rimouski, which was a timber port mainly. I remember when I took my Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers exams, one of the questions was, could you explain what were the, how many and what sort of cargo was exported from Rimouski, well everybody else thought it was in Russia, didn’t’ they? [laughs]
AS: But you had a clear mental picture.
HH: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Anyway, we were trying to, we were drinking some, we went to a bar and we were drinking this clear liquid, we had asked for whiskey but they served us up with this clear whiskey, clear liquid and when we were coming back in a taxi we were, we’d had about two each of these, we were all very sick we had to stop the taxi we were really sick and we saw afterwards that [unclear] don’t drink anything that is given to you because there is a stuff called alcool which is made from wood alcohol and it’s can make you blind.
AS: It’s like drinking anti-freeze, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh, lucky escape!
HH: And so that was that. So then from Mont-Joli we went to the staff end course at Rivers in Manitoba which was astronavigation, advanced navigations course it was.
AS: What was the basic navigation course? What was your basic navigation training like? Was it mostly classroom or?
HH: A lot of in the air.
AS: What were you flying in?
HH: Ansons. Yeah. Mark 1 Ansons you had to wind up the undercarriage, you remember?
AS: Yeah. Did you take to it easily, to the navigation, because of your maths proficiency or?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: And you found it easy to be an accurate navigator?
HH: Yes, I mean, you’re training all the time of course and right the way through when I came home from Rivers, came home over on the Union-Castle ship, called the Cape Town Castle, which I didn’t sell. And, what’s the time?
AS: Now.
HH: [alarm clock rings] The taxi, yeah.
AS: Okay. We’ll pause at there, shall we? [recording paused]
HH: Yeah. Astronavigation course A and it was mainly a flying by using star shots yeah. But when I got on the squadron, I mean you had to carry about three sets of books, you know, and a naval almanac as well. Had to work out your star shots. But when I got to the squadron they had a marvellous bit of equipment, a little projector over the navigator’s tail [unclear], which about that high off the table and you had to measure it up with a special stick to make certain it was in focus and on this astrograph there was three stars you could use and, two stars rather, two stars plus Polaris you use to get a three star fix, and you worked out a datum point for the time before you, before you got airborne and drew it on your chart and then you lay your chart down on the table and lined it up with the astrograph and then this projected the position lines of these stars onto your chart. So all, so, the bomb aimer, all the bomb aimer had to do was to take the star charts, he was, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator anyway and I think he’s still alive, I’m not sure, and.
AS: So it was very much team work.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Between you and the bomb aimer but actually on astros. So, you, we jumped straight on to being on the squadron. Did you know, as soon as you started navigator training, that you would be going to Bomber Command?
HH: Well, it’s pretty obvious I would be. Yeah.
AS; Okay. And, so, you finished your training in Canada, came back to the UK by ship, and what happened next before you got on to the squadron?
HH: I went to [unclear], is it Cumberland?
AS: I think Scotland.
HH: Up near Carlisle, north of Carlisle then, between Carlisle and Keswick I suppose. And a little aerodrome there and we learned to fly in wartime conditions, you know, where the balloon barrages were et cetera. Where to avoid them.
AS: And is this when you stepped up from Ansons to bombers?
HH: No, no, this is still on Ansons. And then from there we went down to Hampstead Norris still on Ansons and then we went to Harwell, Hampstead Norris was a satellite of Harwell at the time and then we crewed up with our pilot and wireless operator, I think we already had a wireless operator and we crewed up with bomb aimer and engineer, no, no, we didn’t have an engineer at that time, this is on Wellingtons and.
AS: What were they like the training Wellingtons, were they in good nick, were they ropey old kites or?
HH: No, no, pretty ropey, they were draughty as hell, oh God they were draughty. The wind used to whistle through that fabric, you know. [unclear] construction, wasn’t it?
AS: What was, was there a step up in gear going on to heavier airplanes and operational tactics?
HH: Oh yeah, yeah.
AS: You are moving much more quickly in your calculations and navigation than perhaps when you were training?
HH: We did quite a lot of cross countries and Bullseyes we did in OTU.
AS: What’s Bullseye?
HH: Bullseyes we did down, we’d go down to, say the Channel Islands and experience a little bit of flak there and then we’d come back up again and fly across to Portsmouth or somewhere and fly across the coast there or else we’d fly, out to the North Sea towards Denmark and come back into Hull.
AS: So this was almost a simulated bombing mission, was that?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Training, for training. Okay.
HH: They were called Bullseyes anyway in cooperation with the army, I suppose, with the the ack-ack.
AS: So, when you’re at OTU, you’re on Wellingtons.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Then we went up to a place called Riccall in Yorkshire, near Selby, and we had to, we trained, we converted onto Halifaxes.
AS: What, can you remember what year, what month this would be when you?
HH: Well, that would be about Christmas of, just around Christmas in ’42, I suppose.
AS: Wow, so what type of Halifax would this be? The Merlin one or the?
HH: The Merlin one, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yes, so the Hali, Hali 1, what’s his name? Not Gibson, what the hell was his name?
AS: Cheshire?
HH: No. Gus Walker.
AS: Gus, oh yeah, yeah.
HH: He was a lovely man, Gus was, and he’d taken out, all the mid upper turret and the front nose cone as well, there is a very big heavy turret in the front nose and like the Lanc was, you know. And then, it’s pretty useless that front turret was but anyway. Then, eventually we got the Hali II.1 A which had a four gun [unclear] turret on the top, yes, same as on the Hali 3.
AS: So your mid upper then got his job back.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, Gus Walker he took these turrets out to save weight, to carry more bombs?
HH: To save weight, yeah. Just to save weight, to make it improve performance a bit. And get a better height. I better ring up my taxi.
AS: So, by taking the turrets off, Gus Water was giving his aircrews more of a chance really, wasn’t he?
HH: Yeah, but then later on they improved the, we still had the Merlin 22s, same as the Lanc had, you know. Merlin 22s, but the Mark II.1 A was a much better aircraft, you could get up to, you know, eighteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two thousand.
AS: Loaded?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Which is, you were at the same height as the Lancs. And the Lancs had the habit of dropping their bombs on you. Which happened on our very first trip. We went to, we were waiting to have a nice easy trip but no, we got Essen. And then, when we were over the, when we were over the target on our bombing run but a whole lot of bombs dropped on us, a whole lot of incendiaries dropped on us and the engineer and myself had to go back and kick them out the door [laughs] and which is good practice actually, because it happened to us again over Wuppertal.
AS: Really?
HH: But that time there was a, I think it was a two thousand pounder or a thousand pounder, I don’t know, and it came and took our port rudder right off, and the port tail and the port tail blade yeah.
AS: And what sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Mh?
AS: What sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Well, we found, she was, it was still flying alright but I found that we were crabbing a bit. And I remember seeing a light below and I said, take a drift on that, would you? And anyway we found that we were crabbing quite about ten degrees to port, I think, yeah.
AS: So you do all your sums again and take that out by adjusting the.
HH: No, I just took ten degrees off every course [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: That must have been quite a hairy landing I would think.
HH: No, [unclear], yeah. I can’t remember it being anything but normal.
AS: Wow.
HH: And when we got back, the little corporal in charge of our ground crew, he came out, what the bloody hell have you done to my aircraft! [laughs] as if it was our fault, you know.
AS: Did you fly your own regular aircraft that you got attached to?
HH: Yes, yeah. D, we always flew in D, until one time we let, we were on leave and I think it was an Australian pilot took it and he was very conscious of saving fuel. So he throttled right back coming back and the result was that the, when we went to run the engine up the following day, the engine started to shake, port engine started to shake and suddenly the prop came off and went right through where I’d be normally sitting and sliced my table in half, but I was in the rest position now for take-off you know.
AS: Wow. So that was one of your nine lives gone?
HH: Yeah. I tell that story I say, as you can see I’m still here [laughs]. I wasn’t sitting there at the time.
AS: So, did they repair the aeroplane or was that the demise of D-Dog?
HH: But that was it finished, D-Dog was finished then and we got the Mark 2.1 A then.
AS: Still as D-Dog or was there a superstition about that?
HH: No. We were still with D, yeah. But, Jackie Miles, he was our mid upper gunner, he was really pleased to get that. We got four guns, he was really happy [laughs]. But it was much safer to have somebody in a blister looking down underneath.
AS: Is that what he used to do before he got the target?
HH: Yeah. Yes, and he used to put it in his log book, duty, rear gunner’s me [laughs].
AS: Yeah. On, when you were on ops, had the idea of the bomber stream come in by then?
HH: Oh yes. Yes, we were on the very first time they dropped, the Pathfinders used Oboe on the Essen raids. I think it was first used on the 5th of March, wasn’t it?
AS: I don’t know, 1943. This was.
HH: Yeah, ’43, ’43 by this time, yeah.
AS: So, it was quite early on in the idea of the Pathfinders.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, you went on ops just as the stream and the concentration were starting to take place. I know you were deep in the bowels of the aeroplane at your navigation table. Did you, did the crew see other aircraft around them, feel the other aircraft around them?
HH: No, you are in the slipstream the whole time. Especially when you got near the target, when you’re on your final run, you sort of you feel the slipstream and you have got to remember that five percent of our losses were due to collisions, it has been estimated.
AS: That’s a high percentage.
HH: I think we were told that at the time to be extra vigiliant, you know.
AS: Against the dangers of collision. What about enemy aircraft on your first tour? Did you have any encounters with the German night fighters?
HH: Oh yeah. [unclear], he shot down two, he shot down a Ju 88 and an Me 110 I think it was, yeah.
AS: And this, this was your rear gunner.
HH: And he had a problem as well. A lot of Battle of Britain pilots would have given their eye tooth for a score like that. Probably would have gotten a DSO and a DFC.
AS: [laughs] there are a lot of unsung deeds in Bomber Command.
HH: Anyway then we finished up in October ’43 and I got sent up to 6 Group, it was a Canadian crew.
AS: With the Canadians. How did you?
HH: And they wanted everybody to be Canadians, you know. They didn’t want an English instructor so I got, I quickly got posted down to 3 Group. And
AS: Somewhere along the way you, you picked up the DFM. Was that during your first tour?
HH: Yes, was the first tour.
AS: And what was the story behind your DFM?
HH: I don’t know really. It’s not in the book even, not even in the, my citation is not there, there’s a book of DFMs in the RAF, book of DFCs and DFMs. And I think there was an Australian, called Cameron, he found this book of DFMs but I don’t know, I think Gus Walker probably. You see, I’d broken my left foot, I’d broken a bone in my left foot and what with having leave, we were due for leave I went on leave on with my foot in plaster, came back and had the plaster taken off and then I fell off my bicycle [laughs]. Didn’t help. So, the doc said, ‘Right, I’m going to keep you in hospital until your foot’s cured. I don’t want any arguments.’ And the following day Sam came in, he said, we are on tonight, [unclear] and they want me to take a spare navigator and I said, ‘No way, Sam, let’s go and see the doc.’ The doc was in a good mood ‘cause he was going on leave. So, have you read all this before?
AS: No.
HH: So, [pause] he said, ‘Alright you, you can go this time, but’, he says, ‘Provided you come back into hospital as soon as you get back. If you get back’, he said, ‘If you get back.’ So, he then went on leave. Anyway, I duly arrived at main briefing, done my navigation briefing, I think we came at main briefing and Gus Walker was on the door. And Gus said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m on crutches you see. I’m going on ops.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t where my crew is going, I don’t want them to go without me.’ ‘Well, oh alright then.’ So I went in and we went to Berlin that night. And when I got back, Gus was still on the station. ‘Cause he was in charge of three squadrons, wasn’t he? Up there. And he said, ‘Right, young Hughes,’ he says, ‘I’ve been hearing all about you, he says, ‘It’s alright, I’ll take you back to the hospital myself.’ And then I got in his car and he tore me off a bit of a mild strip for being irresponsible and some of that and then as I got out, he said, ‘Bloody good show anyway, Hughes.’ And I think it was he who recommended me for a DFM, I don’t know, probably.
AS: Excellent. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story. What happened, you said, you tried the book in the RAF club to find your citation. Have you explored anywhere else, to try and find the DFM citation?
HH: I did write to some time ago, I don’t know, I think they did, you get from RAF records I think.
AS: Okay.
HH: Because I wrote to them the other day and asked them if, ‘cause I had a letter from them to say that I could retain the rank, substantive rank of flight lieutenant when I finished in the reserve and use the courtesy rank of squadron leader. But I’ve never used it. So I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my tombstone, so I wrote and asked them if that still pertained, shall we say.
AS: And you are still waiting for a reply.
HH: Well, they wrote back to me and said that I’d have to give them some more proof of who I was, you know, passports, et cetera so I sent them up a copy of my, one of my utility bills and my council tax demand.
AS: Well, hopefully that’s good enough.
HH: It only went off last week, so we will have to wait and see.
AS: You mentioned briefings. I know the targets were different and the weather was different, but could you give me some idea of an average preparation for a mission from waking up in the morning to taking off. Is that possible, that sort of things that?
HH: Yeah, because you went down to the, you went down to the flights and you stood in the apron outside the squadron offices and at ten to ten on the dot, if you were on that night, the phone would ring. You knew you were on that night then and then, but if you waited and waited until ten past ten the phone would ring again to say the squadron’s stood down by which time we had all disappeared ‘cause we’d all. Didn’t want to go to on a bloody route march or something [unclear].
AS: So it was all incredibly secret but the routine gave it away.
HH: Yeah [laughs].
AS: So if the phone call came at ten to ten, you knew you were on ops that night, what would happen then?
HH: Well I did, we’d go down to our aircraft and check all the equipment in it and then if necessary you take it up on an air test and then you were back on the ground again by, about eleven, eleven thirty, and then you’d either come back and go to lunch and or else you’d and then after you’d had lunch you’d go on for navigation briefing at about two o’clock.
AS: So the navigator was the first person in the crew to know where you were going, what timing was.
HH: Yes, we knew where we were going, yeah.
AS: Was that a very full briefing, with weather? Is this when you drew up your courses, you got your turning points and what not?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Was this a very full briefing?
HH: Oh yeah, well, the navigation briefing, yes, you got your various tracks you had to go on to and hopefully they’re taking you around the defended areas you know.
AS: The flak and the searchlights, yeah. Was there a lot of work involved for you to prepare your charts?
HH: Yes, it took quite a time. You were mainly with your bomb aimer to help you, you know. Harry Hoover, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator, he trained in South Africa I think.
AS: So, you two were the only ones that knew at the navigation briefing the target. Was it difficult to keep it secret from your skipper and your crew?
HH: Oh no, you didn’t have to keep it secret but you just told the rest of the crew where we’re going so all this business about being a gasp when they, when the curtains were pulled across from the map.
AS: Probably you already knew.
HH: We all knew where we were going by that time, at least my crew did.
AS: So, you’ve done your navigation briefing and what happened then? Just sit around waiting for the main crew briefing or did you have duties to do?
HH: No, we just, by the time you finished doing the nav, it’s about time for the main briefing and then having done the main briefing you then went for an ops breakfast. The ops breakfast, which was bacon and eggs, baked beans, all the things you shouldn’t eat.
AS: Baked beans?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’re flying at twenty thousand feet.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Oh, that could have been interesting. What was the atmosphere like? Was there a lot of tension? Was there a lot of horseplay? Was there a lot of fear? What was the atmosphere like?
HH: I don’t know, I can’t remember now, there was a feeling of are we gonna make it or not, you know.
AS: Was that a personal thing or something that you talked about with the crew?
HH: I would never, never, never, never, my mid upper gunner, he, one day, we were in our room, I shared a room with him and he packed up all his biscuits on his bed and folded up all the blankets and sheets. What are you doing that for? And he said, ‘I don’t think we are gonna come back. So I’m putting the things in order now.’ And he got all his paperwork out and everything, letters and everything to his wife and things.
AS: What did that do to your morale?
HH: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t very happy about it but it was a scrub that night anyway. Then he said, afterwards he said, ‘God, good job we didn’t go to [unclear] because we weren’t going to come back.’ He knew.
AS: But after that on future trips he was fine.
HH: Well, I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again, Jackie, I said, ‘You never do a thing like that again.’
AS: Tempting fate. What about off duty, what sort of things did you, you guys get up to that you can talk about?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Off duty, did you get much time off to yourself? Or to yourselves as a crew?
HH: Yeah. We, I used to go out with, mainly with another crew ‘cause all our crew, our skipper was commissioned, so we were all and the rest of them, Jackie Miles he lived in Leeds so when he had an evening off, he went back to Leeds and the rear gunner was the same, he was somewhere just outside Leeds. Sam was from Leeds as well, the pilot, so it was only the engineer and myself.
AS: So you latched onto another crew for the,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The social element.
HH: Yes, [unclear] crew, yeah. I was pretty friendly with his navigator but he got killed.
AS: And did the rest of the crew come back?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And brought him back?
HH: They brought him back, yeah.
AS: Your, we were talking about your navigation training and astro, during your time, your first tour on ops, did you start to get Gee in the aeroplane or any other navigational aids that you used?
HH: We had Gee.
AS: You had Gee.
HH: Right from the start, yeah. We had the Mark 1 Gee which was, used to have to tune it, the narrow knobs on the side and you had to tune it to get a signal and it’s like tuning one of those. Televisions, you know.
AS: Keep wandering off. Did you, was it as a big revolution in navigation as people say?
HH: The Gee was, yeah.
AS: The Gee was, it really did make a difference.
HH: Yeah, well, it did make a difference because, but you didn’t get it beyond the Dutch coast, it wouldn’t work beyond the Dutch coast but you had we, well, you had LORAN later, in Mosquitos we had Gee and LORAN. In fact, it really annoys me now to hear the met men talking about the jet stream because we found the very first jet stream. I found a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots at thirty thousand feet.
AS: Tailwind.
HH: Hundred and ninety five knots and when we got back, I told the met man, I said, ‘I got a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots and you were forecasting forty five to fifty knots.’ He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!’ So he went to Group headquarters and the Group headquarters said we don’t believe it. They went to Command headquarters and the met people up there said they didn’t believe it either. But then everybody else came back with these winds and they suddenly realised what was called jet streams but now they talk about jet streams all the time. And what they mean is where the warm front, the warm tropical front meets the polar maritime front and all the way along that you get depressions form and then, and with it you get this so-called jet stream would form as well. Ah, so which comes first? The frontal systems or the jet stream?
AS: Must be the fronts, must be the fronts. So, when you are doing your tour, you’d had the nasty experience of being bombed twice by your own people, probably 5 Group above you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Was that the limit of the difficulties you had? Was the aeroplane mechanically reliable or did you suffer?
HH: Oh, we, came back on three engines more times than we came back on four.
AS: Really?
HH: Yeah. I think we came back on three engines eleven times out of our tour.
AS: And what did your ground crew chief say to that?
HH: Well, it wasn’t their fault, necessarily, well, he didn’t think it was anyway.
AS: It’s just overstraining them, is it, full fuel, full bombload climb to heights. Coming back from the raids, what was your pilot like? Was he one of those that, wanted to pour on the coal and get home early or did he stick to heights and courses as briefed or?
HH: Well, he couldn’t do much else with a Halifax. But when I was on Mosquitos, with our New Zealand pilot, we were always first back [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: Becomes a matter of pride. On your first tour still perhaps we can talk a bit more about that. As you got towards the end, did the, you knew presumably you were going to stop on, what, thirty trips?
HH: Well, I did twenty six in fact.
AS: Okay.
HH: Which we were screened two trips early. I would have done twenty eight for my first tour, ‘cause the pilot had already done two second Dickey trips to start with. [door bell rings] That’s my taxi now.
AS: Okay.
HH: So I’ll just pause this. [recording paused] We were just talking about your tour length. The question I was going to ask is did you feel a real rising tension as you got towards the end of your tour?
HH: But we didn’t know we were towards the end, we thought we had another two trips to do.
AS: Okay.
HH: But, I remember Sam coming in and he says, ‘I have some good news for you, we’re screens and you’re off on leave from tomorrow. You are all going on leave tomorrow.’
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Mh?
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Ah, it was good feeling but I forget what happened now. When I was on Mosquitos I think when I was doing my last trip on Mosquitos ‘cause you had to do fifty on Mosquitos you see for a tour.
AS: So, you finished on 102 Squadron and were there many crews that went all the way through like yours did?
HH: No, not a great deal, I wish I had the [unclear] I’ve got it somewhere, might be in that case there, book of all the losses, you know. 102 Squadron losses.
AS: Oh, perhaps we can look at that tomorrow or now if you like.
HH: Well I, it might be in that case, I’m not sure.
AS: Let’s pause this and we’ll go and have a look. [recording paused]
AS: Harry, good morning, it’s day two of our interview sessions. It’s very good of you to agree to this interview. Can we start by going back to your first tour of operations during the Battle of the Ruhr on Halifaxes. Were you conscious at the time that this was a major battle or was it just one job after another?
HH: We were trying to hit Germany where it hurt, ‘cause we didn’t only go to the Ruhr and we went to places like Pilsen, and then we did Nuremberg and Munich and.
AS: Were you briefed on specific targets in these cities and told what you were going after?
HH: Oh, we knew that Essen was the Krupp works, yeah, and we were given a good, pretty good briefing by the intelligence officer what we were gonna hit because one time we went, we were going to. There was almost a mutiny one day because they were sending to some place I forget, Gelsenkirchen or somewhere, I forget where it was now, and [pause]
AS: What happened then? What was the mutiny all about?
HH: Well, the intelligence officer said that he didn’t know why we were going there, there was nothing there, there was just a spa town that we were going to hit but what we didn’t know, of course, it was a leave centre for the Gestapo and the place was full of the Gestapo officers and but you know initially we said, no, why are we going there, you know? And there was almost not exactly a mutiny but it was a fear of you know, why are we bombing this place, we probably would just hit a lot of women and children.
AS: So, this was 1943. So even at that stage.
HH: This is ’45. ‘43 rather.
AS: So, even at that stage there were some concerns amongst the crews about what you were doing and where you were going.
HH: Yeah, we didn’t, the Hamburg raids for example. That’s the first time there was a real firestorm and we went on three or four of those raids, I forget now, it’s in the book, Hamburg in July ’43. That book is falling to bits, isn’t it?
AS: Well, it happens to all of us, doesn’t it? As we get older. Here we go, 24th of July ’43 and the 27th of July ‘43. Ops Hamburg, yeah. And then the 2nd of August.
HH: Yeah, the 2nd of August when we, we’d already realised that the firestorms, you know, in then, we were dropping our incendiaries first and setting fire to places and then dropping four thousand pounders, two and four thousand pounders on top of the fires which, that’s why it’s called the firestorm, the blast from the comparatively thin-cased two thousand pounders and what have you, would suck in the air and the oxygen, you know, and cause these firestorms.
AS: So, the thin-cased bombs would blow the roofs off and then the incendiaries would go inside and.
HH: Well, you know, in that, wish I could find that, you could sit and watch that, the CD I’ve got somewhere in there of.
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Yes, the first or second of the Hamburg raids which caused the firestorm. And I remember watching this from over the bomb aimer’s shoulder and watching these fires spreading and I remember saying, I felt very sorry for the people down there.
AS: At that time.
HH: At that time, yeah. In fact I said a little prayer for them.
AS: Is this something you discussed with the crew or any of your friends?
HH: Not really, no. I just said a prayer to myself, yeah.
AS: And was that really specific to Hamburg or to?
HH: Just to Hamburg, yeah. ‘Cause that was where the firestorms first started. Well, it was worst then Dresden actually.
AS: I believe so in the numbers lost. So, your first tour was absolutely in the thick of what we call the Battle of the Ruhr and extremely, extremely difficult and dangerous missions.
HH: The people who came after me, they’d done Hamburg and the Battle of the Ruhr, and then they had to follow on doing the Battle of Berlin. You can find my very last trip was to Berlin I think, no, it was Hanover. It was one of my last trips was to Berlin, that’s when I went on crutches, yeah.
AS: Home on three engines, that one?
HH: Was that Berlin?
AS: Yes, 23rd of August. And then you did a Munich and a Hanover. What was Berlin like? Was it special, was it the
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was Berlin perhaps the best defended target? What was Berlin like?
HH: It was the length of the trip really. You know, on heavies, on Lancs and heavies it took us eight and a half hours there and back. What’s it say there? [paper rustling]
AS: Seven hours fifteen, that’s still an incredible time. People talk about eight hour days, and that was a full day’s work at night.
HH: Was a full day’s work was being shot at too.
AS: And, I mean, was Berlin the best defended target, do you think or was that the Ruhr, perhaps?
HH: No, I think, I don’t think it was as bad as the Ruhr but it was, there was plenty of activity there but mainly a lot of fighter activity there over the target, over Berlin.
AS: And you, you could see the enemy?
HH: Oh yeah. They were coned and searchlights one time I was on Mosquitos, there was two Mosquitos, an Fw 190, and an Me 109, all on the same cone.
AS: Wow!
HH: And there is a painting of that somewhere. I described it, you know. And there is a painting somewhere that is called Berlin Express. And [unclear] have got the original.
AS: Okay, I’ll look for that.
HH: [unclear] then.
AS: Okay. Some trips to France as well. Le Creusot. You weren’t after a saucepan factory there were you, what was, can you remember what that trip was about?
HH: Oh yes, that was, they were manufacturing parts for tanks and things, I think.
AS: Gosh, here, after Le Creusot, Muhlheim, home on two engines.
HH: Yeah [laughs]
AS: What’s the story behind that? Did they just pack up or was it flak or?
HH: Yeah, they just packed up on us yeah, these Merlins were you know they were way overstressed on the Halifax and we came back on two on that occasion, yeah.
AS: After a lot of, after the Hamburgs that we talked about and Berlin, Munich. Now, can you remember that trip? September ’43 to Munich.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First off, first back, in your log book, eight hours, fifty five minutes. Did the stream hold together, the bomber stream hold together over these long distances?
HH: Yeah, you we were all given certain times, you know, you had to be at certain times on all the way along the track, at the various turning points, you know. And I think it did help, you know, no doubt about it and then with the advent of Window of course, it just threw their ground tracking, we had a little device, did I tell you, a little device called Boozer in Mosquitos.
AS: No, you didn’t, no.
HH: We had a little device which, when they were tracking you from the ground, a little yellow light used to glow. But when they were tracking from the air, a red light used to glow. And one night, we were coming back, and somewhere around about the Hamburg, sorry the Bremen Hanover gap, and this red light came on very bright and we knew the red light meant we were being tracked from the air you see. And then suddenly over the top of us, about the height of this building, just came two, I think they were Me 263s,
AS: The jets?
HH: The jets, yeah. Right over the top of us. And they didn’t see us. I got a photograph of a Mosquito somewhere I don’t know what she’s done with it now. I meant to ask her that when she was in last night.
AS: No worries, maybe today. So, this, the 262s had the speed, they were the only ones with the speed to catch you, really.
HH: Yes. They were doing about a hundred knots faster than us. Fifty to a hundred knots faster than us. And they just sailed over the top of us and disappeared in the distance. There were four jets, two of them.
AS: So they had radar airborne in the jets.
HH: Yes.
AS: That is a pretty dangerous development, isn’t it? That was another one of your nine lives gone, really, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Your slices of luck. Back to your first tour, you, when did you come off ops?
HH: I went to a conversion unit, at a place called Wombleton.
AS: Okay, was that Stirlings?
HH: No, it was Halifaxes actually but.
AS: Okay.
HH: Canadian group, they are mainly on Halifaxes.
AS: In 6 Group, how did you get on with the Canadians?
HH: Not very well.
AS: Really?
HH: No. They are very, they didn’t want to know us, you know, they just wanted to get rid of us as quickly as they could.
AS: I’ve heard this that they were running,
HH: They wanted to run their own show.
AS: [unclear] as part of the Canadian.
HH: I remember getting one crew and I said, I wanted to send them back for further training because the navigator was absolutely hopeless. He really was, he couldn’t, it was like putting, I don’t know, he was thick as two planks, he couldn’t. So, I said if you’re sending this crew with this navigator they don’t stand a chance of getting through, not a chance at all. They’ll be shot down on, within their first five operations, they’ll be shot down.
AS: And do you know whether that came to pass?
HH: No. They didn’t like this, you know, the fact that I’d criticised one of their Canadian crews and I was posted down to 3 Group and, which suited me, and the crew got to squadron, got to a squadron and they did one trip and got hopelessly lost and I heard it afterwards that the CO of the, I think it was Lane, what was his name? Lane. He said, what the hell are you doing sending us crews that are, they should have been send back for further training. And I had recommended that.
AS: Had you been commissioned by this point?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: I was commissioned at the end of my first tour, I think.
AS: What sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: Pardon?
AS: How did, what sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: I just had an interview, I don’t know, who I had an interview with now, I can’t remember. And I mean after the interview I was then a pilot officer but I was a flight sergeant before and my pay was sixteen shillings a day as a flight sergeant but as a pilot officer I was only going to get fourteen and four pence a day. So they said, oh, we can’t have that so they gave me a six pence rise, six pence a day rise so I was getting fourteen and six a day as a pilot officer. And then eventually when I was a flight lieutenant after a couple of years, I was out in India by that time, and I got, well I was on Indian rates of pay anyway so, it didn’t factor.
AS: Back to the instructing. You finished an operational tour, had some leave and presumably your crew dispersed.
HH: Yeah. Pilot went to Rufforth converting many French Canadians and to go to Elvington, French, I mean French crews rather, French crews to go to Elvington, to 77 Squadron.
AS: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew members after?
HH: I came up to York a couple of times and met Sam, Jackie Miles I used to see and my gunner and Harry [unclear] the, the last time I’ve heard from him, he was up at near Shrewsbury.
AS: You all went to instructors jobs, do you?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did they teach how to be an instructor or did they just send you off?
HH: No, I just went in and just talked to them and told them where they were going wrong, you know, and how to waste time and things like that.
AS: In the air this is.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, did you do any formal classroom training of these chaps or was it just, what, supervising in the air and on the ground?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Supervising?
HH: Yeah, just going through their logs and charts individually with them and showing them where they’d gone wrong.
AS: And I believe the same sort of thing used to happen on ops, that when you came back your nav leader would go through your charts, is that right?
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: They’d assess your, that’s the assessment on each one there.
AS: That we saw before.
HH: The little design on his wall, Charlie had, he had sort of a little square beside each one of you and you had two dots for very good, one dot for reasonably good, no dots at all for
AS: Average.
HH: Just average. Yeah.
AS: That’s his way of keeping track. So, on 3 Group, is this when you went to Stirlings? When you were training?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When you left the Canadians and went to 3 Group, that was, what was that, Stirlings, was that the Conversion Unit there?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yeah, it’s down at Chedburgh.
AS: Okay.
HH: And, yeah, Chedburgh, near Bury St Edmunds. There was a beer drought down at that time and we used to cycle miles to find a pub with beer [laughs]. Then we’d keep very quiet about it [laughs].
AS: It’s not too bad.
HH: Me and a Canadian called Connors and we wanted to, we’d heard about that 8 Group wanted Mosquito pilots and navigators, so, we both applied to go, we both applied to go back on ops together. So, our first application, we were turned down because, being in 3 Group on Stirlings, you know, they were rather short of crews, and so we were turned down anyway. So we waited a couple of weeks and we applied again and we got turned down again. So that night, I got a tin of black paint from the stores and I wrote a message, a letter on the ceiling of the mess to the group captain, quite a polite letter, would you kindly pull your finger out and get us posted back on ops. We’re fed up with this instructing so could we please get back in so and so and signed it Connor and Hughes. The following day we were up in front of the old man and he said, ‘Right, you’re both going back, no way you’re going on the same crew or on the same squadron. In fact, you go back first, Hughes. Connor will follow you in about two- or three-weeks’ time.’ And this is what happened.
AS: It’s amazing. So you weren’t actually instructing for very long, were you?
HH: No, from October until July, so I suppose six months.
AS: Okay.
HH: And you’re supposed to have six months, at least six months rest, you know? From operations. Between tours.
AS: Okay. And then, in July having arranged your own posting really, you arrive at 1655 MCU. What’s MCU?
HH: Mosquito conversion unit.
AS: Okay.
HH: At Warboys, yeah, and Weston [?].
AS: I imagine this must have been a completely different sort of navigating. Was it?
HH: Oh, just very quick, but you, you wouldn’t think it now but I was very, very neat and tidy in what I did. I knew exactly, I used to keep my pencils in my flying boots, my dividers as well, [unclear] my Douglas protractor I kept in my hat with my dividers, which was behind me and my Dalton and, and then we used to take as your [unclear] fix, as soon as you got airborne, you got to operational high I’d take fix, fix, fix, every three minutes, then work out a tracking ground speed wind velocity and then another three minutes later another fix, a nine minute tracking ground velocity plus the sixth, the latest sixth one and another one, further on, six, and I can tell you exactly which way the wind was going, how far out the met was on their winds.
AS: And these fixes would be visual fixes or Gee fixes or both?
HH: Gee fixes.
AS: Gee fixes.
HH: So I’d take fix, fix, fix, you worked really hard to get the timing, you know, of the.
AS: Whereabouts was the Gee screen in the aeroplane? You were sitting on the right in the [unclear]
HH: I was sitting on the right and the Gee was behind me and LORAN as well.
AS: Okay. So.
HH: Gee and LORAN which was behind me.
AS: So, could you operate the equipment with your harnesses done up?
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: ‘Cause you just turned your head and⸻
HH: I just turned my head. It was just like there, behind me, there, but I could turn easier then and it was there, you know, just behind about there, about that angle to me.
AS: And it is just, as you say, second nature, three minutes, three minutes.
HH: It didn’t take long to take the fix but it took a long time but we, we had charts with the letters, lines of the Gee chart superimposed on top of it. So, this really worked very well.
AS: So, what came up on the Gee screen? What allowed you to compare the screen to the map?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the presentation on the Gee screen? What actually came up? Was it numbers or?
HH: Yeah. Well, you just, you could, you worked out, you knew what, you strobed the whichever signal you wanted to take, you know, and then you, you strobed the two of them and then fix and then you just read it off.
AS: I guess it’s, so you gotta an alphanumerical printout did you virtually.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Wow. So that could be done quickly.
HH: It’s quite, it’s very quick to work it all out, yeah, to work it out to get, to actually calculate the winds on your Dalton.
AS: How did you operate at night, because I imagine you had no lights in the cockpit?
HH: Well, we had enough.
AS: Okay.
HH: We had a red light and then, what’s his name? Anderson, our group navigation officer, he found that red, you couldn’t see the red markings on your chart. So, that was all orange and green.
AS: Which was easier to see.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. So, when you’d done your Mosquito conversion unit or at the Mosquito conversion unit, you must have crewed up with a pilot, how did that go?
HH: Well, I had already wanted to fly with this Australian so, when this New Zealander came along, I thought, he’ll do, I crewed up with him.
AS: As simple as that. And did you do, did the aeroplane Mosquito take some getting used to it, so different from a heavy bomber, with different performance and.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: What was she like to fly in?
HH: It was nice and reasonably fast. And I don’t think you really noticed it until you were doing some low flying.
AS: Shall we take a pause there? Okay. [recording paused]
HH: The Mosquito was, it was terribly difficult for a navigator to get out of.
AS: Why was that?
HH: Well, you had to, first of all you had to get hold of your chute and you kept that on, then you had to jettison two hatches to get out,
AS: Underneath.
HH: Underneath, yeah. Slightly forward towards the nose, yeah. And but by which time your pilot probably gone out of the top and you were spiralling down and the chance of you getting out was pretty slim.
AS: This hatch underneath must have been very close to the starboard propeller.
HH: Yes, we, yeah. Yes, it was quite close, yeah.
AS: Did you practice this on the ground a lot?
HH: No. I don’t think they thought you were, it was worth the risk. But the, a friend of mine used to fly with a man called Gill and he went down, got killed, Ronnie Knaith went down with his aircraft, and Gill got out and came home and he went to see Ronnie’s parents and they just slammed the door in his face, they wouldn’t talk to him. ‘Cause they had thought that he’d should have stayed onto the controls until Ronnie got out. Which is really what one was supposed to do.
AS: I hadn’t realised that the drill for the pilot was to go out of the top.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Because there’s a tailfin behind.
HH: Yeah, you jettison, you jettison the hood I think, the whole hood went. And theoretically the navigator could’ve gone out after him, I suppose, but.
AS: I think overall the losses were less on the Mosquito.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: I think you were safer flying in a Mozzie than in a Halifax.
HH: Yes, I mean, there’s somewhere I got the losses in Hamish’s book, in Hamish Mahaddie’s book, all the losses in 8 Group and you will see that 692 do feature quite regularly, you know.
AS: Yeah, so you were posted to 692 Squadron after the conversion unit. You’d had, I suppose, eight months away from ops by then, ten months, had things changed a lot in that time?
HH: I don’t think they’d changed all that much for the heavies, no. And we operated separately and we used to do Window opening for the heavies, we used to do, we used to fly out with the heavies and used to meet up with them at Reading, they’d all congregated there, what’s that? There is something squeaking, did you hear?
AS: I don’t know, let’s pause the tape.[recording paused] Well, Harry, we discovered what the squeak was, it was the smoke alarm. We were talking about Window opening and you meeting the heavies over Reading.
HH: Yeah. We used to fly down with the and meet up with the heavies and then we’d weave in and out of them, stream, you know, and you could see the strength of the stream then because, you know, there was just a whole block of them all over the horizon.
AS: And these are daylights.
HH: Yeah, in daylight, yeah, it would be. And then somebody in one of the heavies would be signalling to us, you lucky bastards or words to that effect. So I was sent back, been there, done that [laughs].
AS: Fair do’s. Because you could fly a lot faster and a lot higher than they could.
HH: Well, we used to be, weave in and out of them, you see. And then, then when you got to the coast, you climbed very rapidly above and you got to your operational height. If we were going to say, if we were Window opening say for Stuttgart, we’d probably do a, you go to Cologne first and drop a few bundles of Window there making them, making them think that was the target, you see. And then we’d go along to wherever, Stuttgart, and where the main force were going, and we’d, we’d do Window opening for the first wave of Pathfinders going in.
AS: Okay. This was the, was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Yeah, well, we were the light night striking force, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: But our main role was to bomb Berlin every night.
AS: Oh, you were involved in this Berlin shuttle?
HH: Yes. So, we used to drop our cookie, we used to drop Window for the heavies and then we’d go along to Berlin and drop our four thousand pounders, keep them awake.
AS: Ah, so, did you have those special Mosquitos then?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Those with the pregnant bomb bay?
HH: That one there, isn’t it?
AS: Yes. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, who got to drop the bomb? Was it you or the driver?
HH: Me.
AS: You.
HH: Yeah. Unless we were doing low level. And even then it was me up on the front, up in the nose.
AS: How did you, how did you drop Window from a tiny little aeroplane like Mosquito?
HH: We had a chute, little wooden chute which used to go through the two doors and we just dropped bundles of Window through that. Remember to grab the string as it went down, otherwise you’d just drop bundles [laughs].
AS: You don’t want them falling on someone’s head and hurting them, do you?
HH: No [laughs]. So, it’s a nice day now, isn’t it?
AS: It’s wonderful out there. It’s great. So, sometimes you were operating with the main bomber stream and sometimes as 8 Group by yourself or squadron by yourself?
HH: Individually, yeah.
AS: Individually too?
HH: We used to fly, we used to sing, I made up, there was a song going round at that time sung by Hildegard, I walk alone, to tell you the truth I’ll be lonely, I don’t mind being lonely, when my heart tells me you are lonely too. So, I made up the words for our squadron, we fly alone, when all the heavies are grounded and dining, 692 will be climbing, we still press on, it’s every night, though they never will give us a French route, for the honour of 8 Group, we’ll still press on.
AS: That’s fantastic.
HH: It’s always a [unclear] no matter how far, one bomb is slung beneath, it’s twelve degrees east, one engine at least [laughs]. It’s a pretty horrible little song.
AS: it’s brilliant. It sums up what you felt.
HH: Not as good as some of the songs, you see, erks used to make up in India and down in Burma, you know. One they used to sing, rotting in the jungle, on a [unclear] marshy shores, dysentery, malaria and bags of jungle sores, living around in a bloody great heap, our beds are damp, we cannot sleep, we’re going round the corner, we’re going round the bend, two trips to Meiktila, maybe three or four, AOL’s a keen type, he thinks we’re doing more. When we get back as you can guess, we’ll put this effing kite US [laughs] and we’re going round the, and there’s about two more verses to that, I can’t remember, that’s when the mail arrives, and there’s two for you and f.a. for me you know [laughs].
AS: I think we will have to try and get you a recording contract. This could be an excellent CD on the wireless.
HH: I don’t think they’d allow it to be broadcast.
AS: Probably not, probably not. But see, you, it sounds as you had very high morale on the squadron.
HH: Oh yeah. But, yes, this was when I was on ferrying.
AS: And on 692, as you say, opening with Window and then lots and lots of trips to
HH: Berlin.
AS: To Berlin. Did you ever get involved in a double trip, I believe some people, some crews did two trips to Berlin in one night.
HH: Yeah, we did, on one occasion we did. I think we did Duisburg in the morning and Berlin that night. Came back, and refuelled and bombed up again and we were away again.
AS: There must have been, I would expect, a cumulative tiredness at that level of operations. I’ve seen your ops on your second tour are very close together.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First of October, third, fourth, fifth, two on the fifth, very, very very close together and then Berlin followed the next night by Cologne. Did you, were you conscious of getting tired?
HH: Well, no, because when you’re off, you went into town and into Cambridge and I met up with my girlfriend and she was lovely, my girlfriend, I must have a picture of her, I did have a picture. She was beautiful, she was lovely red hair and creamy skin, you know, and green eyes, oh, she was beautiful. I used to walk down the street with her and everybody would stop and stare, at her, not at me [laughs].
AS: I was going to ask that. And you met her when you joined the squadron?
HH: When I joined 692, yeah. Yeah, we were walking, you remember, do you remember the Red Lion in Cambridge?
AS: I don’t know Cambridge well. I know where the airfield is.
HH: There used to be a passage where you could go through, you’d start off in the Baron of Beef, down by the river there and, and then you go from there to the Bun Shop and to get to the Bun Shop you have to walk through the Red Lion right, right the way through there, the foyer, there is a bar, two bars there and when I walked through there one night, there was Red sitting there with two of her friends and as I walked through, I said, ‘Cor’ to who I was with and I caught red hair and no drawers, and I said, ‘I’m in’ [laughs]. And she followed me through to the Bun Shop and that’s how I met up with her [laughs].
AS: Excellent. Probably best not pursue that story too much further, I think. So, you’ve got here on a trip to Berlin, landed Woodbridge. Now⸻
HH: Yeah.
AS: I know that Woodbridge is one of the emergency landing grounds.
HH: Yeah, well we, very often we had to land, when we took S-Sugar, which is a bloody awful aircraft with a terrible fuel consumption, if we took that to Berlin, we would end up, always end up landing short of fuel at Woodbridge. In fact, one night, when Harris was on this station, we were the only squadron operating that night, so he came to our briefing. [phone ringing]
AS: I’ll pause there. So, after the phone call, we were talking about S-Sugar and its ability to drink fuel.
HH: Yeah, on this night Harris was at the and [unclear] Northrop, our CO was reading out the battle order, you know, and he said, came to, flying officer Mormo, S-Sugar, ‘S-Sugar?’ said Roy, ‘What’s wrong with our Robert?’ ‘Well, that’s got a mark drop on the starboard engine, you’re going to have to take the spare.’ ‘But S f for Sugar, sir, that bloody kite flies like a brick shithouse!’ [laughs] and old Harris was standing there, and he was trying his best not to laugh, you know, his moustache had a twitch and [laughs] you could he’s gonna laugh every minute, you know. But he didn’t, he held it in [laughs]
AS: What was Woodbridge like? Is an emergency landing ground very different from a normal airfield?
HH: Oh yeah, you, huts with the roof off, you know, half off and snow would come in, on a snowy night, yeah.
AS: Not finished?
HH: No, they had just blown off. That’s a nuisance that thing, isn’t it?
AS: Your smoke alarm, yeah. As we got to this time or you got to this time in the war, this was late 1944.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Had the scene changed in terms of aids to navigation, things like Sandra lights and Darky and ground organisation, was there a lot to help you?
HH: [unclear] Much on the ground I think, mainly H2S, Oboe, things like that, you know. And G8, wasn’t it? G8.
AS: G-H, yeah. I didn’t, I don’t know how that worked, I never had that but we were quite content with LORAN. In fact, I got a wind over, going down to, I forget where I was going, Berlin I suppose, but yeah, we were going over to Berlin I think and I got a wind just north of the Ruhr, a hundred and ninety five knots.
AS: Wow!
HH: And what we’d done, we hit a jet stream, you see, and but when I came back, I said to the met man, I got a wind of a hundred, impossible, impossible, impossible, and it went to Group and Group said impossible as well, went to Command and Command said impossible well then when everybody started to get them, they suddenly realised there was something in this jet stream. Now they talk about nothing else but the bloody jet stream and it annoys me that because they ignored their existence during the war, the met people did and we kept telling them, look there is something up there and it didn’t last very long, you see, you were in it and then you were out of it, you know. So you couldn’t use it as a general wind to carry on to Berlin, shall we say for example, and nor could you use it when you were coming back. You might hit it again but it’d be in a different place slightly and.
AS: It must have meant that you had to be on your toes with your fixes all the time.
HH: Yeah. Anyway we,
AS: In your logbook, it suddenly goes from duty as nav to duty nav b. What was the significance of?
HH: Well, I stood in as bomb aimer as well.
AS: Ah, okay, that’s what it was. Tremendous number of operations over the winter of ’44-’45.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So I presume you must have flown in most weather with the nav aids that you had.
HH: Oh yeah, I remember one night, I don’t know if I should say this because it’s a bit derogatory to somebody who’s now dead, and that’s to Don Bennett. He was in the control tower on this particular night and we were getting hoarfrost all along the wings of our, as we taxied out we were getting hoarfrost develop all along the wings, so Roy got onto control and he says, ‘Could we have the de-icing bowsers out, please?’ And Bennett said, ‘Never mind about the de-icing bowser, just get off the deck.’ Well, we didn’t go, we said, ‘No, no. It’s too dangerous.’ Anyway, another aircraft came after us and they ploughed into the end of the runway and they were both killed of course when their bomb blew up. And Bennett never said a word to us afterwards, he was, we came back for briefing that night and he’d left the station. We came back and got the de-icing bowser and got cleared of the hoarfrost. He literally left, you see. And then we went to Berlin that night, I think.
AS: I should think, with fuel and a four thousand pounder you must have needed all the runway to get off.
HH: Yeah, well, there is another tale attached to that, the, you see, we started off with four thousand pounders, I think we were the first squadron to have four thousand pounders, and then they put fifty gallon drop tanks on each wing which were increased eventually to seventy five and then a hundred and then, and then we ran out of four thousand pounders and we had to borrow four thousand pounders from the Americans, which were four and a half thousand pounds. So another five hundred pounds to get off the deck. But the old Mozzie just used to take it all in its stride. No bother.
AS: You had no concerns.
HH: No, and I remember one day when I’d finished tour. I was sitting in the crew room minding my own business and the CO, a Canadian called Bob Grant came in and he said, ‘You doing anything Hughes?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Grab yourself a ‘chute would you and I’ll see you out at the aircraft.’ I said, ‘What do you⸻’ ‘Just bring a local Gee chart and local maps, would you?’ So when I got out to the bay, they were loading a four thousand pounder and I said, ‘Well, what fuel have we got?’ ‘You’ve a got full load of fuel and two hundred gallon drop tanks.’ And there’s a wind blowing right the way down the 330 runway which was fourteen hundred feet or something compared with two thousand feet on the main runway. I said, ‘What are we gonna do then?’ He said, ‘We’re gonna see if we can get off with this wind, the scale blowing, see if we can get off on this, on the fifteen hundred runway.’ So, we got to the end of the runway, and he waited until there was a gust of wind blowing, until the airspeed indicator was indicating about fifty or sixty knots. And we went. And I dropped the cookie on the live bomb target in the Wash and then we came back. And he got a report and said it wasn’t possible. I said, ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ [laughs] it wasn’t possible. And he said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t think the crew, you could expect the whole crew to wait’, the whole squadron rather to wait until there was a lull, that’s turned till there was a gust of wind which would get them off the deck.
AS: It’s a good example of leading from the front though, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Doing the test himself.
HH: It was old Bob Grant, he’s dead now, he married a Yorkshire, he was CO of 105 Squadron, amongst other things and he was, when he got back to Canada, of course he was made up to brigadier, I think. He was a group captain here, so he was a brigadier. That was equivalent to air commodore, wasn’t it?
AS: I think so, yeah, yeah.
HH: I don’t know.
AS: And, ah, there it is Group Captain Grant, 19th of March 1945, bombload take off fourteen hundred yards. That was pretty much the end of your operational flying, I think, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: On the Mosquito. Last trip, February, February ’45.
HH: Hanover, wasn’t it? Or Hamburg, Hanover.
AS: Frankfurt, I think, Frankfurt in your log. And did you know that that would be your last trip or you’re just told you’re screened?
HH: Yeah. You knew you had to do fifty on Mosquitos. So.
AS: And what did happened after that? Did you go back instructing or?
HH: No, no, we were sent on leave and when we came back, we’d been posted, several crews had been posted down to Pershore to ferry Canadian built Mosquitos across the Atlantic. And I crewed up with a different, Lloyd had gone back to New Zealand and he used to fly with Air New Zealand after the war. And thanks to me, because someone had put a bottle through his hand and all the tendons had gone. And so he couldn’t, when we were taking off at Whiten once doing a cross country, we got airborne and suddenly the throttle went back and he grabbed hold of them and held it with his hand and because you had to keep the throttle up so loose ‘cause of this weakness in his left hand. So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Roy, from now on I’ll tighten the throttle knot for you when you’re ready. As soon as you want, you just say, throttle knob and I will reach through and grab the throttle knob and turn it and tighten it for you.’ And we did that every trip. And but I, ‘cause I had to reach over, I couldn’t strap in, so I did all my trips without strapping in [laughs]. I never strapped in again, not with Roy flying. So he’d of never, I mean, he was flying with Air New Zealand afterwards he’d never have passed their medical if he’d of disclosed it, you know.
AS: But eventually, not in a Mosquito, but he’d be flying with throttles on the other hand, wouldn’t he? So the problem,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The problem would go away. So you’d had some leave, you were posted to fly to Pershore to fly Mosquitos.
H: Yeah. And we were sent on indefinite leave, Pershore sent us on indefinite leave. And I thought, oh God, I’ll be grounded for sure. So, I got on a train and went up to Air Ministry and saw a wing commander there and I said, look, there is a war going in in the Far East [unclear] aircraft ferried out there, coming back for maintenance and what have you. And he said, what a good idea, you know, come back in the morning, will you? And I got the whole lot posted out to the Far East. Fifteen or eighteen, I think I told you this before, didn’t I?
AS: I think so but we didn’t get in on the tape, I don’t think, no.
HH: No.
AS: I bet you were popular.
HH: Fifteen, oh God, when I got down to Lyneham they were moaning, ‘I’m just due for demob for God’s sake, why the heck do I have to, due for demob any day now.’
AS: I bet you kept quiet.
HH: And here I am, so I kept very quiet. And so, I mean I wasn’t due for demob for some time.
AS: So here we are, Lyneham in July ’45. A huge trip as a passenger on a deck. Thirty two hours flying.
HH: Yeah, back to Karachi, yeah.
AS: So by going, going East, you, did you, before you went, did you see, did you go on any of these trips over, over Germany to see all the destruction?
HH: No, no.
AS: Okay.
HH: I missed all that.
AS: You’d said earlier that you said a prayer for the people of Hamburg. What, at the end of the war, did you reflect at all on the, or during that, on the bombing? And what were your feelings about being involved in it in the war?
HH: Well, I’ve spoken to our vicar about it, you know, and said, do you think Saint Peter’s gonna let me through the gates? Or not. So she sat and he said a prayer for me. Lady vicar of course. Anyway, but I was invited out to Hanover as a guest of the mayor and the local newspaper to commemorate the 60th anniversary of when we bombed them.
AS: And you went?
HH: So I went over, yeah, well, I was asked to volunteer and I remember, at the Bomber Command meeting they said, did anybody go to Hanover, I said, well, I did. When I got home, I found out I’d been to Hanover about eleven times and [laughs] so I was well qualified.
AS: And are you pleased you went, did it turn out well?
HH: Yes, they were very, very, very nice, I like German people.
AS: So do I.
HH: I got two of them coming over now. Here any day now. I think. They stay up at [unclear] castle, ‘cause he’s paraplegic, he can’t get down my steps.
AS: Yeah.
HH: He’s, he had polio when he was a youngster. But they come over by air this time so he couldn’t bring his invalid scooter with him so I don’t know whether he’s gonna hire one when they’re here or not, I don’t know what they’re gonna do to get around.
AS: That should be possible, I think.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And these are friends you made when you went to Hanover?
HH: Yeah. Well, they were both reporters with the Hamburger Allgemeine. And anyway I was, the last day I was there in Hanover I was there for about three or four days, I had to attend a meeting of all the survivors from the raids and all the students from university there and the colleges and what have you and a little girl gets up and question time you see and she gets up and says, can I please explain what was the duty of the navigator? Well if you ask me a stupid question like that, I’m gonna give you a stupid answer, for sure. So I said, ‘Well, the reason why we carried a navigator, because we had to have someone on board who could read and write’ [laughs] and their mouths fell open, he went like this, everybody, so I said to my interpreter, I said, ‘Tell them, it was a joke, will you?’ ‘Ah, a joke, yeah, we got no sense of humour, we Germans, we’ve got no sense of humour at all.’ [unclear] So then, later on somebody, one of the survivors said, ‘Why did you bomb the city?’ So I said, ‘To be perfectly honest, we couldn’t hit anything smaller but just remember this,’ I said, ‘Right in the centre, almost within half a mile from the centre of Hanover there was the biggest rubber factory in Germany, so it made Hanover a very legitimate target.’ ‘Yes’, this man says, ‘But you didn’t hit it, did you? ‘Cause it’s still there!’ [laughs]. I said, ‘Well, and you tried to tell me that the Germans got no sense of humour?’ [laughs] And then I was on their side from then on.
AS: I’ve lived there for eleven years. I’m with you. I’ve lived there for eleven years.
HH: Have you?
AS: Yeah. They’re great people, great people. I think.
HH: In which part were you?
AS: I was in Munich for five years.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And then in Bonn and Cologne, in the Rhineland for about six altogether. Some of the places you visited by air, in fact. That’s the feelings of the Germans. How, there’s been a lot of controversy about how Bomber Command were treated after the war. Have you got any views on that?
HH: Well, I think, first of all, we should never, never have bombed Dresden, I think that was the biggest mistake we made. And Portal should have stood up and said, no! But he didn’t have the guts to do it, he didn’t have the guts to stand up to Churchill and it was Churchill who, on his way to Yalta, he stopped off at Malta, And they’d agreed to bomb five cities within reach of the Russian lines, you know, and I think Dresden was one and what’s that? And Leipzig and one other I think. Anyway he sent back this signal to Portal saying, from Malta saying, where is my spectacular, get on with it. So, Portal looked at the charts and he consulted the Met people and the only target available that night was Dresden. I didn’t go to Dresden, I went to Magdeburg, Magdeburg that night, you can see it on there, in that book there.
AS: You believe it was, that Dresden was the turning point and that?
HH: Mh?
AS: You believe that Dresden was some sort of turning point?
HH: Yeah.
AS: How Bomber Command were treated?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you, do you feel now that it’s changed with the memorials and the clasp?
HH: Yeah, I think so. I think, there was a time just after the war, when the people who were against us were the people who were in the Air Force or in one of the forces and they felt that we were, they didn’t want us to have any publicity, you know.
AS: After the war.
HH: Yeah. And then, and then since then, they’ve suddenly realised that you know, we had the highest losses of any unit in the, our forces, fifty five thousand killed, which is quite a lot, wasn’t it?
AS: Yeah. Fifty five thousand, five hundred and seventy three.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’ve seen a, well, or you see a change in attitudes now.
HH: Yes, I think, younger people are much more inclined to want to hear about it and talk about it and understand why we did it and there is no good saying, well, we were under orders to do it, because that’s what the Germans excuses were, you know, for their treatment of the in the concentration camps. We were under orders.
AS: And you did it because it was right?
HH: Well, we did it because we thought we were, ‘cause we were shortening the war and therefore less people would be killed.
AS: Is it, I agree, you say, that now people want to hear about it, is it good for you and other veterans to be able to talk about it after all this time?
HH: It’s getting more and more difficult, there’s so many books have been written on there, now.
AS: And you are actually in one of the books.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Steve Darlow’s book. How did all that come about? Did you get involved with him?
HH: I don’t know. He wanted, I think I was recommended by probably Bomber Command, you know, Dougie Radcliffe.
AS: Oh, the Bomber Command Association.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Have you always played a big part in that?
HH: No, no, I was mainly in the Pathfinders Association.
AS: Oh, okay.
HH: We were separate from, we were separate from the Bomber Command Association, but I’d already joined the Bomber Command Association when we disbanded. I’d already been a member for several years.
AS: And do you belong to your squadron or 102 Squadron association as well?
HH: Yeah. Yes, it’s, I’ve written a letter to, when I went to the VJ-Day celebrations⸻
AS: Yes.
HH: We had to fill out a form travelling expenses and I got three hundred pounds from the Lottery Fund.
AS: Excellent.
HH: And my son Jeremy, who’d driven me up there and then he got three hundred pounds as well. And I don’t, I hope he hasn’t. So I wrote a letter to the Big Lottery and said, thanking them for their, I said, so, twice a year I’ve got to go to, up to Pocklington in Yorkshire, which is rather expensive for me now ‘cause you got to go up Virgin cross country you know, right the way up to York and it’s a long journey that. It’s an interesting journey but there’s no, there was a little old lady pushing the tray along, pushing the trolley along, you know, that’s all that you get to eat with some coffee and a fruitcake or something.
AS: It’s not the same as a full dining car.
HH: I like the dining cars on, I’m going up on the 22nd of October I think, coming back on the 23rd, I always travel back down on the dining car which, on a train with a dining car which leaves at seven o’clock in the evening.
AS: Do you still have wartime comrades that you’ll meet in Pocklington?
HH: Oh yes, yeah. Most of them are dead now but.
AS: So, a lot of reminiscing and’
HH: Yeah. There’s a friend of mine, who was a previous chairman, Tom Wingate, who, he wrote a book called Halifax Down, ‘cause he was shot down on his second tour, and I used to have a copy but I can’t find it now. I don’t know what I have done with it, I lose things all the time now.
AS: I have a copy at home, I can send you one.
HH: Pardon?
AS: I have a copy, I can send you one.
HH: You got a copy of that?
AS: Yeah, I have.
HH: Halifax Down, yes, it’s not a bad book, actually. Except that he joined the squadron the same time as I did, his crew did. And he’s quoted in his book, as if he was there three or four months before me. He’s quoted various trips and he’s got these out of those old war diaries, wish I could find that. I wonder where I put it?
AS: Well, you’ll have to take your logbook the next time you meet him.
HH: Oh no, he’s dead now.
AS: Okay.
HH: That’s why I’ve taken over as chairman.
AS: After you came off ops, you did this trip out to the Far East, did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: In what?
AS: Did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s quite a lot really. My very first trip was down to Akyab, on the Arakan coast. I think I told you, didn’t I?
AS: Yes, but not into the tape. So, what happened on that trip?
HH: I don’t think that particular trip’s in there, actually, I looked for it the other day and I can’t find it. I must have left it out for some reason.
AS: This was the trip with the Japanese.
HH: Yes, all the way around us were Zeros, you know. We could hear them yacketing away and then this Indian crew comes on with their Hurricanes and the Japanese just disappeared.
AS: What was the radio conversation about with these Indian squadrons, red flight?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the radio conversation story about the?
HH: Oh, well, the Indian crews? ‘Yes, red leader to yellow leader, how do you read me, over? Yellow leader to green, you are not red, you are green, you know? Red leader to yellow leader, I am not green, I am red. And this Aussie voice comes up by the blue, you are black, you bastard’ [laughs].
AS: So, it’s still a combat area that you’re flying replacement aircraft I suppose in to the squadrons?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you get involved in flying damaged aircraft for repair?
HH: Oh, I used to fly back from say Kamila or with two Pratt & Whitney’s engines in the back and a load of ENSA girls as well amongst them [laughs], sitting where they could and trying not to get greasy, ‘cause these, and yeah.
AS: Yeah. Shall we, pause there I think?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And wind it up. Thank you that, It’s been absolutely wonderful to hear.
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 Harry Hughes
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-21
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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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AHughesWH151021
Format
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02:28:15 audio recording
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Hughes volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940 and trained in America, where he was washed out as a pilot and then retrained as a navigator in Canada, flying Ansons and Wellingtons. In 1942 he converted to Halifaxes and flew operations with 102 Squadron over Germany, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying an operation to Berlin whilst on crutches. He recounts the routines of preparing to go on operations and his use of navigation aids including Gee, LORAN and later, Boozer in Mosquitos. He was bombstruck twice during operations. He completed 26 operations including the bombing of Hamburg which he describes as a firestorm and recalls saying a private prayer for the people of Hamburg below. After his tour finished, he then instructed before applying to go back on operations with 8 Group, flying Mosquitos with 692 Squadron and dropping Window for Pathfinder forces in 1944/45. In 2004 he visited Hanover and discussed the raids with survivors of the war. He was a member of a number of post war service associations and kept in contact with his crewmates.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Southeast Asia
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
United States
Alabama--Montgomery
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1943
1944
1945
102 Squadron
3 Group
6 Group
692 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Anson
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
faith
Fw 190
Gee
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
incendiary device
Ju 88
Me 109
Me 110
Me 262
medical officer
meteorological officer
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
promotion
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Harwell
RAF Riccall
RAF Wombleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/607/8876/AMaywoodRM151109.2.mp3
773cbbdec73ec1fb4e55919303593c37
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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Maywood, Dick
Richard M Maywood
R M Maywood
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Maywood, RM
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard 'Dick' Maywood (1923 -2016, 1623169 Royal Air Force), his log book and a certificate. He flew operations as a navigator with 608 and 692 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-09
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
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This was the, this was the interview with Mr Richard ‘Dick’ Maywood at xxxx and he was a Mosquito Pathfinder navigator.
[Recording resumes]
RM: Above the main bomber stream. Twenty eight thousand. We carried one cookie.
CB: Four thousand pounder.
RM: Four thousand pounder.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And we had the Mosquitoes with the bulged belly. Now a lot of those — that was the B16. A lot of those appeared in the film, “633 Squadron.” Now, that film was the biggest load of bullshit you ever came across. It was so ridiculous that a lot of people would believe it. The bombs which they showed being loaded up on these, for the operation, were cookies. The four thousand pounder bombs that we carried with the peculiar tail fin added and they were supposed to drop these bombs so that they hit the base of the rock and bring it down. Now, with the four thousand pounder we were told safety height above one of those is five thousand feet or more. They wouldn’t have been more than five hundred feet away from that rock. So, the best part of that film as I was concerned was the theme song. The theme music.
CB: Yes. Exciting.
RM: Which I intend to have played at the end of my funeral service.
CB: Oh right.
RM: Because I’m gone.
CB: Yeah.
RM: The other Mosquito film they made. “Mosquito Squadron.” Again. That was largely, sort of, bull but there was one interesting point there which is true and that is the point where they had Mosquitoes practicing dropping bombs or lobbing bombs in to tunnels and that actually did occur. And one of the Polish squadrons. I think it was 305 was involved in that but other than that away we go. The Amiens raid which was a true one.
CB: Pickard. Yeah.
RM: That formed the basis of Mosquito squadrons attack. So, in actual fact “Mosquito Squadron” in spite of the American CO and all that sort of nonsense did contain certain aspects which were very true. Curiously enough, as I say, most of the light night striking force operations were either nuisance raids to divert fighter aircraft from the main bomber stream and were raids in their own right or they were on the same targets but about a mile higher than the main stream. So, some of them, the runs, were particularly with Berlin. They used to call that the Milk Run.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So how did that work?
RM: In exactly the same way as an ordinary raid would be set out. You’d be given the route. You’d plot the route. And you’d be given the Met winds which the weather people had found and were vital because A — you needed it for navigation in the days of steam navigation. And you also needed it as the only setting to be put on the Mark 14 bomb sight. And that was the gyroscopically controlled one. I can tell you a story about that too. I shared a bombing range with a B17 on one occasion at Boxmoor near Oxford. We’re at twenty five thousand feet. We had six practice bombs. It was a NFT. And I was sharing a range with a B17 and he could not have been more than fifteen thousand feet. With the bomb and the pickle barrel from thirty thousand feet. Norden bomb sight. His bombing error was twice mine. I was knocking up around about sixty, seventy yards and he was around about the, probably a hundred and twenty, hundred and fifty yards and as I say he was probably ten thousand feet below me. Two miles below me. So much for the American bomb sight. And that Bomb sight the bombardier had to take it out of the aircraft every time he flew and put it back in to safe keeping and then draw it out because they didn’t want the Germans to get it. But what they’d overlooked was the fact that the Germans had hacked down quite a lot of B17s and knew everything about the bombsight. But there we go. I’m afraid that you are probably going to think that I am very biased against the Americans. I’m very biased against the American navy. And I’m not particularly, sort of enthusiastic about their air force either. Any air force which bombed in daylight, in formation. Well, at a steady height. Steady speed. Nearest approach to suicide you could get. The B17 crews, I must admit, were very very brave people. Very brave people. But in those days as I say we hadn’t got much reference for them because most of the big B17 stations were around here. in this area. Northamptonshire.
CB: Near Peterborough.
RM: Peterborough and that area.
CB: Yeah.
CB: And all that area. And George, my pilot, if we were coming off a night flying test he’d look around for one of these and he’d formate on a B17 and sort of drop his undercarriage and put the flaps down and sort of follow on its wingtips and then when he’d had enough of that he’d go clean. Both engines. And then he’d fly in a circle around them as they went along because I mean we could do a hundred and ninety knots quite comfortably on one engine. But to give you some idea. On one occasion, on an authorised low flying exercise an American B, a P47, the Mustang — formated on us. “Air Police” written along it’s side and he was going like this. More or less telling us to get up. I gave him the washout sign. I said to George my pilot, I said, ‘We’ve got a visitor.’ ‘What’s that?’ He looked, ‘Oh him,’ he said. He said, ‘Let’s teach him a lesson.’ And he just took both engines through the gate and we left.
CB: Left him standing.
RM: Within a minute he was a dot. He could have beaten us at low level because of course our B16s that we were flying at that time, although it’s low level, really didn’t get into their own until we were at twenty one thousand feet or over. But going through the gate gave us that little bit extra. And that was it. Because we used to — from Downham Market we exited down between the old and new Bedford Levels right down to Royston. That was our route out. Incidentally, after VE day they said, ‘You’re coming off high level bombing. You’re going low level daylight in the far east and map reading.’ Now, that is the equivalent of going off an HGV on to formula one practically. Now, a lot of people don’t believe this but I can assure you, hand on heart, that it’s true. We were told, ‘Now, when you go to low level that is fifteen to twenty five feet.’ And we did it. Fortunately, my pilot, when he was an instructor in Canada at Estevan on Oxfords had four instances of collecting rubbish from the undercarriage of his Oxfords. Low level. Unauthorised. But he was very very good at it [laughs] and we had quite an amusing incident to do with that but if we go back to the light night striking force. As I say that was part of 8 Group which was given the permission to put eight, in brackets, PFF force. Group rather. Pathfinder force. Because each station in 8 Group had one Mosquito which was mainly light night striking force and one squadron of Lancs which were again associated with the Pathfinder force and they were equipped with H2S which gave you the map. And of course H2S was the result of quite a lot of Lancs being shot down because the night fighters, German night fighters could tune in. Home in on them and bang. And then again, the Germans had a very nasty idea called Schrage Musik which you’ve probably heard of. The upward firing guns. So, they’d home in underneath an unsuspecting Lanc and bang. That was it. But once they got wind of this then they put the Mosquito night fighters in with the bombers and that did reduce the losses a little because it upset the Germans. Now, is there any aspect that I could fill you in on? Because I don’t exactly know what you’re after you see.
CB: That’s alright. So, what I’d like to suggest is that we start with your earliest recollections of your life. What you did at school? Where you were born? And then after school what did you do?
RM: Yeah.
CB: And how did you come to join the RAF?
RM: Yeah.
CB: I’m just going to stop for a mo.
RM: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: Hang on. Let me just get it started again. So now we’re restarting with the early days, Dick.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So, where you were you born and —
RM: I was born —
CB: Just up the road.
RM: Just around the corner.
CB: In Peterborough.
RM: In Peterborough yes. I went to the local school which is about a hundred and fifty yards around the corner from here as an infant. From five to seven. They had the junior section then from seven to eleven and when I was eleven I got a scholarship to the local grammar school which was called Deacon’s School. Peterborough had two grammar schools. Deacon’s and King’s, of which, of course, there was very considerable a rivalry between the two [laughs] as you can imagine. Now, with King’s School it didn’t matter so much about passing the school cert exam. Eleven plus equal. With King’s School you had to be able to sing because that was the Cathedral School. And curiously enough at the service yesterday at the Peterborough Cathedral I remarked on the fact that we must be getting old because the choirboys looked smaller and smaller. I was actually in school to hear war declared. I’d reached the sixth form. And we were actually called in during the holiday to the sixth form to deal with the evacuees from London. Now they, that started on a Friday. The evacuees came into the school and we were there to separate these various children and give them to the groups to which they’d been allocated so that they could be taken to their future homes. And about half past ten, quarter to eleven on the Sunday morning the headmaster came around and said, ‘Forget about the evacuees. All of you assemble in the music room because Neville Chamberlain is going to speak to the nation at 11 o’clock.’ So, we went in there and we heard the war declared and that was that. Now, I came to the conclusion then that instead of staying on to go, say to do my A levels and go to university if that would be interrupted by war service. Now, I’d always been, from the age of about nine when I’d got a book called the Boy’s Book of Aircraft for a Christmas present I’d always been interested in the flying aspect. Biggles and all that sort of thing. And I developed quite an interest in flying from the reading point of view and from the model aircraft point of view. And I thought well why not volunteer for the air force. So as soon as I was eighteen, that was in 1941, I nipped up to Cambridge because at eighteen if I volunteered for the air force I wouldn’t be called up for the army or the navy. And so, I volunteered. I was accepted for further investigation. That was in 1941 and then in December ‘41 was called to Cardington where I had my aircrew medicals and aptitude tests and was accepted as future aircrew. And much to my annoyance, that was December ’41, I was actually called up to Lord’s Cricket Ground August bank holiday Monday 1942. I hopped off one foot on to the other. I thought that was a dirty trick [laughs] Anyway, we were assailed with needles and vaccinations and boots to be cleaned and uniforms. Paraded up and down Earl’s Court and so on and went to the zoo for meals. From there I eventually went to Number 6 ITW at Aberystwyth. I’d only been there about six weeks on a ten weeks course when I had to report sick on the Tuesday. I’d got a swollen throat and what not. Sore throat. Went to the sick quarters and the MO there sort of looked, ‘Ah, Mist Expect three times a day for three days. Come again on Friday.’ Well, this Mist Expect was a brown lotion. Yuck. Which was very evil tasting. Anyway, by the Friday morning I more or less managed to crawl up to the sick quarters and they said, ‘Strange. We’ll have you upstairs under observation.’ And that was on the Friday. On the Sunday morning I developed the classic male symptoms of mumps. Now, as soon as they realised this they whipped me off to the local isolation hospital called Tanybwlch where I was the only patient and I distinctly remember it. There were five Nurse Williams’ and one Nurse Prodigan there. I lived like a lord but the interesting thing was that I was there for a week and at the end of the week they said, ‘Right. You’ll be going home Monday. Fourteen days sick leave.’ Now, before the Monday, on the Friday, about twelve of the people who were in my flight at ITW reported in to Tanybwlch with mumps. And what they were going to do to me was nobody’s business until I mentioned fourteen days sick leave. I was the flavour of the month after that. Anyway, from there, after a week, a few weeks due to bad weather I finished up as Desford Leicester, grading school where I did my twelve hours on Tigers. Selected for further pilot training. The interesting thing was there the instructor that I had was a Sergeant Collinson. He was an ex-bank manager and three weeks after I’d finished and gone to Heaton Park word filtered through that he’d had a pupil who’d frozen on the controls and killed them both. And a nicer bloke you couldn’t have wished for. He was the exact opposite to the American instructor which I had at Grosse Ile. Anyway, as I say, we did this grading school and then from there we went to Heaton Park which of course was the centre from which all aircrew to Canada, America — the USA, South Africa were sent simply because there was no room in the sky to have UT pilots barging about and getting in the way even though the Tigers were painted yellow. But, and as I say from there I volunteered for the Flying Boat course which was rather ill fated. I did get about thirty — thirty five hours solo on Stearman N2S4s which I thought was a beautiful aircraft. It really handled superbly. The sort of one that the wing walkers are using now. Much nicer aircraft to fly then the Tiger. Had twice as much power and on Tiger if you came on the approach five miles an hour too fast you nearly floated across the airfield. You didn’t get down. With the Stearman N2S4 you came in and as soon as you got the right attitude closed the throttle, stick back and it would go down on a three pointer and stick. Much nicer. Also, had brakes which helped you to stop and manoeuvre because with the tiger they had to come out and take your wing tip.
CB: Now where was this? In the states. Where?
RM: This. Grosse Ile, Detroit.
CB: Grosse Ile.
RM: Yes. And the French Grosse Ile. And that was American navy. The only British officers that we had there were one RAF and one Royal Navy officer acting as liaison because of course not only did the RAF send pilots there but of course Fleet Air Arm. And it was the Fleet Air Arm course really. With carrier work and then Flying Boats because they had to be versatile with both but I could never understand why we were subjected to the first part of the course but it was a good thing in actual fact. But I couldn’t see it at the time. Because I couldn’t understand anybody would try landing a Catalina on a Flying Boat. It’s a ridiculous state of affairs to be. Anyway, from there, as I say, I was sent back to Canada. To Windsor, Ontario and had a re-selection board. Was re-selected as a navigator air bomber. The navigators could either be pure navigators, NavBs, NavWs nav wireless or Nav radio and in each case, it depended on the type of aircraft that they would be going on to for their training and radio mostly on fighters for instance. The day and night fighters. The —
CB: Can I just go — can I interrupt? Go back a bit? Why was it that you gave up the flying? The pilot training with the US navy.
RM: Why? I was washed off. Yes. I was washed off the course. They had a field. The main fields. Grosse Ile had several satellite airfields. Much more. And one of these was a square field on the edge of Lake Michigan and in the middle of the field was a hundred foot diameter circle. Now, it gets rather technical here because to explain it I’ve got to be technical. Imagine that there’s a line through the circle with the wind. Wind line. And this wind line when on the afternoon that I was taking my tests was at right angles to the shore of the lake. Now, this field was probably no more than four hundred yards long and the circle would be probably about eight or ninety yards in because you had to, sort of, do a touch down and off again. The afternoon, it was in August, the ambient air temperature was eighty five Fahrenheit. Now, you came down wind parallel to the wind line like a normal left hand circuit. Eight hundred feet. When your wings were opposite the circle you cut the engine and the rest was a glide. Now, you had to glide down across the wind line at between ninety and forty five degrees. Continue the left hand turn and make a right hand turn onto the wind line and in and drop. Because, of course with a lot of aircraft you’ve got no forward, fighter aircraft particularly, no forward vision. So they had to adopt this and they still do I believe. I’m not sure. Now, as soon as on the right hand turn, as soon as I crossed the shoreline I gained about fifty feet. Thermals. I’ve never done any gliding or known anything about it and I didn’t know what a thermal was. So I overshot. The next time. The second run. I came a little bit lower. I still overshot. And we had to get three out of six in the circle. The third shot. I came around and I still touched down just beyond the circle. So I knew that I’d failed but I opened up and ignored the instructor who was sitting by the side of the circle watching. Ignored his signals [laughs] I thought I will bloody well put one in and the fourth one in I actually undershot. But in order to do that my right hand wingtip on the right turn was almost in the water. It was that low. And as I say as soon as I muffed that third one I knew that I’d failed so it didn’t bother me much. Now, one difference between the RAF training aircraft and the American training aircraft was that with the Tiger Moth you had a two way Gosport system so you could talk to the pilot. With the Stearman N2S4s, both army and navy, they had one way Gosport. The pilot could talk to you but you couldn’t talk back. The other fact is that all of the instructors, army and navy instructors on pilot training in the States were usually first generation nationalised Americans. Now, they were not allowed to go to the actual warzones just in case they were spies and nasty types. So, you can imagine that these instructors had quite a bone to pick. You know. They were very bitter about being singled out for this and they took it out on us. Now, on one occasion I’d already upset my instructor. You know, before these circles landing. And if you had a high level emergency which usually occurred at two thousand feet you were supposed to glide round, selecting a field and then make this sort of approach. And we were stooging along on one exercise just before these circles and he suddenly cut the motor and said, ‘Right. High level emergency.’ And one of the satellite fields was just down there so, I gave it full left stick, full right rudder, organised a side slip and brought it right down in one go in to this field. Settled and did a three pointer. And I sat there and I thought bloody marvellous Maywood. The remarks that came over the Gosport were not printable. Definitely not printable. I had disobeyed every rule in their book. Disobeyed them. I was worthless. I was useless. He didn’t speak to me for a couple of days afterwards. He just took me up. But on the way back after the side slip he cut the visit short because we flew for an hour and a half at a time. We’d been flying for about a half an hour. He said, ‘Right. We’re going back to base.’ And he did flick rolls left right left right and obviously to try and upset me. And they had a mirror up in the centre section where they could see us and as he did these, the more he did it, you know, sort of thumbs-up which made him even worse. As I say for two days he would just take me out to the aircraft. We’d do what we had to do until this circle business and not a word was said. Now, after washing off this course, as I say, we had a re-selection board in Windsor, Ontario. It’s just across the water from Detroit and I was selected as a NavB. I had to do six months general duties work. Three months in Toronto manning depot. That was quite an interesting, mostly sweeping the floor but on one occasion. Two occasions. Two successive days. We had to, you know, two of us, another washed off pilot and myself chummed up and we were picked for guard duty in the detention barracks there. When we reported to the flight sergeant MP first thing in the morning we were handed side arms. 45 revolvers. And the SP said, ‘Now, the only thing I’m going to tell you,’ he said, ‘Is never ever let one of the prisoners get within shovel distance of you.’ Shovel distance. What’s that? He said, ‘Remember that.’ He said. ‘If they look like getting there,’ he said, ‘Shoot them because it might be the last thing you do.’ He said, ‘We won’t ask questions.’ Anyway, we went into this detention barracks and we were ushered in to a building which was about thirty feet wide. Probably ninety feet long and normal height of a shed. Say perhaps ten, twelve feet. Across the centre of the room there was a black line. Two inch black line that ran down the walls, across the floor and up the other wall. Now, you can imagine. You walk in there and you see this. At one end there was probably about fifty, sixty tonnes of small coal. The other end absolutely pristine walls and floor. Whitewashed. The prisoners had wheelbarrows and shovels and it was their job to shift this coal from one end to the other and then when they’d done that they scrubbed the floor and the walls. Whitewashed them. And then did the job again. Now, they were doing this probably for two or three months and they were, it was described as being stir happy. And this was the reason. They’d had one or two of the guards had been attacked with these shovels and had been seriously injured or killed and that was the reason why we were told. Now, we only had that for two days fortunately because we more or less stood back to back [laughs] watching each other’s backs and then back to the old sweeping routine. And that was for three months. Then from there I was sent out to a place called Goderich which is right on the borders. Western border of Ontario. That was a training station for twin-engined aircraft for Royal Canadian Air Force cadets. Spent three months there and then onto a place called Mountain View in Ontario to do the bombing and gunnery school. The flying was done on Mark 2 Ansons. You’ve probably seen pictures of those. And the gunnery was done with the Bollingbroke which was the Canadian version of the Blenheim 4. The turret. Have you ever seen the Blenheim gun turret?
Other: No.
RM: Most peculiar arrangement. Vertical column. And a beam pivoted on this vertical column. At one end of the beam is a seat. At the other end are two Browning pop guns. 303s. And handlebars. So when you — to operate the turret to elevate the guns or depress them you turn the handlebars like twist grips. And to turn the turret you steer it like a pushbike. So, if you were firing at aircraft up there your bottom was right down here and you’re looking up there. You’re not sitting in the chair and looking all over like did with the Fraser Nash and the other turrets. The locking ones. Anyway, we were quite interested because the first exercise that we did it was really a chastener. We had two hundred rounds each to fire. Now, what they did with the two Brownings — they put three hundred pounds in each with a dummy round of two hundred in each gun. So, the first person in to the turret, you flew in threes, first used the left hand gun. Two hundred rounds. Left it. The next person going in two hundred rounds from the right hand gun. And then the third one cleared both guns and a hundred from each. Now, the actual bullets — the tips were dipped in paint. So that when they went through the drogue, which was the target, you could see from the colour as to who hit and how many. The drogue was roughly in size a bit bigger say than the fuselage of a Hurricane or a Spit so you can see it was quite large. The first exercise was what was known as a beam target where the towing aircraft had towed the drogue on your beam two hundred yards distance. Steady. In other words you were firing at a static object. No lead necessary either way. And of course we just blazed away with these in short bursts and when we got down after the first exercise. This exercise. They gave us the number of hits. Now, believe it or believe it not at two hundred yards, steady target, no more than probably being on the gun boats — an extraordinarily good result was five percent hits. The average? Three percent. Which is amazing isn’t it? The reason? Vibration. The rigidity of the gun mountings of course allowed the guns to spray and this is one of the things where modern films and pre-modern films of aircraft fights where you see a nice line of holes being stitched across the fuselage — absolute bullshit. You were lucky if you get it off, peppered them. That was the gunnery and then we did sort of quarter cross overs and all that sort of thing. Mostly then with cameras attached to the guns. They took Cinefilms. They wouldn’t let us use live ammunition against [laughs] their aircraft. The bombing was done with Mark 2 Ansons. A very slow aircraft. And using the old fashioned Mark 9 bomb sight which was quite a Heath Robinson contraption really but it worked after a fashion. But it was designed to operate when aircraft were sort of doing their bombing runs at probably a hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty miles an hour with very little relationship to the forthcoming four-engined aircraft. And for that reason they devised the Mark 14 bomb sight which was gyroscope labourised and it was a beautiful piece of work. But going back to what I was saying about the weather, aircraft and wind finding. With the Mark 14 bomb sight you had to put the wind velocity in. Feed it in manually. And the only other manual thing you did was fit the bomb type. Select the bomb type and it worked out the trajectory and everything. Not only that but with the plate glass, sight glass, you had the red cross with the sword and that was stabilised horizontally. So that it would, in actual fact, give you accurate bombing up to about ten degrees of bank. Whereas with a Mark 9 you couldn’t. You had to be absolutely spot on and running the thing accurately.
CB: Straight and level.
RM: Straight and level. Yes. So that was an advantage with it. And that was bombing and gunnery school. Then nav school, as I say, was at Charlottetown, PEI. Prince Edward Island. And it was there I had my first really narrow squeak. In training of all things. Now, the nav school at that time lasted for twenty weeks. At the end of ten weeks you got a seventy two hour pass. From the Friday night to the Sunday which you couldn’t do much about because by the time you got from Charlottetown on to the mainland it was time to come back again. Right out in the sticks there. You were in the boon docks. Anyway, because we had bad night flying weather in the first eight weeks of our course they decided that instead of us flying on the tenth week we would fly on our twelfth week and the next course — 97. Behind us. Two weeks behind us would fly in our place. Now, you can appreciate this obviously. We were, a group of us, were going into the local cinema and it was just getting dark. Nice bright moon. No wind. Not worth talking about. Beautiful night. When we came out of the cinema three hours later there was a forty five knot gale blowing. Now, I can visualise what I understood and if I was in the same position I might have made the same mistake. In fact, almost certainly would but the Met forecast for the whole of their four hours was light and variable winds. Now, a sprog navigator. They’d only done ten weeks. They were only half way through the course. You still, over there, only had radio bearings. Visual sightings. More or less. And astro compass. The old bubble sextant which I could never get on with to navigate with. And the first leg out probably — of course you see navigation in those, steam navigation the vital part was wind finding, direction of the wind because that meant that you would get to where you wanted to go to. Probably find wind— sort of ten knots. Well, that falls within the flight plan. Get on the next leg and then you suddenly find wind fifteen, twenty knots. Must be something wrong so you backtrack. Check all your doings and in the meantime still maintaining the same course. And eventually you think well the only thing to do is to go back to ten knots. So, you re-plot for ten knots. Come to the next turning point as you thought, make your turn and say ,with four legs ultimately, you’ll probably be getting, or getting readings of thirty knots, thirty five knots. Can’t be right. Must go back to flight plan. And at the end of the flight when you should have been back at Charlottetown if you’d sort of ignored the truth you were probably fifty, sixty nautical miles northeast of Charlottetown. Right over the main Gulf of St Lawrence. Well as I say when we came out of the cinema there was this forty five knot wind blowing. When we got back to the camp they said, ‘Course 96 report to briefing room first light.’ And they made sure that we were there at first light because they sent people around to get us up. And we were given a very quick course on how to conduct line square searches. And every available aircraft and staff pilot who were available flew us so that we did these searches over the Gulf looking for missing aircraft. Never did see any. I believe that just after we’d finished the course. Twenty weeks. And being on our way back that they found one empty dinghy out there. And I believe that in actual fact they found the wreckage of one on the coast of Labrador which is just across the other side. How many went missing we were never told. But I did find out from the archives of the Empire Air Training Scheme in Brandon near Winnipeg — that I think three crews were absolutely lost. But anyway, we measured that and as I say we came back to this country. We did, before they would turn us lose on anything, they said, ‘Right you’ve got your navigation brevets in Canada. From Charlottetown. Over the Maritimes. Where one road or one railway is a land mark. Now, you may find flying over Britain and the continent a bit different. So, before you do anything we’re going to give you three weeks intensive training on map reading.’ And we were actually posted to a lovely little station just outside Carlisle. I think it was called Longton, where we were piled in the back seats of Tiger Moths. They only had about eight of these Tigers with staff pilots there. So, as I say it was quite a small grass field and we did quite a lot of map reading and target spotting over the Midlands and the Lake District. And that was good fun actually. On one occasion we, I actually flew with a pilot. One of the staff pilots who was a little more daring than others and it was a very windy day and he said, ‘I fancy doing a trip. Do you want to come?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ So, we took off and we were plotting our way around and the biggest rift that I calculated on that was fifty four degrees. And when we came over the airfield boundary at three hundred feet we actually landed ten feet inside the fence because the wind speed was virtually the approach speed of the Tiger. Yeah. That was quite interesting that was. Anyway, from there we went to AFU, Advanced Flying Unit and that was at Wigtown in Scotland. Halfway between Dumfries and Stranraer and that was on Ansons. Again, that was just generally getting used to flying over Britain. And then from AFU of course, straight on to OTU at Upper Heyford where we flew in Oxfords and we, more or less, we were [pause] our technique with Gee was a Gee fix every three minutes. DR after six. Six minutes. New course and again every three minutes. Every three minutes. And this was anything up to four hours. Which of course is the sort of navigation that we would be doing with the Mossies at night. And we also, we weren’t introduced to Loran until OTU and the snag there you see was the Gee would only be useful up to the Continent’s coast line. After that there was so much interference by the Germans. So much, what we called grass, that you couldn’t pick out the signal so we had to use LORAN which, curiously enough, they never did jam. It worked quite well and it worked out well over the Atlantic. Coastal command used it quite considerably. And as I say the last OTU trip we demolished a Mossie by going through the hedge and into trees on the way back with a single engine landing. Then, as I say, I’d only just started a tour before VE Day came. Just after VE Day the first thing we did were Cook’s Tours. We had two Mosquitos from each of the stations. 8 Group stations. Took off at one hour intervals during the day so that there was a route which went across northern Germany, the Ruhr valley then out more or less through the Danish border and back to home. And this was ostensibly to give us a picture of the damage which Bomber Command had done but if you bear in mind that these flights were every hour through daylight I reckon that the idea was a standing patrol just to tell the Germans we were still about. Now, at the risk of boring you here we were told that these Cook’s Tours would be a thousand feet. That’s a thousand feet above ground level obviously but George sort of took it upon himself to fly at a thousand feet. Now, the Ruhr valley is above sea level. About three hundred feet if I remember rightly. So, we were probably about seven hundred feet. Now, as I say the place was absolute rubble with steel structures. Just odd bits sticking up. Odd bits of concrete. Just like Hiroshima. And the Germans had bulldozed roads through this rubble so that they could get their troops. We were stooging along one of these roads. Sort of just ambling along at about a hundred and ninety knots. And we could see in the distance a chap ambling along with his stick and he heard us and he turned around. He recognised what we were and shook his stick at us. So, George said, ‘I’ll teach him a lesson.’ So, he sort of pulled up into a stalled turn and as he did he opened the bomb doors. Now on the B16 the bomb doors are big. Four thousand pound bomb size and from the front you can’t miss them. And this chappy, you could see, he sort of looked. Up went the stick and he was legging it down the road like mad, much to our amusement. Yeah. When it comes to low level flying though as I say our height was fifteen, twenty five feet. Clipping the grass almost. And on one occasion we were going across Wales, went down the valley and then up the other side. Big wide valley. Half way up this valley was a farmhouse and we were climbing up the slope and there was a woman pegging washing out. She obviously heard us and we could see her looking. Saw we were there and then she decided to look down and she could see us coming up and she legged it through this farmhouse. We could see her. And she ran out the other side as went over the top. Again, in those days our sense of humour was different to what it is now and as you probably [unclear] it was quite interesting. But fortunately for us — just after this 608 Squadron, the one we were on, was disbanded and we were posted to another 8 Group unit. 692 Squadron at Gransden Lodge which is just to the west of Cambridge and we, in actual fact, did one or two trips there and 692 was disbanded which meant that we were redundant aircrew. So we were sent first of all up to Blyton in Lincolnshire for re-selection board and I eventually finished up, although I’d opted for something different, on a flight mechanic engines course at Hereford. Credenhill. But there I learned all of the intricacies of the Merlin and the Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasp engine. And having finished that course I was posted to 254 torpedo Beaufighter Squadron at Langham in Norfolk. Langham, now, I believe is famous for its glass factory there which I think is on the old airfield where I became the flight tractor driver. And that’s what I stayed until I was demobbed. Now, they [pause] I could have opted to sign on with the air force. Not necessarily guaranteeing that I would fly as a navigator again but there was a pretty good chance. But in those days you had to do twenty one years for a pension which would have taken me from the age of nineteen when I joined up to forty. But you were too old to fly at thirty two. Now, as you probably appreciate after being grounded you don’t know what sort of job you’re going to get. General dogsbody usually. And the thought of eight years as dogsbody to get a pension didn’t appeal to me so I came out and I eventually finished up at teacher training college where I spent five years with a secondary mod trying to teach maths and science. And at the end of five years — because in the period between school and joining the air force I’d become an electrical trainee at the local power station so I’d got quite a good working knowledge of turbines, pumps and all that. Generators and so on. A good mechanical background. I managed to get a job as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at the local technical college on a one term temporary contract in 1954 and I was like old Bill in World War One. Unless you can find a better hole there’s no point in moving. And I eventually spent twenty eight years there and retired. Well, took voluntary redundancy in ‘82. And I’ve been a pensioner ever since. I think the Ministry of Education are busy making little plasticine models of me and sticking pins in because I’m quite expensive. Yeah. But that is that sad story of my life.
CB: Fascinating. Thank you very much. I suggest we have a break now.
RM: Yes.
CB: So, I’ll turn off.
[recording paused]
CB: So. Ken. We’ve just talked about Ken O’Dell being at Edith Weston near North Luffenham because he was also trained in America.
RM: Yeah. Now, if he was trained in America he wouldn’t necessarily be going to Grosse Ile because –
CB: He didn’t. No.
RM: He went under what was known as the Arnold Scheme and that would be usually around about Texas or somewhere like that. To one of the flying schools there with the American army and he would become an army pilot. Now, of course there would be some relevance there because the first part of their course would be for fighter aircraft. Fighter training. Single seat fighters. And this is probably where he went.
CB: Yes.
RM: Under the Arnold Scheme.
CB: His instructors were civilians.
RM: Yes. Yeah. And that did apply but not with the navy. The navy were all genuine navy types. For example, the chief petty officer who took charge of all the morning parades and what not — he had been in the American navy for eighteen years and he’d never seen the sea. Mind you, the Great Lakes, when it does get rough you do get thirty foot waves on it so it’s as good as the sea. And we can prove that because a group of us Fleet Air Arm and RAF types we hired one of these paddle steamers one Saturday night to go out on the lakes. You know, for an outing. This chief petty officer came with us. Now, admittedly it was a bit choppy but he spent all evening draped over the rail. Much to our delight. Much to our delight. Yes. Yes, he was not popular. The Americans for instance. The American navy have a very queer discipline which didn’t go with us. Very rigid. Whereas with the RAF you get a certain amount of latitude and humour. But not the Americans and for any minor misdemeanour the sort of punishment you got you went before the mast, you see and you were awarded this punishment. And that was known as square eating. Have you ever come across it?
Other: No.
RM: Ever heard of it?
Other: No.
CB: Never.
RM: Right. Now, at mealtimes because you were condemned to this you had to do a square eating. In other words [pause] that. That was square eating.
CB: So, lifting it up vertically and then pulling it, eating it horizontally.
RM: Yes. Horizontally. To eat.
CB: Into your mouth. With both knife and fork.
RM: Yes. Oh no. Usually with the fork because the Americans of course chop up their stuff.
CB: Of course. Yes.
RM: With a fork even. But if you did use the knife.
CB: Yeah.
RM: It had to be like. Now can you imagine anything more stupid? And that was the sort of typical sort of thing that you got. But the Americans, bless them, they weathered it so — good luck.
CB: Tell us about the accommodation. What did that they have?
RM: Oh, the accommodation was superb. These twin, these blocks that you see in the films. Two story blocks. Everything beautifully polished. Wood floors. The interesting thing is they had showers there and toilets. You had a single bed which was made up every morning. You know. Bullshit. And the interesting thing was the actual loos. Now, the loos were just like ordinary loos except there were no partitions [laughs] yeah. And we thought that strange. But they say you can get used to anything and it is so. Yeah.
CB: How many people? Were they, were you in dormitories?
RM: It was a dormitory. Yes. It would be about twenty — probably twenty four people. Twenty four cadets. Two sides. Twelves. Just like the dormitories you see on the films. The wartime films of the Americans. The American army of course were a bit more spartan than the navy. But everything was nice. The food though was good. Rather like the curate’s egg though. Good in parts. And you had very strange things like plum jelly with chopped celery in it and that would be a vegetable. Things like that. It was ingenious. Let’s put it that way. As I say, the discipline was very very good. If you heard the trumpet sound for the flag being lowered at the end of the day wherever you were and whatever you were doing you had to stand to attention, face the flag and salute whilst the trumpet blew. We did, in fact, there was one big navy battle that was conducted whilst I was there and I can’t for the life of me think what it was. I think it was Leyte Gulf but I’m not sure. On this particular occasion all flying stopped on this day. We were all assembled in one of the big hangars. All RAF. And five hundred of us all together. Fleet Air Arm types. All the officers there. The band. And the flags and banners and what not and we were given a very very stirring speech by the commanding officer on how good the American navy was and how brave they were and what a victory this had been. All this, that and the other. If you’d listened carefully at the back particularly with Royal Navy types, Fleet Air Arm types a series of raspberries. Yeah. Then having gone through all this marshall music we were all marched out again and continued. I remember that quite clearly.
CB: What time did you get up in the morning?
RM: Usually around about half six.
CB: And breakfast?
RM: Breakfast. Yes. You wandered over to the mess. That was one thing you didn’t parade for. You only paraded after breakfast. You know.
CB: Yeah. And what time did you go to breakfast?
RM: Usually around about half seven.
CB: And then you went for your parade. What time?
RM: About quarter past eight or so. From there disbursed to the actual flying field which — now this was quite interesting in actual fact. The main airfield at Grosse Ile didn’t have runways but it did have a huge circular patch of concrete about six hundred yards diameter so that you could land in any direction and you could land two or three aircraft side by side. Now, that was clear. All you had was hangars in the distance. And then beyond the hangars there was one vertical radio mast which was clearly visible. Now, that radio mast subtended a fraction of one degree from the field. So, you think nobody’s going to hit it. Wrong. Just before we got there some character flying solo. Chop. And the mast came down and hit the, fortunately the American seamen’s mess not the British mess and did grievous bodily damage to several of them. But nobody shed a tear from the British contingent for that. As you can gather I’m not terribly impressed with the Americans.
CB: Were the Americans training their people in similar numbers to yours or what was the situation?
RM: I don’t know what the navy situation was because this was the American navy base. And it was only RAF and Royal Navy.
CB: Oh was it? Training.
RM: Training.
CB: Right.
RM: Yeah. So, they must have had other bases. Probably in California and on the coast and so on. But we didn’t know anything about those and didn’t want to know anything about those.
CB: No. Tell us a bit more about these people who were first generation Americans. What sort of people were they and what was their attitude to the war?
RM: The one. My instructor and I only came across him really was a chappy who was a naturalised Dutchman with the rather curious name of Nieswander. Not spelt exactly as we’d pronounce it. N I E S W A N D E R. Now, he was, as a say, a naturalised Dutchman. First generation. And about six feet two, physique rather like a beanpole and of course like all of these other characters he had a chip on his shoulder. He wanted to be a fighter pilot. He was going to be a fighter pilot. Bugger this job sort of business. And he was, I suppose, fairly interested in teaching people to fly but you could sense and even it was expressed sort of rather obliquely to you by him that he wanted to go into the war zone but he was not allowed to.
CB: No.
RM: All of the pilots and this, of course, I think this also applied to the army pilots that they were not allowed to go into the warzone so they could either go on to training but curiously enough — transport. Cargo and all that sort of thing. And some of these cargo flights actually took them into the war zone. But they weren’t equipped with guns and what not so they couldn’t fight. Yeah.
CB: And what ranks were these people who were your instructors?
RM: Oh, practically all lieutenants. Junior grade.
CB: Right.
RM: Which would be equivalent to our POs. Pilot officers. Now, the interesting thing was there that in the RAF of course with commissioned and non-commissioned ranks you got upgrading in rank at given periods of time with aircrew and what not. Not so with the Americans. And I daresay that I was there, what, 1943. I daresay that in 1945 when the war finished he would still be a lieutenant. General. GJ. Lieutenant junior grade.
CB: And what rank were you at that time? An LAC were you?
RM: An LAC yes. Got, oh — Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where I got y brevet. The Wings Parade there. Now that was in July. And we were all drawn up. We’d finished our training satisfactorily and I was assigned the rank of sergeant. We did get about three or four commissions straight away but mostly sergeant rank. And we were drawn up 2.30 in the afternoon on the parade ground there at Charlottetown and we were addressed by the Governor General of Prince Edward Island after we’d been given our brevets. And this gentleman to us, at that time, we estimated his age at eighty. He was old anyway. He was quite short and apparently, he was deaf. His aide de camp was an army type, lieutenant, who stood about six feet two and this Governor General was making a speech which lasted in total about fifteen minutes. And in the speech, he congratulated us on being — becoming pilots with the Royal Air Force. Went on in this vein and his aide de camp, his aid, was nudging him. Almost to tell him. You know, we could see it happening but he ploughed on and at the end of it the aide de camp had a real chat with him. Now we were standing to attention. Blazing sun.
CB: July. Yes.
RM: And by this time our tunics were turning black with perspiration. And what does the silly old bugger do? Once he’d been told that we were navigators he went through exactly the same speech and substituted the word navigators.
CB: Yes.
RM: Now, if any of us had had a gun we’d have shot him. Without any doubt. He was definitely not the flavour of the month. I had, I have never ever been so hot because of course the Canadians had the lightweight summer gear. Khaki. Like the Americans. What did we have? Blue serge. We never had any and those blue serge uniforms were quite warm. Yeah. We could have shot him quite cheerfully.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But –
CB: Now the Canadians. Excuse me. I’m going to stop a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: So, let’s just talk about the Canadians.
RM: The Canadians except for the French Canadians in Quebec were charming people. Now, as far as the Americans are concerned — individually very charming. We had individual hospitality through their USOs where you go and have a weekend with a family and so on. Superb hospitality. But when you get them in a group you’re on a different planet. Terry Thomas had the best description of a group of Americans. Remember his –?
Other: No. I remember him but not –
RM: Described an absolute shower. Yeah. And we found that afterwards actually when my first wife and I went across to the Continent in the early 60s. On the ferry we bumped into a bunch of Americans. Loud mouthed. Uncouth. But if you separated them they were quite charming to talk to. Now, the Canadians — much more reserved but just as genuine and I made quite a few friends there except at Charlottetown. Which — there’s a joke about Charlottetown actually which was very true at that time and the joke goes like — that in summer they raise potatoes and in winter children. Now, they still had prohibition there when we were there. That would be in late ’43, early ‘44. And apparently, prohibition stopped only perhaps twenty years ago so consequently the local inhabitants made their own alcoholic drinks by filtering off brasso and stuff like that or using rubbing alcohol. And the weekend before we got there. Two of the erks off the station because there were RAF aircrew there had purloined from the stores a quart of glycol, mixed it with orange juice and two of the local popsies and these two had a beano at the weekend. On the Monday morning the two popsies were dead, one of the erks was in sick quarters blind and the other one was rather non compos mentis. And both of them by the time we got there at the next weekend were on the boat home to Britain. That’s the sort of thing they got up to. As far as I can remember with Charlottetown you had large numbers of children who did the same sort of thing as a lot of the children you see where troops are concerned, and where the Americans are concerned. You know. Chocolates. They wanted chocolates and sweets or whatever and I was not impressed. Nothing would tempt me to go back there again even though it has changed apparently. The Maritimes, the western provinces, New Brunswick and so on — very sparsely populated and very uninterested. The only thing with them is trees, more trees and even more trees with roads, odd roads going through. Nah.
CB: Now when you were flying in Canada —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Were the instructors all Canadians? Were they British? What were they?
RM: A lot of them were RAF seconded over there. What happened, say take twin engine aircraft. You get the RAF sent over there — say to Estevan. He would do his course. The few people at the top of the course, the really high flyers would be retained.
CB: The creamies.
RM: As instructors and would do a full tour. Now, this has a bearing actually on George, my pilot and 8 Group. Now, all 8 Group Mossie pilots had to have at least a thousand hours on twin engines and the twin engines were mostly of course Oxfords which handled apparently rather like a Mossie. Either that or they were tour expired Lancasters. But you didn’t get anybody who just got his wings becoming a Mosquito pilot. Now that was just 8 Group. I don’t know what happened with 5 Group or 2 Group which were the other two groups that I remember being a part of Bomber Command. And it worked. It worked quite well. There were Canadian instructors obviously. RCAF. That is, if they hadn’t been posted to Britain which they were. I mean, they were coming over. When it comes to going over to Canada and the States I travelled on the Queen Elizabeth and it was like a mill pond and of course the Lizzie and the Mary were run by the Americans. They were handed over to the Americans and based at New York. And typically from New York they would come across to Glasgow — Greenock, with a division of American troops. Eighteen to twenty thousand troops on. They would unload them. They would then load returning Americans or returning Canadians and all RAF aircrew that were going for training. Royal Navy and so on. Roughly about five thousand at a time. And they would go to Halifax. At Halifax they would discharge and pick up a Canadian division. Bring those back and then you’d have aircrew that were going to the United States on the Arnold Scheme and people like that. Returning Americans going back to New York. And that’s how they did it. Now, going over there the actual mess deck had tables for twelve diners. Twelve people. And the cooks cooked in batches of twelve and you had, each day, one person went from the table to the mess. The cooks collected a tray say, of twelve steaks. Twelve chops. Now, when I say steaks — American steaks. Not British steaks which were postage stamp sized. But these were genuine. Genuine pork chops. Sausages. Those twelve helpings came to the table. Now, we got on to the QE in Greenock at midnight. The engines were running. There was a bit of vibration there. We sailed on the first tide which was about 6 o’clock in the morning. Just breaking day. We had to go to breakfast around about 7.30 again. And of course, we collected this tray. There were only four of us on the table. The other, sorry, six of us on the table. The other six were in their bunks seasick and we hadn’t even hit the Atlantic. Anyway, we got out onto the Atlantic and it was like a mill pond. There were six the first day, six missing the second day, four missing the third day. And we ate like lords. You know, God, we thought, you know, this is marvellous. We really ate. And these steaks and that were beautiful. Couldn’t grumble at that. And on the last morning they did manage to come down for breakfast before we disembarked. But one interesting thing. Each of us was given a job. The job that I was given was to go from the main stores with one of the American seamen to actually re-store or re-stock the canteens. Chocolate and so on. Which was quite a — not a very onerous job. Over and done with in an hour and that was it. But this American seaman I was with he said, ‘Have you got any currency you want changing?’ So I said, ‘Well, you’re not allowed to bring any currency out. Only ten pounds.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Supposing you got a bit more than that?’ He said, ‘Would you like it changed?’ He said. So I said, ‘Changed to what?’ He said, ‘Dollars. American.’ Now in 1939 the pound was worth four dollars American and four forty dollars.
CB: Canadian.
RM: To the Canadian. So you had this ten percent difference. So, I said, ‘Well, what’s your exchange rate?’ He said, ‘Well. For you it’ll be four dollars to the pound.’ So I said, ‘Well, it so happens,’ I said, ‘I’ve been a bit naughty. I’ve brought an extra tenner out. Twenty. I got twenty pounds changed into American dollars which, interestingly of course if you spent them in Canada which they were spendable — for ten dollars you’d pay the American ten dollars and get a dollar change. So, it worked out quite well. But the — I was talking to this seaman and I said, ‘We seem to be going at a fair old lick.’ I said, ‘What’s it doing?’ He said, ‘Well, I shouldn’t tell you.’ He said, ‘It’s more than my job’s worth.’ So, I said, ‘Go on. Nobody’s listening.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’re cruising at twenty nine knots.’ But one night I woke up. It was only about 2 o’clock in the morning and the boat, you could tell from the vibration that they’d definitely sort of upped the steam but when we went to breakfast we were back to the twenty nine knots. So, I said to this chap, I said, ‘What happened last night?’ ‘Nothing very much,’ he said. So I said, ‘Go on,’ ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ I said, ‘You were going a lot faster.’ I said, ‘What speed were you doing?’ He said, ‘Thirty four knots,’ he said, ‘There was a sub scare.’ Now, of course the two Queens were unescorted but imagine this. A six inch gun fore and aft on the bow and the stern. On the main deck — Bofors and three inch guns. On the deck above you had Oerlikon cannons.
CB: Twenty millimetre.
RM: Yeah. Twenty millimetre. And on the roof you actually had two rocket launchers. So, as far as aircraft were concerned which of course would be the main thing they would have given them a very rough time. And on the second day they tried the guns out, you know, just to make sure they were working. And they did them one side and then the other. A big rocket flare went up, parachute flare, and they all opened up on this and it was quite deafening. Except the big six inch guns. They didn’t. But everything else —
CB: How many days did it take to get over?
RM: Four days and eight hours. As I say we lived like lords. Coming back. We came back on one of the old Empress boats. It was the Empress of Japan but it had been re-named the Empress of Scotland for obviously patriotic reasons. That took six days and a half. And on that they only had two meals a day. Not three. Now, you can believe this or believe it not. Going out the canteen had run dry so there was nothing on the way back. The first morning, I forget exactly which way around it was but this was the sort of thing. We had smoked haddock for breakfast. The evening meal — wiener sausages. Then for a change wiener sausages for breakfast. Smoked haddock. And we had that for six days. There was no sweets. No fruit available. And we were not in a happy mood. And then when we got into Liverpool Bay the boat had to anchor there for twelve hours before we could dock. And we could see the shoreline. People moving about. There would be restaurants there. And there we were. Stuck. We were not a happy crew. Funnily enough when we came back we had a full customs inspection. And you were allowed two hundred cigarettes, a bottle of Scotch say, or a spirit and a bottle of wine. The chappy in front of me, customs bloke ‘cause we were all queuing up, customs said to the chap. ‘Any cigarettes?’ Expecting two hundreds. The chappy in front said, ‘Six hundred.’ The customs officer looked at him and he said, ‘Surely you mean two hundred?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve got six hundred.’ ‘Oh. Well, that’ll bloody well cost you then.’ [laughs] I mean how thick can you get? Dear. Oh, it was. I must say that in spite of our, got one, two or three near squeaks I can look back on my war service and it’s quite interesting. Very varied. And I met some jolly nice people.
CB: How many of those did you keep in contact with after the war?
RM: I kept in contact with my pilot up to a time and then I lost contact with him. The chappy that I was at the Toronto manning depot with we split up but I traced him afterwards. After we’d become civilians. And found out that he’d actually joined the Toronto Metropolitan Police. Been with them for ten years and then he’d left there and joined the Pinkertons.
CB: Right. In America.
RM: Now, I always thought that the Pinkertons was a mythical organisation and I was put severely in my place when Gordon — eventually I went over there in ‘86 and stayed with him and his wife. When I said that I thought it was mythical he said, ‘We’re international,’ he said, ‘We’re interested, more or less in industrial espionage and things like that,’ he said. ‘We’re not interested in police work.’ So, I was really put in my place there. Yeah. And my pilot. He died. Had a heart attack around about 1982 if I remember rightly going on a fishing trip from Vancouver to Nanaimo. Vancouver Island. And he died on the ferry. Had a heart attack.
CB: Was he a Canadian?
RM: No. He was a Londoner. But he had gone across to the States — to Canada. Done his pilot training, become an instructor at Estevan and while he was there he met his wife who was the daughter of a newspaper owner in Langley which is just outside Vancouver. And of course as soon as he was demobbed he shot off to Canada because he got free passage there. Free ticket back home. Yeah.
CB: I’ll stop there for a bit. Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re now re-starting after a short break and we’re with Dick Maywood and talking now about LMF.
RM: LMF. Lack of moral fibre which was a euphemistic way of referring to cowardice. It was not unknown with, particularly Bomber Command crews that some of them lost their nerve. In fact it’s a wonder that they didn’t all lost their nerves on heavies. Anyway, if they were accused and if they did succumb to lack of moral fibre they more or less had a courts martial and were almost certainly stripped of all rank.
CB: Physically.
RM: Yes. And –
CB: In front of — sorry go on –
RM: They were also treated to so many months in the Glasshouse which was at Sheffield. And everybody knew. All their crew knew of Sheffield and what it entailed. And fortunately, from my point of view I mean flying in the Mossie was safe. I mean not like the heavies. Because the chop rate even in 1944/45 on heavies was still quite considerable. But on Mossies I think it worked out, on 8 Group Mossies something like about half a percent. But one thing that did strike me with that ‘casue in the Mossie, being wood, low thermal conductivity. Radiators between the engines and the fuselage on both sides with air bleeds. Sealed cockpits. We flew in battle dress. No gloves. But we did have the escape boots just in case we had to escape. That was it. And we had our own sidearms. In my case a .38 revolver and it was only about three years ago it that it suddenly dawned on me. Twenty five thousand feet. If we had been hit and had had to bale out we would have been dead. Lack of oxygen and cold because, I mean, the outside air temperature was around about minus sixty. Minus seventy. And apparently about thirty six seconds of that and its good night nurse. It was a good job we didn’t think about that otherwise we might have gone LMF. But no, I have the utmost sympathy because one or two of my friends I know have had a very sticky patch. One I was with yesterday he is ex-Bomber Command Lanc and he was telling a friend that on one occasion they had a twenty millimetre shell, or, no, it couldn’t have been twenty millimetre. It must have been bigger than that. Go in to the Lanc and lodge in the ironmongery and not explode. And Dennis said that they sort of fished this thing out and dropped it out. And the chap who was talking to him and said, yeah, ‘Didn’t it explode then?’ And Dennis said words to the effect, ‘You’re rather stupid. If it had exploded I wouldn’t be here.’ How silly can people get? It’s, but it’s surprising really. When it comes to the old Mossie they talk about the wooden wonder. They’ve heard of the wooded wonder vaguely. No idea what it did really. Couldn’t be very interesting because it’s made of wood. And when you consider it was the first RAF multi role combat aircraft. You had your weather versions. You had the oboe versions. You had the PR Unit versions. Night fighter units. You had the Coastal Command Banff Wing which for a time had those Tsetse Mosquitoes with the 57 millimetre gun and I know one or two of the 247 Squadron even now who flew in those. And one in particular and he said that every time one of those guns went off you lost twenty knots airspeed with the recoil. But they didn’t last long because they found that a battery of eight rockets, sixty pound rockets was a better bet than the Tsetse gun. That was known as the Banff wing. There was 235 and 247 Squadrons in the Banff Wing. Anti-shipping. You had second TAF who flew fighter bombers. That’s guns, cannons and two bombs in each and that would probably be either on interdiction, road transport, railways and what not. You had the night intruders. Now, had the war had gone on longer it would have satisfied my sense of humour to get on night intruders. Because I loved the idea of sort of just dropping an odd bomb on the runway as they were about to land or shooting the buggers down. Pardon my broken English. Shooting them down. It would have appealed to my sense of humour but no. No. But there we are.
CB: So, you talked about flying at very low level.
RM: Yes.
CB: Tell to us a little more about that. I mean we’re talking about being low indeed.
RM: Yeah.
CB: However you look at it. And what about the excitement and the danger? Or the other way around.
RM: Well excitement. Yes. Particularly when we were doing low level bombing because I’d be prone in the bomb bay looking out the window. The Mark 14 bomb sight was useless because it was a high level job. And they hadn’t got a low level bombsight so it was all done with Mark 1 eyeballs. Now we had a bombing range out at Whittlesea. Well, just the other side of Whittlesea. And flying PPL I often had a scout around there to find out where the field was and I couldn’t find it but this was a big square field with the target in the centre. Now, literally to go we were flying over trees and down again. That was, we were sort of doing. The reason for it was quite simple. We were told the lower — you were going out to the Far East. A lot of jungle. Clearings. The lower you fly the less time you’ll be a target for ground gunners. So, the closer you can get to the treetops and the ground the safer you’ll be. And as I say, fortunately George was extremely good at low flying. Quite interesting actually. If we were bombing on east west run we’d come in low level and then at the end of the run we’d do a slow climb up to about fifteen hundred feet and then do a turn, reciprocal, back down to height again and bomb in the reverse direction and when we were on that run. On the east west run. Our turn to go reciprocal was always over Peterborough Town Bridge. It was super you know. Sort of down there. Yes. Home.
CB: Now, what about navigating when you’re — because your vista is very restricted when you’re flying low. So how did you deal with the navigation in that context?
RM: That was extremely difficult because as you say your range of vision is restricted so you have to absolutely do the correct thing. You look out and you see on the map where you are. The common mistake with map reading is to look at the map and say, ‘Oh that must be it,’ Because as you are probably well aware it is in actual fact, it’s very easy to do that. To convince yourself but I’ve been ferried over the last two or three years on what was known as Project Propeller. And I have, I’ve had a variety of pilots and I’ve flown as passenger with them and quite interestingly I am deadly against wind — so called wind turbines. And I cannot convince the BBC or the papers just what a waste of money they are. But these wind farms shown on air maps are extremely accurate.
CB: Are they?
RM: And they make bloody good landmarks because they actually show the arrangement of them.
CB: Oh right.
RM: So, you can see an arrangement and you can look at the map. Well we must be there. But of course in those days we didn’t. And again, you see, over the jungle as far as I can make out fortunately we were three weeks from going out to the east with the B35s.
CB: Oh.
RM: Which was the later version of the B16. We were within three weeks and VJ day came. Now I cannot stand hot humid weather. Whether it’s a throwback to the Wings Parade with the Governor General or not I do not know but I just cannot stand it and the thought of going out there. I would have been a grease spot.
CB: Yeah.
RM: A grease spot. Yeah.
CB: Just picking up on the navigation.
RM: But it would be with maps.
CB: Yes but —
RM: And dead reckoning.
CB: Yes. Well, I was going to say you use IPs. identification points. Would you put more of those in?
RM: Oh yes. You’d put them on the map because you’d probably, you’d be looking for them on the course. And as I say you take the ground on to the map not the map to the ground. Yeah.
CB: Now, going back to what you were talking about before we started taping you talked about the three mishaps that you had. So, what were they?
RM: Right. The first one was at Navigation School at Charlottetown and that was the fact that due to bad weather we missed the bad weather which was not forecast for the people who flew in our place. So, they got lost and I’m pretty sure that if we had flown on that night and we’d been given that Met forecast — winds light and variable which would take as zero for navigation purposes. It might have been a case of there but by the God go.
CB: Yes. You might also have vanished.
RM: Yes. Yes.
CB: Yeah. In the Great Lake.
RM: No. The Gulf of St Lawrence.
CB: Oh, in the Gulf of St Lawrence sorry. Ok. Next one.
RM: That was the first one.
CB: Ok.
RM: Then at OTU on the return trip from France where we had to land on one engine. They put us on the shortest runway with no wind and of course we vanished through the hedge with rather dire consequences to the Mossie. But — and then the third narrow squeak we had was of course the first time we took off with a four thousand pound live bomb and we got off ten knots slower than we should have done.
CB: Now, the Mossie could take four thousand pounds.
RM: Yes.
CB: But it was just in this particular case. What happened?
RM: Well, we, we — it took us longer to maintain, to achieve height than it should have done. Let’s put it that way. There was considerable chance that if the engines had even stuttered under those conditions on take-off we would have wiped out half of Downham Market.
CB: Was it because of the wind? You took off with the wind? Or what was it that caused it?
RM: Oh, we always took off in to wind.
CB: I know but in this particular case why was it?
RM: George didn’t say very much but I think the engines were not producing as much as he expected or the flaps were not right or something like that but I was too busy then actually during take-off. Getting all the charts ready and getting ready to —
CB: Where were you going that day?
RM: We were going to a place called Eggbeck which was one of the satellite airfields for Kiel. The Kiel Canal in Denmark. And it must have been the name of an airfield because I’ve looked and I’ve actually been in that area. Motored in that area for quite some distance and never found a place called Eggbeck. But it must have been one of the fields which was known as that. Yeah. And that was the one and only.
CB: Right.
RM: I’m afraid. Much to my annoyance. I was really savage when VE day came along, you know.
CB: Yeah. I imagine.
RM: I wanted to get my teeth into the Germans. But these things happen. But as I say afterwards we did the Cook’s Tour. We did quite a few what were known as Bullseyes. Have you come across those?
CB: Yes. Would you like to describe that?
RM: Yeah. Bullseyes were exactly the same conditions you would fly an actual operation. The only difference was at the target area e didn’t drop a bomb. We took a photograph to prove that we were there and we got there on time. Now, to give you an idea of the difference because as I say we had the Lancaster squadron. 635 Squadron at Downham Market and on bullseyes we both did the same route. Now, the Lancaster chaps would go in for their evening meal, would go to briefing and would be taking off as we were getting ready to go to the mess for our evening meal. Our evening meal, briefing, take off. Fly the same route. Be on target at the same time. On the way back we would land, be debriefed and would be having our breakfast when the Lancs were coming in. So two hour difference. Solely due to speed. But here I can give you something which is even more interesting. The American B17, the Flying Fortress. Nine crew. Fourteen guns. Four engines. Bomb load to Berlin four thousand pounds exactly. Out and return nine hours. Now, our Mossies on 608 Squadron, 692 and the other ones on the, what we called the Milk Run. The Berlin run. Out and return time four and a half hours. Now, admittedly with the American the B17s there was time taken up getting into formation and breaking formation on the way back but a lot of people don’t realise with the Americans in daylight, they couldn’t fly at night. They couldn’t navigate. They didn’t know how. They flew in daylight. Formation. Now, they carried a master navigator and a master bomber and I think usually two deputies just in case. They’re in formation. When the lead aircraft dropped his bombs they all dropped theirs. So, what they were doing in actual fact was carpet bombing. Admittedly they’d blanket the target. They would hit the target but that would be covering an area. Now, of course Bomber Command was specific on target markers. You bombed a target and all of the aircraft bombed that target. Not just one or two. So, as I say the American B17 crews were very brave. Much braver than I’d be, I think, under those circumstances to fly in daylight, level thirty thousand feet. Fighter fodder. No doubt. Yeah. Whereas the old Mossie. You couldn’t describe [pause] they did, the Germans did do us an honour. I think it was the Henschel 219 but I’m not sure where it was designed as a two engine night fighter specifically to counter Mosquitoes.
CB: Was it really?
RM: And that was the biggest compliment they could pay us. Then of course the jets came along and that was a different matter. They could sort of commit mayhem. But the interesting thing was that on the raid that we were doing on Eggbeck we were going out and near the target one of the aircraft called out, ‘Snappers,’ and that was the code name for the fact that 262s were about.
CB: Right.
RM: But nobody got lost that night. So –
CB: Messerschmitt 262 jets.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
RM: I mean they were serious opponents those. The 30 millimetre cannon for a start. I mean you don’t argue with those. Yeah.
CB: What was your operating speed?
RM: Our normal cruising airspeed out was around about two hundred and thirty knots. But that was indicated air speed. I mean at twenty five thousand feet the true airspeed would probably be somewhere in the region of three hundred knots which was covering the ground fairly well. If we went flat out the highest ground speed that I ever recorded was four hundred and ten miles an hours. And that was without trying.
CB: Now, what was the pattern of your operation? Because you were much faster than the Lancasters so you took off late but you had to be there first so how did you do that?
RM: Well the oboe aircraft had to be first. And then the Mosquitoes that carried additional marker bombs would be on target more or less at the same time and they would be listening to the oboe.
CB: Which was the master bomber.
RM: Or the ground. Master bomber. Advising them where to drop their new flares.
CB: Right.
RM: Whether they’d drop them short, long, east or west and so on to correct the error. And then of course by this time the main force Lancs and Mossies would be coming up on the scene but in a lot of cases with 8 Group the light night striking force actually operated on different targets. These targets were designed to be diversionary to lure night fighters away so that they didn’t know whether to go for the Lancs or us and in that case you’d probably get about anything from forty to fifty Mossies attacking quite a valuable target. Yeah.
CB: Now, you talked about twenty five thousand feet. Was that your normal operating height?
RM: Yes. That was normal.
CB: Or did it vary much?
RM: It didn’t vary much. Anything from twenty five — twenty eight thousand. The oboe Mossies, of course, they went up to thirty seven thousand feet.
CB: Oh did they. Right.
RM: Because of course the radio waves were line of sight and at that height they could just get the Ruhr. And of course, the Ruhr was the main complex of the German war industry and after, in ’43 onwards it was systematically demolished with oboe and and with precision bombing. Yeah. As I say the whole area was completely derelict. There was nothing there.
CB: What was your most abiding memory of your experience in the war?
RM: Well, it may sound silly to you but the thing which stuck in my throat more than anything was catching mumps. I mean it was so demeaning. Orchitis. Which, of course is the classic symptoms of that. It’s not pretty and it’s painful and to catch that at nineteen years of age. It was a chance complaint and that, that really stuck with me more than anything. Yes. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
CB: Yes.
RM: I suppose in a way what with that and the fact that I got washed off pilots case and the fact we hit bad weather at Nav School. With the time I lost. If it hadn’t been for that I might not be here.
CB: But you might have done all sorts of other things. Operationally.
RM: I might have finished up on heavies with a much heavier chop rate. Yeah.
CB: Just going back to the American training experience. In essence it was to train for flying boats so that –
RM: Yes.
CB: What aircraft did they have in that area working on the lake?
RM: They didn’t. The Grosse Ile was the aircraft carrier part of the navy.
CB: Ah right.
RM: And once they’d completed that you then went down to Pensacola.
CB: Right.
RM: And the Gulf of Florida and converted on to Catalinas.
CB: Right.
RM: Now the interesting thing is that for many years RAF — the RAF Museum at Cosford encapsulated my wartime flying experience very very neatly. They had Canso, which was a Canadian built Catalina because it had a retractable undercarriage whereas the Catalina didn’t. And alongside it was a Mossie B35 which, to all intents and purposes, apart from an astro dome was the same, exactly the same as our B16s. And these were side by side. Now, nobody knew about me there so it was purely chance but I gather now that last year that they actually split them up into two different hangars. Which is a shame.
CB: Changing the subject a bit —
RM: Yes.
CB: A Mosquito is very cramped inside. Or is it? For the navigator? And how did you operate?
RM: Well, I was a lot slimmer than I am now. The amount of room we had. My seat was about that wide. In front of me we had a dashboard with a dropdown table for the maps and what not on. We were actually sitting on the main spar and the pilot’s seat was just in front of the main spar. Now, just here —
CB: In front of you.
RM: In front of me and to the left hand side would be the console with the undercarriage and flaps.
CB: Throttles.
RM: And throttles. For the pilot. Right handed. In front of me, underneath the dashboard would be the opening which I would go through to get into the bomb bay.
CB: Go in legs first.
RM: No. Head first.
CB: Right.
RM: Yeah. Because you had to be facing the front. Yeah. You could only go in head first. There was no room to do a hundred and eighty.
CB: Yeah.
RM: It’s very cosy. The pilot –he had roughly the same amount of room and all the gubbins in front of him and to his left. We were both slimmer and we could both get in. Now, the B, the bomber versions — you went in underneath. It had a floor entry. Like the prototype in South Mimms Museum. The fighter bomber versions had a side exit or entry and that was just aft of the propellers. About nine to twelve inches behind the propellers and in the event of getting out you had to go in. Go out head first facing the rear to make sure you didn’t get mixed up and come out as mincemeat. Yeah. They had a ladder which stowed in the aircraft that you climbed up. You went in facing backwards and then turned around. The pilot went in first, of course to get into his seat. Now, he would have a seat type parachute. We had just the harness and we had the parachute stowed down by the right hand side so that if we had to get out we could just pick it up, clip it on and out.
CB: So, if you had to get out are you going to go out through the canopy or through the floor?
RM: Oh you didn’t go out through the canopy except as we did when we crash landed at [unclear] when it was stationary. If you went out through the canopy you had a jolly good chance of being chopped in half with the rudder. So, you always went out the escape hatch at the bottom. Yes. It would be a very foolhardy thing to go out the top. Yeah. That was quite interesting now you’ve come to mention it. When we were at Gransden Lodge we were doing, going up on an air test actually and we got up to about ten thousand feet and all of a sudden there was a hell of a bang and a lot of rubbish and what not flying about and George said, ‘Get ready to jump.’ So, I sort of put the parachute on and he said, ‘Oh.’ he said, ‘The aircraft seems to be flying all right,’ he said, ‘I thought the front had gone in.’ You know, the nose, with all the rubbish and what not. We were looking around. Couldn’t see anything wrong. And then we looked up and we found that the top hatch had blown off. And of course the vacuum, the sort of [unclear] effect too place all the rubbish in the bomb bay had come out and he said just said, just tried it and he said, ‘The chances are it’s probably altered the stalling speed a bit.’ So instead of carrying on with the climb he played about and found out exactly how the aircraft handled at a hundred and twenty knots which was the normal approach speed and he found it was probably about a hundred and thirty knots with the extra drag. And so, we aborted and came back and landed. There was quite a hullabaloo, you know. ‘How come you lost that hatch?’ Well, one of those things. Yeah. They didn’t charge us for it [laughs] 664B. I take it you know what 664B was.
CB: No. Tell us. Tell us for the tape.
RM: 664B action was to re-claim from your wages.
CB: Yeah.
RM: The money for whatever it was that you’d lost, stolen or strayed. Yeah. A lot of people for instance lost their wristwatches and went on 664B because you could get a Rolex for around about six pounds ten shillings. The Longines. I had actually had a Longines wristwatch. We were issued with watches. I don’t know whether you realise this or not but we had, were equipped with aircrew watches and we had to rate them and adjust them so that they lost no more or gained no more than two seconds a day. Now, that stems from the vital necessity of having exact time to the second when you’re doing astro shots. Because one second in time can mean about a quarter of a mile in position. And for instance Coastal Command types. The Catalinas and the old Flying Boats.
CB: The Sunderlands.
RM: The Sunderland. If they were returning and they had very poor radio signals. Very few Astra shots. And could not be absolutely certain of their landfall because of the astro shots and wrong time. A few seconds. I mean a quarter of a mile could mean the difference between getting into a fjord or a bay or hitting the land at the side of it. So it was vitally important that you got the time down to a second. It wouldn’t have mattered now because course cards. So accurate. But of course with the spring you actually had to adjust them. Now, the first watch I had we were equipped with these at navigation school at Charlottetown. The first one I had was a Waltham. An American which was quite well thought of. But I just could not get it closer than about five seconds no matter how I tried. And after two weeks they said, ‘Right. That’s no use.’ So, I took it back and got a Longines and within a week I’d got that sorted out and it worked quite well. And kept that right the way through and stupidly I handed that in when I was demobbed. Because as I said 664B I could have had it for six pounds fifty. Six pounds.
CB: Even in those days.
RM: Another thing. Another thing too which I bitterly resent or regret handing in was my sunglasses. Now, they were Ray-Ban. Green. They were superb for sun. want a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses now. Ninety quid. Ridiculous isn’t it? They would have cost about three pounds.
Other: Yeah.
RM: On 664B.
CB: You talked about astro shots. You talked about astro shots so where would you put the sextant. Could you hang it on the —?
RM: Yes, you hung it in the astro dome.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Now, you can turn this off because I’m going to be in trouble.
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 Dick Maywood
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-09
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMaywoodRM151109
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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02:21:54 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
Scotland--Aberdeenshire
England--Leicestershire
Canada
Ontario
Ontario--Goderich
Alberta
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island--Charlottetown
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Ontario--Belleville
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
1945-05-08
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Description
An account of the resource
Dick was born in Peterborough and volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1941. He was called up to Lord’s Cricket Ground in 1942. Dick went to No. 6 Initial Training Wing at Aberystwyth. He then went to RAF Desford, flying Tiger Moths and was selected for further pilot training. After Heaton Park, Dick volunteered for the flying boat course and flew on Stearman N254s at Grosse Isle in the United States. He returned to Canada, initially to Windsor where he was re-selected as a navigator air bomber. He was sent to Goderich and then Mountain View to the bombing and gunnery school on Mark 2 Ansons and the Bolingbroke. He gained his brevet at Navigation School in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island.
Dick underwent intensive map training on his return and went to the Advanced Flying Unit in Wigtown on Ansons. He proceeded to the Operational Training Unit at RAF Upper Heyford on Oxfords, where he was introduced to Loran. He had just started a tour as a Mosquito Pathfinder navigator before VE Day. He describes the aircraft, Oboe, and the pattern of their operations. Dick participated in Cook’s Tours to the Ruhr Valley. He was in 608 Squadron but it was disbanded and so he was posted to 692 Squadron, another Group 8 unit, at RAF Gransden Lodge. This was also disbanded, and Dick was sent to RAF Blyton for a re-selection board where he was sent on a flight mechanic engines course at RAF Credenhill. He was posted to the 254 torpedo Beaufighter Squadron at Langham until he was demobilised.
608 Squadron
692 Squadron
8 Group
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
B-17
Beaufighter
Bolingbroke
Cook’s tour
flight engineer
Gee
Initial Training Wing
Master Bomber
Me 262
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Oboe
Oxford
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Banff
RAF Blyton
RAF Credenhill
RAF Desford
RAF Downham Market
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Upper Heyford
sanitation
Stearman
Tiger Moth
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1167/11733/ATrotmanPJ180604.2.mp3
4c11d1e2b9ac76fcd78b3c8a985d3116
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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Trotman, Percival
Percival John Trotman
P J Trotman
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Percival Trotman DFC and bar. (b. 1921 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 150 and 692 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-06-04
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.
Identifier
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Trotman, PJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DH: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Dawn Hughes, the interviewee is Mr John Trotman. The interview is taking place at Mr Trotman’s home in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on the 4th of June 2018, and thank you John for agreeing to talk to me today. So can we start off with, if you remember last time we talked about the lead up to joining the RAF so what made you join the RAF? How did it come about?
JT: Well the, obviously there was, everybody was being taken into the services, Army, Navy, Air Force. And I considered the Army but, you could volunteer of course, if you volunteered you would be taken instantly, but otherwise you would be called up, so I felt I should volunteer. So I considered the Army, and I thought about the first world war and I thought there is no way if we get into trench warfare that’s, that’s something I don’t want to be involved in. Navy, I‘m not a very good swimmer so if I’d off into the ocean in the mid Atlantic I’m not going to get very far, so I decided the Air Force was obviously the thing to do, and in any case they had a much nicer uniform. So that was my decision to join the air force. And so, I went and applied at Reading, I was given an interview and then subsequently I was sent up to an airfield in the Midlands where I spent twenty four hours going through a tremendous [emphasis] number of tests. Overnight we slept in a bell tent, all with our feet towards the middle and er, the food wasn’t too bad and then we came home. And then I had to sit and wait, to be called up. And in fact from the time I was there, which was in May 1940 I wasn’t called up until the September, which was quite amazing, first, first of September. I was called up to, went down to Torquay for two weeks and then six weeks in Aberystwyth for basic training. And life changed of course, no longer [laugh] was life a sort of semi-leisurely situation, you were under military orders and of course your life changed completely, of course, and I wasn’t unhappy about that. Obviously like all the others we were keen to go through the training and get on with the job.
DH: Okay. So, what was the initial training like? Can you tell me a bit more about that.
JT: Initial training at Torquay well, you know, it was sort of getting your hands and feet in the right direction and doing all the right things according to drill, and of course you quickly adapt to that. So it was a question of drilling, marching up and down and doing about turns, and you know, there was responding to orders which was what it really was all about; time passed very quickly, until eventually we got our posting, which was to Aberystwyth. To do that we had to go by train, so we got on the train at Torquay but the train got stopped just outside Bristol because there was an air raid going on and we went across and stopped outside Cardiff because there was an air raid going on, and then this train chuffed its way right up to West Wales coast; took a total from midnight when we embarked on the train to Torquay till three o’clock on the following afternoon, on a train with no food, no toilets, we got packed sandwiches, but no toilets so every time the train stopped at a station there was a mass city central in the toilets! [Laugh] Anyway we finally got into Aberystwyth and then we got oriented of course. Where it started, you were out of bed at seven in the morning, in fact you were doing PE at seven o’clock in the morning, so you had to be ready for that, and you did that for half an hour each morning on the sea front, then from half past seven you went back, changed and you had to be at breakfast within quarter of an hour, quarter to eight for breakfast, breakfast finished at quarter past eight, on parade at half past eight, then march to the classrooms and spent all day in the classrooms. That happened every [emphasis] day, except on Saturdays we were, eased off wee bit; we still had things to do on Saturday, but you got Saturday afternoon, and Sunday, except Sunday we had to church parade, in which case I decided, I was Church of England, but I decided I’d try the Catholics and the Jews and everybody else [laugh] so I went to their services as well. That was interesting. At the end of the course, [clock chime] you had to pass and you had to reach a certain standard, and if you didn’t pass that standard then you were out, or as I say you were moved to other things, ground jobs within the air force.
DH: So at that point in time had you, had your trade been established?
JT: Sorry, had it?
DH: Had it been established that you were going to be a pilot or - ?
JT: Oh yes, once you had reached a certain level to their satisfaction yes, you were destined to be a pilot, considered so.
DH: So did you [emphasis] choose that, or did they choose you to do that?
JT: I wanted to be a pilot and I didn’t know until long afterwards that apparently I was rated above average, through sheer hard work and it was that I think got me through to what I wanted to do. That was what I was posted to, Coventry, just outside Coventry.
DH: Can you tell me what happened then, ’cause I believe you had a part in the clear up in the Coventry bombing.
JT: Yes, I was posted in on the, Coventry, the airfield just outside Coventry and that night there was an air raid warning, so we went down into the shelters and of course that was the night that Coventry was blitzed. So the next morning we were loaded into trucks to what, taken into Coventry to see what we could do to help in any way at all. To try and help the military and the civil authority maintain some sort of order and help clear up the worst situations. And the worst situations were something, I don’t think you want to, talk about very much. For example the Owen Owen’s department store had a whole lot of people in it when the air raid started.
DH: It did.
JT: So they were all bundled down to the basement; it was a shelter, but unfortunately Owen Owens got a direct hit: the whole building collapsed in on itself and they were buried, alive and of course I think over eighty people died in that alone. So you can understand that some of the other situations were [sniff] not very nice. So aft, at the end of that day I think we’d had enough and glad to, well right get on with your training now and that’s what we did.
DH: Yeah.
JT: So, that had certainly instilled in me [emphasis] the effects of an air raid at first hand and I thought, like everybody else, we’ve got to give it to them back, they’ve got to know what happens under these circumstances you just can’t do this willy nilly. Obviously they were after targets in Coventry because there was a high concentration of companies: tool makers, aircraft part makers, I think there were six main manufacturers virtually in the centre of Coventry because that’s the way the city became built. And that’s why the centre really, the centre of Coventry got such a battering.
DH: Yeah. I can, I can understand why that would make you think, yeah, I’ve got to do that back, yeah. So from, so that’s your initial training so how did you come to start then, next? You went to Cranwell, didn’t you.
JT: Yes, basic training just outside Coventry then went on to advanced training on twin engined Oxfords at South Cerny in Gloucestershire, at the end of that course they then decided, which way, you qualified for your wings, so you were a qualified pilot at that stage. They then decided your future. Most other people were sent to either to a squadron at that time of the war, or for operational training unit where, for heavier aircraft, at that time Stirling. But for some reason I was sent instead, again I was above average on the course, and I was sent to Cranwell to train as a flying instructor, which surprised me no end. And that meant three weeks on, learning to instruct on the bi-plane and another three weeks learning to instruct on twin engined Oxfords, and it was hard work because there was so much to do. You had to go through twenty eight subjects on each aeroplane, and you had to not only learn that but you also had to espouse this, that as an instructor and I didn’t know how to do that, so it was really hard work for six weeks. While we were there incidentally we suddenly heard a funny noise, rushed to the windows to look outside, and saw an aeroplane take off and it’s got no propeller, this was absolutely amazing! How actually does an aeroplane fly without a propeller? This was of course the basic first jet, so quite amazing sight to see, but, er filled us with wonder and tremendous encouragement I think we’d got the thing that might end the war, for flying anyway, did help, but not till much later, had to be developed. Anyway after that I went back to Shawbury as a flying instructor.
DH: So you were on Oxford Airspeeds there?
JT: Yes.
DH: So, so at this point you’re, you’d done training, you’re an instructor, but you hadn’t seen active service.
JT: Oh no. I stayed in Shawbury for nine months and quite frankly I got to the point where enough was enough, I felt. You trained a few people to fly the plane and then subsequently supervised later in lessons as you went through it. Then the next course came in and you started all over again, and then the next course came in and you went through it all again, very repetitive. And it tested your flying skill at times, because for example the undercarriage and flap levers on the early Airspeed Oxfords were side by side, and if in fact you wanted to, took off an aeroplane for example, you wanted to lift the undercarriage, and you or, you lifted the flaps instead, it can be a hell of a job to get off the ground at all, or alternatively, if you do what we call an overshoot in other words you come in to make an, you do an approach to land and then you command the pupil to open the throttles and go round without landing, and at that stage your flaps are fully down to retard the speed of the aircraft, so in this case if the chap pulled up the wrong lever, the flaps would come up and the plane just sank like that, hit the runway and where it would explode virtually, so you had to be very [emphasis] sure that he pulled up the right lever, [chuckle] and you watched like a hawk to see which one he was going to pull up, and one chap did pull up the wrong lever, I was there, and without any hesitation I whacked my fist down on the back of his hand and knocked the lever back into position! He was protesting strongly that I’d bruised his hand! I said well that’ll remind you which lever you’re pull up in the future. [Laugh] Anyway, life goes on. But at then at the end of nine months I’d had enough, decided to leave. The circumstances of my leaving were unique perhaps in a sense that I took a pupil down to, just north of the A5, towards the midlands and there was a low flying area specifically where we trained people to fly low. The purpose of this to evade enemy fighters because no enemy aircraft can get under you if you are low flying of course, and that’s your vulnerable part. So I took this pupil down there and he wouldn’t fly below two hundred feet so I said, ‘look this is nonsense, you really must get down, now let me show you.’ and I took him down, right down, so low we that were actually hedge hopping over hedges and flying between trees, and he looked with horror at the moment, for a moment or two and then suddenly he began to get the excitement of it all and we came out across an airfield that was under construction. All the work was lots of sea of mud and two runways and right at the intersection of the runways was a big caravan on wheels. And two chaps on the veranda of this were looking out over the scene. Obviously discussing things, the engineer or the architect. It just so happens that this caravan was in my line of flight, and I was only about ten feet off the ground. I flew towards this thing, hopped the plane over the top and these fellows jumped for their lives, unfortunately down into the mud, which was a very naughty thing to do really. But in fact it was, had results because one of the gentlemen was the officer commanding Shawbury, a group captain, and his gold, hat with gold braid fell into the mud which had to be sent away for specialist cleaning and his wonderful uniform got into a mess. I was posted forthwith.
DH: Oh wow!
JT: And frankly it suited me down to the ground actually and I think I got a detrimental report on my, on my record. Still.
DH: So you got moved for doing what you were supposed to be doing!
JT: Yeah, well.
DH: It’s just he got in the way.
JT: He got in the way.
DH: Yeah. Oh wow!
JT: I was very sorry for him afterwards, really.
DH: Yeah. I’m sure you were! [laugh] Not. So when you were posted then, where did you to go then?
JT: I then went to an Operational Training Unit which was at Pershore, in Worcestershire. There, as the Operational Training Unit you had to fly Wellington bombers and to do that you had to have a crew. You got a navigator, wireless operator, front gunner and rear gunner; the front gunner also being a bomb aimer. So you collected your crew, and you met people, you formed a crew, which we did. And then we went through the appropriate training period for that, for that aircraft. Towards the end of the training period, lots of night flying, cross countries where you would fly from that place up to, virtually up to Scotland, down the Irish Sea, to, down to sort of bottom end of Wales, and then fly back into this, that would be a normal night cross country exercise to get the idea of long distance flying at night, and so, you know, we were just, getting towards the end of that training, and suddenly Bomber Harris - chap in charge of Bomber Command of course - decided that he would like to wanted to bomb, do the first thousand bomber raid. Now, Bomber Harris had not got a thousand aircraft in Bomber Command. So he had to take some from the Training Command, some - one or two from Coastal and various other sections - to make up his thousand, which he did. So despite the fact we hadn’t finished our training, six aircraft were designated from our training unit to join this thousand bomber raid, though we hadn’t completed our training at that stage. Fortunately the other five people had a qualified pilot sitting alongside them, so they were all right, but since I was also, got lots of flying hours in, been an instructor, I was told I was going on my own. And so we flew to Cologne which was the first of the thousand bomber raids. Which was quite, that was the first time we did, and quite spectacular it was. The defences were completely overwhelmed with one thousand aircraft did the whole job in about ninety minutes, and that’s really [emphasis] intense bombing, and it virtually destroyed Cologne, most of it in the centre and the outlying areas: devastating. And of course two nights later we all went to Essen to do the same job there, but since, at Cologne we could see everything, visibility was perfect; at Essen there was cloud and we actually had to bomb through the clouds, because we hadn’t developed the Pathfinder thing to the right extent at that stage. And then they said right well you’re operational we’ll post you to a squadron and that was it. So I was posted to, eventually to an Australian squadron just north of the Humber. And when I arrived there the commanding officer was on leave, so we went down to the flight and got us out an aeroplane, one of their aeroplanes and flew it around on navigational exercises we decided on our own, to get used to the area. The engines were not the beautiful engines on the, ones we were used to, these were American Pratt and Whitney engines and if you, they had notorious, they were absolutely notorious because when they took off the noise was out, absolutely outstanding, very noisy aeroplane due to the design of the engine, well, anyway we got used to this, and at the end of the week we were told the CO was back and he wanted to see us. So we marched in, lined up in front of his desk, he points to me, ‘Right, what’s your name and where you from?’ [Australian accent] So I told him, he said, ‘You’re a bloody pom! I don’t want any bloody poms on my squadron, you’re posted!’ - that was it. And so same with my rear gunner who was also English, ‘cause the other three guys were Australian, in my crew, and so they remained, formed another crew, and unfortunately they didn’t survive the war. But the other gunner and I survived the war, that’s, the way things went. We were posted another British squadron this time and to carry on to do the other twenty eight trips necessary to make up the total thirty. So, our crew, Aussie crew, were hell of a nice guys, one from Sydney, one from Melbourne, I forget where the other one was from, and when we first met, when we’re crewing up in the first place, in training, they took one look, said to me ‘Christ we’ve got bloody poms running our, bloody, on us’, I said, ‘Christ we’ve got bloody colonials working for us!’ [Laugh] So all together [cough] we got on like a house on fire, great guys, thoroughly enjoyed it.
DH: Good.
JT: That part.
DH: At what point did you go to RAF Binbrook on the Wellingtons? Is that the period of time you’ve just been talking about?
JT: Yes, that was the time when I was posted just for a brief time to Binbrook.
DH: Yes.
JT: And this turns out to be a mistaken posting for some reason, so we weren’t unhappy about that one. From Binbrook we went to the Aussie squadron and from there we went on to the English squadron.
DH: Right. So. You did some raids, or a raid on, at St. Nazaire. Can you tell me about that?
JT: St. Nazaire, yes. Well, St, Nazaire, like Lorient on the west coast of France of course, were submarine bases, with huge concrete submarine pens there, they were bombed incessantly and so they built these huge concrete pens, so that submarines would come from the sea up, a narrow channel and then dive under the concrete shelters so that they could then load, refuel and ready to come out again. The trick was, while the bomber command had tried all sorts of bombs to penetrate this concrete, waste of time because they were just bouncing off concrete: they could be six nine feet thick, reinforced. So the trick then was to try and catch them either coming in or going out. The most effective way to do that was to drop mines, sea mines, in the, in the channels leading into the bunker, you know. And that we had to do. So to do that you had to fly an aeroplane one hundred feet above the water, at a set speed, because of the, it has to be about, only about a hundred knots, that’s about a hundred and fifteen miles an hour, and then you open your bomb doors and absolutely accurately from one hundred feet above the water, in pitch dark, [emphasis] you had to drop your bombs up the line of the channel. And these bombs, the mines in effect, would sink into the water and they would lay there, and just any metal boat that went across the top of them, the bomb would explode; just lay there all the time. So about six or eight aircraft sowing a whole host of these things on the water, would stop submarines coming back for refuelling and that all sort of out in the Atlantic and they certainly stopped the loaded boats from coming out, ‘cause they couldn’t get out that was the principle of it. It was effective in a sense, but the Germans of course decided that all these mines had got to be set off, and the easiest way to do that was to get a French trawlerman with a metal boat to travel and explode the bombs, and killed the Frenchmen on the way: didn’t matter. That’s effectively what they did.
DH: So they were magnetic I presume.
JT: Hmm.
DH: So they’d come up and hit whatever was metal.
JT: Aye. Well they’d trip, trip a magnetic mechanism within the bomb and [explode sound] go up yes, and sink any French, metal boat that was going over it or submarine for that matter, German submarine. It would sink them The idea was that if we could get a few submarines sunk in the channel that they would stop using the top, have to use the, the two depots.
DH: How long did that, did you do that for? You know, did they make a decision right to stop them?
JT: Yes, virtually, almost continual basis over a period of time, perhaps once a week, once every two weeks you’d go back and have another go and because of this the banks on either side on the approach to this, these were lined up with anti aircraft so when you went there with your hundred feet steadily at that speed with anti-aircraft fire coming in from both sides and you just crossed your fingers you would get through safely and of course you couldn’t take evasive action a hundred feet above the water, the slightest movement you’d be in the water yourself. So it was a, rather a dice with death situation. Not as simple as it sounds.
DH: And can I ask were, did many crews get killed, doing that?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Did many, were many aircraft killed, shot down?
JT: Yes, a few, I don’t know the total frankly, but certainly a few. Well, you were a sitting target so just the way but once the mines were in the water, it was quite effective in inhibiting where the submarines could get, go in and out.
DH: Reading your book, you talked about Lorient, the Bay of Biscay. What happened there? Was that, is that around the St, Nazaire?
JT: That is, yeah, one is up the coast, one is further down the coast, exactly [emphasis] the same sort of situation. Again, the thing was, again there was a channel which the u-boats went in and out and again we were throwing these mines into that channel, to stop, stop their progress.
DH: Yes.
JT: This was particularly important as we, as we got to D-Day of course, we had to stop them dead.
DH: Okay. You mentioned in your book about, is it Mainz, to do with a gentleman called Viv Parry.
JT: Yes.
DH: Can you talk about that please?
JT: We did bombing raid in Hamburg and we had a hard time with that one, and coming back we realised that we were losing fuel, one of the petrol tanks had been holed and we were, not losing fuel from it, and so we got to the point where almost half the way back across the north sea and I had to stop, the engine just stopped for lack of fuel and I feathered the propellers and we were now flying on the one engine, bit tricky because we hadn’t got very much fuel left, so in the remain, tanking on the other side, so by cutting its power back, on the engine, so it consumed less fuel, we also were losing height until eventually we crossed the Yorkshire coast very low indeed and we were desperate to look for somewhere to land and I was really dicing because it was a question as to how long we would stay in the air, give us time to find an airfield to land on. In fact we ran out of fuel. And so from about a thousand feet I had to suddenly look round in the early dawn, to find somewhere to land the plane. I suddenly spotted one just about the last hop would do the trick, dead engines, the plane just wasn’t exactly a good glider, it came down fairly rapidly, I managed to screw it round get into the airfield and do a perfect belly landing which I thought this is absolutely superb, marvellous. I even thought, you know how good it was, until eventually, we approached a copse where were quite, fairly slow down, then suddenly the wing tip on the right hand side collided with a young tree, just projecting out, and this had the effect of swinging the plane round, rapidly, it came to a stop. Now part of the procedure in all this crash landing is that the crew goes into what we call crash position and brace themselves. I stayed in the cockpit doing the flying and they all brace themselves. The rear gunner turned his turret to one, to right angles like that to the, to the line of flight, and he opened his little back doors and he unstrapped himself so as he could get out quickly, and the unfortunate effect of this, this catching the wing, swinging the aircraft like that it ejected him from the rear turret, he must have flown through the air about twenty, thirty feet, landed, unfortunately broke his neck and it was me was, to discover this. A complete shock, you know one of your own crew, one of your best and close friends; suddenly there he is lying dead. You can’t stand there, do nothing.
DH: No.
JT: So, was a question of having him covered up, one chap stayed with the plane and the body, and the other guys were sent in different directions, and I went off to look, we all went to look for help get to a telephone and get to the air force and that’s where I sort of waded into a, through a canal, put my boots back, on knocked on a farm door, the farmer eventually answers the door, looked at me, I was bloodied, because I’d cut my head badly, blood all over my face, I was wet, I looked a wreck, and, he didn’t know what I was, in fact he thought probably I was a German, he didn’t, my speech was a bit slurred. Anyway I managed to convince him who I was and he invited me in and put through a phone call, called his missus down from upstairs and she came down in her nightie, a little dressing gown over the top, being a practical woman of course, she immediately got a bowl of hot water and started cleaning up the wound and making me reasonably respectable and for good measure stuffed a big double whisky down me, [laugh] in to me which made me feel just a little bit better at that time. So we got recovered, plane and everything else. And we set off on leave of course. Viv Parry was buried in a graveyard in Anglesey, where he lies to this day.
DH: Was the plane re-usable after that?
JT: No, only in parts. The strain put on the crash landing and the effect of hitting the tree couldn’t support some of the metal parts, so they weren’t prepared to risk taking off the wings and trying to get it to fly again, when they reassembled it, so I think they used it for spares, so we never saw it again.
DH: At some point after that I understand you went to Tilstock, as an instructor. Was that after, that was after that was it?
JT: Yes, after the tour of operations I was posted to Tilstock in Whitchurch. I was there for quite a time. Flying Whitleys, Whitley, old fashioned Whitley bombers. You took pilots up and you trained them to fly the plane and when they were qualified as you felt fit and you, you put the crews in and then they went off on to practice, cross country work round the country, all round the country, the bombing range at er, just across, not far from here, they used that as a bombing range, of course other bombing ranges were in different parts of the country. So they had to navigate their way to this particular bombing area, do the bombs and then carry on a circuit, prescribed circuit and then come back. In other words it’s a virtual imitation of what they’d be doing when they qualified. And it was from there, they went on, at that stage of the war most of them would go to what we call a conversion units to convert from two engines to four engines, and then from the conversion unit, with a crew they would go on to operations, operational trips. Tilstock was a nice post. It was a relief to survive to become an instructor on that, one or two adventures of course, there always is. Which isn’t always totally reliable.
DH: So you completed, was it thirty ops, you completed thirty ops before you went there.
JT: Yes, at that stage.
DH: So that’s where you got the DFC.
JT: Er, I didn’t get the DFC till much later in the war, I realise is utterly wrong, when I joined the Pathfinders.
DH: So after Tilstock what happened then?
JT: Well, they decided at Tilstock should, was approaching the end of 1943, and they decided they wanted to train people to gliders, towed gliders to go in into the invasion, and so the whole airfield was converted to a different type of aircraft and towing gliders and mixed in with the Army. And so I was moved on to a place called Peplow, not far from Wellington, and there I became an instructor on another different type of aircraft altogether, Wellington. Which I gave up after a while became test, briefly a test pilot for every one that, every aeroplane that came out of over, being overhauled I would fly it to make sure everything was in order. I decided early on, that to avoid any errors, I’d, the chaps who worked on the aeroplane, the fitters and riggers, had to fly with me when I did the test flight. They quickly cottoned on, they made sure that if they flew with me on the test flight it had to be right, and so apparently the quality of the servicing shot up! [laugh, cough] Just a little trick you learn.
DH: That’s a very good trick!
JT: From there on, after D-Day I decided I had to get back into the war, that’s you know, going on to Mosquitos.
DH: Can you tell me about Mosquitos then?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Can you tell me about your time on Mosquitos then please?
JT: Yes, the Mosquito was a beautiful aircraft, it was never given an awful lot of publicity, but was a workhourse and did a lot of good work. So we had two weeks on a training course, joined up with a navigator, chap, navi, Tubby, Bernard Tubbs his name was, my navigator, thin as a rake, but because of his name he was called Tubby, and we got on like a house on fire. He already done a tour of operations himself on Lancasters, so he was a good navigator and an experienced one and I’d done a tour and been an instructor. So we went in to Pathfinders and in two weeks, we’d not, I think only a short four hours, flying the Mosquito. Lovely aeroplane to fly, really was, we were very pleased with that. In fact one stage I think I flew over the centre of England and I could see Ireland on that side, and half way across the north sea on the other side, in those days yo,u flying at thirty five thousand feet, was something so rare, you know, didn’t happen. Today it’s commonplace of course, had to, had to have oxygen, and it was a nice scene rarely, rarely you get weather that good in Britain. Anyway, from there we went, posted to Gravely, in er, not far from Cambridge, and we did our second tour of operations, another forty operations over Germany with the Mosquito. The Mosquito was used in various ways Pathfinder squadron. So either you would join in an air raid on a particular German city. The principle was that the main force, of Lancasters and so on, would go to the target. We would take, they were, we would take off after them because we were a lot faster, we then flew over the top of the bombing raid, got in to the target ahead of them and then dropped right the way down and spread markers on the ground so that they knew what to bomb. So by the time they came in, we’d put all the markers there and so they could come in and bomb the markers and know that they’d done an accurate bombing job. So as we were Pathfinders we were prime targets for the Germans of course, but that was the way it was. But apart from that, we did not many of those strangely enough. We were sent off, because at this time of the war, the idea was to be bombing as many Germans cities every [emphasis] night as possible. That meant the workers were down in the cellars and if they’re down in the cellars they couldn’t be making guns and ammunition and aeroplanes. And it was quite effective in that sense. So a lot of the trips we did, fifteen, twenty, twenty five thousand feet, over various, while the heavies were doing all their damage over one part of Germany and we were scouting out and dropping bombs on other parts of Germany. That was the general idea of it all. So flying at twenty thousand, twenty five thousand feet, today’s jets, was quite common. We were very fortunate, because they developed one type of Mosquito that could specially fly that high, the engines were slightly more, got more beef in them, they provided heat, and they provided some pressurisation which was virtually unknown in those days. So in fact we were flying in a pressurised, heated aeroplane, rather like today [laugh,] really deluxe stuff. In fact we were the only squadron who had this type of aeroplane. Quite remarkable, but it was a nice way to go! Until you had trouble of course, and then, then it wasn’t. Because if you suddenly lose the heat, and the oxygen, at about twenty five thousand feet, you got difficulties.
DH: Yes, I can imagine.
JT: Because above fifteen thousand feet, no oxygen, you’re [pooft sound], you then become unconscious quite quickly, apart from the fact that you’re flying at temperatures of, at that height, could be minus thirty, minus forty degrees.
DH: Did you ever have any close shaves like that?
JT: The only time I’ve ever had was, was, having flown down to, started off and flew to the target in south Germany and, in the normal way you climb up to, in that case I think it was twenty five thousand feet, and then head off for the target. But the plane I was in, I’d got up to about five thousand feet and suddenly I looked the temperatures and the pressures on the engines and the temperatures were up and the pressures were down, which meant the engine was over, both engines were overheating; that wasn’t good news, particularly when you’ve got a bomb, big bomb on underneath you. So I levelled out and flew the plane a short while, level, throttled back the engines and they seemed cool down, to almost normal. So again I opened and climbed another three or four thousand feet, again they overheated and I levelled out, they cooled down, then I went up in steps to about seventeen, eighteen thousand feet I think, and I thought this is silly, so I flew along for a while at, about that height, eighteen thousand I think it was, and the engines came down, to, temperatures were up, slightly up, pressures slightly down, not enough to worry about anyway, so I thought right we’ll go, but of course this was all time consuming. Whereas we should have been first on the target to mark it, the other guys were way ahead, including the main bomber force. So we plodded our way down towards the target, and we got within sight of the target which we, thirty, forty miles ahead, I suddenly looked at the port engine temperatures were up, way up [emphasis] pressures right the way down, if I left it running it would just stop, catch fire, and in a wooden aeroplane that it not good news, so immediately cut the engine, switched everything off, cut the fuel and everything else, carry on with one engine but I daren’t open the other engine because we got ourself in trouble with that one, so I had to leave that one as it was, which was in a cruising position because one engine, two engines support the plane, one engine doesn’t, so the plane progressively started to lose height. So instead of bombing the target at twenty five thousand feet that night or whatever, we were down to five thousand feet by the time we got to the target which was thoroughly well alight, but fortunately the bombing raid was over and the Germans were all rushing around putting out the fires and dealing with everything. So we flew in straight over the target at five thousand feet, which is very low, let our bomb go right bang into the centre of the target we were aiming to do. And of course, as soon as the Germans spotted that, they’d heard a, an aeroplane with one engine, not two, so they thought it was one of their own that far down in Germany.
DH: Wow.
JT: So they assumed it had to be one of their own with those engines, so that’s why we got in dropped the bomb and it was only then that they realised who we were and then suddenly there was a whole barrage of stuff, heading out at us, we just did a quick turn, that way rather, and vanished into the darkness, and worked our way back up, in fact because we hadn’t got a bomb, we’d used half our fuel, so made the plane was much lighter of course. So with the one engine left in that cruise position it actually climbed and back up at eighteen thousand feet. So we kept a sharp eye out to be sure we weren’t going to be followed or attacked and crossed over the border into Belgium, and suddenly I looked at this engine, the temperature had crept up, the pressure was down, and I thought that’s it, you know, just the way these things were going, we had no hope of getting it back to the UK. So that’s when we called it, started calling up ‘Mayday, Mayday’. Got no response. So I thought there’s only one thing to do, let’s try, may, I think I sent out nine maydays altogether, in groups, nothing and er, so I said right, we’ll go. So Tubby went down and tried to release the bottom hatch which is the normal way to go out, but of course we were pressurised. So the only other was out was through the top, you pull emergency lever and the hatch flies away, top hatch, flies away. The whole plane was depressurised, that meant that anything lightweight [swooshing sound] was sucked out of the plane: chocolate bars, baps everything went out the top, [laugh] which didn’t matter at that stage anyway. And so he clambered up, and went out through, I brought the plane back to as low a speed as I dare, which was only about ninety miles an hour, and he went out through the top, and parachuted. I thought well, that’s me, I’m next. So the idea is, you switch off the engines, chop the fuel, put the plane into a glide and you go out through the top as well. By that time I could have got out through the bottom with the pressure’d been released, either way I was just about close the engines down I thought I’ll give one [emphasis] more try and I went, ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,’ and immediately a voice came back, in English, and said, you know, ‘what’s your problem?’, so I told him, and in no time at all they’d put up a cone of searchlights and the engine by this time was on its last legs, I really pushed it [cough] I landed the plane with almost, one, just, barely an engine working at all, managed to get the undercarriage and flaps down and landed and it was, it was a forward English fighter aircraft base, fortunately was also a maintenance unit, so I thought well that’s good. So I checked in with the people there, and they said we well can’t do anything tonight, but we’ll send a wire to er, I said why don’t you just send a wire back to the squadron to tell them where I am? ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, I’ll send a signal’ but he said, ‘no chance,’ he said, ‘there’s so much going on in Europe at the present time, the chance of your getting a signal back are fifty-fifty.’ So I said ‘well how do the squadron know that we’re missing?’ I said. ‘Well the only way they know you are missing is ‘cause you don’t come back, from their point of view.’ So just had to hope that somehow a signal could find its way through in the end. So I, they found me a bed to sleep on that night, and we looked around the aeroplane the next day they said well they were too busy today with other fighter aircraft to get them in the air, so we’ll try and look at your plane tomorrow. So that was it. That night we went out to a bar, we got in the car trundled along, and there’s nothing on the road generally at night, except we came across a couple of wagons, French peasants, and there hanging lanterns under the wagon that’s to tell, so you know that if coming up from behind, [laugh] you know there’s something in your way. We went into a bar there and, had a couple of drinks and were drinking away happily, and suddenly there was a click, click, click of heels, sorry, we decided, having had a drink we decided go to the loo. So we were standing there was we gentlemen do, and suddenly a click, click of heels and women walked right past us, so I looked at this gentleman and ‘Oh’ he said, ‘don’t worry chum, you’re in Belgium now, men and women use the same toilets.’ [Laugh] I’d learnt a lesson! Anyway the next day they did look at the mossie, the one engine that had failed they said nothing much we can do with that its either a new engine or we’ve got to strip it right down, and refurbish it which will take time, so I’m sorry you can’t use your aeroplane unless you can take off on one engine and the runway wasn’t very long and in any case each side of the runway was lined with German planes that had been dropped off their, down off all their undercarriages, so you daren’t deviate off the runway. So I said no, I’m not going to take this plane off like that. The plane had a tendency to swing to the left on take off and if you tried it, you came to that, the left hand engine, running ahead of the right hand and that’s how you took off a mossie, the way, as long as you knew the trick, that was the way to do it. So I said if you try to take a mossie off with the starboard engine running full out and nothing on the left hand side, the tendency to swing to the left is going to be accentuated and I have no way of countering it. If I had got a very, very long runway of about three or four miles, I could gradually ease it up and with time, I could work it, get power up and get off the ground, but you haven’t got that long a runway. And if I did take it off on your runway, once I’m airborne, the chances are the plane will just flick over on its back and dive in the ground and I don’t intend to commit suicide at this time. So I said no, you’ll have to repair it. So they said well can you fly a Wellington bomber? I said yes, I can fly a bomber. We’ve got one in the hangar we want to get back to the UK, we can have it ready by tomorrow. So I said all right I’ll fly that back. So we that night, we went to a local, he said come on, we’ll go to a better place than we did last night. So we went to this place, semi-circular building, and virtually in the centre, sort of half a circle, as it were, circle in the centre of that was a woman behind a humendous cash, national cash register, biggest one I’ve ever seen, and stairs going up, and a lot of dance music seemed to be coming down from upstairs, I thought that’s nice for the lot of air force lads, lot of army lads, said it must be nice for these lads, a night out. And so I was chatting, we got beers brought across to us, and sitting there chatting away and suddenly a very beautiful [emphasis] woman, girl must have been in her early twenties I suppose, came across, sat down beside me. I glanced at her, didn’t take any note, carried on talking. She tapped me on the shoulder, says, ‘You no like me?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah, very, very nice,’ and carried on chatting. She tapped me again, I forget her name was, she gave me a French name, ‘oh yes, I recognise that, but I’m talking to this, my friend,’ and suddenly she was stroking me round the, [chuckle] round the unmentionable area. I thought what the hell’s going on here and my colleague was laughing like hell. Of course we’d come to a, an appropriate place for that sort of thing! I said, ‘Look I’ve got a girl, I’m not going to get into this sort of situation.’ ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘you can’t leave now you’ll insult the girl, insult the management and if you get like that they’ll think nothing of cutting your throat when you get outside.’ ‘Oh’ I said, ‘that’s a difficult situation,’ and I thought, I turned to this girl with my friend, so I said to her, ‘I’m sorry, but we are only here for a short time because we have to go flying, so I would like to come back and see you tomorrow, at seven o’clock.’ And she said, ‘oh, oui monsieur’. So I stood up, she stood up, shook hands, kissed on both cheeks, I got this bloke and went out the door and said [mutter] ‘spoilt my whole evening!’ [laugh] So we got out and the next day I flew the Wellington back to the United Kingdom. And then finally got back to the squadron. My navigator landed in a ploughed field and because you got the plough, the way the ploughed field is, you put one foot on, down the trough and one foot on, got himself a black eye so he didn’t feel so good, but anyway managed to bury his parachute in a ditch, kind of off the main road because there’s no hedges or fences, and looked at the stars, decided which was north, south east and west, and decided he’d go west, or north west, which is, the road was generally in that direction. He plodded along for a while and he came to a village. He looked around the village for a plaque, you know doctor, found plaque there, banged on the door, finally chap opens the window upstairs, you know, ‘Qui est la?’, - who is there? - and so he told him who he was, in his fractured French, and ‘Non, non, non. Allez!’ Slammed the window and told him to go away, which he thought well that’s not good for a doctor, so he banged on the window again, door again and the chap opened the door and pointed a double-barrelled shotgun at him. ‘Allez, allez!’, you know, and so there’s no arguing with a shotgun, so he walked away and told the, told the chap he should have married his wife in b, in voluble English language –
DH: Yes.
JT: - hobbled along and down the road for a while and suddenly he heard some vehicles coming towards him from the west and thought well now, are they retreating Germans or are they advancing Allies? So he dropped down the ditch out of sight. All the stuff trundled past: vehicles, tanks, trucks. And eventually one stopped just above him, stayed silent as the grave because if he’d emerged from the ditch and decided he was English, they would just shoot him and leave him in the ditch. So he kept very quiet, till a voice said, [American accent] ‘Hey Mac, will you give me a cigarette?’ He was out of the ditch like a shot! The headlights of the jeep across, identified himself and they said, ‘horrible weather, mac,’ they were pointing at, two cocked pistols pointed at him. Americans, you know, quick on the draw, anyway eventually he identified himself, one American soldier sat at the back of the jeep, he sat in the front by the driver with a pistol in his back and they went back to the local military depot and before long they get into another American airfield, I’m sorry, and given food, medical treatment, sorted out and sent to bed. And they said well, we’ll see if we can get a message back to you, into Britain but you know how it is, we have to report back to brigade headquarters and they have to report to London, and London has to report to the Air Ministry and by the time they get around be an age, he said until you are identified, positively identified back from your Air Ministry you’ve got to stay here! So a couple of days went by so enough’s enough, then eventually a chap flew in, came in to the mess where he was, an American pilot, he got chatting to him, ‘Yeah, I’m on delivery, at present on Dakotas and I’m bringing in supplies sure I can give you a lift back, take you to Southampton, is that all right?’ So he flew back, back in this thing to Southampton, and got some money out of the American adjutant to get him back home, and went home to check with his parent to say, tell them he was all right, and then got to London and then came back to the airfield and I was very pleased to see him. So he had his little adventure in his own way.
DH: He certainly did, didn’t he!
JT: And then we carried on with the war, as you do. [Rustling]
DH: So is, after that had happened [rustling] obviously D-Day had happened by then, and we were with the allies as plans, so what part did you take then, after that, before the end of the war?
JT: Well, we, we continued bombing into Germany because that’s where, you know the stuff was, ammunition, guns, tanks were still being made. and it was important to stop those. But there was a case where, just before Christmas 1944 that we established that there was a tremendous build-up of arms, ammunition, everything else, in West Germany where, at the point where they go through a series of tunnels and they come into France. They quickly picked up that there might be an attack down there, but, so what happened they were a bit slow in getting the, moving troops into the area to contain it, and that was where the Americans did a breakthrough actually about that time, unfortunately the weather was, we couldn’t fly in the weather that was going on at the time, so there was nothing really to stop these guys actually, bursting their way back, Germans bursting their way back into France. So the only way we could tackle this was to close down the tunnels, that’s where the supply route was. So the job was to fly down the banks, where the tunnel was, fly down the banking on either side, down along the tunnel railway tracks about twenty feet up and then drop a bomb, so it was actually, you thew, literally threw your bomb into the tunnel with a delayed action fuse and hoped that it worked, and of course it was unfortunate that all the tunnels had got machine guns rooted round them so you went in, you know under those conditions, it was, just so happened this happened when I was on a day off, or stood down for the day anyway, but I know that our squadron did go in and they did drop some bombs, blew up a lot of the tunnels in that area, so as to stop the trains getting through. And one of my colleagues was last seen going down in flames, was obviously shot into bits. But it was a tough time. Anyway, it all helped to stop the Germans and their supplies getting through, and in the May, stopped because they only got so far, then they ran out of fuel and they had to pick up the fuel locally where they could, there sort of, there was no further supply of ammunition, so they were isolated and the whole thing failed of course.
DH: Was that still flying Mosquitos then?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Was that still flying Mosquitos?
JT: Oh yes, yes. So we were getting towards the end of the war at this stage and just wanted to finish, but still we had targets we had to hit. Hammering Berlin was the usual; we went to Berlin nineteen times. Try and hammer them into submission, you know. I’m not sure the public wanted submission, but they’re not being allowed to submit, under those circumstances, and then Hitler committed suicide, and his lady friend and the war ended quite quickly after that.
DH: So how regular were you going, in that period of time, how regularly were you going? Like, every day? Every two or three days?
JT: Sorry?
DH: To do a bombing run. How often were you going?
JT: I’ll tell you. [Shuffle of paper] Trying to catch up, yeah, so many pages, ah yes, yes, it’s er, ah right, 21st October: Hamburg, 10th of November: Hannover, 11th of November [indistinguishable], 21st of November: Hannover, 24th of November is Berlin, 25th is Nuremburg, so it’s sort of two nights running quite often then a break. 27th of November was Hannover, 29th was Duisburg, 30th was Duisburg. December 1st was Karlsruhe, so you know, it was -
DH: All over the place, and regularly.
JT: December, that’s when I had the trouble, December the 5th, I didn’t get back to flying operationally, until February the 5th after it was, I forget what happened earlier, it was Berlin, Mannheim, Berlin, Berlin, [tuning pages] Erfurt, Berlin, Berlin, Dessau, Berlin, Berlin, Bremen, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Dessau, Berlin, Berlin, Hamburg Munich Berlin, Berlin, Kiel, Munich, airfield and so on.
DH: Yeah.
JT: Some of them little bursts of two or three days and then a break.
DH: Yeah. So in between bombing raids what did you get up to?
JT: Oh well, you went out to a local pub and had a few beers! [Laugh] The main thing was you drank in the mess sometimes but the tendency was to get away from the atmosphere, the flying and everything else, into a local bar and meet with normal people.
DH: Can you think of any capers that people got up to?
JT: Oh, I can’t think of anything particularly but I’m sure they did! [Chuckle] There were sometimes you’d get to the pub and there’d a drinking party going on, not very common the publican in those days had to close at ten o’clock prompt at night. So he’d close the front door at ten o’clock then open the back door, so if you wanted to drink you went to the back door and kept going till two or three in the morning, as long as his beer ration lasts.
DH: I was going to say that, was there much beer?
JT: There seemed to be a reasonable amount of beer going round but you, if one pub ran out of beer then you moved on to the one that had beer - the word quickly got around on these situations.
DH: Very good. So.
JT: In other words get away from the military atmosphere get into a relaxed atmosphere. It was good to do that –
DH: Absolutely
JT: - otherwise the whole thing would bear down on you and you’d be no good to anybody.
DH: So after VJ day how do you think the war affected you, did it affect you in any way?
JT: Well I think a) we were glad the European war was over, but remember the far east war was still on. We were given some opportunities to choose what we wanted to do. I’d always thought the idea, we were still ferrying Canadian built Mosquitos from Canada, and flying via Greenland, Iceland to Europe and then you went back on a commercial transport of some sort and then brought another one in. But then fortunately I investigated it, and I found that in Iceland the weather conditions can be such that suddenly like a cold air meets the warm air and a blanket of fog [noise] just descends on the airfield and you could be flying from [cough] Greenland to Iceland, suddenly arrive at Iceland and they’d be blanked out with fog. there was no way you can land the aeroplane and you certainly wouldn’t have enough fuel to head to England, or Scotland. So they were stuck there bail out waste of aeroplane so on, and if you landed in the sea up there you didn’t last very long anyway.
DH: No. Oh my god!
JT: So I thought this is almost as bad as operational flying, so I thought right I think I’ll give that one a miss! [Laugh] So I went to an Operational Training Unit then, so I could train people to fly, and it was a more relaxed atmosphere, in any case the air force had decided the there’s no point now doing operational flying; the war’s over, so the amount of flying it was doing less and less and less, and so they had to keep us occupied, with either courses or you had to take parades you were in to the old pre-war military situation of parades and officialdom really came into its own. And these characters who had been sitting around, administrators and everything else, been doing as they’re told for all this time emerged from the woodwork and didn’t make life too easy for the people flying. [Clock chimes] In the end I decided anyway the particular airfield I was on, that I wouldn’t, I’d got extended service, that is to say I applied for, and they gave me extended service, that meant I could continue with the service till it, the air force had sorted itself out in which case I could remain in the air force and carry on using it as a career, so I thought I might well do that. Until I got to this station, particular airfield, where I became an instructor there, along with others, but one of the problems with it, in the officers mess at I was at this time there were two squadron leaders, and they were bango whizzo type characters who didn’t think the war was over, so they’d think nothing of walking on the ceiling and drinking themselves silly and making the whole, most in fact people didn’t go into the mess any more, they couldn’t stand these two characters. But unfortunately there was no one in a senior position, the group captain who ran the station was due to leave the air force anyway any minute, so he’d lost interest in the field, the wing commander also in charge, he was in a similar situation so there was no real [emphasis] somebody to do something about it. And one of the, favourite trick of these two drunks, was about two o’clock in the morning they close the bar in the officers mess and they’d go round tossing people out of bed just as a, just for fun, and I remember about half past two in the morning you’d suddenly find yourself on a mattress on the floor being tipped out of bed, and these two characters guffawing like mad and going ahead and trying somebody else. I thought this just isn’t going to happen. So I thought, all right, and three nights later, drunk again, I could hear them coming down the passage, so I got up, stood behind the door, one of them barged in, I closed the door right behind him. I got hold of him, slammed him up against the wall, he was drunk mind you, and I put my fist under his nose and I told him, you ever come in here again, you’ll know what you’ll get. I made sure he understood that, and I opened the door and pushed him out and he fell on the floor, drunk of course, in the passage outside, when he looked at me I knew one thing, right there and then, I was a flight lieutenant, he was a squadron leader. I had insulted and virtually assaulted a superior officer and I could be in real trouble. So I thought that’s it, I thought about it, so I sat down and wrote my resignation from the air force there and then and requested immediate, you know, removal from the air force, and I went first thing in the morning at half past eight I was in the, put the letter in the hands of the adjutant officers. And at ten o’clock, or half past ten I think it was, I was told to report to him, and he was an old timer, a bit of a character, and he threw the, he threw this thing across the desk at me, ‘what’s this nonsense about, why should you leave the air force?’ And that’s when I’m afraid I lost my dignity and a lot of temper, we were all stewed up about the situation, I let him have it, hard, about how the station was not being run properly, about the mess was a mess, mess was a mess, these two squadron leaders acting like overgrown schoolboys and disgrace [emphasis] to the service and gave him a long lecture about this. Me a flight lieutenant, lecturing the commanding officer, and he was going purple in the face, nobody’d ever spoken to him like this. I said that’s my decision to leave, sir, gave him a smart salute, about turn and walked out! And I was out of the air force in a week, that’s in a week, I was gone, civilian life, got rid of me. But [emphasis] I still had contacts back in the, back in the mess, and a chap actually ring me, er two weeks later and said I don’t know what you did but by god things have changed, you rattled the CO something rotten and he went into the mess at about eleven o’clock one night, found these two squadron leaders drunk as, like I have described to you, making a mess of themselves. and he you know, suddenly they spotted him, standing in the background, ‘Hello sir, good evening sir, come and have a drink. sir,’ you know, something stupid like that. He turned round and walked out. So the two squadron leaders were posted forthwith to different areas, left the station, and this chap said suddenly the whole atmosphere of the mess, everybody came back into the mess, the whole atmosphere changed, wonderful, nice to have it back again, nice to have our mess back again. So he said I don’t know what you did, by golly it worked. So I was rather pleased that something had come out of it anyway.
DH: Did you have any regrets about leaving?
JT: Sorry?
DH: Did you have any regrets about leaving?
JT: In a sense no, because the air force was changing, it was no longer, the wartime service was, I know it was death and destruction but you were in, a tight family, you knew everybody, knew what was going on, were up to date, but suddenly there was nobody to fight. And so, as I say they had to keep us occupied, so we were up to, a lot of administrative duties were thrust at us, which, a lot less flying was being done, the whole atmosphere was beginning to change, as I say these people who’d been in the background: administrators and everything else, now came to the fore and weren’t making life too easy for the flying people. It was just one of those situations at that time. So I said enough’s enough, I’m off and that’s really precipitated my leaving.
DH: So what did you do then with your life after you left?
JT: Well, I hadn’t made up my mind really what I wanted to do, except that in my home village for many years, they decided, the local authority decided that the village should be by-passed and the by-pass was rumoured for a long time and then it became something more important after the war, something they could get on with. So I thought well, the situation was that my father ran a garage anyway, and what we would do was open up a petrol station on this by-pass probably with sort of motel type accommodation or accommodation of some sort, and that would be a good idea. So, I knew the, roughly where this thing was planned to go, and so I approached the landowners with a view to possibility of purchasing this land, but the word had obviously got around what was happening, so the idea of a) they refused and b) they raised the price so, it was all, eventually I gave up on this it was a good idea, but not practical for me, a rather penniless man trying to get into the world, it just didn’t happen. So, er, I was escorting my lady friend at that time, she lives up here and obviously offered me a chance of connection up here and the chance of joining Hoover, I thought well, something to do keep me occupied for a while. So I went on a training course, a few training courses, before I knew it I was the manager, regional manager and the whole of Birmingham and the Midlands was all, then moved down, they moved you about every four years, moved over and looked after the western half of London and out in to the counties, east part of London and into the counties, then up to the west country taking over the whole of Devon and Cornwall and all that sort of area like that, and then moved up to the north as you do, every four years until we finally settled there, just up the road in Cheshire. So it was a very nomadic sort of life particularly when you’re bringing up youngsters and various schools they had to attend. No, I enjoyed that, responsibility and everything else, just upsetting moving for the children’s education point of view, but from the housing point of view it was an advantage, because that was the time after the war onwards, house prices were rising. First house I bought was a semi-detached house on the outskirts of Birmingham for £1,975. Then we moved to Harrow where I paid £3,200 for a four bedroomed semi-detached, from there I moved to, er, Chelmsford, about £4,900 for a brand new, four bedroomed detached property with double garage, and from there I moved down to the west country. I paid £7,250 for a four bed detached double garage in a nice area, and from there we moved up to Cheshire where I in fact, I bought a piece of land and had a four bed detached property with double built there. So I took advantage of the rising prices, I don’t know what the last Cheshire one was, about, I don’t know three or four hundred thousand, something like that. Ridiculous when you think about the prices.
DH: I know. It’s daft isn’t it.
JT: Crazy. And as long as the land is restricted to build on, so the prices will maintain their, and that’s the problem Where do you find land to build that doesn’t upset people.
DH: That’s right.
JT: So. But there’s a lot of land available that’s not being utilised. Anyway, that’s another story.
DH: Can I ask, can you think of any occasions when you were absolutely scared to death during the war?
JT: [Breath out]
DH: Did you get scared?
JT: Oh yes, I think you did get scared. You, the thing about being a pilot, you daren’t, particularly when you’ve got a crew, you daren’t show it, you know your heart’s in your mouth and all that sort of thing, I know that dropping these mines in that water at a hundred feet with people springing out everywhere ‘am I going to make it, am I not going to make it,’ and when you go in, you think, well there’s a job to do, I’ll do it, but whether I’ll survive it I don’t know, and I did. But somehow and I think I explained in the book, my mother, grandmother on my mother’s side had this virtue of, or they called it a virtue, had second sight, that is to say she could, tell you things that are going to happen, before they happen. For instance, for example, she was doing some washing in her house, my mother told me this, suddenly she took off her apron, put on her hat and coat, took a tram in those days to the other end of Eastbourne, she knocked on the door of a house she’d never been to before in her life, she told the woman who answered the door she was to go immediately [emphasis] to a hospital in London, her husband was calling for her. She so convinced the woman that she caught the train, went in to London, she arrived at the man’s, her husband’s, bedside half an hour before he died. How did she know that?
DH: Wow.
JT: My mother had it to a lesser extent, I never really thought, well I’d heard these stories but you don’t take, as a kid you don’t, it doesn’t mean much to you. It was strange enough I got to one point on the squadron where I knew instinctively [emphasis] whether a crew would survive or not. At first that was a frightening experience, you get the guys and then a couple of weeks later they’re gone. And you know, when you’re losing crews like that, that’s not, it’s no good, you know, this instinctive feeling I had about it I just had to submerge it, forget about it. But it was there, I could tell if they were going to live or die when they came on the squadron. Never happened before or since. Can you explain it?
DH: No, I can’t.
JT: Probably inherited in the family, something like that.
DH: Probably, yeah.
JT: But, er, something my sons never had, not that I’m aware of.
DH: You said right at the beginning that, when you’d gone to Coventry and when you saw what happened there, you wanted to, you wanted the Germans to understand what we were going through. By the end of the war did still think that, did you have any regrets about what you’d done? Any dilemma in your head or anything?
JT: Not really. The idea was you know, to, really try to bomb them into submission, to agreeing to stop the war was all we wanted, to stop the war, and that was what the bombing was all about, apart from the invasion of course to stop these people fighting, that was all we wanted, and when it was over that was it. I think perhaps we tidied it up a bit better after this war than we did after the first world war, but it was not doing the job properly after the first world war enabled the Nazi party for example, to rise. It hasn’t happened so far in Germany and we hope that, it is obviously a reasonable country.
DH: Is there anything else that I haven’t, or we haven’t covered, while we’ve been talking that you think might be of interest to people?
JT: Not really, I can only express this from a man’s point of view in the situation, from the women’s point of view: wives and sweethearts, and all that sort of thing, it was tough because the men, we go off to war and you’re never going to know if you’re going to see them back ever again, that was a tough situation particularly as the families were concerned that was, was rough because there were many widows as a result of all this, plus the effect of war which was disastrous really, we don’t want wars but if you’re forced: you fight back, and that’s the result of what happens. A modern type of war, the second world war anyway, was a bit disastrous for civilians, no doubt about it. If you have another war it’ll be rather a different kettle of fish, again just whole civilians war, be engulfed. But I don’t know what would happen, have fair idea what will happen, but just hope it never will.
DH: Absolutely. Right. Can I say thank you very much.
JT: Oh you’re most welcome.
DH: It’s been fascinating to listen to, and very informative.
JT: As I say, there are stories in the book you might want to include.
DH: Yes, yeah. Your book’s fascinating.
JT: Hmm. Anyway, it was very nice to see you.
JT: Is it still recording?
DW: I shall turn this off then, okay.
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 Percival Trotman
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dawn Hughes
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
2018-06-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ATrotmanPJ180604
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:21:24 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
Description
An account of the resource
Applying for RAF Bomber Command in May 1940, Percival Trotman was called up in September 1940, training as a pilot at RAF Towyn in Aberystwyth. Being present at Coventry when the town was bombed, he recalls deciding that the Germans deserved to have the same done to them and pushed to do well in his training. Completing his advanced training at RAF South Cerney, Percival was rated above average and was sent to RAF Cranwell to train as a flight instructor, without seeing active service. He gives some examples of training, including low flying over hedges and almost crashing into a caravan, which eventually led to him being moved to an operational training unit where he trained to fly Wellingtons. Whilst completing his training, Percival was drawn into the ‘thousand bomber raid’, without completing his training. Posted to RAF Binbrook by mistake, Percival took part in operations over France and minelaying. Explaining a close call on a return from am operation on Hamburg, Percival gives insight into how he dealt with a crew member's loss during a crash landing. He explains that he felt fear during operations, but kept it hidden so that his crew remained strong. Completing 30 operations in total, he was eventually transferred to the Pathfinders, earning the Distinguished Flying Medal and flying Mosquitoes. Percival recollects his crew members fondly, including his Pathfinders navigator ‘Tubby’. Percival outlines what the aftermath of a crash contained, including making it back to Great Britain, giving insights into another crash he had on the return from an operation.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Cheshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Coventry
England--London
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
France
France--Lorient
France--Saint-Nazaire
Wales--Ceredigion
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-05
1940-09
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Harper-Coulson
Anne-Marie Watson
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
150 Squadron
692 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
final resting place
Flying Training School
forced landing
Initial Training Wing
military ethos
mine laying
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Cranwell
RAF Graveley
RAF Peplow
RAF Pershore
RAF Shawbury
RAF South Cerney
RAF Tilstock
RAF Torquay
RAF Towyn
recruitment
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1596/25340/LSaundersEJ924532v1.2.pdf
c78158eb8860fddc9d2b39689fa6731e
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
Saunders, Ernest John
E J Saunders
Sam Saunders
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
2020-02-13
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
Saunders, EJ
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. The collection concerns Ernest John Saunders (924532 Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, photographs and correspondence as well as two photograph albums of his service and family life. He flew operations as a navigator in North Africa in 1942 with 40 Squadron and with Bomber Command in 1943 - 1944 with 692 and 128 Squadron on Mosquito.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Penelope Thicket 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
Sam Saunders's flying log book
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
Description
An account of the resource
Detailing his flying training and operations flown as navigator 16 January 1941 to 9 January 1946. He was stationed at RCAF Winnipeg (6 AOS), RCAF MacDonald (3 B&GS), RCAF Rivers (1 ANS), RAF Harwell (15 OTU), RAF Shallufa (38 and 40 Squadrons), RAF Upper Heyford (16 OTU), RAF Hendon (24 and 512 Squadrons), RAF Doncaster (271 Squadron), RAF Marham (1655 MTU), RAF Oakington (627 Squadron), RAF Graveley (692 Squadron), RAF Wyton (128 Squadron), RAF Crosby-on-Eden (109 TCU), RAF Almaza (216 Squadron).
Aircraft flown in were Anson, Battle, Wellington, Hudson, Tiger Moth, Dakota, Sparrow, Oxford, Proctor and Mosquito.
He flew 3 night operations with 38 Squadron, 42 with 40 Squadron, 8 with 627 Squadron, 45 with 692 squadron and 9 with 128 Squadron, a total of 107. His pilots on operations were Warrant Officer Brodie, Sergeant Le Brog, Squadron Leader Booth, Wing Commander Lockhart, Flight Lieutenant Grainger, Squadron Leader Saunderson, Wing Commander Birkin, Wing Commander Watts, Flying Officer Page, Pilot Officer Burnett, Flying Officer Richardson, Flying Officer Goodwin, Wing Commander Burrough, Flying Officer Boyer and Flight Lieutenant Gallanders.
Targets included Benghazi, mining, Tobruk, El Daba, Alamein, Ras el Manatis, Fuka, Cagliari, Tunis, Bizerte, Duisburg, Cologne, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Hannover, Dusseldorf, Koln, Osnabruk, Stuttgart, Friedrichshaven, Leverkusen, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen, Bremen, Homberg, Weisbaden, Saarbruchen, Wanne-Eichel, Castrop, Kiel, Kassel, Brunswick and Cochem.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Cara Walmsley
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Egypt
Great Britain
Italy
Libya
North Africa
Egypt--Alamayn
Egypt--Cairo
Egypt--Suez
Egypt--Tall al-Ḍabʻah
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Doncaster
England--London
England--Norfolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Cochem
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wiesbaden
Italy--Cagliari
Libya--Tobruk
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Tunisia--Bizerte
Tunisia--Tunis
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Magdeburg
England--Oxfordshire
Libya--Banghāzī
Tunisia
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Yorkshire
Egypt--Fukah
Manitoba
Manitoba--Rivers
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1942-05-24
1942-05-25
1942-05-26
1942-05-27
1942-05-30
1942-06-05
1942-06-06
1942-06-08
1942-07-11
1942-07-12
1942-07-15
1942-07-16
1942-07-18
1942-07-19
1942-07-20
1942-07-21
1942-07-23
1942-07-24
1942-07-25
1942-07-26
1942-07-27
1942-07-29
1942-07-30
1942-08-01
1942-08-02
1942-08-04
1942-08-05
1942-08-18
1942-08-19
1942-08-22
1942-08-23
1942-08-26
1942-08-27
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-08-31
1942-09-01
1942-09-06
1942-09-07
1942-09-13
1942-09-14
1942-09-18
1942-09-19
1942-09-20
1942-09-21
1942-09-24
1942-09-25
1942-10-09
1942-10-10
1942-10-12
1942-10-13
1942-10-18
1942-10-19
1942-10-20
1942-10-21
1942-10-23
1942-10-24
1942-10-25
1942-10-26
1942-10-27
1942-10-29
1942-10-30
1942-11-02
1942-11-03
1942-11-04
1942-11-05
1942-11-06
1942-11-07
1942-11-08
1942-11-09
1942-11-10
1942-11-11
1942-11-14
1942-11-15
1942-11-18
1942-11-19
1942-11-20
1942-11-21
1942-11-24
1942-11-25
1942-11-27
1942-11-28
1943-12-28
1944-01-02
1944-01-06
1944-01-14
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1944-01-29
1944-02-01
1944-02-07
1944-02-19
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-06
1944-03-11
1944-03-13
1944-03-14
1944-03-23
1944-04-04
1944-04-12
1944-04-13
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-05-08
1944-05-09
1944-05-10
1944-05-11
1944-05-26
1944-05-27
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-21
1944-06-22
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-26
1944-06-28
1944-06-29
1944-07-04
1944-07-08
1944-07-10
1944-07-11
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-17
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-08-05
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-08-30
1944-08-31
1944-09-01
1944-09-02
1944-09-13
1944-09-14
1944-09-27
1944-10-01
1944-10-02
1944-10-19
1944-11-27
1944-12-05
1944-12-06
1944-12-11
1945-01-01
1945-01-18
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
LSaundersEJ924532v1
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
128 Squadron
15 OTU
16 OTU
216 Squadron
38 Squadron
40 Squadron
627 Squadron
692 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Battle
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
C-47
Hudson
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Proctor
RAF Graveley
RAF Harwell
RAF Hendon
RAF Marham
RAF Oakington
RAF Shallufa
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Wyton
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/607/26325/LMaywoodRM1623169v2.1.pdf
5b92814ba444c0b862e57eaf42f615f4
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
Maywood, Dick
Richard M Maywood
R M Maywood
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Maywood, RM
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard 'Dick' Maywood (1923 -2016, 1623169 Royal Air Force), his log book and a certificate. He flew operations as a navigator with 608 and 692 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-09
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.
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
Dick Maywood’s Royal Canadian Air Force flying log book for aircrew other than pilot
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Canadian Air Force flying log book for aircrew other than pilot for R M Maywood, navigator, covering the period from 31 December 1943 to 25 September 1946. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RCAF Mountain View, RCAF Charlottetown, RAF Kingstown, RAF Cliffe Pypard, RAF Wigtown, RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Barford-st-John, RAF Downham Market and RAF Gransden Lodge. Aircraft flown in were, Bolingbroke, Anson, Tiger Moth DH82a, Oxford and Mosquito. He flew one night operation with 608 squadron and completed his post war flying with 692 squadron. Target was Eggebeck. His pilot on operations was Warrant Officer Johnson.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMaywoodRM1623169v2
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.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
England--Wiltshire
Germany--Schleswig-Flensburg
Ontario--Belleville
Prince Edward Island--Charlottetown
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Ontario
Prince Edward Island
Ontario--Belleville
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1945-04-26
1945-06-09
1945-07-03
16 OTU
608 Squadron
692 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Bolingbroke
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
Cook’s tour
Flying Training School
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Barford St John
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Downham Market
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Wigtown
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/799/10780/ADellFH160520.2.mp3
aeca252c2e392e1703817a3b4c40aa64
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
Dell, Frank
Francis Humphrey Dell
F H Dell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Frank Dell (1923 - 2022, 131049 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 692 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
2016-05-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Dell, FH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JH: Good morning, Frank. I’m talking with Frank Dell. We’re in St Ives in Sydney. It’s Friday the 20th May 2016. My name is John Horsburgh and I’ve got the honour of interviewing Frank this morning. So, before we start I just thought I’d say that Frank was a pilot with the RAF 692 Squadron. He was a Mosquito pilot and assigned to the Light Night Striking Force. And it’s an interesting story because Frank was actually shot down over Germany near the border with Holland and spent some time being sheltered by the Dutch and participating in the Dutch Resistance. So, so good morning Frank. Maybe we can start by talking about your, your childhood and some of your background and how you, how you got to join the RAF.
FD: Well, it’s a little bit of a story there because I I grew up on the south coast of England at a little township called Southwick. Just between Worthing and Brighton. Actually, right on the coast. And there’s a little harbour there called Shoreham Harbour. And all through my teenage stage I had the ambition of joining the Royal Air Force. This is before the war of course and this was spurred on by the fact that my father had been in the Royal Flying Corps and then the RAF in the ‘14/18 war. And like young men today he had first of all wanted to get into cars and then at a slightly later stage flying had caught on and he wanted to fly. But that was a pretty difficult thing to achieve. But, however the First World War then started and that was in 1914 of course. And by 1915 he applied to join the Royal Flying Corps to become a pilot only to be told that at the age of, I think it was thirty two he was too old. They only took younger people. So he couldn’t achieve his ambition at that stage. But the person who interviewed him said, ‘Oh. We see you have a qualification in mechanical engineering. Would you be game to join the Royal Flying Corps as a mechanic? And maybe they would raise the age at which they would take you on as a, as a trainee pilot at a later stage.’ So, anyway against that background he joined and was sent to France and worked as a mechanic at an airfield in northern France and must have made quite a mark while he was there because after about twelve months he was posted back to England and commissioned as an engineering officer. And he was then posted to the Central Flying School at an airfield called Upavon in western England where he was put in a team that was then sent to Canada to establish flying training systems in Canada. And this was of some importance because this was the forerunner of what became known as the Empire Flying Training Scheme in the Second World War. And having started, or having got established in Canada at the end of 1917 the United States came into the war so their training establishment in Canada was then transferred to Fort Worth in Texas. And we started Flying Training Schools, British Flying Training Schools in Texas in the ‘14/18 war. And people have no knowledge of this in this day and age. But this was —
JH: So that is interesting. So that is the forerunner of the Empire Training Scheme.
FD: Absolutely.
JH: Which was mainly Canada but also the US in the Second World War.
FD: Exactly. Yes. It was an extraordinary thing. But anyway the war ended and, oh yes he had applied for a permanent commission in what had become the Royal Air Force. But by the time his demobilisation date came up no permanent commission had been offered so he went back and joined his father’s business. His father having a fairly small furniture business selling antique furniture and good quality second hand furniture and he had a small department specialising in selling and fitting carpets. And he had a removal van for moving his goods to and fro and for moving people’s furniture when they moved house and that sort of thing. And he had a warehouse for the storage of people’s furniture. And that was the main character of the, of the business. And my father didn’t enjoy it all that much but persevered and when his father finally died the business was his and that’s, that was the ongoing business that I knew as I grew up. And I used to so enjoy going to the shop to see it all happening. But then the Second World War was declared and I was, I was sixteen, yes when the war broke out. And living in the south of Sussex, South of England in the county of Sussex a large part of the Battle of Britain took place over head in 1940, by which time I was seventeen.
JH: So you can remember seeing some of that going on above your head.
FD: Day after day one saw these huge formations of German bombers coming over. Once, twice a day and so on. And these great air battles taking place in the sky. And the BBC day by day would recount how many German bombers the RAF had shot down the preceding day in the way that we report cricket matches and things here.
JH: Yes.
FD: And I think the highest number I ever heard broadcast was a hundred and eighty eight in one day. But —
JH: Of German aircraft.
FD: Of German aircraft.
JH: Yes.
FD: Had been shot down for the loss of twenty five or something like that.
JH: Yes.
FD: In fact after the war we realised or it was reported that the figures were grossly exaggerated on both sides.
JH: Yes.
FD: But that was the way it was. But, however one sensed that, that the success or the success or failure from the British point of view success or failure of the battle hinged not really from the number of German bombers that were shot down but whether we would have enough Spitfires and particularly pilots to fly them. And we could see that the limiting factor was likely to be that we would run out of pilots. And in, at the commencement of the battle we started with six hundred pilots flying the Spitfires and Hurricanes in south east England against the German Air Force of two thousand four hundred aircraft attacking England. But, but we could replace the Spitfires quite quickly but we could not replace the pilots that were lost. And in a ten week period having started with six hundred pilots we actually lost six hundred pilots. Arguably they weren’t all the original ones because as men were lost day by day and week by week pilots were brought in from where ever they could be obtained. From other squadrons elsewhere in the UK. We got a whole lot of Navy pilots in and we got pilots from the recently occupied Holland. Belgium.
[recording glitch]
Advertisements saying something on the lines of school leavers who may interested in a post-war career in the Royal Air Force are invited to apply for university courses lasting one year with everything paid for by the Royal Air Force. And with the opportunity of completing their courses after the war. But they would have to serve one year at university. So, I put in my applications and I was accepted. And the logic behind it all was that the Officer Cadet College at Cranwell had been closed down because of the circumstances of the war but nonetheless the air force was still continuing the [pause] the practice and the syllabuses of of applicants as though they were going to peacetime Cranwell. And by some misjudgement I got selected and so I was sent to university by the RAF. All paid for.
JH: Yeah.
FD: For a year.
JH: So this was 1940.
FD: 1940.
JH: Yes.
FD: When we couldn’t be sure that we were going to succeed.
JH: Yes.
FD: You see. Really quite extraordinary.
JH: Yes.
FD: And of course beneath it all of course was propaganda. You know. We were sort of doing this to the Germans.
JH: Yes.
FD: You know. You know we’re going to win because we’re recruiting boys, you know, for after. After we’ve won. It’s extraordinary.
JH: It would have been hard to concentrate on your studies knowing that you could get a telegram any day to report to some place.
FD: Well, anyway that’s how it was and actually I expected to hear. Oh yes, they said, ‘Have you a particular preference of which university you’d like to go to?’ And I’d had various friends and acquaintances who had gone to Oxford and Oxford wasn’t all that far from where I lived. In the event I was sent to Aberdeen University in northern Scotland which was about as far away as I could have been sent which sort of brought home to me the fact that I may have been somewhere near the bottom of the list [laughs] Anyway, there it was. And then one did one’s year there and then those like myself were sent to a little Flying Training School near High Wycombe out through the west of London. This place being called Booker. And —
JH: Which became the headquarters of Bomber Command.
FD: That’s right.
JH: Yes.
FD: It is. But there is also a small airfield which is a communications airfield for Bomber Command in this day and age. But there we were given up to ten hours flying on little Tiger Moths.
JH: Yes.
FD: To determine whether we really had the aptitude to become pilots because they didn’t want to waste money putting us on ships to go to Canada or the United States or wherever to learn to fly if we hadn’t got the aptitude in the first place.
JH: So, that’s interesting. What sort of qualities? Presumably everybody wanted to be a pilot.
FD: Yes.
JH: But what sort of qualities were they looking for specifically in the training?
FD: Well, I can’t say. I think some people have a natural ability and others, you know it can be quite frightening for some people getting in a little aeroplane and going up there. Sort of psychologically they have perhaps not quite the right stuff for this sort of thing.
JH: Yes.
FD: And they looked for athletic people as well. And I suppose they’re thinking of the stress and strain and so on of flying. But anyway there we are.
JH: Yes.
FD: That’s the sort of general picture. And then —
JH: So your first solo flight was a Tiger Moth.
FD: Well, no. They, they took you up to the point at which they were confident that you could go solo.
JH: Yes.
FD: But you did not in fact go solo at this little place.
JH: Oh.
FD: No.
JH: Yes.
FD: But you just reached that point.
JH: Yes. Yes.
FD: There were all sorts of twists and turns and what happened then. But I was then put with a group of people who were sent to Canada to — we went across on a Canadian Pacific liner called the Montcalm. The weather was terrible [laughs] We were all sea sick. And we ended up in Halifax.
JH: Yes.
FD: But anyway then we went to a depot at a place called Moncton where they then decided where, what airfield, what training airfields you were going to go to. And I was most fortunate, at least I regarded myself as most fortunate being sent down to the United States to learn to fly in the United States. America having just, Pearl Harbour had just happened.
JH: Yes.
FD: So America no longer had to play games to try and get around being a neutral country.
JH: Yes.
FD: They were at last in the war.
JH: And a connection with your father’s experience.
FD: Absolutely.
JH: Yes.
FD: Yes.
JH: Yes.
FD: So, and then I, and those immediately with me were sent to a small flying training school at Tuscaloosa in Alabama. Tuscaloosa being the university. The university town for Alabama. Which meant there were quite a lot of lady students around at that time. But there we, we flew admirable aeroplanes called Stearmans which were a class ahead of Tiger Moths such as we had before. We had open cockpits and so on. But they had more powerful engines. They had brakes. You could steer on the ground because you had a tail wheel.
JH: Yes.
FD: When the Tiger Moth just had a little skid at the back. On the assumption you were going to be flying off a grass airfield where we flew off a proper runway and so on. And, well we had, what? The best part of three months I suppose there. And it was the best flying I ever encountered. It was just wonderful flying these little aeroplanes. And then one moved to another airfield. Montgomery in, Montgomery [pause] yes that was Alabama as well. It was called Gunter Field where we flew aircraft called Vultee Valiants which were somewhat like a Harvard. A single engine training plane but with an enclosed cockpit. But these Vultees in fact had fixed undercarriages.
JH: Yes.
FD: But after flying in an open cockpit like a Tiger Moth or a Stearman it was like stepping into a Rolls Royce to actually be in an aircraft with a canopy and a cover. Anyway, one did that and we had two months doing this on the more advanced aircraft. And then we were posted to Turner Field in, in Georgia where we flew twin-engined aircraft. And all those who, or the majority of people who went through the twin-engined training courses was asked if, by this time we were mixed courses of RAF and American airmen as well. And certainly for the Americans all who went through the twin-engined training then went onto Flying Fortresses and Liberators and things. Four engine aircraft. And for the RAF people most of them went on to Halifaxes and Lancasters as one would be back in the UK. But at the completion of that training some who had done a little better than others on the training courses were selected and put through the American Central Flying School to become instructors themselves. So that the whole training process was self-generating.
JH: Yes.
FD: We generated our own instructors as did the rest.
JH: Yes.
FD: And the air force, the American air force and of course the RAF as well was expanding at a tremendous rate. And, and anyway I completed the instructor’s course and was then, well perhaps I’ll dwell a little on the instructor’s course because there were some pretty exceptional people there. There was one man in particular. In fact he was the chief flying instructor. His name was Si Wilson and he was becoming a specialist in learning how to fly in very turbulent flying conditions. In particular flying through thunder storms. And from him one learned a great deal of how to fly safely through thunderstorms because —
JH: Through rather than around or above.
FD: That’s right.
JH: He flew through these storm cells.
FD: That’s right.
JH: Yes.
FD: And I can remember he was giving us a lecture on something. I don’t know what, when the sergeant came in to the lecture room and whispered in his ear and he thanked the sergeant and then turned to us and said, ‘You’ll have to excuse me gentleman but I’m informed that there’s a big thunderstorm approaching and I think it more important that I should get up into it.’ [laughs] And he left the lecture room, went out and got in his aircraft and up he went. But that was the nature of the character of this man who would actually do it. Anyway, I digress but that was just —
JH: So the next stage was presumably to come back.
FD: Yeah.
JH: And be assigned to a squadron.
FD: Yes. There was a little twist to it there because we were sent to a depot in the UK [pause] where we were interviewed and assessed and told where we were to be sent. And during this interview of course they, one of the first questions was, ‘How many flying hours have you got? What have you done?’ And you see the normal through put of pilots from the training schools would have arrived at this selection centre with something like two hundred and thirty flying hours. That was, that was the minimum. But because I’d done a whole year as a flying instructor I had one thousand two hundred flying hours. And this gave one a little bit of preference when it came to what sort of flying you wanted to do. And I was interested in night fighting. I thought well I, if everybody wanted to fly Mosquitoes or Beaufighters if they could but quite apart from flying the aeroplanes I was interested in the technology that went into flying at night. And anyway having expressed this which I was posted to a training school to become a night fighter pilot and I was sent to this training establishment at a place called Grantham. And if you watch Downton Abbey you will know that Lord Grantham was the leading [laughs]
JH: Grantham. Yes.
FD: Chap in the series. Anyway, there we flew semi-obsolete aircraft called Bristol Blenheims. And —
JH: Twin-engined.
FD: Twin-engined.
JH: Yes.
FD: Yes. About the size of a Mosquito. In fact, if anything a bit bigger than a Mosquito or a Beaufighter. But this was to be a stepping stone towards those sort of aircraft. Anyway, I and my mates completed the course but there were still no vacancies on the squadrons. On the night fighter squadrons. So they said, ‘Oh all right. You can do the course again.’ So we did the same course again. So we maintained our flying practice. And then the word came around that Bomber Command was starting to use Mosquitoes as, as bombers.
JH: In the Pathfinder force.
FD: In the Pathfinder force.
JH: Yes.
FD: In the night, Light Night Striking Force. And one or two of us said, ‘Well, why don’t we go down there and talk to the [pause] talk to 8 Group,’ which were the Pathfinders doing this sort of thing, ‘And see if we can achieve success.’ So down we went and we met a great character in Bomber Command called Mahaddie who did the selection.
JH: Hamish Mahaddie.
FD: Mahaddie.
JH: Yes.
FD: You know the name do you?
JH: Yes. Well my father knew him.
FD: Did he?
JH: He was a friend. Yes.
FD: Yes. Yes. You have to excuse me a moment.
JH: Yes, we’ll have a pause here.
[recording paused]
JH: Frank, we were talking about Hamish Mahaddie.
FD: Yes.
JH: An interesting character. And I believe he was Don Bennett’s head-hunter or horse thief.
FD: That’s right.
JH: Is that correct?
FD: Yes. And, well so one was selected and I found myself in 8 Group which was the Pathfinder Group and I was posted to 692 Squadron at, at Graveley. And as you’ve just mentioned Dixie Dean was the station commander and the, and commanding officer of 692 Squadron was [pause] I’ll have to think rather hard for a moment. Joe. It escapes me for the moment. It’ll come.
JH: Never mind. It’ll come back. Yeah. What was the culture like at Graveley at that time?
FD: Oh [pause]
JH: In terms of morale and —
FD: Yes. Well, people, people were cheerful. Yes. People. One wouldn’t, wouldn’t have said that there was any lack of morale. No. Life was perhaps a little, or humour may have been rather exaggerated to counter battles. What else was going on. But no. It was — life was pretty, pretty normal.
JH: And in your book, I might give a plug for your book, “Mosquito Down” A very interesting read. You have an anecdote about Don Bennett.
FD: Yes.
JH: Who turned up one day.
FD: Yes.
JH: In his Mosquito.
FD: That’s right. Well, we’d been briefed. Standard procedure was that at about mid-day on any day we were told which, which crews were on that night as the saying was. And, and that meant that it was desirable to get some sleep in the afternoon and, you know prepare for what might happen that evening. And then we’d be given a time later in the day when we’d have to report to the briefing room to be briefed on what we’d been alerted to do. And this invariably started with the crews sitting in rows of seats in this little theatre in essence. With a screen at the, at the front with a map of Europe on it with coloured ribbons pinned to it to show what the routing was going to be and so as you walked in to the room just by looking at the ribbons you could tell what the, what the target was going to, going to be. And if it was going to be somewhere like Berlin or Essen which were both very heavily defended places a great groan would go up among the boys as they took their seats.
JH: So the ribbons told the story as soon as you walked in.
FD: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And well there, oh yes there was again this time when we turned up to be briefed. I can’t remember what the target was that night but it was of significance that it was our thirteenth trip and it was Friday the 13th [laughs] and Ron, my navigator and I exchanged looks [laughs]
JH: Not that you were superstitious of course.
FD: Not that we were superstitious [laughs] But in the event it was cancelled. So we didn’t go. But the next night was still our thirteenth [laughs] but not on the Friday. And so what sticks in my mind about the briefing that night was here were the tapes on the chart and they led to Berlin. And as we took our seats and having spotted where the tapes were leading the customary groan went up among us all. And then the intelligence officer, as was the pattern stood up to tell us or to give us information that might be useful to us as we went along. Such things as if our reconnaissance aircraft had noticed that they were moving night fighters to airfields closer to the coast or that they were moving guns to particular towns or cities or they were establishing decoys around particular towns to confuse us and things like this. But on this particular occasion as we marched in and spotted Berlin and groaned the intelligence officer who was a new chap got up and said, ‘Well, I don’t think there’s anything that I can tell you tonight that you probably haven’t experienced before.’ And sat down. So that was our total briefing for what was lying in wait for us along the way. That stuck in my mind ever since. ‘Nothing unusual tonight that you haven’t experienced before.’ [laughs] And in fact the heavy bombers that night were going to the northern end of the industrial Ruhr to bomb a town called Duisburg which had big, a big steelworks to do with the Krupps steel making industry and we were to go off. Our take off time had been calculated so that we would pass over Duisburg just as the heavy bombers were turning for home after they dropped their bombs on the town. And that we were then to continue further eastwards to Berlin as we normally did deduce with the objective of drawing the night fighters away from the heavy bombers who were then heading, heading back for home. And as part of the exercises as we approached Duisburg we would throw out what they called Window. Which were these strips of silver paper which when thrown out into the slipstream would create a minute, an image of a very much larger force than in fact we were. And anyway we did our duty doing that.
JH: Any heavy bombers go with you part of the way towards Berlin?
FD: No. No. No.
JH: Just the Mosquitoes.
FD: As soon as they got over Duisburg they turned for home and we continued on. And the Germans would then have to start guessing as to where we were going to go and the size of our bomber force which was quite difficult for them. Or we hoped it was difficult for them. Anyway, the first big town we passed over after leaving Duisburg or as we, was Munster. And as we approached Munster the anti-aircraft gunfire came up and there were many searchlights so even if you were flying at twenty eight thousand feet as we were you could almost read a newspaper up at that height. And we were suddenly hit by something. I thought we were hit by anti-aircraft fire because there were shells coming up. We, we used to use a gadget called Boozer. I don’t know if that’s mentioned in the book but Boozer was a very simple device that we had. It consisted, consisted of two little radio receivers. One tuned to the ground radar frequency used by anti-aircraft guns and searchlights on the ground. And the other part of the receiver was tuned to the night fighter frequencies. So that if there was a night fighter somewhere close to you you’d be warned. You had a yellow warning light to tell you that if it just came on dimly it meant that you were being looked at in general terms but not specifically. But if, if a gun was being, a radar gun was being pointed at you then the light came on very brightly in which case you had to alter course. So that when the shell finally reached your height —
JH: How much leeway would you have in terms of time when that light went on?
FD: We — you counted one second per thousand feet. Feet of altitude. So we would fly at, well commonly at twenty seven, twenty eight thousand feet so we’d count up to twenty eight. Well, we’d alter course immediately the bright light came on. And then you’d count up to twenty eight. Then you’d go back on course again and you’d look over your shoulder and you’d see pop pop pop pop shells bursting where you would have been had you not altered course. And so that was how we played it at the ground radar. And then we had a red warning light which would come on dimly if there was a German night fighter somewhere behind you. And that came on brightly when he was two or three or four hundred yards right behind you. In which case you then did the steepest turn that you’d ever done in your life. And you also used to, you were required to shout out, ‘Snapper,’ on the radio so to warn other aircraft in our immediate vicinity that there was one of these devils very close and very active. Anyway.
JH: And you had no machine guns.
FD: No.
JH: On the Mosquito.
FD: No. No. All we could do was do a very steep turn.
JH: Yeah. Sure.
FD: But you didn’t have to turn very far before you got outside the fighter’s screen. So [pause] anyway it was all a bit complex but you could get outside the area that he was watching.
JH: His envelope. Yeah.
FD: But once, once he got close, close enough he then, the fighter pilot would detach his attention away from radar and instruments and so on because for his final attack if he could get you silhouetted against searchlights then he’d got you.
JH: Yeah.
FD: And so that was the situation that I was in. But I didn’t know that there was a night fighter behind me but in retrospect I can now see that he probably saw me silhouetted against the searchlights. And anyway we got hit and the aircraft gradually went, oh first of all the flying control column was thrashing. Thrashing to and fro. And the aircraft slowly went into a steeper and steeper climb.
JH: You were hit in the tail area.
FD: Well, exactly. One couldn’t handle just at that moment what was happening but subsequently I realised that probably the elevators were either damaged or shot off I think. There was no, there was no elevator control left at all. And the thing then went into, fell away into a spin and I don’t know how many times we went around and around but I suppose it would be five or six times. And my analysis now is that our bomb broke loose. Because we used to just carry one four thousand pound bomb. That was all we had. One four thousand pound. It was a bit longer than this table and was, it was like a big oil drum. An elongated oil drum. But it was four thousand pounds weight and I think as the aircraft spun down I think it broke loose and broke the aircraft. Because one minute one was sitting in the aircraft with shoulder straps on and leg straps all connected to a big buckle here and one minute one was sitting in the aircraft trying to cope with this situation and the next minute one was out in the fresh air. There was no, no sort of undoing of seat belts or opening hatches or anything. There was no transition at all. One minute one was in the plane. The next minute one was out in the darkness tumbling end over end. And I can remember feeling around presuming that I’d still got the, that I was still attached to the seat and — but the seat had gone. My shoulder straps had gone. But one sat on one’s parachute. That was, that was the cushion that you sat on was one’s parachute and that was all still there and I remember pulling the rip cord and being very relieved when the parachute went pop. And eventually after a moment of utter utter confusion it suddenly became quite peaceful.
JH: And could you see the Mosquito going down below you?
FD: No. But, but I did see a big explosion after I don’t know how much time. A minute or so I suppose. But I did see a big explosion which I presumed was the, was my bomb going off. Yeah.
JH: And I bet you were hoping your navigator —
FD: Well —
JH: Had got out.
FD: Well, you see this was the agony of mind. It was really terrible. Yeah. Because as we had gone over Munster and so this time he’d had sufficient time at our cruising altitude in order to calculate a wind and to compare it with the estimated wind that we’d use for our flight planning at the outset. So, by that time he had his, he’d got — he’d calculated a wind. And he’d got out of his seat and ducked down into the little space underneath the instrument panel and gone up into the bombing nose so that he could set up the wind on the bomb sight so that he could be all set for when we got over Berlin which was going to be another forty five minutes later or so. So, he was down there when the aeroplane broke up. And he didn’t wear, he didn’t wear a parachute.
JH: His, his ‘chute was on a hook somewhere.
FD: It was on a little shelf just near his seat. And he, he wore the harness which had two big hooks on it and he was expected, if we got into trouble he was expected to take the parachute off the shelf, clip it on and then open the hatch and jump out. But he wouldn’t have had a chance of doing any of that.
JH: This is Ron Naiff isn’t it? Your navigator.
FD: Ron. Yeah.
JH: Yes.
FD: Yes. Yeah.
JH: So, so there was some wind so were you drifting as you were coming down?
FD: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. I can’t remember what the, what the wind strength was but it was probably something like twenty knots or so because we used to calculate everything in knots. And one comes down in a parachute at something like a thousand feet a minute and I think probably the plane was probably at about twenty thousand feet when it broke up. So it would have taken me about twenty minutes to come down and [pause] A third of an hour. Yeah. And we would have drifted. Yeah. Yes. Drifted five, six miles or so and I think this was the saving grace for me because if people went out and located the wreckage of my plane and they found that one crew member was missing — by that time I was six miles away. And I think that really was my saving grace. That —
JH: And landed, you landed in a farming area or forest.
FD: Yes. I landed. I sort of got down fairly low. I can remember looking down thinking I could see a darker dark patch on the ground and I thought I was coming down in a wood. And almost as soon as I thought the thought I’d hit the ground and in fact I was in, I’d come down in quite a small ploughed field and it was because it had been ploughed that it did show up as being a bit darker than surrounding fields. So I landed on my bum on the soft newly ploughed field.
JH: Had you actually parachuted before in training? Or this was your first jump?
FD: Yes. It was. Yes. They gave us lectures giving simple guidance on what to do but no more than that yeah. Once was enough. Yeah.
JH: So, what, so presumably you had to bury the parachute somehow.
FD: Well, that’s right.
JH: And then figure out what to do. Which —
FD: Needless to say had to hide parachutes somehow.
JH: Yes.
FD: So that again the searching party wouldn’t have a datum point from which to continue.
JH: Yes. And footprints.
FD: Continue the search and so on. So I went to the edge of the field. Buried the parachute in a shallow ditch underneath some undergrowth that was there. And then, oh yes in the lectures that we had you know in which we were taught what to do under these circumstances one of the things they said was take out your escape pack and we all had these little boxes in our, in the breast pockets of our, of our battle dresses. And they said, ‘Take those. Take your escape pack, open it up and,’ they said, ‘On the very top you’ll find a cellophane packet with,’ I think they’re called Bendazine. Bendezine. ‘Benzedrine tablets in them.’ Which in this day and age are regarded as soft drugs that you buy on Saturday nights, I think [laughs] But they said, ‘Take one of these because it will sharpen your wits. Help you to overcome the shock that you’ve been through and,’ they said, ‘It will also put you on your guard if you get caught very soon after coming down because,’ they said, ‘It’s while you are in a state of some shock people are most vulnerable in interrogation.’ So, they said, ‘Take, take one or two of these tablets and that’ll help you pull yourself together. And then,’ they said, ‘Get the hell out of it. Get as far away as you possibly can.’ Which I did. And, well the story goes on and on in the book. But I did find my way to a, into a wood. I don’t know if you want me to go into all of it.
JH: That is interesting. In the book you, I remember you were in this wood.
FD: Yes.
JH: And you kept hearing all this shouting going on.
FD: Yes.
JH: And you thought they were closing in on you.
FD: Yes. Well, to start with, just as I was, quite soon after I left this ploughed field and found my way to a little road which was heading in a general sort of north westerly direction I started out walking out along this and I heard this big heavy vehicle coming along behind. And I couldn’t see it at first and, but there were men walking along the road ahead of it with flashlights which they were shining in the hedgerows and trees and things as this vehicle went along. And my first thought was that they were shining the flashlights to see if they could see someone like me. But in fact I then doubled around and walked along behind this vehicle and every once in a while one got a silhouette of the vehicle against the light of these torches and so on. And one could see that it was a very very big vehicle with a tarpaulin over, over the top. And so as it went along with these guys I was walking along behind it and then eventually we came to this wood and this vehicle turned up a little pathway into the, into the wood. And I thought well if they are still looking for me I’ll come into the wood and find somewhere to hide. Which I did. I found a bit of a ditch that had been overgrown with brambles and ferns and undergrowth of various kinds and I buried myself in this and the vehicle continued on for another, I don’t know three or four hundred yards perhaps. And then there was a lot of shouting and then I heard the engine stop on this vehicle and then it all went quiet. And then in my little hiding place I got a little sleep then. And then after perhaps an hour or so more shouting and the sound of this vehicle’s engine running and so on one then had this extraordinary experience of a noise louder than I’d heard in my life before. And one saw this great column of smoke going up into the air. And it was one of these V-2s being launched. But what was so extraordinary was that it wasn’t being launched from any sort of prepared launching site. There was no, no sort of concrete constructions of any sort there. It seemed to be just a cleared space in the middle of the forest. And I thought, you know this was, this became very important to me to get back home to tell people that the Germans were launching rockets from where ever they chose to launch them. They didn’t have to have a specially prepared launching site as was the case with V-1s. The V-1s did have to have specially constructed concrete launching ramps which the V-2s quite clearly did not.
JH: Well, that is interesting and if you had have been caught by these Germans watching a launch.
FD: Yes.
JH: You would have been in a very difficult situation I would have thought.
FD: Yes. That’s true. Yeah. So, anyway it must have been at about the time of this launching that I sort of checked on my own situation and opened up my escape pack and discovered that the night before I hadn’t been taking Benzedrine tablets. I’d been taking water purifying tablets [laughs] Yeah. But yes.
JH: Chlorine.
FD: Yeah. That’s right. Yes.
JH: So, you, I guess you had a compass in part of the kit.
FD: Yes I did.
JH: And how far were you from the Dutch border?
FD: I reckoned it was about eighty kilometres. And I managed to cover that distance in four nights of walking. It was actually on the fifth day that I finally confirmed that I was in Holland.
JH: And reading, reading the chapter in the book this was farmland. Farm areas.
FD: Yes.
JH: Villages.
FD: Yes.
JH: It’s not wilderness. And I seem to remember that almost night and day there was quite a bit of rain.
FD: Yes.
JH: And was that a, was that an advantage for you in that you know with not so many people out walking along the lanes?
FD: Well, that, that may well have been the case. But I think I had probably two dry nights to start with but after that yes it was raining and drizzling and I got sopping wet. Yeah. That added to my misery I can tell you. Yeah.
JH: And you did have some close calls with some German soldiers.
FD: Yes. Yes. That’s right. One night when I was walking along I could, I could hear laughter and shouting and so on. And I think this was probably four or five that I, rather than bumping in to them and being accosted when I could speak no German of course I thought it best to turn in the opposite direction and get as far away as quickly as I could. So that was the first encounter. And another time on an another night walking along in the darkness I almost bumped into a German truck that was stuck at the side of the road with the bonnet open and two German soldiers were poking about in the engine trying to get it started. But I just walked to the other side of the road and hid behind a tree and watched. Of course it was only later that I discovered that the Germans were desperately short of petrol and diesel oil and so on and they were putting all sorts of rubbish I think into the tanks.
JH: Thanks to Bomber Command.
FD: That’s right.
JH: Yes.
FD: That’s right. Yes.
JH: So had you found like an overcoat or something to put over your —
FD: No.
JH: Your flying dress?
FD: No. No. But very much later when I was joined by other allied aircrew when I was living on a particular farm one of the chaps who came to join me was my Australian friend Jim Strickland who faced with this very question, well like me he had started by, he’d come down near Dusseldorf. And he was, like me walking into Holland or hoping to walk into Holland. But he found that, found it so difficult walking in the darkness that he took to walking in the daytime. And he took off — we used to, used to wear heavy knitted navy blue sweaters like the one that you’re wearing. But they were very long and come down almost to your knees and when one was wearing one’s uniform on top of that, one’s battle dress one used to throw the bottom piece up over your chest so you had two layers of of the sweater. And what, what Jim hit upon was taking his sweater off altogether and putting the sweater on top of his uniform. And he said he gathered an armful of brushwood as though he was taking it home to kindle the kitchen stove or something. And he said wearing his sweater and carrying his bundle [laughs] bundle of firewood under his arm he said he found people walked past him. German soldiers and civilians and nobody gave him a second look.
JH: So, so Frank let’s maybe jump ahead a few days. Your first encounter with friendly Dutch people.
FD: Yes.
JH: Across the border.
FD: Yes.
JH: How did that come about?
FD: Well, I was pretty all in after four nights of, of walking and as I’ve described I was cold, wet and so on. And walking along this particular road I saw there was a farmhouse quite close to the road. And so I walked around the back of this house and there was a farmyard immediately behind. And on the far side of the farmyard was a large barn and it had a big doorway at one end, big enough for a horse and cart to be driven through. But that was all tightly secured and I couldn’t get in there. But walking around the side I did find a side door that was open which admitted me into a storeroom of some sort with farm tools and all sorts of things in it. And it had a ladder which clearly went up in to the hayloft. So I clambered up the ladder. Got into the hayloft and the hayloft was about a quarter full of hay. And I took my outer garments off. My battle dress top and my trousers and shoes and so on and hung them up on a beam hoping they’d dry a little bit. Then I dug myself down right into the hay pile and fell, fell sound asleep. And I was awakened probably about 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning by the sound of a fighter plane diving down and firing its machine guns and cannon at something very close to the farmhouse. And then it pulled up and went around and I think it came in a second time and fired further bursts. Anyway, I remained where I was in my hay pile. And then I heard cautious footsteps coming up the ladder into the hayloft and I, the circumstances were such that I was quite sure that whoever these, this person or these people were they were afraid of something that was going on outside. They’d come up to hide where I was and that gave me a little bit of encouragement. And then I heard excited whispering going on just three or four paces away from where I was lying and I realised that whoever these people were they’d found my battledress and top hanging on the beam. So, I came out of my hiding place in the hay and frightened the daylights of two sixteen year old boys. There was I just in my underpants and a vest [laughs] But they were very quick on the uptake and they said, ‘Be stil. Be stil.’ Stil being the word for quiet in Dutch. And, and they said, ‘You. You Tommy pilot?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And they said, ‘We have German, German soldiers in the farmhouse.’ And what had happened was that this patrolling fighter had been flying around looking for vehicles moving on the road that it could attack. And it had seen a German army truck coming and indeed it had come and attacked it and wrecked it and the Germans in it had run for their lives. And the nearest shelter they could see was this farmhouse. They burst in through the front door of the farmhouse and as they came in through the front door these two young lads left by the back door and ran across to the barn where I was. Then some discussion ensued between us and one of these boys spoke a little English and he said, ‘My father is school master in the town. Perhaps he knows someone who could help. I will go to my father tonight and see if we can. See if something can be arranged.’ And I suppose it was about that time that the two boys had gone back down into the farmhouse to confirm that the German soldiers had departed. I think the house, the farmer’s wife had given them a cup of coffee a piece or something and they’d pushed off on foot to go back to report to their headquarters that they’d lost a truck. Anyway, that’s, that’s how it started to develop. And it was as a consequence of this lad going into the town and finding his father that someone was alerted to come and see me.
JH: So, so that someone was part of the Resistance.
FD: Yes.
JH: Movement.
FD: Yes. He was.
JH: And was the plan to try and get you back behind the lines?
FD: Yes. It was.
JH: But in fact you, you didn’t did you? You got involved actively with the Resistance.
FD: Well —
JH: How did that come about?
FD: Well, it must have been at about that time that a communication link had been established across the River Rhine because up to the Rhine the southern part of Holland had been liberated. And the Rhine was actually the front line.
JH: That was the front.
FD: That was the front. And this was a big obstacle for the likes of me because the Germans were pouring reinforcements in to the opposite bank to oppose any crossing of the Rhine. So that it became quite difficult just to get to the water’s edge. Well, it would be difficult for me to get to the water’s edge to swim across the other side. And the Rhine was very wide there. It’s about a quarter of a mile wide getting on for, I was going to say [unclear]
JH: Was there another complication in that the remnants of Market Garden —
FD: Yes.
JH: Operation.
FD: Yeah.
JH: The British paratroopers.
FD: Yes.
JH: Hundreds of them.
FD: That’s right.
JH: Were also trying to get —
FD: That’s right.
JH: Across the Rhine.
FD: That’s right. I was about twenty kilometres or so from Arnhem where all that was happening and I never determined any exact figure but probably something like four or five hundred British and Canadian airborne troops were in hiding in in the neighbourhood of Arnhem. Preferring not to be taken prisoner and with no possibility of getting back over the river. And these were quite an embarrassment to the Dutch because they had to find food for them, they had to find civilian clothes for them and just places to hide. And so one of our — do you know about MI9?
JH: Yes.
FD: This particular man in MI9 established a contact point in the power station at Nijmegen which had a private telephone line to the power station at Ede just outside Arnhem on our side of the Rhine. And messages could be passed to and fro. I knew nothing of all this going on of course but the word came from the other side that we were to stay where we were and keep, keep — keep hidden because the British would be coming over in the fullness of time.
JH: So, were you recruited by the British Special Operations or by the Dutch Resistance?
FD: Just by the Dutch. Just by the Dutch people.
JH: And you had to establish a bone fides.
FD: Yes. Exactly. Yes. One went through this.
JH: So what sort of operations were you involved in with the Dutch?
FD: In the main just the supply drops for when they were supplied by, with guns, ammunition and food. You know.
JH: Was that 100 Group that carried out those operations?
FD: In the main yes but when I enquired as to who, in fact this was after the war and I asked or made enquiries. They said, ‘Oh, you were almost, almost certainly supplied by 38 Group. Not 100 Group.’ I think 100 Group were dropping secret agents. I think in the main dropping secret agents all over Europe but 38 Group was partially concerned with dropping supplies.
JH: What would be a typical operation that you were involved in? Give me an example of — was it a weapons drop? Did you have to have torches out there?
FD: Oh yes.
JH: And radio contact.
FD: We had no, no radio contact. In fact, when I was interrogated they said to me, ‘Do you know the Morse code?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes.’ And they said, Can you send and receive messages with a lamp?’ And I said, ‘Yes. Not very well but yes I can.’ And, well there was, they then thought that I would be quite useful if I did take part in one of these or in a series of drops. At first one would lay out a flare path party. A flare path which would consist of perhaps sixty err six men lined along the edge of a strip of of a field. Each equipped with a flashlight and being spaced I suppose about fifty metres apart. So you’d have perhaps six men with flashlights forming a line. And then I would be out to the left of the up wind end of the line with another torch and as, as the bomber approached us I would, I would be flashing the letter Z for Zone. It being the dropping zone.
JH: Did you have a special code for that night that was?
FD: Yes. Yes. Yes, we did.
JH: Communicated by the BBC.
FD: Yes.
JH: Yeah.
FD: I see you’ve read the book.
JH: I sure have.
FD: Yes. The BBC would read out these phrases after the 1 o’clock news at midday and these phrases would mean nothing to people who were not in the know. But we used to listen for a phrase which in Dutch was, ‘What has Peter’s brother brought?’ That was what we had to listen for. ‘What has Peter’s brother brought?’ That meant then we were going to have a drop that night. And then at, after the 6 o’clock BBC news they would repeat that. ‘What has Peter’s brother brought?’ And then they would quote another phrase which I cannot remember at the moment which told us at what period of the night they would come. Either between nine, 9 o’clock and midnight. Or midnight and three in the morning. Or three in the morning until six in the morning. Something like that. So that confirmed that they really were coming and you knew the period of the night. And then off we would go. Out into the, out into the fields. It was probably the best part of an hour’s walk to get out to our dropping zone. And there it was. And we would line up the chaps and I’d be there with my torch and we would establish lookouts in the general area so that if inquisitive people got near we could either stop them or at least warn the people at the dropping zone that there were people around.
JH: What about German patrols? Did they —
FD: Well, this is the sort of situation we were, we were concerned about. I don’t or we never or at least I never heard that there were patrols as such. But there was a radar station quite close to where we did all this. And the Germans manning the radar station might well have been very curious [laughs] But we managed successfully. Yeah.
JH: And I gather as, as time went on there were some nasty incidents.
FD: Yes.
JH: As the front was, was moving.
FD: Yes.
JH: Could you tell us about some of those?
FD: Well, in, in February 1945 it was becoming evident to us and of course to the Germans that preparations were being made on the other side of the River Rhine for a crossing. And we could guess within ten miles or so as to where this was going to take place because just by looking at a map you could see where there were roads pointing to particular localities. With bridges perhaps that might be useful to capture or even if they didn’t have existing bridges where a bridge, a floating bridge could be put across and so on. So you would guess fairly generally where a particular locality was likely. And this is exactly what happened. But because of that the Germans of course were bringing more and more reinforcements in to the neighbourhood against the day when all this was going to happen. And on this particular day a German truck arrived at the farm. And I suppose there was something like twenty or so German soldiers there and they announced to the farmer and his wife that they were going to be billeted there. And the officer and the sergeant took over the front parlour of this little house and the, some of the troops were billeted actually in the barn and more of them were billeted in another barn also adjoining the general area. And, and life, life proceeded. And each evening the Germans would come into the kitchen of the house for warmth apart from anything else because the kitchen stove was kept going with wood. With a wood fire all the time. And the German soldiers fraternised with the family and perhaps one should make the point that the farmer and his wife had ten children which was quite a significant number. And by this time there were in fact seven of us allied aircrew in hiding in a hiding place in the hayloft of the barn which in fact was actually joined to the farm house and our hiding place was over the kitchen. And when the German soldiers were chatting up the family and having conversations we could hear what was being said and what was going on. We were as close as that. And of course at night when people were in their various sleeping places again they were not, not very far away. Oh one might mention that they’d driven their truck into the barn itself and two or three of the soldiers actually slept in the truck with a bit of straw I suppose to provide a bit of a mattress. But anyway it was a pretty cosy situation with seven of us there, twelve of the family including the ten children and ten or so soldiers sleeping in different parts of our barn. And that must have gone on, I suppose for about ten days or so. And all the time we were —
JH: Very tense situation because you were in a way putting the Dutch family in —
FD: Yes.
JH: Real jeopardy.
FD: Yes.
JH: If you were caught.
FD: Yes.
JH: How did you come to terms with that?
FD: Well, we did come to terms with it and more particularly they came to terms with it but it was, one could tell the stress was starting to tell. It’s interesting that it was the farmer’s wife and the eldest daughter who in fact were less nervous than the old farmer himself. Yeah.
JH: Very brave people.
FD: Very very brave.
JH: Yes. And I believe you became lifelong friends.
FD: Absolutely.
JH: With these Dutch families.
FD: Yes.
JH: And the Resistance people.
FD: Yes. In fact this very evening I may be talking to a granddaughter who is over here from Holland and there was a message on my telephone last night saying, ‘Frank, we cannot contact you. We will call you again tomorrow.’ So —
JH: Marvellous. Yes.
FD: It’s kept alive up to this day.
JH: Yes. What about liberation? What, what happened when you were liberated?
FD: Well, that was extraordinary.
JH: British army.
FD: Yes. Well. You see it must have been about on about the 26th or 27th of March the British and Canadian armies did cross the River Rhine and established, they established a bridgehead over on our side. And there was a fair bit of fighting going on. And I think it was on the night of the 28th [pause] Yes. There was quite a lot of gunfire. Artillery fire coming down in our neighbourhood and in our hiding place we would, oh we propped up some of the pantile tiles which were on the roof of our hiding place so that we could peer out. And we could see one farmhouse out to the east of us that was burning and another one on the western side that had part of its roof blown off by, by shellfire. And we could see shells landing on the main road which was about a half a mile away. That was quite interesting because as the shells hit the road you get a great jet of fire along the asphalt surface as they, as they detonated. It was a curious spectacle. Anyway, and there was rifle or machine gun fire and so on. And then I suppose probably about 8 o’clock in the morning or something there was a tap on the trap door in to our hiding place. And we opened it up and there was the farmer down below and he said, ‘Boys, the Germans have gone. The Germans have gone. They’ve pulled out.’ And he said, ‘We think there is a Tommy tank. A Tommy tank on the road.’ So, we all clambered out of our hiding place and I and Jim Strickland, the Australian, and Joe Davis, one of the Americans set off across the fields to the main road. And there we saw a British armoured car sitting on the road. And this armoured car had a little six pounder gun in a gun turret and it was sort of waving. Waving around looking at things. And we walked towards this vehicle and I’m not sure whether we had our hands up or anything. Anyway, we walked towards it feeling very nervous and got right alongside it and no sort of recognition was given from within. And I remember banging on the side of this thing with its engine running. I’m told these Humber armoured cars could go as fast backwards as they could go forwards and clearly it was on reconnaissance looking to see where the German front line was when, as we approached. Anyway, subsequent to my banging on the side the steel lid on the gun turret opened and out came what I recall as a huge moustache. And I said to this guy, ‘My name’s Dell,’ or something, ‘RAF. And I’ve been in hiding here for a little while. And this is my American friend Joe Davis and Jim from Australia and we’ve all been hiding together here.’ And this chap said, ‘Jolly good show. Jolly good show.’ And it was the Household Cavalry. Which is a very aristocratic bit of the British army. In fact curiously I was watching on television last night this celebration for the Queen’s birthday. I don’t know if you saw it.
JH: I’ve recorded it. Yeah.
FD: Did you?
JH: For my grandson. We’re going to have a look. Yeah.
FD: You’ll see the household cavalry there. Anyway —
JH: Oh, that’s marvellous.
FD: They then radioed back to their headquarters and a vehicle called a Duck W came to our rescue. I don’t know if you know a duck. Duck.
JH: Amphibious.
FD: Yes.
JH: Vehicle.
FD: That’s right.
JH: Yes.
FD: Yes. It came and picked up me and the American and Jim and then we, in it we went back to the farmhouse to meet the other guys. And that was really a very poignant moment in time and in our lives because —
JH: And I would think the next poignant moment would be reuniting with your family.
FD: Well, yes, you see that was something because in this, once we were all together well having literally endured all these dangers at the Prinzen’s farmhouse suddenly in the space of five minutes or so we simply had to say goodbye to them, you know. We’d got to get out of here because for all one knew the Germans might have staged another counter attack or something and the British would have been forced back. Anyway we got out and we were taken.
JH: Ushered to the rear.
FD: Ushered to the rear. And we were taken to this little town. Now, what’s it called? I can’t remember. Anyway, there we were given accommodation and we were interrogated. Oh yes, and quite early on they said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to send a telegram to your family to say that you’re safe and well,’ Because we realised that they would never have been told anything of us being around and being alive. All they would have had was a telegram the day after we were shot down that we were missing. That’s all, all that they would have known. So we were each given a telegram form to fill in which we did and, and that was that. And then a day or two later we were flown back to this airfield. Northolt. Just outside, well not far from Heathrow in London. And again we were exhaustively interrogated and given another telegram form to send to the family which we all did. And in my case I simply said, you know knowing we’d already sent them one from Holland I sent this one saying, “Hope to be home tomorrow. If not tomorrow probably the next day.” Or something like this. In the event they never got the one from Holland so the first news my family had that one was alive at all was this very nonchalant one saying hopefully home today. But if not tomorrow. Today. If I’m not home today I’ll come tomorrow. That was the first they knew that I was alive.
JH: After what? Six months?
FD: Six months. Six months.
JH: My goodness.
FD: Yeah. That was, that was really quite something. Yeah. My, my mother was of a religious turn of mind and she thought it was all a miracle. Perhaps it was. Anyway —
JH: What did they, what were they thinking in that time? That you had survived or —
FD: Well —
JH: That maybe not.
FD: My, my mother was hopeful. Yes. My father having been in the ‘14/18 war and seen the sort of things that went on he was, he was more pessimistic. Yeah. But however, there we are. But it was quite a thing linking up with them. As you can well imagine.
JH: Well, Frank that’s an amazing story.
FD: Well —
JH: And, but maybe we should start to wind up this interview. It’s been fantastic.
FD: Well, obviously I —
JH: But you carried on flying.
FD: Well, yeah.
JH: Tell us about that.
FD: Well, I could tell you a little bit about that but let me tell you, I don’t know if you’re familiar with this book. It’s called, “Operation Hurricane.”
JH: No. I’m not. Who’s the author of that?
FD: A chap called Marc Hall.
JH: Yes.
FD: I suppose about five years ago I was in the UK and I got a phone call from this chap and he said, ‘My name’s Marc Hall,’ and he said, ‘I’m doing some research with a view to writing a book about Operation Hurricane.’ And I said, ‘Oh yes.’ And he said, ‘The world at large doesn’t know that the night you were shot down was the greatest air operation carried out by Bomber Command in the whole of the war.’ It was the greatest operation carried out by Bomber Command in the whole of the war.
JH: In terms of the number of heavy bombers in the air or the success of the targeting?
FD: Yes. The total success of the total operation. He said, ‘You know that the principal target being bombed that night was Duisburg but every sort of device had been used to confuse the enemy. Like you flying over Duisburg and then continuing on to Berlin because the Germans weren’t expecting you to go on to Berlin. And therefore they were confused and starting chasing your lot instead of chasing the heavy, British heavy bombers that were then turning for home and so on.’ And they put up an artificial radar, the British put up an artificial radar screen broadcast by 100 Group aircraft along the Dutch and German coast. Just to confuse things in that way. And I think there were two if not three minor bombing attacks quite apart from Duisburg. I think we bombed Hamburg and Brunswick and Berlin of course. All at the same, virtually at the same time as Duisburg. Just to confuse the Germans. And then they said and the Germans were pretty totally confused. I think we put up something like two thousand three hundred, well I say two thousand three hundred aircraft, two thousand three hundred sorties were flown. Some of them flown twice in the night. In the same night that Duisburg was bombed.
JH: Is that —
FD: But out of two thousand five hundred or something I think we lost something like twenty seven aircraft which was an extraordinarily low percentage of loss. Anyway —
JH: So, that must give you some real satisfaction you played a key role in that operation.
FD: Indeed.
JH: And, you know you were shot down.
FD: Yes.
JH: And you lost Ron.
FD: Yes.
JH: But that, that is quite interesting.
FD: Yes.
JH: That that is one of the most important raids.
FD: Indeed. And I said to him, ‘Well, how did you pick on me?’ And he said, ‘Well, the Bomber Command Diary and your squadron backed up by your squadron, your Squadron Diary as well show that yours was the only Mosquito shot down that night.’ And he said, ‘I’ve been at pains to contact some member of the family of every aircraft that was lost that night.’ And in a way he did quite a Christian act I think.
JH: Yes.
FD: In tracing where each of them, each aircraft —
JH: Yes.
FD: Had come down that night. And he’d contacted the families of each, each aircraft that had been lost just as he’d contacted me.
JH: Some sort of closure as they say.
FD: Anyway, we met up after his initial phone call. We had a natter. We linked up and had a few cups of coffee and talked about it and I said, ‘Well, now look. You’re, you’re about to put together a book. I’ve had some interest in putting a book out myself and I wouldn’t want to run into any legal battle with you if you’re going to press ahead of me.’ And he said, ‘Oh don’t you worry about that because,’ he said, ‘Anything you put out will supplement anything in my book and if anything it will boost more sales of my book.’ So he said, ‘Don’t worry. You go ahead. You publish.’ And it took me another three, three or four years to get to the point at which —
JH: Same publisher, your book, as “Operation Hurricane.” Is it the same publisher?
FD: Just underneath —
JH: I think it is. Yes.
FD: Take a quick look. [pause] Yes. It’s the same publisher.
JH: Yes.
FD: The publisher is Fighting High Limited. Yeah.
JH: Yes.
FD: Yes.
JH: Frank, why don’t, this is absolutely fantastic and we could go on for hours and I think I’ve broken the rules for the length of time for the interview.
FD: Oh no. No. I’m sorry if I’ve —
JH: No. This is amazing. So, so after the war. Post war.
FD: Yeah.
JH: Marriage.
FD: Yes.
JH: BEA airline pilot.
FD: Well, there’s a little story there in that in the latter stages of the war people were invited to apply for permanent commissions in the RAF. And this, this was my lifelong ambition to be in the permanent RAF if I could achieve this. And so I applied and then when my demobilisation date came up — no news about a permanent commission. So, I liked, I liked the actual flying of aeroplanes. I was also fascinated by the technology that went into it. So, as you’ve already identified I applied to get in to British European Airways which, which I did. And let me see. That would have been, would have been the winter of 1945, nineteen forty —
JH: ’46.
FD: ’46. Yes.
JH: Yes.
FD: ’46/47 which was a miserable time in the UK and so on. So, having joined BEA it so happened that a notice appeared on the notice board one day saying applications are invited to fill the vacancies in a new airline to be set up in Cyprus. And Isabel and I had not long been married and the thought of sunshine and the Mediterranean and all that appealed greatly to her so I applied and was accepted.
JH: I bet you weren’t the only applicant for that job.
FD: Yes. I got it.
JH: Well done.
FD: Yes. Now, the reason I’m explaining this is that we got out to Cyprus and we got very well established out there and the did sun shine and there were nice beaches for swimming and there was no rationing. And life was pretty good although we, I must say we worked very very hard but that’s by the by. But while I was there my permanent commission in the RAF came through. Two years after the end of the war. And one then had a very difficult decision to make. Did one take up one’s permanent commission in the RAF? Or did one stay in the airline? I can assure that was very very difficult. However, my wife decided that we would stay in the airline [laughs] so we did five years in Cyprus.
JH: Sounds like it was a good decision.
FD: Yes. It worked out exceedingly well.
JH: Yes. Yes.
FD: Because [pause] the world doesn’t know about these things but British European Airways or the nucleus of British European Airways was a bit of Transport Command in the RAF at the end of the war. And in the company’s charter it said, you know, you are commanded to develop airline routes in Europe and in the British Isles etcetera etcetera and it would be born in mind that in a national emergency or war BEA would again revert to being in Transport Command in the RAF.
JH: Ah. That’s interesting.
FD: Yeah. The world doesn’t know or has forgotten that this is so. So, anyway after flying on the line as they described for ten years or so I applied for a management appointment and got it and became what they called a flight manager. Each type of aircraft. We had a huge, well, I say huge, we had a big flight of Vickers Viscount aircraft and not long after the war TAA had Viscounts here in Australia. We had a good link with them. And I became a flight manager on one of the Viscount flights. And then we got a bigger version called the Vanguard and I became a manager of one of those things. And then we got jets. We got these things called Tridents which the Americans copied it by building Boeing 73 — 727s with three engines in the tail [unclear] Three engines in the tail. And it, I was in the, in the, we had three flights of Tridents. I had one of them and I was on, in the one that was closely connected with technical development which I did for a time and well all that becomes a bit complex and I could hold forth for another hour on that.
JH: But I see from the photo that you were a royal pilot.
FD: Yeah.
JH: At one stage. How did that come about?
FD: Well, I was fortunate because I was, I was fairly close to the top of the management pyramid that I I —well there were only two, two chaps above me. But the two fellows, these two fellows that were there, the flight operations director and the chief pilot had both just completed conversion courses to fly on new aircraft called the Lockheed Tristar. And Buckingham Palace wanted to charter an aeroplane but she could have gone on the, she was going on a state visit to Finland and she could have gone on the Concorde for example. But the world doesn’t know this but Buckingham Palace are very careful with their money and they don’t spend a penny more than they absolutely have to and they decided the Concorde would be too expensive. They decided a 747 would be too expensive but a Trident would be ideal. So I got the job of flying the Queen on the state visit to Finland. And I had five of the most memorable days of my life I suppose. Flying her around Finland and bringing her back home again. Yeah.
JH: Marvellous.
FD: Yeah.
JH: Well, Frank I think it’s time for a cup of tea.
FD: Yeah.
JH: And lets close this off. Thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed this. And maybe we’ll carry on after hours here. Thank you very much indeed.
FD: Well, you’ve been very very kind and very supportive. Thank you so much for what you’ve done. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble.
JH: Not at all. A real pleasure.
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Interview with Frank Dell
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John Horsburgh
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-05-20
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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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ADellFH160520
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Pending review
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01:57:30 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Dell’s father was a member of the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and so it was perhaps inevitable that Frank would share the fascination with aviation and a desire to fly. As a teenager Frank witnessed the aerial battles of the Battle of Britain overhead and so he volunteered as soon as he was old enough. After training in the US Frank was retained as an instructor. On his return to the UK he was posted to 692 Squadron at RAF Graveley flying Mosquitoes. His navigator was killed when the plane was attacked. Frank managed to evade for several days despite many close calls and on one occasion while hiding he witnessed a launch of a V-2 from a forest clearing. He sought shelter in a Dutch farmhouse from where he joined with the Resistance and other allied aircrew until liberation.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1945-02
692 Squadron
aircrew
evading
Mosquito
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Graveley
Resistance
shot down
training
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1627/25335/BThickettPSaundersEJv10015.2.jpg
9bc19ea0e1f799ea52f46131c14fa0ad
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
Saunders, Ernest John. Album 1
Description
An account of the resource
A history of Sam Saunders RAF experiences complete with a biography. It is presented in an album.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Penny Thicket
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-02-13
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Saunders, EJ
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
During January 1944 he was based in North Weald, Hendon and Boxted flying War Operations 48 to 53 and bombing across Germany; Hamburg, Duisberg, Magdeburg, Berlin, dropping 500lb bombs.
In February he moved to 692 Squadron and stayed there until the end of August 1944. This Squadron was specifically involved in bombing into Germany and Berlin, Daddy carried out one of the first drops of a 1x 400lb bomb. Then there was the bombing of Frankfurt, Berlin and Augsberg.
“In February 1944, an entirely Mosquito raid was successfully carried out against Düsseldorf. It was formed of the usual marker aircraft from 105 Squadron, 692 Squadron Mosquitos each carrying a single 4,000 lb 'cookie' and backup aircraft with 500 lb delayed action bombs.”
692 Squadron was formed at Graveley, Huntingdonshire on 1st January 1944. It was equipped with Mosquito light bombers and became part of the force of fast, high-flying night raiders, the Light Night Striking Force of No 8 (PFF) Group. They made a name for themselves with regular journeys to Berlin, hitting the German capital again and again with up to 4 x 500 lb bombs.
Total Flying Hours to date 793.40 by day and 533.50 by night.
Through March and April 1944, with a few flights with 571 Squadron, the 400lb 'cookie' bombs were being dropped regularly, firstly and famously over Düsseldorf as well as Hannover, Hamburg and Dortmund.
The Drops continued into August, attacking Cologne, Berlin, Bremmen, Metz, Saarbruchen, Hannover, Gelsenkirchen, Osnabruck and Stuttgart. The bombing was relentless and by the end of August he had flown more than 10 times to Berlin, dropping bombs.
By Operation 97 there are details of accuracy of the bombing, errors being 260 to 99 yards at 20,000 feet and some flights are specifically 'dummy' ones, either in the UK or across other regions of Germany, practising for the major bomb drops.
[page break]
[black and white photograph]
692 Squadron.
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
Sam Saunders 692 Squadron
Description
An account of the resource
Details of Sam's operations with 692 squadron, mainly against German cities.
There is a photograph of the squadron arranged in front of two Mosquitoes.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Penny Thickett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-10
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed sheet and one b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Text. Personal research
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BThickettPSaundersEJv10015
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--Hamburg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Bremen
France--Metz
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Stuttgart
Great Britain
England--Colchester
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Saarbrücken
France
Germany
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Essex
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01
1944-02
1944-03
1944-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jan Waller
105 Squadron
571 Squadron
692 Squadron
8 Group
bombing
Mosquito
Pathfinders
RAF Graveley
RAF Hendon
RAF North Weald
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1628/25550/PSaundersEJ20010103.2.jpg
01bae0cdc1a06d4c37f9acb6f1b18ee3
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
Saunders, Ernest John. Album 2
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
2020-02-13
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
Saunders, EJ
Description
An account of the resource
Album containing photographs of his training and service in North Africa and with Bomber Command.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
692 Squadron and Mosquitos
Description
An account of the resource
A large group of airmen arranged in three rows in front of two Mosquitos.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph on an album page
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PSaundersEJ20010103
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
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
692 Squadron
aircrew
ground personnel
Mosquito
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force