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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/99/928/BArcherSWArcherSWv10002.2.jpg
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Title
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Archer, Stanley
S Archer
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Description
An account of the resource
18 items. The collection concerns the career of Flight Sergeant Stanley Archer. He originally trained as a fitter and served in Fighter Command before re-mustering as a flight engineer and flying operations with 97 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa. The collection includes a memoir, a joke medal, an engine test report, a diagram of constant speed units, three operation honours cards and 11 photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemarie Da Costa and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Archer, S
Date
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2016-04-29
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[inserted] F/LT STAN W. ARCHER DFM 97 & 467 SQDNs [/inserted]
My association with the Lancaster started in 1942. I was one of the first Flight Engineers to be trained specifically for operational duty on this new bomber which for a while after its introduction carried two pilots.
The training started with an Air Gunnery course, 6 weeks at Walney Island and the flying carried out on Defiants. We were posted from the Gunnery School to our bomber squadrons in my case 97 Sqdn at Woodall Spa. 10 of us. Ten more went to 106 Sqdn at Coningsby and the remaining 10 went to Waddington.
97 Sqdn with 44 Sqdn have just carried out the incredible daylight raid to Ausburg [sic], 6 aircraft from each [deleted] each [/deleted] Squadron. This raid was to bring Sqdn. Ldr. Nettleton the Victoria Cross. [deleted] and [/deleted] We were received with some incredibility and disbelief, but we were soon to go on to our Lancaster Training. This was 2 weeks at Avros [sic] at Chadderton, followed by 2 weeks at Woodford. As I recall, the Instructors went through the various systems of the aeroplane, but of course there was no flying training and no real Engineer training.
This month with Avro’s was followed
[page break]
by a month at [inserted] No 4 S of T.T. [/inserted] St. Athans [sic] where we were instructed by R.A.F Flight Engineers on the Halifax which had only one thing in common with the Lancaster. The Halifax 1 had Merlin Engines. The course was in my case rather a waste of time, as I had worked as a fitter on Merlin Engines fitted to the Hurricane & Spitfires, and as all of the u/t Engineers were Fitter II E’s most of them knew the Merlin.
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Title
A name given to the resource
Training as a flight engineer on Lancasters
Description
An account of the resource
Stanley Archer’s account of his training as one of the first flight engineers for Lancaster operations in 1942. First he attended an air gunnery course then transferred to 97 squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. He comments on a daylight operation on Augsburg. Training continued for a month at Avro's at Chadderton then Woodford. This was ground based on Lancaster systems, there being no flying training. This was followed by a month at RAF St Athan on Halifaxes. He had previously worked as a fitter on Hurricanes and Spitfires and he considered the course a waste of time.
Creator
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Stanley Archer
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942
Format
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Two handwritten pages
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BArcherSWArcherSWv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Germany
England--Lincolnshire
England--Chadderton
Germany--Augsburg
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
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1942
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
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David Bloomfield
106 Squadron
97 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Defiant
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Hurricane
Lancaster
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Coningsby
RAF St Athan
RAF Stockport
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodhall Spa
Spitfire
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/200/3335/PBaconSG1601.1.jpg
70945e1921ef54e6d100ad826375db35
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/200/3335/ABaconSG160216.2.mp3
b7fb370705e8e6280c2275db97ad276e
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
Bacon, Stephen Granville
Stephen Bacon
Stephen Granville Bacon
Stephen G Bacon
S Bacon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Stephen Granville Bacon (1921 - 2023, 1351298 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 12 Squadron before he was shot down and became a prisoner of war.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-19
2016-02-16
2016-01-18
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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Bacon, SG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Sergeant Stephen Granville Bacon at his home in Burnley on Tuesday 16th of February at twenty past two. Start us off -
SB: Err, excuse me a minute -
BW: Go on.
SB: Warrant Officer Bacon.
BW: I beg your pardon.
BW: Warrant Officer Bacon.
Other: Is that different?
BW: They only gave me your rank as sergeant.
SB: That’s what I finished up as. A -
BW: That’s fine.
SB: Warrant officer
Other: Is that higher than a sergeant? I don’t know.
BW: It is. Yes.
Other: Oh right. Warrant Officer
BW: That that was all they gave me, sergeant. So, Warrant Officer Stephen Granville Bacon can you just confirm for me please your service number and your date of birth.
SB: 1351298 as I already told you. That’s my service number and my date of birth is 2 3 21. 2nd of the 3rd 21.
BW: 2nd of March 1921.
SB: Yeah.
BW: And you were born in Barton on Humberside. Is that right?
SB: Yes.
BW: And what was your, you say you were from, your family was you had eight siblings. Is that right? You were one of eight.
SB: I’m one of eight.
BW: I see and -
SB: I had five brothers and two sisters.
BW: And were you the eldest?
SB: No.
BW: Eldest brother?
SB: I was the youngest bar one.
BW: And what was your home life like in the 20s and 30s? What would you describe it as?
SB: Strict. And that’s all I can say. I mean we used to have a time to be in at night before dark. Anything like that. We strictly adhered to that. So it was really strict.
BW: And where did you go to school?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Where did you go to school?
SB: I went to school at Queen Street School, Barton upon Humber which was a church school in actual fact.
BW: Were you a religious family?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Were you a religious family?
SB: No.
Other: You were quite poor I think. Am I right?
SB: Mind your own business.
BW: And so what age did you leave school?
SB: Fourteen.
BW: Which was I think standard at that that time wasn’t it?
SB: It was standard age at that time. And that was -
BW: Did you leave with qualifications or anything or not?
SB: No. I finished up in a class of my own x7 and WH Aubrey was the headmaster and I’d go to school and there was only me in this x7 and he’d just say Stephen just pop along and see if Mrs Aubrey wants anything. Any errands running or anything. And that was my last year at school.
BW: Yeah. Just running errands for -
SB: Oh yeah. There was no point in me being there on my own. It just wasn’t the class, the only one in the class I think and it was quite pointless. I did go to school as soon as I joined the air force.
BW: And what, what age were you when you joined up?
SB: Eighteen I think. Eighteen. Nineteen. I forget which. Eighteen I think. Was I?
BW: And what, what prompted your decision to join the RAF? Why? Why the RAF and not the other services?
SB: I had an ambition to fly but it didn’t work out that way. I joined when I went to enlist in Hull at Kingston I, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘I’d like to be flying in the air force.’ ‘Very good. But you can’t. You’ll have to join up as a AC plonk’ as they called it. AC2. ‘and then you’ll, you’ll have to put a remuster application in.’ Well, after several remuster applications I eventually was accepted to go to Weston Super Mare in front of a selection board and I think there was eight of us at that time. I didn’t see any more but I got a recall after seeing, being in front of this selection board to tell me I’d been accepted. From there I had to go to St Johns Wood in London for a deep medical.
BW: Ahum.
SB: And then from there I went to Craven Hill and then I went to Dalcross and that’s when I started flying.
BW: Whereabouts is Dalcross?
SB: Scotland. And there were Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft, we, which was a single engine plane with a turret on and the pilots, I think the majority of them were Polish. Quite nice chaps. A bit haywire when they got in the air. In fact, I remember the pilot who was flying, I was flying with we landed and he said, ‘I can’t give this in Steve.’ That was the, there were drogue, drogues towed and we used to fire at the drogues. He said, ‘You’ve got too many bloody holes in this drogue.’ I said, ‘Well you took me too bloody near’ and that was the attitude. Free and easy. Aye. But enjoyable. Oh aye.
BW: And so while you were there you were training as a gunner. Is that right?
SB: Yeah. That was all we did we used to fly over the North Sea, follow the drogue and fire at the drogues and that was our training.
BW: How successful do you think you were at that?
SB: I seemed to be fairly successful. I finished up with taking ten of us down into England and dropping them off here and there and I think it was because my name was first on the alphabet. More or less B. I seem to get all these things and in actual fact I was posted to India when I was stationed in Blackpool. The only fault was I wasn’t in Blackpool. I was in Burnley [laughs] and of course I had to go for the high jump and another, in front of another board and I explained what was going on and funnily enough I got in charge of the party going to Mold, I think, in North Wales and this party was eventually India on the, and though we didn’t fly we sailed on the Mauritania.
BW: On the Mauritania?
SB: Ahum I think it was its last trip.
BW: I see.
SB: In actual fact and the largest boat to go through the Suez Canal but they were quite pleasant at being a warrant officer. I had advantages. We’d waiter service at the table. We were on A deck and we used to look down at the motley crew on the other deck. Oh aye. My job was check the armoury so I used to go down into the bowels of the ship every morning, casually check and that was my day. The rest of it was deck quoits and all sorts of entertainment. Oh aye.
BW: You say you were already a warrant officer at that point.
SB: No. I was only a sergeant.
No. Are you -
SB: Oh at that point, going to India
BW: Yes.
Other: That was after the war isn’t it?
BW: Yeah.
SB: Yes. Aye
BW: So that was some time after your service in the war then when you went to India. Is that right?
SB: Yeah.
BW: Ok.
SB: There was no vacancies for flying. So -
BW: Ok.
SB: I took going to India which was quite an education.
BW: So coming back then to the early part of the war and your career. You said you went to school in the RAF and so you -
SB: Yeah.
BW: Was this before your gunnery training or after or part of it?
SB: It was before. I passed flying exams on Thorney Island which is not far from Portsmouth and the flying officer there he said, ‘I’ll set you an exam Steve. The equivalent to the flying job.’ And he did and that’s how I come to go to Weston Super Mare. He recommended me and I finished up in front of this board at, selection board in Super Mare.
BW: And was your intention when you joined up to be air crew air gunner or did you actually want to fly or navigate? Was your ambition higher than to be gunner or were you -
SB: My ambition was to fly. I remustered for a pilot but I didn’t get, it didn’t happen while I was vacant. I was otherwise engaged in Germany. [laughs]
BW: I see. I see.
SB: I was there two years in Germany.
BW: Ok. So you had your initial time in England as, as sergeant and you were trained on Boulton Paul Defiants as air gunner.
SB: Yeah.
BW: What happened after that? What was the next stage of training for you?
SB: That was it.
BW: Did you go to a conversion unit or an operational training unit?
SB: I went from Dalcross which was Boulton Paul Defiants. I went from there to Wickenby which was 12 squadron.
BW: And what period in the war was this? What sort of year was this?
SB: 1942.
BW: Ok so you finished training at Dalcross which I’m guessing would be summer ‘42. And you went to Wickenby to continue flying as a gunner. On, on what aircraft? What were you posted on to?
SB: Lancasters.
BW: Lancaster. So this would be a new squadron for you and a new squadron entirely because 12 squadron was only formed in September ‘42.
SB: [?]
BW: Or thereabouts.
SB: It was a very basic place were Wickenby. Very basic. Nissen huts.
BW: And did you live in the nissen huts with all your crew or was there another crew with you?
SB: No. We, in the nissen hut I was in we were all gunners.
BW: So you were all on different aircraft but you were all the same trade.
SB: Yeah.
BW: Ok. That’s interesting. Some, some huts were occupied by crews and so there’d be two crews in there but in your case you were just billeted with other gunners -
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: Entirely.
SB: Oh yes. In actual fact during my stay in Germany I, at the, where was it? I don’t know where it was somewhere down in the interrogation place it was and they give me papers to look at and I noticed one of the chaps who was with me in this nissen hut he’d drowned. It was at the side of his name - drowned. It was all propaganda them showing us these things.
BW: So when you were at Wickenby and you joined this new squadron how did you meet the rest of your crew?
SB: I haven’t a ruddy clue [laughs]. I’ve no idea whatsoever. My crew was three Australians, two Canadians, and myself and a fellow from Tadcaster and I was the youngest.
BW: Do you recall their names and what they did?
SB: Now then. Now then.
BW: I believe your pilot was Featherstone. Is that right?
SB: Bob Featherstone. The -
Other: There was the piece of paper that we thought were your crew but we weren’t sure. Have you got your glasses?
SB: Oh aye. Well I’ll tell you what they were.
Other: Oh right.
SB: There was Bob Featherstone the pilot. Laurie. Laurie Hickson, navigator. No, Laurie was the radio operator. Jack [Ebblestone?] was the navigator. Tommy Fouracres was the bomb aimer. My friend, the other gunner, I’ve no idea what his name was. All I knew him as was Robbie.
BW: And would he be Canadian?
SB: Robbie was a Canadian. And he wasn’t in the billet with me, with the other -
BW: What-
SB: With the other gunners. Robbie.
BW: Was he a mid-upper gunner or a front?
SB: Who?
BW: Robbie.
SB: Robbie was rear gunner.
Other: Yeah. Steve wasn’t a rear gunner.
BW: Ok and there was one other. A guy called Cooper.
SB: Engineer. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know because I couldn’t see him climbing on the bloody wings if anything went wrong with an engine. Quite surplus to requirements in my opinion was the engineer but we had to put up with it.
BW: And his name was Freddie you say?
SB: Harry.
BW: Harry, beg your pardon.
SB: Harry Cooper
Other: F H Cooper.
SB: He was a director of John Smith’s. Not John. There’s two of them. John -
Other: Sam Smith’s.
SB: John Smith’s
Other: John Smith’s Brewery.
BW: I see. And how did you all get on as a crew?
SB: Very well. Bob. Bob Featherstone, he was a very reserved sort of a person. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t drink. I remember being in the mess one time and I said, ‘Would you like a drink Bob?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘What would you like?’ He said, ‘A glass of milk.’ And I got him a glass of milk. [laughs] but the rest of the crew were, me being from Barton on Humber I didn’t spend much spare time other than Barton on Humber like according to what the Germans told me the aerodrome was eighteen kilometres northeast of Lincoln. I didn’t know that.
BW: That’s right. That’s absolutely right.
SB: They like, we used to get before flight we used to have a briefing all the crews all together and we used to get lectured and what have you and one of the things was, ‘Now if you have the misfortune to be shot down and captured during your interrogation a little old fellow will come and he’s a member of the International Red Cross. He isn’t.’ And lo and behold I think it was in Frankfurt where this interrogation camp was and lo and behold eventually this little old chap came and he said, ‘I’m from the International Red Cross,’ and I said, ‘Don’t kid me.’ I said, ‘You’re not. I got that told that before I left England.’ ‘Oh. Oh.’ And that finished that and he give up trying to convince me he was the International Red Cross fella.
BW: So coming back just to Wickenby itself you were quite a mixed crew as you say two Canadians and three Australians and two British.
SB: Yeah.
BW: But you didn’t mix a lot on the base. You said you went back to Barton on Humber quite a bit.
SB: Well I -
BW: Is that right? To see your family.
SB: They used to be workmen and there was a workman’s bus went from Wickenby to Barton upon Humber which was rather convenient when, when I was available.
BW: And so you spent your free time mainly at home.
SB: More or less. Yeah.
BW: Did you get to socialise on the base with the crew before missions or after missions
SB: No not to any degree I think. No. I remember after the war I was on a course in Tadcaster and I found out my engineer’s telephone number was and I rang him and I said, ‘Hello Harry.’ I said, ‘This is Steve. I’d like to ask you and your wife to lunch with me. I’m at John Smith’s.’ ‘Oh. Oh well, well I’m helping my son to do some decorating.’ I thought oh. So I didn’t hear any more of it.
BW: But you still had to fly together in the -
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: In the aircraft.
SB: Oh yes. Oh yeah well I mean you don’t fly together. I mean, I was very remote on top of it. Robbie was remote at the tail of it and the others were at the front.
BW: So -
SB: We were two isolated persons other than RT.
BW: So your position in the Lancaster was a mid upper then was it?
SB: Yeah.
BW: I see,
SB: Three hundred and sixty degrees viewing. In actual fact I was walking, I’d been cleaning my guns and I’m walking along the aerodrome and I saw a fella on top of a Lancaster and I thought, ‘What the bloody hell is he doing?’ So I give a shout and I said, ‘What the hell are you doing up there?’ ‘I’m cleaning guns.’ I said, ‘You what?’ He said, ‘I’m cleaning my guns.’ I said, ‘Hold it. Hold it’ I said, ‘Stay where you are,’ and I went in the plane and through the main there was a cover some, behind the turret or front of the turret I don’t know which it was and he didn’t know you could rotate your guns manually and always park them over the tail and he was trying to climb over the bloody turret to clean his guns and he was a commissioned air gunner. He was a pilot officer. I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe a pilot officer didn’t even know how to rotate the bloody turret and was going to climb over it. I mean if he’d fallen off I mean it’s quite high up is a turret gun when it’s on the deck. Aye a pilot officer. How the hell he became a [governor/gunner?] I don’t know.
Other: [You’ve only told this to protect the innocent?]
SB: Oh yes it, another incident I might recall was, I don’t know why we were on [Denham?] Golf Course and we were intermingled with the army on dive bombing. This was not flying and there were, what was the popular twin engine plane? I forget. Anyway, they were dive bombing and this plane’s coming down and there’s four people walking across the aerodrome. They should not have been there and as the plane took off knocked a fellas head off.
BW: Wow.
SB: There was just a red flash and he was gone.
Other: I didn’t know they got that close to the ground.
SB: And as far as I can remember it was Sir Christopher de Bath. I think that was his name but he shouldn’t have been where he was. They just let the pilot fly a bit and then they brought him back and he was ok but that was not in my agenda as a -
BW: No.
SB: As a gunner. I mean we all gunners were all trained on the same things. Turrets and guns and that’s it.
Other: What was the golf course?
SB: Hmm?
Other: Was the golf course, did the golf course go across the aerodrome or something?
SB: No. I don’t, no. No. I don’t know during the war I don’t know if it was permissible the golf course no it was -
Other: [It was…?]
SB: They were using the golf course obviously for, to be a plane without any obstruction. No buildings or anything.
Other: Oh I see. He was probably looking for his ball.
SB: But I do remember that fella getting his head knocked off.
Other: Oh God. I didn’t realise they flew that close to the ground.
BW: So you’re on operations now at Wickenby and what sort of routine would you follow for missions? What sort of preparations would you make for a mission if you were on roster to -
SB: Well obviously -
BW: Conduct a raid?
SB: We had to look to our guns to start with. Then we all who were flying collected together for a briefing on where we were going, what height we were flying, what we expected to come across. Other than that we just clambered into the aircraft and away but it was very boring I should think just sitting there and not many, I mean, I never fired my guns in anger and neither did Robbie and as I say it was rather boring sitting there and no, no fighter aircraft or anything.
Other: Not much fun.
SB: Like Ruhr Valley. Well that was rather lively anti-aircraft gun and Berlin when we crashed and whatever the hell happened to us I don’t know. That was different. I can’t remember much anti-aircraft so whether there was flying, planes flying, fighters I don’t know but according to information I got from someone in Lincoln there was also another three -
Other: Oh yes.
SB: Lancasters went with no survivors.
Other: Yeah that’s right.
SB: So whether it was because of that I didn’t recognise any anti-aircraft fire and they were shot down by aircraft I don’t I don’t know but we were fortunate we were straight down and very, I only met Bob Featherstone, I only met him for a few minutes because we were separated. We were stripped naked and separated, put into different, separate cells and he said, ‘We just touched over five hundred mile an hour, Steve. In a Lancaster bomber.’ And I remember I sat there and I thought, ‘Bloody hell this is it.’ And nothing I could do. I just sat there. Initially I thought he’d put the nose down to get out and home but it wasn’t. They pulled the plane out of this dive and I thought I was going to go straight through the ruddy bottom with the pressure and and that’s what Bob said. He said we reached over five hundred mile and hour and then after we pulled out we seemed to be flying straight and level and Bob came on the RT, ‘Bale out. Bale out.’ So I said, ‘Just a minute, Bob.’ He said, ‘What’s that.’ I said, ‘Can’t we reach Sweden?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh that’s just too bad then,’ and we, course getting in and out of a mid-upper wasn’t very easy and by the time I got to the back door Robbie, the rear gunner at that time, he was sat on the doorstep. The door had gone. He’d got an axe to it and opened it with an axe and he was sat there and as I got there he climbed back in and I said, ‘What’s to do Robbie?’ ‘I can’t get out.’ And I said, ‘Have another try.’ I thought I had to do something here and he got back sitting on the doorstep and I gave him a bit of encouragement and he went. But I sat on the doorstep and I rolled out and I didn’t find any problems whatsoever. Why, whether he’d lost his nerve or what I don’t know.
Other: He probably didn’t fancy landing in Germany.
BW: And you don’t recall how the aircraft was hit.
SB: No I don’t know whether it was hit-
BW: Whether it was fighters or flak.
SB: Gun whether it had been hit with a fighter or anti-aircraft I’ve no idea whatever. All I know is the plane crashed. I know it crashed because I saw the ruddy thing crash. I was hanging about up there. And but I’ve no idea and I’ve only heard that our plane crashed. I’ve no idea why it crashed or what caused it to crash but -
BW: And do you recall this was on your fourth sortie. There were two previous trips to Essen and one to Berlin. This was a second trip to Berlin.
SB: Ahum.
BW: And it seems this was the last time that the squadron visited Berlin through the rest of their tour but do you recall what it was like on the approach to the target. You say as a mid- upper you had a good view. Were you looking around -
SB: No problems whatsoever.
BW: For fighters? Could you see the target ahead?
SB: As we, I don’t know which it, whether it was so but you’re talking about the target. Towards the end of, or when I was flying the Mosquitos came into action and the Mosquitos used to drop flares and we used to bomb the flares but the Mosquitos used to pick the target, drop these flares and we’d bomb on the flares.
BW: You didn’t see much of Berlin at this stage below. Sometimes crews report seeing targets on fire or explosions on the ground.
SB: No. No. I can’t recollect seeing anything. No. I mean as we were approaching targets Bob used to corkscrew to upset the ground crews and that sort of thing.
BW: And were you picked out by searchlights at all?
SB: Only once. We got searchlight and went straight, Bob went straight down it and pulled out. Other than that we weren’t bothered with searchlights. Not like the pilots are today. Have you read in the papers about this -
Other: Laser.
SB: Oh dear.
BW: Yeah ridiculous isn’t it? Do you, do you recall the earlier trips at all over Essen?
SB: No. I mean I remember one time we were on low level practice and old Bell , Squadron Leader Bell got in touch with, ‘Mr Featherstone. You’re on low level not a bloody altitude.’ Well that upset Bob and of course I can see all this. We went down, we went down and we went down and there was as I say there was workmen on the Wickenby and there was a steamroller there and our, the people on that steam roller had never moved so bloody fast [laughs] when Bob went down and they must have thought he was going to hit it. I did as well. [laughs]
BW: And in general how did you find it? Flying in a Lancaster?
Other: [What did you call it?]
SB: It was what I’d always wanted. I mean going like a cross country over this country, Ireland very nice oh very oh yes very exciting. Not exciting. No. It wasn’t exciting but it was what I always had wanted.
Other: Cold.
SB: Oh we had four pairs of gloves on. A pair of silk, a pair of woollen, gauntlets and electric and we’d an electric waistcoat and electric slippers. Course at the back of the plane there was no heating whatsoever. Forty degrees wasn’t abnormal. You couldn’t touch your guns with bare hands or you just stuck to them. Oh it was very cold but [I had?] my fun here. I enjoyed it.
BW: And did you take hot drinks with you or anything like that?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Did you take hot drinks with you during the flights to keep warm?
SB: All we got flying was chewing gum and a small can of orange juice. A small can of orange juice by ten thousand feet was solid ice so were not much help really. Oh no it’s, I mean, I couldn’t move anyway. I mean I was just stuck in a turret on the top of the ruddy plane and that was it.
BW: Up there in the cold.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: And this time of the year is the end of ‘42 and the squadron only became operational on the 27th of December so your early trips were in January ‘43 so it would be particularly -
SB: New.
BW: Cold at that time.
SB: It was cold. Damned cold. Oh yeah.
BW: It was cold at the best of times.
SB: In actual fact –
BW: At altitude.
SB: I landed in a field with several inches of snow and of course being in air force dark, darkish coloured I’m burying my chute and I looked up and there’s two fellas there. Both with guns. I suppose they were kind of home guard and we weren’t allowed to, we were advised not to take guns because if you did like the position I’d been, I was in they would have shot me because they thought I had a gun but we didn’t and these two chaps took me to a house and they must have rung the police or something. Anyhow, a guy, I remember he had a brown uniform which I don’t know what that was and he interrogated me. He says, ‘What, what, how many were in your aircraft?’ I said, ‘Only me.’ ‘Oh.’ I thought he doesn’t know much about this. He says, ‘What do you mean only you? I said, ‘We jettisoned tanks on the aircraft.’ I said, ‘There was only me.’ ‘Ah gudt gudt gudt. Here you are,’ and he gave me a twenty packet of Gold Flake cigarettes. I light up and he toddles off. A few minutes later he dashes in to the room, ‘You lied to me.’ [laughs] ‘I find another man.’ Well he found seven eventually but it was funny being given Gold Flake cigarettes but I lost them of course. When he found the second man he took my cigarettes off me but it was a bit of a comic. But we went to, I think it was an air force camp and that’s when they stripped us completely, put us in separate cells and eventually they transported us down south to, I think it was Frankfurt, I’m not sure about, that to an interrogation camp. There were quite a lot of people in it. Mostly air force of course and that’s when the little chap from the International Red Cross came up but and then of course we were taken to a Stalag 8b. Because of something happening with the Canadians who raided Dieppe, something about them tying prisoners of war hands handcuffed and the Germans wanted to have reprisals but they hadn’t enough Canadians to suit their purposes so they drafted the air force. There was about three hundred of us and we were in handcuffs. They were put on. They were decent about it. They put them on in the morning and took them off at night and of course it’s amazing what people get up to. They soon found out how to manipulate the locks on them and if the guards had been decent we’d just throw them in the box. If they hadn’t they had to undo every, every one. And, and they used to be radio reports put up in the billet. In the billet I say they were proper huts. No windows in. There were windows but they’d no glass. Very little water, just a dribble. No chance of getting washed. We were dirty. We stunk. Must have done. And lousy. Me and Harry Cooper the engineer who was, there were three high bunks in this place and er and initially they’d started with boards but the prisoners found a better use for the boards which was making a fire to get a brew and as time went on we got Red Cross parcels that usually a parcel between two but they were all tied with string and we collected this string and we made nets to replace the boards on the beds. At the finish I shouldn’t think there was a bed with boards on it. Only Red Cross string. And [pause] you must excuse me I’m looking for a handkerchief. I’ve just found one. Oh yes and we used to get tenth of a loaf a day which were about that much.
BW: About an inch and a half.
SB: Aye. Identity disc was just a tenth of a loaf and some used to, you could cut it. The bread was so like a solid mass and you could cut it so ruddy thin and some of the chaps used to cut and spread it out over the day. I used to do the same but I used to eat it and hope for the best and we used to get, they used to bring a dustbin thing in occasionally and that was supposed to be soup. I remember one soup what we called bedboard soup. It just tasted like sawdust. We were hungry but nobody could eat it. The toilets were forty seaters. Four banks of ten so you could have a chat while you were [laughs] aye. Four banks of ten and during the summertime if we got Red Cross parcels they used to stab all the tins so we couldn’t save them for making escape purposes. So, if we couldn’t consume them we used to throw them over to the next compound which was the Russians and they were very grateful to a point. I remember when they decided to move us from Lamsdorf which was on the Polish border and they set off, sent us all off marching, hundreds of us. I don’t know how many was in the camp at the time but I think it was, there was twenty five thousand in and attached. Most of them were on working parties. There were, ‘cause it was an army camp. They decided that they were going to move us away from the Russians. I don’t know why. And this was in January. A little bit of snow and what not and we started marching and I remember the first stop was at a brick works and I got bedded down on some blocks of clay and we’d, we’d all got a [?] blanket and eventually the blanket became too heavy and too much of a damned nuisance but we just, we were like bloody zombies walking in the snow and very little or nothing to eat. I remember one time that we were walking along and there was a potato clamp. Are you with me? You should be.
BW: Ahum.
SB: One of the lads took a dive for the potato clamp and he was shot through his shot through his face and that’s how desperate we were. I mean sometimes we were just laid in an open field. A derelict factory. Course no bedding. No cloth. No -
BW: No provisions of any kind.
SB: We’d no washing facilities whatsoever so we never got undressed for about three months and we must have smelled a bit ripe [laughs] but it was all part of it and it was war.
BW: And this period of time would have been January ‘45 is that right? This would have been January ‘45 or thereabouts when you were marched out of the camp.
SB: ‘44 ‘45 I forget which.
Other: [It would be towards the end of the war wouldn’t it?]
SB: Like another point as I said we used to get Red Cross, Red Cross parcels. Maybe two. Occasionally and they used to stab it and we used to throw it to the Russians and of course the Russians they were marched with us on this walk and they were separated from us in so far as we were in a compound and they were in the next compound and we were in a huge marquee and on the floor was small branches off fir trees and that was it and we’d no water but the Russians had a tap and when we went to the Russians and asked for water. ‘Cigarette’ and ‘cigarettes.’ Well, they knew damn well we’d no cigarettes. We didn’t get no water. That was the gratitude for giving them the parcels.
BW: I was going to say yet you’d been throwing parcels over the wire to them.
SB: Yeah and er -
BW: And they wouldn’t let you have water.
SB: Eventually we got, the Germans left us. The guards left us. We were in a camp with nothing and me, and I got friendly with an Australian soldier and we decided to have a walk and we were walking around the countryside. We saw a house with a light in it and we went and knocked on the door and there were a lot of mumbling and grumbling and I said, ‘What’s to do, Joe?’ He says, ‘I don’t know.’ Anyhow, Joe could speak French. He started talking in French. Eventually we got in this house. There was eight Madagascans and they’d got a set boiler, you know, a boiler with a fire underneath it full of meat and they give us as much as we wanted but nothing else but meat. No bread, no veg, no, just meat but by heck that meat was good and that was, I never met Joe again. The Americans came and at that point my legs were tight in my trousers. Beri beri I think they said it was and I went and found a medical, an American medical chap and he said, ‘Sorry I can’t give you anything.’ He said. ‘All I have is two or three aspirins,’ he says. ‘I’ve used everything I had.’ He says, ‘It’ll wear off eventually when you start eating.’ [laughs] And then we got in some clapped out Dakotas aeroplanes and they flew us back to Cosford which is near Wolverhampton I think.
BW: That’s right
SB: And there we were stripped again and deloused and treated like royalty. Oh yeah. They couldn’t do enough for us and then we were despatched home and then after I think I had four weeks leave and then I got sent to India and that was the end of the war for me. I I in actual fact I was in India in Delhi and I thought there’s all these bloody people getting relieved and they were conscripts. They’d completed their two years [and they would be ?]. So I got in touch with the officers and I said, ‘What’s my position?’ I said, ‘I’m an RAF volunteer reserve I suppose,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Oh we’ll see what we can do with you,’ and the next day I was on a train to Bombay. And there they were very obliging again, ‘Well we haven’t a place cabin-wise for you. You can go on this ship or you can wait till there’s a cabin available on another ship.’ Oh I said we’ll get the [excuse ?] let me get on it and I think it was the Scythia if I can remember right and I came back home and I, I was in a bit of a state. I’d no qualifications. I was a machinist before the war in a cycle works and I daren’t say I was a machinist or I would have been reserved occupation so I just said I’m a labourer. Anyhow, as I say I came back here and I got sent to Blackpool. I spent a lot of time in Blackpool and I met my wife. [back then?] as she was a young woman and we got married and I’d no qualifications whatsoever and of course going to Burnley it was either went to Burnley or Barton. Well, naturally I’d no, no say in the matter. It was Burton and I thought well I had to find something. I went as a coal miner. Had a few months in a coal mine and I got dermatitis and so I had to come out and my wife said, I used to see these in the paper, situations vacant and there used to be overlookers wanted. Overlookers wanted. I said to me wife, ‘What’s this overlookers?’ She said, ‘Oh you’ve no need to bother about that. You won’t be one.’ I said, ‘Its hard luck then.’ Anyhow, I took a job at just over three pound a week. Three pound a week and I thought well it’ll keep me going cash wise and I got in to the, this job three pound a week was at the end of the war and before the war the mills used to get large amount of coal on the canals but after the war it was delivered in three ton trucks and my job was wheeling it over the ruddy boiler and tipping over for the fire beater and I’m shovelling this coal one day and a fellow walking down the yard and he stopped. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I politely told him [laughs] it was running off my nose was the sweat and ‘Aye all right.’ And he toddled off and a couple of hours later, ‘You’re wanted in the office, Steve.’ Oh I’ve got set for being rude with that fella and it was this same fella wanted to see me. He said, ‘How about coming working for me?’ ‘And who are you?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I look after this mill. I look after four in Blackburn, one in Morecambe, outside Morecambe, Whiteland. ’ I said, ‘Right. What’s the reward?’ He said, ‘Oh you’ll be a lot better than what you are now,’ he said ‘And I’ve a van you can use,’ And I got into the textile trade then through this fellow Harry [Makenson] I’ll always remember his name. He looked after me. He made me an overlooker as they called it, was a maintenance engineer on looms and I I seemed to cotton on to it and I finished up manager of a weaving mill. I mean initially I didn’t know one end of a bloody shuttle to another and that’s how I finished. George Street Mill closed down and it’s gone now. It’s been knocked down. I retired and I’ve been retired thirty odd year.
BW: Ahum.
SB: But er no my war experiences was, this march oh that was grim was that. Oh bloody hell. I I ate raw chicken and raw rabbit what they if the people had left them, forgotten them, we didn’t forget them. Oh I think I weighed seven stone something when I and they sent me on four weeks holiday. I went back and, ‘Right. Get on the scales,’ and I did. ‘Get on the scales again.’ I did. ‘Something wrong here.’ I says, ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘You’ve put on thirty odd pound in forty eight days. What have you been doing?’ ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I must confess.’ I says, ‘I’ve been drinking Guinness.’ I said, ‘I’ve been drinking about an average of about fifteen bottles of Guinness a day. ‘
Other: Good grief.
SB: He says, ‘You what?’ I said, ‘Oh yes.’ That’s where my money went and I got back to my ten and a half stone and now I languish at twelve stone. [And you must excuse me ‘cause I must go to the toilet.]
BW: No problem.
[pause]
SB: My escaping [laughs].
BW: I was going, I was going to ask you actually -
SB: Which was rather farcical.
BW: I believe you made a number of escape attempts.
SB: I er, in actual fact I never escaped. I was always someone else. The first effort was I swapped identities with a fella. An old, well to me an old fella. He would be about forty He was a member of the Pioneer Corp which was a non-combatant unit and I swapped identities with him and eventually I got drafted to a working party on an aerodrome and our job was looking after the grounds but it didn’t work out very well. It was alleged that someone had managed to dodge the guards, got in an aeroplane, couldn’t read the ruddy things and jettisoned the petrol out of it. We were straight back to the camp. All lot of us. That was number one. I reverted back to my position in the air force and its surprising there wasn’t a lot more people doing the same as me but anyhow, eventually I got another one. I got friendly with one in the army camp and he was fed up of working. I mean they’d no option. They had to work.
BW: So you were, rather than being, let’s say, given protection because of your rank and aircrew you were actually put to work. You were in labour gangs were you?
SB: At my rank no. My rank I couldn’t go to work. I wasn’t allowed to work. The soldiers were compelled to work so the only thing we had to, well I had to do was change my identity and as I say I changed with this guy. He was a Pioneer Corp and we got drafted back to the camp because of this misdemeanour, this alleged ditching the juice from the aircraft but whether that was true or not I don’t know but that was the reason I heard and eventually I got fed up and I got this other fella. I can’t remember his name. I know we were doing some work in [Gliwice] and I decided I’d had enough and I got hidden away and the guards were a bit slop happy and I was left and I had a couple of three days and that was it. I had nothing to eat so I got picked up.
BW: So you manged to give them the slip and spend three days away.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: Two or three days.
SB: Oh yeah. Course I used to walk at night and hide in bushes and whatever during the day and oh that was the second time I think there was a field with a kind of a basin in it full of bushes. Ideal for sleeping. Only trouble was I was prodded in the ribs and it was a fella with a rifle. He could speak, he spoke very good English. And he says, ‘Come on. Come with me.’ And he was a farmer and he took me to his house, rung the local police and he was talking and he said, ‘I’ve come from America.’ He says, ‘It’s the worse bloody days’ work I ever did. He says, ‘Coming back here’ he said, ‘But you know the feeling. It’s your country. Well come and,’ he said ‘It’s the worse bloody thing I ever did in my life.’ He says, ‘I daren’t do anything but ring the police.’ And a policeman came on a two stroke motorbike. He made me push his motorbike and he walked on and I had a night in jail and the guards came from the camp to take me back and I settled back again and then I got the urge again so I picked on a fella going as an air force man. Aye, I often remember his name. They called him Bill Major from Liverpool. Only fault was Bill got fed up with being in the bloody camp. He was so used to going out to work so he changed his identity so when I eventually, where was it oh I was at a brick works and I was there one day working and I saw a spanner and I thought bloody hell that looks like the bolts on windows. It was a little, it had been a little school where we were billeted in, on this brickwork and this spanner it fitted the nuts so I got, pulled them out one side and got out and I was a gentleman I put them back and screwed them back and the lads who I’d got friendly with they came back and they said, ‘You left us in the real bloody muck,’ he said. ‘They didn’t know how you’d escaped.’ He said, ‘How did you escape?’ I said, ‘I found a spanner and I opened the bars and I walked out.’ There again I got caught again and of course every time I got caught I used to be sentenced to solitary confinement and it was solitary. 5 o’clock in the morning, fill a pail with water, scrub your deck out, stand your bed up. The bed was a few pieces of wood with rope across but you had to stand it up so you couldn’t sit on it and if you didn’t do it in their time they just used to kick the bloody bucket over and your cell was swimming in water but we put up with it. And there was one fella there one time I was in solitary and the padre used to come every day to see him. He was a New Zealander and it seems he’d been on a working party and he’d seen a chain on the ground and so he just picked it up and threw it into a machine and it was dodgy whether he was going to be shot or not and this padre used to come every day to see him and after the war I saw his photograph in the paper. He’d been awarded the BME is it?
BW: Um could be MBE.
SB: MBE aye. And so obviously he didn’t get shot and he got back home. Oh yeah. Aye. But I’m surprised there wasn’t a lot more of them swapping identities with soldiers who, well some of them had done four years. I’d a brother. My brother, he was a marine. He was taken prisoner on, [pause] where?
Other: Crete.
SB: Island.
Other: Crete.
SB: Crete. Oh Crete aye and one time I’m in in solitary and they used to take us out. Geneva Conventions again. They used to take us out and we used to walk around in a little circle. We had to get this exercise in and one day one, the fella said, ‘How long have you been here?’ I said, ‘I’m just doing fourteen days.’ ‘Well how did you get from Crete er from Germany er Italy?’ I said, ‘What you are talking about?’ He says, ‘Haven’t you just left Italy?’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Were you a marine?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘That’s my brother.’ What happened he’d met my brother in Italy. But no there was some comical things happened. Oh yeah. Oh aye.
Other: [Not?] very comical.
BW: But you didn’t have to have your escape attempts approved as might be the case with others in some camps. You acted on your own initiative to try and escape.
SB: Oh I just went. I just went. Oh I wouldn’t. No. No I knew I couldn’t go anywhere because I couldn’t speak German but I thought well I’ve got to do something and as I say it became something of a, like I changed the third one Bill Major who got fed up of being in the camp because he’d always been used to working so he swapped identities with another fella so when I got back I had to find out who Steve Bacon was. [laughs] Quite funny really but oh no they -
BW: How were you picked up each time? I know you mentioned a farmer found you sleeping under a bush at one point. How were you picked up other times? Were you, when you were out of the camp were you not afraid of being picked up by the army or handed over to the Gestapo or something like that?
SB: I can’t remember to be quite honest. I’m just trying to think. I had that farmer and then we were sent back because of someone ditching the ruddy petrol out the aeroplane and then the third time I went Bill Major, Bill Major, Bill Major. I can’t remember how I got caught that time but I got caught and that time it was a bit of a nuisance. I got caught and of course I got sentenced to fourteen days, well it was twenty one days then. It had gone up. But I had to go to a straflager which was a part of the camp reserved for potential what not, isolation and in there, there were mostly soldiers messing about there because of the women and I remember one chap he was, he had to go to civilian court and he went and he came back and he said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Right, here you are.’ He’d taken all the lightbulbs out the ruddy waiting room of the court he’d been to. Oh there was some humorous ruddy things. Oh yeah aye oh aye but as I say I never escaped because I was never me. I was this Pioneer Corp chap. I belonged, I belonged the Pioneer Corp and I was a gunner and then I was an ordinary soldier with Bill Major and I’m talking I got back I’d done my solitary and I got back to the camp and back to the air force compound and I’m walking around one day. ‘How are you going on mate?’ I looked around, ‘I’m alright. Why?’ ‘You don’t know me do you?’ No it’s surprising what they got up to. I said, ‘No. I don’t know you.’ And he said, ‘I was in straflager with you,’ he said, ‘But I’ve escaped.’ He’d escaped into the camp. [laughs] what happened to him I don’t know but they used to get up to all sorts of ruddy tricks. They used to put this radio bulletin up every morning and of course the Germans, ‘They must have a radio.’ They cleared all everybody out. The camp was on a moor, moorland in actual fact as I previously said with a forty seater toilet where they used to pump it out and they used to spread it around the camp to stop digging tunnels and what not and, what was I going to say? I’ve forgotten. But they emptied the camp completely. They’d dogs in and all sorts in looking for the radios that wasn’t there but we had bitterly cold on this moor but we, we did it and, oh aye. And another time they used to, we used to have roll calls of course in fives and one day we were out nearly eight hours. They couldn’t figure out how we’d missed, they’d missed somebody and every time they went five, ten, fifteen. There were three hundred of us and somebody had bent down to tie, reckon to tie their shoelace. One missing. And they’d go again and they’d get it right. That’s right. And they were so bloody stupid. That’s right. Aye aye. ‘We’d better have another check,’ and so they’d check again and somebody had bent down and it would be the same again. One missing. And they’d dogs and they’d officers of all bloody sorts in the camp that day in our compound and they never found the one who was missing but it was our discomfort but we used to put up with it and that was it. It was part of the gang kind of thing but as I say I never escaped because I as never me.
BW: What were relations like with the guards? If people are managing to build rudimentary radio sets they must get the components from somewhere. What were relations like with the guards? Did you, were you able to bribe them or -
SB: Oh, no. They, they -
BW: Persuade them to do things for you?
SB: They didn’t like it. No, no. I know there was one, I did see one fella shot. He was being marched through the camp, past our compound with a guard, a guard with a rifle and all of a sudden he had his coat over his arm and he just threw it over the guard’s head and galloped. He didn’t gallop fast enough. They shot him. They shot him and he was dead. Aye.
BW: Just coming back to, I’m interested in the point where you talked about getting out of the aircraft and you took to your parachute. How were you then picked up? You landed in a field of snow and then -
SB: Picked up with two, two like home guard. I don’t know -
BW: Ok.
SB: They’d guns. That’s all I know and they took us to a house and there was a young boy in this house in actual fact and I had my escape kit with me. I thought, well there was chocolate in it. He wouldn’t eat it. He wouldn’t touch it. No. We had an escape kit. The chocolate and vitamin tablets and what have you and money but not German money. I don’t know. I think it was franks. I don’t know but -
Other: I think you thought it was the home guard didn’t you?
BW: And so they reported to the police that they’d picked you up and presumably the police came for you.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: What, were you taken to a civilian jail? Or were you -
SB: Oh yes.
BW: Passed to the Gestapo? Or were you -
SB: Oh yes I had a night in the jail and the guards came from the camp, a couple of guards take me back. Kept them occupied. But oh no it had its humorous side.
BW: And news of your aircraft being lost must have reached home. There’s a letter here which is a reply from the wing commander at 12 squadron to your mum, ‘In response to your letter.’ She was asking about getting your personal effects sent back. When you got back to your family do you recall what had happened from their point of view? Were they told by the squadron you’d been lost? Did they know you were in a prison camp or what was their take on events?
SB: Well they initially telegram.
Other: Yeah that’s the other one Brian. That’s the telegram from to say he was missing in action or something.
SB: Your son is reported missing and then another one was something about Lord Haw Haw. You wouldn’t know that would you?
BW: William Joyce yeah.
SB: William Joyce, yeah. He broadcast my name as a prisoner of war and they sent my mother another telegram stating that take it with a pinch of salt.
BW: Yeah there’s an official telegram here that says, ‘Regret to inform you that your son Sergeant Stephen Granville Bacon is missing as a result of air operation 17th, 18th Jan 1943. Letter follows. Any further information will be immediately communicated to you. And that’s from, that would be air ministry I think but it’s, it’s er named from, I think Wickenby but so they’ve been informed by telegram. How, how did you end up on Haw Haw’s broadcast? Was this a regular thing to name POWs? Or was it -
SB: I’ve no idea. I haven’t a clue. I didn’t know until after I got back.
BW: Yeah.
SB: That it had happened.
Other: Yeah. I think they’d already had a memorial service for him in the [Barton?] church I believe.
SB: Oh aye. It was a long after the war I, my nephew sent me a paper cutting and it was from the local paper, Hull Times I think it was. And there was a list of names, ‘Would anyone who knew these people get in touch with us.’ They’re all, these people who had been killed during the war and Stephen Granville Bacon was one of them. I’m still here [laughs]
BW: Well it’s like when you were in the prison camp. You didn’t escape. That was somebody else. Somebody else was killed, it wasn’t you.
SB: Yeah it was. I was amazed when I got that paper cutting. I think I have it somewhere.
Other: That’s quite recent isn’t it?
SB: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
SB: Aye.
Other: Yeah.
SB: Anyone know anything about these people who were killed during the war.
Other: Well I think it was something like -
SB: I knew a lot about him [laughs]
Other: Something like six months or so after that initial letter and Lord Haw Haw and his mother had to go around the village then apologising to everybody for -
BW: Right.
SB: Oh aye. Well er -
Other: Having a service for him.
SB: Like what was it now?
Other: I don’t know if she was more embarrassed [?] or what [laughs]
SB: Oh it was old Tom Everett. He was one of our neighbours. He must have been listening to Haw Haw and he heard this and of course he dashed out and went out to my mother’s, knocked on the door, ‘Your Steve’s a prisoner of war.’ [laughs] It must have been a shock for the old lady but aye that was Tom Everett.
BW: So you, just coming back to the point when you’re first captured were you in, did you meet up with the other members of the crew. Were you fairly close together when you were picked up? Or, I mean, was there any chance of escaping? Or making your own -
SB: We were all picked up at separate times.
BW: Right.
SB: And they must have got in touch with these, this I’m sure it was an air force camp that we were taken to where they stripped us and I mean they were looking for compasses and such like things and compasses used to be all over the ruddy place. I had it in the lapel of my coat. Bob Featherstone, I know he had one in his pipe. He didn’t smoke but he had a compass in the bottom if this pipe but the Germans knew all, all these things. They knew where to look. When we got our clothes back they were torn where they’d looked in the seams and what have you but oh no it’s surprising how much they knew about us as we knew about them aye.
BW: And you were handed over from civilian police straight to the camp. So there was, was there any formal interrogation that took place?
SB: No, not at that point. No, no, it was, as I say I think it was Frankfurt this camp we went to which was just an interrogation centre and it was very populated but they used to be in separate cells and they’d turn the heat up, heat up on us in the cell and it used to get bloody hot and then they’d switch it off altogether and it would just go just the opposite just to cool, just to loosen you off a bit. Aye. Oh aye.
BW: How long were in the interrogation camp at Frankfurt?
SB: I’ve no idea.
BW: Roughly.
SB: Eventually we were put on a train with no shoes. Nobody had any shoes on and we were taken to Lamsdorf on the Polish border. I remember the train it was it was luxury I mean there were seats in it but they were wooden seats but er and that’s how I got to Lamsdorf by train.
BW: Were there guards on the train?
SB: Oh yes. Oh aye. Aye, there were plenty of guards on the train and of course when you’ve no shoes it’s a big handicap.
BW: Did you get your shoes back or any shoes when you got to Lamsdorf?
SB: Any shoes, clogs, all sorts, wooden clogs. Not, not like what we used to wear. Not the proper clogs, wooden clogs. Most bloody uncomfortable.
BW: Lamsdorf had a reputation for being a tough camp. It was apparently notorious for poor conditions of construction, sanitation and overcrowding and had the highest number of British POWs there by the time of 1944 but you mentioned the sanitation conditions. Were the barracks that you were kept in were they, were they overcrowded at all or did you feel like you had enough room?
SB: Well I suppose we were overcrowded but it was all three tier, three tier bunk things and sanitation oh we’d, we’d as I say we had this forty seater, four banks of ten which used to be pumped out regularly and spread around the area to give it a bit -
Other: Pleasant.
SB: Of perfume but other than that there was no bathing facilities whatsoever. Oh no. As I say we were, we were lousy. Me and Harry, our engineer, I got friendly with him and we used to put out a blanket each and we used to have a bit of a line and we used to go and we used to stop at forty bugs.
Other: [?]
SB: I remember my mother must have had a brainstorm. She sent me a pair of pyjamas. Now, how the hell I got them I don’t know but I put them on and on the first night I’d, or the first morning when I took them off they were just polka dotted where I’d been bitten. I didn’t use them anymore. Oh no the sanitation was nil other than toilets but there was no, no shower. We’d a big trough thing with a pipe on top and water used to dribble out of it but you couldn’t have a wash. No.
BW: I’d just like to show you some pictures of a camp and just see if you think they reflect conditions or construction similar. The first, the first set show open type huts if you like. Purpose built long barracks and these aren’t the same camp as yours but do they -
Other: I think we took some pictures. There’s some stuff on the internet somewhere cause my son typed in Stalag 8b one day and came up with, oh and he instantly recognised the latrines I think. ‘Oh I remember that.’
BW: Yeah.
SB: I can’t recognise these at all. What is it?
BW: They’re, it’s a different camp but -
SB: Ah. Oh no.
BW: It’s -
SB: Totally different. That’s more like -
BW: It’s shown close to a town.
SB: I was going to say that’s more like ours. They were -
BW: Yeah.
SB: Proper barracks.
BW: Yeah.
SB: But they’d no windows ‘cause I suppose the previous tenants had bashed the bloody things out. Oh no. That, that is Stalag 8b of course. I mean, Bob -
BW: Were you -
SB: Bob Featherstone, our pilot, I mean we never saw him. He was a commissioned officer. He went to an Offlag.
BW: Ahum
Other: [?]
SB: So we didn’t see Bob again until, well I did see him again after the war. He was a, he was on the immigration situation going to Australia. Persuading people to go to Australia and persuaded me but my wife said no and that was it. Oh yes. Oh aye
BW: Were you close to a town or was, you said Lamsdorf was up on a moor.
SB: Oh it was isolated.
BW: Were you in reach of a town or just -
SB: Oh no, no it was -
BW: Middle of the country.
SB: Completely isolated. There was, what it doesn’t indicate there used to be turrets on stilts kind of thing on each corner of the camp.
BW: Similar to that.
SB: Oh there we are. Yes. There we are.
BW: These are pictures of guard towers and –
SB: Oh aye
BW: Barbed wire.
SB: And there used to be barbed wire and about six or ten feet from the barbed wire there used to be a single wire and if you went past that you were asking for trouble from that.
BW: You would be shot presumably.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: It was like, like a trip wire I guess. And so there was plenty of barbed wire on the outer fences shown there. Were there two or three layers of barbed wire?
SB: Oh it was a fair depth of barbed wire. Oh yes. I never fancied this tunnelling business. Oh no. That didn’t appeal to me at all. I took it that changing identities was a lot easier.
BW: What put you off digging?
SB: Hmmn?
BW: What put you off digging or tunnelling?
SB: Well a bit claustrophobic I should think. And that Dulag Luft that’s an air force camp.
BW: Ahum.
SB: Well they didn’t have the opportunities like we had for swapping identities with soldiers going out to work because they were all senior NCOs and they weren’t allowed to go to work so they had an advantage but it was a disadvantage as well.
BW: It’s interesting that you took the opportunity to join a working party and go outside the camp. Was it the opportunity to get away from the camp a little bit that appealed or was it the idea of just having something to do?
SB: I think it was something to do. As I say I’d no ambitions about escaping completely because I couldn’t speak ruddy German and it was keeping the Germans occupied as well as anything else but er -
Other: If it’s alright I’m going to leave you to it.
BW: Do you want to, sorry?
SB: A grand lad. He looks after me with bills and -
BW: Yeah.
SB: He explains what, my heating, I haven’t a clue about it. I just had him on it this morning. He used to be in charge of a soft drinks factory and he used to drink like a fish but not soft drinks. It used to be beer.
BW: And this was your dad who was in charge. So, and that would, he would have died only shortly after you joined up then, presumably.
SB: In actual fact I didn’t get my first leave and I got a telegram to say he was dangerously ill and so I put an application in and I got a weekend and I always remember I was in, where was I? Duxford. And I went to see the station warrant officer and explained to him and he just calmly said, ‘And how many times is this your father’s died?’ I said, ‘As far as I know it’s only the first time.’ And I had a fortnight, a weekend, and he died before I got there. And when I went back I made an appointment to see the station warrant officer, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Now then. What can I do for you?’ I said, ‘You can’t do anything for me.’ I said, ‘I’m going to give you some information.’ He said, ‘What’s that? I said, ‘My father died for the first bloody time,’ I said, ‘And you remember what your remarks you made.’ He didn’t say anything. Oh aye. I had a brother in the navy for twenty years. One of my brothers was on mine sweepers. One of my brothers was a fireman and the other one, who was taken prisoner on Crete, he was a steeplejack and that’s the thing I can’t stand is bloody heights.
BW: And yet there you were in the mid upper position on a Lancaster.
SB: Oh that didn’t seem not the same feeling. I don’t know. It’s something different. I mean I had no qualms about jumping out. Well you don’t jump out. Well I didn’t. I rolled out but I never thought about it but Stan, my brother, who was a steeplejack I was talking to one of his workmen and they said, ‘Well he’s a bit of a son of a bitch.’ I said, ‘Is he?’ Hey said, ‘Yeah but there’s one thing about him. He wouldn’t ask you to so anything he wouldn’t do.’ But I said, ‘He’s different to me. I would be scared to bloody death.’ Oh yes. He died. Stanley died. He wasn’t ill. In fact Stuart came and knocked at my door. I answered it. ‘Yes Stuart. What’s the matter then?’ He says, ‘Stan’s died’. I said, ‘You what?’ He said, ‘Stan’s died.’ ‘My brother?’ he said, ‘Yeah.’ He was three years older than me and we used to fight like bloody hell as kids. I remember oh aye. He used to collect birds eggs. And I, and the brother in the navy he brought us a football and a pair of football boots each and of course we used to fight like hell who was going to have the ball. Is it your gang or is it mine? And he used to keep his eggs I think with a bowl on top in the bedroom and he, we’d had an argument about who was going to have the ball and I thought, ‘Right.’ So I went and took the drawer out and boom boom boom broke all of his eggs up and we used to have gangs of us and if they thought about it they’d just get us upset and say, ‘Who broke Stanley’s eggs?’ [laughs] And we, in those days we used to make our own enjoyment. I mean we had a three valve tel, three valve radio but for that we’d no nothing and we used to split up a couple of gangs and, Fox and Hounds and we’d have limits of where we could go. We’d go hide in trees and all. It was a totally different world to now. We never used to be in the house. No. And if we were, if I went home with my shoes wet. [Boing.] So I used to, I used to have socks on of course so I’d rub my bloody shoes up my socks so I wouldn’t get that bloody slap back from my mother. My father never touched us but my mother made up for it. Oh aye. Those were the days oh yes. And as I say I was, I was starting work at fourteen because well the money was seven and six a week then.
BW: And so you were working from the age of about fourteen when you left school up until the point, as you say you joined the RAF and you were a machinist at that point.
SB: Yeah. Like I, Elswick Hopper Cycle Works and I used to be in the machine shop. I was foreman’s stooge I think. The stooge was a fella called Tup Franklin and he said, ‘You’ve no need to mess about with turning Steve. Just do whatever wants doing. Put belts on and sharpen tools,’ and he says ‘Just sharpen drills’ he says and I got on very well with him and not being tied to a bench or anything like that it was just the job I wanted. And er -
BW: And then when war broke out you say you felt -
SB: Oh well.
BW: It was your duty to join up.
SB: Oh me and a fella called Donald Cook who was a pal of mine we were sat on, there used to be a drain goes past our houses and into the country and there used to be a [form sitting ?] where the road went over it and we were sitting one day and I said to Donald Cook, I said, ‘Right, Don. I’m going to join up.’ He said, ‘Right, Steve. I’ll join up with you.’ So we got on the train and the ferry. I think it was six pence and we joined up in Kingston upon Hull. Aye the old paddle steamer and the bar, of course we weren’t old enough really for drinking we didn’t drink but the bar opened up as soon as they cast the ropes off the pier. The bar opened and it used to close as soon as it got to the other side. Twenty, twenty minutes normally but as I was reading somewhere, I don’t know where, something about the estuary the Humber being very dangerous. Sandbanks. And I remember the sandbanks. If you got the ferry at low tide oh it’d take ages to get back. Only a, you could spit across nearly from Hull to New Holland and I had a friend, Noel, Noel Stamp. He was a shop assistant in Hull and the times he used to be late coming home. Two or three hours oh aye oh yeah but were no worse for it. We, we did very well. All my family did fair. As I say I met my wife in Blackpool. She was on a fortnight’s holiday when there used to be wakes weeks and Burnley used to have a fortnight followed immediately by Blackburn and there were her and a couple of cousins and I’m stood outside a pub waiting for it to open. A shortage of beer at that time and I got talking to a sergeant and an Irishman, a soldier, in, while I were in the queue and when the pub opened we dashed in and we got sat at the same table as three young ladies. One of them of course happened to be my wife. And she died though. She’s been dead forty odd years. A grand lass but it had to be, but it’s funny how things work out. I mean no one would have expected me to be finish up a manager of a ruddy weaving mill. I couldn’t, I never, I was never a weaver but I had to be a weaver to be an overlooker but Harry [Makenson], this guy who stopped and asked me what I was doing when I was shovelling bloody coal, he, he put me in to be an apprentice overlooker in [Burnley] and my wife was correct. They turned me down. I wasn’t local. My family didn’t work in the mills or anything like that so as my wife forecast they turned me down. So I saw old [Makenson] and I said, ‘Oh Harry I got turned down.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it. Come to Blackburn.’ He said, ‘I’ll get you in.’ I went to Blackburn. I went to the front of the committee and oh yes, oh yes and I was in and I was an apprentice. Harry [Makenson], he looked after me. He was a bit crude at times. I was his apprentice overlooker which I’d never been a weaver yet. Totally foreign to me and he said, ‘Right, Steve,’ he says, ‘Them boxes there.’ He says, ‘There’s machines in them, I want them running.’ He says, ‘You’ve got a bricklayer there to do anything you want him to.’ I opened these boxes and they were automatic [widening?] frames in them and with faults and mistakes I got them all running. He said, ‘Right, you’re coming up to [Longsham?] Mill.’ He said, ‘You’re going to be an overlooker.’ I said, ‘At last?’ He says, ‘Yeah.’ I was there about six months and I got called into the office and me and a fellow called Jack Sowerby, he was in the same position as me and Harry [Makenson’s] there. He says, ‘Now then,’ he says, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ He said, ‘I’m asking,’ I forget his name, Jimmy or Harry or whatever. He says, ‘I’m going to ask you do you want to go down to Highfield Mill and it’s shift work and this Harry said no. ‘Right. Steve, you’re going.’ [laughs] I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘You’re going to be an overlooker.’ I said, ‘I know I am. I’m an apprentice.’ He says, ‘You’re not. Not anymore.’ He said, ‘I’ve one finished. A foreigner.’ He said, ‘He’s finished down at Highfield Mill. You’re going there’ And they were Japanese looms and I used to spend the first few days looking to see what happened and I got on very well. I had maybe good luck and good judgement I don’t know but I was immediately an overlooker and then he opened another mill. He said, ‘I’m opening a mill Steve. You’re going to look after it.’ ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘Christ almighty what next?’ But that mill it closed down through slump and then I came back to Burnley. I was in Blackburn for twelve years and I came back to Burnley and that’s where I still am. I don’t regret anything.
BW: No.
SB: No. I’ve had a, I’ve been a coal miner, I’ve been a ironstone miner at Stanton at Scunthorpe, I’ve been an industrial painter. I’ve, I’ve tried everything until I got settled in textiles. Aye.
BW: Interesting that you had a couple of jobs as a miner and yet when you were in the prison camp you didn’t fancy tunnelling.
SB: No.
BW: Did you ever feel claustrophobic as a miner?
SB: No but I, that, that, that totally different. A coal mine is six to eight feet high.
BW: Ahum.
SB: Other than the actual face and as they move the face along they move this passageway and rails so it was a different atmosphere. In the ironstone mine that was what they called room and pillar system and they’d go that way and go that way and leave a diamond shape to support the roof. That was the room and pillar and I was a a pipe fitter strangely enough but the, I forget, I think they called them eggs. I’m not sure only the pipes were made with a lip on and you put this adaptor in and it was airtight. It was all compressed air was the machinery fans and drills and everything and so I finished up as a pipe fitter but that was thirty foot high and it’s all, I think it’s closed now. Not, not because I left it but [laughs] it’s amazing what you can do when you have to do, oh aye.
BW: And were you aware of other tunnellers in the, in the camp? Were other activities going on like that?
SB: No. I don’t know of any. No but I did hear say that if they found any they’d, instead of pumping the toilet on the field they’d pump it into the tunnel. That would be a deterrent of course [laughs] but I never heard of any but as I say I was surprised I didn’t know any air force fella do the same as I did but I don’t know why. I mean to sit there and play bloody cards all day long there, Oh no it’s, you’ve got to get moving and of course there was always the chance of being shot I suppose. I don’t know.
BW: Some of the other activities here that went on in some of the other camps I’ll just show you were there similar things going on in other in Lamsdorf at all or not. They show a meal at one Christmas and they show a sports team -
SB: Oh yes.
BW: And amateur dramatics.
SB: There was. Oh we’d ladies. [pause] Oh yeah. Oh yes there used to be baseball and as I say ladies. They were fellas dressed as ladies and I knew one and the last time I heard of him he’d died on the isle of Ibiza. What did he die of? Aids. He was a queer. Denholm Elliot. And the first time I I saw him after the war I was, we were in the Odean cinema in Burnley and before the programme there used to be a screen come down with adverts on and lo and behold Denny, Denny Elliot was there advertising cocoa. But it didn’t, he was, he was definitely feminine. Oh his attitude and he was one of the main actors or actresses whatever you might call them and they used get organised and they would give a concert occasionally, oh yes.
BW: Did you sense any of that with the other guys who maybe dressed up?
SB: I didn’t meet any. Denny was the only one I met. Oh no he was a nice, nice lad. Very inclined to be a bit delicate but nature’s a queer thing. I never criticised Denny. I mean he lived his own life. He was seventy odd I think when he died but he died of aids on Ibiza.
BW: And was he in, he was in the same camp as you then.
SB: Yes.
BW: At that point.
SB: Oh yes.
BW: That’s where you met him first.
SB: Aye. No, I mean, in between times I mean we used to play cards. We knew cards inside out. Bridge. Bridge was the main game of cards and I used to, we used to cheat like hell. Like not really cheating but you might, I don’t know if you know bridge at all.
BW: I don’t know the rules of bridge to be honest.
SB: Well, it’s a case you make bids. I’ll bid one club. Well I’ll be the diamond which was over a club and then bid the heart and then the spade was the top card and we’d, we used to have, we had two packs of cards and we used to use we used to get thirteen cards each if I remember right and we’d start bidding. Well me and my partner we worked it out that I’ll bid a diamond or a diamond you missed the [?] out and of course that told your partner something about we were about a real system of cheating but there was nothing at stake. I mean it was just friendly. Well to a point it was friendly. But oh no but I suppose it was a hard life.
BW: Were there opportunities for sport?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Were there opportunities for sport?
SB: Oh, no. You were, you were pinned into your own compound. They were kicking the ball about but as a team no there wasn’t ‘cause I mean it was a transit camp. Here today and gone tomorrow working parties.
BW: Did you get to see much of the commandant?
SB: No. Oh no.
BW: Did you ever see him when you were brought back to camp having tried to escape? Were you taken to him?
SB: No. I went -
BW: For punishment or -
SB: I only saw his underlings. Aye. But no it was a fixed effort. You got seven days, you got fourteen days, you got twenty one days depending on how often you went there. I got to twenty one but er -
BW: Twenty one days in solitary.
SB: Yeah and it was solitary. They, they, you could figure out you could sit somehow and get comfortable and the guards would creep down but it was a concrete floor and they had jackboots on and it used to crackle so they gave themselves away. We’d stand up then immediately we heard this crackling. Oh yeah.
BW: And what sort of size of cell were you in?
SB: Pardon?
BW: What sort of size of cell were you in in solitary? What sort of size of room were you in?
SB: Oh only a little room. A width of a bed and another bed. About that maybe.
BW: So maybe six foot across most.
SB: Yeah six or eight foot maybe. We’d a high window and we’d hear a frog [croakus?] at night. Oh aye, the frogs kept us company at night. Oh yeah.
BW: And so was the window high up. Was it open?
SB: No. No it wouldn’t open.
BW: Oh.
SB: No.
BW: But even then you could hear the frogs outside.
SB: Oh yes. oh yes there was twelve solitary confinement cells but as I say it was solitary apart from this quarter of an hour we used to have walking around this circle which was one of the Geneva Convention rules that they had to have exercise.
BW: And do you think they treated you fairly in the camp in respect of the Geneva Convention or were there things that they should have done that they didn’t or -
SB: I think they were fair in so far as it wasn’t everybody who could have white bread. It was the sick and infirm who got white bread and this brown bread that we got which soldiers got as well it was bloody awful. It was so packed it was like clay and you could cut it as thin as a newspaper but we only got a tenth of a loaf so it didn’t really trouble us a lot [laughs] Oh yes. Yeah.
BW: And you mentioned getting the Red Cross parcels. Were they regular or did you -
SB: Oh no -
BW: Sense that they had kept -
SB: Intermittent.
BW: They were intermittent. Did you sense -
SB: Now and again and as I say two to one parcel.
BW: Do you think they were keeping those parcels behind for their own good?
SB: I don’t know. I’ve no idea. No. I never give it a thought.
BW: Yeah.
SB: No. But no I can’t say we were ill-treated they just hadn’t anything to give us. I mean, as I say, white bread was very unusual. You had to be ill or something. That was for ordinary people not us prisoners of war. No. I think, like they say, the Germans prisoners of war who we took got a lot better treatment. They got better treatment ‘cause it was available.
BW: Did you feel that you were treated differently to the Russians? You say they were in the compound next to them. The Germans had quite a different view of the Russians. Do you feel that or did you get an idea that -
SB: No I -
BW: They were treated more harshly than you?
SB: I didn’t, I didn’t have any idea to compare. I’ve no idea how they treated them. I mean funnily enough I was on the, oh Ibiza and I used to go drinking and my, I was favourite in a bar run by Germans.
BW: So many years after the war you went to a bar in Ibiza that was run by Germans.
SB: Yeah. Oh yeah. I got on very well with the Germans and they got on very well with me I suppose but no it was all over and done with and hope it never happens again.
BW: And in the years following how, how has it been when you’ve seen public response to Bomber Command and the, let’s say the commemoration of them? How have you, have you seen a change over the years that people from Bomber Command have been treated?
SB: Pardon?
BW: How do you feel the veterans of Bomber Command have been treated after the war? They’re, do you feel there’s been a change in attitudes since.
SB: Well I think just a nucleus of people forgotten. It’s one of those things that happened and that was it. I mean Bob Featherstone, an Australian. I mean he came from Australia. He was a school master and then he finished as a rep for the immigration authorities persuading people to go to Australia and I’d been mean I was working in Blackburn at the time and I went home, and my wife said ‘There’s been a man to see you Steve.’ I said, ‘Who was it?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I thought. ‘You’ve to go down to the Labour Exchange at 8 o’clock tonight.’ I says, ‘Why? I don’t know that I applied for any position in anywhere.’ Anyway I went down and there’s Bob Featherstone sat. ‘Come and sit at the side of me Steve.’ And he was talking to people and he was telling them the truth. He said well, the whole point is you’ll get accommodation and you’ll have to, after three months you’ll have to find your own accommodation and different things and I was talking to him afterwards and I says, ‘What about me going Bob?’ ‘Oh you can go anytime’ He said, ‘I can find you a job. I’ve two houses. I’ve one in Geelong and I’ve one in Sydney.’ He says, ‘You can one for as long as you want.’ Oh I thought, ‘Bloody good.’ Anyhow, of course he was only in Burnley for a day and he came to our house and had a meal with us and then he went of course on his travels. He said, ‘Keep in touch, Steve.’ He says, ‘You can fly or you can go by sea.’ He says, ‘Let me know.’ And I was talking to the wife and I said, ‘Alice,’ I said, ‘You’ve got to think one thing.’ I said, ‘You might never see your parents again.’ I said, ‘It’s twelve thousand mile away, ‘I said and you won’t be able to pop over at weekends.’ ‘I don’t want to go Steve.’ I said ‘Ok.’ So I rung Bob and I said, ‘Bob,’ I said ‘it’s off. The wife says no.’ I often wonder what I would have done in Australia.
BW: Yeah.
SB: And Laurie. He was, he was another Australian. He worked on the railways. And Tommy Fouracre. He died. He was the first to die I think. He were a farmer in [?] or some such ruddy place. And the Canadians I don’t know what the Canadians were. I have no idea.
BW: It’s interesting that on that raid as you said before all of you escaped from the Lancaster as it was shot down and yet the three other aircraft that were lost on the same raid over Berlin all the crews were killed.
SB: That’s amazing. I’m wondering if it was as I say I didn’t think or I couldn’t remember ackack. I wonder if the ackack was kept off and the air fighters came in. I mean -
BW: And none of the other crew in your aircraft indicated to you what had happened even when you met up with them afterwards.
SB: No. All I know the plane crashed. Whether it, what it was hit, where it was hit, if it was hit I don’t know and as I say Bob only a few minutes with us and then he was off to an Offlag so I couldn’t get to know off Bob.
BW: And were you all, I don’t recall this being mentioned before and it’s only just occurred to me were you all kept together in the same camp apart from Bob who was taken off to an Offlag were the other six of you kept together? Or did you -
SB: In Stalag 8b?
BW: Yeah.
SB: We were. Oh yes we were held together. We used to play cards with one another and we used to, but nobody wanted to do what I did. I don’t know why. We all have our own funny ways.
BW: So the other guys although they’d all been taken prisoner and all detained in the same camp didn’t try to escape like you did.
SB: No. I mean the, to get out of the camp itself was impossible because there was such a depth of barbed wire and these towers on corners with machine guns. I mean it was hopeless. So there was only one way. Changing identities with somebody who got fed up with working.
BW: And when the camp was emptied and you were walking presumably westwards at what stage were you technically liberated? I mean were you taken to another camp and held there or were you -
SB: We were, I don’t know how long we were on the march. We were like bloody zombies and we finished up in this camp. There was Frenchmen in it in actual fact. There was four Frenchmen killed by a French aeroplane who mistook the camp and and we went to this camp and as I say there was a bloody great big marquee and branches on the floor for us to sleep on and in actual fact there was a young fella younger than me he got frostbite and it had -
BW: Infected his leg.
SB: Aye. He died. He died. He was only twenty one and we were there for maybe a couple of days and then the Americans came. The Germans had gone. There was nobody in the camp only us prisoners and then as I say the old Dakota came along and took us to Cosford and -
BW: And then you were back in this country.
SB: Yep. I was back to work. [laughs] Aye. I enjoyed being in India. I was in Bombay. I was in Madras and I was in Delhi and of course being a warrant officer I had a bit of a [sway?] and some of the lads they all, they always called me Red. I had red hair. If anybody was around it was sir but otherwise it was, ‘Hey Red, just a minute.’ ‘Oh Red. How about getting us on to the race, Guindi racecourse.’ I said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ And I’d get the big, I forget what they called them, bloody thing, the big van thing with windows and we’d go to the races at the weekend. Oh aye. It was useful being a warrant officer [laughs].
BW: Rank has its privileges.
SB: Oh yes. And like if I put my raincoat on and the cap badge or the same as officers and they’d salute me and I’d salute them back the silly buggers. I remember going, going to, oh I was going from Blackpool to Barton. I changed, I was travelling by coach and I changed coach at Leeds and as I got on the coach, ‘Oh very good. Right. Ok now.’ They’d been waiting for an air force officer and mistook me for him and the ruddy coach had been waiting for this fellow and it was convenient. It took me to Hull.
BW: Very good. I think that is all the questions I have for you. So -
SB: Well it is nice talking about it again.
BW: Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. It’s been great talking to you.
SB: It was an experience.
BW: It was a good one I hope. It was for me.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: So thank you very much for your time Mr Bacon. Thank you.
SB: It’s been a pleasure.
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Interview with Stephen Granville Bacon
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:21:47 audio recording
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2016-02-16
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen joined the Royal Air Force in Kingston upon Hull. He wanted to be a pilot but became a mid-air gunner instead. He started at RAF Dalcross where he trained on Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft and went to 12 Squadron at Wickenby on Lancasters.
Stephen describes the preparations for missions, the cold and how the pilot would corkscrew as he approached targets. Following two trips to Essen and on his second trip to Berlin, his aircraft crashed. Another three Lancasters went down with no survivors. Upon landing in the snow he was captured by the German home guard and sent to an interrogation camp at Frankfurt. A person, claiming to be from the Red Cross tried to interview him but Stephen had been warned of this ruse and refused to answer any questions.
He and the other crew members were taken to Stalag VIII-B in Lamsdorf, near the Polish border. The conditions were very difficult with very little water and food. They burnt bed boards from their three-tier bunks to make tea and replaced them with string from Red Cross food parcels. The sanitary conditions were poor. Stephen, however, felt they were treated fairly.
He describes in detail the deplorable conditions in the camp. During his stay he escaped three times by exchanging identities with a member of a working party but was recaptured every time and punished by solitary confinement. He knew he had little chance of escaping as he couldn't speak German but wanted to keep the Germans occupied. He discusses some of the amusing incidents which occurred and outlines the entertainment activities in the camp. Stephen’s mother was informed he was missing, and his name read out as a prisoner of war by Lord Haw-Haw [William Joyce].
In 1945, he embarked on a gruelling march to escape from the approaching Russian army, often resorting to eating raw chicken and rabbit. Eventually the guards disappeared and he was picked up and looked after by the Americans and flown back to England for medical treatment. Stephen developed beriberi, weighing only seven stone. He was flown back to RAF Cosford in a C-47. After treatment he was sent to India as there were no flying post available in England. After the war ended, he was sent home to Blackpool for demob and worked in the coal mines, as a coal handler in the mills, a maintenance engineer and finally as a mill manager.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Poland--Łambinowice
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Terry Holmes
Sally Coulter
12 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Defiant
Dulag Luft
escaping
military service conditions
Nissen hut
prisoner of war
RAF Dalcross
RAF Wickenby
sanitation
shot down
Stalag 8B
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3382/PCooperS1501.2.jpg
2a23a039a4e935255b71c83868fe4af0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3382/ACooperS151027.1.mp3
743d46ca47820faff3930564f5cdd69e
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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Cooper, Sydney Foster
Sydney Foster Cooper
Sydney F Cooper
Sydney Cooper
Syd Cooper
S F Cooper
S Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. Two oral history interviews with Sydney Foster "Syd" Cooper (b. 1921, 1528331 Royal Air Force), photographs and other items.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Cooper and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-25
2015-10-28
2017-09-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Cooper, SF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GR: This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre. I am with Sidney Cooper at his home in Pointon near Manchester and it is the 27th of October. Sid, if you can just tell me a little bit where you were born and ‒.
SC: I was born in Blackpool.
GR: Born in Blackpool.
SC: Born in Blackpool 15th‒, 15th of October I921. I’ve always been a worker. I started work when I was ten. We used to go in singing halls. And in those days people used to walk down the prom singing away, you know, mill girls and that. And they come to us and said, ‘Hey, you lads, do you know “When the love birds leave their nest?”’ So I says, ‘Yeah, we know that’. So they said, ‘Can you sing it for us?’ So me and Metcalf (pal of mine) we sang it. Yeah, right. ‘Can you stand there?’ ‘Yes’. People walking by, looked in, seen those kids singing and after we’d got a few people there we’d buzz off. They’d give us tuppence and then we’d go to another one, and we did that.
GR: And that was at ten years old.
SC: Oh yeah, I’ve done all sorts of ‒. I’ve sold black puddings on Blackpool Prom for threepence apiece and gone to Chester, run errands for stallholders and this that and other. It was a past time of mine and er, I did that oh ‘til I was fourteen.
GR: Brothers and sisters?
SC: Brothers and sisters, yes. I had two sisters and ‒, two sisters and four boys, and our Jack ‒, he’s here somewhere, here he is, there’s me brother. He joined ‒, he joined, the bloody Fleet Air Arm.
GR: Was you the oldest or youngest?
SC: I’m the eldest boy.
GR: You’re the eldest boy, yeah.
SC: He’s three years younger than me or two years younger than me. He went in the Fleet Air Arm.
GR: He went in the Fleet Air Arm. So that was in Blackpool?
SC: So I tried to get in the Air Force when I was about twelve or fourteen and wrote to them and they sent me a form back to fill in. I filled it in to the best of my abilities and sent it off and they wouldn’t accept me. I wasn’t of the accepted standard required by the RAF. I only weighed about four stone, four or five stone and small, and so I never get in, but I got my own back and joined up and became an engineer.
GR: So you tried to join the RAF, what when you were, what, fourteen years old?
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GR: Which was a bit young.
SC: Yeah, yeah, well you see, because I wanted to go in as an apprentice, you see, and they’d go to school. They’d march down with a piped band, and walk back with a piped band all the time. I knew quite a bit about it, you know, found out about things but anyway it wasn’t to be.
GR: So you were turned down initially.
SC: Oh yeah, turned down. Well after that ‒ [unclear].
GR: Right so when was that? How did that happen?
SC: That was 1941. 1941 I joined the Air Force.
GR: And they sent you for training?
GR: Sent me for training as a flight engineer, which I passed and came away with a first class and went to er, ‒, posted to Blackpool. That’s where I come from. And you’re posted in The Progress Hotel. I thought, ‘I know her, I know her, I know the owner’. It’s just gone out of my bloody mind now, I thought ‘Smashing!’ I walked in there, walked in there, bloody queer you know. Holmes, Mrs Holmes. Bloody place, we were just in one room, just beds, nothing else. Electric light, yes. Heating, no. And this was 1941, Christmas. So, anyway, I was posted ‒. I was going on to 256 Squadron then at Squires Gate, which I knew, and we had to walk there and have meals, and then walk right across the airport to where we were. I had A for alpha er, to look after from a flight engineer’s, from an engineer’s point of view
GR: So you were a fitter engineer.
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I never had a fly in one. There was an accident there with a Blackburn Botha, Blackburn Botha, and a flood and one of our aircraft, it was a Defiant, Defiant and that was a bad aircraft and over Central Station it crashed, but of course I didn’t know much about it because I was in the Air Force at the time. Anyway, I left there ‒.
GR: Just going back, 256 Squadron where you was an engineer fitter. Was it Hurricanes and Defiants?
SC: Pardon?
GR: Hurricanes and Defiants?
SC: That’s right, yeah.
GR: And what did that encompass? Was you an engine fitter?
SC: Engine fitter. Yes. Engine fitter and, of course, they had the same engines in them anyway. And I got posted then to Stradishall and there was no aircraft there or anything. We were waiting for it to commence and I was on Air Speed Oxfords ‒,
GR: Still as a fitter?
SC: Oh yeah, yeah and sort them. Oh, Stradishall was a queer place. There was 214 Squadron were there on Wellingtons and er ‒.
GR: Stirlings I think?
SC: Stirlings, yes there were, 3 Group and oh, I don’t know who I was with but there was another squadron on the station, 138 Squadron. They had Whitleys.
GR: Sid’s putting his fingers to be silent. I think 138 was a special duties squadron.
SC: They had Whitleys, Manchesters and ‒, oh, it’s just gone out of my head, and you know ‒.
GR: You said Manchesters. Halifax, Stirlings?
SC: No, no, no.
GR: Lysanders?
SC: Lysanders, Westland Lysanders [emphasis]. They had Whitleys and Lysanders and er, I have seen people [unclear] taking secret people to France. I see them get up the rope. Anyway, there was one incident that I saw, a Stirling, sorry a Lysander, skid and go in the back of a wagon, just pulled the canvas off, nobody hurt, nobody killed, but we went when it was terrible weather, terrible weather. We didn’t have an aircraft at all but we were employed clearing the runways. My address was number 35, Married Quarters, an empty, empty house. There was nothing there, just three beds in there, no lockers, anything at all, just three beds then usual blankets for to cover us, two blankets apiece, and in the morning we had to get out there, no fire, no hot water and we got all wet through. We had to put our wet trousers on and go out again ‘cause there was nowhere to dry ‘em. Anyway, there was no flying for about eight days it was that bad, 1942 this and ‒, I’m trying to think of where ‒. Oh, I was keen, as I say, always after the money, so I heard they were forming the RAF Regiment so I jumped down and wanted to join the RAF Regiment. They says, ‘Who are yer?’ I says ‘I’m here, I’m there’, anyway he says, ‘You can’t’. You see, because in the Air Force there was six groups of money.
GR: That’s right.
SC: All the people could be of the same rank but all on different money dependent on training. There was group one engineers, group two, group three, group four, group five, and six was ‘M’ [unclear] medical . You can only re-muster upwards and you’re at the top and there’s nowhere you could go. So I says ‘Oh, right, so’.
GR: Probably, as an engineer fitter you was more needed as that.
SC: That was the best job they had in the RAF for people of my age. Anyway, I decided I’d go in as a flight engineer.
GR: So you volunteered for aircrew.
SC: Yes, volunteered for air crew. So they says, ‘Yes, medical, this, that and the other, yes. You’re just the type we want’, so I went as aircrew.
GR: ‘Cause I believe in 1942 as Bomber Command was moving into four engine bombers ‒
SC: That’s right.
GR: Stirlings, Lancs, Hallifax.
SC: Exactly.
GR: So, the extra crew member they needed was the flight engineer.
SC: And a gunner, mid upper gunner.
GR: With your background obviously ‒. So did you do training then? More training?
SC: This will amuse you. Jack Campbell [?], he joined together with me. We even started school together he and I. He joined, he was going as a gunner, wireless operator air gunner, WOP AGs they called them. So of course, being volunteers we were tested, you weren’t tested if you were brought, you was summoned in, so we went into a little room, not much bigger than my lounge and there was queues in there so we go in the queues and was given a bible apiece, a bible apiece, so we were there he recited something and we’d repeat it you know, obeying all the laws and kings and queens and that bloody rubbish. So, we said, ‘Yes, so where’s this bloody shilling coming in?’ The King’s shilling I’d heard of, anyway we came out of there with no shilling. Well, I thought he’s had about 50 shillings that should have been ours, or not. But apparently it’s a myth I think [unclear]. So, that was it. Anyway, so I was in, so I went from there to er, I’ll go and try and find it the name ‒ but it was the head place, the main headquarters, where the boy entrants were and all that ‒ .
GR: Alton?
SC: Alton. Correct, correct. We went there to new entrant headquarters. We were there for a fortnight. Of course, we were hierarchy you see, so that was fair enough, altogether we were off on our way, marched up, and they decided so many people, and we all got a corporal in charge of us and we went to Cardiff, yes Cardiff. ‘Where we going now?’ Goes up the road, another train, we end up in Llanelly, I don’t know, it was always called ‘Slash’ to airmen. We went to Number 1 SDF air crew training, gunnery school, Pembray and that’s me at Pembray. You can see me, the good looking one.
GP: We’re just looking at the photograph of the good looking one on the front row?
SC: Yeah, and he was the instructor, Flight Sergeant Marley.
GR: RAF Rembray, Number 1 Air Gunnery School
SC: That’s right.
GR: January 1943. Wonderful photograph.
SC: Yeah, right. So then came the good news in the morning. He said ‘You lads go out and enjoy yourselves’. Out we went, you see, we’d just arrived, come back, then in the morning we were told what we were going to do. We were under this gentleman. He says, ‘Well this is a very interesting course that you’re going on and of course you’re going to learn a lot. And that’s the good news. Now the bad news, you are not allowed out all week’. Couldn’t get out of the camp, couldn’t go for a drive, so we started about half past eight in the morning to about eight o’clock at night learning about these guns, trying to fit a nice [unclear] on ball turret , different things and armour piercing bullets, and tracer bullets and Christ knows what. Anyway we learned about them SGO Vickers gas operated guns, Tommy guns and oh we left there, all of us one morning, we’re off again. This is after about eight days. We got on this train and went to Cardiff, to Cardiff and then we went from Cardiff to ‒.
GR: It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember.
SC: Gillston, Gillston, all off there and then we were marched to St Athan.
GR: St Athan.
SC: That was a big place and we went there and we, of course, were greeted as we usually were with ‘Who are you? We didn’t know you were coming’. [Laughs]. Anyway, we went in the airmen, went in the airmen’s mess and got bedded down and the next morning we were all marched together, there’s more than this, this was just part of it, and righto, fall out, fall out there and he said ‘So-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so’ calling out our last three hundred names, ‘All here’, and ‘So-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so go they were there and so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so go they were there.’ So, they say right, ‘You are training to be a flight engineer on Halifaxes. You are going on Lancasters and you’re going on the big ones.’ Well the big ones was like going up in the air, like going up a mountain. So we were trained on Halifaxes and, so anyway, after we finished the course, passed out, in a puffer train again and we went to er ‒ oh I don’t know what they called it? Went somewhere to a con unit.
GR: Heavy conversion unit.
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, heavy conversion unit and this was in Yorkshire, anyway went there, and we were going to be crewed up there. The crewing is remarkable because this ‒ the crews which were there, they’d come off Wellingtons you see, of course they’re only a five man crew. They want a rear gunner and engineer and you mixed among yourselves and you sort yourselves out.
GR: And you’re in a big room.
SC: Yeah, well it’s nice. You go for a drink, this, that and another and they say, I suppose, ‘Well, he’s not so bad is he?’ you know and that’s how you crewed up. You’re not detailed. So, you’re going in with welcome arms. So, we joined, we joined up with this lot. [Background noise]. Oh, you’ve got that. I was trying to remember their names. That’s the crew that I was with.
GR: So, this is 427 Squadron.
SC: Yeah, that’s right.
GR: And the pilot, Sergeant Hank Henry.
SC: Aye, Henry, Hank Henry.
GR: Hank Henry and he was with the Royal Canadian Air Force and so were two of the other crew members.
SC: Yeah, that’s right but one, the navigator was a foreign officer.
GR: Yes.
SC: In the Canadian Air Force. Anyway, and there was no rubbish. Everyone was the same, you know, when we were out, on board, and so ‒
GR: And so was this the summer of 1943 or ‒
SC: No, winter ’43, early.
GR: Early winter 1943.
SC: Early ‘43.
GR: You crewed up at 427 Squadron.
SC: Yes, you see, they’d been on Wellingtons. They’d already got some ops in so we went over to er ‒ and we were taken to er, Leeming.
GR: Leeming.
SC: Leeming in Yorkshire. Well, that was 6 Group. That was the first group being formed with Canadians, so it was Canadian governed from start to finish and that was OK. So we did a few ops there. I can’t remember how many, about twelve, something like that.
GR: Can you remember your first operation that you flew on?
SC: Yeah, Bochum, yeah, I’ll never forget that, Bochum, and the navigator says to me, ‘This is where we’re going’ and oh I was dead keen, you know, up for it, dead keen, and Christ it looked as if you could put your hand in it, for flak. I thought, ‘ This is good’. Anyway ‒
GR: So, just before the first operation you had your briefing. Was you frightened? Was you looking forward to it? Or did you just take it in your stride?
SC: Well, well, I mean I didn’t know anything about it. You know, it was all completely new to you. We did a few cross countries, high and low tests, and one thing and another but we were all keen on things you see. No, well, a Halifax is a difficult, I hasten to add, ‘cause there’s twelve tanks, six in each main plane and ‒
GR: And they’re your responsibility.
SC: Oh yeah, well we had good, good skins. I mean you didn’t ask anything, I just said to Hank, I said, ‘I’m just going to switch over’, ‘Aye, OK’, he said, you see. So, anyway ‒.
GR: Did it make you feel a bit easier when you did your first operation that some of the other crew had already done ops?
SC: Well, well, yeah, I mean, you know, they were old hands, you know. Well, they were very, very, very good, you know, we got on marvellous. And people say to me, ‘Well, what did the bomb aimer do? And I’d say, ‘I don’t know’. Well, I was that busy myself ‘cause I got a panel there with all the instruments that the pilot had and I’m watching them for pressure, pressure, temperature and this, that and the other. Very, very keen ‒ and I had [unclear]
GR: Careful with your chair Sid, you’re about to go over some of your photos. Now, that’s alright, leave it there. So, Bochum was a bad one, the first one, lots of flak.
SC: Pardon? Well, yeah, well, I mean there’s not much difference to them but I mean before that I’d had nothing to compare it with. Because I remember one ‒, one place I think ‒, and I’ve got a bad memory, I think it was Wuppertal we went to. We went up there and I’d been looking through the little dome that I had, little dome, and ‘Christ there’s something coming towards us!’ And I just says, ‘Duck!’ and we went under it and it went over and this was absolutely forbidden to go over the target the wrong way, so we’d gone over and you should go right round and have another go but er, anyway, we managed that and we got on very well, very well, anyway it had become probably September, September, September they formed 427 Squadron at Leeming. They were all Canadian there and they decided, the powers that be, decided to form another squadron, namely 514 Squadron, 3 Group. 514 Squadron 3 Group and of course they were getting short, well I hadn’t been told but it appeared that they were getting short of technical staff ‘cause they had nothing, just can’t get them. [unclear]. So ‒, so we went there and it was a place called Foulsham, went to this place.
GR: So is that your whole crew?
SC: No, no just me.
GR: Just you.
SC: Just me. Engineer. So, I finished me flying, I hadn’t done a tour but they decided because where’d they get all the fitters from? See, you know, you need what? One hundred and fifty or two hundred men of different types. So anyway we goes there and they didn’t have an aircraft, they hadn’t even got an aircraft but they were forming the people. I’d overstepped it. Who should ‒, who should be the only sergeant? But Giles, who I knew at Stradishall. He was bent and he was a corporal. He had an accident where he got a screwdriver in his eye, lost his eye, and requested he stopped in the Air Force and he stopped on in the Air force until he was demobbed in ‘46 and he died when he was about 96 or 98. I used to go and see him.
GR: How did you feel about going from ground crew down to obviously air crew and back down to ground crew again?
SC: Yeah, well, I was promoted to Sergeant as a tradesman.
GR: But did you not want to keep on flying?
SC: Well, well not really. It was a relief to some extent but I missed the camaraderie that existed. It was absolutely marvellous. There was one occasion and I forget where we were going, on ops and my ‒, say this is the aircraft, my seat was here, here’s the bulkhead with my instruments on, well I couldn’t see ‘em from there, so I got my parachute and I used to sit on it, sit on this parachute and underneath was a lot of oxygen bottles, yep, and I could look up at them like this or stand up. Anyway, on one occasion I’m going to the back, going to the toilet actually, going to the back there and I grabbed my parachute. The parachute was what they called the observer type that you clipped on. The pilot sat on his, that was the pilot’s parachute. Get this, I picked up the wrong handle, I got the metal handle. [whooshing noise] bloody parachute right down to the bottom before you could say ‒, bottom of the aircraft.
GR: So, the parachute exploded in the plane?
SC: Oh, aye, well, it’s held together with bungee cables, you know, [unclear] there’s no explosion down there. When I was there the other side of it was the wireless operator and I says ‘Christ, that’s me, if we’re in trouble that’s me’. He said, ‘It won’t make much difference, if it comes to it we’ll go together you and me’, and you know I nearly bloody cried when he said that, and I believe him. People, [coughs] pardon me, if we’re talking people many think I’m telling lies but I’m not, I was really upset, and I was crying with pleasure because I know [unclear] he would, I’m bloody certain he would. So, anyway that was one unfortunate bloody thing that happened.
GR: So you are now with 514 Squadron? Obviously back to being a fitter, a fitter engineer.
SC: Yes, yes, then we were receiving aircraft to make the squadron up you see and give them what they called an acceptance examination. You can’t just use it and some required some modifications, you don’t hold the system up because they put it in a different flare chute in, you have to put it in when you get to mace [?]. So we formed up and then in December 1943 this is, December 1943. The last operation they did, I forget where it was, but they went to ‒, went from Foulsham and landed at Waterbeach, which was new station, nicely built place etcetera was there, so we were there ‒, I think over ‒, I think it was the second Christmas we had the misfortune on sea [?] flight. They say that a bomb dropped off an aircraft and there was about twenty three killed, killed on sea [?] flight, but well, we don’t know what happened really. Anyone with any information was dead and it was a [unclear]. Mind you it was mixed, a lot of old, er, chaps who were on pension and had been called in you see. And I mixed with people who were much older than me. We’d got Charlie George, Charlie George and Ginger Leadbetter. They’d wouldn’t have nought to do with women. If you went on holiday, and it wasn’t payday, you could go on a casual and take a few quid to go with. So, I was there and Ginger Leadbetter came away, Ginger Leadbetter, aye, and Charlie George says to him ‘Have you got your money?’ These two were old friends. They’d be forty-odd. ‘No’ he says, ‘I haven’t got it’, ‘Well, wouldn’t they give it to you?’ ‘Oh aye’, he says, ’It was a woman!’ So he says, ‘Where?’ He says, ‘The officer, a woman!’ He wouldn’t take the money. [Laughs].
GR: I bet you [emphasis] did.
SC: Oh, I would have done but lots of people didn’t, not because of the women so much, but anyway it was ‒. I really enjoyed myself there, and the CTO, Chief Technical Officer was er, a ‒, oh Christ, smashing bloke. He knew everything that went on. Anyway, the war’s over Christmas 1945, that’s right ‘45, just before Christmas ’45. Only my eldest daughter was born at August towards ‒. I got no leave, not like today. Can’t get [unclear]. So, he says ‘Right, post you to Italy’. Italy, Christ! So, we went to Italy. Well, this was rumoured again, it wasn’t publicised but it’s rumoured and I really want to emphasise this is rumour, that there was a chance of a war breaking out between Yugoslavia and Italy ‘cause Italy was on our side then.
GR: Yes.
SC: They changed, you see, and this was to show force and round about fifteen bombers, Lancasters, used to come out every day, land at Pomigliano, which is Naples, which I was at at that time, or Bari, which is on the Adriatic side, along there, go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. I don’t think they [unclear] on there [unclear] in their quarters. ‘Cause we were stable there, we had our own places in which to live, but that’s what happened and there was no bullshit there, nothing, and someone said ‒, you’ll laugh, you won’t believe this but it’s true, ‘A parade in the morning’, a parade [emphasis], ‘Get out’, ‘There is’, and anyway we all formed and don’t forget we got German prisoners of war in tents on camp. Somebody says ‘There’s something going on’, he says, ‘Cause Latchthorne[?] has had a bloody haircut’. He was the [unclear] officer, had a haircut. Anyway, a strike had broken out in the Far East, an RAF strike, and they were frightened it would go right through ‘cause we were, what you’d call, Middle East, Middle East Mediterranean Forces, and that was funny.
GR: How long did you stay in Italy for?
SC: Well, came back from Italy and this will amuse you, come back, I think it would be June when, this is testing my memory, when apparently political things had settled down a bit, we were withdrawn and we came back from there and then ‒
GR: So about June 1946?
SC: Yes, yes,
GR: Came back to the UK?
SC: Yeah, came back. Didn’t know where we’d go. We see all these go backwards and forwards, go back on a train six in a carriage, six senior COs in a carriage, in a compartment, and eight for the others and we’re there and I said, ‘We ain’t gonna get any bloody sleep here’, took us four or five days to get home. So I says, I says, ‘Aye, this is awkward. I’ve sorted it out. What do you reckon?’ So, I says, ‘Right, seats, one man on each. Right, luggage rack, one man on each’, so he says, ‘That’s alright, well ‒’, he says, ‘There’s six of us’, I says, ’Well, I’m coming to that, one fella lies on the floor between the two benches’, he says, ’That’s five ways, what about the last one?’ I says, ’ That’s me. I’m gonna make a bloody hammock over the top with the bloody kit bag ropes’. Of course it was alright for about three quarters of an hour but the rope broke [laughs] and I fell [unclear] so anyway that’s what happened. So we, we, we, eventually got to England across [unclear]. I don’t fancy the water. I says, ’I don’t fancy the weather, the weather’s supposed to be bad.’ So he says, ‘It’s not so bad, it’s alright’. [Unclear] you silly bloody dope. We came back on the very day lots of ships got sank on the race around England. Anyway, we er, managed and then early morning parade, calling names out this, that and the other, well this, that and the other, over there. And he says, ‘Right, you’re going to Church Lawford’. Oh, right. ‘Church Lawford, you’, and I was going to Church Lawford. That was the AFTS, Advanced Flying Training School, with Harvards (American aircraft). Well I knew the bloody engine’s just the same. So Ginger and I went and unfortunately ‒, Ginger, he was a rigger, on air frames on the other side, and we went to this place. Well, in the Air force when you go from station to station to station you have to have an arrival chit and it has to be endorsed by the person to say that they know that you’re here, you see, and there’s about a dozen, at least a dozen places, what with a medical here, there and everywhere. So anyway, different ones. Well of course it takes you some time to go to these people to introduce yourself. Well the first place you go, pay accounts, another payroll, so I goes there and signs in. So we went to the doctors and dentist, goodness knows what. The last one, where’s that? Where you’re gonna work. That’s two days you’ve been doing now. So we goes, and some NCOs seem to have a certain amount of freedom with the officers because quite often they knew more than the bloody officers above your engineers and that. You’d get engineer graduates from college and well they knew nought about aeroplanes. Anyway, goes there and when I was there you could tap on the door and then put your head round and he’d say ‘Come in’, or ‘I’ll send someone out in a minute’, you see, so he had that licence. So Wing Commander Perry (never came across a wing commander before in the engineering, very queer), anyway, him and I stand there outside, smarten up, you know, no answer ‒ . So anyway [laughs], so Ginger says ‘Come on, let’s go and get a coffee’. I say, ‘There’s someone in here’. He says ‘There isn’t. There’s nobody in there is there?’ I says, ‘I can hear him writing’. He said, ‘Writing?’ Of course, biros hadn’t been invented. I could hear him scratching, you see, ‘cause I had bloody good ears then, which I haven’t now. I said, ‘There’s somebody in there.’ So, he says, ‘Oh right’. So anyway taps on the door and walks in, stood in front of him, he’s still writing, Ginger is still next to me. This is true to the letter. He says, ‘Did you hear me say ‘Come in Sergeant’?’ He said, ‘No Sir’. So he says, ‘Did you hear me say ‘Come in Sergeant’’, I says ‘No, Sir’. He said, ‘Well f‒ off out then!’ [laughs]. I’d never came across language like that from a bloody wing commander so we bloody goes out. Anyway, we’re in the bloody s‒ here with him. Anyway, a girl comes in, calls in and says ‘Welcome’ and then that and the other. He must have been about forty five years of age, must have been by the looks of him. So anyway, we went over and there was two men that we were relieving. There should have been about five senior NCOs and rumour had it, somehow, it has just dawned on me that one of them, that I relieved, had been a prisoner of war and they still wouldn’t let him go ‘til they’d got a replacement, and they got a bloody replacement and that was me! I never seen him again, he’d gone, but I really enjoyed myself in the Air force to some extent, well to a large extent.
GR: When was you demobbed?
SC: Demobbed on 16th August 1946.
GR: And what did you do next?
SC: Well foolishly I did nothing, just hung about and that. ‘Cause I went to Blackpool, took the wife and kids to Blackpool and then I couldn’t get a job.
GR: Now, you’ve mentioned it, was you married?
SC: Pardon?
GR: Was you married during the war?
SC: Yeah, I was married in 1946, 1946. No, no. no, married in 19‒.
GR: ‘Cause you mentioned your wife a couple of times.
GR: Before the war started?
SC: Oh no, no.
GR: During the war? It doesn’t matter exactly when.
SC: Married in May ‘44, May 1944 ‘cause I wouldn’t get married while I was flying.
GR: While you was flying.
SC: My wife wanted to get married earlier but I wouldn’t, not while I was flying, so we married in the April next year, er, ’44.
GR: So after you’re demobbed, back in Blackpool.
SC: Back in Blackpool. I couldn’t get jobs and that was a terrible place for employment.
GR: Unless you was singing on the pier.
SC: [Laughs] That’s right but my voice had gone so I couldn’t and I got some contacts in Blackpool but it wasn’t to be and I went to Standard Telephones and er, in the model shop, gets out of there, goes back to Blackpool, went to the accounts department. I had a good job there ‘cause there was two of us in my place, a big place was Standard Telephones. Chap next to me, he was first class, he went on holiday, [unclear] I got a lot less. Anyway I must have suited them ‘cause I got a £2 pay rise. They used to come in and put it face down in case anybody had a look. Oh Christ, £2! So I got a job there then. Well, when I was at Church Lawford I was dealing direct with a company where the ‒, a motor company, that was agents, main agents for Pratt and Whitney you see, I’d lend them stuff and they knew me by name. Anyway, ‘course I know [unclear] ‘cause there was no one above me, I was the gaffer, and I left there and joined British Airways, British Airways. My brother said to me, ’Oh, you want to get with British Airways, they’re good in aircraft despatch and that’, because you got to work out the balance before it went in the air. You know when you’re a kid and you’re on a seesaw you’re going one way, ‘hey there, get further back and get so and so’. Well you can’t do that with an aeroplane. It’s got to be balanced before it’s up. You can’t do it once it’s up.
GR: So you joined British Airways as a ‒?
SC: As a clerk, as a clerk on five pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence. And I lost twelve quid. I was bloody annoyed. Anyway I went up and eventually there was a new system coming out and I don’t know how it got about but I became top of Europe, you know, ‘cause I said to my boss, I says, ‘Are you trying to make a bloody fool of me on that bloody thing?’ ‘No, no, no’ he says ‘You must go’. Anyway I came top, and it was only British Airways of course. So I was promoted to the hierarchy and I stayed there until I left when I was sixty, ‘cause my wife was very poorly so I had to leave there. In fact I got a letter here ‒
GR: So you finished your working career with British Airways?
SC: No, I got a letter here to say that one of 427 Squadron had crashed on BA property and they were holding a meeting, I got it here somewhere, the meeting. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the letter they sent me. Because I belonged ‒.
GR: British Airways have dedicated a memorial to 427 Squadron for a crashed aircraft and did you attend the unveiling?
SC: No, well I couldn’t leave the wife and she wasn’t fit to fly so I never went.
Gr: So, I’ll switch off.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ACooperS151027
PCooperS1501
Title
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Interview with Syd Cooper. One
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.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:47:48 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Date
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2015-10-27
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney Cooper was born in Blackpool and joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He first served as an engine fitter in Fighter Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 427 Squadron from RAF Leeming. He later served as ground crew with 514 Squadron. On leaving the Royal Air Force in 1946 he worked for Standard Telephones and British Airways.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Creator
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Gary Rushbrooke
427 Squadron
514 Squadron
aircrew
Botha
Defiant
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Hurricane
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
RAF Church Lawford
RAF Foulsham
RAF Leeming
RAF Stradishall
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/250/3398/PEllisMW1701.1.jpg
fe0a9e98f23972969b5aa03159b3c69e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/250/3398/AEllisMW170703.1.mp3
9a9db74325a0256a11c8b95b9a2f864e
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
Ellis, Mary Wilkins
Mary Wilkins Ellis
Mary W Ellis
Mary Ellis
M W Ellis
M Ellis
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Mary Wilkins Ellis (1917 - 2018). Mary Ellis was an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-03
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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Ellis, MW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 3rd of July 2017 and I’m in Sandown with Mary Wilkins Ellis who was a delivery pilot during the war and has a variety of tales associated with that. So, starting off then Mary what were your earliest recollections of life.
ME: Well I come from a farm in Oxfordshire. My father was a farmer and I had three brothers. And I can remember looking at aeroplanes when I was eight, six, eight and thinking how lovely. And then Alan Cobham came along with one of his circus planes to Witney Airfield which is in Oxfordshire. Which is quite close to Brize Norton actually. And so, I had the urge to be more interested in aeroplanes more and more. And then I went for a flight with Alan Cobham’s Circus and this set me off even more. And then I talked with my Pa who also liked flying and he thought it was a good idea that I was interested in flying. And when I was at school in Burford I wasn’t very good at playing hockey so, I was allowed that hockey time to go to Witney Airfield and have a flight and that’s how I started flying aeroplanes.
CB: What age are we talking about here?
ME: We’re talking about [pause] I suppose twelve when I started flying. Well, I don’t know but it was very early on.
CB: What was the reaction of the school to your giving up hockey and going to flying?
ME: Each one was allowed to do their own thing so it didn’t register that I was flying. Other girls were doing probably far more important things but we didn’t talk about it. We just went on with our lessons during the other time.
CB: What did the other girls think about your flying? What did the other girls think about your flying?
ME: We didn’t talk about it. So I don’t know.
CB: No. Interesting. Yeah.
ME: But I learned to fly at Witney and, as I’ve just said and I was flying and I got my licence just in 1938. And then the war came and so all civil flying was stopped and I thought that’s the end of my flying life. So, I went home and I was at home doing precious little [laughs] as girls do, you know. Play tennis and all that sort of thing. And then one day I heard on the radio that girls who had licence, flight licence and were able to fly aeroplanes would they please contact the Air Transport Auxiliary because girls were badly needed to fly aeroplanes. So, I applied and I was taken on almost immediately. And I joined Air Transport Auxiliary on the 1st of October. Now, there’s another car coming. I think this is —
CB: We’ll stop there a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: To fly aeroplanes you have to be trained.
CB: Yes. So, when the radio announcement came looking for girls who had got flying experience then there was a process you went through. So you said you joined the 1st of October 1941. Then what happened?
ME: I went to Hatfield. And I was at Hatfield with three other girls who also joined at the same time and we had to — none of us had very much experience so we had to learn to be able to fly aeroplanes without any radio or any help whatsoever. And so, we were, each day we went off on cross country’s from Hatfield to learn the countryside as it was. You know. Woods here, rivers there, churches there. Something else. Like that. And then I was posted to, I was posted to cross country flight at White Waltham in December.
[pause]
CB: Yeah.
ME: And that was at White Waltham which was — White Waltham was the HQ. Did you know that?
CB: Of the ATA. Yes.
ME: And so there I had to go through all the procedures of finding out how an aeroplane works. How the undercarriages works. And what to do in emergencies. It went on and on and I had to learn about the weather conditions. Had to learn Morse code. And it really was fantastic — the amount of learning that one had to do before starting ferrying. And I was flying in the flying training. All the single aeroplanes and I was ferrying these around. And [pause] what happened next?
CB: So, at White Waltham they had a number of different aeroplanes to fly.
ME: Yes. They had a Harvard something or other. And I flew all these light aeroplanes including Hurricanes and I flew fifteen Hurricanes. And then one day I had a little chitty which said I must fly a Spitfire. Just like that. And I thought, ‘Oh my goodness. How can I do that?’ I haven’t been near one because they didn’t have any spare Spitfires at White Waltham for one to look at. And so, I was taken by taxi aircraft to Swindon. South Marston. And there —
CB: The factory.
ME: Yes. And there I — a Spitfire was, came out of the hangar and it was the one that was on my little chitty. So this, I had to fly this aeroplane. The first ferry Spitfire I’d ever flown. And in uniform, you know, when you’re very young one can look quite attractive [laughs] which is rather different today. And so, the hangar doors were opened and out came this Spitfire and I eventually climbed in. Someone put my parachute in because we always wore parachutes and then I got in myself and I thought, ‘Oh gracious me. How lovely.’ And then a chappy that was fastening my parachute and all the other things inside, he said, ‘How many of these have you flown? You look like a schoolgirl.’ And I said, ‘I haven’t flown one before. This is the very first one.’ And he simply could not believe it. And the people around, they were staggered to see this schoolgirl about to fly a Spitfire. However, I managed very well and I taxied out and took off and I got up in the air and I thought I must play with this aeroplane just a little to find out how it flies. What it can do. What I can do with it. And so I did. I flew around for quite some time and I was only going to Lyneham but it took me a long time because I was flying around in this beautiful Spitfire. I landed it at Lyneham. All was well. My taxi aeroplane was waiting for me so I got out of this Spitfire into the taxi aeroplane which took me straight back to Swindon for the second Spitfire in the same day. And they couldn’t believe it when I got there and they said, ‘Oh you’re back again.’ [laughs] I went through all this paraphernalia you do. As one does. At this time I had to do some cross country to fly to Little Rissington — which I did. And I was almost killed at that time because they were flying Oxfords and as I was going in to land I just landed and an Oxford came and landed just in front of me. I still have the letter of apology [laughs] It nearly killed me.
LS: That’s incredible.
ME: But I’m still here. So, that was the beginning of the Spitfire. As you know I flew four hundred and one Spitfires on ferry flights. So —
CB: Were they consecutive or they tended to be interspersed with others?
ME: Interspersed. I’ll show you if you want to know.
CB: Yes. I’d be interested.
ME: Are you a pilot?
CB: Yes.
[Pause. Packet rustling]
ME: These are very precious so I have to keep them.
CB: Of course.
ME: This is D-day. If you’d like to look at my book.
CB: Thank you. Just while I’m just looking at this, going back to your comment about going to South Marston, the factory, to pick up the Spitfire you then did a handling trial. How much would you throw the aeroplane around?
ME: For ten minutes I was, probably, yes, getting used to it. Marvellous.
CB: So you were doing aerobatics in it.
ME: No. We were told never to do aerobatics or fly at night.
CB: Steep turns. Were you, to what extent were you able to —
ME: Everything else.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Well you can see there were all sorts of different aeroplanes in the same day. I could fly a bomber or a Spitfire. All on the same day.
CB: I’ll stop this for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: We’re talking about the variety of planes you flew, Mary, but in the early training —
ME: No.
CB: At White Waltham they had Hurricanes there. Did you deliver many Hurricanes later?
ME: Well, it’s all in the logbook.
CB: You’ve got a variety here but the Hurricanes aren’t a major item. I’m just curious to know whether you —
ME: Well, if you give me I’ll tell you.
CB: Yeah. Because you’ve got Albacores, you’ve got Spitfire, you’ve got Wellingtons. All sorts of things in there.
ME: There you are.
CB: Oh, there we are.
ME: Those are the ones I flew.
CB: Yeah. At the back. Thank you. So, you’ve got a Tiger Moth as a starter. How did you like the Tiger Moth after what you’d been training on?
ME: I didn’t fly Tiger Moths after I’d been doing my training.
CB: Right.
ME: Silly questions.
CB: Yeah. So, we’ll stop there just for a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: Different types in fourteen days.
CB: Right.
ME: It’s all down there.
CB: Yes. So, did you end up with a preference for certain aircraft and ones that you’d like to avoid. If you had the choice.
ME: We were not given a choice.
CB: No.
ME: We were told each day which aeroplane to fly and where from and to.
CB: Yes.
ME: We had no choice.
CB: No.
ME: But we had a choice as to whether we were flying or not. We had no radio. If we chose not to fly because the weather wasn’t what we wanted then we didn’t. I didn’t. And another thing is there are two or three different aeroplanes all in the same day, different places.
CB: Yes. And what’s it like switching from one plane to another when they are different in the way they handle?
ME: [laughs] Well I don’t know. We had a little book with ferrying pilot’s notes. Read the book. Get in the aeroplane and fly.
CB: And what are the most significant points in the ferry pilot’s notes that they’re making you aware of? Some of them had flaps and some didn’t I presume for instance. Did they?
ME: Oh, I don’t want to go into the technical pieces of —
CB: Ok. Doesn’t matter. I’ll stop just for a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: Garlands or whatever it was.
CB: Right. So I suppose —
ME: It was all, it was all different.
CB: Yes.
ME: But you had to know this.
CB: Yes. That’s what I was getting at really because —
ME: Have you seen the ferry pilot’s notes?
CB: I haven’t. No.
ME: You haven’t.
CB: No.
[recording paused]
CB: So, what you have there is a book of pilot’s notes. Ferry pilot’s notes. Could you just do what you did just then? Tell me what variety have you got in there of planes because it’s just significant in terms of how you had to handle this extraordinary change of aeroplane.
ME: It wasn’t, it wasn’t only the aeroplanes. We had no radio whatsoever. We had nothing except our own thing. And to go from one place to another and when one gets to an airfield that is flying Oxfords and then you have to go around and sit in somewhere. Or another place. I’d go to Shawbury and take a Wellington. And I go around and I have to fit in with all the others because they are talking with the RAF. But I have no radio and they don’t know really I’m there except by looking and I have to choose when to go in and land. And it wasn’t easy.
CB: So, you’re talking about fitting into the circuit.
ME: I’m flying a Wellington all by myself, with nobody else there. So I couldn’t ask. They’re all there.
CB: Yeah. So a huge range in there and the number, the notes are simply on a single sheet. Yeah. So, in here we’ve got Catalina. Buckmaster. Blenheim. Huge variety. Albacore. Tutor.
ME: They’re in alphabetical order.
CB: Yes. And Firefly. Did you do any four engine bombers?
ME: Yes. As a second pilot.
CB: What was that?
ME: In a Stirling. And a Halifax. And a Lancaster.
CB: Right. So, in those four-engined planes were there just the two of you or would there be another person as well.
ME: No. There was also an engineer.
CB: Right. Right. And the engineer was there because of them being multi-engined. Right.
ME: That’s right.
CB: So, in the circumstances of this navigation challenge it’s amazing that you managed to find places. What was the way that you planned a route to get there with no radio.
ME: We just had a map.
CB: Yeah.
ME: And don’t forget all these places were — what’s the word?
Other: Camouflaged.
ME: Camouflaged. And they were not easy to find.
CB: No.
ME: And some of them were secret and so they were very difficult to find but we did it. Didn’t we?
CB: Extraordinary. Yeah. What about the night flying? You said you weren’t normally going to do that.
ME: No.
CB: Were some people —
ME: The whole idea of the Air Transport Auxiliary was to get the aeroplane safely from the factory to where they were needed in the RAF and the RNAS. It was no good breaking them because the country at one time was almost without aeroplanes. And so we had to be very careful.
CB: Yeah.
ME: But we were very much on our own. We could fly or if we didn’t like the weather or we didn’t like the aeroplane then we were not pressurised at all.
CB: Which sort of aeroplane would you not like, really?
ME: Which what?
CB: Which sort of aeroplane would you not like?
ME: I didn’t like the Walrus. I know it was a very useful aeroplane.
CB: Seaplane.
ME: But it had a mind of its own and once it clattered about like a lot of bags of old things and something and it made a terrible noise on the ground [laughs] and in the air it just did what it wanted to do no matter what. It was terrible [laughs] but I flew quite a lot of them.
CB: Did you land them all on land? Or did you land some on water?
ME: Yes. They were made at Cowes and I took them from Cowes and landed them wherever I had to.
CB: Yeah. If the weather deteriorated what would you do while you were flying?
ME: Either put down at some aerodrome. It didn’t matter where. Or turn around and go back. Just depended on what weather was coming.
CB: And the people on the [pause] your destination were all expecting you.
ME: No. They didn’t know.
CB: Sounds interestingly challenging.
ME: Very challenging.
CB: Yeah. So, when you landed in your Wellington and got out — what happened next?
ME: Well [laughs] I can tell you the story which everybody already knows. You can tell the story couldn’t you Frank?
CB: Well it’s just we can’t hear it on there. Yes. Could you tell it please?
ME: This, yes, this Wellington I delivered. I can’t remember where it was but I delivered it to some station and I taxied to dispersal and switched off and then opened the door and let the ladder down. I went down with my parachute and the crowd of people on the ground who were there they were amazed. This schoolgirl, you know, flying these big aeroplanes. And they just stood there. And I said, ‘Can we go to control. I must have my chitty signed.’ And they said, ‘We’re waiting for the pilot.’ I said, ‘I am the pilot.’ There I was, you know, young and lovely uniform and they wouldn’t believe me so two men went inside to search the aeroplane to find the pilot. And they came out and they said, ‘No.’ There was no sign of anybody else so they accepted that I was the pilot. And I was. But I was unusual for one small girl to be flying these bombers. Hampdens and things like that.
CB: The fact a girl was doing it or just on her own?
ME: Without any radio. Without anything else at all.
CB: So was there a rule that if it was a bomber there would normally be two pilots?
ME: In the RAF they would have five.
CB: Yes, but —
ME: I think.
CB: In delivery. On delivery, when you were doing, delivering bombers was there a rule that normally there would be two for bombers or just one pilot.
ME: No. There was only two when they were four-engined ones.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Or if I flew an aeroplane like a Mitchell, I think, if you couldn’t get to the emergency you had to carry an engineer but not another pilot.
CB: You mentioned uniform. So how did you feel about your uniform?
ME: Well we were so used to having a uniform we were so pleased when we had two days off because we worked for two weeks and then had two days off and it was nice to get into civilian clothes and rush off all around one’s friends and go home.
CB: Were you based, yourself, always at White Waltham or did you move elsewhere?
ME: I wasn’t based at White Waltham. I was based at Ferrypool 15 which is Hamble.
CB: Right. And what sort of accommodation did you get there?
ME: It was very good. Everywhere I went was very very good because the ATA sorted it all out and we were just taken from one place to another to another. And I was stationed at Basildon and lived with a family in this big, big house, you know, and they looked after me frightfully well. And each girl had some other place. So, we were all well looked after. We had to be ‘cause we were flying each day and all day.
CB: So, when you got to your destination for the delivery you were picked up by the taxi were you?
ME: Usually. But sometimes I had to fly an aeroplane up to Prestwick and maybe it took two or three days to get there depending on the weather and something. And then I had to come back by night train to London. Back to White Waltham and there they would give me another aeroplane to fly back to Hamble.
CB: Right.
ME: A delivery flight. So, very complicated but it was marvellously operated.
CB: Well, very well organised. What were the taxi planes? Predominantly.
ME: The Anson or the Fairchild.
CB: And they went to various places. They picked up pilots from various places did they? On the way back.
ME: Yes. It’s usually a junior would fly the empty aeroplane and whoever got in the other aeroplane the senior pilot would take over.
CB: On the way back.
ME: So if someone went to pick me up then I would have to fly the aeroplane back or wherever it was going. Probably to another delivery place.
CB: We talked about your initial training at White Waltham which was single-engine. Was it? Where did you do your twin engine training?
ME: Pardon?
CB: Where did you do your twin engine training?
ME: I went to Thame for two hours. And that was on light twins. I flew an Oxford for several hours. And when I’d flown lots and lots of different aeroplanes like twins I then went back to White Waltham and I was given a few hours training on a Wellington which put me in the league of all these bombers. And so it was. And from having training on five different aeroplanes I was able to fly a hundred and seventy six aeroplanes.
CB: Right. What was the most daunting thing about switching to a thing like the Wellington because it’s quite a big aeroplane.
ME: I know but [laughs] you don’t need strength really to fly the big aeroplanes, do you?
Other: Not these days you don’t.
CB: No.
Other: It was a bit more difficult in those days.
ME: I’ll tell you one thing that happened in the Spitfire. Two of us girls were going from Southampton one morning. Quite short. And it was quite hazy. Very thick hazy. You couldn’t see. You could see straight down like that and my friend went off in her aeroplane and I thought yes, I’ll go off in mine and took off and it was, I went above the haze as much as I could and I never saw another aeroplane. But we were both going to Wroughton which is Swindon and the thick haze was so great that I managed to look down because I’d judged on the time and what have you that it was — Wroughton was there. And I looked down and it was there. And I didn’t see any other aeroplane. I couldn’t see anyway. Only straight down. So, I did a circuit and came in to land and she must have done exactly the same. I don’t know. But she did a circuit the other way and we actually passed on the runway. We were actually wheels on the runway. She was going one way and I was going the other. We must have missed by inches [pause] and we didn’t see each other. Not even, not even at the end, coming in to land.
CB: Amazing.
ME: We only saw each other as she was going that way or I was going that way and suddenly there was another aeroplane and then I discovered later it was her and she discovered it was me. So we decided we mustn’t tell anybody.
CB: What conversation did you have about that?
ME: Oh, it frightens me. Lots of lovely stories like that.
CB: Yes.
ME: But we can’t go on forever.
CB: Well. Finding the airfields, I thought, was an interesting point because your navigation clearly was very good but in certain circumstances it must be difficult. So how did you? When you got near to an airfield that you weren’t right on course how did you deal with that? You weren’t quite sure where it was. Did you do a square search or what would you do?
ME: Well we just had the maps.
CB: Yes.
ME: And hoped to get there. Whether we went straight or went that way and like that but we got there and then the map said this is the one. So then you had to operate in between the other aeroplanes which were being driven, piloted by the RAF. And the RAF didn’t know that we were coming.
CB: So, what was the technique? Would you fly overhead and then they would communicate with you by —
ME: How could they? We had no radio.
CB: By — no, no. By lamp. They would signal.
ME: No.
CB: They wouldn’t do anything.
ME: They were doing what they had to do and I would —
CB: You just joined the circuit.
ME: Well I couldn’t really join it because probably it was a different sort of aeroplane. Mine might be a Spitfire and somebody else’s might be an Anson or something.
CB: As time went on the planes became more powerful and sophisticated. How did you feel about that? Did you enjoy that?
ME: I loved the fast and furious ones [laughs]
CB: Tempest.
ME: The Tempest. The Typhoon. What was it? All those fast ones. The American one. What’s that?
Other: Mustang.
CB: Mustang.
ME: Pardon?
CB: The Mustang.
ME: Mustang. That was it. I did, I loved those. But then if you’re flying every day then it’s not as difficult as if you’re flying once a week.
CB: No.
ME: But it is difficult when you have three or four different types.
CB: In a day.
ME: In a day.
CB: Let alone in a week.
ME: And then being taken to somewhere else. [pause] Here you are. A Hudson. A Barracuda. A Boston. A Fairchild and a Spitfire.
CB: Three twins and two singles. Yeah.
ME: [laughs] I find it’s, it’s difficult to talk to anyone unless they are a pilot because they don’t appreciate the dangers we were in all the time. It’s amazing really that we did so well.
CB: Yes. What did you regard as your biggest danger when you were doing deliveries?
ME: Weather. Because the weather could clamp down at any time and the amount of meteorology that we knew was very little. It’s not much better today anyway [laughs]
CB: No. So you talked about going above the haze but would you sometimes put them really low in order to be able to see where you were going?
ME: Would I what?
CB: Would you fly really low sometimes in order to —
ME: Yes.
CB: Under the cloud.
ME: I liked to fly in a fast machine. I liked to fly so that I could see the church steeples and go from one to the other and I knew the country so well that I could do that on a flight. That was lovely [laughs]
CB: So where —
ME: I was still working of course.
CB: So, you did a bit of beating up occasionally.
ME: Yes.
CB: Airfields as well?
ME: Not, not airfields but if you were on track and you thought, ‘Oh my friend lives down there,’ I’d go [whoop] you know. Why not? As long as we kept the aeroplanes safe that was the thing.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Because a broken aeroplane was no good to anybody.
CB: No. How did you feel about when you were picked up by the taxies? How did you feel about being flown up by somebody else?
ME: In the Anson. There were sometimes five of us in the Anson. That was perfectly alright because we would go — whose duty it was that day to pick up. The Anson would go around and pick up until there were five or six of us in the aeroplane and then back to base probably.
CB: If the weather was bad you would have to stay at an airfield I presume. Would you?
ME: We did. Yes. We were well looked after if we had to stay.
CB: Because you had effectively an officer rank so they put you in the officer’s mess did they?
ME: Oh yes, we were. Yes. We were.
CB: And what happened in the social side of the officer’s mess activities? Off duty.
ME: Off duty. I wouldn’t know. If we stayed overnight we would have an evening meal and then obviously one was tired and I used to go to bed in the officer’s — wherever it was. I don’t know. They allowed us a very special officer’s place. What do you call them? In the officer’s mess or somewhere.
Other: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Anyway, we were well looked after.
CB: Well looked after.
ME: I was well looked after. Yes.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
ME: But what I didn’t like. I landed somewhere, I remember, and I had to stay the night and I stayed and ate in the evening with a lot of these RAF officers and then went to bed. And the next morning I got up and went to have breakfast and there were only one or two officers there. So, I said to one of them, ‘What has happened to everybody this morning?’ And they said, ‘They didn’t come back last night.’ And that really hurt. That was terrible. I couldn’t bear that. But I had to get in my aeroplane and go off.
CB: Are we talking about a bomber delivery here?
ME: So [pause] it wasn’t all fun.
CB: No. And did —
ME: Because I lost several friends, you know. The girls. They were there and then the next day at Hamble, when we went, they weren’t there. And we had to carry on. There was a war on.
CB: And what sort of things would cause the girls not to be there?
ME: Because they’d been killed.
CB: But flying in bad weather would it be, or aircraft breaking down?
ME: It was usually bad weather. As ATA.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Yes. It wasn’t, that wasn’t very nice.
CB: Did you strike up some really strong friendships with other ATA people?
ME: Yes. We were all fifteen, twenty girls together. We were all great pals. Some were high rank and some were low but it didn’t make any difference socially. We were quite happy to be together.
CB: And what rank did you start at?
ME: I started as a cadet. And then I skipped third officer and I became a second officer and I was a second officer for about a year and then I became a first officer. And after that, if one went higher, it meant you had to have a job on a desk as well as flying. I didn’t particularly want that.
CB: No.
ME: So, I tried to keep as a first officer.
CB: So that’s equivalent to flight lieutenant.
ME: No. It’s equivalent to squadron leader.
CB: Right.
ME: Isn’t that right?
Other: [unclear]
ME: Well I was told it was.
CB: So your real interest was to fly all the time. Were you marking?
ME: Rather than sit.
CB: Yes. Were you marking up your score of the number of different planes.
ME: No. No.
CB: Or was it just coincidence that it —?
ME: No. Each day one had to put in the log book.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
ME: Because they all had numbers and so you had to put them in the logbook.
CB: Yeah. Apart from the meeting on the runway in opposite directions what other scary moments did you have?
ME: [Laughs] Too numerous to say.
CB: Give us a sample.
ME: I — no I’m not going to say that. [pause] Yes. There were always little incidents rather. Especially with Spitfires when the tail wheel wouldn’t either go up or go down. I can’t remember. Do you remember?
Other: You’re probably thinking about the main wheels because the tail wheel, first, the very early ones had a skid and then they got the tail wheel very early on but it was not retractable. I think they did have some on the PR aeroplanes that were retractable. I’m not sure.
ME: I’ve got a lot of things in one or two of my books.
CB: Was the Spitfire rather temperamental or was it just you needed to drive with caution?
ME: Here’s a Headquarters, Finding Accidents Committee. “The aircraft landed at its destination with the tail wheel retracted.”
CB: Right. The later model.
ME: “The pilot is held not responsible for this incident.”
CB: Right. Right.
ME: Or accident.
CB: Right. So, which aircraft was that?
ME: This? What?
CB: Which aircraft was that?
ME: It was a Spitfire.
CB: Right.
Other: Interesting.
ME: I don’t know where it was. I’ve got [unclear] [pause] yes, I had [laughs] I was flying over the New Forest one day. I was going to pick someone up from Stoney Cross. I was flying a taxi aeroplane and the engine clipped so, as you know, you can’t stay up there too long when you’ve got no engine. Fortunately, I found a space and I managed to get down in this space which was very very small and I didn’t damage the aeroplane. But there I was. Stranded. And from out of all the trees and bushes came a herd of cows and I’m terrified of cows. And so I had to be rescued [laughs] myself. Somebody passing by or doing something saw an aeroplane and so they came and rescued me from these cows which is extraordinary. To land an aeroplane quite safely and then have to be rescued from the cows [laughs]
CB: And as a farming girl that was quite interesting.
ME: [laughs] yes. There was a reason why I was not very [laughs] intimate with the cows.
CB: In the early days of farming was it?
ME: [laughs]
CB: So, what was that plane you were flying that day? A single engine was it?
ME: There you are. Eleven types in fourteen days. Did I tell you that?
CB: No. That’s good.
ME: I did.
CB: You did.
ME: That was that one. Well, there was ten types in fifteen days.
CB: Right. What’s the predominant one there?
ME: On July the 6th I flew a Wellington.
CB: Yeah.
ME: A Defiant, a Wellington, a Spitfire and a Swordfish. All in the same day.
CB: Quite a bit of variety. What was the Swordfish like to fly?
ME: It was lovely.
CB: Draughty.
ME: I liked being out in the open for a change. It was. It really was lovely. It was like a ginormous Tiger Moth.
Other: It was big.
CB: Apart from the Walrus which you didn’t like what other plane would you rather have avoided?
ME: I think I told you. The Walrus.
CB: No. Apart from the Walrus.
ME: There isn’t one I disliked but several I found rather more difficult to handle than others.
CB: Would that be twin engines more difficult to handle or some of the very fast?
ME: Some of the bigger ones.
CB: Yes.
ME: Like a Hampden. And you know when you fly a Hampden you have to put a special thing on to get the undercarriage down. If you forget to press this little knob —
CB: Pneumatic.
ME: Then the undercarriage won’t go down and so you circle around and think why can’t I get the undercarriage down? Eventually you just remember to poke this thing [laughs]
Other: Yeah.
CB: Did you ever have a wheels-up landing?
ME: Yes. I did [laughs] I hesitate because I don’t really like answering it but Chattis Hill was a secret place for making Spitfires.
CB: Oh.
ME: And it was in [pause] what’s it near? Chattis Hill. What’s it near?
Other: [unclear]
CB: I don’t know where that is.
ME: Anyway, it was a secret and it was on a side of a hill. And I took this Spitfire off down to where they’d been training horses. So I went down to get a good look and I took off quite happily and one day I forgot that it was a different engine and [laughs] I hadn’t changed the trim the right way and I took off and I went zoom. Like that [laughs] and missed the trees by that much. ‘Cause you know there’s a Merlin engine and a Griffon engine. Now, I forgot so that was my fault. But shortly before or after that I took off from Chattis Hill, this secret place and I went up and I couldn’t get my green lights. In fact, I couldn’t get any lights at all and so I didn’t know what was happening with this Spitfire. And then it started getting warm and I thought I can’t stay up here so I flew around this place and these people in this secret place, I saw them bring out the fire engine and I saw them bring out the ambulance and I thought, oh. And I then went back around and I knew I had to land somehow and so I did. I came in to land and I switched an engine off as I crossed into the field.
CB: On the boundary.
ME: And then sat it down without any, without the undercarriage, without more ado.
Other: [unclear]
ME: It, because I’d switched off everything I could it wasn’t too bad. I got a few bruises myself. But they soon mended the aeroplane I think. A couple of weeks afterwards.
CB: Yeah.
ME: It was flying again.
CB: So, did you come in at a lower speed in order to make sure that you stuck well or how did you do it?
ME: When?
CB: When you were on finals did you actually come in slower than you would have done with the undercarriage down?
ME: What do you mean finals?
CB: Final approach.
ME: Are you talking about this aeroplane?
CB: Yes. As you came in.
ME: It wasn’t [laughs] There was no case of finals. It was just a racecourse.
CB: Right.
ME: [laughs] And I knew if something — obviously I would come in as slowly and safely as I could.
CB: Yeah.
ME: All my learnings came into my head in a fraction of a second and that’s why I didn’t break it very much.
CB: Just bent the propeller.
ME: So all my learning was very good [laughs]
CB: You clearly had a huge number of experiences. What would you say was your proudest event?
ME: Oh, I don’t know [laughs]
CB: I should think that was one of them. Getting it down undamaged.
ME: Pardon?
CB: I should think that was one. Getting it down undamaged.
ME: Ahum.
[pause]
CB: Now, there were men in the ATA as pilots as well as women. So how did that fit?
ME: We were all girls at Hamble.
CB: Right.
ME: We didn’t have any men.
CB: Right.
ME: Just one engineer man. That’s right.
CB: So, at Hamble you were picking up brand new aeroplanes.
ME: We were not always picking up brand new aeroplanes. Quite often we were picking up aeroplanes that had been damaged that had to be flown to the MUs to be fixed again to carry on flying. Quite often we did that. It wasn’t always new ones.
CB: So were you delivering the damaged ones as well as picking up the ones that had been mended?
ME: Yes.
CB: Right. And when you landed at the airfields there was a simple — they weren’t expecting you but there was a simple procedure that you went through was there? To hand over the aircraft.
ME: No. We went and put the aeroplane where they asked us to put it. And then we had this little chitty which we took back with us to Hamble and put it in so they knew that we had delivered that particular aeroplane safely.
CB: Yeah. I’m going to stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: Meteor flight.
CB: No. So tell us. The first jet.
[pause]
ME: This —
CB: So, this was —
ME: That’s what you wanted.
CB: Thank you.
[pause]
CB: This is a letter from November 1945 saying, “Dear Miss Wilkins, I’d like to add to the expressions conveyed to you by my commanding officer my own appreciation of your good work you’ve done for the Air Transport Auxiliary as a ferry pilot. I wish you every happiness in the future and success in any work you may undertake. Yours sincerely, Senior Commander, Director of Women Personnel, Air Transport Association.” Amazing.
ME: Thank you.
CB: So, the Meteor. Where was that being collected from?
ME: Yes. When ATA really closed in ’45 I was seconded with a few other men to fly in 41 Group. The RAF.
CB: Yes.
ME: So, I was posted to White Waltham and during that time I was asked — given a Meteor to fly. [pause] And so I flew it [laughs]
CB: So where did you take off from?
ME: I was flown to Gloucester. Where we were the other day.
CB: Yeah. Staverton.
ME: I flew it from Gloucester to Exeter. I’d never seen one before and I remember saying to the pilot, ‘I can’t fly it because it doesn’t have any propellers.’ [laughs] And so, I said, ‘Can you tell me any of its characteristics or something.’ And he said, ‘All I can tell you is that you must watch the fuel gauges because they go from full to empty in thirty,’ something, ‘Minutes so you’d better be on the ground in that. Before that.’ And that’s all the instructions I had on a Meteor [laughs]
CB: So, what did they explain about the engines and how they operated?
ME: I’ve no idea.
[pause]
CB: Extraordinary. Because one of the interesting —
ME: I just had to fly it and I had my book.
CB: Yeah.
ME: I looked in the book.
CB: Pilot’s handbook.
ME: What it said.
CB: Yeah.
ME: This, that and the other and I just flew it.
CB: Did it tell you you had to keep the revs above a certain level?
ME: No. It didn’t [laughs]
CB: ‘Cause one of the interesting —
ME: How would I know? Because it was entirely different from an ordinary aeroplane.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
ME: So, I just looked in the book and there it told me and so I did what it said.
CB: What height did you fly on that?
ME: Oh. I can’t remember but I remember going off and I thought oh I’m up here. Where am I? I’m lost [laughs] but I soon found myself. Oh and the pilot had told me it would drop like a stone when I took the power off but I didn’t find that at all. I did, it could be a perfect landing and all the people at Exeter were there to greet it and they couldn’t believe this female [laughs] this young female driving this. And the CO said, ‘Oh that’s wonderful. We’ll have a party,’ [laughs] and he said he would keep it for his own because they were changing from Spitfires to Meteors or the other way around. I don’t know which. Anyway, that was my experience which was fantastic. I thought it was wonderful.
CB: And how did you feel the acceleration and speed on that compared with a Spitfire?
ME: Well it was nothing like a Spitfire. A Meteor’s got two engines. A Spitfire’s only got one. So [laughs]
Other: Very fast.
ME: Oh, dear.
CB: Yes.
ME: I’ll tell you what.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Someone said you wanted to know how many Wellingtons I’d flown.
CB: Yes.
ME: And so, I put it out at one, two, three, four to be continued. I got tired of doing it so I —
CB: Right. That’s very good.
ME: And there it is. I copied from my logbook.
CB: That’s lots of Wellingtons. Yeah.
ME: Hard work that was.
CB: Thank you.
ME: Four engines were Lancaster, Lancaster, Liberator, Stirling and Halifax.
CB: Did you fly as first pilot in any of those?
ME: Not the four engine ones.
CB: Right.
ME: No.
CB: And were they also flown by women?
ME: There were secret places.
CB: Yeah. Were they flown by women?
ME: Yes.
CB: As well. They were.
ME: Yes. Of course. Women did everything.
CB: They did. Marvellous. Yeah. So was it only one Meteor you flew or did you go on to fly others?
ME: Pardon?
CB: Did you fly other Meteors?
ME: No. Because I was only there for three months.
CB: Right.
ME: And they were just making these Meteors then. No other girl alive has flown a Meteor.
CB: No. I can imagine. So, then the war ends. Well, what happened at the end of the war?
ME: Well, flying ceased so I went home. I went home. Played tennis with my mother.
Other: [unclear]
CB: And when did you meet your husband to be?
ME: I met him, oh I don’t know. I was running the airfield up here for about ten years before I met him. And then suddenly he appeared and he was a commercial pilot then. So. He was very handsome and so I thought [pause] he talked me into it. I may as well agree [laughs]
CB: So, after the war then you went home and played tennis but after that you went back in to flying.
ME: Well, I just said I came to the Isle of Wight as a, I was a personal pilot to a man that had an aeroplane but no pilot.
CB: Oh. Who was based in the Isle of Wight. Right.
ME: That’s why I’m on the Isle of Wight.
CB: And how often did he use his plane? Well you flew it but —
ME: Very often because he went to various places in, he had to go to committee meetings every so often to here, there and all over the country. So, it was rather fun.
CB: What plane did he use?
ME: A Gemini.
CB: But it had a radio [laughs]
ME: Pardon?
CB: But it had a radio now.
ME: No.
CB: Oh. it didn’t.
ME: No.
CB: Oh right.
ME: No. It didn’t.
CB: What about going abroad? Did he go abroad in it?
ME: I can’t hear now because my hearing aid has just run out.
CB: Ok. I’ll stop.
[recording paused]
ME: I became a personal pilot to this farmer man.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Then he bought a small airfield.
CB: Oh.
ME: And he had several managers which he wasn’t happy with and then one day he suggested that I could manage it for him. And I thought, well it’s a challenge and I like a challenge. So after a while instead of going home I decided to become an airport airfield manager so I was made manager and a few weeks afterwards when I started to build it up and I built the place up and up and I became airport commandant [laughs] because I’d now fixed in a CRDF and all sorts of things which had to be in order for the airline to come in and I did so desperately want the airlines to come in to the Isle of Wight. And so, I had to have all this CRDF and everything else. So, I did that.
CB: This is at Sandown.
ME: And the airlines came in. In the summer it brought people from Leeds and Manchester and Birmingham and Exeter and London. Every day in the summer. Which was — people can’t remember here that this ever happened but it did and it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. And then of course I was married by this time and my husband was working for the — what was it?
Other: The Hovercraft.
ME: Hovercraft
LS: Yes. Yes.
Other: Hovercraft.
ME: Yes. The British Hovercraft. Whatever it was called.
CB: The British Hovercraft Association. At Cowes. Yes
ME: And he was posted out to various places around the world and then he didn’t like that very much so he came back. And he was asked again, please would he go to various places and he said he wouldn’t go unless I went with him. So it was a case of he giving up his job or me giving up mine. And unfortunately for me I had to give up. So, I said I can’t stay here any longer and so I went abroad with my husband but because I left the field gradually went downhill and it closed shortly afterwards and went for sale. And I didn’t know anything about it then because I was abroad. Had I stayed I would have gone on. Without my husband [laughs]
CB: Yes. We’re talking about Sandown aren’t we? Yes. Which still has a grass runway. So, you went around the world with him. Then eventually he returned to the UK. You did. Together.
ME: Yes.
CB: Then what?
ME: But that, that would take, that took about four or five years because I was in the airfield here from ‘50 to ‘70. ‘70 I took off with my husband. So that was twenty years.
Other: Mary. You did the pleasure flying. Mary. Pleasure flying.
ME: Pleasure flights.
Other: Yeah.
CB: You did pleasure flights.
ME: Donald did afterwards.
Other: Yeah.
ME: But — yes because Donald bought an aeroplane. My husband. And together we did pleasure flights. Yes. That’s right. Which was very interesting because quite a lot of people that went for a pleasure flight decided that they would learn to fly afterwards because they enjoyed it. It was going around the Isle of Wight. So that was some good. And then, for some reason, Donald left and said, ‘I don’t want to do that anymore.’ So he didn’t. And I just went. We sold the aeroplane and I more or less went with the aeroplane just selling tickets. And that’s how people know me. Selling pleasure flight tickets. They don’t know anything about my previous life.
CB: Extraordinary. Yeah.
ME: It’s extraordinary.
CB: Yes. Eventually you gave up selling the tickets.
ME: [laughs] Yes.
CB: And settled down to a bit of retirement.
ME: I’m trying to grow old gracefully with my great help.
CB: Yes. Lorraine.
ME: My great friend.
LS: We try to inspire each other. You’re still inspiring me anyway, Mary.
CB: And finally as far as the air, the association was concerned, the organisation continued.
ME: Which?
CB: In the background. Your [pause] your girl, the girls who were in the —
ME: That stopped at the end of the war.
CB: Right.
ME: That finished in ‘45 and so I had three months in’ 46 when I was with 41 Group.
CB: Right.
ME: Which is part of the RAF isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
Other: I’m not sure, Mary. I don’t know.
CB: Yeah. But the Air Transport Auxiliary had an Association afterwards did it? Where people kept together and so you kept in touch with the girls you’d flown with for all those years. Did you? At annual events?
ME: There weren’t very many because most of the girls had been married and so they stayed at home.
CB: Right.
ME: But we did have one reunion. Yes. And that was all. And gradually they have all gone to heaven. Or somewhere.
CB: Yeah. Well Mary Wilkins Ellis thank you very much for a most interesting conversation and we wish you many more years.
ME: You can’t do that because I’m a hundred and a half already.
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PEllisMW1701
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Interview with Mary Ellis
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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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eng
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01:17:14 audio recording
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Chris Brockbank
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2017-07-03
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Wilkins Ellis was born in Oxfordshire and became interested in aviation at a very early age. She experienced her first flight with Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus. Mary learned to fly while still at school and obtained her licence in 1938. When the war began all civil flying was stopped and she thought her flying life was over until she heard a request on the radio for ladies who had a flying licence to join the Air Transport Auxiliary. She applied and was accepted immediately. She began her training at Hatfield and then at White Waltham, where she learnt the rudiments of flying various different kinds of aircraft as well as emergency training, meteorology and morse code. As with all ATA pilots, she began ferrying planes to airfields without the benefit of a radio and landing without any assistance. This led to a number of close calls. One day she ferried two Wellingtons, a Spitfire, a Defiant and a Swordfish. Towards the end of the war she also flew a Meteor.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Air Transport Auxiliary
aircrew
Anson
B-25
Blenheim
Catalina
Defiant
Halifax
Hampden
Hudson
Hurricane
Lancaster
Meteor
Oxford
P-51
pilot
RAF Hatfield
Spitfire
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
Typhoon
Walrus
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/260/3406/PGardinerEF1701.2.jpg
3d1d6163b01832b82e5e90e52d7d1125
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/260/3406/AGardinerEF170809.1.mp3
344ed80f38814e93bb28e5aed249c0bb
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Gardiner, Ernest Frederick
Ernest Frederick Gardiner
Ernest F Gardiner
Ernest Gardiner
E F Gardiner
E Gardiner
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Ernest Frederick Gardiner (1923 - 2019, 1322805 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-04
2017-08-08
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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Gardiner, EF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: My name is Pam Locker and I am here in the home of Mr Ernest Frederick Gardiner [address redacted] and Mr Gardiner’s daughter, Lynn Moult, is also with us. So I would just like to thank you again, Fred, very much indeed, on behalf of the Bomber Command Digital Archive for agreeing to talk to us.
FG: My pleasure.
PL: Thank you. So Fred, I guess where would, a good place for us to start is perhaps your childhood and a little bit about your parents perhaps, and how you eventually became part of Bomber Command, so.
FG: I was born in Banbury, 1923, and I went to a local Church of England school, called St Leonards, when I was five, until I was fourteen. And my father worked for Morris Motors at Cowley, Oxford, and my mother didn’t work, out, but she died when I was just coming up to ten years old and I was then looked after, supposedly, by my father’s spinster sister, but I think we looked after her rather than she looking after us; she was a bit useless! [Chuckle] Anyway by the time I was fourteen I went to work in a furniture factory and I was trained mainly as a french polisher. Then the war started when I was sixteen, and I thought, the job I had wasn’t reserved because it was furniture making, although they were changing over to making gliders, but I wouldn’t have escaped being called up, so I jumped the gun as it were, and joined the RAF rather than finish up in the trenches, haha. So I was called up after that, after I registered. I was called up in November 1941 and went through usual training processes. I went to initial training place at Padgate, near Warrington, where I was kitted up and then went on to Blackpool. I was in Blackpool in digs, civilian digs, for four months doing the usual military training plus initial learning of Morse code and signals. After that, I, after a spell of leave, I was posted to Number 10 Signals School at Madley near Hereford and that was to complete the course as a wireless operator which meant training on radio equipment, continuing Morse code training, we had to reach a speed of twenty words a minute. After that, another little spell of leave and then I spent four months in Leconfield, near Beverley, Yorkshire, and my job there was to fly as a wireless operator with trainee pilots. So we had a trainee pilot and an instructor pilot and myself, the wireless operator, and my job there was to collect bearings from different stations, so that they could be used by the trainee pilot, and that was quite a nice job, I liked that job, for four months and I had to go back to Madley for another three months to take what they called the Aircraft Facility, the aircraft level of training which, until then I was supposed not to have been flying, but that was very nicely ignored I think. And after training there and I was sent to do an air gunnery course, that was at Walney Island, Barrow in Furness, and we flew on Boulton Paul Defiants, sing, two seater fighters, to do our training and we had to fire Browning machine gun from the turret at targets being towed by other aircraft. That was quite exciting, and from there I went back to Madley, did a further course and from there I went to an Operational Training Unit, an OTU, where I was crewed up, and that was an interesting experience. We, there were I think twenty pilots, twenty navigators, twenty of all the categories, and forty air gunners, because there were two air gunners in a crew. And we were mixed up in a hangar and told to sort ourselves out into crews. It was a bit strange, but I think it was a very effective, very worthwhile because you couldn’t really complain after that you see, it was your choice. From there, after we finished OTU, which was a three month course, and flying Wellingtons and doing practice, all sorts of practice flights, short distances, doing short take offs and landings and longer trips up to about eight hours, flying from A to B to C all round the UK, at night as well, to gain experience, did all the job, each one of us doing our job. So, after that we went to train on Manchesters and Lancasters and we were then given a flight engineer join the crew, so there were seven of us. A short course and we went on to Bomber Command which was then at Syerston, near Newark, and we were there and did, well we did, we were shot down on our fifth operation. We did, the first one we did was to Essen and then we did three in a row to Hamburg and then we were on our way to Mannheim, Mannheim Ludwigshafen, its full title, and that’s where we were shot down, by Oberleutnant Petrich, I’ve got a photograph of him, so [pause] from being, being shot down, I was picked up in Belgium by the Belgian Resistance. I’d come down right in the far south east corner of Belgium, very nearly into Luxembourg, and I landed in the dark. It was, to be shot down was about the most horrifying experience I ever had, or likely to have and that’s quite terrifying, sitting there minding your own business and suddenly you’re surrounded by tracer bullets and things coming whizzing past you. In fact that attack killed three of the crew, they missed me and fortunately they missed the pilot and the bomb aimer escaped and the navigator escaped, and we all managed to bale out. Then, as I say, I was picked up by the Belgian Resistance and after five, five weeks of being taken from house to house, village to village, town to town, into France and finished up in a place called Fismes, F I S M E S, Fismes, near Reims, Reims, Reims. And I’d then met another Air Force chap, a New Zealand pilot, he’d been shot down, well he crashed, he crash landed and so the two of us finished up the last week or two in France and then the RAF sent a Lysander aircraft which landed just outside this town of Fismes and picked up myself and this sergeant pilot, New Zealand pilot, and a Belgian agent. This was a night time job, we were escorted up to a lonely field, torches were placed out to make up a flare path. The Lysander came in and landed over a haystack, which was rather unfortunate, because the field that it was coming in had been ploughed up, but where the haystack was, they’d left that strip. Fortunately the pilot managed to do a reasonable landing, and the pilot was Group Captain Verity and he’s written a book on this, these adventures, called “We Landed By Moonlight”. His name: Hugh Verity. I’ve got a copy. So we were picked up there and made a decent take off, came back to England in broad moonlight. Fortunately I don’t think the Germans were interested in one little plane, so we weren’t molested all the way back and we landed at Tangmere, which is near Chichester, and went into an RAF house, on the airfield, and the next day we were taken up to Air Ministry to explain where we’d been [chuckle] and kitted out again, rekitted out. So, back to normal again. But I went back, had some leave - month’s leave. I was a bit annoyed that my New Zealand colleague, he got six weeks and I only got four weeks, and he couldn’t even go home, to New Zealand. And after that I was posted as an instructor in radio, Morse code and also the Browning gun ‘cause I was an air gunner as well. And I served, I was sent down here to Southampton, to the University Air Squadron and I was there until I was demobbed which was a couple of years. Nice job that, very nice job that was. So back home and I didn’t want to go back into factory work – it was hard work, not very well paid, no pensions or anything like that - so I studied and got a commercial wireless operator’s qualifications and with that I got a job with a local firm here in the Channel Islands, Channel Islands Airways, and as a wireless operator, radio officers we were called now, and I did that job for a couple of years to and fro the Channel Islands and then eventually I was posted up to first Northolt, and then Heathrow and transferring from de Havilland Rapides, which were old fashioned two, bi-planes, bi-plane, and went on to um, Vikings, Vickers Vikings, and then - Viscounts - and I did, I think it was thirteen years, and did most of that on the Vikings, er Viscounts, but then they made the radio officers redundant, technology advanced [interference] and they didn’t need a wireless operator and so I was made redundant when I was forty, but that took me up to finding another job, which I managed to do as a technician with IBM at Hursley, and I stayed there till I was retired at sixty, and from there went, with my wife, to live in Chandlers Ford, how many years, er, well, until I was, until I was -
[Other]: Ninety.
FG: Yes, until I was ninety and then we both, my wife and I, both came to Sunrise Care Home and my wife was only here for a few months and she passed away so left me here on my own ever since. That’s nearly four years ago. I think that brings up right up to today.
PL: Well Fred, [Clear throat] that’s a wonderful story. Can I take you back to when you were in Bomber Command and ask you to describe your escape? You’ve talked a little bit about being shot down, which was very interesting, but can you tell us about, you know, once you’d landed and this extraordinary escape that you had, in a little more detail?
FG: Yes. Okay. I remember the horrifying moment when these bullets and shells came through the Lancaster, absolutely terrifying. And you think, I thought to myself it’s our turn, because you knew all the time all the raids were going on, quite a lot of aircraft shot down. Lancasters, quite a lot of those went and this feeling suddenly, when it happens to you, you think my turn, it’s our turn. Anyway, the Lancaster caught fire. It was my job to go back to a position in the fuselage on the floor of the aeroplane, where there was a handle which you could pull which released a big bomb, we had a four thousand pound bomb, that released it, in case the bomb aimer either wasn’t able to, or his equipment was damaged, so he couldn’t drop it from his position so it was my job to dash back and pull this handle and the bomb went down. By then the Lancaster was so well alight I thought well I’m not going back to my seat, I’m getting out. In fact the mid upper gunner was getting down from his turret so I thought oh well, the captain’s probably told us to abandon ship, so I went back to the rear door, which was my escape hatch, escape exit, and I, we’d never done a parachute drops as practice, but we’d been told just what to do, especially in a Lancaster where the tailplane is right up alongside the door and if you didn’t do it properly, it would hit you as you went out. So all these, this training, these lessons, came, came sharply to mind and I managed to get the door open, kneel on the, kneel on the door sill, head down, I’d already clucked my parachute on to the harness, put my arm across the parachute, not my hand on the rip cord. Now some people lost their lives by pulling the ripcord too soon and sometimes in [emphasis] the aircraft, that dead loss, so I thought no, you’ve got to be careful, put my arm across the parachute to cover the handle so that I wouldn’t pull it too soon, so I put my head down to miss the tailplane. When I think about it, I think I did quite well there, I was with it all the time, sharp, sharply thinking what I’d gotta do, so I went out head first, did a couple of somersaults, let the Lancaster get clear, pulled the ripcord, big jolt [emphasis], then it was all peaceful. Lovely, a lovely calm night, and a little bit of moonlight I seem to remember. Anyway, the starlit sky above, but looking down, trying to see the ground, was absolutely black. You can’t see a thing on the ground at night. And I was trying to see where I was gonna land, looking down, focussing several thousand feet, couldn’t see a thing, absolutely black and wallop, hit the ground! Parachute came gently down over me and got myself sorted out and I was just a few feet away from an electric pylon. [Laugh] So nothing to do then, but I rolled myself up in the parachute until it got light. And we had an escape pack, so I opened that. I had some Horlicks tablets and some tubes of cream and few other useful things: a compass and some maps, which were printed onto silk, like handkerchiefs. I sorted all that out and I was just going to make my mind up to move, there was a little track alongside where I‘d dropped and along this track came a chap leading a horse and cart, and I thought oh, well, I didn’t know whether I was in Belgium, Luxembourg France or Germany, they all come down there and very close together, so I stood up and I took a handkerchief out to wave, as a surrender [laugh] and I think this chap leading the donk, leading the horse. thought I was going for a gun and he dived under his cart! [Laugh] Anyway, when he saw I was harmless, he came out and shook my hand, ‘Comarade’. I thought is that French, German, comarade, sounds could be either, play safe. So he pointed back to where he come from and said ‘Comarades, Comarades’. I gave him a handshake and I set off in the direction he pointed. I had bare feet. When the parachute opened, the jolt takes your flying boots off and the socks come with them ‘cause it was fur lined so I was in bare feet [chuckle] so I managed to stagger down in bare feet, in the direction this chap had pointed, and I went down, I remember I had to go under a railway bridge and I came, quite quickly, came to a road with a signpost on it which said Rulles, R U double L E S, so I thought well, I don’t know where Rulles is, never heard of it, but this is probably where I’ll go so I got onto this little roadway and I saw some cottages about a hundred, two hundred yards away, so I set out, I thought well I’ve got to get some footwear before I do anything else, whether I can steal some or be given some, I don’t know, I didn’t know what really was going to happen at that moment, and then I heard a lorry engine coming down the road and I thought there’s only Germans got motor vehicles here: they’re Germans. And I’d just got to the first cottage and I thought I’d better get out of sight so I opened the door, fortunately it wasn’t locked, I just opened the door, stepped inside and closed the door behind me and looked out the window at the side of the door, and the truck went past, open truck with a covered, canvas covered top, but the back was open: German soldiers sitting in there, with their rifles! I though ah, they’ve missed me – only just! So I turned to see where I was and there was an elderly lady in the room, all in black I remember, and she burst into tears and I never knew, then or now, whether it was due to fright or sympathy, bit of both perhaps, very startled, must have startled her for that to happen. Anyway a chap came in from a room at the back, he shook hands with me, he realised who I was, and gave me a black raincoat and some boots, socks and boots! Thought doing very well here and told me to follow him, and I went with him and across the road and I remember, over a little bridge I think it was, to another house, and took me in there and several people gathered – I was an object of curiosity - and I said where am I in English, but nobody could understand me, and I couldn’t understand them very well, but eventually one chap said, ‘Ici Belgique’ – I was able to translate that, Belgium, that’s good. [cough] Am I going on too long?
PL: No, not at all, it’s fascinating. Keep going.
FG: So. Can we switch off a moment?
PL: Just pausing for a moment. Recommencing.
FG: I was now taken to another house where several people had gathered, and one chap could speak a little English, and eventually they found some civilian clothes. [Coughing] So I changed into these civilian clothes and I was then taken by bicycle and escorted by a young, another young cyclist to the next village, which was about two miles away, and when we got there I was taken to a priest’s house [background music] and he took me in and er, I was given a room, and I was pretty tired, this was, I’d had no sleep all night, and he took me up to a room, little room, with a very soft bed, and I went out like a light. I don’t know how long I was asleep, some time I think, and when, later on, when I was awakened, taken down to his study, he and his housekeeper were there and they had a radio which they had to, they could listen to English radio but they mustn’t let Germans hear them, so very quietly put the radio on and put the English news on, BBC, from where I learned that seven RAF bombers were missing that night. That was six plus me. So they gave me some food and so called coffee which I was told afterwards it’s made partly of acorns, it was, I found it was drinkable, and black bread. That sounded nasty but I’m not fussy, food has never been a problem, I don’t turn anything down, so I was very pleased to get some food and I was taken to another house where the lady was in the kitchen, and I was taken into the kitchen and she had a huge [emphasis] plum pie and she cut me a big slice of plum pie and that was rather nice! From there I did this bicycle trip to the next village and I was taken into a room and shown to a bedroom. And I, although it was daylight it must have been then about ten o’clock in the morning, I was absolutely whacked, tired, and they showed me into this bedroom, so I got undressed and I got into bed, and I remember nice, soft bed, and just about to, within seconds to go to sleep and a chap burst in and he said, ‘you are in the house of a collaborator, you’ll have to get out, come with me!’ So having just trying to go to sleep I had to get out of bed quickly, dress quickly and follow him out the back of the house and across into some pretty wild countryside in fact we walked across what must have been a First World War battlefield, it was all hillocks and undulating ground and my ankles I remember playing me up a bit. Anyway we plodded on until we came to this next village, that’s [emphasis] where I was taken in by the priest and I stayed there till the next evening and he said ‘oh, you’ve got to go on now.’ By the way, while I was in the priest’s house, I was sitting there with him, in his study, looking out the window, and two gendarmes came up the path, oh, what do we do now? Anyway, they came in shook my hand and Comarade, Comarade! They didn’t speak English, but very pleasant. I remember their names, and er [pause]. So later on, I was given this room and went to bed because I was needing sleep. And then when I got up later on, more food, and then the priest said oh, ‘you’ll have to carry on, go on from here, you come with me’ and off, we left his house and it was raining and I’d got, I was still in, I’d got these civilian clothes, but no, nothing to keep the rain out, I think somebody had taken this raincoat away from me, wanted it themselves I expect, so he put his cassock round me, and somebody had given me a little black beret, so I had this black beret and this cassock right down to my ankles, absolutely invisible in the night, good thing perhaps. So we set off from his house, getting dark, in fact it was quite dark when we came to the edge of some woods and the priest gave a whistle, which was answered by another whistle and a chap came forward and he was going to be my guide, and he had a pistol, he gave me one, showed me how to take the safety catch off, ‘put that in your pocket’ he said. So the priest left me with him and we set off through these woods, and we got a little way in, in darkness, and he said we must be a bit quiet, there’s a German encampment here nearby and we were just going past like a Nissen hut, a military hut, when the door burst open and a couple of German soldiers came out with their rifles and my colleague pushed me into the ditch and came in with me, and we lay still in the ditch and these two Germans came out and got on bicycles, and rode past us about as far as my daughter is to you, and of course they’d come out from a lighted room so they were a bit, not very, couldn’t see very well in the dark, but we could see very well, we’d been out in the dark for some time, but it was a little bit scary because my companion pulls his pistol out and trains it on the Germans, as they went past. [Motor noise]
PL: [Sharp intake of breath]
FG: I thought oh, don’t want a gun battle here, we’re not going to win against rifles. Anyway the Germans went away and we stayed put for a little while and went on with our journey to the next village where he introduced me to another family and things went more or less satisfactorily from there and I was there for a couple of nights, in fact I stayed there with this chap who’d rescued me, and then he disappeared and I had another guide, a lady this time and [motor noise] she took me, escorted, by bicycle, we both had bicycles, and we went through woodland on our bikes, a little track through the woods, and we came to another village where I was taken into the house of the Burgomaster, and I was sheltered in there and when it became evening I was taken down the road a little way to another house which was, I think a relative’s house, [motor noise] where I was given a bed for the night. The next day the Burgomaster’s sister, turned out to be, nice lady, and she again escorted me on the bike, quite a long way through woods, and we came out at a little town in Belgium called Bouillon. B O U I double L O N, Bouillon. I think it’s the place where the soup comes from. I went up a little track down, between the woods, to a little detached house situated nicely, quiet position, alongside a river, and it was a tobacco farm and my lady companion took me into this house, introduced me to the people there, they took me over and found me a room on the top floor, I remember it, and because it was a tobacco farm, this room I was given was lined with little cupboards and I was quite curious to know what was in these cupboards and they were packed full of cigars, hand made cigars, from the tobacco farm, but I didn’t try one because I’d tried the cigarettes and they were ghastly enough; I smoked then. And I was there for a fortnight and it was quite pleasant, out of the way, no traffic, no roads nearby, and alongside the river, and I went for a walk alongside the river, people across the river walking about on the path, but quite a wide river, River Semois, and so I stayed there for a fortnight and then one day a taxi turned up, and he just managed to get down this little track, to the house, and beckoned me, come with me, so I said goodbye to these people, got in the car and he took me into the village, into the town, at Bouillon, took me in to a hotel, dropped me off at a hotel, in fact once he’d dropped me off he shot off like mad, get rid of me, got rid of me quickly. I went into the hotel, into a room, there were several people, they were all Resistance people and one of them there was Flight Sergeant Herbert Pond of the Royal New Zealand airline, Air Force, so that was rather nice, I was able to speak fluently to somebody and have a little chat, and he said ‘they’re suspicious of me, they think I’m a German plant, can you help sort this out?’ So at least one of these Belgians or Frenchmen, I think one was a French Canadian, and he said ‘can you vouch for him?’ So I said ‘got any experiences you can remember?’ And he said ‘I remember I was on one station and there were some Australian crews’ - and they were always getting up to trouble -and they’d hijacked some chickens, live chickens, taken them up to their room in the barracks and thrown them out across onto the parade ground at night, you know, evening time, night time, and they had bets on which chicken could get furthest along, that’s Australians for you, so he said ‘I remember that!’ He said ‘I saw that!’ So I said to these Belgians, or French people, he’s, ‘no German knows what he saw that night so he’s a genuine.’ And he said ‘I think you may have saved my life there’ he said, ‘they held a gun against my head!’ [Laugh] I still get Christmas cards from him. New Zealand. So from there the taxi driver turned up again and took us across the border into France. In fact, we [emphasis] walked across the border and he took his taxi round through the official entrance and picked us up the other side, at a pub I remember, haha, and from there we were taken to a little town. Oh, we were taken first of all to, to this little local town, and we did a train, we were given a train ticket, some train tickets, yeah, this helper was a French Canadian, that’s right, he took us over there, and of course he could speak English and French, and bought us some rail tickets and we sat on the station, outside the station, while he went and got these rail tickets and Herbert Pond, the New Zealander, myself sat on opposite sides of a table, long table, and he brought us, he went to buy us some beer and while he was gone to get this beer from a kiosk, some bloomin’ German soldiers came down, propped their guns up against the table and sat down next to us, [chuckle] so we weren’t able to speak after that. But then he came back with the tickets and just indicated us, come with me, didn’t say anything, off we went, followed him onto the platform, he said ‘they’re your tickets, when you get to Reims’, is it Reims? Yes, Reims, he said ‘you’ll be met outside the station, at the station exit, by a lady dressed all in black and she’ll be wearing a red flower.’ So the train came in and we separated, myself and Herbert Pond, he said separate on the train, so Herbert went off on his own and I watched where the door was, went across the platform, and in most of the carriages there was a notice up: ‘Reserve Pour Les Troops d’Occupation’. I could read that, even though I didn’t know French, I could read that. Anyway, I could see that somebody was, a civilian, was standing in the corridor and I thought well if he can stand there, so can I, so I went to get on the train but a porter shouted at me and pointed at this notice. I ignored him, I got on the train and went and stood in the corridor and then, from nowhere, goodness knows where, a load of German officers came in and came aboard the train and came past me, the reserved coaches for them, so they took their places in the carriages and one even said excuse me in French, ‘excusez moi’, as he squeezed past me. I thought you don’t know I’m wearing an RAF vest! [Chuckle] Anyway, I stood in the corridor, quite a long journey from this place to Reims, yes, from Bouillon to Reims, and when we got there, got off the train and Bert Pond was, he got off as well, and there was the lady waiting for us, oh skulduggery, I thought this is, this is kids’ comic stuff that we’re doing, this, and followed her at a distance and she led us to a flat where we were given some refreshments and then, after a little while, we were taken to another place, where we stayed I think it was two nights, and that was actually in Reims. By now, we’d got to know this French Canadian and him telling us what was going to happen, he hoped. He said we’ve got to do another train trip so when the time came, two days later I think it was, and we went and got on this particular train and it was a suburban train, wooden seats, bit backward, you know, bit elementary. Anyway we got on the train and I remember we sat together, with our guide, and on the opposite row of seats, facing, were several French women and it looked as though they’d been shopping, they’d all got shopping bags and stuff. So again we couldn’t talk, but it wasn’t too far to go and when we got off we were taken to, er, now where were we taken to, another house in this village called Thiem, welcomed there by the family, I was trying to remember their names, I can remember their names given time. We were looked after well there and I remember lots of white wine was provided for us, bottles of white wine, all the time. So Herbert and myself, we settled in there for a couple of days and I remember being taken from the house into the yard at the side, there was a yard, with doors opening into big open spaces, I think they’d been stables or something, and in one was a Flying Flea. Did you ever come across or heard of Flying Fleas? [Cough] Excuse me. [Pause] Well the Flying Flea was a little home made aeroplane, that could, a real miniature aeroplane, very tiny, stubby little stubby wings and little stubby tail and it would only carry the pilot and I’d seen these flying at Portsmouth when I was a lad and they were highly dangerous of course! And I remember that these people had got one of these strung up on a wall, and the guide said ‘I think these people like to think they’re gonna fly to England in that but they’ll be lucky!’ But I do remember that Flying Flea. So we were looked after there for a couple of days and then we were told that the RAF was hoping to send a plane in to pick us up. Oh gosh, possible, and they said it may be any evening, any night, depending on the weather and other circumstances, so we just had to sit around and wait but after two or three days this French Canadian, he’s still looking after us, he said ‘the plane’s probably coming in tonight’ he said, we’ll set off at a certain time, in good time. So a party of us set off, there were about four or five Belgians, and I remember one of them was carrying a rope, in case the aircraft got bogged down, which had happened, in the past. So off we went following in a single line, no talking, had to keep quiet, until we came up to this field, level field, bit of consternation because it had been ploughed! But there was a strip left, strip of grass, with a haystack at the end, which was a bit tricky, and I being the signaller, I was told to give the signal, think it was the letter R I had to flash. And we had to, well we didn’t have to wait. The aircraft had already arrived and was circling round, and we had to run the last few hundred yards, I remember through mud, and we got there, put the torches out quickly, gave him the signal to land, signal came back. How he found that field, in the middle of France, in the dark, well he wrote a book about all this, as I say, I’ve got a copy. So we set up torches as flare path, gave him the okay signal, came in and landed, over this little haystack – marvellous pilot. Came to the end, turned round, came back to where we were waiting and I’d been instructed to take some parcels off the back seat. There was a little ladder fixed to the aircraft on the outside, I had to climb up two or three steps of the ladder, take these parcels out, hand down to the party below, and he kept his engine running of course and I thought oh, you know, Germans are going to come rushing out from all angles! But of course it was a very lonely spot, and I think he made a record afterwards, he was only on the ground for two minutes and myself and the New Zealander and the Belgian agent all piled in to a single seat at the back. It had one seat, I never got the use of it, I think I sat on the floor, no parachutes of course, or anything like that, and off we went, fingers crossed, and we came across in lovely, lovely clear weather, few searchlights about, but of course it was over France, not over Germany and I don’t think anybody was interested, Germans weren’t bothered about one little aeroplane. So we ploughed a nice trip back and landed at Tangmere near Chichester and went and thanked the pilot for coming to pick us up, Hugh Verity, yes, got his book up there. And we were taken into a, this RAF house and given a bed, the night, and the next day we were taken up to London, to Air Ministry Headquarters, go in there to be interviewed, and rekitted, new uniform, and sent home for a month, month’s holiday, so that was that.
PL: Can you remember what happened during the interview? Can you remember what happened during the interview? Did they, what did they want to know from you?
FG: Well, they wanted to know which towns and villages I’d been to and the names of the people, so I said ‘well I’m not too happy about giving names’, but as it was I think a Wing Commander or somebody senior, RAF man interviewing me, in fact I think there were two or three officers there, and so I had to cough up, should be all right, unless the Germans win the war! [chuckle] And so I was able to tell them, gave them all the details, seemed to be interested and then said ‘off you go for a month’s leave.’
PL: What an extraordinary story! How old were you when this happened, Fred?
FG: Twenty.
PL: And can you remember, I’m just curious, I mean how did you feel about all of this. I mean were you frightened, were you excited, were you? How did you feel?
FG: I was, when the bullets came through the Lancaster I was terrified! I wasn’t too bothered about baling out, and the funny thing was, I was looking down to see where I was gonna land, couldn’t see anything on the, it was all black, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t particularly scared, I can honestly say I wasn’t particularly scared, I was just getting on with it, as you can say.
PL: And during your escape, this extraordinary escape where, you know, every so often you would come in close contact with the Germans, what about then, did you sort of?
FG: No I just held me breath a bit.
PL: Held your breath a bit.
EG: Kept me fingers crossed. No, I wasn’t scared, no. Because at the back of my mind I thought well, if I’m exposed enough to give myself up, they’re not going to stand there and shoot me in cold blood, surely. I don’t think they would have done, and I’d have finished up as a POW, prisoner of war. But these people who were helping myself and Bert Pond, they were risking their lives, in a concentration camp, whereas we would have just been put in a prisoner of war camp. So they were the ones, they were the heroes, they really were.
PL: And did you find out what happened to them?
FG: Yes, um, [sniff] with my wife, we went back to Belgium, and France, and went round to see these all these people and they were absolutely delighted to see us, and see me.
PL: How old were you then? When did you go back?
FG: After the war, when was it, 1947? ‘46 ’47, yes, in fact, we were invited to go back any time and we actually had two or three holidays over there and I took the car over a couple of times. There was one, there was one family who sheltered me for a fortnight, well there were two families who sheltered me for a fortnight each. one family were the tobacco growers and the other family was a chap who spoke perfect English, he’d lived in England previously for several years, and he was an insurance man and a very nice, a very nice character [engine noise], I admired him very much and he was very pleasant, really nice man, and his wife was a very nice, very nice looking woman, and they had a daughter, same age as me, and they sheltered me for two weeks and they’d got some English books, which was very nice, Dickens books, which I was able to sit and read, and they put me up in a little room in the top of the house, in the attic, and I could go down and have breakfast with them and then they said right, ‘the housekeeper’s coming in to clean and you’ll have to go back and hide and keep quiet’, which I did, and she came in several times while I was there, apparently, and she never heard a thing. And she was ever so surprised after the war, when they told her that they’d got a British, a British airman had been hiding up in the loft. They never told her of course, daren’t trust anybody.
[Other]: About your hat.
FG: Oh, yes.
[Other]: Just tell the story of the hat. Tell the story of the hat.
FG: Oh yes, my wife and I were out in Belgium one day, visiting the people in this town, very nice little town called Floranville, where I was looked after for a fortnight in this very nice house and there was an article printed in the local paper giving my name and details, and it was read by a Belgian policeman, and he rang up our host, hostess, and said I know, I’ve got the cap belonging to this airman, could you pop over and get it? And he said er, [pause], ‘I’ve got your cap’, he said ‘I picked it up near where the bomber crashed’, he said, ‘and your name and number and rank is inside’ he said ‘and when I saw your name in the local paper’, he said ‘I realised that was you’, so he rang my hostess and told her, would we go and see him and if we did he would present me with my cap. Which he did.
PL: How wonderful! That must have been an emotional moment for you.
FG: Yeah. It was all quite an adventure. Yes, we went back to Belgium, my wife and I, several times, [cough] looked after us, ever so happy to see us and we had one of the couples back to stay with us for I think a week or ten days, and we were living up in Greenford at the time, but they came over and stayed with us. I thought it’s the least I could do, but I’m afraid most, if not all [emphasis], of the people I knew out there have all died ‘cause I had contacts with several of them for many years, several years, Christmas cards to several people, France as well. I didn’t feel I wanted to give people up like that, give them up casually, when they’d done what they’d done for me. So I kept in touch.
PL: Did they all survive the war? Did everybody that helped you, did they all survive the war?
FG: Um, a chap I met at one house, who’d taken my photograph for my passport, identity card, he was very careless the way he talked, spoke, and he’s partly, I was told, it was his own fault, he was picked up by the Gestapo and he was sent to a camp somewhere, but he died of typhoid and I was told afterwards it wasn’t due to what he did for you, it was because he had so much to say [emphasis] to everybody, let himself down, so he said that was just too bad. One of the ladies, she had a, she was discovered as helping, she was in the, what the Belgians called, the Secret Army, and she was sort of a member of these people and she’d been, I don’t know whether she was betrayed by somebody but the Germans came to pick her up, and in some way, she got up on to the roof of the house she was in and she was standing up by the chimney stack and one of the German soldiers shot her, in the leg. And when, they took her prisoner then of course, and she went to a concentration camp but they fixed her leg and when mum and I went over one time, she showed us this nasty scar in her leg where this bullet had gone in, but otherwise, the man who’d organised the flight out of France, organised the escape line, Belgian, and he was betrayed, and he was tortured and I learnt afterwards he threw himself out of an upstairs window to avoid this torturing, and killed himself. But as I was told, not particularly due to you, I’d have felt a little bit awkward, bit shocked really, didn’t want to think I was going to cause other people trouble like that, but apparently he was betrayed, by a so called friend. [Sniff] [Pause] Trying to think if there’s anything as a follow up.
PL: Going back to Bomber Command, what are your feelings about how Bomber Command has been treated over the years?
FG: I don’t know how to think about it to be honest. I don’t try to think about that. It was all done at the time, it was thought it was necessary and you know at the time, everybody’s saying, oh you know, course we were dropping bombs on civilians as well as on industry: ‘oh never mind, kill a few of them off’, that was the attitude, didn’t think much of it otherwise, and I must admit when I looked out at Hamburg burning I thought it must be terrible down there and it was. We learned after the war how terrible those raids were for the Germans. Six hundred bombers raided Hamburg three nights running. Then I went back as a civilian, because British Airways did a run, London to Hamburg, and I did those. [Laugh] Yes. Long time ago, it’s all in there and I’ve got a good memory.
PL: You have a fantastic memory. It’s been the most extraordinary experience, listening to your story, and is there anything else at all that you would like to mention or talk about as part of your interview?
FG: Well I’d like to give credit and thanks to all the people that really helped me, especially the Belgians and French, otherwise, I think that wraps up the war story.
PL: Well Fred, I’d just like to thank you again.
FG: That’s all right.
PL: For sharing your story.
FG: Pam isn’t it?
PL: It is.
FG: Do you mind if I call you Pam?
PL: Absolutely! It’s been just fascinating and it’s just I mean it’s like the most extraordinary story really of survival and of huge, huge value to the Digital Archive, so thank you very much indeed.
FG: You’re welcome. I quite enjoy talking about it still.
PL: Lovely.
FG: Some people who’ve had experiences like that don’t want to talk about it. Whether or not it’s because they can’t talk about it, haven’t got a very good vocabulary, and I’m not too bad at that am I?
PL: Very good.
FG: I don’t know what sort of accent I’ve got because it’s a mixture, but it’s northern Oxfordshire and it’s a little bit sort of rural, but apart from that have to live with it.
PL: It’s a wonderful accent, Fred Gardiner, thank you very much indeed.
FG: You’re welcome, Pam.
PL: So sorry, we’re restarting.
FG: You switched off.
PL: I’ve just started it again, so that we can hear about your work with the charter company. And you were flying?
FG: Yes, Halifax freighters. And I’ve written an account of my four, three or four months with them. I’ve got it written down the if you’d like to borrow it and read it at any time. That was interesting, very interesting, and quite dangerous.
PL: So that was after the war?
FG: Yes, immediately after the war.
PL: So what made it dangerous Fred?
FG: The way the aircraft were operated. [Throat clear] [Pause] Yes, it was a bit dangerous, in fact one of the aircraft had to ditch in the sea. They were coming back from Italy with a load of fruit, they got low on fuel or something, and I think they’d got a pretty poor wireless operator, and they had to ditch. Because on one trip I had to send a distress call because we were running out of fuel, in bad weather, over Norway, that was, that was a bit dodgy, I could see us ditching. [Cough] The aircraft was full of stockings, boxes of stockings, made in Britain, exported to Norway. And when we got to Norway there was low cloud, very low cloud, and Oslo is situated in some, between some nasty hills, not, I don’t know whether you’d say mountains, but pretty steep hills, and I flew with a very good pilot, he was really super, and it was my job, as the wireless operator, to get him bearings, radio bearings, that he could follow in to land, and the idea was I got lots of bearings from the ground station as fast as I could, one after another so that he could keep lined to the runway and come down until he could see it and you’d know if you were on the right course that there weren’t any high hills in the way, so that was satisfactory, but the weather was so bad that he overshot twice because he couldn’t quite make it. Up and round again, same procedure again, I think on the third attempt, third trip he managed to touch down. No, wait a minute, no, that wasn’t, that’s not true, on the third trip he didn’t make it and he said ‘I’m going to have to divert somewhere’ and - I don’t know why had a slip of memory there - so we set off going south from Oslo and we were getting low on fuel, and it was low cloud, everywhere, so I said ‘shall I send a distress call?’ ‘Yes’, he said, ‘you might as well.’ I sent a distress call and it was answered by a station, all in Morse code of course, this station’s callsign was S E A, I remember, Sea, S E A, and I didn’t know where SEA was so I had to ask the operator on the ground where are you, who are you? And they sent me a stream of stuff back and it proved to be a Gothenburg airfield, so we headed for that and I continued to get these bearings and give them up to the captain and he carried on flying towards them until in the end we got down quite low over the sea and Gothenburg people fired up some search rockets and a searchlight and Very cartridge lights because the weather was still very bad, and being over the sea we weren’t likely to hit any hills and when we got very close to Gothenburg and the pilot could see where he, just see where he was, he did a circuit round and he lost sight of it in the circuit, that was how bad it was, so he had to do that sort of approach again, using the radio. Anyway, after a couple of runs at it, he touched down, fortunately the runway was right on the edge of the coast and he flew over a sandy beach, onto the runway which we were able to do, and when we came to the end of the runway and sorted ourselves out and they got some people up to fill up the tanks and they came back and they said your tanks are more or less empty! I think I saved that, I think I saved that Halifax that day.
PL: Well, to have survived the war and everything that you went through then, you know, to have been lost in that way would have been just so terrible, wouldn’t it.
FG: Yes. Yes, I had a quite interesting time in flying. One or two little hiccups in BA, BEA actually, with engine trouble, engines failed two or three times I was on, engine failure. Very good pilots all the time, got us down on single engine. [Pause]
PL: Are you happy for us to end there?
FG: Happy?
PL: For us to end there?
FG: Yes.
PL: There’s nothing else you want to say? Is there anything else that you would like to say?
FG: Just have a quick think. [Pause] I don’t know if you like to, I’ve got a copy of my time with that charter company and I think it makes an interesting story, all in all, I don’t know if you’d like to read it?
PL: I’d love to read it, let’s end there then. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AGardinerEF170809, PGardinerEF1701
Title
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Interview with Ernest Frederick Gardiner
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:25:04 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2017-03-01
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Gardiner grew up in Oxfordshire and worked in a furniture factory before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He flew five operations as a wireless operator / air gunner from RAF Syerston before his aircraft was shot down. He gives a detailed account of having to bale out of his Lancaster at night, of meeting civilians who sheltered him in various locations whilst he and others avoided German soldiers prior to their rescue. After the war, he and his wife returned to thank those who had helped him escape and remained in touch with many of those who he came across.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
Norway
Sweden
England--Nottinghamshire
France--Reims
Germany--Mannheim
Norway--Oslo
Sweden--Göteborg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
aircrew
bale out
crewing up
Defiant
evading
Halifax
Lancaster
Lysander
Manchester
Operational Training Unit
RAF Syerston
Resistance
shot down
Special Operations Executive
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/PNoyeR1501.2.jpg
2653db561dc3c7ee26ea68bcaca8b1ef
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/ANoyeR151022.1.mp3
be6dc302b639364c57f551e47bc43bba
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
Noye, Rupert
Rupert Newstead Noye
Rupert N Noye
Rupert Noye
R N Noye
R Noye
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history with Rupert Newstead Noye DFC (1923 -2021, 1332761 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
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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Noye, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RN: My name is Rupert Noye. I was born in February 1923. When the war started I was, er, sixteen and in 1940, when Churchill formed the LDV, I volunteered for that. We were renamed later Home Guard and it came in useful when I eventually went into the Air Force because we had learned a lot of rifle drill, marching, things like that. And in, after just a few days after my eighteenth birthday I volunteered for the Air Force as a wireless operator air gunner. I was accepted in April ‘41 but then put on deferred service and eventually called up in September ‘41 and, er, went to Blackpool on a s— a radio course, failed it miserably and re-mustered to air gunner. We were posted to Hendon then and at Hendon for about six months and then I was posted onto Scotland to take the gunnery course. After gunnery course we did OTU on Whitleys at Abingdon. When that course was finished we were posted to St [unclear] attached to Coastal Command, where we were doing sweeps over the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, and one day we did actually see a submarine and attacked it but we never knew of any definite result. After that we were posted on to Wellingtons, went to Harwell to convert from Whitleys, and we were then to posted 166 Squadron at Kirmington and our pilot disappeared one day and we had another pilot, an Australian, starting his second tour. He was very, very good and, er, we finished our first tour at Kirmington when they converted to Lancasters in September ‘43 and I was posted to Operational Training Unit as an instructor. I was recalled in April ’44 to 12 Squadron at Wickenby to replace a rear gunner who had been injured and they, the crew, had already volunteered to join the Pathfinder Force so I went along with them. We went to Upwood and started operating with Pathfinder Force. You had to do so many marker trips before you got your Pathfinder badge and, er, but due to an incident of — we, the crew was broken up. I stayed at Upwood as a spare gunner and during that time I flew with quite a few different pilots and eventually finished up, er, in about September ‘44 with, er, Tony Hiscock. He was what we called a blind marker. He bombed on radar or dropped the flares on radar and we did quite a few, well we did about nineteen trips together, and the last one was over Hamburg, a big daylight raid just before the end of the — 31st March actually, 1945. After that we were all made redundant, went to various stations and different jobs and I volunteered to stay in the Air Force for another three years and eventually was posted back to Upwood on 148 squadron, again on Lancasters, and I stayed there until I was demobbed in 1949. That’s about it. I was very lucky during my time in Bomber Command. I did three tours of ops and was only once was attacked by a fighter. That was on the 5th of January 1945. We were coming back from Hanover and I saw [bell rings] a fighter, a single engine fighter, approaching from starboard side. I told the skipper and he started to corkscrew but the aircraft did fire at us and we were damaged in the tailplane and the wing. The damage to the wing disabled my turret completely because of the hydraulics were damaged and the — but there was no real serious damage. We got back to base quite happily but we did lose about three hundred-odd gallons of petrol. Then in March ‘45 I was again rather lucky and I was awarded the DFC and Tony Hiscock, the pilot I flew with, he was awarded a bar to his and, er, he was a very good pilot and we got on very well together as a crew, which was one of the biggest things you needed, to be a happy crew. I think that’s about enough. When you flew with Bomber Command you were in a crew and the crew — you were trained as crew and you got, generally speaking, you got on very well together and at times, er, when me as a rear gunner would have given instructions to the pilot, having seen possibly an enemy aircraft, instruct the pilot to dive or corkscrew and he would do that without any hesitatation, although I must say we were — that I was lucky in my time that we didn’t have many times when that was necessary but the crew, the crewing up system was a bit haphazard. When you reported to OTU you were all at one time, a varying number of pilots, wireless operators, navigators, bomb aimers and gunners were put in a big hangar or big room and told to crew up, which seemed very haphazard, but the system seemed to work. Later on, if you went on heavies as a crew, you went to a Heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit and got a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer and, er, I never had that because as I joined from a place of rest to a place as a rear gunner. I think that’s about it. We got up to about to, er, on our training and we went into these Defiants and the — firstly you couldn’t, not allowed to work the turret until the pilot says so, and so he said, ‘OK.’ So, I turned the turret round and you have to raise the guns first, turn round and looked at the tailplane and there’s this little tiny tailplane behind you and you think, ‘That’s all that’s holding us up.’ [slight laugh] But it wasn’t, we had wings built the right way round and a good engine [slight laugh] but it was funny really because I mean that was the first time the vast majority of us had ever flown when we were on training because, I mean, you didn’t fly much in those days unless you paid five bob ride with Jack Cobham when he came round to a local airfield and you could go and have a short trip for five bob or seven and six or something. Alan Cobham that was. He started off doing refuelling in mid-air didn’t he, er, down in Dorset? But funny ‘cause when we were at Blackpool we went to the Pleasure Gardens there had they had what they used to call in those days the scenic railway and got on this thing and then down in almost vertical swoops and up the other side. And I think that was designed to put you off flying. [laugh]
MJ: Did it?
RN: It didn’t. No, Not really. Not when you got on a bit on bigger aircraft with the rest of the crew, you were alight, you were quite happy because you couldn’t do much with a Whitley [slight laugh]. It was quite good fun.
MJ: People don’t realise it was good fun.
RN: Well, it was as you steadily, as you, after you crewed up and got steadily got to know a bit more about the rest of the crew because, er, that pilot we lost when we got on the squadron because I think he went LMF. And — but he was married and had a young daughter. He was a Welshman and later on the wireless operator went LMF. There must have been something wrong with us because the navigator and the bomb aimer and myself finished the tour eventually on, on Wellingtons. But we had a nice picture of the Queen, didn’t we, for our 60th wedding anniversary? And I must get a frame for that. Put it up. But it’s a nice picture.
MJ: That’s the point. It’s — that’s how it works. That’s how you remember things.
RN: On Pathfinders, um, they were all volunteers from various squadrons but we used to have talks on the squadrons from, er, Hamish Mahaddie who was one of Don Bennett’s leading men and he used to come round trying to talk people into joining PFF and, um, he must have been very successful because they were never short of volunteers.
MJ: Did — what sort of training did you have to do for that?
RN: Well, when we went to PFF you went to Warboys because Warboys was the Navigation Training Unit for Pathfinders and you went there and you did so much, about a week or ten days’ course there, training, mainly training for navigators and then you were sent to the squadron and did the ops and marking as the time came [background noises]. You didn’t mark straight away because you were, weren’t considered experienced enough or trained up to the, the standard that they wanted.
MJ: Did you have to go with another crew then?
RN: No, you had instructor pilots that went with you mainly but, of course, all the navigators’ logs were sort of checked by the navigation officers after you came back from every trip whether it was training or an actual operation. [background noises throughout sentence]
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Rupert Noye DFC for his recording on the date of — I forget what it is now, 26th? 27th, ah —
RN: 31st is Saturday.
MJ: I’ve got — I’ll see this is on and stays on. 27th of October 2015. Once again, I thank you again and even though I got the date wrong. Thank you.
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ANoyeR151022
Title
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Interview with Rupert Noye
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eng
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00:12:40 audio recording
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Mick Jeffery
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2015-10-22
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Rupert Noye completed two tours of operations as a rear gunner with 166 and 156 Squadrons.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
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Great Britain
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Christine Kavanagh
12 Squadron
148 Squadron
156 Squadron
166 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
civil defence
crewing up
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Home Guard
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Abingdon
RAF Harwell
RAF Hendon
RAF Kirmington
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
submarine
training
Wellington
Whitley
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Title
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Wakefield, Jack
J Wakefield
Description
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One oral history interview with Jack Wakefield (1921 - 2022, 40929 Royal New Zealand Air Force). He flew operations with 75 Squadron from RAF Feltwell and with 38 Squadron in the Middle East.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-10-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Wakefield, J
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MS: This is Miriam Sharland and I’m interviewing Jack Wakefield today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Jack’s home in Wanganui and it is Saturday the 29th of October 2016. Thank you, Jack, for agreeing to talk to me today.
JW: It’s a pleasure.
MS: Also present at the interview is Glenn Turner Of 75 Squadron Association. So, Jack can you tell me a bit about your early life before you got involved with the air force?
JW: Well, I was an apprentice upholsterer when war broke out. And I joined the air force and the army at the same time. But the army age was actually twenty one. So when I got the message from the air force that I’d been accepted and that I was going in to camp on the 8th of April 1940. I sent my father down to the army headquarters to say that I was too young to join the army and they weren’t very pleased. But anyway I made the right decision and really enjoyed my time in the air force.
MS: So what made you decide to join the air force?
JW: Well, we were very patriotic as young people and I was actually in the Territorial Army, and that’s why I joined the army at the same time. Most young men were looking forward to adventure. We knew that it was dangerous but it didn’t worry us a great deal. So it didn’t matter a hell of a lot to us which service we went in. But I said years later, there’s one thing about the air force, you go home to bed — if you go home.
MS: So how did you end up in Bomber Command?
JW: Well, eventually, when I arrived in England in July 1940 we were all gathered at Uxbridge in London and from there we were posted to all points of the compass. And I happened to go to number 5 OTU Aston Downs which is an RAF station, training on Defiants. And during that period the Defiants were meeting up with the Messerschmitts and initially the Messerchmitts were coming behind the Defiants which had a four gun turret firing twelve hundred rounds a minute, each gun. They fell to the gunners and the air force were ahead. But once the Germans knew that the Defiant had no forward armament they started attacking from the front, and then things were reversed. The Defiants were, suffered heavy losses and were withdrawn. By that time I’d finished training on Defiants and they had to do something with us. We were trained air gunners after all. No matter what aircraft we were flying in. So we were posted to 75 Squadron. A New Zealand Flight that had evidently a shortage of air gunners. Like replacements.
MS: So did you want to be a pilot?
JW: Yes. I definitely wanted to be a pilot but I, to be quite honest I just didn’t have the education. I was quite capable of passing, you know, exams. I had a proficiency certificate but that wasn’t sufficient. One thing I couldn’t do was mathematics because I’d never seen them in my life. That’s algebra and all that kind of stuff. So I stumbled there. But anyway I was quite happy to go as an air gunner but I would have, right up to the end of my service life I would have liked to have been a pilot.
MS: So can you tell me a bit about the air gunner’s role? What did it feel like when you were in the turret?
JW: Well you felt responsible for your other crew members. You were the only eyes facing backwards. And we had small duties like the navigator might want a drift. Get the drift of the aircraft and things like that but mostly the main function, I suppose, was extra eyes, especially facing backwards.
MS: And did you ever shoot any German planes down?
JW: No. To be quite honest I never fired a shot. But we were fired at occasionally but quite often the target was too far away for me to retaliate so I’d just give the pilot instructions which way to dive to get the darkest part of the sky.
MS: Can you tell us what it was like when you were training?
JW: Well, it was very thrilling getting into a two seater fighter with a Merlin engine up front, even though it was underpowered for the weight it was carrying. We were so keen to fly that there was pilots going up in Blenheim’s solo and we volunteered to go up with them. And one day I went up with this Blenheim pilot and the aircraft — most of the aircraft were clapped out and we got up, he was going up to, I think it was twenty two thousand and we got up to about fifteen and I found I had no intercom. And there was also a light button which we could send Morse. That was u/s as well. And then when I turned the oxygen on that wasn’t working either. And I couldn’t, I could bash and yell and everything but I couldn’t make the pilot hear me. But at seventeen thousand, it’s in my logbook, seventeen thousand you start to overheat so he descended. So, otherwise I would have gone to sleep. That’s just a little side line.
MS: What did it feel like going from New Zealand to England?
JW: Well, it was a great thrill of course. You see, we were, well I was only third generation New Zealander. All our history at school was British history so we felt very very close to English people. And we knew all about, well I wouldn’t say knew all about, we knew a lot of English history. We knew London. All the history connected with London and all that kind of thing. So we really enjoyed getting around. Then we got to Uxbridge. If we weren’t posted in the morning we were free for the rest of the day. So another New Zealander, a navigator, we’d tramp around London until we were absolutely footsore. And I suppose we were glad to be posted [laughs] because we were running out of money as well.
MS: Can you tell us what squadron, what squadrons you were in and what rank you were?
JW: 75 Squadron. I was a sergeant.
MS: And what —
JW: 38 Squadron I was firstly a pilot officer, actually firstly a flight sergeant, then pilot officer and flying officer.
MS: And where were you located? And what was it like on the bases where you were? Where you were based?
JW: Well, Feltwell of course was a permanent base. A peacetime station built in brick and all that kind of thing. You know, a quiet English village and when I got married I took my wife down there and we lived on a farm and the farmer and his wife really looked after us. And we used to enjoy a bit of a social life in the, well one pub was called The Bear. It was right, more or less opposite the gates of Feltwell. And in that pub my wife met an air gunner and he was flirting with her, and I didn’t knock his block off because he was harmless. But anyway two nights later the poor devil got a cannon shot through him and he went to Ely Hospital where he died. That was just one of the things that happened as soon as we got there. But anyway, my wife, living on the farm she could hear the squadron take off and she’d hear us drift back, and of course quite often we were, we couldn’t get down because of fog. So we’d be diverted but I had no way of contacting her to say that I was ok. So if I left, say, left home say at 8 o’clock the night before to take off at ten or something like that. 4 o’clock the next afternoon there was no Jack. And the farmer’s wife evidently went real solid, you know, stern, sad. But I’d just waltz in through the gate and the farmer’s wife would say to my wife, Joan, ‘Jack’s just come through the gate.’ But they really did treat me as their own and gave the wife and I a nice honeymoon. Until I finished my thirty trips.
MS: How did you meet your wife?
JW: Well I think there was three of us. We were on leave in Lancashire and we were wandering around a market there which they had. They had these stalls in the street. Well, you would know about that. And I was looking for pipe tobacco which was hard to get. There was no issue. You just had to get it where you could and we were going around the odd tobacconists and that and asking if they had any. Most of them said no because they’d have it under the counter for their customers. Anyway, there was these two nice, nicely dressed girls, one blonde, one brunette. Well, very well dressed and they were looking for flowers for their mother who had only died roughly six weeks before. And we passed them once or twice and gave the smart remark, you know. We weren’t crude in those days at all. Anyway, we passed them again later on and I asked them if they’d like to go to a local pub, have something to drink and eat. And after we got in there we ordered salmon sandwiches and then we started to sweat. We didn’t know how much they cost and we were nearly out of money because this was the end of our holiday. Anyway, I got on with Beryl’s [unclear] very very well and I promised to write to her because we were going back the next day. And she said to me, her sister Audrey, ‘He’ll never write.’ Well she got quite a shock because I did write. And at that time the girls were, they went home to live with their auntie because their mother had died and the house was sold. And they all got permission from their auntie for me to go there on leave. So that was great.
MS: So can you tell me how you got together with your crew and tell me what your — ?
JW: Oh yes I can tell you about that. I’ve just got to think of the name of the ‘drome for a minute. Oh God [pause] One of those great big personnel aerodromes.
GT: Westcott.
MS: Was it Westcott?
JW: I just can’t remember the name of the place.
MS: Was its Westcott?
JW: No. If you just turn that off I can go and get my logbook.
MS: Sure.
[recording paused]
MS: Ok. So Jack I understand you were a fill-in gunner.
JW: Yes. There were six of us that came off Defiants because they were taken out of service. And there were six of us posted to 75 and they were all people that had trained with me on Defiants. They were surplus to requirements on those squadrons. I think they used some of the Defiants for night fighters, but the chances of detecting anyone was pretty remote. So that’s how I happened to go to 75 and we were just slotted in where air gunners had probably taken ill etcetera etcetera. So, that’s how I became a gunner on 75. The first pilot was an Englishman and he broke his leg doing back flips over the couch in the officer’s mess. So he was [laughs] he was sent away to recover. And I think the next one was a Charlie Pownall. He was a New Zealander. And all the crew wanted to go to the Middle East except me because I’d met this blue-eyed beautiful lady. So I went to the CO who was Wing Commander Kay and said to him that I’d like to stay in England. Now, I wasn’t, I wasn’t dodging anything because naturally it was tougher over Germany than it was over the desert. So he said, ‘Wakefield, if you can get someone to take your place that’ll be ok.’ So one of my mates was Jack Milner from Hamilton, and he had spent most of his life up the Pacific and he hated the snow and ice in England. Absolutely hated it. So when I told him the story he said, ‘I’ll go.’ So Jack went out to the Middle East in my place and he did fifty two trips but he was killed out there. Well, later on of course I finished my thirty trips and then I was posted to a training school. Operational Training School. There I was what they called a screened gunner. I was screened from operational flying but I took crews out over the Irish Sea and we fired on drogue, a drogue towed by another Wellington. And then when we had finished firing we turned around and they would fire on us. And naturally we were firing out to sea. And during that period when I was training other people we were airborne one day, about half an hour, one engine cut out. And we weren’t very high. We were flying across England towards Finningley and we were in sight of Finningley aerodrome and the second motor cut out. So we crashed on the Great North Road. The pilot put the plane down perfectly on the road, but the wing, of course was too wide for the road and we collided with pine trees which ripped the Wellington around and broke its back and in fact broke it in half, and half went down the road. The crew, including myself and the front went through a hedge and the aircraft burst into flames. Being a pretty cunning critter I already had the escape hatch out before we touched and I was laying down with my feet up on the main spar to take the shock. As soon as we hardly stopped rolling I was going out through the top, but the flames were right on our tail. I got one hand all blistered and the chappie next to me, he got his face blistered as he got out the astro hatch. So that was a bit of a shocker. The rear gunner, who was a pupil, and I left him in the rear turret because generally it was the safest place in a Wellington. In this case it wasn’t because the aircraft was doused with fuel when the wing tanks were ruptured and the second half which is, you know is nothing to burn really, went up in flames and the poor chap was caught alive and burned alive, which is one of the horrible memories I have.
MS: So can you tell me what kind of planes you flew in and how they compared to each other?
JW: Well, of course a Defiant was a two-seater fighter and it was too slow for us. With the weight of the turret and the weight of the ammunition of the turret and the weight of the air gunner it was just too sluggish, too dead. The Wellington of course was the heavy bomber when war broke out and a very hard-working work horse. It carried four thousand pound, a four thousand pound bomb. And we went to many many targets in Germany where we were shot at occasionally. Came back once with forty two bullet holes in the aircraft, but most [laughs] most of the time when we got a barrage which appears very close we generally said something like, ‘ship,’ which is my magic word to get away with anything.
MS: Can you tell me about some of those ops that you went on? Any particular raids that stay in your memory?
JW: Well, I can. The memory’s a bit slim on that because they were mostly very similar. They were either good flights or tough ones. But I went to Hamburg five times which was one of the toughest targets to go to. And when the briefing went around they used to have the map of Europe under a sheet during the day. More or less for semi-secrecy and it had a red tape across to the target. And when it was unveiled and it was Hamburg you could hear this audible sigh amongst the aircrew of, ‘Oh God not again.’ I went there five times and you went up, I think it was the Dortmund Ems Canal because Hamburg’s an inland port. And all along that canal was armed and the worst thing was the searchlights because if a searchlight hit on to a Wellington say that was travelling at, we’ll say a hundred and fifty miles an hour they only had to move the searchlight a fraction to keep it on the aircraft. And although our pilots weaved and chucked it around and everything it was almost impossible to get out of. And what we did, there would generally be three on you at once. So they would pass you from one to the other and when you probably got down the end of say, three there would be another three pick you up. And of course if you were blinded by the searchlights you had absolutely no vision outside at all, it was just absolutely blinding. So that’s when a Wellington would be a sitting duck for anything that was hanging around but it never happened. But I remember one night flying past one while another Wellington was getting hammered with the anti-aircraft fire. We sneaked past and I was quite happy about that, another tough target was Berlin. I went there three times and of course part of the endurance I suppose is the distance of those two places. Especially Berlin, you know. All the way from the coast of France you were being tracked. But apart from that, I mean, you felt quite proud of yourself when you got back. You didn’t worry about whether you’d get back or not. But I will admit that on 75 we didn’t lose big groups. Not until I’d finished. And then a night bomber, [unclear] went down there were six crews lost that night. Which was thirty six young men that weren’t there for breakfast, kind of thing. But during my period there would be two occasionally. Mainly because the weather was so shocking. We were snowed in and the Germans were snowed in as well so there wasn’t a great activity. I mean it took me nearly six months to do thirty trips and quite often they would save you until the moonlight period. And I think I did seven in nine nights at one stage, something like that.
MS: So how was the morale on base when you talk about people not coming back. What was the general feeling amongst the crews?
JW: Well, when it was a question of say of two crews they’d just say, ‘Oh we hear old so and so didn’t get back.’ But see there was always a chance that they were a prisoner of war. We didn’t know that they were alive or dead and it may be weeks later before the squadron would know if they were a prisoner of war. So we didn’t worry too much.
MS: Was it hard to get close to people or to make friends? Especially as a fill-in crew.
JW: Well I’m glad you asked that. We were in close groups of friends. In other words chaps that I went there with, you know like the air gunners. I was mostly, you know, we’d go to the sergeant’s mess. We’d form a little group in one corner. And later on I went to the OUT. There was a New Zealander from Fielding and a New Zealander from Hawera and they both worked for Hodder and Tully. Now, this pilot, he was really good friends with us to. So much so that when his wife had a baby and baby clothes were very hard to get in England. Wool was hard to get so my wife gave her Beryl’s baby clothes. And Hugh Kempton was this pilot’s name and I always told my family he was one of the nicest guys I’d ever met. This was as a young man. Always smiling. He had real laugh lines around here. Why he latched on to us I don’t know. Probably because we were Kiwis I suppose. But normally crews mostly, especially crews that were trained in Canada, they would probably stick together most the time but generally if we went out for the evening it would be as our own crew. And we would get drunk, etcetera and stagger back.
MS: So what kind of things, what kind of things did you do in your off times? So you mentioned that you might go out for a few beers with your crew. What other kind of things did you do when you got some time off?
JW: Well, you couldn’t go far from base during the day because you might be called for briefing. This was an operational squadron. Mostly we were on base and you would kind of get in the mess and have a yack. In the case of the air gunners we’d go out and clean our guns. That kind of thing. You always had the odd button to sew on. Or write home. That, more or less just basic stuff like that. You know, mail home took quite a bit of time because everybody wanted to hear about you. I just wish that I’d told my family more. Because we were told to keep our mouths shut I kept my mouth shut. So they didn’t really have a clue what I was doing half the time. I wish I’d been a bit more open about it. I’m sure it would have meant more to them.
MS: So, you mentioned before about things that people did in the mess, jumping over sofas and things like that. What other kind of things did you get up to?
JW: Well, in the sergeant’s mess and I believe it was in the officer’s mess as well, there were these black footprints that went up the wall, and over the ceiling and down the other side. And they were just perfectly in the right place, you know, distance apart and everything. And evidently, they were put there by Popeye Lucas who was one of the early flight commanders of 75 Squadron. He was the culprit but I didn’t know ‘til after the war. I think I read Wing Commander Kay’s book that named him. There was that kind of thing. And we had a chap from Wellington. He was the guy who designed the 75 logo. If we were playing snooker and he missed the, missed the [pause] what do they call it? The pocket. You then took a shot at the lightbulb. So we finished up with no lightbulbs over the, over the tables. So we could only play in the daytime. We couldn’t play at night. We couldn’t play at night until the bulbs were replaced and believe me they’d be very slow in replacing anything during the war.
MS: So, Jack, did you and your, and your fellow crew members, did you have any kind of personal mascots or superstitions or anything that you did?
JW: Well I did. I think it was, I think it was my wife’s sister that gave me a little knitted doll thing that I put on my guns. More or less to please her. But something kept me safe, I don’t think it was that though [laughs] I think it was the prayers of my wife and my mother. We were, I don’t think we were really suspicious. Is that the word?
GT: Superstitious.
JW: No. I don’t think we were really.
MS: What about nose art on the planes? Did any of your planes have any good nose art on them?
JW: Had any what?
MS: Nose art.
JW: Oh yes, they did, Glenn would know this. On Y for York, it had a big soda syphon with a big hand squirting bombs out. And I think it was Glenn that showed the photograph at one of our reunions where I’m standing on a ladder in front of that, and there were several members. Bob Fotheringham was one, and probably a navigator but the fourth guy was the fighter pilot that had only dropped in for the day, and we said, ‘Hey you.’ But that’s, that’s the only one. And that [pause] that Wellington lasted about twenty trips before it went down. And roughly about three I suppose, three or four after I’d finished. That night as I explained before they lost six crews that night, and that was one of them. So —
MS: And I read that you used to drop bricks out of the plane with —
JW: Oh yes. I used to drop half bricks with rude words what Hitler could do to himself. And I think I used to imagine them coming down with a hell of a whistle and then plop, like into a bog [laughs] I mean I can imagine the Jerries ducking and running when they heard the whistle and then there was just a plop.
MS: Can you tell me about the thousand bomber raids?
JW: Yes. I can. I was, I was on OTU at the time. 23 OTU, and I was doing aerodrome control on the satellite. The chief flying instructor asked me if we’d, if a couple of us like to, Kiwis would like to do aerodrome control which is a duty pilot, which was only normally up to that time done by pilots. And we said we’d give it a go, being Kiwis of course you couldn’t have it any other way. So anyway we made a success of that. One day he rang me up and he said, ‘Wakefield.’ he said. ‘I’ll see you out on the runway in about forty five minutes. I’m going to do an air test and I’ll drop in and pick you up.’ And he said, ‘Bring your pyjamas and your tooth brush.’ And when I got in to the aircraft he asked me if I’d just test the hydraulics in the turret. And he said, ‘I can’t really tell you why I’m picking you up or what’s on but briefing’s at 4 o’clock.’ So 4 o’clock we went up and found out the thousand bombers was on. And what they did, they, they got all the front line squadrons in. Then all the OTUs produced fully trained crews that had just barely finished their training. So that’s how they got their numbers. I think the greatest number, I think was nine seventy, they never quite got the thousand if I remember rightly. But pupil crews they went as pupil crews. Us instructors went with other instructors. And in my logbook, I’ve got a Pilot Officer Monroe. And I think he’s the, he was the one ‘cause the timing was about right. He would have been a pilot officer and it kind of tied up with his other exploits in units. But anyways there was a Pilot Officer Monroe and I know he was a New Zealander. I only flew with him once, but I made a comment to one of my mates, ‘These bloody cow cockies are good pilots,’ [laughs] So, anyway we went on those three but with weather we were delayed a lot longer than they expected us to be together because all training stopped during that period. I think they were spread over three weeks. I’ve got the dates in there but I’m sure they were about three weeks. And they were all pretty easy raids because the heavy bomber force had gone in before us. We were on the end because we were more vulnerable. And in some of them we were more or less a picnic. Heavy fires burning, bags of smoke and flashes going off and all the rest of it. But anyway great publicity in England of course. That was, really gave the British people a lift because we’d been hammered before then.
MS: Can you tell me what it was like going to a briefing? What, what happened at a briefing. Can you just talk me through?
JW: Well we used to go in generally like there would be an assembly hall and there’d be a chart of our target for tonight up on the wall. And when the intelligence officer pulled that cover off the map of Europe we knew where we were going. That’s when I told you if it was Hamburg there was a big sigh. So that’s the first thing. The first time we’d know. Well, at one stage they withdrew all permission to live out because they reckoned that they knew where we were going before the aircrew did. Anyway, I still lived out despite orders because they had a friendly hole in the fence and I used to go out there and go home on the farm. Come back the next day about 2 o’clock, ready for briefing about 4.
MS: So you told me that one time you came back from a raid and you ran out of petrol on the runway just after —
JW: Yeah. Marham. Forget where we’d been now. And one motor cut out while we were taxiing and ran out of fuel. It was pretty hairy at times because the weather forecasts weren’t a hundred percent and your petrol load would be estimated. But if you struck an adverse wind of course that would gobble your petrol up. But sometimes they baled out over England if they were lost. They might not be able to land because of fog. Some went right across England and in to the Irish Sea and were lost. So it wasn’t just the operational side of it that was dangerous. There was a hell of a lot of other dangers as well. With Bob Fotheringham — one night we were ready to take off with a full bomb load on. He goes careering off the grass runway and then starts heading straight for the hangar. In other words his trim was all to blazes. So he throttles back, goes back to the end of the runway again ready for take-off. Trundles down the runway, gets up up to about sixty miles an hour and starts heading for the hangar again. Third time we got off but naturally I had no control over that so it didn’t make me very happy. Where we did take off, at the end of the runway was a damned anti-aircraft gun. You know, if you were a bit low that would bring you down. I didn’t like that there either. It’s just another little incident that I was telling you about. Life was full of incidents. Remembering them is the hardest part.
MS: Do you remember James Ward VC?
JW: Honestly, no. He was on the squadron at the same time and I’m positive about that but as we kind of congregated in our own little crew numbers to me he would just be a new chum. So I couldn’t, I couldn’t claim to know him. But you see I’m trying to remember seventy years ago now too. But I probably just looked at him as a new intake.
MS: Can you remember what it was like the first time you went on an operation? How you felt?
JW: Well, I suppose I was a bit apprehensive for a start. I suppose it would only be natural but I think that with the lack of detection methods we had a pretty good chance. And you’ve got to remember that if there wasn’t a moon it was absolutely black, you know there was no lights anywhere. You might see the odd flicker of a train being stoked as it went along the line but in full moon we were open. Really open. From any direction. We wouldn’t even see it coming. I didn’t like moonlight nights.
MS: And you told me before about the time when your aircraft identification —
JW: Oh the IFF. The IFF blew up on take-off and it had a detonator on it to destroy it in case of crashing. So the Germans couldn’t get access to any secrets. And ours blew up on take-off and the pilot called up asking whether to return to base or carry on. We were told to carry on. The ground defences would be warned that we were on our way out. And that was very very good. The only thing is they never told anyone that we were coming in, and we happened to be coming in over Southampton where the navy boys gave us a burst up the backside. It was quite severe naval barrage too. The next thing a fighter, a German fighter err a British fighter came up the side of us. Had a look at me. I had a look at him. And then he veered away which we were rather pleased about. And no doubt he was too. But I knew we were out of range. Probably a Messerschmitt 109. The chance of it being a German were pretty, pretty remote really. But anyway that was just another little incident that happened.
MS: So, as a rear gunner how, how difficult was it to detect whether an aircraft was friend or foe?
JW: Well to be quite honest. There is no other way to say this and there’s no other way to do it. If anything comes up behind you you squirt at them. You can’t possibly tell in the dark what it is. Now, he might be coming up behind you, not, being a friend but not knowing you’re there. But that’s just the way it happens. I had a friend that reckoned he’d put a burst into one of ours one night. He asked me what he should do. I said, ‘Just keep quiet.’ I said, ‘You’re a volunteer. You’re don’t want to waste all that training and experience.’ And it was just one of those things. He was very upset, and he didn’t know what to do but he did take my advice. There’s no point in admitting anything like that. Except to say that somebody come behind you, you knew and you gave them a burst. You can tell them that part of it. I didn’t feel a bit responsible for anything that got behind me. I would shoot at. In the dark and in the moonlight. I mean you can be in a classroom and they would show you all the designs and different shapes of aircraft. It means nothing at night. And of course around home bases you’ve got your navigation lights on. That’s a bit different. Although they did sometimes attack us on the circuit when we were taking off or coming back.
MS: How did you get on with the local people? Did you, did you meet a lot of the other local people and how do you think they felt about the Bomber Command being in that area?
JW: Well, the local people were fabulous for a start. And not only that they really, they really honoured us because Britain had taken quite a hard bombing. Our ships were being sunk at sea. Especially the merchant ships. And we were the only ones taking the war back to Germany. And I think for that reason we had a lot of respect. We were the main ones that were hitting back. The navy boys were fighting their backsides off in the Atlantic but the English people couldn’t see that. The bomber boys, they could hear them going and they could hear them coming back and then there was quite a bit of publicity in the papers. Where we had been to and all the rest of it. Now, I think that, I mean I for instance respected the English people. They were working in factories day and night. My own wife and her sister were working on munitions. And in the winter it was dark when they went to work and it was dark when they came home. So they were putting their backs into it. And the Home Guard were special. I was asked to break up a fight one night in a pub. And this warrant, English warrant officer who was in plain clothes because he was going to a dance, he said, ‘Would you come over here and sort this corporal out. This RAF corporal. He’s picking on a Home Guard. And that Home Guard,’ he said, ‘Is my local butcher. He’s a butcher during the day and home guard at night.’ So I went over to this RAF corporal who happened to be a boxing champion. Nobody told me that of course. And I went over, and I said to him, ‘What’s the trouble corporal?’ I was a sergeant at that time but a very new sergeant. ‘What’s the trouble corporal?’ He looked at my three stripes and of course there would be hundreds and hundreds of air crew around. You know, new sergeants and he would, he was permanent staff guy, so he’d more or less spit on us. So, anyway he called me a bloody sprog, so I hung one on him. And this warrant officer came over and hauled me off and he said, ‘Wakey, I asked you to stop a fight not bloody start one.’ So while, this guy’s hauling off me off my mate from Harborough goes and he gives this bloke another one. So the next day — overnight I heard that this guy was an RAF boxing champion. So the next day he sidled up to me and said, ‘I’ll take you on in the ring anytime you like.’ I said, ‘Do you think I’m bloody silly.’ There’s a difference between a roughhouse and, you know, boxing in a ring where a good guy can get at you and you can’t get at him. But anyway it all well that ended well but, you know, a sprog. Calling somebody that had been over Germany many many times a sprog. That was an insult. That’s why I bopped him.
MS: So you mentioned before about going to dances. What were the dances like in those days?
JW: Well I was a very, very poor dancer so I sat most of them out to be honest. I could go over Germany but I couldn’t face a girl to dance because I couldn’t dance properly. That, the chap from Hawera, Alan Campbell and the English warrant officer pilot. He was on rest with all — he was another instructor. We’d all done our thirty trips over Germany. So we totally resented being called a bloody sprog by a corporal who was PT corporal actually. I mean they have their job but I mean they were a bit officious and they were used to everyone jumping but I didn’t like being called a sprog so I filled his teeth in a bit [laughs] But I actually, I wasn’t, I was never bad tempered or anything like that. My natural nature wasn’t like that. But if someone insulted me that was different. You know, do unto others.
MS: When did you end up on 38 Squadron? Can you tell me about that?
JW: Yes, I served on 75. Then I went on instructions for instructing people for about nine months. Then I was asked to do the three, one thousand bomber raids. And a few weeks after that I was posted to the Middle East. And we went to this big aerodrome which I’m damned if I can remember. A massive one, a personnel base where they trained. Well they were checked crews because most of them had been trained. And we went into a big hangar there and you’d just mill round and if you see a pilot you ask him if he’s got a crew. That’s how we were crewed up. We’d never met each other before. Now, I happened to arrive there with two Englishmen off 75 Squadron and they said, ‘Are you in a crew, Wakey?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re not either.’ So then they came to me and they said there’s a Canadian crew who want to take,’ this was a wireless operator and a front gunner, ‘They want us, but they don’t want you because they’ve got their Canadian friend, rear gunner. So I said, ‘Well you go with them. I’ll find a crew.’ But they absolutely refused over several days. So the Canadians gave in and they decided they’d take me. Just shut that off for a minute.
[recording paused]
MS: So, Jack, can you tell me, you went to Mediterranean Command with 38 Squadron.
JW: Yes.
MS: Can you tell me how that was different to Bomber Command?
JW: Well I suppose it was only really different in living conditions for a start. We were under canvas. Apart from that the operational side of it was the same. And 38 Squadron dropped bombs, laid mines, dropped depth charges. In other words we were a work, you know, a maid of all works as far as bombers were concerned. And it was actually quite pleasant serving out there really. Apart from the odd dust storm.
MS: So can you just tell us the story about the trip where you didn’t get your lunch?
JW: Ah yes we were flying from Gibraltar to Lagos in Nigeria and it was eleven hours forty minutes. And after six hours I thought it was time to have something to eat. I called up on the intercom and said, ‘Any chance of any grub?’ And there was stone silence. And then the second pilot came down with some Jubes which I told him where to put them. And I was very very irate that they could draw our rations and couldn’t count to six as there was on that crew. And so it meant that by the time I got anything to eat it would probably be about thirteen hours. And so I was pretty irate and determined to see the CO soon as I got down to ask for a transfer from that crew. Anyway, I kind of forgave them. Got over it. Later on, when I was promoted, my pilot came to me and he said, ‘I see you,’ he didn’t, he congratulated me when I, when I got my pilot officer, he congratulated me. But when I got promoted to flying officer roughly about six weeks later because it followed me out from England — the commission. He flew at me and called me a little runt. So I said to him, ‘Well if you’ve got any grizzles about pay or promotion go to the Canadian air force headquarters. Don’t moan at me. I’m not even in your own air force. I’m not even the same trade.’ And he did a bit of a snarl. And after that I was asked to drive a truck from Suez to Benghazi for the air force. So while I was away on the road trip my crew went to Malta. And when I got to Benghazi the adjutant asked me if I wanted to follow my crew. And I said, ‘No. I’ll stay in North Africa.’ So we parted. Later on the second pilot came back to 38 Squadron in Benghazi and I did some trips with him. He was ok. I didn’t take it out on anyone else. I’m damned sure it was the pilots work. I don’t know whether he dumped my lunch or what happened to it. Anyway that’s one of things. But in four years of service I only struck two that were similar. Not a great deal to worry about.
MS: Generally, did the crews of different countries all get on quite well together or did you —?
JW: Oh yes. I suppose the only aircrew I took a bit of a dislike to were French Canadians. We didn’t feel that they were trustworthy. We felt that they were a bit devious. Apart from that we could fly with, you know, Irish, Scotch, English, South American, Australian, Canadian, you name it. We had one bloke from South America and I think he was a pilot officer and he started off to say Pilot Officer James Jose so and so and so and so. He had about twenty names. He was quite a likeable guy though. One of his names was named after an Irish hero that led some rebels down there in South America at one stage. He finished up with all these Spanish names and then his last name, his surname was O’Hegans. Quite strange.
MS: Were you all volunteers?
JW: Yes, yes. Definitely so that’s what made all the difference I think. You wouldn’t want reluctant air crew. Not really. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair to them. It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the crew.
MS: On 38 Squadron where were you based and what jobs did the squadron do?
JW: Our original based was Shaluffa near Suez. And as the 8th Army moved up we generally landed on a desert airstrip and tents could go up rapidly. After all they might be already standing when we got there. And we followed Monty right up. Our squadron followed Monty all the way up to Benghazi in different stages. We were just more or less south of Tobruk when El Alamein broke up. And we heard the thunder of the guns in the distance. Montgomery opened up with a thousand guns, artillery. And we could hear the thunder in the distance. We weren’t far behind the front line at any stage but we very seldom got raided. The Germans weren’t strong enough at that time to waste their bombs on airfields or anything.
MS: How many tours did you do for Bomber Command? And can you tell us a bit about how it felt when you completed your first tour?
JW: Well the first tour of course I went on leave and breathed a sigh of relief. And as I told you I was instructing as an air, flight sergeant air gunner. And then I was asked to do the aerodrome control which we took on. My mate and I with half a dozen guys that were waiting to be re-mustered for different reasons. Some would have changed their mind perhaps and thought it was dangerous. I never asked them their story. One tried to tell me. He said, ‘I don’t know whether you know my story, flight.’ I said, ‘Well I’m not worried about your story as long as you do what I tell you.’ And they stayed and disappeared and replaced. So we were always, there was about eight of us most of the time. And of course I used to let these guys a lot of unofficial leave, you know. We had an Englishman live not far away and I used to say him, ‘You can go home for the weekend but remember if you’re caught I know nothing about it.’ I let an Englishman go home to London without an official leave pass and he came back a day late so I really went him and he started to cry. And I said, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ His wife had left him apparently when he got home when he got home. And I said, ‘Well you’d better bloody well go back and find her.’ He came back a couple of days later beaming from ear to ear. He was quite happy. But you know Kiwis are a bit like that. We’re adaptable.
MS: How did they decide it was your time to come back home to New Zealand and when did you come back?
JW: I can’t tell you the exact time I was away but all of a sudden, the word went through the grapevine that if you’d been overseas for a certain time, it might have been three years, you could apply to come home. So I applied to come home. I had a wife and child at that stage and we had to wait for, you know, our civilian ship. Not a troop ship. And we came home on The Akaroa.
[pause]
JW: Then when I got back here I was posted to, I think it was [unclear], once. I was introduced to Hudsons. And then I went down to Blenheim where I was aircraft recognition instructor because I’d done a course in England on that. And then we had a bloke there. Well known in broadcasting circles. Tusi Tala, Teller of Tales. He used to tell stories on a Sunday night on the radio. And there was four thousand men on that base, just out of Blenheim and they got us in the theatre there and gave a great spiel how everybody was still needed. And shortly after that you could apply to get out. So I thought it might be a good time to get out. Otherwise you’ve got thousands of army guys coming out at once etcetera etcetera. So that’s what I did except that I went back to a job I was doing before the war as an apprentice. The boss did his damndest to tell me not to join up, because he had been a soldier in the First World War. And their memories weren’t very nice you know. But being young I thought I was better than the whole German air force and why shouldn’t I give it a go. I mean we did have a certain bit of that about us. You know, we were as good as anybody. So I think that was one reason why we didn’t show any fear.
MS: So you had, from your logbook here you had a grand total of four hundred and ten and a half hours of day flying. And four hundred and nineteen —
JW: Night.
MS: And ten of night flying. Total flying time.
JW: Yeah. Night flying was always done in red ink. But you know some of our operations were over the sea. Over the Mediterranean looking for submarines. We might just be changing from one base to the other. So we’d go over the Mediterranean and then back in again and landed at our new aerodrome. That kind of thing. That was counted as an operation. Still dangerous of course. You know with, you know the reliability wasn’t a hundred percent by a long shot. We lost a wing commander doing this night stuff we were doing, you know. Going around the convoys. And they disappeared. No idea what happened when his rear gunner was washed up months later with his dogtags on. So you know he might have hit the drink, or he might have had engine failure and they never got a chance to make radio contact because we’re going round at a thousand feet. It doesn’t give you much time if you run into mechanical trouble. No matter where you flew in the air force. Training, operational or anything else there was men getting killed. I heard recently, and I think that it’s probably right, I think there was ten thousand killed in training in Bomber Command. We lost fifty five thousand over the six years and probably ten thousand wouldn’t be far wrong from what were killed in training accidents. Because they were taking these men, some of them were just like, boys, straight off the farms, out of the factories and turned them into four engine pilots. Some were bound to have crack up or emergencies that they couldn’t handle. But generally speaking they took their job very serious and they did it well. I’m very, very proud of the guys really.
MS: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command got treated after the war?
JW: Personally I think it was disgusting. When we were flying over Germany in 1940 the papers praised what we were doing. We were taking the flight to the enemy. And as soon as the war was over Churchill turned his back on us. But we were encouraged at that time and he made the great speech there that the so and so wind will reap the whirlwind because we were the only ones, apart from the navy guys, that were taking the war actually back to German soil, German cities. Making them wake up a bit. Our bomb load wasn’t that accurate, and it wasn’t heavy, you still do a hell of a lot of damage.
MS: So you went to the unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial in London.
JW: Yes.
MS: Can you tell us how you felt at that ceremony and what that was like?
JW: Well, going back to the UK on a military aircraft I felt rather proud of the guys that were with us. I was proud of our exploits. And I was certainly very, very proud of the, rather sad to say, [unclear] there was twenty three thousand names at Runnymede and these were aircrew that have no known grave. In other words they would have come down in the North Sea. Probably in swamps, mountains or whatever, twenty three thousand. So when I see those kind of figures all I can think of are all those eighteen and twenty, and twenty two year olds that I joined with that were full of the joy of spring. And we had one guy with us, he had been washed out as a pilot and he was over the six foot. He decided to be an air gunner. He got in to the turret alright. Once you got in and sitting down you’d be alright. But when he got drunk his party piece was take somebody’s gate off and take it for a walk down the road, like a half a mile. Well there was gate he moved it took two of us practically all our time to lift it. In other words when he was drunk he didn’t know that anything was heavy [laughs] There was all those funny things, you know that happened. Those guys, he was another one that was lost. I think as far as I know I disagreed with Max Lambert because I went through the casualty list and he reckoned eight came back. I reckoned four. I do know this. That one Max Lambert quoted as coming back was lost over Greece because it’s in that book of obituaries, you know, from 1915 or something up to 1945. Jim Bolton — his name was in there. His aircraft collided with another one over Athens. But anyway whether it was four of eight I remember all of them. And I remember what their traits were, you know. Pubs and in the mess and all that and some were real characters. They were all decent guys though. They really were.
MS: Can you tell us a bit about what you did on that trip back to London?
JW: Well, he went to Australia. North Australia. And we spent twenty four hours there and they took us on a bus ride before we went to a hotel and naturally being in a hotel we were well looked after. And I had a friend Ray Tate from [unclear]. It was quite funny because he had hearing aids and my hearing was ok so if anyone knocked at the door I answered. And if there was question of going into lunch or meals he took me down and told me what was in the different terrines and all the rest of it. So we got on very well and I got mixed up one time and I got up early one morning to have a shower and I realised that something was wrong. And I said to Ray the next day, ‘I hope you didn’t hear me. I got up and had a shower about 1 o’clock.’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I just take my hearing aids out.’ So that’s why he didn’t hear me. But anyway he was, he was great. I really admired him and liked him, and I think a certain amount of it was reciprocated. We seemed to just get on so well but he was what you call a really decent New Zealander. But apart from that in England of course we went to [pause] I think we went to Duxford, I think. I think we went to Duxford. A big air force museum there. I get mixed up because I did a few trips with different people. And we went to one of the bases up north where they had a memorial service in the garden.
MS: Have you been inside any old planes since the war? Any of the planes you flew in during the war. Have you been in it. Maybe at MOTAT. The Lancaster there.
JW: I went up to MOTAT. I never went inside the Lancasters. Perhaps because I don’t know whether we were allowed to. But I had a look and of course the turrets are the same but I had a look. I went to [pause] what’s that museum in London? Air force one.
MS: Not the Imperial War Museum. The Imperial War Museum.
JW: No. No. It’s an air force museum.
MS: There’s one at, I think, at Hendon.
JW: Yeah. Hendon.
MS: Right.
JW: I went there and saw a Wellington and walked around it and I couldn’t, couldn’t believe I’d actually flown in one. It was so unreal. It really was. But anyway the funny little thing happened there. I was walking around the museum of Ray Tate and he said, ‘Oh look Jack. There’s a photograph of a Wellington.’ I said, ‘Yeah. I know that photograph. I’m on the end of it.’ And there was two ladies, carers within earshot. And they called all the others over, ‘Oh come over here and take a photograph. Jack’s on it.’ So one of them leant over them and I’ll tell you the story in a minute attached to it, said, ‘Did those grey haired ladies catch up with you in London?’ What actually happened, I had a mate in Blenheim. And I told the story to reporters at, over in Blenheim and I went to the papers and I think they published it on the aircraft newspaper on the way over. But my mate used to say to me that there was always two grey haired ladies waiting on London bridge to catch up with Jack Wakefield. And I used to tell him it wasn’t me and I didn’t do it. So anyhow when we went over to London, to the Memorial, after the ceremony a lady came up with tears streaming down her face and thanked, thanked me for being one that went over. Really filled in for them, you know, during that critical period of the war. And one of these carers came over later, ‘Jack one of those grey-haired ladies has caught up with you.’ [laughs] I mean the grey-haired ladies story was just a myth. It just happened when you start a funny rumour, you know.
MS: Can you tell me about the Memorial unveiling at Mepal? Oh sorry.
JW: At Mepal.
MS: Oh right. Sorry. So after the Memorial service in London can you tell me about when you went to Feltwell and Newmarket and Mepal.
JW: I can tell you. Yeah I can. We were in a pub in Feltwell and I was talking to locals and I said to them that the wife and I were billeted out on a farm close by. And this chap sidled over, and he said, ‘Do you know the name of the farm?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. Chalkwell Farm.’ He said, ‘I own that now.’ He said that little brick bungalow, old brick house that you had, there’s now two American ladies in there that are writers and they’re just tenants. And you know the chances of that happening are one in a million. That he happened to be in there. But at Mepal it didn’t mean much to me because I never served there. But it meant a hell of a lot to the Lancaster guys because I think they went to Feltwell and I think they went to Newmarket and then probably Mepal, I think. So it meant a lot to them, but the service was done in a rose garden and what impressed me was the way that the little church served refreshments and all that. You know, all volunteers through the church. They made us so welcome. And the minister said he was eleven when the bomber boys were milling around the village. So you know there’s quite a lot of stories about these people but I’ll never forget that rose garden.
MS: So that is all my questions Jack but is there anything else that you wanted to tell us about? Any other stories or memories?
JW: I don’t think so. Not off the cuff. I think that pretty well covers it. I just remember one little thing. I should have started off with it. When we went to Levin they gave us about five different shots. You know, Cholera and all sorts of things and the guys were going down on Levin station and falling over. So they stopped leave.
[pause]
MS: So, there are only two Wellington 75 Squadrons air crew left in New Zealand now. That’s you, yourself and Eddie Worsdale.
JW: That’s quite possible. There was, you know, there was, as I say a gunnery officer, he was a gunnery instructor. I was also intelligence officer on a small unit where we sent Maryland and light American bombers. Went out over the Mediterranean looking for downed air crew or enemy submarines. That was another job I did and on 38 I got hauled in to become messing officer, and the guy that was messing officer never returned. You know one of those stories, Glenn. I’ll just take over while he’s away. Alright. And the guy doesn’t come back so you’re stuck with it. So one day I was in the mess. And I was fed up with the Canadians were moaning because the tomatoes were fried and somebody else was moaning because they wasn’t. I did my stack. And I’m in the bar and I’m banging the bar with my fist and I’m saying, ‘Where’s the CO? Where’s the CO? I’ll tell him where to stick his messing officer.’ The next minute there’s a hand on my shoulder. ‘You want to see me Wakey?’ ‘Oh hello, sir.’ [laughs] It’s surprising how you can sober up in a millisecond. Lots of funny little things like that. I remember one night our beer had arrived. Used to come back in a Wellington bomber from the Delta when an aircraft came back from maintenance. It generally had a lot of beer for the officers, airmen and NCOs. And we would probably drink most of it in one or two nights. And I remember the CO climbing up the centre pole with somebody trying to rip his shirt off, you know. The next day, ‘Good Morning Sir.’ [laughs] He was an Irishman. A good, good guy. There was another guy that used to — we only had two records I think. There was a wind-up gramophone and one of these records was, “Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry.” And there was one guy that absolutely hated it. So every time I saw him coming up to the mess tent I put it on. So he was, he ran in to it every time. in the end he lost his temper and jumped on it. That buggered that [laughs] we only had one record [laughs] You see a lot of that stuff was salvaged out of, or purloined out of Italian houses. Even our, we had a nice sideboard in the mess that the barman served behind and all that. All that furniture came from abandoned houses which had probably had the enemy through several times as well as us. And I remember one night we went and we were going to have a bit of a dance and we brought these American nurses over. About five or six. I went with the driver and we picked them up from the American unit and brought them over and they had quite a few dances with the guys. And then the party started to get a bit rough so I decided I’d take them back. So we took them back. And when I got back there was a guy playing the piano. He’d passed out altogether. There was a guy playing the trombone that could only lay on his back and go ‘uhhhh.’ Yeah. I don’t know what happened to the third one but anyway it was a real shambles. There was one night here. It was one morning I had terrible tooth ache and I had an abscess and I went to the dentist and this was out in the desert, you know, in a tent and he said, ‘I’ve got a,’ he said, ‘You’ve got an abscess Wakey and I don’t take them out normally until the abscess has gone down.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t care if you pull my head off the pain’s so great.’ So he said, ‘Last night in the mess,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what happened but,’ he said, ‘I’ve got lumps all over my head.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I saw you doing roly polys back to your tent down the [unclear] Road,’ [laughs] Oh dear. Anyway, excuse me.
[recording paused]
Thank you very much Jack. Interview’s now concluded.
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AWakefieldJ161029, PWakefieldJ1601
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Interview with Jack Wakefield
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:18:43 audio recording
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Miriam Sharland
Date
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2016-10-29
Description
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Jack Wakefield grew up in New Zealand and volunteered for the Air Force and the Army. After training, he flew operations with 75 Squadron from RAF Feltwell and with 38 Squadron in the Middle East. He describes a crash when he was instructing.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
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Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
England--Norfolk
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Hamburg
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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Julie Williams
23 OTU
38 Squadron
75 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
briefing
crash
crewing up
Defiant
love and romance
memorial
mess
nose art
Operational Training Unit
RAF Feltwell
RAF Finningley
searchlight
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/367/6116/PCavalierRG17010062.2.jpg
1d9c7a16b53f890ba315eda3b6183008
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Cavalier, Reginald George. Album one
Description
An account of the resource
57 items. Photograph album showing pictures taken during Reginald George Cavalier's service as a squadron photographer. It includes material from his photographic course training in 1940, and service with 76 Squadron at RAF Middleton St George, and with 88 Squadron and 226 Squadron with 2 Group and 2nd Tactical Air Force at RAF West Raynham. The album also includes target photographs, images of Christmas parties, visits by VIPs including Eisenhower and the King, as well as captured German ordnance and aircraft in France, the Netherlands and Germany.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-04-10
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cavalier, RG
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
Luftwaffe and RAF Aircraft
Description
An account of the resource
Photographs 1 and 2 are of a Junkers 352 with RAF roundels. Photograph 3 is of a Me 110 radar equipped night fighter with RAF roundels. Photograph 4 is of a Me 262 with radar aerials on its nose. Photograph 5 is a Ju88 night fighter Photographs 6 and 7 are of a Me 110 with RAF roundels. Photographs 8 and 9 are a Me 262 with RAF roundels. Photograph 10 is an Anson, font/port side. Photograph 11 is a DH Hornet Moth, port side. Photograph 12 is a Beaufighter, port side. Photograph 13 is of two Defiants, port side, one with engine covers removed. Photograph 14 is of a Meteor, port side.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
14 b/w photographs on an album page
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PCavalierRG17010062
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
Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
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.
Anson
Beaufighter
Defiant
Hornet Moth
Ju 352
Ju 88
Me 110
Me 262
Meteor
radar
Spitfire
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/377/6710/LDawsonSR142531v2.2.pdf
49c83001650f4a5f72ee40cfc1a96250
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
Stephen Dawson's pilot's flying log book. Two
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
LDawsonSR142531v2
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for Stephen Dawson, covering the period from 6 April 1942 to 30 August 1944. Detailing his instructor duties, flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Swanton Morley, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Swinderby, RAF Wigsley, RAF Bourn, RAF Gransden Lodge, RAF Market Harborough, RAF Silverston and RAF Boscombe Down. Aircraft flown in were, Oxford, Wellington, Lancaster, Boston, Mitchell, Buckingham, Marauder, Halifax, Liberator, Harvard, Avenger, Defiant, Barracuda, Hampden, Black Widow, Hurricane and Mosquito. He flew a total of 32 Night operations with 97 Squadron. Targets were, Krefeld, Mulheim, Wuppertal, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Essen, Nurnburg, Milan, Leverkusen, Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Hannover, Frankfurt, Fredrichshaven, Modane, Cannes and Ludwigshaven. The log book included pictures of examples of some of the aircraft flown, also handwritten list of targets and bomb loads.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Wiltshire
France--Cannes
France--Modane
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--Milan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-22
1943-08-23
1943-08-24
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-07
1943-09-22
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-10-07
1943-10-08
1943-10-09
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-10
1943-11-11
1943-11-12
1943-11-17
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
14 OTU
1654 HCU
97 Squadron
aircrew
B-24
B-25
B-26
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Boston
Defiant
Halifax
Hampden
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Bourn
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Silverstone
RAF Swanton Morley
RAF Swinderby
RAF Wigsley
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/81/7914/LGodfreyCR1281391v10001.2.pdf
2bb4feee369606f050f7e0e0563b6922
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
Godfrey, Charles Randall
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Description
An account of the resource
64 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Charles Randall Godfrey DFC (b. 1921, 146099, Royal Air Force) and consists of his logbook and operational notes, items of memorabilia, association memberships, personnel documentation, medals and photographs. He completed 37 operations with 37 Squadron in North Africa and the Mediterranean and 59 operations with 635 Squadron. He flew as a wireless operator in the crew of Squadron Leader Ian Willoughby Bazalgette VC.
The collection has has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Charles Godfrey and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
Godfrey, CR
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-18
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
Charles Godfey's observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGodfreyCR1281391v10001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Egypt
France
Libya
Greece
Germany
Gibraltar
Great Britain
Netherlands
Scotland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Belgium--Haine-Saint-Pierre
Egypt--Alexandria
Egypt--Cairo
Egypt--Ismailia (Province)
Egypt--Marsá Maṭrūḥ
Egypt--Tall al-Ḍabʻah
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Devon
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Kent
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northumberland
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Worcestershire
England--Yorkshire
France--Angers
France--Caen
France--Creil
France--Mantes-la-Jolie
France--Nucourt
France--Rennes
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dorsten
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wesseling
Greece--Ērakleion
Greece--Piraeus
Libya--Darnah
Libya--Tobruk
Netherlands--Hasselt
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
England--Cornwall (County)
North Africa
Libya--Banghāzī
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Libya--Gazala
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1942-03-23
1942-06-10
1942-06-11
1942-06-12
1942-06-13
1942-06-14
1942-06-15
1942-06-16
1942-06-17
1942-06-18
1942-06-19
1942-06-20
1942-06-22
1942-06-23
1942-06-24
1942-06-25
1942-06-26
1942-06-28
1942-06-29
1942-07-02
1942-07-03
1942-07-05
1942-07-08
1942-07-09
1942-07-10
1942-07-12
1942-07-13
1942-07-15
1942-07-16
1942-07-17
1942-07-19
1942-07-20
1942-07-25
1942-07-26
1942-07-28
1942-07-29
1942-07-31
1942-08-01
1942-08-06
1942-08-07
1942-08-08
1942-08-09
1942-08-14
1942-08-15
1942-08-16
1942-08-17
1942-08-18
1942-08-19
1942-08-21
1942-08-22
1942-08-23
1942-08-24
1942-08-25
1942-08-26
1942-08-27
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-08-30
1942-08-31
1942-09-01
1942-09-03
1942-09-05
1942-09-06
1942-09-08
1942-09-09
1944-05-06
1944-05-08
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-05-29
1944-06-05
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-07-07
1944-07-09
1944-07-10
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-08-01
1944-08-04
1944-11-17
1944-11-18
1944-12-04
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-12
1944-12-15
1944-12-18
1944-12-24
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1945-01-01
1945-01-02
1945-01-05
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1945-01-23
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-18
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-22
1945-03-24
1945-03-25
1945-03-31
1945-04-11
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-25
1945-04-30
1945-05-05
1945-05-07
1945-05-15
1945-05-22
1945-06-08
1945-06-18
1945-08-03
1945-08-05
1944-06-06
1944-08-03
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
Observer's and air gunner's flying log book for Pilot Officer Godfrey from 3 of February 1941 to 25 of September 1945 detailing training schedule, instructional duties and operations flown. Aircraft flown were Dominie, Proctor, Wellington, Hampden, Anson, Defiant, Martinet, Stirling, Lancaster, C-47 and Oxford. He was stationed at RAF Manby, RAF Bassingbourn, RAF Harwell, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Downham Market, RAF Hemswell, RAF Wittering, RAF Abingdon, RAF Upper- Heyford, RAF Upwood, RAF Gillingham, RAF Cranwell, RAF Melton Mowbray, RAF Church Fenton, RAF Market Drayton, RAF Waddington, RAF Upavon, RAF Sywell, RAF Carlisle, RAF Linton-On-Ouse, RAF Newbury, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Brize Norton, RAF Exeter, RAF Andover, RAF Hampstead Norris, RAF Hythe, RAF Gibraltar, RAF St Eval, RAF El Dabba, RAF Shaluffa, RAF Abu Sueir, RAF Almaza, RAF Blyton, RAF Ingham, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Leeming, RAF Acklington, RAF Middleton St. George, RAF Newmarket, RAF Moreton-in-Marsh, RAF Leconfield, RAF Skipton-on-Swale, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, RAF Westcott, RAF Gravely and RAF Worcester. He completed 37 operations with 37 Squadron in North Africa and the Mediterranean and 59 operations with 635 Squadron to targets in Belgium, France and Germany. Targets included: Heraklion, Piraeus, Derna, Tamimi, Benghazi Harbour, Gazala, Mersa Matruh, Ras El Shaqiq, El Daba, Tobruk, Fuqa, Quatafiya, Düren, Munster, Mantes- Gassicourt rail yards, Haine St. Pierre rail yards, Hasselt rail yards, Rennes, Angers rail yards, Caen, Ravigny rail yards, Nucourt, Wesseling oil refineries, L’Hey, Kiel, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Notre Dame, Trossy St. Maximin, Karlsruhe, Merseburg, Essen, Ludwigshafen, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Mönchengladbach, Troisdorf, Dortmund, Nuremberg, Hannover, Munich, Gelsenkirchen, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Osterfeld, Kleve, Wanne- Eickel, Chemnitz, Wesel, Worms, Hemmingstedt, Dorsten, Bottrop, Osnabruck, Berchtesgaden, Ypenburg and Rotterdam. Notable events are that Charles Godfrey undertook a search and rescue operation in a Defiant and during the operation to Trossy St Maximin 4 August 1944 his aircraft, Lancaster ND811, was brought down by anti-aircraft fire. Whilst he survived and evaded, his pilot, Ian Willoughby Bazalgette was awarded the Posthumous Victoria Cross. The hand written notes added to the end of the log book give a description to the crash, and his attempts to evade capture. Pilot Officer Godfrey also took part in Operation Manna, Operation Exodus and Operation Dodge.
11 OTU
15 OTU
20 OTU
37 Squadron
635 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
C-47
Cook’s tour
Defiant
Dominie
evading
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Martinet
missing in action
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Andover
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Blyton
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Carlisle
RAF Church Fenton
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Cranwell
RAF Downham Market
RAF Graveley
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Hemswell
RAF Ingham
RAF Leconfield
RAF Leeming
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Manby
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Melton Mowbray
RAF Middleton St George
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Newmarket
RAF Skipton on Swale
RAF St Eval
RAF Sywell
RAF Upavon
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Warboys
RAF Westcott
RAF Wittering
RAF Wyton
shot down
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
Victoria Cross
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/333/8766/PStangryciukBlackJ1701.1.jpg
7833673268b4133cfbed42ada1200c7c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/333/8766/AStangryciukBlackJ170314.1.mp3
c18b97cc9486526d7fd01b40171ef5f4
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
Black, Jan
Jan Stangryciuk-Black
Jan Stangryciuk
J Black
J Stangryciuk-Black
J Stangryciuk
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Jan Black (formerly Stangryciuk)(1922 - 2023, 794829 Royal Air Force).
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
2016-07-10
2017-03-14
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
StangryciukBlack, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 14th of March 2017 and I’m in London with Jan Black, who came from Poland originally and we’re going to ask him what, what about, what he did in his life. What are the earliest recollections of life that you have Jan?
JB: In Poland?
CB: Yes.
JB: Yes, I was, my people were farmers in Poland and of course I was going to school and helping, you know, my parents you see. Agriculture worked in. Yes. And then when my family decided to emigrate to Argentine and in 1934 we had all the docs, immigration documentation complete we went by sea to Argentine and we dock in Buenos Aires. That’s the capital city of Argentine. Then after, after [pause] seeing different part of Argentine my family settled in province named Misiones. That was big province near Brazil, Brazilian boarder. Then, then I starts school in Argentine to learn Spanish and to uplift my further education. Then after living four years in Argentine the war broke out in Poland and my country was invaded by the Germans in September 1939 and after ten days the Russians attacked my country from the east. To me it was very sad time hearing all the news and destruction what my people start to suffer under the German and the Russian occupation. And every day I was reading in the newspaper how continuously different, different system was in force on my people and I start to feel very sad for my country. Then after about three months, in the Polish newspaper printed in Argentine, there was very happy news I receive. What the Polish people and the ordination could volunteer to come to England and to join armed forces and to fight against the Germans. I went from my homeland in Argentine to capital city Buenos Aires to the centre, where we had to report our intentions of joining as volunteers and to come to England. When I arrive at that centre we’d been check by medical board and we had tell them why we decide such a decision to come. And it was very straight forward answer, what we just wanted to go and fight against aggressive occupation of unfriendly nation. After having medical check up, we’d been asked when we would like to go to England. I told them soon as possible and the person who was in charge at that time told me what they will check my health and if I want to go soon they will notify me in two weeks, and they told me I can go home and wait for the next information. After two weeks I receive letter and a ticket, railway ticket that I can come to certain centre in Buenos Aires, the capital city, and I would be accommodated in one hotel. When I, on the second day, came to the meeting place I notice that there were different nationality volunteers. Polish, English, French and I was very happy what different nations also were coming as a volunteers. We’d been told in that hotel what we must keep our secret about our destination because there was lot of Germans espionage during that time circling in that part of the city. We’d been told what our departure will be very short notice given and be prepared on such an event. Then one evening notice was given to us at six o’clock and we’d been told what we will get transport to board on the big British liner from Buenos Aires port, when the big boat will take us to England. The name of that boat, I remember, it was the name Highland Monarch belonging to the British Royal Mail Line. That company had four big liners continuously travelling between England and Argentine and they, what they, during that travelling between England and Argentine there were, they were bringing lots of meat from Argentine to England. I say food for the war days during the difficult times. When we started our journey at night, at twelve o’clock, very secretly we had been told what we must be very alert because our journey will be continuously in danger from the German submarine or big German battleship which are circling on the Atlantic Ocean. We’d been told to be always , have ready, wear jackets in case the boats get sunk, we will have life jacket attached and the boat was continuously during the journey not going on a straight course only circling, zigzagging to avoid be spotted and sank by the German submarine. The journey starting from Buenos Aires to England took, instead of three weeks, took four weeks because the boat was zigzagging and loosing lots of shorter distance between England and South America. When we came closer to England we’d been told what our boat would dock in Belfast, Northern Ireland because to come closer would be much more danger as during that time the Germans continuously kept bombing our port on west from western approach. When our boat disembarked us we’d been taken to the local hotel for a couple of days and then we were taken to Scotland to some military barracks centre. And then again we had to pass the second medical board from the doctors. Doctors during our medication and inspection bought us, ask us what armed forces we would you like join. We had choice to serve in the Royal Navy, Army, Air Force or other forces. I was young and I thought the most exciting service would be Air Force. The doctors told me what my medical board said it was good enough and I, if I want to serve in the Royal Air Force I can make already decision what I will be, will be accepted. Then we’d been accommodated in some army barracks in Scotland and start telling us what now we will be sent to different centre when we start to continue our trainings. My selection was decided to send me to Blackpool where was Polish RAF centre for beginning my training to start learn of my future responsibility. After studying such trainings for months will be taken to special RAF centre. The centre it was 18 OTU Bramcote. When we start to continues the next training with flying. That training was very exciting for young men like myself, but it was very speedy training. We had not too much time to have, for other exciting moments. Training was long hours of different responsibility to get us ready, equip for responsibility we would be facing for our future flying. I was happy to start my training flying on Wellingtons to wing engine bomber at that time and I knew that soon I will be selected to the operational squadrons, but during that time we had to go on evening [unclear] training. During take-off my Wellington had fault in one engine during take-off. We crash during that take-off and I lost consciousness during the impact of our crash. When I recover my memory I could see what part of my plane was in flames. I start walk to the front of my plane and see what happening to the rest of my friends. When I reach the position where my pilot was sitting I saw him in his special seat. I did try to get him out of the burning plane but he was still strapped in his seat and during that time the plane was quickly increase in the bigger burning flames. I knew and I could see how to un-strap him from his seat and I cover my left side of my face because the flames were obstructing and burning my visibility and helping myself with the right of my hand looking for exit from the burning plane. Luckily at moving inside in that burning plane, I was lucky to see what my plane during the impact had crack in its construction and there was broken exit from that plane what I was lucky to squeeze myself from the small hole of my burning plane, but I already couldn’t see normal because my eyes were already damaged from very strong flame was burning round the plane. I start to crawl a certain distance from my plane and the local people found us. Came to my rescue and they torn my burning combination suit because without that help I would be completely burned to die. I was so lucky what those people were so brave and came so close to that burning plane and they took me inside into their local house but I couldn’t see nothing because my visible, visibility was damaged. But they told me that they had already telephoned for ambulance to come. In about half an hour ambulance came and they took me gently into RAF Hospital Cosford near Wolverhampton. I was in terrific pain. I was so happy to be dead at that time because it was such a painful experience what I had to go in my lifetime. But the doctors soon came to my rescue. They told me don’t worry your pain soon will stop. I didn’t believe them but they had the answer to it. They give me certain tablets and I think some injection to stop my pain. When I recover my memory, I think it was the next day, I could not see nothing because my eyes were damaged but the doctor came and talked to me and told me that I will be making progress with their help. I thanked them very much but the most biggest thing I receive from them was my pain was already under control. Then my small recovery started day by day. [clock chiming] The nurses every day would take me to the bathroom, put me into the bath and gently try to remove my bandage that I was strapped on my head and on my hands. That bandage was soaked with a special oil so that oil prevent so the bandage doesn’t get stuck to my burning flesh and they gently will remove that bandage every day and cover me with the fresh new bandage. After having the same routine day after day, after two days I been told that a very special doctor will come to see me. The name of that doctor was Sir Archibald McIndoe. He was one of the biggest plastic surgeon doctor in the Royal Air Force Hospital, Queen Victoria in East Grinstead. He came that hospital to RAF hospital in Cosford and to see certain airmen from different accidents. When he came to see me he told me his name and he told me he would like to transfer me to his hospital in East Grinstead and ask me if I will be happy to go to that hospital. I turned to him and I said to him ‘doctor I leave all the decision to you because you know the best about my problem and what to do with me’. He was happy to hear that my great thanks to him that he wanted to take me to that special hospital in East Grinstead. The next day ambulance took me to that hospital. When I arrive in that hospital I’d been told there are so many boys from different accidents and different nationalities. There were English, Canadians, Polish and I think some French. I was so happy to be in such a friendly hospital. Queen Victoria Hospital it was one of the most famous hospital in the world for the badly burned, disfigured young airmen and the city, small town East Grinstead. It was our, the most lovely place maybe in England because those people understood and feel our disfigurement and they never stare at us in such bad disfigurement as we receive from different accidents. East Grinstead give us hope to continue, having such a big hospital with such advanced capability to improve our standard from the most horrible disfigurement what the fire could give to you. Must stop now.
CB: Right.
JB: How we play this, you know broken mentally now. You know what I mean?
CB: Yeah, they knew how you felt.
JB: Yes you see because you come to London people don’t, when they see you in certain still disfigurement they think, think probably you come from other planet or something. [laughs]
CB: [laughs] Yes, yes. Can I just ask you one thing and that is what happened to the rest of the crew because there were five of you on the aircraft or six?
JB: Yes. There were, I was one and the rest died. I was the only one that survived. Yes.
CB: Yes. Right. So you were flying as the co-pilot?
JB: Um.
CB: You were flying as the co-pilot?
JB: No. I rear gunner.
CB: Oh, gunner?
JB: I was the rear gunner.
CB: Oh, right.
JB: Yes, yes.
CB: OK.
JB: I did try to save my pilot because, but by the time I tried to reach the plane was in flaming.
CB: Yes.
JB: In bigger. So I covered my left side and tried with right hand so I burned my right side you see. Because you can see it you see you lost your visibility and the way to find the way you just had to with one hand. Even in your hand you was using feeling because hands was burnt. Fire you see. The biggest enemy what you could face.
CB: Absolutely. Yeah.
JB: Because I was — three times I see young boy drowning I say but you can fight drowning, but fire —
CB: Fire you can’t.
JB: It puts you out of completely, out of control you see. Fire the biggest enemy what you could face.
CB: Dreadful. Yes. So how soon after take-off did the engine fail?
JB: You see, what I want to, ‘cause I asked for break.
CB: Yeah.
JB: Then after spent six months in hospital. Hospital was getting so overloaded with new cases coming night after night and they were running short of beds, so what they used to do they sent you back to your stations for certain time.
CB: Right.
JB: And they patched me up. The beginning of my recovering and I’d been told what they cannot do another operation because I must have certain recovery time you see.
CB: Right.
JB: And they got in touch with my station but I would be discharged from hospital for short time and my station send me railway ticket from East Grinstead to Scotland, to Evanton near Inverness to gunnery school. And in that place there was, they give me instead of having a bit more recovery I had to continue flying with the new course, batch of gunners who come. Flying Boulton and Lysanders so the new gunners always be — I already was advanced as a gunner and give them instruction how they have to continue the more — the rest of their training. How to shoot the Lysander whose pulling behind him they sat and they firing from the Boulton twin engine plane with the [unclear] turret. Yes. To teach them how they have to see the distance. When the Lysander approaching them and they will be able to know the distance from what distance they can open fire, shooting to the Lysander sat which is dragging behind. And sometime it was very, very danger, you know, because the new gunners they had no hundred percent control of what they were doing. Sometimes they turn bit too much quickly and they shooting instead of sat and they shooting closer with the pilot you know flying Lysander. [laughs] So the pilot talk to me on the intercom ‘what’s happening? Can’t you see what’s happening?’ I said ‘yes skipper, I see what’s happening’. You know, I said, you know that’s not going to happen again. So I run to that gunner and I say he must move the turret gently not you see, but they kept not feeling it yet. So I continue that training for three months in Scotland. Evanton near Inverness. And after three months, after three months I went to my commanding officer and I said to him I said ‘Sir, I would like very much asking you for one favour. If you could give me permission to be sent to my squadron.’ And the commanding officer in the gunnery school asked me why I want to be transferred. I ask him after having three months responsible job what I was doing I found I just cannot continue, you know, to do that. He said ‘you will do that’ but he said I must wait another few days. I thank him. After, I think four days, I had my railway ticket with the rest of my documents, discharge from that station gunnery school to my squadron. When I arrive to my squadron, the next day I had to report to the commanding officer. My commanding officer ask me why I asked to be transferred to that station. I told him what I spent three months as instructor in that gunnery school and it was just too much to continue and he ask me what I want to do on my station. I turned to him and I said ‘Sir, what I want to do, I want to do same thing what I been taught told what to do. I been teach to fly and do my flying job.’ He said to me will I be, if I will be able to do that. I said to him I think if I did already three months as instructor in the gunnery school, I am sure I will be able to continue to do the rest of my job. He said alright but, but they still send me, he send me with two doctors for two hour flying and the doctors kept talking to me during those two hour flying, looking at my reaction and my, and my [pause] and my, how I feel if I’m not nervous or something or they could notice, not capable to continue to do my job as I ask my commanding officer that I wanted to fly again. After two days my commanding officer saw me and told me what the doctors give him result without no problem so I can continue to do my flying again. I restart doing my operational flying and at one time I receive letter from hospital and hospital ask me to go back for the continuation of the rest of my treatment recovery. I took the letter and gone to my commanding officer and show him the letter and commanding officer turn to me and said you should be very happy what the hospital want to continue to improve you, the rest of, give you treatment. He said you should be only too happy to that hospital and he said I must go. On the third night after departing from my station and departing from crews what I was flying with them. On the third night they went on the night mission and never return. So you know my history, twice luckily, you know had enough luck probably you know not to end up with the rest of my friends, you see. By the time they finish my, the rest of my treatment the war was over, but I still serve ,still serve three year longer, longer. You know, because I was young and they were discharging mostly older people. And in 1948 I had my discharge from Dunholme Lodge, the discharging station, Dunholme Lodge in Lincolnshire. Yes. And that’s when I started to go into the civil life. Then I got married to my wife. That’s why because I didn’t marry her during the war because I told her the war brings so many unexpected changes but when war ended we, we give each other promise so we get married. And we kept to our promise [pause] after living with my wife for fifty-two years [pause] I promise her what I will never leave her. So when I die I give her promise I will be buried with her together and that’s what I will give, going so you see I thought England is my country, my history here. They called me when it’s Remembrance Day [unclear] London Royal British Legion I felt if I go back to Argentine, I took my wife to Argentine I ask her if she like to see my family and we went by boat because during that time, after the war it was not such a long distance plane flying, so we went by boat. Three weeks going there and three weeks going back. But Argentine was changing after the war, different Government, different changes and I thought I was already more adjusted to life with my future wife in England. We returned and restarted our civil life and now I go to Poland for short holiday. I got some time to Argentine now, it’s easier to get there but I thought I came to England when time was difficult and we achieve our aim and this country had guts to stand up, you see and to [unclear] enough was enough without England the world would be different today. So that’s what I did for this country. There was nobody else could stood up. The English had guts to do it and the rest of people would join.
CB: Um.
JB: And without such a decision probably, you know, I don’t maybe for a thousand year the world would be different.
CB: Um.
JB: But you see the people, young generation don’t know what took [unclear] you see I saw in my squadron when sometime you come back and that table it was empty in the dining room and you thought sometimes think to yourself when my table will be empty. Because we could always eat together. We be like brothers if you know what I mean. And we — whatever happened after the war we made Europe different for so many years.
CB: Um.
JB: The people parted in different parts of the world now making destruction and so on but we show the world what Europe will change and I think this whatever we make changes we should be happy that so many people give their lives in the second war. But we must always remember that we don’t want to go back to the old days what Europe was, you see.
CB: Um.
JB: And we, we had our — the one thing after the war I was really heartbroken when Mr Churchill was not elected as our leader because I thought in the most difficult time when he took over, er, we should have given him that big recognition what he started in difficult time and achieve with the rest of the people in the world such a great victory and recognition and using the election, you see because I think that was the biggest mistake what we make after the war. Because with him I think we probably would be still much better off, you know what I mean, because that meant was seen all over the world you see.
CB: Um.
JB: But sometime politician do make mistakes too, you know what I mean. Men go, will fight and do his job and the politician make mistake too, you see. But that’s how things go, you see. To us and it will be continue.
CB: Um.
JB: And I mean I have sister in Argentine. She’s younger than me, a few years, and she said to me why don’t I go back and live with, with her and her children. I said no, I said I came during the war, I was a young man, I found my girlfriend here during the war and I said I would be feeling lost there, you see. Because I said, I in this country have some recognition you know. What I did, I mean if I would go to other country, even in Poland it wouldn’t be the same like here.
CB: Um.
JB: You see I belong to the Guinea Pig Club. Duke of Edinburgh [unclear]. He’s our president of our Guinea Pig Club, you see. He used to come sometime if he was not abroad to our dinner in East Grinstead. I had couple of times chance to talk with him, you see and that give you something what you, you used to have special days, Remembrance Days. Royal British Legion give me invitation to all the smaller things and you, you just feel you don’t want to lose that recognition, you know what I mean.
CB: Um,
JB: I will not receive that in another country. Yeah. And that myself what I as a young man came from the Atlantic all ready because I was feeling hurt what my people suffer of two unfriendly nation. Russia and Germany and I thought it was all wrong what we in Europe in those days for so long had so many times, you know, continuously such an unfriendly living. Yes. And now whatever look, year seventy over seventy years people travel you saw no fighting we give the rest of the world example what they should take same thing what we did. You know what I mean.
CB: Um.
JB: But we don’t know how long it going to last because you see because there new super power emerging with nasty ideas. Yes. And that’s why those [unclear] sooner or later will be happening all over the world. There’s nothing worse when dictator get power, you see, because they don’t listen to nobody. I mean those big dictators, you see when they done, have democratic system they take power into their hands and that’s what always was not much future during. Luckily we got rid of them [laughs] but some as soon you got rid of them then some new emerging [laughs] yeah. But, we took, when we took that big decision in 1939 and Mr Chamberlain used to, Neville Chamberlain used to go to Hitler and ask him what you, why you continuously want more, you already took so many. And he used to always promise the British Prime Minister there would be no war you know. But the rest of the world knew that the Germans was arming themselves and preparing themselves for the big expansion of their empire. You see that’s why [unclear] Germans because they wanted they could get pressurising Poland what Poland should give them [pause] chance to march, attack Russia because they knew that Russia was such a huge big country. And they knew it would be easy to, in those days, to overpower that part of the Eastern Europe. And Poland they wanted no German friendship nor Russian. They used to live between two very unfriendly neighbours you see. And that’s what happened, you see. And Hitler, you see, in the end took power into his own hand and he was gaining without fighting from beginning. Yes. And if in those days there would be no England there was no other country who would be stopping his expansion here because he already had everything going easy, easy. And even after when France collapse, look he was almost big military hardware which he recover from the French. I mean he used to make himself from strength to strength you know, without. He’d overpowered Czechoslovakia, took very big modern small industry, Skoda. Took the French, you see, military hardware and he was gaining from strength to strength he was building himself. It’s a good job there was one country still standing in the world. What they knew they cannot give in no more and they told, told on the last many meetings of Mr Chamberlain had what if, if he continue with Poland because Poland had treaty with England and France at that time. What the world will be unavoidable. But even so he took so many chances and he gained without problem and he thought it would continue but he made mistake you see. But the British decided they were going to stand up to it. Yes. But you think, you think there is the world that’s why in Europe now you see we, we should have much bigger recognition, you know what I mean in, in that. There’s twenty-seven countries, yes but we should be classified you know exactly as equally you know because there is difference between one country and another, you see. And the trouble was immigration was big problem for long time, you see, because now they well staffed to notice that what you know we must do something and cooperate not listening just to one country, you see, because it is a world problem you see and, but Europe didn’t listen much you see and that’s probably what ever happening changes or we don’t know how it’s going to end, you know what I mean.
CB: Um.
JB: But it was problem because they used to come to [unclear] and not the one country was selected the most of them wanted us England, you know what I mean, because it was the most place where they could get the easier living and you see Europe then should talk it out more into consideration what they should cooperate together. I mean the Syrian problem started, Europe start to wake up you know and notice the big problem to the rest of the world but there is not only secondary there is African problem yes coming. And Europe must work together to stop that because one country cannot do it. Now, now after all these years [unclear] tried to clean it you know what I mean. For how many years and it was spreading because during that time lots of people were making money out of it you know. Everybody had fingers in it, you know what I mean.
CB: Um. Um.
JB: You see the French were very, I would say, to, to have less responsibility because they, they had their country and they should probably knew what lots of people who come from different parts through their land come to the English Channel and heading, you know to England.
CB: Um.
JB: And for so long it was continue you see, but the, like, you see, in the many, many different ways I think the France took big res — less responsibility they, they start to feel under own problem you see and that’s what happening but probably that should been stopped long time ago, years. But politicians have time to make mistakes you see. And that’s we probably don’t know how going to end you see.
CB: Let’s just stop there for a mo. Now you mention that you had a girlfriend in the war called Evelyn.
JB: Yes, yes.
CB: And where did you meet her?
JB: Yes.
CB: And what was she doing?
JB: I, I met her during the war one day at the Hammersmith [unclear] at a dance [laughs] yes. Yes.
CB: So how did that come about?
JB: Er, well you see Hammersmith was very popular part of London where was lots of during the war activities and there was very famous for dancing you know [unclear] dance and I met my wife but she, she was, er, coming from the Derbyshire, Matlock in Derbyshire. Yes. And my wife during that time was working in cafe royal syndicate. Yes. And I ask her why she’s not going back to Derbyshire and she told me because she come from big farm in Derbyshire but her father send her to London to finish her economy programme. When she receive her degree in the economy she decided that she find better reward living and working in London. And she decided to stay in London and when I met her during my first meeting I ask her why London is her select place. She told me because working on the big farm was very responsible and heavy daily responsible life but she was always happy to tell me what the Derbyshire will always be her, the most lovely part of the country. But one time I ask her why and she told me if I ever heard the name Rolls, Rolls Royce I say yes that’s one of the famous place where they produce the biggest engine for the planes she told me because the most famous people live in Derbyshire and I always will remember her sorts of proud to come from that part of the world. She was very understanding person and I promise with her what when war ended and we survive during the war, if she decide to marry me I will give her promise I will do that. War ended and we kept to our promise. And I will remember what we kept that till the very end. She was very good wife and my memory will be continuous of my happiness what I spent with her for so many years after the war. Yes.
CB: When did she die?
JB: Um.
CB: When did she die?
JB: Oh, eight years ago.
CB: Right.
JB: I bury her in Gunnersbury cemetery.
CB: Oh Gunnersbury. Right. Right.
JB: Yes. Yes.
CB: And it’s big enough for both of you?
JB: Yes.
CB: Let’s have a break there for a moment.
JB: Yes. But we knew the second war was brewing, from, you know, year two year we knew.
CB: Right.
JB: And the, the one thing, you see, what I remember it was what certain dictators were feeling what they could make such a, a big, er, names for themselves, you see, and I think what the Europe at that time was thinking after the first war that they had enough seen suffering that the peace will continue but at that time certain dictators emerge into the big popularity and that’s why Europe became such an unfriendly part of the world. Yes. And that’s what happened. It started from small conflict, it went to the bigger one. And I ask, I took small part in that conflict. I think what we, at that time, played very important part and commitment that we took to not to keep continue making same mistakes in Europe again.
CB: Um.
JB: And I hope the young generation should remember the history what we went through and should not forget that the history should not be repeating itself again.
CB: Um.
JB: We, they have a, have a responsibility for such a big commitments what was started on, we gain our aim in the end and I’m so happy what Europe now is. Whatever is prosperous part of the world.
CB: Um.
JB: Yes.
CB: What was it that prompted your father to leave in nineteen — what was it that prompted your father to leave in nineteen forty, thirty-four why did he go to Argentina?
JB: Oh yes. Because you see Europe was my country, living was hard after the first war and my father look like millions of other European nations, were looking for better prospect in different parts of the world. South America it was huge big empty new land. Lots of people were hoping that they make easier life there.
CB: Um.
JB: You see. He went there, bought lots of land cheaply, because land was cheap there you see. But it’s no good having lots of land if you have no strength to give — aid you.
CB: Um.
JB: To cultivate that is huge responsibility and I, I had feeling what my country was suffering when war started and I, my only happiness was to have opportunity during that time to come to England.
CB: No.
JB: And to fight together with British so my people not again go under for many years of occupation of the very unfriendly neighbours like Russia and Germany. And that’s as I mention in the past what England for many nation give that courage and strength what we together.
CB: Um.
JB: Join in and with such a difficult uncertain future but in the end the things start to show us what we gain our victory in the end.
CB: Um.
JB: And I feel what we must remember the history and the history must never repeat mistakes in the past. Yes.
CB: You’ve also got the British Legion VE70 badge.
JB: Oh yes, I —
CB: So that’s because you were remembering the end of the war.
JB: Yes, yes and I have one unforgotten association here.
CB: Yes.
JB: You know, Buckingham Palace. This one.
CB: That one. Yes.
JB: You see, yes, that’s once, once in lifetime they probably when they think you did something you know so they ask you, Christmas little party you see in the news Buckingham news party.
CB: Um. Yes.
JB: Yes. So you see that’s why for Buckingham Association.
CB: And what is your tie?
JB: Um.
CB: What’s the tie that you have got on?
JB: Tie. Lancaster, yeah that’s my — you see, that’s [unclear] [laughs]
CB: [laughs] Right just going to stop for a mo.
JB: But you see afterwards when I did in my squadron after hospital.
CB: Yes
JB: After gunnery school.
CB: Yes.
JB: I used to do spare.
CB: Yeah.
JB: Because you see in the squadron on Lancaster is three gunners
CB: Yes.
JB: Rear gunner, middle gunner and front gunner and sometime crew, one, one person will have [unclear] operation or something so in the squadron is always spares.
CB: Yes.
JB: Crew.
CB: Yeah.
JB: Person who finish [unclear] and he doesn’t want to be posted somewhere else.
CB: Right,
JB: And he will have a holiday after you do thirty-three trips.
CB: Yes.
JB: Because when you do thirty-three trips you don’t need to fly no more.
CB: Right. Right.
JB: But you just get into it you don’t want to be somewhere, sent somewhere you want to stay in your squadron.
CB: Can I go back to the crash?
JB: Yes.
CB: So you were the only survivor, you were really badly injured obviously with fire.
JB: Yeah.
CB: But how did you feel emotionally about the fact that you were the only survivor?
JB: Oh, well you see that’s sometime now. When we have Battle of Britain Remembrance and you go behind our war memorial and you see all the names written and sometime you think to yourself what I probably, probably would be better if I will be dead with them then if you know what I mean.
CB: Um.
JB: Because you see —
CB: The sense of loss?
JB: Yes, because that was the friendship you see. We share sometime when we had to empty cigarettes packet and you came back from the operation and you notice cigarette were on very short, er, ration in those days, so you take, share with them you see. It was friendship, terrific friendship you see during the war.
CB: Um.
JB: I mean such a friendship will be in your heart for long time you see and if you’re gone with your friend in pub you didn’t wait if he probably was running short of cash or something not to share with him you know your money because us people were living together and facing the responsibility together. They were almost prepared to give life, one for another, you know what I mean.
CB: Um. Indeed.
JB: You see, today is difficult for people to understand such a friendship.
CB: Sure, because the crew was the family.
JB: Yeah it was family, it was family.
CB: Now the crash was in a Wellington but this is three — then you go to 300 Squadron and that converts to Lancasters?
JB: Yes, yeah. We passed our conversion on Halifax’s in Brighton and from Halifax’s into the Lancasters. Yes.
CB: Oh Right. So you went to the Halifax, from the Halifax through the Lancaster conversion school?
JB: Yes the Lancaster that was seven crews you see.
CB: Yes.
JB: Yes but before you go on a Lancaster the Halifax’s, that’s a four engine bomber. So from Wellington you go on Halifax and from Halifax’s into the Lancaster. Yes.
CB: Yes. Yes. So they, when you returned to East Grinstead, you were on Halifax’s?
JB: No from gunnery school.
CB: Yes.
JB: From gunnery school, my squadron then was sending from Wellingtons into the Lancaster.
CB: Right.
JB: And at Faldingworth Station, was built by Wimpy. It was first new built aerodrome that was 1900 Squadron moving in you see near Market Rasen. Yes.
CB: So you then, having converted onto Lancasters.
JB: Yeah.
CB: You then went on ops from there. How many ops did you do on the Lancasters themselves?
JB: Eighteen.
CB: Eighteen?
JB: Yeah.
CB: OK. And then you were called to East Grinstead?
JB: To East Grinstead, yes.
CB: How did you feel when you heard about the loss of the whole crew in the Lancaster?
JB: Oh, it was really I think the same probably as I would lost my father or mother or brother you know. That was the same because you see we during our flyings we were such a close together, you know what I mean.
CB: Um.
JB: When we went for holiday we share our money if we had money when we had no more money we return back to the station. You know what I mean. We shared together and we had one pay master. We give him our money. He used to pay our lodging. When we had holiday we usually gone together, you know what I mean.
CB: Right. We’re stopping there. Thank you.
JB: Yeah.
CB: When you left the RAF —
JB: When I left the RAF yes.
CB: What did you do?
JB: When I left the RAF, yes, I got job in the rubber factory in Southall. The name of that factory was [pause] Woolf, Woolf Rubber Factory Company, Southall, Hayes Bridge. Hayes Bridge that’s the name of that district, Southall.
CB: What did you do there?
JB: I, I was young and they give me opportunity to train me as a machine forcer setter [pause] I start in that factory to do night work. Twelve hours at, twelve hours night, twelve hours shift. I worked there twelve years [long pause] having one Sunday off. After twelve years [pause] I left and work for, as a rep, for the electrical company. With the electrical company, Clark Electrical in Willesden. I worked twenty-two years knowing all the cities in England I travelled as a rep and my big boss in that electrical company, the name Mr Jack Clark, died and the company, company was sold.
CB: Oh.
JB: And I reached my retirement age you see and that was the end of my civil life. So I had two jobs, one in twelve years and one twenty-two years.
CB: Brilliant.
JB: Yes.
CB: What did your wife do in that time?
JB: Oh yes. My wife in the end work in Carlton Tower Hotel, Sloane Street, Knightsbridge.
CB: what did she do there?
JB: That was the first American hotel built in London.
CB: Oh was it.
JB: The Carlton Tower.
CB: Yes I remember it. Yes. [long pause] So she stayed there all the time?
JB: Yes.
CB: Good. And how many children did you have?
JB: My wife had caesarean operation could not have no children.
CB: So that saved you quite a lot of money?
JB: Um.
CB: That saved you a lot of money?
JB: Yeah, yeah. I bought little old house in, in Holland Park, that’s when I made my money in the rubber factory you see.
CB: Yes.
JB: Yes. It was dilapidated house because during the war nobody could get no paint, no — you know because — and the roof was leaking but I liked the place Holland Park, you know. And as you know property start going sky —
CB: Sky high yes.
JB: And the things start to improve but the work was after the war, there was no, any, I would say, support like now people get.
CB: No.
JB: You had to get up early in the money whilst there was some job going because after the war in England was very difficult, very difficult. Every food was on ration you see. You went to the butchers shop you could get six rasher of bacon or half butter cut, you know, on how you say one pack of butter that was cut in half you see because on coupons.
CB: Yes
JB: Everything was on ration. Shoes on the ration. But afterwards slowly year by year when factories start turning into the commercial things start to improve.
CB: Yes.
JB: Lots of big emigration people used to go to different parts of the world from to America, Canada, Australia. Because during the war the most factory were producing for the war.
CB: Of course.
JB: Essentially you see.
CB: Yes. Yes.
JB: And it took them time to restart afterwards.
CB: Um.
JB: But when they started and you had strength to do it there was lots of money could be made, you know what I mean.
CB: Yes.
JB: It was hard, hard.
CB: Hard work.
JB: Hard working but there was overtime, there was factory was working you know all year round without stopping because my rubber factory I could set forcer machine on any production today.
CB: Right.
JB: Like Firestone, Goodyear, Dunlop because most of the rubber factories they have same machine forcers you see. And I was young and I was supervisor.
CB: Right.
JB: Yes. But you have to in those days there was no strikes, you know, because was union after was started, you know, emerging and there change came and was perhaps getting lots of new rules and so on. But when the factory started after the war they kept going for many, many years because there was such a shortage of domestic products. Our, the biggest customer was Ford and Dagenham. We used to produce to Ford and Dagenham all our rubber installation into the cars because before in the car all the rubber installation in window doors was all rubber. Now it’s plastic
CB: Yes.
JB: It’s different. And the Ford lorries used to wait outside our factory day and night. Soon as you cure our products they were —
CB: Right. Taken there.
JB: Rushing to Dagenham.
CB: Right.
JB: Because Ford had such a big orders for so many cars they could not change it they used to wait outside our factor, lorries, drivers soon as we produce and cure they were quickly because it was so —the rest of the world was such a shortage of cars.
CB: Yes. A couple of final questions. What was your wives maiden name?
JB: Evelyn Black.
CB: And we call you Jan Black.
JB: Yes.
CB: What is your actual surname?
JB: Jan Black.
CB: Yeah in Polish. What’s your Polish name?
JB: Oh. Jan Stangryciuk. Very difficult.
CB: So when did you change your name to Jan Black?
JB: Yes. I’m glad you, you see— I tell you something. When I, when I was with my de-mob money you see, eight years I thought I take my wife on holiday to Argentine you see and I probably thought I settle in Argentine. So my doctor said, Archibald McIndoe, that big plastic surgeon in hospital because he was not our, he was our friend, our advisor, you see that doctor to us he give us almost new courage to continue our recovery because we were partly broken.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
JB: You know what I mean, destroyed, we were ashamed to go between people, yes. He said to me, he said what documents you have. I said Sir Archie, I said I have no any documents. He said you should have British passport. I said to him I don’t know how to, how to make British passport. Don’t you worry for you will arrange for you. Because he said because if you go to visit to Argentine now you must have some documents but when I came here they didn’t want any documents [laughs] I probably have from school some certificate, you know what I mean. So you see, and of course because my wife was the name of Evelyn Black so they said to me we’re not going to give you different name you have same name like your wife, you know what I mean [laughs] but I tell you why. When I applied to the Argentinean Embassy for visa, because in those days you needed visa to go to, they were so interested about my past in England in eight years in the Air Force and so on. And they ask me if I agree so they put in local paper in BA my arrival that I serve in England in the Air Force eight years, I had my accident and so now I am returning to visit my family I said that’s OK but when they called me when my visa ready I went to collect my visa they said to me Mr Black but we have little more problem to ask you. As you know there is so many German different type of men who are now in South America we’ve been advised if you will agree of putting in local paper some of your visit to your family after eight years in England. I said but why is that the problem, they said because some of those men probably could be very unfriendly towards you because there’s so many men with those names unfriendly lots of, now circling in South American countries. So when I came to my wife and I said to her she said you don’t want know your name of your visit what you did in England and she said you had enough during the war, different you know, er, incidents, accidents and you don’t want to go now, you know putting in the paper your arrival and she wouldn’t have it. So I went back you see to the Argentinean Consulate and I said you know I’m afraid I want not to mention of my visit because so many Germans with big money, with submarines got — even the people there in Argentine up to now believe that Hitler was hidden himself in Argentine. What that’s what they said what they did — they got his you know body, his body in Russia somewhere. In Argentine there is still, in Patagonia, that’s a part of Argentine.
CB: In the South. Yes.
JB: Where lots of German community live. Eichmann after so many years you know they, they caught him up.
CB: Yes. Yes. They’re Nazi’s.
JB: Eichmann near my sister in Argentine. I have house, photo from his house. He bought that house near little airport. In BA, Buenos Aires, because Buenos Aires is a huge territory you know, you know London is big but Buenos Aires is also huge size you know what I mean.
CB: Yes I know. Physical size.
JB: So he bought that house, huge house near the airport. He already bought that with that big amount of money and he was living near that airport and had the plane in case of any problem he could easy get away because he had plane near Buenos Aires, small plane you know.
CB: Yeah, yeah. This is Eichmann.
JB: And that house so he easy could escape you know what I mean.
CB: Um.
JB: But the Israelis Secret Service you see there.
CB: Yeah, they got there
JB: And I have photos. You, I mean, I took when I went there to my sister holiday to Argentine with my wife. And that house is still standing as a museum.
CB: Oh is it?
JB: Yeah. A huge house. He was there and he had girlfriend and he promised her to marry. She was Argentinean and in the end because he told her he was single man, he was so and so but that girlfriend start to notice he was trying to betray her you know what I mean.
CB: Oh right.
JB: And staying there and, you see, somehow got in touch with the —
CB: The Israelis?
JB: Israelis Secret Service and that’s how they got him you see after so many years.
CB: Oh I see.
JB: But there’s still — what Hitler was not us, it was in the Europe where the Russian got his body or something but he was in, in Patagonia with stronger German [unclear] two in Argentine places, Patagonia one territory with lots of German emigration and another one what is in one of those parts you see.
CB: Right.
JB: Where you know he spent the rest of his life
CB: Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Jan Black. Two
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-14
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Sound
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AStangryciukBlackJ170314
PStangryciukBlackJ1701
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Jan Black Stangryciuk was born in Poland but his family emigrated to Argentina in 1934. He volunteered to travel to England to join the Royal Air Force in 1939. He recounts his journey, why he made this decision and how he joined the RAF. He was involved in a crash landing during training in a Wellington in which he sustained serious burn injuries and he describes this event in detail and his subsequent hospital stays and treatment. After recovery he spent time as an instructor at gunnery school at RAF Evanton before rejoining his squadron. He undertook a total of eighteen operations in Lancasters with 300 Squadron. He eventually left the RAF in 1948 and married his wife, Evelyn, and he explains why he took on her surname.
Contributor
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Tracy Johnson
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Argentina
Poland
Great Britain
England--Shropshire
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
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1939-09
1948
Format
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02:08:10 audio recording
18 OTU
300 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
crash
Defiant
Guinea Pig Club
Halifax
Lancaster
love and romance
Lysander
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
military ethos
Operational Training Unit
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
RAF Bramcote
RAF Cosford
RAF Evanton
take-off crash
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/589/8858/AHughesWR150713.2.mp3
18e37bacec69f09e545be17b9d8cdabd
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
Hughes, Bob
William Robert Hughes
W R Hughes
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hughes, WR
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Bob Hughes (751133, 137124 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 149, 50 and 23 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: So, this is now recording, and my name is Nigel Moore, I’m the interviewer, and I’m interviewing Flight Lieutenant Bob Hughes on the 13th of July. I’m in Mr Hughes’ home in North Hants. So, Mr Hughes, would you like to tell us something about your upbringing and your life before you joined the RAF?
BH: I was only a, a ordinary seniors school and I never went, never passed Eleven Plus, so I went to the, one of the senior productive schools and then I, I passed, I suppose, most things, you know, and when the opportunity came, I took [unclear] said we had a – I’d been working as a coachbuilder, or in, with a coachbuilding firm, and we were, were making Rolls Royce – taking Rolls Royce chassis in and making them into finished cars. And while I was there, we had a fellow named Serge Kalinsky, he was a Scandinavian diplomat and he started swearing and said ‘There’s gonna be a bloody war any time now! Within the next few months, I guarantee it, in the next few months!’ So, knowing that I – my father had had a rough time in the army, in the trenches, I thought ‘ Well, no army for me, I’m gonna join the air force now,’ because Sywell was a handy aerodrome, so I went and joined weekend air force. And, once I was in there and the war was declared, naturally I was transferred straight away into the main RAF. And, erm –
NM: So, you joined a reserve squadron, did you?
BH: That’s right, RAF Volunteer Reserves. And I don’t know the na – well, I think it was 23 Squadron that I went to, which was when – during the Battle of Britain.
NM: So, how – can you describe your training, your flying training?
BH: Flying training?
NM: What were you training on? What were you flying?
BH: Well, mostly, in Ansons and, well, you know, I, I’m terrible at trying to remember the names of these aircraft tonight, but the – oh dear, two, two, two engined, the planes that we flew in, and – oh, I can’t think of the, the names, have I got it in here at all? [sound of turning pages]
NM: Not to worry, what about the training itself?
BH: Well, this was to go in these aircraft and did a few bail-outs practices and in the, in the, oh dear, in the yards of some big firms where they, they’d got escape possibility there, so we tried, tried those out several times. [background noises, turning pages]
NM: So, you say you flew in the Battle of Britain?
BH: Yes.
NM: What –
BH: That was in Blenheims.
NM: Can you de – can you talk –
BH: Now, this is the thing: quite often, when the Battle of Britain is mentioned, it’s either – what’s the two [unclear] the two aircraft that were always noticed? I think every time they mention these two aircraft, I think, how about the Night Shifts? ‘Cause I flew in, in the, in the Night Shift, and the aircraft we flew in wasn’t – oh dear, I’m terrible at names, I’m a terrible, terrible person to interview, really, because my memory is absolutely shocking. Blenheim, yes, but [pause] these, these were the usual things that we flew in those days, Ansons and Blenheims.
NM: So, can you describe the role that you played in the Battle of Britain flying these Blenheims?
BH: Well, I was a wireless operator/air gunner, and of course, in the, in those aircraft, you could picture everything, what am I talking about? Got a picture here [background noises].
NM: Yep, there’s the Blenheim.
BH: That’s – do you rec – do you recognise the one?
NM: Mr Hughes is pointing out a Mark 1 Blenheim.
BH: Mark 1 Blenheim, yeah, that’s right, yeah.
NM: ‘S’ right, and you were –
BH: And we had a, we had a turret on the top.
NM: And that’s where you were.
BH: When I flew later, in, in the big aircraft, the four-engine aircraft – they’re all here [background noises] when I flew later in the Wellington – that one’s the Lancaster, that is the Dambuster, they’ve got no turret on there but we, where we flew in the Lancasters, we had a turret, you see but previously, during the Battle of Britain, it was on, on the twin-engine aircraft.
NM: So, when you flew the Blenheims during the Battle of Britain, were you on bombing missions, and what – if so, what were your targets?
BH: Well, it, we were on defence.
NM: On defence?
BH: Defence patrol, up and down from the south coast up to, up the Thames Estuary, most of the time. [pause, sound of turning pages]
NM: And this was – were you called the Night Shift?
BH: The Night Shift, yes. There we are, there’s the aircraft. And that’s the flew – the pilot I flew with most of the time, this is Alan Gowarth [?] and that was, yes, and all Blenheims.
NM: So, this was Number 23 Squadron, night –
BH: 23 Squadron, night fighter squadron, yes.
NM: And can you describe your operations flying for 23 Squadron?
BH: Well –
NM: In the Blenheim?
BH: It was a, a patrol, up and down from the south coast up the Thames, the Thames Estuary, keeping a guard on things to the starboard, you know, any incoming aircraft, and we, we had quite a few that we, we followed, and went and dived down with them but we didn’t actually have a contact. [Pause] This first one, yeah apart from anything else, we had anti-aircraft cooperation, searchlight cooperation, going backwards and forwards along the Thames Estuary. That’s what they were: night defensive patrols. And that was, that’s the fella, fella that I flew with most of the time.
NM: So, you encountered a few contacts but didn’t actually –
BH: We didn’t see anybody shot, shot down but we, we fired at them and we saw the bullets, you know, sort of going their direction but didn’t see anything falling down, not then.
NM: And what type of aircraft were you engaging?
BH: It was a Blenheim. Oh, I don’t know; well, they were twin, twin-engined aircraft, yeah. I can’t –
NM: Okay.
BH: Think of the name. [sound of turning pages] I’ve got a picture.
NM: So after the 23 Squadron, how did you move to – can you describe how you moved from Fighter Command to Bomber Command?
BH: Well, at the time, they were losing a lot of crews and aircraft and crews in, in Bomber Command, and so they were asking for volunteers and I volunteered to – went to Number 9 Bomber Squadron, which was at Honington, but I only did one air test with them, and then I was asked if I would volunteer and go to one, 149 Squadron, which was at Mildenhall, and that’s where I did most of the bombing trips that I did, up to, up to seventy-three, but they weren’t all to Germany. A lot – we had a spell over in the Middle East, and it was Benghazi that we were bombing then.
NM: So, the start of your operational life with 149 Squadron –
BH: 149, yes.
NM: Was that –
BH: Mildenhall.
NM: At Mildenhall.
BH: Yes.
NM: And –
BH: And we were –
NM: And how did you – can you describe how you met your crew and got a crew together?
BH: No, only a sort of friendly meeting and you like the look of somebody and who you think was, was genuine. This first fellow we went – I flew with was a Squadron Leader Heather, and we went to Wilhelmshaven, [unclear] class cruisers and we were, we were bombing all around it, when this – oh, we went there again another night, repeat, repeat. I tell you what, when we first, when we first went there, they, they took us to canal, canals, and we got to aim in the canal with the mines, and mind you, was such a narrow mine, margin, and having such a small tar – item, when we got back home, we told them how difficult it was, so we suggested ‘Why not bomb it instead of just putting mines there?’ So they sent us back the next night to, to do that. That was Wilhelmshaven.
NM: So, at this point, you were flying Wellingtons?
BH: Wellingtons, yes.
NM: And this was in nineteen-forty –
BH: 1949, February ’49.
NM: Forty – 1941?
BH: Ah, no, no, beg your pardon.
NM: Yes.
BH: Yes, ’41, yes.
NM: So, can you describe squadron life on 149 Bomber Command at Mil – Mildenhall?
BH: Well, it was just –
NM: What was life like?
BH: Just a friendly get-together, you know, I’m ninety, nearly ninety-five now and I was twenty, twenty then, nineteen or twenty. So, you know, to remember exactly what we did, we got friendly; whoever we met, we made friends with and wanted to know how we got on.
NM: Did you go out for nights out around Mildenhall? What was – what were they like?
BH: Yes, yes, but, you know, just a drink here and there and, but nothing to really note.
NM: And what about your crew? Do you have particular memories of your crew?
BH: Yes, I think I, quite honestly, having done so many and for such a long period, long number of ops, I reckon I was very lucky picking the, or matching up with a good set of wonderful pilots. You see, each of the pilots I flew with were absolutely wonderful; they seemed to go to the target and did the business and get back, no messing and no wandering about all over Germany.
NM: And how about the rest of the crew? Were you a close group?
BH: Yes, yes, I think, generally speaking it was with the naviga – with the observer, or navigator, as they were then, more than anything, and because with the navigator, it was a question of, when we got over the target, sort of the geography of the place. I remember one of the things, one of the worst op we went on was Essen, and the geography of that place was so – we could spot it out as easy as anything. [Pause] But then later on, we did a lot of coast, coastal things like Wilhelmshaven, bombing the cruisers there, they, they took [unclear] class cruisers up the, up the, the fjords.
NM: Why was Essen such a bad target?
BH: Well, being an ammunition manufacturing place, I believe it was very heavily defended because of that. I mean, it was a manufacturer of, manufacturer of explosives and suchlike, and we seemed to cruise around it quite a lot, and anyhow, I was always telling the skipper, ‘Such-and-such is at the, on the starboard side,’ or, you know, ‘We’ve got to turn a little bit to the port to get this thing.’ That was on a reserve flight, 149 Squadron, and then I went to a reserve flight at Stradishall where they were preparing to get crews to go out to the Middle East, and then I had a spell in the Middle East.
NM: So, just back on your bombing raids here, over Essen and other German targets, you were giving instructions to the pilot –
BH: Oh yes, yes!
NM: To help him to do what?
BH: Yes, notifying where the canals are shooting off, to the south or the, the west, you know, that sort of thing. On very sunny [?] nights, the, the water whether it was a river or a canal, you could spot it that much easier, and you would report, you know, what you could see.
NM: So, tell us a little bit how you then transferred out to the Middle East. Was this the same squadron, was the whole squadron go out to the Middle East?
BH: Oh, no, no, it was with a, a, I was with this, what, this one point one, this reserve flight to start with, wasn’t I? And then, then we heard that there’d been so many losses, crew losses, and there were appealing for people to, to go to transfer to the Middle East, and so I went to this reserve flight at Stradishall, and from there, via Malta, I went to, to 70 Squadron in Kabrit, which was in Egypt.
NM: That must have been quite a change. What – can you give us your memories of the change in going to the Middle East?
BH: Well, the thing was, we had, we had a turret to go to, and the preparations for, for raids and things were absolutely marvellous. We had an advanced base; we used to land in the desert and then take off again for the raid. Well, this one here, the first one we had, operations against enemy was Menida [?] Aerodrome, so actually, I liked the possibility of going into the front turret if we were going and attacking an aerodrome, so we can go ‘round and, you know, shooting up the, the, the arm – armoury points.
NM: So, you moved from the mid upper to the front for these raids?
BH: That’s right, yes, but most of the time, you know, we were, when you were in the rear turret, we were solely concerned about attacks by enemy aircraft, you know? So, most of our light was emphasised downwards. [Pause] We had one or two come up to us and nose – nosing towards us and managed to tell the pilot to do a dive and then we went down in, in a curve dive, you know, and got shot of them.
NM: So, you encountered enemy aircraft?
BH: Yes, yes.
NM: On many occasions?
BH: Oh, at least, oh, I’ll just think, at least a half a dozen times.
NM: So, tell us about squadron – your memories of squadron life in the desert. How different was it from the UK?
BH: Well, of course, water was the problem, sort of rationing out water, you know, and sort of having exercise, running and all the rest of it, but had to avoid having too much water. But then, in the desert, particularly, that was an even worse problem. [Pause] That was a thing that we did quite often while in the Middle East, was staffing the motor transport on the – between Cairo and Benghazi. The, the main road was, was used quite a lot by the enemy and we’d attack transport along there, and railway sidings, particularly, so they would try bringing the forces, German forces, into the desert via Benghazi and so we attacked the– oh, I can’t, I was trying to think of the, the general’s name: Rommel. Rommel was bringing all his replacement troops into Ben – Benghazi, so we went there and we – well, they called it the mailroom [?] because we hit it so many times, but it was where they were bringing the re – the new forces in.
NM: And were these daylight raids you were on, or night raids?
BH: Mostly night, but we did one or two; well, yes, I should think about a third of them were daylight, but mostly night. [Pause] Then it was a question of geography and remembering the shape of the, the land underneath you, whereabouts you’d got to. Location, on the main way up to Benghazi, we had to sort out Bardi – Bardiyah and Menidi [?] for erm, to locate us that we were hitting the right thing. Railway sidings were attacked an enormous amount, but we had to sort out our geography to make sure we were bombing, strafing the right things. [Pause, sound of turning pages]
NM: So how did, how did your war continue? Can you describe – were there any changes over this period, 1941, in terms of how the squadron life continued?
BH: Well, towards the end of my period, we did a lot of education of fresh crews.
NM: Who had come out to Egypt?
BH: Yes. [Sound of turning pages] Oh, this is Pershore.
NM: Is that –
BH: Pershore, that was the OTU there, Pershore, where I did a lot of bombing from there, and then on to 12 Squadron.
NM: So, tell me how you managed to get then transferred back from the desert, back to Bomber Command in England.
BH: [Sound of turning pages] 50 Squadron [more turning pages] It’s in –
NM: What happened between 70 Squadron and, and 50 Squadron?
BH: We – everything was going alright and we were bombing everything we were asked to, and, but then they were asking for volunteers to do – to go to, to England again.
NM: So, did you volunteer on your own or did the entire crew volunteer?
BH: Oh, I volunteered on my own, I think, but this was 50 Squadron, 5 Group, Skellingthorpe, it was a liaison visit we did there, and while we were there, they wanted us to go to, to – on Lancasters to Magdeburg. As a matter of fact, I’d been on seventy-two trips, missions, and I’d never once been to Berlin, somebody was talking about going to Berlin, so we went to Magdeburg, and after we’d bombed there, the skipper says ‘See on the starboard side, you’ll see Berlin, Bob, and that’s the nearest we shall get to it!’ [slight laugh] And of course we got ‘boo’s by the rest of the crew, and that’s where we finished up. That’s the seventy – that was my very last mission.
NM: So, we’ve jumped ahead into 1944 from 1941.
BH: 1944, January ’44, yeah.
NM: What – going back a little bit to coming out of Egypt into – back to England: you say you went to an OTU?
BH: Yes, yes.
NM: And you were still flying Wellingtons?
BH: Yes, as a trainee. No, not as a trainee, as a –
NM: So you, you became an instructor?
BH: Instructor, yes.
NM: What was it like being –
BH: Yes, was that ’43? January ’43.
NM: That’s ’43, yep.
BH: Yeah, that’s right, went to an OTU.
NM: So you became an instructor?
BH: Instructor, that’s right.
NM: What else –
BH: And we did an operation from there at – oh, to Essen, several times.
NM: Just what was it like converting from a Wellington to a Lancaster? Can you –
BH: Well, we were –
NM: - describe it from a crew’s point of view?
BH: Well, we had wonderful turrets on the Lancaster and, well, I think we were just pleased that it’s – that it was a new aircraft and we’d got four engines, you know? I don’t think we gave it much sort of consideration as to whether it was better or not, it just – we just accepted that it was [emphasis] better, and we were moved fa – we were flying faster. They, they were some of the worst planes [?] we did with Essen and mine laying, oh, we did a mine laying off Heligoland and that, that was a bit dicey; they seemed to have high defensive, the defences at these places. [Pause] While we were on OTU, of course, we did a lot of experience in cross-country, knowing our way about, you know, air-to-air fire, firing and air-to-sea firing, and that’s just for practice.
NM: Describe a little bit life as an instructor as opposed to operational air crew.
BH: Well, I was quite happy about that; I mean, I knew what I was talking about and the – I, I did see quite a lot, the fellers were coming to me for, you know, ‘Well, how do we, how do we sort out this?’ you know, the rear-see [?] retainer keeper, this was a familiar phrase, you know, ‘How do we deal with this when we’re still flying in the air?’ you know? You’ve got to do it with blinds – blindfold, and that was the case in some, sometimes, ‘cause there was machine, with machine guns. [Pause] That was the last trip we did, we were attacked by an ME-210, that was the target, and fired hundred and fifty rounds but there was no confirmed hits. [Pause] I’m sorry I’m not able to answer your questions quite as freely as I ought to, really.
NM: No, don’t worry about that, you’re doing wonderfully.
BH: Well, a few years ago, perhaps I should – I’m a bit more chatty, but – [pause, sound of moving papers] You’ve got a record of service here, you see: I joined in May the 12th 1939, I joined the RAFVR and received calling-up papers, then, into the regular air force in August of that year, August 27th.
NM: So, when you came to the end of your operations, why did you finish operations? Had you done, finished a tour, or –
BH: Yeah, well –
NM: What happened after your last operation?
BH: [Sound of turning pages] Oh yes, joined an AF – was an AFU, that was the training unit.
NM: So you became an instructor again?
BH: That’s right, yes, on gun, guns and armoury.
NM: And that took you to the end of the war, did it?
BH: Yes, well, February, February, no, Oct – no, October ’44. [Pause] Various aircraft that I flew in was a Blenheim Mark 1, a Fairey Battle, that was an early, early one that I flew in a lot, and then the Boulton Paul Defiant, which we did most of the shooting with on, on nights, and then the Avro Anson that, this was a transport aircraft most of the time, and then in the Wellingtons, I flew in the 1, 1C, 1A, Mark 2 and the 3, and then the Avro Lancasters, Marks 1 and 2, and 3. Oh, also, I flew in the Lysanders quite a few times, and Blackburn Bothas; Blackburn Botha, they were used to use for training quite a lot. I know they weren’t very popular for some reason, but they did the trick.
NM: So they were the training aircraft?
BH: Yes, Bothas.
NM: So, I’m interested in the Lysander, your role in flying in a Lysander; what was your role then?
BH: My role then was to, to, to take us into the desert for take-offs, they just, for operations, or to res – rescue from the desert after we’d landed. That’s when I used the Lysander a few times, was for – was rep – was actually saving, you know, escape. I flew also in Fairey Battle, Ansons, Bothas and Lysanders. Well, the Lysander, as I say, was a thing to save you, you know, sort of a –
NM: So, of your seventy-seven operations, either in the desert or across Germany, are any particularly memorable for you?
BH: Seven – seventy-three, it was.
NM: Oh, seventy-three missions.
BH: Yeah.
NM: Okay.
BH: Well, yeah, occasionally we got caught out with the ‘Un [?] defence plane catching catching up with us, but most of the time, we were wide awake to it and whenever we saw something on the starboard or the port side, we’d tell the skipper and we’d dive away. [Pause] Course, one of the main things, maintenance, was the machine, with the machine belts, belts of machines, you know, sort of making sure we didn’t get caught up on those. [Pause] Anyhow, there’s a – unless there a record of service in the whole, the whole lot, that I, you know, kept it down to a minimum there. I went recently to Clarence House; my wife’s been there to the Queen.
NM: When you look back on your time in Bomber Command, what are your main thoughts?
BH: Well, I was glad I was available to do it, and the friendship that you made with most of the people there was pretty good. [Pause] That was the thing; with the link trainer, I used to enjoy going in that, flying the various things through the link trainer.
NM: How do you think Bomber Command has been treated since the end of the war?
BH: What? Haven’t really, haven’t had any more to do with it or knowledge of it, really. No, I don’t think that we’ve – I think we’ve, we would have cottoned on to it a bit more if anything had gone wrong, but everything seemed to be right, we sort of sorted all the problems out.
NM: Do you think Bomber Command has had enough recognition since the end of the war for what they did, or what you did?
BH: Well, yes, I think so, I think we’ve been reason – reasonably recognised.
NM: Tell me about your life since the end of the war. Did you stay in the RAF long?
BH: Oh, no, when – I had been with a firm that repaired converted Rolls Royce from the chassis into a cars, you know, and it was a good firm to work for, and I, I did a lot of this, this work, and this is how I came to meet this Kalinsky, who came in with his Wellington, with his Rolls Royce, and so he told us that there was gonna be a war, so that’s what made me go into the fleet, into the reserve occupation, so that when I was called up, I was bound to be in the RAF.
NM: So, on leaving the RAF, you rejoined the same company?
BH: After – do you know, my memory, my memory’s terrible. Yes, I must, I must have done, went straight to Mulliner’s, who were coachbuilders, class coachbuilder, they were mainly, mostly London but we had a branch in Northampton, and then [pause] think I got the DFC for my last, last trips over Essen.
NM: So you were awarded the DFC?
BH: Yes, that was December the 12th, 12th of the 3rd, ’43, and then the other thing later, the RAF.
NM: What was the background to the award of the DFC?
BH: We were on – trying to see where this is. [Pause] Oh, it was on the second tour, I’d done a tour of ops already and volunteered for another, and it was during this that I was awarded the DFC on the secondary tour, tour.
NM: Was the reason for the DFC because of your –
BH: Length, length of service, service.
NM: Length of service, rather than a particular –
BH: Yes, volunteering for so mu – so much with the, with Flying Command, with Bomber Command. I went to another squadron, 950 Squadron, we went to, on operational liaison duties, did that quite a bit – it was nice to go to other squadrons and find out how they were getting on and tell them what we did.
NM: So that was between your tours?
BH: Yes, yeah.
NM: So, what was the role you played as a liaison officer, then?
BH: Oh! [laughs] I was to sort out the ammunition, and of course, in the early days, we had the pans to slap onto aircraft, onto the gun, but later on, of course, we had machine belt, belt machine, belt ammunition.
NM: Did you see much evolution in air gunnery between 1939 and 1945? Can you –
BH: Yes, well, we had a lot of new aircraft, new guns coming along, American, lot of new American guns that we were using, and also the, the loading, the belts, not just the belts, but ammunition belt, pan, pans. I don’t seem to be able to tell you anything more positive, really, you know, but –
NM: You received a commission during your service, didn’t you? Because you joined as a LAC and -
BH: LAC, yes.
NM: And moved up to flight lieutenant.
BH: Flight lieutenant, that’s right, yes.
NM: What was the history there?
BH: Well, I’d been, I’d been moved from one place to another and volunteered for so much, much, and there was a lot of training and did a lot of training with pupils coming along. [Pause] Show you this last one there; we had an enormous amount of people with us, we had somebody with seventy-two – oh, that was me with seventy two! So, if all the others had had twenty-four trips, then we were – this was a mission for, for training. It was a voluntary – well, it was while I was on a liaison trip to, to Skellingthorpe on training for, for measured score [?], I said that I’d, I’d done seventy, seventy-odd trips and I’d never been to Berlin, so this gunnery leader there said ‘Well, you’re alright, well go with us tonight,’ got to the end of the runway and this aircraft, this aircraft, yeah, this aircraft, and the target was changed to an alternative, and in the end, we went there and bombed that, and as we come away from it, the skipper says, ‘Well, you’ve seen Berlin on the right, on the starboard side,’ he says, but you know of course, the rest of the crew didn’t care too much for this, they wanted to get home, back home [slight laugh]!
NM: Do you keep in touch with Bomber Command through squadron associations or reunions?
BH: No, that’s – do you know, apart from our local reunions at Sywell, I haven’t gone back to any RAF squadrons at all.
NM: And what’s your association with Sywell?
BH: Well, our, our early training was there, we, we – it was the first aircraft we flew, flew in. We – every opportunity we had of getting a flight, we, we, we took it, you know?
NM: And you get – you go back there now for reunions?
BH: Oh, yes; well, we’ve got a Battle of Britain fighter association, and also, there’s a local – we’ve got a gunnery leader and – oh dear, what do we call the things now? We go to Sywell for the reunions for air, air gunners, all the air gunner, local air gunners, and we joined this local Battle of Britain – no, not Battle of Britain fighter association, it’s the – we joined this – oh dear [pause] gunnery association, really. Do you know, I – my mind’s really terrible.
NM: And do you still meet as a group?
BH: Oh yes; at Sywell, we’ve got a, quite a nice little bunch of fellers there, I think about, we’ve had as many as fourteen or fifteen, but it gradually faded, you know, died off a bit, and so we’re only getting about three or four of us go, once a month.
NM: And are these just socials, social get-togethers over lunch, or just to talk about old times?
BH: No, just at the, the aerodrome at Sywell, where there was a bar there, you see, that was the attraction amongst. There were various cross-country trips, you know, to renew our flying experience.
NM: When was the last time you flew? Was it at the end of the war, or have you flown since the end of the war?
BH: [unclear] [sound of turning pages] So, Uxbridge, we had a – was Bishop’s Court – was about ’44, February 44, it says.
NM: You haven’t flown since the war?
BH: No; oh, well, not air force. I, I, we’ve flown private, private flying ‘cause we’ve got some friends in, in France, we used to go nip across, you know, by ordinary aircraft.
NM: Okay. Shall we stop the recording there?
BH: Yes.
NM: I think.
[recording is stopped and restarted]
BH: Well, people had lost their logbook, or oil. So I managed to rescue mine and copy this from it. [Pause] Who was that?
NM: So your logbook doesn’t exist anymore but you’ve copied all this out from it?
BH: Oh, yes, that’s right, remember him.
NM: So, are you still in touch with any of your original air crew?
BH: Well, I was in touch with the skipper that I flew with most of the time, Alan Gowarth [?] of Monaco, Monaco, he was a night pilot, fighter pilot in 23 Squadron in - during the Battle of Britain, and this, this was illustrated with the seventieth anniversary of the Battle being commended.
NM: So you’re still in touch with him? Are you in touch with him now?
BH: No, no, not in the last – I think he might have pegged out since, but yes, I think it was quite late when I still, still in touch with him, March.
NM: So you were in touch by letter. Did you ever meet him again after the war?
BH: No, no, no, of course, he was New Zealand, he went to settle in his home in New Zealand. [Pause, sound of turning pages] Spires of Lincoln coming out of the mist as we got closer to home, a wonderful sight. As a matter of fact, we did have a situation where we were followed in to our own base, and we warned – we’d been warned about this, and anyhow, it was the last minute, really, before he was gonna fire at us, and we noticed that he was almost nose nose to tail with us, and so I told the skipper, you know, ‘We, we, we’re being followed, turn, turn starboard,’ you know, and he says ‘Okay, yes, fair enough,’ and we shook him off, but he got to within, oh, within a few hundred yards, I suppose, of shooting us down, and we got back home.
NM: So, you had a clear sight of this?
BH: Oh, yes, it was a, it was a Heinkel.
NM: And at this point, you were coming into which airfield?
BH: Hmm, not sure.
NM: Was that Wickenby or somewhere in Lincolnshire?
BH: Yes, somewhere, somewhere in Lincolnshire, but I can’t remember which. I should ought to remember because we were near, near to being shot down!
NM: Was that the closest you’ve, you came?
BH: I think so, to our demise, yes. [Pause] We’d been told about this: ‘Be careful, the blighter’s follow, following you in,’ and he almost on our nose, on our tail, you know, with his nose. [Pause] And then the skipper says, ‘Glad you kept your bloody eyes open, Bob!’ [laughs]
[recording is stopped and restarted]
BH: On the way back from the major target, we’d sort of go to various aerodromes, and the skipper’d ask me to go into the front turret so that we could go around the, the dispersal points shooting up all and setting fire to a lot of aircraft. We did this on quite a few occasions.
[recording is stopped and restarted]
BH: I was just wondering where to start, what, what was I talking about, now?
NM: You were talking about the geodetic construction.
BH: Oh, yes, yes, I was thankful and praised God for Barnes Wallis because of his aircraft design. We were over Benghazi, and we had a, a enormous hole inside of the fuselage (about six foot diameter), and the fact that it was geodetic construction of air, the pilot still flew the aircraft quite smoothly, and then we landed in the desert and checked up on what was what, and we took off again! And that was with a six foot diameter hole in the side of the, the fuselage, and of course, as I say, I thank God for Barnes Wallis and the fact that the geodetic construction was so, so wonderful.
NM: And the damage was caused by en –
BH: By flak, but that was bloody uncomfortable to sleep and we – ‘course, when we were in the desert, we, when we went up from Cairo up to the advanced base, we’d have to sleep in the aircraft, but the geodetic construction was as comfortable to sleep on! [laughs] You know, you’d have load of flying kit all on your hip, you know, to stop you from being scarred [?] ‘cause it was in – we slept in the co – oh, if we, if you laid out, you slept outside the aircraft in the desert, in, in the, oh dear, well, if, if you slept outside in the desert, on where there were lots of dried-up salt lakes, but you could have slept on there, and that was – but there were a lot of darn [unclear] about, and they were, actually, they sounded worse than they were, so it was a question sleeping inside the aircraft, but then, of course, you’ve got the geodetic construction, you know, made it uncomfortable, but having a lot of Irvine jackets and trousers, of course, to pad the sides.
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 Bob Hughes
Creator
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Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHughesWR150713
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.
Format
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00:58:38 audio recording
Contributor
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Beth Ellin
Sally Coulter
Carolyn Emery
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Hughes joined the RAF as war became likely to avoid repeating his father's First World War experience in the trenches and transferred to the RAF Volunteer Reserve when war was declared. He trained on Ansons and then flew in twin-engine Blenheims in the Battle of Britain as part of 23 Squadron. They carried out night defence patrols from the south coast up the Thames Estuary.
Bob volunteered for Bomber Command which had lost a lot of crews. After one air test for Number 9 Bomber Squadron, he went to 149 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall and flew in Wellingtons. He describes the difficulty of targeting well-defended Essen and bombing cruisers in coastal areas, such as Wilhelmshaven.
Bob then transferred to 70 Squadron in RAF Kabrit, Egypt and the Middle East. Water rationing was an issue. They would carry out raids on transport and railway sidings in response to Field Marshal Erich Rommel bringing German forces into the desert via Benghazi.
Bob had instructor stints at the Operational Training Unit at RAF Pershore and Advanced Flying Unit. He went on operational liaison duties to 950 Squadron. Other aircraft in which Bob flew included: Battle, Defiant, Lancasters, Lysanders and Bothas. Bob undertook 73 operations and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 12th March 1943.
He describes the evolution in air gunnery during the war. He also praises Barnes Wallis’s geodetic construction.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Thames River
North Africa
Egypt
Egypt--Kibrit
Libya
Libya--Banghāzī
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1943
1943-03-12
1944
1945
149 Squadron
23 Squadron
49 Squadron
50 Squadron
70 Squadron
9 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Blenheim
Botha
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Lancaster
Lysander
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
promotion
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Pershore
RAF Skellingthorpe
training
Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979)
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/614/8883/PMusgroveJ1501.1.jpg
b7eca1ecabb2abfcc21142f7d37a6759
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/614/8883/AMusgroveJ150812.2.mp3
772053bb4cd364dadff721dd7f83f840
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
Musgrove, Joseph
J Musgrove
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Musgrove
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Joseph Musgrove (1922 - 2017, 1450082, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 214 Squadron.
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
2015-08-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Annie Moodie, and the interviewee is Joe Musgrove, and the interview is taking place at Mr. Musgrove’s home in Whatton, on 12th August, 2015. So Joe just to start off will you tell me a little bit about your, where you were born and your family background and school, stuff like that?
JM: Well I was born in York in 1922, my parents were Soldney [?] people, my father unfortunately had an accident when he was sixteen and lost half an arm so I was brought to appreciate the problems of people who had lost limbs. I went to school, I was at school until I was fourteen at the Loddon School in York which is very good quality school, er, did not do very well. When I went to work I decided that my education ought to be extended a bit more and spend two days a week at night school to bring myself up to a reasonable standard.
AM: What job were you doing Joe, what job were you doing then?
JM: I was working at Rowntrees which is a factory, and just ordinary work producing what is today a Kit-Kats.
AM: What did you do at night school then, what sort of things were you doing at?
JM: Well I concentrated on English and mathematics as I thought they were two basic things in life and that did stand me in good stead when I applied to join the Air Force when I was seventeen.
AM: What made you apply to join the Air Force?
JM: The main reason I think was I didn’t want to join the Army, I didn’t want to join the Navy, obvious reasons [laughs] and the Air Force appealed. The reason why in 1936 a single engined twin wing fighter landed not very far from where I was living and that got my interest in flying which I had ever since.
AM: Right. So you joined the RAF?
JM: Yes.
AM: How old were you eighteen?
JM: I joined in 19 well I went to join in 1940, had all me exams and one thing and another, but I hadn’t realised when I first applied to join that it would be such a complicated business and that, because I spent three days at [unclear] at Cardington where the airships were, going through various tests and exams and things like that, and fortunately I did quite well so they eventually accepted me as a wireless operator/air gunner and I went and trained me on that.
AM: So what was the training like where did you do it?
JM: Well.
AM: Describe the training to me?
JM: I did a bit of everything, I went to Cardington to get kitted out and I went from there to Scar to Blackpool, for initial training, which I enjoyed, because bearing in mind at the time I was just coming up to eighteen in 19. I never been away on me own before it was quite exciting to be in Blackpool in those days, and that was the doing Morse Code and things like that. I did I think reasonably well, a very kindly flight sergeant patted me on the head and said, ‘I think you’ve passed.’ I was pleased about that, and then I went on leave. And then from there I went to a place called Madley in Herefordshire for initial flying on, can’t remember the name of the aircraft now, anyhow it was a twin engine twin plane, it was my first experience of flying which I think I enjoyed at the time you went up and down it’s a little bit rough, and I found out what air sickness was all about and that particular thing, but did quite well pass there and then I went on flying with a single engine aircraft a Percival IV [?] which was quite good. And then from there on leave, Madley by the way was the place where Rudolph Hess when he came was moved to Madley first of all from Glasgow. From there I went on leave, sounds if life’s one great leave for me isn’t it, and enjoyed it. From there I went, can you just let me have a little think. I got posted to a place called Staverton, I went to the, er, railway transport office, and he said, ‘Oh I know where it is it’s not very far from blah, blah, blah.’ So off I went down to the South Coast and on to Staverton, got off train there, empty platform, I found one of the officials there, I said, ‘How do I get to Staverton aerodrome?’ He said, ‘With a great deal of difficulty from here ‘cos you’re in the wrong county the one you want is between in Gloucestershire, between Gloucester and Cheltenham.’ So they put me up overnight and the following day to Staverton which was an aerodrome just opposite Rotols Airscrews Factory. Spent some time there, I’m not quite certain what the objective at Staverton was, did a fair bit of flying. Staverton went on leave and got posted to 102 Squadron on Halifaxes at Topcliffe. Hadn’t been there very long and then moved just the other side of York, can’t remember the name of the aerodrome now, anyhow, but wasn’t on operations I was there as part of my training.
AM: Was this the Heavy Conversion Training, Heavy Conversion Training?
JM: Yes, thoroughly enjoyed it. Went on leave from there yet again, I think my parents begin to think life is one great leave for Joseph David. And from there, oh I got posted to a place called Edgehill near Banbury, which was No. 12 Operational Training Unit. From there of course I joined the usual thing there’s twenty of us of each kind, so the cup of coffee on the lawn and get crewed up which we did.
AM: How did, how did you crew up? How did that work?
JM: Well, it’s I stood there, mostly among people of my own breed if you like [unclear] and a chappie came up to me and said, ‘Are you crewed up yet?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well my pilot’s, a chap called Ces Brown, and I’m his navigator.’ And his name was dead fancy. ‘It would be very nice if you joined us and if you do of course we’ll have an idea we’ll just pop in the mess and have a cup of coffee and a beer later on in the day.’ And I thought, sounds good, so I joined them. And we did our OTU at Edgehill which was an aerodrome sit on like a little plateau which was a bit different but the beauty of it is, it was a farm that abutted the aerodrome that used to have a really good system whereby they give egg and bacon if you wanted it from the farm, which we did regularly. And from there on leave again, goodness, now this time it’s on my record in’t it this man goes on leave quite a lot. And got posted from there to 214 Squadron which was based at Chedburgh. Unfortunately on the way there I got robbed of my case with all my RAF papers in that I was studying nothing secret or anything like that but it was a bit of a loss to me, and joined 214 Squadron at Chedburgh not very far from Bury St. Edmonds. Stirlings Mark 3 Stirlings, I was quite pleased because I thought Mark 3’s, one or two were joining Mark 1’s and Mark 1’s were a little bit of a [intake of breath] I always thought a bit of a difficult thing they used to have a lot of swing on take-off, whereas a Mark 3 had one but not quite as serious as the other ones. So that was it I’m now operational.
AM: So what was your first operation like?
JM: Well it was gardening they always are aren’t they, cinnamon [?] which was just off the Baltic. I don’t know it’s when you’re sitting in the radio operator’s little compartment almost isolated from everybody else you don’t really know what’s going on outside, so what I used to approaching the target area stand in the astrodome and look out for people who were a little bit sort of not all that nice to us and that was the first one, it was uneventful insofar as we weren’t damaged anyway usual [unclear] shells and flak and that was my if you like introduction to operations. I didn’t find it very difficult at all.
AM: What were you doing as the radio operator, what did you do for your main things?
JM: Well it’s communications I suppose was the main thing about radio operators, [coughs] they it was an air gunner, the training for air gunnery and I missed that out ‘cos I did my air gunnery training on Walney Island which was nice.
AM: Near Barrow-in-Furness.
JM: It had a nice pub, and they had Boulton Paul Defiants which was nice, and enjoyed that, and of course at the end of it we did we went on leave. [laughs]
AM: So back to being a radio operator?
JM: Well the Boulton Paul Defiant one was [unclear] two seater fighter with a pilot and the turret just behind, quite fast aircraft. The only thing was with Boulton Paul Defiant’s, oh yes and the pilot that I had was a Pole who didn’t speak English and on the thing there’s a set of coloured lights which combination of each it meant something to him and to me but not necessary the same so on that we had a bit of a problem on there. And on them the undercarriage the hydraulics were a little bit dubious, if I can use that word [whispers], so the problem was if you wouldn’t come down sometimes you’d get one leg down and the other one not, so I used to take it up, oh he used to take it up to about seven or eight thousand feet put his nose down and pull it up and centrifugal force would force the other one down. Well I was a [unclear] and when I flew on it it always worked, and from there as I said before I went on leave and on to [?] squadron.
AM: So actually being the radio operator on the operation what sort of things did you have to do?
JM: Well the thing is [coughs], excuse me, when approaching the target when presumably no, no stuff was going to come off the radio, my skipper asked me if I’d go in the front turret which I did, interesting ‘cos when you sit on the front of an aircraft, with nobody in front of you and nobody at the side of you to me it was a little bit isolated and there’s only two guns in the front turret rather than four in the back, but it was not too bad and it is interesting ‘cos you get a good view of the target when you went over it. One or two times we had a difference of opinion with night fighters, which meant me spraying or hosing the guns.
AM: So you did actually use the guns then?
JM: But I never ever shot anybody down unfortunately so I can’t claim any credit for anything like that, and that was it. And of course we had leave from time to time. [coughs]
AM: How many operations did you do Joe?
JM: Well it was listed as eight, so I wasn’t all that lucky.
AM: And what sort, what areas did you target, where did you actually go on the operations, can you remember?
JM: I remember two gardening, one was cinnamon and the other one was off the isl, Ile du Ré on the Durant which was the entrance to a U-Boat base somewhere.
AM: Why did they call them gardening, why did they call them gardening?
JM: Well they codes we all was vegetables, like cinnamon and rose and things like that, so it was just a code gardening. It was supposed to be our introduction to operations more often than not on the second one we did which was Ile du Ré off the Durant, we got you’ve got to drop them at a certain height, certain speed, and we had two large ones and then going down along the powers that be that gave us the route didn’t take into consideration the facts, there was some anti-aircraft ships they used to have based there, um, which unfortunately for us were just a, if I can put it that way, just a little bit unfriendly.
AM: Describe unfriendly?
JM: And um, the I think it was port [unclear] and that destroyed the power supply to a lot of the instruments the navigator was using [coughs] so we used the, I can’t use his name, but it was “D”. The code you phoned when you were in trouble on the nights and the thing indicated it was night time and we asked for searchlight assistance to get us to our which couldn’t do, so they got us into Andrew’s Field which is an American station which mitchers [?] and marauders and of course we put this Stirling down there and of course we put the Stirling down there and of course the quite high the nose on a Stirling, and the following morning we got up there’s all the, a lot of American [unclear] looking up at us, with some right rude remarks being made about it. But the beauty of it was, was the er, one of my commanders’ said, [coughs] excuse me, ‘You can go into the PX’, I think it was called. A large building where you could buy all sorts of things, so we stocked up on, I think it was Lucky Strike Cigarettes, handkerchiefs and things like that. And I must say when we landed there we went for debriefing for these, they got the station education officer etcetera up who debriefed us and he said, ‘Well non-commission officers in the Air Force the American Air Force don’t have a mess separate, but nevertheless we can get you something that you’ll will enjoy.’ And we had steak and one thing and another for breakfast, and they said, ‘Did we mind.’ And I thought no I don’t mind but if they want to hang on to me for a month or two I don’t mind at all. Eventually we went back to Chedburgh.
AM: How did you get back? How did you get back did somebody come and fly you back?
JM: They sent a lorry for us.
AM: Oh right.
JM: Not a crew bus a lorry and we sat in the back of that, flying kit and everything. And when we went along people recognised what we were and waved to us and we waved back, which was like being on holiday, and we got back and we went on leave, which was nice. And at that time I’d been introduced to a young lady who eventually became my wife, and I went to London to, she was a Londoner, I went to London to see her.
AM: Where did you meet her?
JM: I met her in Banbury when I was at HEO, and there was no bus service from HEO that I remember into Banbury so I used to walk, it wasn’t very far six or seven miles something like that. And I used to walk in spend the day with Elsie, walk back, and we was on night flying, circuit, bumps and things like that, and after seven days I said to Elsie, ‘I wish you’d go back to London ‘cos I’m worn out with you here going backwards and forwards.’ But it was nice. So back to Chedburgh, on the 27th which is the Monday of September 1943, we was briefed to go to Hanover which we’d been before so we knew the way, at least I thought we knew the way to Hanover. I remember it quite well because the final turning point was at the far end of the Steinhoven [?] and I was illuminated by a white flare cascading at three thousand feet, and I thought great that’s exactly where we go on the last leg, unfortunately rather unpleasant German night fighters I think it was, they used to have two sets of night fighters who would [unclear] there’s the tamer soar which was the tame boar and the wilder soar which was the wild boar, and the wild boar it roamed with radar a little bit feared by the way came from nowhere and one of them took a fancy to having a closer look at aircraft and the rear gunner fought him off. The rear gunner, Tommy Brennan, thought he’d shot him down but I don’t think he did, the trouble with rear gunners they always think they’re are shooting people down and there not. But by that time by the time we’d been chased all over the sky we was down to about five thousand feet and we took a consensus of the crew whether should go on or turn back so we decided after come that far we’d keep going although five thousand feet was a little bit low for operating.
AM: Had you been actually shot up at by that time?
JM: Yes the port engine had caught fire which we put out with the Gravenor, the Gravenor is the fire extinguisher in the engine which you can only use once, got that out, got down say to five thousand feet and then got shot at by anti-aircraft fire which set the port outer one on fire, so we [laughs] the bomb aimer disposed of his little things and off we went back but it was pretty obvious we was losing fuel and the aircraft kept getting lower and lower and lower, and Ces Brown the pilot said, ‘We better bale out now otherwise I think it’ll blow up.’ So that’s what we did and I landed near Emden in the middle of a field, and the funny thing was I remember about it, it was a soft landing, so I thought get rid of the parachute and me flying jacket etcetera, but I couldn’t find a way out of the field because there was a ditch all the way round and there seemed to be no way above it to get out, so I went round again and the moon was shining on the water but just underneath the water was this black bridge that was covered by water. So I got across there and I thought right go to the village which was in the distance with a church, go to the last cottage then if it’s unpleasant I’m out in the continent. Well that was the principle but when I got to the village I’m walking along very carefully keeping well into the hedge and things, when a little thing was in me, me back, and a voice said something or other, I could never remember what he actually said but I knew what it meant and that was it, and he was, he was I think he was a Hageman [?] in the Luftwaffe on leave, serves me right for getting involved in [unclear], and he was saying goodnight to his girlfriend when I happened to walk past so I thought his eyes lit up and he thought, ooh I’ve got it, I’ve got it, and I was, and he actually took me to the end cottage anyhow. Got in there and there was my navigator, Ted Bounty, sitting there looking quite miserable but he did perk up when he saw me and that was it.
AM: What happened to the others, what happened to the rest of the crew do you know?
JM: Well see when you are baling out you’ve got to remember the aircraft is still moving, and I been bale out the next man might be half a mile further on, so I don’t know until we’d been to Interrogation Centre, Dulag Luft, and we met that was the first prisoner of war camp I went to which was Stalag VI in Heydekrug in Lithuania.
AM: Right. Tell me about Dulag, tell me about the interrogation part of it?
JM: So they sent him that picked us up to Emden and Emden which was a police marine barracks, him that picked us up, and of course on the films you see these motorbikes with Germans on with a sidecar, they sent one of those, well they sent two, one for Ted Bounty, and one for me, and off we went to Emden. And at that time [coughs] I had, every now and again aircrew a thing we used to do, one of them’s got money and I was the one that had money, currency, so I thought I’ve got to be careful here what I do with it, so I said to the interrogator and they all, interrogators they all look nice, very polite, but there are not. I said, ‘I’m awfully sorry but I must use the toilet.’ So they got a guard took me along and I went inside the little cubicle and he waited outside, and I thought I know what I’ll do I’ll put the money, it was one of the old fashioned toilets up there, lift the lid up put it inside and get it later on. That was a, so went back into interrogation and they in retrospect it was not any particular worry on that, they shout at you, they threatened you, [coughs] excuse me, they offer you cigarettes, in fact I was offered a drink, um, but I’ve always made a promise I would never drink if I was captured, at least I think I did. So I then was taken into a room and given some soup to keep me going and said to that person, ‘I must use the toilet.’ [unclear] fine I’ve got it back again, climbed up lifted it up it had gone, dereliction of duty I suppose you would if the commander found out but I tried hard to keep it. And then went from there after about two or three days by train to Frankfurt am Main which is near to Oberursal which is where Dulag Luft was, stopped at Cologne and there’s I’m in this compartment with two guards, and I thought oh gosh I don’t feel very safe here on the station at Cologne, but fortunately a Luftwaffe officer came in and what he demanded I don’t know but he came to sit in here with us so his presence kept everybody out.
AM: So it was the civilians that were —
JM: Yes.
AM: Was the worrying factor.
JM: So we got on to Frankfurt am Main and then on to Dulag Luft. Dulag Luft I’ve read many many accounts of people’s grief there but I didn’t find it particularly harrowing if that’s the best word for it, unpleasant yes but not harrowing. So again I was offered cigarettes and drink which I didn’t take, regretted it afterwards. And then after about a fortnight something like that, may be six or seven of us that was there, I mean you was in isolation by the way, they took us by tram to a park where there was a wooden hut and it was opposite the IG Farbernwerks [?], I always remember that and we’d got to spend the night there and there’s an air raid, and next to the hut was a German anti-aircraft gun unit, which pooped ‘em up all night, not particularly pleasant, but in retrospect not too bad anyhow. I think when you say in retrospect it means that as the years have gone by you’ve mellowed to the situation, and then from there we were transported by train, luxury train, well cattle trucks really, but they were clean. All the way and I think we spent, and I can’t be hundred per cent certain, but I think we spent two days and two nights going to across Germany to Lithuania to Luft VI Heydekrug, and then that was it. And then when the Russians moved and in July 1944 when the Russians were not all that far away they decided they’d move the camp, most of the camp went by train to Thorn in Poland, the rest of us about eight hundred British airmen and the Americans went by train to Memell just up the coast from Lithuania and boarded a little ship called “The Insterburg” there was nine hundred I think from Klage[?] in the hold that we were in. It was a, it was an old coal ship, a Russian coal ship the Germans had taken over, and I had got volunteered to help the medics at Heydekrug there, one of my problems in life is that I keep going and putting me hand at the back of me head to scratch it and every time I’ve done that I’ve volunteered for something and I apparently volunteered to help the medics. Particularly on aircrew that had had injuries to the joints and the joints become sort of locked with adhesions of the joints, and my job was sort of try to break them down, which was interesting on that. So I had a Red Cross Armband and when I got on “The Insterburg” I said, pointed to it and the just tore it off and backed me down [laughs], and it was a twenty foot ladder, steel ladder into the, and we was on “The Insterburg” I think can’t remember exactly three or two days and nights on that, and then we landed at Swinemünde the German Naval Base at Swinemünde. When the what appeared to be an air raid but it was an individual American aircraft, [unclear], and went from there to Kiefheide, Kiefheide Station where we was going to go onto Gross Tychow which was Luft IV, and when they eventually the following morning got us out they had Police Marine [?] men or mainly boys in running shorts and vests with fixed bayonets and some of the Luftwaffe with dogs and a chap whose name was Hauptman Pickard, I always remember, and he was stood on the back seat of a Kugelwagen which was like a German little vehicle, and shouting all sorts of things [unclear] move you to Gross Tychow Camp at a reasonably fast pace with jabbing and one thing and another and dogs biting, and a thought that occurred to me was that I’d rather be on leave right now than doing this. And it was not all that far about four kilometres from Kiefheide Station to Gross Tychow but we had lots of casualties.
AM: On the way or you had casualties that you were taking with you?
JM: Well the instructions apparently mean to the police moving people, you can do what you like but you must not kill anybody, but that gave them carte blanche to knock hell out of us. Luckily I wasn’t too bad. So when we got there we found that the camp wasn’t even finished, we slept the first night in the open. The toilet arrangement in those days were a little bit suspect and it comprised, I shouldn’t really say this, a big trench with a [unclear] over it. And then the following day we was like in we call them dog kennels, small wooden huts, we slept in there for a few nights until they got the permanent ones done and that was Gross Tychow. It was of all the camps I was in the worst of the whole lot.
AM: Worse because of the conditions or the —
JM: Well, Prisoner of War Camps are governed mainly by the people running them, they can be nice or they can be nasty, at Heydekrug there were some about average they weren’t too bad at all, Gross Tychow they were awful to any of us.
AM: Awful in what way?
JM: Well bullying and things like that, but the food wasn’t very good, didn’t have much of it. There was a man there who was six foot three, or six foot four something like that, we used to call him the big stoop, largely because I think he was a little bit embarrassed by his height and he used to walk in a stoop. He was the one that took by wristwatch, he was the one that used to knock people over and things like that. But for every villain there’s always a day of comeuppance isn’t there and when we moved out on the march towards the end of the war the Americans found him and they’d taken his head off and that was that he’d got his comeuppance didn’t he. The end of the war.
AM: Tell me about the march then?
JM: Well in February, I think it was February 2nd, they made out we had been pre-warned we hadn’t been pre-warned they told us at midnight they was moving out the following day. So you’d got to prepare everything take everything with you that you can take, and most of the people got a spare shirt, sometimes you had a spare shirt, tie the up, the arms up and button it up and it made a nice little receptacle put your things in there, and the following morning we went on the march, it was I think it was eleven o’clock if I remember rightly. And we went from Gross Tychow on the northern run to the Oder to cross the Oder, the Russians were the other side of Statin further down the Oder, and we had to take, we had to get across and what they did for the ones I was with you went into barges, there was two barges tied together and you was towed across the Oder to the other side. Unfortunately the night before when we got there the Germans said, ‘We’ve got nowhere for you to stay for the night.’ It had been snowing so we had to sleep in the open, but being aircrew boasting to the, we worked out what to do, so there’s some like a cloudy fern at the side, got those down tried to sweep away a bit of snow off, we had overcoats on.
AM: Did you have boots, did you have boots on?
JM: Oh yeah, oh shoes, in those days we’d been, well [coughs] usually when you get shot down you lose your flying boots. So the following morning I say they moved us across by barge and then we had to, we found out afterwards of course that the reason for the panic they was frightened the Russians would catch up with us, whether they was ever in a position to do that I don’t know, but the Germans obviously thought that they did. So then we went on the march across Northern Germany, various places, enjoying it, looking at Germany through the eyes of a hitchhiker. [laughs]
AM: You don’t really mean enjoying it?
JM: Well yes, but it, um, there was too many incidents happened there.
AM: What was it like, what was, ‘cos it’s cold?
JM: Well it had been snowing, remember we set out in February.
AM: Yes.
JM: And it was a cold winter. By the time we got to Fallingbostel the weather was getting better.
AM: What did you eat, what did you eat and drink?
JM: Well that’s a problem, I’ve got the world’s worst memory, so I don’t remember a lot. The two things you must do is you must get sleep and you must have liquids, liquids was a very difficult thing, some of the times the Germans got us liquids a lot of the times they didn’t. When there was snow about if you were lucky enough to get a snow that was still clean it would melt in your mouth, but that causes dysentery anyhow, I know [whispers] that’s the other problem. But, to be honest a lot of the time they found us barns and things like that to sleep in. What you had to remember at that time, March and April of 1945 it was mostly British fighter planes in the air which were having a good time, and one of the barns I was in got shot at and set on fire.
AM: How did you all get out?
JM: One or two people got killed.
AM: Did they?
JM: But to be honest the Germans tried to find us somewhere, but I’m afraid Royal Air Force fighter pilots were seeing something that’s a good target they went for it. [coughs] Fortunately we got to Fallingbostel eventually sometime in April if I remember rightly.
AM: So two months.
JM: We was then there for a couple of days on the station, the man in charge of Fallingbostel decided it was overcrowded so our little lot was moved out again on the road to Lubeck, which we went to, was one or two incidents on the way. But the man I was with, if you in the thing you’ve got to have a friend who you are with and Danny was one of mine, and Danny said to me, ‘Why don’t we just nip out sometime when we stop if there’s a time when we can do it safely.’ And there came one of those times and we just, Danny and I nipped out across the field into the woods and that was it, spent a little bit of the time keeping had to get through the German lines and through the British lines which we did when we got to the Elbe, across the Elbe.
AM: Just the two of you?
JM: Yeah, on a boat there was no oars but the hands work for oars don’t they.
AM: And did you know what you were making for that, did you know that you would find the British lines?
JM: Well not really we know the direction roughly and we’d got ears that tell you a lot, we got, there was only one time where we was in a little bit of trouble, we spent the night in a barn that didn’t have a roof but it was a barn so Dan and I spent the night in there and the village further down about two kilometres further down it was a village where there were German half-tracks and things and logic would say that they should be moving east which meant they wouldn’t come our way they’d go east and we were north of them, so we decided, we saw them moving to go so we decided we would go to the village. Unfortunately they decided to go our way north instead of going east, and it was not a lot of them I remember a Mark IV type of tank was pulling two lorries and there’s half-tracks with Germans at the back and we’re going along and they’re coming and there’s no point in running away doing anything like that, and our jackets were already prepared, chevrons everything was pulled off so there’s nothing, so we just kept on walking and we had a like a French conversation, and if they knew it was French they would have wondered what language we were talking it certainly wasn’t French but it sounded like it, and luckily they were so keen to get away they just ignored us and we just kept on going, and we just kept on going, and going, and going, eating what we could and we eventually came across an aerodrome that had some Dakotas, we went on an RAF pilot we collared him.
AM: What did you think when you finally saw it?
JM: Eh?
AM: What did you think when you finally saw it there?
JM: Well, well, contrary to what other people have said it didn’t make a lot of difference to me. It was just something was happening at the time, the fact that it was the if you like the starting point of going out didn’t occur to us, the RAF pilot he said he was on some sort of exercise for evacuation of prisoners of war, and he was, he did say he that they was taking people like to me somewhere in Belgium for transit, but he said I’m not going that way I’m going direct to Great Britain. And we talked him into taking us and he flew from there to Wing near Aylesbury, I think as part of an exercise sort of, and we got to Wing and that was the nice part. When we was coming towards, they all take you over the white cliffs of Dover don’t they you see that, and he couldn’t head them ‘cos you can’t see much so he said ‘I’ll bank to port and you can all go that side and have a look, anyway he said for goodness sake go back again the balance of the aircraft is all over.’ We got to Wing and unloaded us, Danny and I, I remember [coughs] there was WAAFS and all sorts of things, there was two rather large Salvation Army ladies I remember quite clearly came across and lifted us both up and swung us round said a lot I think then we went inside the hangar where all sorts of people came and cuddled you and things like that, yeah that was a nice thing. And one lady said to me I can send a telegram to your parents if you like, give me all the details which I did and they sent a telegram off to my mum and dad saying I was here. So we had something to eat, I always like this because you see they have all this food out and when you get a plate full suddenly a doctor comes along and takes half of it back you know, saying, ‘You mustn’t eat too much.’ And we went from there to Cosford which was set up as a reception centre, had medicals and things like that, and the station commander apparently if I believe what I’m told, given me concerning reception a chat on how to treat ex-prisoners of war and one of the things what he apparently said if I’m to believe what I’m told, ‘For goodness sake don’t leave anything lying about you’ll find it disappears you know.’ Whether that was true or not I don’t know could well have been ‘cos I was the only judge of a lot of people you live on your wits don’t you. And then after I’d been there for some time there was one little amusing incident you had to see a doctor before you could do anything you had to see a doctor, and that’s after you had been deloused that’s one of the things you get done, deloused straight up. And there was five cubicles and the word got around there’s four male doctors and one female doctor, everybody’s trying to work out where the female doctor was to avoid that one, and we, I can’t remember, say cubicle four, and this cubicle four came up you were next you used to say, ‘You go before me I’m not in a rush.’ And I got pushed into cubicle four and it was a lady doctor, mind you she was getting on a bit she was a nice lady, but it was funny the way people were avoiding her simply because they’d been away all that time. And then we were carted off [coughs] to the station, I remember it quite well it was just an ordinary little local train that went from Cosford to Birmingham, two stations at Birmingham, Snow Hill, and I can’t remember the other one.
AM: New Street, New Street, its New Street now in’t it?
JM: So we did that and when we got on the train that was going north there was just one carriage, there was an RAF policeman at either end of it and that was reserved for people like me, the train was absolutely crowded but our coach wasn’t and nice young ladies served refreshment all the time. And I got to York Station, I’d already notified Elsie my future wife and she was at York Station, and all the time I was in Germany I imagined meeting Elsie it’s a step bridge across the rails at York Station, [unclear] slow motion on that like if you’re on the films, looking forward to this, so I’m going slowly towards Elsie and she went straight past me, I remember that I thought oh dear all that time she doesn’t recognise me, it’s something you remember isn’t it, and that and at the other side there’s my sister and her husband so that was it. And I had instructions to go to the RAF York aerodrome there to see the medical officer which I did and he gave me a form to go to the food office in York, and the following day I went. A man said, ‘Join that queue.’ So I joined the queue, it was in the Assembly Rooms in York which is a lovely place, and I’m in this queue and it occurred to me there’s all pregnant women, there’s all pregnant women getting extra rations, people patting me on the back and one thing and another and I always remember that, and that was it I was back in York.
AM: Back in York, on leave.
JM: [laughs] On leave, yeah, yeah, ubiquitous leave.
AM: What happened after that then up to being demobbed how long?
JM: Well I got, er I don’t think you know that most aircrew, nearly all of them had a rehabilitation period and mine was at an aerodrome off the A1, can’t remember the name of it.
AM: No don’t matter.
JM: Doesn’t really matter, anyway I was there for a month and it just so happened the Royal Air Force band was based there so we had music, and for that four weeks what it consists of Friday morning we got up quite early and the station commander had arranged for a Queen Mary to be there on the grounds we had to go to London for some reason.
AM: Queen Mary, is that the big truck?
JM: Yes.
AM: The big open truck.
JM: And about twenty of us climbed on there and went all the way from the station about fifty miles into London on that, and we had to meet at a certain time to get back and coming back and we did that for four weeks until I got on leave yet again, to arrange the wedding with Elsie.
AM: So she’d recognised you by then?
JM: Oh yes I’d put a bit of weight on and that [laughs] yeah, and took a long time to live it down. So from there where did I go, oh I went to Compton Bassett. They decided to put me on a code and cipher course so I went and code and ciphered Compton Bassett. I was the only warrant officer there, there was all flight lieutenants and squadron leaders going to be code and cipher officers which apparently I was destined to be. So I did that and now I’m a code and cipher officer aren’t I, had to go before the board for a commission and they said, ‘The posting will be to the Middle East they’re looking for code and cipher officers.’ So next time, I got every weekend off, so I’m coming back to London to Elsie and I said I’d been offered a commission but it’s a posting to Middle East code and cipher officer, and Elsie said, ‘No way.’ So I had to turn it down. So then they thought well what do we do with him so they had to [coughs] we had a party for the people who passed the code and cipher officer, and I’m sitting next to a civilian and I said to him, ‘It’s a little bit of an impasse I’m not quite certain what to do.’ And explained the circumstances to him, so he said, ‘Write to the air officer commanding training command for this particular region and apply for a compassionate posting to where you want to go.’ Said, ‘That’s fine I don’t know who the air officer commanding is?’ And he said, ‘Oh it happens to be me.’ So he was, I got to meet him he was coming to Compton Bassett for some reason and I had an interview with him and I said, ‘Well my wife is living in Golders Green which is only two stations off Hendon, Hendon would be a nice place.’ So I got a posting to Hendon and they say what the hell do you do with him. It was nice posting, nine to five Monday to Friday living hours, most enjoyable, 24 Squadron which had the Curtiss every now and then unofficially I used to join one of them and go flying. And then I got I think July 1944 I went to Oxbridge and got demobbed.
AM: ‘45.
JM: ‘44, ’45, ’46.
AM: ’46 we’ve moved on one.
JM: Well you’re allowed a mistake now and then.
AM: Yeah go on then.
JM: And got demobbed and got involved in getting a suit. I think Burtons made a lot of them.
AM: Montague Burtons.
JM: Montague Burtons. Some of them were really quite nice, I think I wore it once, it’s the material was nice the cut not particular, but I’m demobbed anyhow. And the company I used to work for before I went in the Air Force wrote to me to say there’s a job waiting for you.
AM: Is this Rowntrees?
JM: Yeah. So I wrote back and I said, ‘I don’t mind working for you but I want to work in London ‘cos my future wife lives in London.’ They said they can’t do that. The problem is when you come out the Air Force you don’t take very kindly to being instructed and when they said we can give you a job but not especially where you want it, so I said ‘I don’t want it.’ So I went to find a job in London and I was offered a job, the people who make fridges, and they made big American ones, but the problem was the job was stores controller and the man was doing it already but he was not retiring until September October and this was early in the year. So I got a job with Express Dairy which was a place quite close to where Elsie lived and thought I’ll have that job until I get the other one, but enjoyed working at Express so much then I wouldn’t leave although the difference in salaries was quite high, and I worked for Express Dairy for all my working life, and they were taken over by various firms but I still worked for them. And one of the problems if you got taken over if it’s two people doing the same job one of them’s going.
AM: Yes.
JM: And the one that’s going is the one in the highest salary.
AM: Yes.
JM: And I kept on being retained, and I said to Elsie, ‘Must mean that my salary is too low.’ I got offered a job at the main site at Ruislip, the job was in charge of warehousing and things like that, and they said well, and then I had a heart attack everybody does if you’ve got a do you’ve got to have one if you’re in a fashion[?], and I had three months off and the chairman called me and said, ‘You mustn’t go back on this job and I’ll sort it and we’ve found a nice little job for you working as PA assistant for the director who was responsible for production.’ And that’s what I did.
AM: And that’s what you did.
JM: And Dennis Watson was my boss, well nothings been written yet so you’ve got to sit down and write your job description will go from there so that’s what I did. I spent the rest of my time on that job.
AM: As PA.
JM: And his responsibility was keeping an eye on [unclear] functions and things like that and decided on systems, his, and we had seven factories up and down the country. One of my jobs was to visit ‘em now and again, and now and again meant to me when you’re a little bit fed up you get in the car and off you go to a factory and that’s what I used to do. And then when I retired my boss Dennis made a big party at Ruislip and there was about a hundred of us there, and that was it.
AM: And that was it.
JM: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to switch off now Joe.
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 Joseph Musgrove
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
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
2015-08-12
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMusgroveJ150812
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Format
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01:11:32 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Born in York in 1922, Joseph left school at 14 and started work in a chocolate factory and attended two nights of further education per week. In 1936, a fighter aircraft had landed nearby which stimulated his interest in flying which he retained all his life. After joining the RAF he did well in the selection tests and was offered a position of wireless operator/air gunner. After initial training he went to RAF Madley to train on twin-engined aircraft and then RAF Staverton, RAF Topcliffe and was crewed up at the operational training unit at RAF Edgehill. Gunnery training was carried out on Defiant which were notorious for undercarriage issues. Finally he was posted to 214 squadron at RAF Chedburgh, flying Stirlings.
His first operation was minelaying in the Baltic and he recalls standing in the astrodome to warn of enemy fighters. On other operations he would sit in the front turret and occasionally fire at enemy fighters, without success. Further minelaying operations were carried out and on his eighth, his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and diverted to a US Army Air Force airfield where he stocked up on goodies, unavailable in England from the base exchange store.
On the 22 September 1943 he took part to an operation to Hanover and describes the night fighter tactics in detail. Following lengthy evasive action his aircraft was forced down to 5,000 feet where it was hit by by anti-aircraft fire and he was forced to bail out over Emden where he was caught by a member of the Luftwaffe who was visiting his girlfriend. After initial interrogation he was sent to the interrogation centre at Dalag Luft and after a two day train journey arrived at Stalag 5 prisoner of war camp.
On July 1944 the encroaching Russian army forced the evacuation of the camp and he was moved to the unfinished Luft 4 camp and remembers the bullying guards and poor conditions. Again in February 1945 the camp was evacuated and after crossing the River Oder in barges marched across northern Germany. After two months he arrived at Lübeck and escaped the column, narrowly missing being captured by German soldiers by conversing in French. Finding an allied airfield he was repatriated to England where he was treated as a hero.
After recuperation he attended a code and cipher course and was offered a commission if he would go to the middle-east. Wanting to get married he declined and wangled his way to 24 Squadron at RAF Hendon, were he was eventually demobbed in July 1946.
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Herefordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--London
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany
Europe--Oder River
Germany--Lübeck
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
Lithuania
Lithuania--Šilutė
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1936
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1943-09-22
1944-07
1945-02
1946-07
102 Squadron
214 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Defiant
demobilisation
Dulag Luft
Halifax
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Madley
RAF Shenington
RAF Staverton
RAF Topcliffe
shot down
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
Stirling
strafing
the long march
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/9858/MCluettAV120946-150515-15.1.pdf
45257601be1228d48e7ba6965f8d72ad
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
Cluett, Albert Victor
Albert Victor Cluett
A V Cluett
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
68 items. The collection concerns Leading Aircraftman Albert Victor Cluett (1209046, Royal Air Force). After training in 1941/42 as an armourer, he was posted to 50 Squadron at RAF Swinderby and then RAF Skellingthorpe. The collections consists his official Royal Air Force documents, armourer training notebooks, photographs of colleagues, aircraft and locations as well as propaganda items, books in German and Dutch and items of memorabilia.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Albert Victor Cluett's daughter Pat Brown and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Cluett, AV
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cartoon notebook
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Air Force notebook for workshop and laboratory records containing a large number of hand drawn wartime cartoons including aircraft caricatures. On the cover '547557 AC2 Johnson' and '1209046 LAC Cluett 1940'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One notebook
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Artwork
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCluettAV120946-150515-15
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
animal
Anson
arts and crafts
Beaufighter
Defiant
Do 18
Fw 190
ground personnel
Horsa
Hudson
Hurricane
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lincoln
Lysander
Martinet
Me 163
medical officer
Meteor
military living conditions
military service conditions
Oxford
P-47
Spitfire
Stirling
Typhoon
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/971/10025/MMolloyS[Ser -DoB]-160212-01.pdf
31dff3d389965a32008336afe506ab34
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
Molloy, Shae
S Molloy
Description
An account of the resource
One Luftwaffe intelligence file on Allied aircraft.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Shae Molloy and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-12
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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Molloy, S
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Partial transcription]
Frontnachrichtenblatt der Luftwaffe
Nicht zum Feindflug mitnehmen!
Der Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe
Führungsstab I C
Sonderausgabe:
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte
Teil I: Britishe Kriegsflugzeuge (einschl. Der USA-Lieferungen)
Teil II: Die Kriegsflugzeuge der USA.
Teil III: Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Sowjet-Union
Leistungen und Bilder
Stand: 1. September 1942
INHALT
Vorbemerkungen Anlagen 1 und 2
Teil I: Britische Kriegsflugzeuge (einschl. Der USA.-Lieferungen)
Hoheitsabzeichen der britischen Kriegsflugzeuge Anlage 3
Leistungstabellen Grossbritannien (einschl. Der USA.-Lieferungen) Anlagen 4a-4c
Schattenrisse im Maßstab 1:1000 der wichtigsten britischen Kriegsflugzeuge Anlagen 5a-5e
Westland “Lysander” Anlagen 6a-6c
Hawker “Hurricane I” Anlagen 7a, 7b
Hawker “Hurricane II C” Anlagen 8a-8c
Supermarine “Spitfire I” Anlagen 9a, 9b
Supermarine “Spitfire V” Anlagen 10a, 10b
Supermarine “Spitfire” (Aufkl.) Anlage 10c
Westland “Whirlwind” Anlagen 11a-11c
Boulton & Paul “Defiant” Anlagen 12a, 12b
Bristol “Beaufighter I” Anlagen 13a, 13b
Bristol “Blenheim-Fighter” Anlagen 14a, 14b
Bell “Airacobra” (P-39) Anlagen 15a-15c
Brewster “Buffalo” (F2A-2) Anlagen 16a-16c
Lockheed “Lightning” (P-38) Anlagen 17a-17c
Grumman “Martlet” (F4F-3 “Wildcat”) Anlagen 18a-18c
North American “Mustang” (P-51)Anlagen 19a-19c
Curtiss “Tomahawk” (P-40B) Anlagen 20a, 20c, 20d
Curtiss “Kittyhawk” (P-40E) Anlagen 20b, 20d
Curtiss “Warhawk” (P-40F) Anlagen 20d
Bristol “Beaufort” Anlagen 21a-21c
Bristol “Blenheim I” Anlage 22
Bristol “Blenheim IV” (“Long-nosed”) Anlagen 23a, 23b
Bristol “Blenheim VIII“ Anlage 23c
Handley-Page “Halifax I” Anlagen 24a-24c
Handley-Page “Halifax II” Anlage 24d
Handley-Page “Hampden” Anlagen 25a-25c
Handley-Page “Hereford” Anlage 25d
Avro “Lancaster” Anlagen 26a-26c
Avro “Manchester” Anlagen 27a-27c
De Havilland D. H. 98 “Mosquito” Anlage 28
Short “Stirling” Anlagen 29a-29c
Vickers “Wellington I” Anlage 30b
Vickers “Wellington II” Anlage 30c
Vickers “Wellington III” Anlagen 30a, 30c
Armstrong-Whitworth “Whitley V” Anlagen 31a-31c
Martin “Baltimore” Anlagen 32a, 32b
Martin “Maryland” Anlagen 33a-33c
Lockheed “Hudson” (A-29) Anlagen 34a-34c
Lockheed “Ventura” Anlage 35
Douglas “Boston” (A-20A) Anlagen 36a-36c
Boeing “Fortress I” (B-17 C, D) Anlagen 37a-37c
Boeing “Fortress II” (B-17 E)Anlagen 38a, 38b
Consolidated “Liberator” (B-24) Anlagen 39a-39c
Brewster “Bermuda” (SB2A-1 “Bucaneer”) Anlagen 40a-40c
Vought-Sikorsky “Chesapeake” (SB2U-3 “Vindicator”) Anlagen 41a-41c
Curtiss “Cleveland” (SBC-3) Anlagen 42a-42c
Fairey “Seafox” Anlage 43
Supermarine “Walrus” Anlage 44
Saro “Lerwick” Anlagen 45a-45c
Short “Sunderland” Anlagen 46a-46c
Consolidated “Catalina” (PBY-5 “Catalina”) Anlagen 47a-47c
Consolidated “Coronado” (PB2Y-3 “Coronado”) Anlagen 48a, 48b
Martin “Mariner” (PBM-2 “Mariner”) Anlagen 49a, 49b
Fairey “Fulmar” Anlagen 50a, 50b
Blackburn “Roc” Anlagen 51a-51c
Fairey “Albacore” Anlagen 52a-52c
Fairey “Swordfish” Anlagen 53a, 53b
Blackburn “Skua” Anlagen 54a-54c
Northrop N-3PB Anlage 55
Bristol “Bombay” Anlage 56
De Havilland “Flamingo”, “Hertfordshire”Anlage 57
General Aircraft “Hotspur II” Anlagen 58a, 58b
Teil II: Die Kriegsflugzeuge der USA.
Hoheitsabzeichen Anlage 59
Allgemeines Anlage 60
Leistungstabellen USA Anlagen 61a, 61b
Schattenrisse im Maßstab 1:1000 der wichtigsten USA.-Kriegsflugzeuge Anlagen 62a, 62b
North American O-47Anlage 63
Curtiss O-52 Anlage 64
Republic P-43 “Lancer” Anlage 65
Republic P-47 “Thunderbolt” Anlage 66
Douglas A-24 Anlage 67
North American B-25B Anlage 68b
North American B-25C “Mitchell” Anlagen 68a, 68c
Martin B-26 “Marauder”Anlagen 69a, 69b
Douglas SBD-3 “Dauntless” Anlage 70
Curtiss SB2C-1 “Helldiver” Anlagen 71a, 71b
Vultee V-72 “Vengeance” Anlagen 72a, 72b
Vought-Sikorsky SO2U “Kingfisher” Anlage 73
Curtiss SO3C-1 “Seagull” Anlage 74
Boeing PBB-1 “Sea Ranger” Anlage 75
Consolidated 31 Anlage 75
Vought-Sikorsky F4U-1 “Corsair” Anlage 76
Douglas TBD “Devastator” Anlage 77
Grumman TBF “Avenger” Anlage 78
Transportflugzeuge Anlagen 79, 80
Lastensegler Anlage 81
Kleinluftschiff (sog. “Blimp”) Anlage 81
Teil III: Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Sowjet-Union
Hoheitsabzeichen Anlage 82
Allgemeines Anlagen 83a, 83b
Leistungstabellen Sowjet-Union Anlage 84
Schattenrisse im Maßstab 1:1000 der wichtigsten Kriegsflugzeuge der Sowjet-Union....Anlagen 85a-85c
R-5 Anlage 86
R-10 Anlagen 87a, 87b
I-15 bis Anlage 88
I-153 Anlagen 89a, 89b
I-16 Anlagen 90a, 90b
JAK-1 Anlagen 91a, 91b
MIG-1, -3 Anlagen 92a, 92b
LAGG-3 Anlagen 93a, 93b
SB (bisher SB-2) Anlage 94
SB (bisher SB-3) Anlagen 95a, 95b
AR-2 Anlagen 96a, 96b
DB-3 Anlagen 97a, 97b
DB-3F Anlagen 98a, 98b
JAK-4 Anlage 99
PE-2 Anlagen 100a, 100b
SU-2 Anlagen 101a, 101b
IL-2 Anlagen 102a, 102b
ER-2 Anlage 103
TB-7 Anlage 104
KOR-1 Anlage 105
MBR-2 Anlagen 106a, 106b
MDR-6 Anlage 107
GST Anlage 108
TB-3 Anlage 109a, 109c
PS-84 Anlagen 109b, 109c
U-2 Anlage 110
UT-1 Anlage 111
UT-2 Anlage 111
JAK-7 Anlage 112
Teil I: Britische Kriegsflugzeuge (einschl. Der USA.-Lieferungen)
Achtung!
Wichtige Vorbemerkungen!
In den Leistungstabellen sind die Flugzeuge der USA.-Herkunft durch entsprechende Überschrift kenntlich gemacht und die militärische und Werksbezeichnung in USA. in der Spalte “Bemerkungen” angeführt.
Bei den Schattenrissen im Maßstab 1:1000 tragen die Anlagen links oben die Überschrift:
“Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte” Grossbritannien (einschl. USA.-Lieferungen)
Diejenigen Flugzeugmuster, die bei der britischen und bei der USA.-Fliegertruppe eingesetzt sind, tragen in Klammern unter der britischen militärischen Bezeichnung auch die militärische Bezeichnung in USA.
Bei den Bildtafeln und Bewaffnungsskizzen wird unterschieden a) zwischen den Mustern britischer Herkunft, b) den Mustern amerikanischer Herkunft, die nur bei der britischen Luftwaffe eingesetzt werden und c) den Mustern, die bei der britischen und USA.-Fliegertruppe Verwendung finden.
Die unter c) angeführten Muster werden in Teil II “Die Kriegsflugzeuge der USA.” nicht mehr angeführt.
Die Anlagen tragen deshalb in Teil I links oben folgende unterschiedliche Bezeichnungen:
Zu a) Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte” Grossbritannien
Zu b) Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte” Grossbritannien (Herkunft USA.)
Zu c) Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte” Grossbritannien und USA.
Im Fall b) werden die USA.-Werksbezeichnungen in “Fußnoten” gebracht.
Im Fall c) werden die militärischen USA.-Bezeichnungen in Klammern hinter der britischen Benennung, die USA.-Werksbezeichnungen in Fußnoten gebracht.
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte - Anlage 1
Vorbemerkungen:
1. Die Steigzeiten werden auf 0,5 min, die Dienstgipfelhöhe auf 0,5 km, die Geschwindigkieten auf 5 km/st abgerundet.
2. Bei den Motorenleistungen sind die Höchstleistungen und dahinter die Höhe angegeben, in der die Höchstleistung des betreffenden Motorenmusters erzielt wird.
3. In der Rubrik bew. MG.-Stände/ MG. in den Tabellen (Anlagen 4a – 4c, 61 a, 61 b und 84) bedeutet die obere Zahl die Anzahl der Mg.-Stände, die untere Zahl die Gesamtzahl der MG. Die Anordnung der einzelnen MG. siehe Bewaffnungsskizze des betr. Musters.
4. Flugdauer und Gesamtflugstrecke sind naturgemäß abhängig vom Grad der Drosselung. Die Flugdauer kann sich schätzungsweise rund in den Grenzen 1:3 bewegen, die Gesamtflugstrecke in den Grenzen 1:2. Die angegebene Flugdauer und Gesamtflugstrecke bezieht sich zumeist auf eine mittlere Drosselung von etwa 66% oder auf die angeführte Marschgeschwindigkeit.
5. Unter normaler Flugstrecke und normaler Eindringtiefe sind die Werte bei größter Bombenlast angegeben.
6. Die Leistungen und näheren Angaben der Flugzeuge für mehrere Verwendungszwecke werden nur in der Tabelle der Hauptverwendung angeführt.
7. Bei Unterschieden zu den Angaben der früher herausgegebenen Leistungstabellen sind die Angaben in den Zusammenstellungen dieses Heftes maßgebend.
8. Bei der Betrachtung der Bilder ist zu berücksichtigen, daß die Tarnbemalung entsprechend den verschiedenen Kriegsschauplätzen verschieden ist.
Alle Angaben sind nach dem Stande vom 1. September 1942 neu bearbeitet.
Die in den bisherigen Frontnachrichtenblättern erschienenen Bilder und Zeichnungen der wichtigsten Kriegsflugzeuge sind, soweit brauchbar, wiederholt und ergänzt, die Leistungsangaben berichtigt worden.
Vorliegendes Sonderheft zum Aushang bringen und zum Unterricht benutzen!
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte - Anlage 2
Anordnung der Bewaffnung, der Kraftstoffbehälter und der Panzerung bei den wichtigsten Kriegsflugzeugen der Feindmächte
In den Zeichnungen sind die Bewaffnung, die Kraftstoffbehälter und die Panzerung nach nachstehendem Schema eingezeichnet:
- Kraftstoffbehälter geschützt
- Kraftstoffbehälter ungeschützt
- Panzerung
- MG
- MG. in Bola [Bola= short for “Bodenlafette”, a ventral gun carriage or gondola]
- Kanone
Die Skizzen sind ohne bestimmten Maßstab. Die Eintragungen wurden auf Grund der zur Zeit vorhandenen Unterlagen – soweit möglich unter Auswertung der Beuteflugzeuge – durchgeführt.
Es ist anzunehmen, daß alle Flugzeuge mindestens mit einem Rückenpanzer für den Flugzeugführer behelfsmäßig ausgestattet sind. Bei den Flugzeugmustern, bei denen an Hand von Beuteflugzeugen eine Panzerung festgestellt wurde, ist diese in den Skizzen eingezeichnet.
Bei den neusten Flugzeugen finden sich nunmehr auch geschützte Kraftstoffbehälter.
Bei den Angaben über die Bewaffnung ist zu berücksichtigen, daß ein und dasselbe Flugzeugmuster verschiedene Bewaffnung aufweisen kann, z. B. Doppel-MG. statt Einfach-MG., Kanonen statt starre MG. usw. Alle bisher bekanntgewordenen Bewaffnungsarten sind bei den jeweiligen Mustern in der Beschreibung auf der Skizze vermerkt.
Die Skizzen von Feindflugzeugen mit Eintragung der Bewaffnung, der Kraftstoffbehälter und der Panzerung werden entsprechend eingehender neuer Unterlagen laufend berichtigt und für neu eingesetzte Flugzeugmuster laufend ergänzt werden!
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte - Großbritannien (einschl. Der USA.-Lieferungen) – Anlage 3
Hoheitsabzeichen der britischen Kriegsflugzeuge
Flügeloberseite
Flügelunterseite
Neuerdings sind der gelbe Ring um die Kokarde, desgleichen der weiße Ring in der Kokarde und der weiße Streifen an der Seitenflosse wesentlich schmäler gehalten. Bisher waren alle Ringe der Kokarde und alle Streifen an der Seitenflosse gleich breit.
Teil II: Die Kriegsflugzeuge der USA.
Achtung!
Wichtige Vorbemerkung!
In diesem Teil sind die Muster nicht mehr aufgeführt, die auch in der britischen Luftwaffe eingesetzt sind. Diese Muster sind im Teil I “Britische Kriegsflugzeuge” (einschl. der USA.-Lieferungen) in den Anlagen 15a-15c, 16a-16c, 17a-17c, 18a-18c, 19a-19c, 20a-20d, 34a-34c, 36a-36c, 37a-37c, 38a, 38b, 39a-39c, 40a-40c, 41a-41c, 42a-42c, 47a-47c, 48a, 48b, 49a und 49b gebracht. Diese Anlagen sind dadurch besonders kenntlich gemacht, daß sie links oben folgende Bezeichnung tragen:
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte
Großbritannien und USA.
Die meisten Bilder tragen noch di bisherigen Hoheitsabzeichen.
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte – USA. - Anlage 59
Hoheitsabzeichen der USA.-Kriegsflugzeuge
Hoheitsabzeichen auf Flügelober- und –unterseite. Neuerdings häufig nur auf einer Flügelseite (linker Oberseite und rechter Unterseite). Die Flügelunterseiten der Heeresflugzeuge tragen außerdem häufig die Aufschrift: US-Army.
Hoheitsabzeichen auf beiden Seiten des Rumpfes.
Sowohl bei Heeres- als auch bei Marineflugzeugen nicht regelmäßig vorhanden.
Hoheitsabzeichen auf beiden Seiten des Rumpfes, nur bei Marineflugzeugen. Nicht regelmäßig vorhanden.
Hoheitsabzeichen: fünfzackiger weißer oder hellgrauer Stern in kreisförmigem blauen Feld. Nach einer unbestätigten Pressemeldung ist das Hoheitsabzeichen von gelbem Ring umschlossen (warscheinlich am Rumpf). Weiß, gelb, blau
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte – USA. - Anlage 60
Allgemeines
Bedeutung der Bezeichnung der Flugzeugmuster der amerikanischen Heeresfliegertruppe
Die einzelnen Flugzeugmuster werden durch Buchstaben und eine Zahl gekennzeichnet. Die Buchstaben vor der Zahl bedeuten die Kategorie, die Zahl gibt an, um das wievielte Muster in der betreffenden Kategorie es sich handelt. Die Bezifferung ist hierbei laufend, ohne Rücksicht auf die Herstellerfirma und ohne Rücksicht darauf, ob das Muster nur als Versuchsmuster oder in Serie gebaut wurde. Ein weiterer Buchstabe nach der Zahl gibt die verschiedenen Serien (Ausführungen) des betreffenden Musters an. Die Kategorien werden durch folgende Buchstaben bezeichnet:
O (Observation) = Aufklärer
B (Bombing) = Kampfflugzeug
A (Attack) = Tiefangriffsflugzeug
P (Pursuit) = Jäger
FM (Multiseater Fighter) = mehrsitziger Jäger (Zerstörer)
C (Cargo) = Transportflugzeug
OA (Observation Amphibium) = Aufklärer-Amphibienflugzeug
Ein X (Experimental) vor der Bezeichnung bedeutet, daß es sich um ein Versuchsmuster handelt, ein Y, daß es sich um ein Flugzeugmuster im Truppenversuch handelt. Zum Beispiel:
B-18 = das 18. Kampfflugzeugmuster
B-18A = die 2. Serie (1. Abwandlung des 18. Kampfflugzeugmusters)
YFM-2 = das 2. Zerstörermuster, im Truppenversuch sich befindend
P-40D = die 5. Ausführung des 40. Jägermusters
Bedeutung der Bezeichnung der Flugzeugmuster der amerikanischen Marinefliegertruppe
Die Fluzeugmuster werden durch eine Gruppe von Buchstaben und Zahlen bezeichnet, die durch einen Bindestrich getrennt sind. Durch die Gruppe vor dem Bindestrich wird die Art der Verwendung, die Herstellerfirma und die Musterzahl gekennzeichnet, während die Zahl hinter dem Bindestrich die betreffende Serie angibt. Der letzte Buchstabe vor dem Bindestrich ist das Kennzeichen für die Herstellerfirma, wobei die einzelnen Firmen wie folgt bezeichnet sind:
A = Brewster
B = Boeing (auch Beech Aircraft)
C = Curtiss
D = Douglas
F = Grumman
H = Hall
J = North American
L = Bell
M = Martin
N = Naval Aircraft Factory
O = Lockheed
P = Spartan
R = Ryan
S = Stearman
T = Northrop
U = Vought-Sikorsky
Y = Consolidated.
Die vorangehende Zahl gibt an, um das wievielte Flugzeug dieser Kategorie der betreffenden Firma es sich handelt, wobei jedoch das erste Flugzeug nicht speziell durch eine Zahl angeführt wird. Die Zahl 1 wird daher weggelassen. Vor dieser Zahl wird der Verwendungszweck des Musters durch 1 bis 2 Buchstaben ausgedrückt. Der erste Buchstabe bedeutet hierbei den Hauptverwendungszweck, der zweite die zusätzliche Verwendungsart. Es werden folgende Buchstaben verwendet:
P = Fernaufklärer (Flugboote)
O = Aufklärer (Artilleriebeobachter)
S = Nahaufklärer
B = Kampfflugzeuge (Stuka)
F = Jagdflugzeuge
J = Arbeitsflugzeuge (Amphibien)
N = Schulflugzeuge
R = Reiseflugzeuge
T = Torpedoflugzeuge
PB = Fernaufklärer-Kampfflugzeuge
OS = Artilleriebeobachter und Nahaufklärer
SB = Aufklärer-Stuka
TB = Torpedo-Kampfflugzeuge
SN = Aufklärer-Schulflugzeuge
JR = Arbeits-Reiseflugzeuge
Ein X (Experimental) vor diesen Buchstaben bedeutet, daß es sich um eine Versuchsauführung handelt. Die Zahl hinter dem Bindestrich bezeichnet, um die wievielte Serie des betreffenden Musters es sich handelt, wobei die einzelnen Serien verschiedene Motorenmuster oder sonstige Änderungen aufweisen.
Zum Beispiel:
S U-4
S: Kategorie “Aufklärer”
U: Fa. Vought (Da keine Zahl voraussteht, bedeutet es das 1. Muster dieser Kategorie)
4: 4. Serie
S B 2 U-3
S B: Kategorie “Aufklärer-Stuka”
2: 2. Muster dieser Kategorie (der Fa. Vought)
U: Fa. Vought-Sikorsky
3: 3. Serie
X T B F -1
X: Versuchsmuster
T B: Kategorie Torpedobomber
F: Fa. Grumman (1. Muster der Kategorie)
1: 1. Serie
Teil III: Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Sowjet-Union
Achtung!
Wichtige Vorbemerkung!
Um die Feststellung von erbeuteten Flugzeugen zu erleichtern, sind die Muster auch mit den russischen Buchstaben bezeichnet, z. B. I-16 = И-16.
Bei den seit 1940 engeführten neuen Flugzeugmustern erfolgte ab 1941 eine Änderung der Bezeichnung: die Neubezeichnung führt nicht mehr die Kategorie der Flugzeuge an, sondern ist aus den Namen der Konstrukteure gebildet. Diese neuen militärischen Bezeichnungen werden in der vorliegenden Zusammenstellung in der ersten Überschriftzeile in der deutschen und der russischen Schreibweise angegeben, die bisherigen Bezeichnungen in Klammern darunter (nur in der deutschen Schreibweise). Bei den schon früher eingeführten Mustern ist die alte Bezeichnungsart beibehalten worden.
In diesem Teil werden nur die Kriegsflugzeuge gebracht, die in der Sowjet-Union selbst hergestellt werden.
Die Muster britischer und amerikanischer Lieferungen sind in Teil I (Britische Kriegsflugzeuge einschl. der USA.-Leiferungen) und Teil II (Die Kriegsflugzeuge der USA.) zu finden.
Zur Zeit (September 1942) sind folgende fremde Muster bei der Luftwaffe der Sowjet-Union festgestellt worden:
Jagdeinsitzer Hawker “Hurricane” (s. Teil I, Anlagen 7a, 7b, 8a-8c)
Jagdeinsitzer Bell “Airacobra” (s. Teil I, Anlagen 15a-15c)
Jagdeinsitzer Curtiss “Tomahawk” (s. Teil I, Anlagen 20a, 20c, 20d)
Kampfflugzeug Douglas “Boston II” und “Boston III” (s. Teil I, Anlagen 36a-36c)
Kampfflugzeug North American B-25 (s. Teil II, Anlagen 68a-68c)
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte – Sowjet-Union - Anlage 82
Hoheitsabzeichen nach sowjetischer Vorschrift von 1941
Seitenansicht
Ansicht von oben
Ansicht von unten
Die Vorschrift wird nicht in allen Fällen genau durchgeführt. Es wurde festgestellt, daß der Sowjetstern auf dem Seitenruder gelegentlich fehlt oder daß die Flügeloberseite das Hoheitsabzeichen trägt.
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte – Sowjet-Union - Anlage 83a
Allgemeines
Die militärische Bezeichnung der älteren Muster erfolgt nach der Kategorie des betreffenden Musters mit einem oder zwei Buchstaben und einer darauffolgenden Zahl.
Es bedeutet hierbei:
I (Istrebitelj) = Jagdeinsitzer
DI (Dwuchmestnyi Istrebitelj) = Jagdzweisitzer
B (Bombardirowschtschik) = Bomber
SB (Skorostnoj Bombardirowschtschik) = Schneller Bomber
DB (Daljnyj Bombardirowschtschik) = Fern-Bomber
BB (Blishnij Bombardirowschtschik) = Nah-Bomber
TB (Tjashjolyj Bombardirowschtschik) = Schwerer Bomber
PB (Pikirujuschtschi Bombardirowschtschik) = Stuka
BSch (Bronirowany Schturmowik) = Gepanzertes Schlachtflugzeug
R (Raswedtschik) = Aufklärer
SchR (Schturmowik Raswedtschik) = Teifangriffsflugzeug – Aufklärer
U (Utschebnyj Samoljot) = Schulflugzeug
UT (Utschebnyj Trenirowatschnyj) = Schul-Übungsflugzeug.
In der darauffolgenden Zahlenbezeichnung ist kein System zu erkennen. Die Zahlen sind weder aufeinanderfolgend, noch nach Werk, Konstrukteur oder Motor durchgeführt. Weiterentwicklungen werden manchmal durch eine nachfolgende Zahl, z. B. I-15 ………. I-153, manchmal durch einen nachfolgenden Buchstanden, z. B. DB-3……………Db-3F, bezeichnet.
Bei den neu eingeführten Flugzeugmustern erfolgt die Bezeichnung seit 1941 nicht mehr nach der Kategorie des Musters, sondern nach den Namen der Konstrukteure (vgl. Vorbemerkung).
Die Werktypenbezeichnung erfolgt durch eine Nummer.
Neue Bezeichnung:
JAK-1
JAK-2, -4
JAK-7
MIG-1, -3
LAGG-3
AR-2
PE-2
ER-2
SU-2
IL-2
Ursprüngliche Bezeichnung:
I-26
BB-22
UTI-26 (I-26 als 2sitziges Übungsflugzeug)
I-200 (Werksbezeichnung I-61)
I-301
SB-RK
Bei den neuen Mustern wurde oft eine Verschiedenheit in der Konstruktion oder in der Bewaffnung vorgefunden, was darauf schließen läßt, daß die serienmäßige Entwicklung noch nicht abgeschlossen ist.
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte – Sowjet-Union - Anlage 83b
Bei Meldungen über abgeschlossene oder zerstörte Flugzeuge ist künftig die neue Musterbezeichnung anzuführen!
Hinweise für den Flugmeldedienst:
Die Unterschiede zwischen einigen Flugzeugmustern sind derart gering, daß ihr einwandfreies Erkennen im Luftraum schwierig ist. Für den Flugmeldedienst werden daher zweckmäßig sich sehr ähnlich sehende Muster (die auch immer gleichen Verwendungszweck haben) unter nur einer Bezeichnung zusammengefaßt.
1. I-15bis und I-153 werden nur als I-153 angesprochen. I-153 ist nur eine Weiterentwickung des Musters I-15 und hat wesentlichstes Merkmal ein einziehbares Fahrwerk. Außerdem sind beim Muster I-153 der obere und untere Flügel geknickt.
2. Die drei neuen Jagdeinsitzermuster LAGG-3, MIG-1, -3 und JAK-1 (“Spitzmaus”-Muster) werden nur “Lagg” angesprochen.
Am Boden ist die Unterscheidung wegen der verschiedenen Bauweisen ohne weiteres möglich.
Das Muster LAGG-3 ist in Ganzholzbauweise ausgeführt,
Das Muster JAK-1 hat einen Holzflügel (durchlaufend) und einen Rumpf aus Stahlrohr geschweißt, mit Stoff bespannt,
Das Muster MIG-1, -3 hat die Außenflügel und den rückwärtigen Teil des Rumpfes ab Führersitz in Holzbau, den Rumpfvorderteil und das Flügelmittelstück in Metallbau.
Diese drei neuen Jagdeinsitzermuster haben flüssigkeitsgekühlte V-Motoren, die beiden älteren Muster haben luftgekühlte Sternmotoren.
3. Alle SB-Muster (SB-2, -3) und das Muster AR-2 (SB-RK) werden unter der Sammelbezeichnung “SB” angesprochen.
Hauptunterscheidung am Boden:
Alle drei Muster haben flüssigkeitsgekühlte V-Motoren, aber verschiedene Kühleranordnung: SB-2 Stirnkühler, SB-3 Bauchkühler, AR-2 (SB-RK) Flügelkühler.
SB-2 und SB-3 haben einen Bugstand mit Schwenklafette, wobei jedes MG. sich in einem Längsschlitz in der Bugnase bewegt, das Muster AR-2 hat einen geschlossenen Bugstand mit einem MG. in Kugellafette.
Das Muster AR-2 hat Sturzflugbremsen, ähnlich wie die Ju-88, die beiden SB-Muster haben keine Sturzflugbremsen.
4. Die beiden Muster DB-3 und DB-3 F werden unter der Bezeichnung “DB-3” zusammengefaßt (zum Unterschied vom Muster TB-3 = “TB-3” Ansprache zweckmäßig “Dora B-3” und “Toni B-3”).
Beide Muster haben luftgekühlte Sternmotoren und unterscheiden sich nur durch die Art der Bugkanzel. Das Muster DB-3 hat eine stumpfe Kanzel mit einem MG.-Drehturm im Bug, das Muster DB-3 F hat eine langgestreckte Kanzel mit einem MG. in Kugellafette.
Alle anderen Muster sind mit ihrer Bezeichnung anzusprechen. Ähnlich sind sich noch die Muster SU-2 und R-10 sowie die beiden Muster PE-2 und JAK-4. Ein sicheres Unterscheiden dieser Muster wird nur bei einigen Fluglagen möglich sein. Ein gutes Unterscheidungsmerkmal bei den Mustern SU-2 und R-10 is die Lage des Führersitzes, der beim Muster R-10 ganz vorn, unmittelbar hinter dem Motor angeordnet ist, während er beim Muster SU-2 weiter zurücklegt. Bei der Ansicht von unten weist das Muster R-10 eine gerade Flügelhinterkante (Keilflügel) auf, während das Muster SU-2 einen Doppeltrapezflügel hat. Als Unterscheidungsmerkmal am Boden dient auch das Motorenmuster: R-10 mit einfachen Sternmotor, SU-2 mit Doppelsternmotor.
Die Muster PE-2 und JAK-4 sind in der Luft schwer zu unterscheiden, am Boden aber infolge der verschiedenen Bauweisen leicht zu erkennen. Das Muster PE-2 ist in Ganzmetallbauweise ausgeführt, das Muster JAK-4 in Gemischt-, der Flügel in Holzbauweise.
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
Die Kriegsflugzeuge der Feindmächte
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
1942-09
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.
Format
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223 printed sheets. The following pages are missing: 25b, 25d, 43, 61a, 73, 75, 76, 79, 80, 81.
Language
A language of the resource
deu
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MMolloyS[Ser#-DoB]-160212-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
United States Army Air Force
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Description
An account of the resource
Contains photographs, silhouettes and drawings of British, American and Russian aircraft, showing dimensions, armament, armour plate or glass, and position of fuel tanks. Tables set out aircraft capabilities, including range and bomb loads.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Germany. Wehrmacht Luftwaffe
B-17
B-24
B-25
Beaufighter
Blenheim
Boston
Catalina
Defiant
fuelling
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Hampden
Hudson
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lysander
Manchester
Mosquito
P-38
P-40
P-51
Spitfire
Stirling
Sunderland
Swordfish
Ventura
Walrus
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/477/10243/LBrileyWG1586825v1.1.pdf
1fafc8f88de868c2a3d32e67ebd8d4b0
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
Briley, William George
George Briley
W G Briley
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Briley, WG
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer William George Briley (1586825, Royal Air Force), his log book, service material and a sight log book containing <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/987">18 target photographs</a>. After training in South Africa, George Briley completed 39 bombing and supply dropping operations as a navigator with 40 Squadron flying Wellingtons from Foggia in Italy. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by William George Briley and catalogued by Barry Hunter, <span>with additional identification provided by the Archeologi dell'Aria research group (</span><a href="https://www.archeologidellaria.org/">https://www.archeologidellaria.org</a><span>)</span>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
William George Briley's observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observers and air gunners flying log book for Wiliam George Briley, covering the period from 2 December 1943 to 24 November 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and communication flight duties. He was stationed at, East London, RAF Qastina, RAF Foggia and Athens. Aircraft flown in were, DH82 Tiger Moth, Anson, Empire flying boat, Wellington, Defiant, C-47, Fairchild Argus III and Liberator. He flew a total of 39 operations, 26 night and 13 daylight operations, consisting of 28 bombing operations and 11 supply drops. Targets were, Ferrara, Bologna, Milan, Athens, Brescia, Szekesfehervar, Solonica, Borovnica, Danube, Verona, Bronzolo, Tuzla, Sinj, Vragolovi, Predgrao, Zakomo, Podgorica, Novi Pasar, Chiapovano, Szombathely, Bugojno, Matesevo, Casarsa, Susegana, Salcano, Doboj, Circhina and Udine. His pilot on operations was Sergeant Hanson.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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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
LBrileyWG1586825v1
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Greece
Hungary
Italy
Montenegro
Middle East--Palestine
Serbia
Slovenia
South Africa
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Bugojno (Opština)
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Doboj
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Tuzla
Croatia--Sinj
Danube River
Gaza Strip--Gaza
Greece--Athens
Hungary--Székesfehérvár
Hungary--Szombathely
Italy--Bologna
Italy--Brescia
Italy--Bronzolo
Italy--Casarsa della Delizia
Italy--Ferrara
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Milan
Italy--Susegana
Italy--Udine
Italy--Verona
Middle East--Palestine
Montenegro--Kolašin
Montenegro--Podgorica
Serbia--Novi Pazar
Slovenia--Borovnica
Slovenia--Cerkno
Slovenia--Solkan
South Africa--East London
Greece--Thessalonikē
Gaza Strip
Danube River
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1944-09-02
1944-09-06
1944-09-10
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-14
1944-09-17
1944-09-19
1944-09-21
1944-09-26
1944-10-04
1944-10-05
1944-10-09
1944-10-10
1944-10-11
1944-10-12
1944-11-01
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-08
1944-11-10
1944-11-16
1944-11-17
1944-11-18
1944-11-19
1944-11-22
1944-11-25
1944-11-26
1944-12-11
1944-12-13
1944-12-14
1944-12-15
1944-12-16
1944-12-19
1944-12-26
1944-12-27
1945-01-03
1945-01-05
1945-01-15
1945-01-20
1945-01-21
40 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-24
C-47
Defiant
mine laying
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Resistance
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/794/10776/ADawsonR171107.2.mp3
8ad9cef294f74f5a98b99c14641317ab
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
Dawson, Ron
R Dawson
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Ron Dawson (1684989 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Dawson, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the international Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Julian Maslin. The interviewee is Ron Dawson, flight sergeant, later warrant officer. The interview is taking place at Ron’s house in Stafford on the 7th of November 2017. Ron, would you start us off by telling us a little bit about your family background please?
RD: Yes. Well, I was the, there was four of us in the family and I was the, my brother was four years older than me and then I had two sisters, four years and five years older than, younger than me. And we lived in a terraced, small terraced house and from there I, when I was sixteen and a half, when I was sixteen I joined the Air Training Corps and then the Air Training Corps I trained to be air gunner and strange as it may seem, my schoolfriend, who we went training on bomber pilot, he changed, he became and we were training as air gunners together. And we trained, and you did your air gunnery course which was an exciting course because you did flying on different aircraft, we did Anson aircraft which had a turret behind the pilot and of course being a gunner, that was ideal and they used to, an aircraft coming along, towing a windsock and we used to fire the guns at the windsock and then my pal joined up and we got in this air gunnery course together and then we went to, when it was all finished, we went to an airfield in Leicester, there was hundreds of different people, pilots, bomb aimers, navigators, and the pilot was trying to get a crew together and he was walking along and talking and with me, he said, he came over, he said, tell me, who are you? I said I told him my age, who I was and he said, what do you want to be? I said, a rear gunner. Oh, he said, I am looking for a rear gunner for my crew and I said, wonder of wonders, my pal, who gave up Bomber Command, gave up pilot and navigator course and we are on the course together and we did a gunnery course, flying an Anson aircraft with a turret, and then in a Boulton Paul Defiant, which was a fighter aircraft, and it was, it had a turret, and it was exciting. And then we all met in this very large room at the airport of Leicester and this man came to me and he said, can you tell me who are you? Well, I said, Ron Dawson, and he said, what did you train? I said, I’ve been trained as an air gunner, oh, he said, I’m a pilot, and he was Australian. And he said, I’m a pilot, I’m looking for a gunner, I said, well a rear gunner, he said, that’s fine and I said, my pal who managed to get the same course, we did the gunnery course together, and I said, I joined up with the pilot, the navigator and other people and we flew. In the early days, we flew in the, the old aircraft called the Whitley, it’s nickname was the flying coffin, because it was square shaped like a coffin and it flew nose down and I did a couple of operations over Europe in that dropping, one was dropping leaflets and the other one was dropping bombs. And then I got together and we were, we were recruited to, as a crew, doing raids on different parts of Germany, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin and I said it’s, it was exciting going to these different places and I said it was exciting to see the aircraft fighting in the sky, the Germans firing at us and I said twice, on, once on a trip we were attacked by the German aircraft and he fired his guns at us but he never hit us and another time we were there they came and he, the aircraft attacked us and he shot us up, shot the backend of the plane and we had trouble with the mechanics to control the aircraft and we had to land at a [unclear] in Norfolk which was controlled by the Americans and we landed there because there was some difficulty with the mechanics of the aircraft and in controlling it and they had a runway over a mile long which enabled us to control our aircraft and stop and then another time we were shot up and we had to land and we landed at an American Air Force base and I remember the American coming to me and saying, are you RAF? I said, yes, I am, I’m an air gunner, rear gunner, oh, he said, and where [unclear], I said, this is my aircraft, my God, he said, it’s all bullet holes, I said, yes, fortunately none of them have hit us and I said, and another time, we got shot up and then I said, I was flying coming back from Germany on a raid, and we got attacked and we got, we had to bail out, I said, we were over twenty thousand feet and I said it was almost laughable when I was, I said, I went forward the aircraft, you, normally I would drop out the, out the rear turret, backwards, with me parachute on, but if we could we all went out the front so the pilot could count the crew had got out and I said, I bailed out of there the front and I said, we were twenty thousand feet and I said, it was, it was unique, I said and, I said I was, we carried a whistle so that if you ever come down in the sea, you don’t have to shout, you blow the whistle and attract attention and I said, I was blowing my whistle and I was shouting hello! This is Ronnie, this is Ronnie, is calling everybody, hello! And I said I was [unclear] down some twenty thousand feet and I said, I landed and I, immediately I could see my aircraft which had crashed and was burning and I turned my back on it and started to run away and I got, I was hiding up and I was hiding in these bushes, I had no idea where I was, except I thought I was in Germany and I said I, it was coming daylight and I got into these bushes and I looked out cause I heard a dog barking and I thought, they’ve got the dogs on me tail and then I looked up, it was getting late, and I could see these crossroads and the crossroads had signposts there, the Germans never took the sign posts down, so there was a little farmhouse nearby and I saw this farm and this dog was really [unclear] barking and when he disappeared I went out to look at the crossroads to see where I was. And the first words that stuck out in me mind was Luxembourg and I thought, oh, I’ll just go back and hide, now I know where I am and, but the dog started barking again, I thought if I go back and hide in the bushes, the farmer will, I don’t know whether he’s good, bad or indifferent, but I said, I walked into the village, and I said, it’s a mystery of mysteries, about eight to ten children came from nowhere, told them to call [unclear] through the village and no sooner we’d done about twenty yards, then the sirens went and the children disappeared and I turned the first corner and it ended into a little wood and I said, I got my maps out cause I’ve read the signpost and I found where I was and I thought, good, and I was told in, when I was in training, if you get shot down and you come near Switzerland, that’s a neutral country, it’s a good country to get to if you can but the Germans smothered the border to stop anybody trying to escape so I said, I made me mind up, I was in Luxembourg and I’d walk across France and across Spain because Spain wasn’t exactly [unclear] friendly with Germany and into Portugal and I said, I don’t know how many hundred miles it was and I said, I set off walking, but again I got disturbed and this little man stopped me when I was sitting in this little wood and he said in French, vous RAF, tombez avec parachute, you RAF, fall with the parachute and I said, I’ve never been more pleased about learning French at school than I did then, cause the words came easy. And I said yes and I was picked up by them and they hid me away and it was a case of hiding from the Germans and I knew where I was, Luxembourg and then I got out of there and I set off for Spain and I, over France and Spain and Portugal but I got picked up and I was, joined the RAF from there, almost flying in different aircraft, finishing me air training course, and when I did in 1944, I was on me fortieth op and I got shot down and I couldn’t fly again and I was, I got picked up by the underground and taken care of.
JM: Now, I believe Ron that you were, you were, I believe you were sheltered by the Resistance for quite, I believe you were sheltered by the Resistance for quite a long time.
RD: Yeah, yeah.
JM: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
RD: About?
JM: About the time you spent in hiding in Luxembourg.
RD: Oh yes. When I, when I was hiding from the Germans, I didn’t know where I was, and then I was hiding in the bushes, and then I heard a dog barking, and I thought, oh, the Germans have got a police dog on me tail, and I looked out and it was a farmhouse with crossroads, and there was a farmer and his big dog were standing by a little farmhouse, he went in and there were signposts at the crossroads, the Germans never took signposts down, so I said, ah, that’s where I’ll know where I am, and when I went down, I saw the words, [unclear], Luxembourg, and I was just a few kilometres from Luxembourg and I thought, great, and then the underground picked me up, and I was hiding and training with them and it was really exciting coming down after being shot down at twenty thousand feet in the air and blowing the whistle and shouting, this is Ronnie, this is Ronnie, and I landed and then I saw the Luxembourg, I saw the crossroad signs, saw that I was in Luxembourg, and I was going back into hiding, and then the farmer saw me, so I went into the village, and I walked in the village and about eight to ten children joined me and then the sirens went and the children disappeared and I went into the wood, and I looked at me, I got me maps out cause you would given when you would training, you were given an escape package, with foreign money in, French, Belgian, German, and the little maps to tell you where you were and I said, I decided that I would, that’s what I would do, but I got picked up by this little man and he came, he said, vous RAF, tombez avec parachute and he took me on board and I was glad to know it was Luxembourg.
JM: I believe for some time you were living in a house that was only two doors from the Gestapo.
RD: What?
JM: I believe for, you were living in a house that was only two doors down from the Gestapo headquarters.
RD: Two what?
JM: Two doors, two houses, close by the Gestapo headquarters.
RD: Oh yes, yes, and it was exciting and it was frightening in some words, not exactly frightening, but I went training and I was flying and as I say, I got shot down, then I got picked up by the underground cause I was in these different houses and they, I found out, [unclear] I read me maps and everything where I was and I thought, I’ll set off walking from, to Portugal because you couldn’t, the Swiss border was so heavily protected and so I got picked up by the underground who took me on board and took me in a house and hid me and I was hiding away when I was, this man came and took me and he took me to his house and it was in Luxembourg and it was a nice house that I learned much later it was only four, five doors from the senior German police officer and I was hiding in this house and it, they looked up to me, and then they picked up and put me in the underground and it was, it was living, when I was flying, I did about, I did over forty operations and I got shot down, and I wasn’t hurt but when we had to land at this airport, which is a big airport, the Americans were there and when the Americans came and saw the aircraft, and said, are you part of the crew? I said, yes, he said, what are you? I said, the rear gunner, my God, he said, look at that! He said, I said, all the Perspex of the rear turret was shot away, there’s bullet holes all over, how I’ve never been hit I don’t know, but I said it was, I was picked up by those people and I was learned to, trying to fly.
JM: Ron, can I just take you, can I just take you back to your time in Luxembourg?
RD: Time?
JM: When you were living in Luxembourg.
RD: Yeah.
JM: Does the main
RD: I was living in Luxembourg, I was picked up and this, this family picked me up and I was, I’d seen the sign posts and I looked, I got in the wood and looked at me maps and I saw where I was, I was delighted and then this little man came and asked me if I was RAF and I joined up with him.
JM: Does the name Ferdie Schulz mean anything to you? The name Ferdie Schulz?
RD: Yes, and the man, the man that looked after me, was a man, he, I was picked up and taken into the village. And there’s a lady there and she was talking to me in French and it was, she was talking very fast and difficult to understand and I said, the door opened and I said, this man came in, tall, heavily built, short cropped iron grey hair, I said, this man’s Gestapo, he’s German, but he said to me in German, sprechen sie Deutsch? I said, nein. I said, I speak English. Parlez vouz francais? I said, en peu, just a little I speak, but I am English, and from that moment on he hid me away and he took me to his house in the middle of Luxembourg. His wife was a Spanish lady who was neutral of course and she was scared stiff because she was not anti-German but not pro German. And she was scared stiff because only a few doors away was a very senior German police officer and if she’d been caught, she could have been hurt, she could’ve been. Anyhow, I got out of there
JM: How long, how long were you living with them?
RD: Ey?
JM: How long were you living with them?
RD: I lived with Ferdie Schulz from the March to the 8th of June.
JM: Right.
RD: Because the invasion came on the 6th of June.
JM: Yes.
RD: All the names and dates blend in.
JM: Yes.
RD: And then I, I was in training and
JM: When you left their house, when you left their house
RD: Yes
JM: I believe
RD: When I lived Ferdie Schulz’s house.
JM: You went to the Ardennes
RD: I went to live in Belgium and then in Belgium I went into the Ardennes forest
JM: Yes
RD: And I lived in the Ardennes forest and I joined up with a [unclear] groups of people and they were all European, French, German, Italian and we were all in this camp and I was sitting when the invasion had started and we could hear the invasion, the, the Allies had landed in Europe and were coming forward, and we were in this camp as I say, nearly all European nationalities, and we were debating what to do, should we come out in the open and meet the Allies or wait and I said, I went outside in to have a pee and I said over the top of the bushes, I saw these round helmets, my God, Germans have found us and I said, run, the Germans are here! And it turned out to be the Americans.
JM: So, you were liberated by the Americans.
RD: Yeah, and then the Americans picked us up, looked after us, took us into the, into the Ardennes forest and I was living in the Ardennes forest with a group of other people and then I was moved into Belgium and it
JM: Now, I believe that the Americans actually arrested you in the forest.
RD: Well, what happened was, when I went outside for a pee, I saw the round helmets, I thought, run, it’s the Germans, and then [unclear] with the Americans and the Americans came and they talked to us and they, he said, we have to arrest you because we have to interview to find you who you really are and we are going to put you in this school house with some other people and outside in the yard was full of German soldiers and I was looked after and interviewed and hidden away, well, I say hidden away, got to know everybody, and it was, it was, living in the with Ferdie Schulz, just a few doors from the senior police officer, then things got a bit scary, they had a maid and she found out I was there, and they moved me on, into a village called Troisvierges, three virgins, in Northern Belgium, and I lived with a doctor, Doctor Isha, and his wife and he had a wife there and he was old and he had a daughter called Guedette and he had a maid, she was seventy odd, and we lived there for a while. And then they moved me on from there into a hiding place in the forest in north, in south Belgium and then I got out when the Germans came, well, when the Americans came, I got out and they interviewed me and I eventually got back to England and was transferred, it was funny, when I was picked up I was more or less left to go on my own devices and I said, I was guided up to the north of, to the north of Europe and then taken over into Europe and in Europe I met Ferdie Schulz who looked after me, he looked after me for several weeks, and then, after a few weeks, the Germans, the Allies came forward and he took me along and we met the Allies.
JM: I understand that after the war, you met up with the Schulz family again through their daughter.
RD: That’s right.
JM: Will you tell us about that, please?
RD: That’s right. I went back, I went back to see them, Ferdie Schulz, in Europe and it was, it was exciting and frightening to think that I’d lived so close with them to the senior German police officer and that they risked their lives.
JM: And he was involved with Radio Luxembourg.
RD: That was Luxembourg.
JM: And he was involved
RD: And from Luxembourg I went to the Ardennes forest in Belgium
JM: You did, but Ferdie Schulz was involved with Radio Luxembourg I believe.
RD: Radio?
JM: Radio Luxembourg.
RD: Radio Luxembourg.
JM: He was involved with that?
RD: Oh yes, well, Radio Luxembourg came and interviewed me.
JM: Right.
RD: And it was, they were so interested into the story
JM: Right.
RD: And from there on I went, the Americans came forward and the Americans looked after us and then I went
JM: You went to Paris I believe.
RD: Went to Paris, yes, was nice Paris, nice in Paris, and it was a strange world in Paris but it was such a big city, it was a lonely place but I was taken up to the, to live with Ferdinand Schulz in his house and as I say, he had a Spanish lady who was in neutral
JM: Yeah.
RD: And she was frightened because in case the Germans
JM: How did you get back from Paris to England?
RD: Well, I was living in a camp among a lot of other people, Europeans, German, Italians, French, Belgian and I went outside for a pee, saw these round helmets and I thought, oh, the Germans have come, and I shout, the Germans have come, and this voice said, [unclear] and it was the Americans and I said, the Americans then got us all together and they said, well, you have to be interviewed to see if you are really who you are, to see if you are an ally and so you’ll be arrested by us and I was arrested and I was put on the back of an American lorry and taken up to South Belgium and I was taken out there and put into a school and I was told I would have to be there till I was interviewed and I said anyhow, I went in the school and the Germans interviewed me and then I, I was, they believed who I was
JM: I think you mean the Americans interviewed you.
RD: Well, the Americans I meant, the Americans and they left me on me own to get back to England and I got back to England and got picked up and got helped and it was all exciting, it was coming back to a new world, after being shot down, you know, it was, and how frightening it was, to live so near a senior German police officer and it was, I wasn’t caught.
JM: You successful evaded for so many weeks
RD: And the Americans came and took me, put me in a school, then took me to the North of Belgium and left me and I mean, I made me own way back to England and I, I must tell you, I had no money and I was walking in Paris cause I’d the freedom of the Americans and I saw this notice, it was a notice on the wall that said, something about a British regiment, I said, I went inside, and I said, there was a captain there and he said, yes, who are you? I said, well, I’m English, he said, how do I know you’re English? I said, well, I tell you the story I’ve been shot down and I said, really what I’ve come for is to see if I can get some money. You’ve got nothing here, it’s not a charity, and the door opened and this fellow is a captain and a major walked in and he said, what’s going on? And when he heard the story, he said to the captain, give him the money, I’ll take the responsibility, we’ve got his name, his rank and his number and we’ll get it back from him later. And I said, so they gave me the money, and I said it’s, then the Americans took me into Northern Belgium that’s more or less left me.
JM: But when you got the money in Paris, you were able to get home.
RD: Right, yeah, yeah, they took me to the North of Belgium and left me and then I got on a plane, made me home with it and I was picked up at the, Germans, the Americans picked me up and they took care of me and I was hiding away and I got free.
JM: When you got home, your family must have been thrilled to have you back.
RD: When I got home?
JM: Your family must have been thrilled to have you back.
RD: Well, I remember that I’d no money and I just wanted money to let my family know I was alright and the British officer gave me the money and I got a message sent to England to tell them folks that I was alright. And the Americans dumped me in the North of Belgium and let me to find me own way back and then I went back and I found my way to the railway station and I got a ticket and I phoned up and told them where I was and the family met me, my dad and two sisters met me at the Stafford railway station and they looked after me.
US: [file missing] You want to tell that story?
RD: Yeah.
US: And then you can tell that story and then Julian asked and then, when you got back to the UK, how did you get a message to your dad and where did they meet you, not at Stafford, it was at Durham or Newcastle.
RD: Yeah, yeah, well,
US: Tell.
RD: What happened was that when I got the money, we had a good drink, and then the Americans took us forward to the North of Belgium and left us on our own but I had money to get across
US: You had no money, they left you in Belgium, you made your own way to Paris, and it was the English major in Paris
RD: OH yes
US: Who gave you some money.
RD: Yes, the English and army unit, English army unit gave me the money and I managed, they left me in the North of Belgium and I managed to get over there.
US: No doubt.
JM: Yeah, ok.
RD: [file missing] and I spoke to them, they said, we’ll come and meet you, anyhow they came and they met me and I was with them and it was, it was nice meeting up with the family again and it was exciting story to tell and
JM: And I believe after the war, you were a policer officer.
RD: Ey?
JM: I believe after the war, you were a police officer.
RD: OH yes, yes, I joined the police force and it was the thirty years of the policemen, well, twenty odd years, and then I was in a special unit, and it was, they took me in this special unit and the British army looked after me and then I, from there on I, it was the case of meeting different people and getting home and
JM: Ron, could I, answer up and just take you back a little bit?
RD: Is what?
JM: Could I take you back a little bit because there are one or two questions that I want to ask, just to clarify it for the recording. What squadron were you in?
RD: What?
JM: What squadron were you with, when you were shot down? Was it 4?
RD: 429 Squadron.
JM: 429, and where was this based please?
RD: 6 Group Bomber Command Canadian.
JM: Right.
RD: So, I was with a Canadian group and it was they, they looked after me.
JM: Yes. So, you were in a Canadian squadron, but you had an Australian pilot and you were English.
RD: An Australian pilot, an Irish engineer, a Scottish navigator and the foreigner was me.
JM: [laughs] and the operation on which you were shot down was one of the most important and famous operations of the war.
RD: Yeah, well, it was, I was shot down on the major, the biggest loss of Allied bombers which was in ’44 and there was 97 British bombers shot down.
JM: And where were you attacking?
RD: And that was the heaviest loss of bombers at any time.
JM: Yeah. Where were you attacking Ron? What was the target? What was the target?
RD: Pilot?
JM: The target.
RD: Target, Nuremberg.
JM: So, it was the Nuremberg raid.
RD: Yeah, it was on the way back from Nuremberg, this twin engine aircraft shot us up
JM: And you, you
RD: I bailed out by parachute
JM: Yeah.
RD: And there were twenty thousand feet and I was shouting and whistling
JM: And the other crew members, they bailed out too, did they?
RD: Ey?
JM: The other crew members all bailed out?
RD: Yeah, they, I found out later they were, they bailed out and were arrested
JM: They were all captured
RD: Yeah
JM: So, you were the only evader
RD: And I was the only escapee.
JM: Right.
RD: And but I didn’t know that, but it was all now exciting and to think that they, American, the British gave me some money and I was able to go into Paris and
JM: Ron, Ron, can
RD: I remember I got, [unclear] two or three other people and we got drunk with champagne and the champagne was, it was cheap [coughs] and the more we drunk, the more they charged us until we got angry and said, no, you’re robbing us and then everything came fine and they looked after us and I got back to England and mom and, dad and two sisters met me at the railway station and mom was, couldn’t stop crying cause they got a telegram and I’ve got a copy of the telegram that said, regret to report that your son was, is missing, reported as missing in action and I said they made enquiries for several weeks and months and they couldn’t find and mom came to conclusion I was dead. And then out of the blue this wonderful news for mom came and they were delighted, delighted and the family looked after me, the Americans looked after me and it was living at home, making the best you could, and I had a bit of money as I said, from the British army and I was, everybody drank champagne [laughs].
JM: And your squadron, 429,
RD: Ey?
JM: 429 Squadron
RD: 429 Squadron, 6 Group
JM: Yes
RD: Bomber Command
JM: Yes, and was that the Lancaster Squadron?
RD: Canadian Squadron
JM: Yeah
RD: And they were Halifax bombers
JM: They were Halifax bombers
RD: Yes.
JM: How did you feel about flying the Halifax? Did you like it?
RD: Everybody used to say the Lancaster was the pride of the joy of the Bomber Command, no way, I would put all my faith in this Halifax, it could, it got, I mean, I was actually part and parcel of the truth of the matter, got badly shot up and the aircraft stood all the battering we’d got, from being shot up and I got shot down and purely because one of the [unclear] had been damaged and I couldn’t manoeuvre the aircraft, we had to bail out. And it was bailed out and it was, I thought I was dead. I bailed out and with the flames were shooting across the aircraft, and I thought, if I, when I bail out, if I pull the ripcord, the burning petrol may go into the parachute, and it’ll burn and I’ll die, so I said, I’ll count to ten when I bail out, and I started to count and I got to six and I, I didn’t panic, I just said, bugger it, I’m pulling the ripcord, and I said, I got out and pulled the ripcord, and I said, it was a delight really but I said, it was frightening because I was sure I was dead, because when I opened my eyes, I could see me feet, where me head should be, and I thought, it can’t be, your feet should be at the ground, I’m going to Heaven, and then I realised that the harness of the parachute, me leg was trapped in the harness and I was upside down, I was upside down in me parachute, and I was delighted, blowing me whistle, shouting me name, and then I got out, the Americans picked us up, put me in this school house and the American, I got, money from the British and the Americans took me to Northern Belgium and left me.
JM: Ron, you’ve given us a lovely interview, you’ve given us a lovely interview, you’ve told us so much about [unclear]
RD: Is that alright?
JM: I’m gonna leave it there for tonight because I can see it’s tiring you so I’ll leave it there thanks on behalf of IBCC.
RD: Any time you want to come back.
JM: Thank you
RD: Because there must be a thousand stories about flying and that sort of thing and me family now know the story living in [unclear] Nuremberg and
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 Ron Dawson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Julian Maslin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADawsonR171107
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:43:44 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Luxembourg
Germany--Nuremberg
France--Ardennes
Description
An account of the resource
Ron Dawson flew over 40 operations with 429 Squadron as air gunner. He joined the Air Training Corps at the age of sixteen. He trained on Ansons and Boulton Paul Defiants and remembers flying in the Whitley. He crewed up at Leicester airport. Tells of being attacked by enemy fighters twice. Gives a vivid and detailed account of when he was shot down on the way back from Nuremberg. They all bailed out but while the rest of the crew was arrested, he found his way to the Luxembourg border and was taken up by the Resistance. He was then taken to the house of a man called Ferdie Schulz and he stayed there from May 1944 to the 7th of June 1944. From Luxembourg he went to Belgium, where he hid in the Ardennes forest with other people from different countries, until the invasion started and they were then liberated by the Americans, who after questioning them regarding their identity, let him go to fend off on his own. After the war, Ron became a police officer.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-04-30
1944-04-31
1944-05
1944-06-07
1945
429 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Defiant
evading
Halifax
Resistance
shot down
training
Whitley
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/807/10788/ADunbarR180624.1.mp3
d7cdd125daadfc734bce7f179423743d
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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Dunbar, Reg
R Dunbar
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Reginald Dunbar DFM (b. 1921, 50747 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 37 and 100 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-06-24
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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Dunbar, R
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JB: This interview is being carried out for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jennifer Barraclough. The interviewee is Reginald Dunbar. The date is the 24th of June 2018 and we are at Mr Dunbar’s Apartment in Albany near Auckland. Ok. Thank you very much Mr Dunbar. Could you start by telling us a little about your early life and how you came to join up with the Air Force?
RD: Yes. Of course. It’s a pleasure. My name is Reginald Dunbar. I am a wing commander retired. I think I’d best start with when I was born. I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and moved across to Liverpool when I was six months old. I wouldn’t say that I was thrown out of Ireland but it felt like that [laughs] I attended a normal sort of school. Nothing particularly clever. Just normal schooling until I was seventeen and a half. But during that time I moved around a bit because my father was a baker on the White Star Line that used to go out to America and he stayed out there for a while at one stage to my mother’s rather disappointment. But however, I got a, I left school at fourteen and got a job in a shoe shop which was situated in Liverpool city. I persevered in that job until I was seventeen and a half and at that stage I was at the time a member of a church choir in Liverpool, namely, Emanuel Church. And while there I joined the Church Lad’s Brigade and although you may not heard of it, it was a sort of semi-military affair and they were issued with rifles of all things at the time which we marched off to church with at this, whatever the attention was. What it was called? Anyway, when I reached the age of seventeen and a half I was a bandsman in the Church Lad’s Brigade and used to sort of do a lot of work with my colleagues in the band doing, doing sort of training really for armaments which seemed strange for a church organisation. However, a colleague of mine named Norman King decided he would leave the Church Lad’s Brigade and join the Air Force. Now, he was six months older than me and he decided to leave and I followed him after, about six months after he’d left and left. And when I arrived at the recruiting office in Liverpool I asked if I could be a pilot and they checked on my background and said well, no. They thought something less [pause] less difficult than that and they suggested I join as a wireless operator with a six month training session. So, anyway I did that and left and joined up via a place called [pause] a place called, what was the name of the — ?
Other: [unclear]
RD: Where the R101 were based.
Other: Cardington.
RD: Cardington. That’s right. Cardington. And that’s where they had their recruiting set up and there was nothing in there apart from rows and rows of tables with plates on the table. Six plates on each table. This was for recruits and they had these sort of well, odd looking meals on board. They were sort of cow heels I think they were called. They were white, you know. Obviously the way they’d been cooked. However, sufficient to say at the end of a meal we found that the bins outside the buildings were full of these cow heels [laughs] Nobody had touched them. Anyway, we went from there to our training unit and my unit was, training unit for training was Yatesbury. Yatesbury was down in [pause] where was Yatesbury? Down in the south of England anyway. And I always remember the place because it was hilly around there and they had on the hills these white horses printed you know, and I used to spend a lot of my spare time sitting up on the hill enjoying life. You know, when I didn’t have to be doing any training. I seemed to be sort of by myself a lot. I didn’t make a lot of friends there to be quite truthful. I was by myself most of the time. I met a lot of people that lived local and they seemed to take a lot of care. They’d invite me out for meals and things you know when they saw me in uniform sitting doing nothing there. However, it was quite a comprehensive training they gave you including of course the Morse Code, everything and taught you all about training. And I had a good six months training and when I’d finished I was posted to a place. Where was it? I think it was over in Lincoln as a, on ground, ground equipment. Actually, I was posted to train on teleprinters. They’re the things like a printer, you know and that was shortly before the war broke out. Well, when the war broke out I was, I had volunteered for wartime training for Bomber Command. They were after, they were after volunteers and at that time I was only, what was it? Seventeen and a half approximately. And I went to South Wales to do my gunner training because you couldn’t be a wireless operator by itself. It had to be with the training as a gunner, an air gunner. Well, I went down to South Wales. I’ve forgotten the place it was but I remember doing my training down there which consisted of training on aircraft which was, which trailed a sort of a what would you call it?
Other: Kite? Kite?
RD: It was trailed. A sort of a target. It was a target. It was sort of a round sort of [pause] the idea was you hit it as many times as you could from a distance of over two hundred yards. And I remember the pilot putting up that aircraft putting in a bit of a complaint about me as a gunner as he didn’t know whether I was trying to hit him or the drogue. That’s what it was called. It was called a drogue. I don’t think he was too, he was too happy with me. Anyway, things mellowed and I did, let’s see, I suppose two months training as a gunner and we were trained from an open, open, an open [pause] an open seated. It wasn’t closed in or anything. We were just firing from the, from the side of the aircraft. It was a two seater. A very early one. Anyway, we’ll pass over that one but when I, when I had finished I was posted to Number 37 Bomber Squadron which was a Wellington aircraft. A Wellington aircraft was a two engined aircraft, and it was a geo traffic, a sort of cross of [pause] what was it made of? Aluminium and it was made in crossing and it was covered with fabric and two engined. And it sounds as though it was a very frail aircraft but believe me it was one of the workers of the Air Force. It was a very good aircraft. When you got, if you got a hit, if you got a hit and it made a hole in the side of the aircraft you got back alright because the whole sort of, the whole sort of make of the aircraft held together and sort of stuck together. You know what I mean? And so it sort of saved you from crashing or anything. So that was very helpful. But I, I was consigned to the rear gunner’s position because the crew that I was assigned with, when I was assigned to them had already done fifteen raids on Germany, and a number of raids that they did before they were sent home for a month’s rest was thirty, and they had already done fifteen. So when I’d done fifteen they had already done their thirty. You see what I mean. And the captain was a Flying Officer Warner who’d a big system of clothing shops in England, and I was his rear gunner because the rear gunner that he had at that stage had been dismissed from the Air Force because he had medical problems. Well, of course being at the start there I didn’t know much about it but I soon learned because the raids that we took part in were over Moers, the Ruhr Valley, Dortmund, Leverkusen, Black Forest North, Bremen, Waalhaven, Emden, [Gottensburg?] Hamburg, Munchengladbach twice, Sonnendorf, Soest, [Rossel?] and Rostock. And if you want to know why I remember those it’s only because I took them from my logbook which I haven’t got to show you because my eldest son has it and he’s sent it to me but it hasn’t reached me yet. So I have to apologise for that.
JB: Ok.
RD: But luckily I had made this. And from there I was transferred over to another squadron because I’d only done fifteen raids and I went to a squadron, same squadron of Wellingtons only it was commanded by a Squadron Leader Golding. Squadron Leader Golding was a regular officer and he was a very sort of experienced man and I was very pleased to have been allocated to him. With his aircraft I was posted not as a gunner but as a wireless operator which was my basic trade of course and he must have been quite pleased with me because he gave me an instant first operator’s job and I guided the aircraft by wireless over Hanover, Black Forest twice, Emden. I don’t know whether you want to know all this do you?
JB: Yes.
RD: Flushing, Berlin, Bottrop, Rotterdam, Hamburg, [Benroth] Hamburg, Berlin, Cuxhaven, Hamburg and Kiel. And after this that was my fifteen. So altogether I’d done thirty ops so I had to leave that squadron. They had to do another fifteen before they had it but I was sent on my way to do a month’s rest. So with, I was a sergeant at that time and I packed my kitbag and went to Euston Station on my way to Liverpool, but while I was on the station platform waiting for my train a message came over the tannoy system, ‘Would Sergeant Dunbar please report to the station master’s office on platform 1.’ So I thought to myself well what the heck would I have to report that I’m on my way for a leave.’ However, I made my way across to see what they wanted and the station master said, ‘I’ve had a report from — ’ I’ve forgotten my station. Feltwell. RAF Feltwell, where we were stationed. The squadron were stationed — ‘Asking you to return back to base.’ I wasn’t very pleased with that of course. So I got the train back and when I went back there and I saw the wing commander in his office and he said, ‘I don’t want you to be worried, Reg.’ He called me by my first name so I thought there was something funny. So I sat down on the chair and he said, ‘37 Squadron is going out to Middle East to operate there in North Africa and your erstwhile captain, Squadron Leader Golding asked me to contact you to see if you would be his wireless operator to go out to Middle East with him. And if you don’t want to go you just say so.’ So, I just quickly thought to myself the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know, because if I had gone on my leave when I came back I’d have to be put on another squadron see, and I knew him and he knew me and we got on well together. And so I said, ‘Well, all things being equal, sir.’ [unclear]
RD: It’s ok.
JB: ‘All things being equal, sir I think I’ll go out with the squadron as first wireless operator.’ And I trotted around to the squadron commander’s office and shook hands with Squadron Leader Golding who welcomed me like a long lost son. And we had to do some sort of training where, sort of radio training, you know where we would go away from base and he’d ask me to sort of guide him back to the middle of the airfield. Which I did by using my own sort of loop and everything and he was very pleased with that. So, anyway we were all set to go and we set out in January. January ’41 I think it was. Excuse me if I’m a little out on the dates.
JB: That’s ok.
RD: But out to Middle East. Right. Now, I was first wireless operator. Now, we went from Feltwell and we flew by night and we got to Malta where we were, Malta was our first stop. Malta. RAF Malta. And from there the station commander was a group captain and he was a little concerned at the times the Italians had attacked Malta and seeing the local population being housed in the caves in Malta because there were lots of caves there and they were pushed in there when there was a warning. And he asked Air Ministry I presume if he could hold on to 37 Squadron to get a bit of their own back on Italy. And from there we were, we attacked Taranto twice. That was the Naval base. And Naples which was effective of course, and Castel Benito and they were the total. And then we went and we were released from there. He let us go after that and we went on. We went on to our base at Shallufa which was on the [pause] I was based on the, there as the [pause] excuse me while I just —
JB: That’s ok.
RD: What do they call the canal?
Other: Suez.
RD: The canal. You know the —
JB: The Suez Canal.
RD: The Suez Canal. The Suez Canal that was, yeah. Well, that’s where Shallufa was built. It was an air force base and it was built solely to meet the needs of the Air Force and they were, we were, we were stationed in Shallufa, the squadron and we were used as a sort of heavy bomber squadron to bomb bases on the north, north of the, the [pause] you know the, the north shore of the north. You know where. Oh, well if I give you these actual targets you’ll probably know where it was —
JB: Yes, don’t worry.
RD: Hmm?
JB: Don’t worry.
RD: Yes. Well, we were sent out in a bomber. From there we bombed Bardia, twice. Bardia is a port on the north coast of North Africa. So we did two on Bardia, Derna which is further along the coast. Tobruk, Benghazi, Fouka, Benghazi again. Tobruk again. Rhodes and Fouka again. So we did our fair share of that. After that just the bottom [unclear] I was recalled, personally recalled to the UK when I was sent back by ship. When I got back I was posted to the first, 15. I thought that was first. It was 15. Number 15 Operational Training Unit and that was training people coming on to bombers which was at RAF Harwell. That’s where they later had the chemical —
JB: Yeah.
RD: You remember that.
JB: Yeah.
RD: Right. Well, that was on the 30th posted there to train others. Well, on the 30th of May 1942 we were in our bomber. The bomber that we were allocated to. Oh, I’ll tell you the background of that. The prime minister who you know. The prime minster wanted to get his own back a little bit on Germany and decided he would like to have the Air Force hold thousand bomber operations over Cologne. Just to give them a bit of their own back. To do that he had to shut down the operational flying of the RAF Bomber Command while they got the aircraft serviced because it would have to include training aircraft as well. He wouldn’t have enough otherwise. And so they had to have a sort of a competition and you had to have a sort of a pick, pick, pick [pause] You had to have all these aircraft of one squadron put in a hat, their numbers and you picked one. And some got operational flying Mark 2 Merlin engine modern Wellingtons, and others got aircraft that were old ones and only being used for circuits and bumps. That’s training pilots to, you know land. And unfortunately the one that we picked for the Cologne operation was one of the old ones and the sergeant, the flight sergeant who was the pilot of this first thousand bomber operation to Cologne was a bit, well fed up with it because when we were doing training for this operation he couldn’t get it to fly higher than eight thousand feet which isn’t very much. Anyway, the way he overcome that was on the operation itself. Instead of taking the aircraft to the city he kept it on the outskirts and instructed the bomb aimer to drop his bombs when he did a split, if you excuse my language split arse turn around and, to let his bomb go when his [unclear] And of course the super thing carried the bombs into the centre of the city or as near as he could get them because he wasn’t going to check. He wasn’t going to take any risks with the aircraft because he was too low. So anyway, we got back alright obviously. Well, we went on training. Training the, and in the, what was the prime minister’s name in those days?
Other: Churchill.
RD: The prime minister’s name.
Other: Churchill.
JB: Churchill. Winston Churchill.
RD: Churchill.
JB: Winston Churchill.
RD: Yeah. He was, he was so pleased with the efforts of this that he decided he’d like another one. So they’d done a second thousand bomber operation to go to Essen. Not all that far from Cologne. That’s where they had all the armaments. Well, we were sitting, and we went on this Bomber Command operation, a thousand bomber. It was successful and we did it and we got a few holes in the aircraft to satisfy us. Or satisfy the Germans I should say. We got back alright, and would you believe it that was on the 11th of June 1942, only a month later. Well, would you believe it there was no satisfying the prime minister was there? He decided he’d like to try a third one if you remember. Anyway, we were sitting in the briefing room. I remember sitting next to my friend who was also a wireless operator, a fella named Harry Jordan, and the chap came on and they had a big briefing room for these things you know and they tell you what the weather’s like and what the targets are. It was a typical Bomber Command briefing room and when this chap he got up to start his briefing another chap came on from the Ministry, the Air Ministry and he excused himself and obviously they had arranged it between them because it was his job to put to the audience volunteers for special duties of just wireless, and young pilots. Young pilots. I’ll tell you why in a minute. So I turned to my comrade and I said, ‘How do you feel about volunteering for special duties? I’m fed up with these thousand bomber raids.’ He said, ‘Yeah, alright.’ So we were two of the volunteers, and we went up to a place. I won’t bore you with what happened afterwards but eventually we were sent up to a place called RAF Drem which was a little south of Edinburgh, and we were briefed there. And we eventually, we were posted on to [pause] oh the aircraft there were Defiants. They were fighters. Now, the reason they happened to be fighters, Defiants was because they had been used as night fighters originally but the Germans had soon, they were fighter aircraft with a turret in the top and Germans had learned how to get at them coming underneath. So it didn’t take them long for the RAF to discount them, and so they gave them to us. They had nothing else for them and so they used them to, used them for daylight operations called Moonshine and this, how they did this, the Defiant squadron they had usually around about twelve aircraft, and they had the pilot and the likes of me who was acting as a wireless gunner. If we were attacked we attacked them from the, from the turret. But our wireless job was in the back of the aircraft. We’d have to get down out of the turret and work our way in to utilise our skills on the radio stuff. Now, how it worked was this, you might like to know. I think this is still secret. How it works was this. When we got, when we got up to about a thousand or, how many was it? I think it was about eight thousand feet. Around about that. We were, we were over the south coast and we were met by a squadron of Spitfires or some fighters, and we were waiting there and at that stage we were flying out over the German coast, and we would have had the information to turn on our electrical stuff which comprised of equipment which gave the impression when switched on of there being a sort of a wing of bomber aircraft going out there. It wasn’t of course. It was only us. The Germans, hearing this would take off as a squadron of fighters to attack this incoming lot, which we weren’t and they would be flying this way and when they were over here where we were the Spitfires, who were on a higher level would take up with them, and would sort of have a dogfight with them I suppose. And in the interim period the American squadrons would go out from where they were arranged to go from on the daylights. Now, that’s about all I’m going to say about that but they were, but we went to France, Holland, France, Belgium, France calibration, calibration. That’s where we had to do calibration. Make sure that the equipment was still right. Holland, France, Germany, France, calibration, Holland, France. Oh, and then we crashed at Heathrow [laughs] We got back alright but France and Holland and that was all we did on the daylight. Then we did night operations. Now, a night operation were absolutely different. Dutch, French coast were divided into eight positions of ten miles. It doesn’t matter how long they were, but they were limited and each aircraft of ours —
[knocking on the door - recording pause]
JB: Carry on.
RD: Each aircraft of ours was, was sent to a different position. So we were stationed at, what’s that RAF station near London?
Other: Northolt.
RD: Hmm?
Other: Northolt.
RD: Northolt. We were based at Northolt. But on the days when there was going to be a big bomber attack at night we were sent to the forward landing grounds that we’d been allocated to. Refuelled. Did everything right. And that night when the Bomber Command, the bombers were going out there we were allocated to our different positions and we switched on our equipment from, but we didn’t switch it from, we were sitting in our turret and when we were given the instruction swe lowered the seat which was just a crossbar and got in to the back of the aircraft and switched on our equipment, and this equipment was just jamming equipment. It jammed the German radar and when it, we didn’t do that until we knew the RAF were going over. But when they were going over we switched on and it stopped the Germans being able to sort of get on to our people who were coming out. It’s a very vague way of explaining it, I’m sorry.
JB: That’s alright.
RD: I’ve forgotten most of it.
JB: That’s fine.
RD: And they did that. All I’ve got here is eight positions which were the positions we were in. Position 7 6 7 1 1 1 8 5 7 7. Just all the numbers on the different nights that the Bomber Command aircraft were going out there. And in the end they took me off it and sent me up to Scotland to train others which I didn’t like particularly but then I think it’s in that thing that Richard’s got.
Other: Dumfries. Dumfries.
RD: Dumfries, that’s right. RAF Dumfries. We used to go out taking pilots and crew. Training them, you know. And we, it was while we were up there we heard about the landings in France, you know. We didn’t take part in those. We were probably told that we had done enough. And that’s about it.
JB: That’s about it.
RD: And from there I was taken on as a flight lieutenant in the RAF, given a permanent commission and what did I end up as? Wing commander wasn’t it? Wing commander. And I left the Royal Air Force when I found that I couldn’t get any further, and I went in to the Australian Air Force and did some manpower planning for them which I in the meantime had become expert in. And from there I did a short term engagement with them. I extended a couple of years. They asked me if I’d stay on for a while in Australia which I did. My wife didn’t mind, in fact she was a real wonder isn’t she? She’s a wonder. She stayed. She didn’t mind. And yeah, and from there I came back to England. And from England we went out oh [pause] and we came out to New Zealand and stayed out here. We got permission to stay out here. So that’s about it.
JB: That’s it. Thank you. That was splendid.
RD: [unclear]
JB: It was excellent. I really enjoyed that.
RD: Oh, well I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ve got —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Reg Dunbar
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jennifer Barraclough
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
2018-06-24
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
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ADunbarR180624, PDunbarR1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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00:48:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Dunbar enlisted for the RAF in Liverpool and it was suggested that he join as a wireless operator. He went to RAF Cardington initially and then to Yatesbury for training. He also trained as an air gunner, and after training was posted to 37 Squadron flying Wellingtons. When he had completed thirty operations and was heading home on leave he received a message at Euston station to return to base. His pilot requested that he join his crew that they were being posted to the Middle East, and flew to RAF Shallufa via Malta to commence bombing operations. He was recalled back to UK and was posted to 15 OTU at RAF Harwell and it was from here that he took part in the first thousand bomber operation on Cologne in 1942. Reg volunteered for operations at RAF Drem flying in Defiants as part of Moonshine operations to jam enemy radar. He was given a permanent commission and joined the RAAF attaining the rank of Wing Commander.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
France
Germany
Great Britain
Malta
North Africa
Egypt--Suez Canal Region
England--Bedfordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Wiltshire
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Libya
Libya--Bardiyah
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05-30
1942-06-11
100 Squadron
15 OTU
37 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Defiant
Operational Training Unit
RAF Cardington
RAF Drem
RAF Dumfries
RAF Harwell
RAF Shallufa
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/812/10794/AEllamsSD170825.1.mp3
b0ffbbb061e351d003bc492ea0b449ee
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
Ellams, George
G Ellams
Description
An account of the resource
60 items. An oral history interview with George Ellams the son of Wing Commander George Ellams OBE (b. 1921), and documents and photographs concerning his fathers service. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 223 and 199 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stephen Ellams and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Ellams, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. So, it’s Friday the 25th of August 2017 and today I’m with Steven Ellams in Manston in West Yorkshire. And we’re here to talk about Steven’s dad who was George Ellams, Bomber Command, and lots beside. So, I’m going to just stick that on the floor somewhere. That’ll do. And what I’m going to ask you Steve I know that you said your dad was born on the 16th of May 1921. So, what do you know about his early life? Where he was born. What his parents did.
SE: I did a visit to Liverpool a couple of years ago to trace his background and the family. And he was from Toxteth in Liverpool. And I’ve got his original school reports. I know he was in the Boy’s Brigade and I know that he was, on his signing up papers registered as a shop fitter.
AM: He was a shop fitter.
SE: And when I looked at that a bit closer it turns out it wasn’t quite what I thought. And the title shop fitter was more that he dressed dummies and that. So, I learned that my father was a window dresser come whatever else. Anyway, so the family, the Ellams family. It’s pronounced Ellams but Ellams people pronounce it different ways. They come from the Liverpool area and the Wirral. I’ve traced the family background. The two brothers which he had were both in the RAF at some stage and we traced that the elder brother was given the freedom of the City of Chester for being able to trace the family name back to 1066 or thereabouts. So, it’s quite a well-known ancient name. So, he being the younger of the brothers joined the RAF in 1938.
AM: Can I just wheel back a little bit?
SE: Yeah.
AM: Do you know what his parents did? What his, what his father did?
SE: Yes. His father, his father was a publican. Ran some different group of pubs in the Liverpool and particularly in the Birkenhead area. I’ve done a little bit of background on that and he was in the Merchant Navy. So, he, we’ve never been able to find exactly that part of his background particularly well but the part of the mother’s side which was extremely traumatic and something that we learned quite early on was that she committed suicide when he was fourteen. So, my father — and he found her hanging in a wood. So, we knew there was some really traumatic episode there. Now there have been other family members that we’ve traced since and there has been one of the family members has done quite an in-depth search on the rest of the family and the Ellams Printing Company have been part of that group and there are quite well documented, you know pieces in newspapers and that in the Liverpool area. And I’ve actually got the write up on his father’s death which was about 1967 I believe. So, we’ve got one or two pieces there. But the, the earlier background there was always the suggestion that his mother was Irish and his father was English but we’ve never quite been able to trace that. So, I’ve never gone back further than those bits of information.
AM: I’m trying to piece the dates together. Did you ever meet him then? Your grandfather?
SE: No. No.
AM: You didn’t.
SE: No. I never met them. Well, I certainly, obviously never met the mother. My father interestingly enough did seem to be adopted by a lady who, where she fitted in to it again we’ve got photographs of this lady but I think it was simply that she sort of took the boys under her wing when the mother disappeared. There was something there. But certainly, as far as the publican side is concerned, we’ve only got one photograph of the father in this particular pub and I have since traced that pub and that pub still exists in Birkenhead. In Wallasey. That’s where they went. And the school report and the details of that are all from the Boy’s Central School, New Brighton, Wallasey, and —
AM: So, that’s where he went.
SE: Yeah. And there’s some good information in there as to what his sort of level of education was like and he was obviously showing a little bit of technical skill at that time, I think.
AM: How old was he when he left school?
SE: I think he was about seventeen, eighteen. Something like that.
AM: So probably would have done school certificate then.
SE: Yes, he did. I think he did.
AM: He did it.
SE: Yes. I think it’s in there. Yeah. And then obviously he seemed to go straight into the RAF. Now, I believe it was his brothers —
AM: Via the window dressing.
SE: Yeah. I think it was his brothers that encouraged him to do that and certainly I haven’t been able to trace much other than his middle brother was, was a sergeant in the RAF. And the elder brother, and the one that got the Freedom of the City of Chester he ended up as the senior representative, chairman, call it what you like of the Prudential Insurance in Liverpool. So, he had quite an interesting career and he does come up in one or two searches when you google the name. And his name was John. The same as his father. So, both the senior brother and the father were both called John Ellams whereas the middle one was called Walter.
AM: Right. And then, yeah you knew that he went as a — so as a seventeen year old he joined the RAF and he went to Cranwell.
SE: Yeah. This has always been a bit of an anomaly as well because most people would know that if you went to a technical part of the RAF you would go to what was Cosford, Halton, St Athan.
AM: Yeah. Absolutely.
SE: And various other places and I always used to think it was a bit odd that he ended up at what would be the equivalent to the RAF’s senior —
AM: And that —
SE: Officer training. So, having then found loads more documentation. This was fairly recently when my mother died that we found that there was some paperwork to say that there were a group of individuals who were signed up to that college. And how or why it came about I don’t know but the list he actually kept so that he could trace some of these characters and you went as an apprentice, a craft apprentice, a technical apprentice to —
AM: To Cranwell.
SE: Cranwell. And you then went on to whatever station. And Aldergrove in Northern Ireland seems to be the station where he went immediately after that as a wireless operator. Obviously, Cranwell doesn’t do, do apprenticeships now. And of course, when I got to talk to Peter about this I said that he was always very proud of his hat band which was a particular type of colouring or squares or whatever the colouring was. Because when he was the senior training officer at RAF Cosford he used to go on about how he went to Cranwell and they were always sort of like, ‘Well, wait a minute. How could you have gone Cranwell if you weren’t a pilot?’
AM: Yeah. Why would you be?
SE: So, there were all these sort of anomalies in there. But I’ve actually got the list now of the apprentices that went to Cranwell in those years and I think Peter’s copied that now.
AM: Right. Yeah.
SE: Or I hope he has because that document must be pretty rare.
AM: It will have all been copied.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Did he ever speak about then? So, he left school with school certificate. Window dressing seems a bit —
SE: I know.
AM: Left field.
SE: I got the shock of my life when I got the documents from Innsbruck in Gloucestershire saying what his original occupation was.
AM: And you just don’t know. It might have just been the temporary job.
SE: Absolutely.
AM: Earn a little money.
SE: Absolutely. Absolutely.
AM: And but did he ever speak about actually joining the RAF and —
SE: No.
AM: Where he would have gone to sign up?
SE: No. No.
AM: So, somewhere there’s a bit missing there where he would have, he would have signed up.
SE: Yeah.
AM: They would have looked at him.
SE: Yeah.
AM: To try and decide — ok.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Which bit of the RAF then.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And somehow they’ve picked him out as being technically minded.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Which is where you then go on to find out that he became —
SE: Yeah.
AM: You know — a wireless operator.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So, how did, from your, from the records that you got how long was it? You said he wasn’t at Cranwell very long and then —
SE: It seemed about a year that the sort of apprenticeship they did. It didn’t seem to be much more than that because the first major entry or tracing I could come up with was sort of ’40, ’41. So, there’s a bit of a gap between the beginning of the war and leaving Cranwell and going to Aldergrove. So, there’s this Aldergrove connection in Northern Ireland that I can’t quite piece together and then it seems to be that around that time he was obviously showing some aptitude and it was the case then that he went for flying training. Now, I do remember him talking about that and that his claim was that he could take off but he couldn’t land, and that he basically got turned down for —
AM: Right.
SE: Flying training. And this was when he was re-mustered then as a W/op AG.
AM: Right.
SE: And that’s when that logbook starts.
AM: And that happened to quite a few of them.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Where they showed the aptitude but for whatever reason they dipped out of the pilot training.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And then as you say were re-mustered.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Because looking at the logbook.
SE: Yeah. It starts —
AM: At you say it’s got —
SE: With Defiants.
AM: This one starts with the Defiants.
SE: Yeah.
AM: In ’42.
SE: Absolutely.
AM: So, you’ve still got a gap there.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Where he would have had to have done some training to fly as a pilot.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Before he got to the stage —
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Where they decided he weren’t going to be one.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: And then he would have had to do his, his wireless op training.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So, that was the beginning of the war. So he would have trained as an air gunner as well.
SE: Yeah. And that’s where it really starts for me.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Because he, he very early on I remember I was really into Airfix model making. And I bought a model of a Defiant. And that little brass one there is a Defiant. And he used to look at that and say, ‘See this thumb and you see those scars?’ He said, ‘That’s as a result of getting my thumb caught in the trigger on a Browning machine gun that’s on those turrets.’
AM: On the Defiant.
SE: And that’s when it starts there with the log.
AM: Yeah.
SE: And I’ve traced one or two of those aircraft. I think there’s one of them still, I’m not even convinced it’s not the one that’s at the RAF Museum. But I have done a bit of work on Defiants.
AM: Right. So, what’s, looking at the logbook which starts in January ’42. So, he was at Number 2 air gunner’s, Air Gunnery School.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And as you say was on Defiants.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And, and the remarks within the logbook are about the number of rounds hit.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Fired. And how long it took and what have you. All in Defiants.
SE: Yeah. I think the, as I understand it was the turret. In other words, depending on what aircraft you were likely to be posted onto you would learn and train on a similar type of turret. And I’ve been to the museum here in York where they’ve got a Bomber Command turret exhibition and they are quite specific these turrets. And they’ve all got different names and that and I do understand that’s where that came from. So, the high likelihood is you would then be posted on to an operational squadron which would have those type of turrets.
AM: That’s right. And yet —
SE: Or that’s as I thought it was. Whether that’s true I don’t know. But to go from there to Sunderlands.
AM: Well, yeah.
SE: I thought was a bit strange. And the other first aircraft you’ll see crop up there is a thing called a Lerwick and a Lerwick was a two-engine Flying Boat that had a very poor track record.
AM: That’s it so, so —
SE: So, he went to that first which was presumably the Conversion Unit, and then finally on to Sunderlands.
AM: Even just on the first page where he’s at the Air Gunnery School he’s in the Defiants. Quite a number of the pilots that he was flying with were Polish.
SE: Yes.
AM: By the looks of the names.
SE: Yes. Yes.
AM: And when he starts off you’re looking at the number of hits — one percent, six percent, seven percent.
SE: Yes [laughs] it’s not very good is it?
AM: And then the very, well then he had a go with no drogue.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So they’re not following it around anymore.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And then all of a sudden he gets thirty four percent in two hundred rounds.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And then it stops and then he moves to number 4 CO Training Unit.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And that’s when as you say he ends up on the Lerwick but then latterly on the Sunderlands. So —
SE: Well, one of, one of the interesting things about, which I do remember he did talk about that because as a kid you’d get into air guns and pistols and whatever. And again because he was senior training officer at RAF Cosford we had access to all the facilities so he’d say to me, ‘Do you want to come down to the range and we’ll get that rifle of yours sorted out?’ And I do remember him saying that, ‘You may have seen in my logbook about the target shooting and the percentage hits and that.’ And I said to him, ‘How did you ever know they were your bullets that were hitting it?’ He said, ‘You painted them.’
AM: Yeah.
SE: He said, ‘You had all different coloured bullets so that whoever was hitting it you could identify then.’ So, I said, ‘Oh,’ you know. And I then asked, you know about the, the success rate, and he said, ‘Oh, I was never that good,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘You got passed out on anything that was reasonable.’
AM: And actually depending what plane they were on you talk to lots of gunners and they never actually fired a gun in anger.
SE: Probably not.
AM: They never needed to.
SE: Yeah.
AM: They knew how to take it apart.
SE: Yeah
AM: Anyway.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So, back to your, your dad. And in, in March — so February to March through to April he was on the Sunderlands. Did he ever talk about why? Why did he end up on Sunderlands?
SE: No idea. That one’s always been a bit of a mystery. I think the fact is that he was showing an aptitude for the radio side and the radar side and the Sunderland was a very good platform to put lots of equipment on. And it’s obvious through the log that he was learning a lot of stuff.
AM: Yes.
SE: And finally became the squadrons signals officer and was again on various courses and bits of upgrade. Came back to the UK for, again upgrades on different radios and wirelesses. So, I think there was an element there that they were starting to see again that he was moving more —
AM: Yeah.
SE: To the technical side than he was either the flying or the ground side.
AM: Because in, in that whole period most of it is exercises with valves.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Two way, all the way, so we’re talking about radio stuff.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And there’s only one air to air gunnery. A hundred and fifty rounds fired. Nil stoppages. Everything else is about —
SE: Yeah.
AM: Wireless. The wireless side of it.
SE: There’s one entry there which I I will tell you about because I think it’s the most fascinating thing is an entry coming back to the UK from West Africa and it says specifically that they were attacked somewhere over the Bay of Biscay.
AM: Is that later on you’re talking?
SE: Yeah. They were attacked by an ME110. Now, the captain of that aircraft, it gives his name there. And I thought what’s the chances of this chap being alive still? And I then went to the Sunderland Flying Boat Association which is run by a chap who’s written many books on the subject and I contacted him and said, ‘Look, I’ve got this, what’s the chances —’ He gave me the current list of live pilots from that time. This is going back about ten years now. I rang the number. The guy was still alive. He was ninety two. And I said, ‘I’m Steve Ellams. I’m the son of what would have been Pilot Officer Ellams in those days,’ And he basically said, ‘I remember that trip,’ he said, ‘We got absolutely shot to bits. Nothing was below the water line. We landed at Calshot which is on the south coast,’ and he said, ‘Everybody got off, looked at each other and said that was a close one.’
AM: Yeah.
SE: And as I said it’s in the log there that he read. He remembered it. The pilot. Again, my father not being alive to verify any of this so I can only go by what he said.
AM: Absolutely.
SE: On that particular occasion.
AM: Because then I’m still looking at the logbook. April ‘42. Now, he’s posted.
SE: Yeah.
AM: But not on Sunderlands.
SE: Yeah. He did about eighteen months I think it was.
AM: Yeah. And I’m looking at the different pilots he flew with.
SE: The most significant is the early bit where you see he is on L5805 for about a month.
AM: He is. Yeah.
SE: And L8, I’ve checked this. I’ve got the records. L5805 disappeared in the middle of an operation in nineteen, was it ’41 or ’42?
AM: ’42.
SE: ’42. And the pilot is a, is a chap called Pybus.
AM: Pybus, yeah.
SE: And he was a New Zealander. Now, he has a memorial to his name in Auckland in New Zealand.
AM: Right.
SE: He and the whole of that crew disappeared. But you’ll note my father wasn’t on the crew that day it disappeared. Now, I believe this is where he has, or had this thing about Sunderland Flying Boats because if you look at the dates you’ll see the aircraft and the crew don’t appear for a month. Now, you’re in West Africa. Where are you? What are you doing?
AM: Yeah.
SE: Now, we know he suffered malaria all his life and we think, I’m not certain, I haven’t got his RAF medical records but I’m pretty convinced he got malaria. He didn’t go on that trip. The crew disappeared.
AM: And he was in hospital.
SE: He was still there. And I think he’s had a little bit of a sort of thing about that ever since.
AM: Right. Because as you say he was, he was in the Mediterranean by then. He joined 95 Squadron. He was posted to 95 Squadron, 14th of April ’42.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And then in terms of thinking about where he went —
SE: Yeah.
AM: The significant one is that after three days of engine tests they went from Calshot to Mountbatten to Gibraltar to the Mediterranean.
SE: Yeah.
AM: To Freetown.
SE: Which is —
AM: So they were —
SE: British West Africa.
AM: Yeah. Absolutely.
SE: They operated there for most of that. Yeah.
AM: All over that area.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Escorting the Queen Mary.
SE: Yeah, they had, they had quite a chequered background but according to most of the material I’ve read on 95 they were, they were just doing fourteen hour sorties into the middle of the Atlantic. It was an extremely boring time.
AM: Yeah. Because some of the, apart from the transit ones that were getting them —
SE: Yeah.
AM: From somewhere to the somewhere else.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: They are quite short. Relatively anyway. Short flights.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And so from May ’42 he was the second wireless operator.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And then from mid-May became the first.
SE: Yeah.
AM: WOM.
SE: Yeah. And the main, the main aircraft that seems to have survived right through with his time was EJ 144. Now, that aircraft was finally written off some time in ’44 after he’d left the squadron. But I’ve got pretty good records from 95 via John Evans, as I say. He’s the guy who’s done all the books on the Sunderland and he’s got a very good record of this lot. And it just seems to be that apart from a couple of crashes that they had and they’re mentioned in there where they’ve had one or two issues and I’ve got those photographs and those photographs have been published in, in John Evan’s book. And, I think in one or two other aviation books as well. So, again he never mentioned Sunderlands. He never mentioned crashes. He never mentioned this business in the middle of the Bay of Biscay with the ME 110.
AM: Yeah.
SE: And you sort of think but having visited the RAF Museum and clambered aboard the Sunderland they’ve got there and realised that this thing that you can see above your head as well was a pretty big aircraft and that you can sleep on it. You could —
AM: Oh yeah.
SE: You had quite a nice little setup on there. You’d have bacon butties.
AM: It’s a lot bigger than being inside a Lancaster?
SE: Absolutely. It’s a huge thing. And I think that they had a reasonable time. But one thing I do remember is that [pause] oh, it’s my chair. I wondered where that squeak was coming from. One thing I do I remember — when we were in Singapore we found an abandoned canoe on a beach. And he said to me, ‘We’ll have that, do it up, and we’ll call it Archimedes the Second.’ And I thought, so where’s that coming from? Not realising ‘til many, many years later that Archimedes the Second was EJ 144.
AM: Right.
SE: So, he called it after the particular Sunderland Flying Boat. And we got a close up of the hatch on EJ 144 on a, we got a photograph up on it and we pulled it in and sure enough you can see it. And according to John Evans it’s one of the very few Sunderlands that actually had a name.
AM: Right.
SE: So, somebody named it Archimedes the Second.
AM: I’m looking at carrying on at the other stuff that he was doing. And then August, September and October was spent on the ground as a squadron, as the squadron, you mentioned, squadron signals officer.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. So again going technical more and more.
AM: Yeah. You can see where it’s heading, can’t you?
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: And then back to his Sunderlands.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Through December. I should know this but I don’t. Where’s Mountbatten.
SE: Mountbatten. It’s just —
AM: Gibraltar to Mountbatten.
SE: It’s just off the south coast. It’s at Calshot. It’s the, it was the RAF Sunderland Flying Boats.
AM: Right.
SE: Yeah.
AM: EJ. There we are EJ 144. So, all the way through 1943 we’re back in around Gibraltar. Back to Bathurst doing lots of escort duties.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: And he describes himself as gunner signals at that point.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. And occasionally he’d be navigator as well I think.
AM: Yeah.
SE: On one or two trips. So they obviously had a grounding in most of the sort of basics and flying was obviously something that he was never going to pursue after that early knock back I suppose you’d call it.
AM: Do you know you look at it and — so into March ’43 and on Sunderland EJ 144 now with the same pilot throughout now.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So, we’re now with flying officer [Calcut?]
SE: Yeah.
AM: Having had a number of different —
SE: Yeah.
AM: Pilots until then.
SE: And he went on to become the commanding officer. And I, believe it or not met the guy when we were based at RAF Brampton. So we’re talking 1968, 1969. This chap came into the officer’s mess. My father looked at him and said, ‘My God, I haven’t seen you since — ’ whenever. And he introduced him. And I thought wow there’s a Sunderland connection for the first time. And again —
AM: So, how old would you have been then?
SE: I was about seventeen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
AM: Yeah. Ok.
SE: Maybe I was a bit older. Eighteen. No. I was just about going off to university.
AM: Right.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Because I mean you look, you just look at some of the entries and think I just wish I could ask him about this one.
SE: Yeah.
AM: The ten hours fifty plus during the day. Plus two hours ten at night, anti-blockade runner patrol.
SE: You realise that, you know we do a trip from here to Hong Kong. It might be what ten, twelve hours and we think that’s heavy going. But you’ve got your drinks and you’ve got your meals whereas these guys are fourteen hours in the air.
AM: Absolutely.
SE: Out in the middle of nowhere and nowhere to go.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. There’s some. There’s a couple of fourteen hours. Twelve hours.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: See the last one on that page.
SE: Well, you think you’d go do-lally just looking at the sea all the time.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
SE: I mean, the Atlantic is the Atlantic however you play it out. And you’d think gosh if you were out over there for those numbers of hours it would be quite exciting to see a submarine or something surface.
AM: And just looking at that date. That’s March. So he was out virtually every day. Virtually every day.
SE: This is why I’ve always queried that gap in the log when that crew disappeared because you couldn’t possibly be on holiday or just sitting on the ground. So, I’m convinced that that’s when the malaria got him.
AM: And the submarine attacked one.
SE: Yes. There was one or two occasions they did actually get to do something.
AM: Yeah. Anti-submarine patrol again. Oh, see, you look at that one. So, we’re in April 1943 now. On the Sunderland that he was on for ages and ages with Flying Officer [Calcot?]
SE: Yeah.
AM: “Searching for survivors we sighted lifeboat.”
SE: Yeah.
AM: But we don’t know whether they actually found any.
SE: We know there’s lots of stories about Sunderland crews landing to pick up people. We’ve got some fantastic stuff in John Evan’s material about even a Sunderland being towed by a ship back to base. There’s some fantastic stories with Sunderlands. I mean, they were such a versatile plane. And to be able to put one down in the Atlantic and get off again must have been almost impossible with, you know the rise and fall of the waves alone.
AM: We’ve got April ’43. The port outer seized and the prop stopped.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. There’s the, I’ve got the photographs of some of the crash landings and there’s one with a wing tip gone and another one with a chunk out the tail. And John again has put together the photographs I’ve sent him with the squadron records and said this is what happened. And so I’ve been able to piece it together from that.
AM: Yeah. Because that one where the — so when the port outer engine seized and the prop stopped and then the very next day engine change.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Full engine change. Straight out again.
SE: Yeah. Absolutely.
AM: Even though there was a small oil leak.
SE: Yeah. And learning again more about Sunderlands you know that they could actually get these gantries over the wings and lift the engines off. And of course the worry, as I then learned is that if an engine seizes and the prop keeps spinning or whatever it just literally just shakes the engine apart and can do more damage if you don’t get it sorted.
AM: Well, yeah. 26th of May, convoy escort OC 5. Didn’t meet them but crashed on landing.
SE: Yeah.
AM: The port float was written off at Port Etienne.
SE: Yes. I suppose quite symbolic and I think that’s the one I’ve got the photographs of. One of those, you know, things hanging under the wings there.
AM: Yeah. I’m looking up at the model you’ve got.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: And these are the floats.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Under the wings.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: So —
SE: They’re quite big. I mean, you know. They’re quite sizeable objects. They’re made in presumably lightweight metal but I’ve seen one or two in various museums.
AM: Right. I’m just flicking through the Sunderland ones now because I’m interested to see what he then moves onto. So, there’s lots of the same. I’m sure it wasn’t the same at the time but [pause] because then we get as far as August ’43 and he was posted. So, he wouldn’t have been doing operations counted in the way that they counted them in Bomber Command at the time.
SE: Correct. Correct.
AM: However, it’s clear that they were out virtually every single day.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Doing quite long flights.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So, I don’t know, maybe you do. Was there a point at which they said, right you’ve done x number of hours now, that’s it? You’re off. So, so in Bomber Command it would have been, ‘That’s it. You’ve done a full tour.
SE: Yeah, looking at the way the personnel seemed to change it seemed to be based on exposure and experience. So that I’ve always taken it as read that it would be the numbers of hours that, not maybe in the air but using the equipment.
AM: Right.
SE: So, his expertise would have been building up now on radar and various forms of electronic communication and that would be the reason he was posted on. To then go on to do more training which appears to be the case before he goes back to flying again.
AM: Well, yeah. I mean following, not the usual pattern but a pattern that quite a few followed then they would have finished their tour of operations or however you described it and would become an instructor. They’d end up at an Operational Training Unit.
SE: Correct.
AM: Training.
SE: And that seems to be the case because he goes to OCU.
AM: And that’s what he’s got.
SE: With Sunderlands.
AM: Yeah. It’s number 4 COTU.
SE: Yeah.
AM: At Alness.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Where was Alness?
SE: Somewhere up in Scotland.
AM: Is it?
SE: I think it’s up Oban way. Somewhere up there.
AM: So, we’re August, September now. And straight away he’s instructing. And describing the exercises he does and who with but then another one where pupils not found but I’m fit to go solo. I’m adding a few extra bits there.
SE: Yeah.
AM: He doesn’t say I am he just says fit to go solo.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So then in to December ’43 still an instructor on Sunderlands.
SE: Yeah. So, for somebody who had so much time on Sunderlands its, it’s remarkable —
AM: Yeah.
SE: That he just never spoke about them.
AM: Yeah.
SE: I mean his nautical side he did speak about because they used to, you had a captain of a Sunderland not, not a pilot. And he used to talk about mooring up and you know there was a definite sort of leaning towards that side. Whenever we used to go out on a boat or whatever he would say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do that.’ So, I think he took to that side of it. But the actual Sunderland. The aircraft. The stories. All the stuff that’s in that book. Nowhere did he ever talk about it.
AM: Just, no.
SE: No. Even when I made the model he just sort of went, oh.
AM: Alright then. And now here we’re coming to January and February ‘44 and this is the first time radar’s actually mentioned by name.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: But, but he also does an air to sea rescue duty but no trace of survivors. So, there were —
SE: Well, I think what, what, again from John Evans, John Evans’ material that it appears that when you were on an OCU of some sort you were still, if you were in the air and something took place you would be sort of commandeered.
AM: Still operational.
SE: And you’d be expected to go.
AM: Yeah.
SE: And help out as it were.
AM: And by April ’44 qualified to operate and instruct pupils in Mark 3 radar equipment.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: And just before that he’s done his radar instructor crew courses [pause] Which then takes us onto [pause] from Scotland.
SE: Out to the Caribbean.
AM: Out to the Caribbean.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Nassau.
SE: To be re-mustered again.
AM: Yeah.
SE: To join up with the crew. Now, I’ve got the photograph which Peter will have of the crew that they joined up with. And according to the archivist at 223 he was able to name all those characters but in one or two of the publications they’ve got the notations wrong or they haven’t got the right caption. Because, I’ve queried how come my father’s not listed on some of the photographs but he’s on them and vice versa. So, we’ve got a little bit of an anomaly with the record keeping as to which crew he was with. That’s pretty clear in the, in the documentation. But on the photographs, and apparently this is a common thing that they get a photograph from somebody. They haven’t quite got the caption right or the names are wrong or something like that.
AM: Yeah.
SE: So, he ended up on coming back from being re-mustered or crewed or whatever they did out in the Bahamas. The photograph’s there, and then came back to 223 at Oulton.
AM: Yeah. So, he goes to Nassau. To Number 111 Operational Training Unit. So, we’re coming back to going on operations again.
SE: Yeah.
AM: One, oh the transit is on a Dakota. Yeah. So, that makes sense. Off we go in a Dakota. And then he’s on Liberators.
SE: Yeah. Now, again why Liberators? I don’t know. I could see the connection between Sunderlands and Stirlings because they’re made by the same people — Shorts. So, I would have thought that you would again keep people on similar. It’s a bit like saying you’ve always been with British Leyland.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Or you’ve always been with Ford. That’s how I understand it. And so it means that you would be familiar with a lot of the equipment and the things that are on those planes. But Liberators? American. Don’t know where that would fit in to be honest.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Just presumably where they did their training and its obvious from again the way its reading that there was —
AM: Well, and if you think about when it is. I have absolutely no idea if this is relevant or not but we’re after D-Day now.
SE: Yes. I wondered. And that’s, again he never ever mentioned about, again the period of the war where I always thought well he must have been involved in D-Day. As you would anybody that was in the forces but you see there that he was well clear of that.
AM: Yeah. There’s because the gap is —
SE: Yeah.
AM: That he did his final instructor crew the 1st of May ’44.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And then the next entry is the 15th of June 44. So that period —
SE: Yeah.
AM: Of getting ready for D-Day and —
SE: Yeah.
AM: D-Day.
SE: Well out of it.
AM: And then all of a sudden he’s on American bombers.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting. And again, it could be and I would like very much to get hold of his medical records from the RAF.
AM: Yeah. Could have had the malaria again.
SE: Yeah. I think again there’s been, something happened in and around that time that’s knocked him out because there are these gaps where you’ve thought well what were you doing for that period?
AM: And at such an intense period.
SE: Yes. Exactly.
AM: When they’re not going to send them all home doing nothing are they?
SE: No. Not at all. Not at all. No.
AM: Yeah.
SE: No. And then from RAF Oulton where he didn’t seem to be there long before again he’s recruited to go to another training establishment or course or whatever. And then from there he’s bounced on to North Creake. Now, being as both those squadrons are Special Operations Squadrons with 100 Group you can see that there would be a progression then to where ever you can do the job. Train at the same time. Use the expertise. Now, again I never understood what RCM meant in the logbook until somebody pointed out it was Radio Counter Measures and Radio Counter Measures being anything to do with throwing metal bits out of the aircraft to doing signal —
AM: They dropped the —
SE: Signal, yes. Or as I now understood that a lot of it was putting —
AM: Windows.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Sorry.
SE: Was it Windows? And putting out a lot of duff gen. So, in other words they were sending signals out within the main bomber formations to say we are actually something else. And it wasn’t for some considerable time did I put all that together and realise that these Stirlings were a pretty clapped out aircraft in amongst the main formations.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Doing all of this.
AM: Yeah.
SE: And they were doing it in patterns. And I’ve now managed to acquire three publications on the subject and it’s fascinating because we’ve now been able to trace the main pilot. We can see he was the guy who he was with most of that time and they did these like figure of eight patterns in the sky.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Or did a box or whatever out into the North Sea over the particular target areas. Sometimes they weren’t involved in actually bombing. They were just up there, you know messing about if that’s the right term. Whereas where you’ve got an entry that’s in red with a target then they were bombing, so —
AM: Yes.
SE: We know then that some of them were involved in actually dropping munitions and others weren’t. And again he never mentioned it. He never used to say oh we dropped all these bombs on so and so but through those publications I’ve learned a tremendous amount of what they were up to.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because he was posted. So, he was posted to 223 Squadron.
SE: Yeah.
AM: On the Liberators. And as you say by October some of it is in red now so we’re on operations. Just, “Patrol as briefed” operations.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So we don’t know what the patrol was.
SE: No.
AM: And then [pause] and we’ve got a gap again. October ’44.
SE: That’s when I think he was another signals course.
AM: Right.
SE: Going to —
AM: Oh yes. Yeah.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Quite right.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So, posted for a signal leader course.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Which takes us to January ’45.
SE: Yeah.
AM: 199 Squadron, North Creake.
SE: Yeah.
AM: As you say, Stirlings.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And now we’re out over Germany.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So —
SE: Yeah.
AM: We’re out, we are within Bomber Command as support. Stuttgart. Metz. Eindhoven. Liege.
SE: Yeah. One of, one of the things that we learned as well from the archive of 199 is that according to that logbook they flew the last operational sortie.
AM: Right.
SE: And the aircraft was N-Nan. And we’ve got the photograph in the album which Peter’s got where it’s, the caption says, “Last op,” and “A dusk take off.” And I always thought that was significant. And that tallies with the operational records from that squadron to say that they were on the very last operation actively, with Stirlings at 199.
AM: Yeah. It’s just all described as bomber support. You desperately want to grab him and say, ‘Yeah. But what did you do? What did you do?
SE: I mean I don’t know whether his Morse code was sending out or whether they were doing it verbally or what they were doing. But I would assume that the, the duff gen as I call it or the disinformation would be giving wrong positions, or saying that the formations heading to — where ever.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Or I just don’t know what they were doing other than —
AM: Because for everyone else it would be radio silence.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So —
SE: Yeah. And radio counter measures. It makes you think oh they’re bouncing signals back or they’re, you know, defending something somehow. But I really just really don’t know what all that was about and I know, as I said earlier that he was fluent in Morse code. I mean he could tap out anything.
AM: And with Flight Lieutenant Lind. Did you ever —
SE: Ray Lind. We’ve got photographs of Ray Lind. He got a DFC and bar. He was quite an accomplished pilot and he went on to stay in the Air Force for a while. And there is some correspondence between him and Ray Lind so they were obviously quite good pals. But whether he’s still alive today I don’t know. He may well be because he was about a similar age. And let’s be honest if he’d have, if he’d have lived he would have been now the same age as Bill Barford. So that would take him to ninety [pause] wait a minute, ‘21 ‘til now.
AM: What would your dad be? Ninety — your dad be ninety six if he was still alive.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. Bill was, yes. Bill was ninety five, ninety six. Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: So, bomber support. And that finishes then in March ’45.
SE: Yeah. Yeah. And the war ended not long after that.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And then he ends up just after the war.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Signals officer.
SE: Yeah. And then the, the real sort of career takes off where he is now re-categorized for major aircraft. That’s anything with four engines from what I could see where he became a VIP crew man. So, in other words, according to all of that — and there’s some very interesting names in that logbook. There’s people like Sir Pirie. Oh, wait a minute. What’s his name? What would have been equivalent terms today of the Minister of defence or various other VIPs and you’ll see later on in the logbook that they were flying all over world. They were flying important people. And he, having this particular category as a wireless operator, air gunner, signaller, whatever. And I’ve got, which I only really looked at today for some reason. I’ve never really paid any attention to it before but there was a little diary thing here which was in amongst a lot of his other affairs. And this is called, Aircrew Categorisation Card. Wireless operator air. Now this dates from — the very first entry is the 7th of March 1946. And it’s saying, qualified VIP on all types of service aircraft and equipment. And it basically goes on that each time there was some other aircraft or whatever then you can see that it goes on where you’ve basically got a record of you are one of the number one people now for taking VIPs around. And you’ve got, and if you look at the very back of the book there’s a, there’s a little sheet in the back cover that says — it’s almost like saying if you stop me I’m the person that you should be paying attention to because I’m the person who knows what I’m talking about. I’ve never seen that before.
AM: Pretty much. Yeah.
SE: I’ve never read it before. And I suddenly saw it today and I thought, oh wow, look at that, you know.
AM: Is — did I just see or am I [pause]
SE: And the range of aircraft that he ended up in.
AM: That’s exactly what I’m looking at now.
SE: Oh, it’s huge. It’s huge.
AM: That’s exactly what I’m looking at now.
SE: If you look at the back pages of the logbook you’ll see. It’s got — what aircraft type have I flown? That I’ve flown on. And I think it’s the last but one page in the back there. Go back. Go back further. Yeah. There.
AM: Yeah.
SE: And it’s got and then I think it goes to the actual aircraft there.
AM: Yes.
SE: And you start thinking wow that was a fair number of aircraft that you flew on there.
AM: And he did get to fly a Lancaster.
SE: On one. Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Even though he never mentioned it. And when we were younger I’ve got photographs of me on the strip at Changi where a Lancaster landed that’s the very one that’s Just Jane. I’ve got a real association with Just Jane up at East Kirkby.
AM: Yeah.
SE: And I clambered aboard with him in 1965 when it came through on its way back to the UK. I climbed aboard again in the mid-70s when it was the gate guard at Scampton. And I had no idea until my wife bought me a present for, I think a fortieth, fiftieth birthday something like that to do a night flight over on Just Jane. And I was over there and I kept thinking there’s a bit of déjà vu going on here and sure enough it turns out to be the same aeroplane which I had no idea.
AM: Just shows you.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Have you actually counted up how many —
SE: No.
AM: Bomber command operations he did?
SE: No. No. Never did. I know there’s a, there’s one commendation thing in here which I’ll just show you which I thought was quite an interesting one which again is getting very friable now. This one. That one.
AM: Right.
SE: Now, that one as I say is quite a rare one. I’ve not seen one of those before and its getting quite thin on the, you know the print. But I think Peter picked up on that one.
AM: Yeah. I’m just trying to see a date on it but this was 199 Squadron.
SE: It doesn’t. I know. I couldn’t find a date on it either. I thought that’s a bit silly that.
AM: But this is for meritorious service and good airmanship.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And it’s, a full operational tour has been completed without having been involved in any accidents or ever having an unnecessary cancellation or abandonment of an operational sortie.
SE: Yeah.
AM: I’ve never seen one of those before.
SE: No. I’ve not seen that before. And that’s 199. So, again that that’s must have been the last trip or the last trips that he did.
AM: I wonder who that was signed by because it’s been approved by somebody for —
SE: Yeah.
AM: The Air Vice Marshall, Air Officer Commanding, HQ, 100 Group.
SE: Yeah.
AM: But I can’t read the actual signature.
SE: No. No. No.
AM: So, that takes us to the end of the war. So, obviously I’ve got this great big thick logbook here that goes on many years after the war.
SE: It explodes after that.
AM: So, tell me a bit about — I’ve forgotten when you said. You were born in ’52.
SE: Yeah. I was born at Ramsgate.
AM: So, but what do you remember before we come onto you. What — so what do you remember if anything about — they would have got to the end of the war.
SE: Yeah.
AM: So, there’s two pathways for people to go then. They could either stay until they’re demobbed.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Or they can stay on. And obviously your dad stayed on.
SE: Yeah.
AM: Did he ever talk about why or —
SE: No. I remember he, he, obviously there was the connection with my mother and he was based somewhere around Manston.
AM: Right.
SE: Which is on the Kent coast. Where he met my mother. And obviously she was from Ramsgate so the connection there must have probably thought well I’ll stay in that area. And he got posted to, or he was the commanding officer of a secret radar station on the south coast called Foreness.
AM: Right.
SE: Again, you can see the connection with the expertise —
AM: Yeah.
SE: In radio or radar. So, that’s about 1950/51. Now, by then my sister was born and she was born in Singapore because he spent considerable years number of the years after the war in Singapore doing all this VIP flying. So, from the time that the war ended and him doing the VIP stuff they were in Singapore for three years. And there’s a lot of —
AM: Sorry. When did your mum and dad marry?
SE: They were, they were married in 1949.
AM: Right. Ok.
SE: So, between ’49 and ’51 they were in Singapore. My sister was born there and my mother was — no it may be even earlier than that because my mother said on many occasions that when she went to Singapore she was one of the very first wives to go back to Singapore after the Japanese occupation. And they still had Japanese prisoners of war as servants, and doing jobs. And my sister was born in Changi Hospital and she was the very first English, or white person to be born in the hospital after it was re-opened. Because if you know anything about Changi and you know anything about that hospital and the things that happened at that hospital —
AM: I do. I do.
SE: We’ve got quite a good history of that and I’ve got several books on the, on the history of Changi. Now, so, so they came back from Singapore ’50, ‘51ish or whenever it was. And then he went to Foreness and Manston. He was, he was sort of seconded from Manston to Foreness. I think Manston at that time was an American Air Force base so there was a connection there. And then at Foreness he had this challenge. My mother tells me about this challenge where he said to get the respect of his underlings he would have to climb the tower. Now, it was only last year that I had a connection with Foreness, from their archive people to say that this was true and that the tower existed and they sent me a photograph of the tower. And apparently he climbed this tower singlehandedly. Well, you had to to maintain it. So, he said, ‘Well, if you’ve got to maintain it I’ll get up and have a look at it.’ And I was sat on the beach as a six month old baby with my mother with this all going on. And I’m like — oh sorry love.
Other: I have to go.
SE: We’ve got to go have we?
Other: Yeah.
SE: Ok.
[recording paused]
AM: Right. Ok.
SE: What we can do. You can obviously keep that there and I can now do you a follow up to that. I’ve got one of those. And I can do the bit that’s missing if, assuming you want the up to date stuff. I wasn’t sure whether you really wanted to go that far.
AM: Yes. Ok. So, what we’re going to do we’re going to pause the interview now.
SE: Yeah.
AM: And probably recommence at some later point when hopefully you’ll be able to tell us about your childhood.
SE: Yeah. By all means. I mean —
AM: About your dad and the RAF.
SE: Yeah. I mean —
AM: And your dad in the RAF.
SE: Yeah.
AM: But also what he talked about to you and what sort of impression that made on you as a child.
SE: Yeah. I mean the sort of thing that I like to remember is the, the coming home in the evening in uniform. He’d come home and he’d say, ‘Do you fancy going down to the bottom of the runway? Because there’s a whole load of Mosquitoes down there that are being broken up. And you can go down there with a hacksaw and a chopper and go and get some wood and you can make yourself a model out of it.’
AM: Absolutely.
SE: So, I know as a kid I was vandalising aircraft.
AM: The wooden wonder. Chopping it to bits.
SE: Yeah. No. We could certainly do that.
AM: Did he ever talk about, you know the, the thing about bombing. Well, mind you he didn’t bomb then as such. He wasn’t, he was an operator. He was —
SE: No. No. No. He never mentioned it.
AM: He was on support wasn’t he?
SE: Never mentioned it. Never mentioned it. I mean it was only, it was only just recently when I, when my mother died that this parachute bag appeared. I mean this bag as I say it’s got his, it’s got his name on it as a, as a pilot officer and it just was up in the attic for, I don’t know how long, you can see the W.
AM: Yeah.
SE: Oh. Air Ministry on there. And, as I say, and PO. Now, that must go back to Sunderland days, and this is his parachute.
AM: Pilot officer at that point so —
SE: Yeah. So, this is his official parachute bag. So, you know they must have got on board each time with these parachutes and thought one day I might have to jump out. But anyway —
AM: Yeah.
SE: But, yes if, if that’s the case Jackie we’d better get a shift on.
AM: So, we’ll leave it there.
SE: Yeah.
AM: But I’m sure there will be a second instalment to come.
SE: Yeah. I’ll just show you this little thing. They paid me through you —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Steven Ellams
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-25
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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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AEllamsSD170825
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:53:06 audio recording
Coverage
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Civilian
Second generation
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Steve Ellams is the son of a wireless operator who flew in a number of different aircraft. During the war he flew initially in Sunderlands overseas before being posted back to the UK. He started operational flying in Bomber Command with 199 Special Duties Squadron.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
199 Squadron
223 Squadron
95 Squadron
aircrew
B-24
Defiant
Me 110
RAF Alness
RAF Cranwell
RAF North Creake
RAF Oulton
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
Sunderland
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/936/11293/PLunnR1601.2.jpg
fda5c96e9a63672691e6276a70b55a7b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/936/11293/ALunnR161103.1.mp3
e1a12a500401e925ed38b3d632eff028
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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Lunn, Reginald
R Lunn
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Corporal Reginald Lunn (b. 1922, 909634 Royal Air Force). He served as an engine fitter.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-03
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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Lunn, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre on Thursday the 3rd of November 2016. The interviewee is Reg Lunn and the interviewer is Mike Connock. The interview is being conducted at the [deleted] Ok Reg. What we’ll, we’ll go on with what we were talking about is that you, you tell me you were —whereabouts you were born and when.
RL: Hmmn?
MC: When and where were you born?
RL: I was born in Fulham, London SW6.
MC: That was in —
RL: 1922.
MC: Yeah. Yeah. And then, and what was, whereabouts did you go to school?
RL: I went to what they call Fulham Central School. A very good school. And I was there when I passed the scholarships there. And, and then —
MC: Enjoyed those school days then?
RL: Pardon?
MC: You enjoyed those schooldays then.
RL: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. No regrets at all. No.
MC: Yeah.
RL: No. As I say no regrets to more than six years in the air force.
MC: Yeah. So how old were you when you left school?
RL: How old was I?
MC: How old were you when you left school?
RL: About fifteen and a half.
MC: Yeah. So what did you do?
RL: I left early. I left early to start an apprenticeship. Yes.
MC: Yeah. What? Doing what? What was the apprenticeship?
RL: In the printing trade. Yes. Letterpress. Yes.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yeah. On a, on a big one. [unclear] big machines. Not the, not the small ones.
MC: Yeah. Yeah. So, the, so what made you choose to join the air force then?
RL: Oh. Most of my schoolfriends. They, they were in the air force. Unfortunately a lot of them got killed on operations. I used to go home on leave and my mother would say, ‘Poor Don was killed in, on operations.’ Yes. And that was that.
MC: So, you, when you joined the air force you went straight into ground crew. You selected to —
RL: Oh yes. Yes.
MC: Did you say you’d applied to go to aircrew?
RL: Sorry?
MC: You said you applied. You applied for aircrew.
RL: I did apply twice. Yes. Yes. And twice I passed the selection board. Yes. Well, yeah well except you go and and have a medical. And go to the medical. And as soon as they said medical I knew I was finished because I knew I was colour blind. And, yes and after about two minutes, ‘Sorry. Unfit for aircrew,’ and that was that. I was out.
MC: And so you were then, you then selected, you were selected for ground crew.
RL: Yes. Yes. Yes.
MC: Did you get a choice of what trade you went for?
RL: Not really. Well, I suppose yes and no. I wanted to work on aircraft.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
RL: So that, that was that actually.
MC: So you finished up as what? Engine fitter.
RL: Yes. Yes. You were called, called an engine fitter. Yes.
MC: Oh right. Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: Yeah. So when — when was that you joined up then?
RL: When I joined up. In ’43.
MC: How old were you?
RL: When I joined up? Nineteen.
MC: So you were born in 19 —
RL: ’22.
MC: ’22. So it would have been ’41 wouldn’t it?
RL: Yes. Yes.
MC: ’41. That’s about right. About ’41. Yeah. And where did you do your basic training?
RL: In the air force?
MC: Yes.
RL: Up in Blackpool. Squire’s Gate. That was the home for all of the training. Was up there. Training. Engine training.
MC: You did your engine training up there as well.
RL: Yes. Yes.
MC: As well as your square bashing.
RL: Yes. Oh yes [laughs] square bashing. Yes. Yeah. Yes.
MC: Yeah. How long was that, that for? How long did you do your engine training for?
RL: It was six months.
MC: How, so how many would be on your course? Would there be many?
RL: Just the same number of —
MC: What was accommodation like? Were you in billets or in hotels?
RL: Yes. In [pause] in civvy billets. Civvy.
MC: Oh civilian premises. Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yes. Yes.
MC: The bed and breakfast type of accommodation.
RL: That’s right. Yes.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: Yeah. Yeah
RL: Six months there. And then from there we went to —
MC: Which, which aircraft did you — which engines did you work on when you were there in the training? Your training. All sorts?
RL: Mostly the American. Rolls Royce.
MC: Rolls Royce’s as well.
RL: Yes.
MC: Yeah.
RL: And [pause] It was mostly Rolls Royce.
MC: Yeah. Yeah. Rolls Royce. Merlins? Did you work on —
RL: Merlins.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Went on a Merlin course to Bristol. That was, that was an interesting two or three weeks down there. Yes.
MC: Yeah.
RL: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So, when you finished your engine fitter training which was your first posting then?
RL: First place. In what was [pause] I think it must have been Wick.
MC: Wick. Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: And what aircraft did they have at Wick then?
RL: Well, not the aircraft but the engines mostly.
MC: Oh, were they?
RL: Yes. Mostly engines.
MC: So, they didn’t have any — so Wick was, was it, it wasn’t Coastal Command then, was it?
RL: Oh it was. Oh yes. 48 Squadron. Yes. Sunderland. Sunderland and Hudsons. Yes.
MC: Oh Hudsons. Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
MC: Oh so it was 48 Squadron.
RL: Eh?
MC: 48 Squadron.
RL: 48 Squadron, yes. Yes. Yes. And they had, they broke up and was posted overseas but I didn’t go with them.
MC: You didn’t go with them.
RL: No, I was posted farther south. Down to Alness and Invergordon. Down there. Yes. And again on Coastal Command. Yes. Yes.
MC: And what aircraft were there there then?
RL: They were the same. Just Sunderlands. Catalinas.
MC: Sunderlands and Catalinas. Yeah. Now which aircraft did you prefer out of the two?
RL: Oh, I think the Americans. Yes.
MC: Yeah [laughs] Everybody likes the Catalina.
RL: The Cats. Catalinas. Yes. Yes.
MC: Mind you they’re big aircraft the Sunderland, aren’t they?
RL: Oh yes. Yes.
MC: Sunderland Flying Boats. A big aircraft. So, so I mean are they, what’s the crews like on these aircraft? Are they a different number of crews? How many crew have you have on a Sunderland? And —
RL: About six, I think. Mostly six. Yes.
MC: But not so many on the Catalina.
RL: Oh a Cat’s only about three or four. Yes.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yes. Yes.
MC: Yeah. And you got plenty of flights on those.
RL: Oh yes. On test. I used to go on test flights. Test flights. Yes.
MC: Yeah.
RL: Flying around and around and around. Yes. Yes.
MC: So, and how long were you at Invergordon then?
RL: How long was it? Oh about three and a half years. Four years.
MC: Yeah. And accommodation like there. What was, it would have been in bed or in —
RL: Nissen huts. Nissen huts.
MC: Nissen huts. Yeah. Yeah. And did you get out much? You know, in the local area.
RL: We used to go to Inverness any time off we had but mostly it was all work work work work work work work.
MC: Yeah.
RL: And had an occasional day off and leave every about six months. That’s all.
MC: Yeah. So, what did you do on your days off? Did you go out much?
RL: I’d say we were so tired through working so non-stop. Non-stop. We didn’t go far. Far as the NAAFI and WO YMCA. Yes.
MC: Yeah. So when, I mean you said you got leave about every six months.
RL: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: How long? How long a leave did you get?
RL: Just about a week. Seven days.
MC: And you’d go home?
RL: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Go home. Yes.
MC: Take you a long time to get home then.
RL: It did. Hours and hours. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
MC: Did you get the train from Inverness?
RL: Inverness. Yes. And we’d go either Inverness Glasgow or Inverness Edinburgh. Yes. Well, a train from Invergordon to Inverness and then depending which leave you was on you either went to Kings Cross or [pause] or what else is there?
MC: Euston? Somewhere like that?
RL: Yeah.
MC: Probably not.
RL: No. Nothing to —
MC: So, how long were you at Invergordon did you say?
RL: About three and half years.
MC: Three and a half years. Yeah.
RL: Yes. Yes.
MC: Yeah. Yeah. And then you enjoyed your time there? Did you?
RL: Sorry?
MC: You enjoyed your time there did you?
RL: Oh yeah. Yes. Yes. We worked hard and played hard. Yes.
MC: So, what, when, when you finished at Invergordon where did you go to?
RL: I came down south. Well, eventually I finished up at St Mawgan. Down there. That’s where I finished up. Yeah.
MC: One extreme of the country to the other.
RL: Eh?
MC: One end of the country to the other.
RL: Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes.
MC: Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: And what what aircraft did they have at St Mawgan then?
RL: Again, that was Transport Command. A bit of Ferry Command. Just for ferrying new aircraft from Britain to Europe. Yes.
MC: So, so you worked on quite a variety of aircraft there then.
RL: Oh yes. Yes.
MC: What sort of aircraft did you work on then?
RL: Well, again not a variety but as we said the Dakotas and Boulton Paul Defiants.
MC: Oh Defiants. Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yeah, so —
MC: You mentioned Spitfires?
RL: Not much. There was Spitfires yes. But not a great deal.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: They weren’t —
RL: Mostly transport rather than Fighter Command. Yes.
MC: Life was good down at St Mawgan then?
RL: Well, yes it was. Yes. Especially in the summer when, when we used to go down straight from work in the evening and just walk down to the beach. Down the cliffs to the beach and spend the evening down there. And that was, everybody had a good time. Yes.
MC: Yeah.
RL: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So you were, you were at St Mawgan until the war finished were you?
RL: Yes. I was demobbed from St Mawgan. Yes.
MC: When was that?
RL: In ’45.
MC: ’45. The end of — yeah. Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: Shortly after. Was it shortly after the end of the war or later in ’45?
RL: Well, [pause] about half and half. Half and half. Yeah.
MC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you never considered staying in.
RL: Well I did but then I thought all my friends they’d got demobbed and I don’t know, gradually back in Civvy Street. So, I thought well maybe there’s a lot in that. So I didn’t. I didn’t bother to sign on.
MC: Yeah. So, when you look back on those times you enjoyed them. Even though there was a war on.
RL: Oh yes. Never regretted a day. No.
MC: Even though there was a war on. Yeah. Yeah. So, when you went back to Civvy Street what —
RL: I went back in the printing trade.
MC: Yeah.
RL: Down there. And saw a few years down there. Yeah. Ten to four. We —
[recording paused]
MC: So, when you, after you went back into the printing trade and that.
RL: Yeah.
MC: And you met your wife after the war of course, you said.
RL: She was a nurse.
MC: Oh yeah,
RL: A nurse at —
MC: In London was that?
RL: One of the biggest hospitals in London.
MC: Guys.
RL: Guys. Guys, yes.
MC: Guys
RL: Guys. Yes. And then she qualified at Guys and then went to the eye hospital.
MC: Moorfields.
RL: Moorfields. Yes. Qualified there. Yes. And I met her at the Palais one, the Hammersmith Palais one Friday night.
MC: The famous Palais.
RL: Yes. Our second home down there. The Hammersmith Palais. Just walking distance from the Hammersmith Palais to where we lived. So that was that.
MC: So, you were a great dancer were you then, Reg? You enjoyed dancing.
RL: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
MC: Everybody did dance in those days didn’t they?
RL: Yes. They did. Yes. Yes.
MC: Seemed to do. Seemed to have done.
RL: Yeah. I read just a few months ago they’d knocked the Palais down.
MC: Oh had they? Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: I didn’t realise that.
RL: We was there about three or four nights a week. Yes. So, Sunday was mostly just dancing. Tuesday or Wednesday was to go on a — the pubs in Hammersmith down there before we went into the Palais. Yes. And that was that. Yes.
MC: So when was it you got married?
RL: In ’39. No —
MC: ’49? Must have been after the war.
RL: Sorry. Dear oh me. It was ’43. I think it was.
MC: Oh during the war. You got married during the war.
RL: No. No. No. After. A few years after the war. Yes.
MC: Don’t worry. And you had two children then.
RL: Yes. Yes.
MC: You said. Yeah.
RL: Yes.
MC: What were their names?
RL: Robert and Valerie.
MC: Oh, of course. Yeah. And lots of grandchildren.
RL: Yes. Yes.
MC: So, going back you don’t keep much contact with any of the former members of your RAF people in the RAF?
RL: No. No.
MC: You know.
RL: No.
MC: After the war you —
RL: Just, just had two or three years but you know just drifted apart and that was that. Yeah.
MC: Yeah. And did you get involved with the, any of the organisations?
RL: Oh, RAF Association.
MC: Yeah.
RL: I was one of the founder members.
MC: Oh right.
RL: Yes.
MC: In, in that area. Yeah.
RL: Yeah. And we used to meet two or three nights a week and we used to go out on different functions. Yes. Yes.
MC: Well, Reg I thank you very much for your memories of those days. And it’s, it’s great for you to let me talk to you.
RL: Well thank you.
MC: Really appreciate.
RL: Well, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
MC: Yeah.
RL: It brought back memories. I had to rack my brains for some of them. Yes.
MC: So, if there’s anything else you remember please don’t hesitate. But thank you very much, Reg.
RL: It was a pleasure. Yes. Yes.
MC: Much appreciated it.
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 Reginald Lunn
Creator
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Mike Connock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-03
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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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ALunnR161103, PLunnR1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
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00:17:19 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
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Reg Lunn was living in Fulham and working as an apprentice printer when he volunteered for the RAF. He had wanted to be aircrew but he was colour blind and so failed the medical. He joined as an engine fitter and was posted to 48 Squadron at RAF Wick. He mostly worked on Sunderlands and Catalinas. In future postings he went on to work on Defiant and Dakota aircraft.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cornwall (County)
England--London
Scotland--John o' Groats
Contributor
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Julie Williams
C-47
Catalina
Defiant
fitter engine
ground crew
ground personnel
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Wick
Sunderland
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1106/11565/ARossiterHC150913.2.mp3
fec6b127aef3d0344f0ef2e51fba0776
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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Rossiter, Harry
Henry Charles Rossiter
H C Rossiter
Description
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An oral history interview with Harry Rossiter (1922 - 2019, 1332079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 115 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-23
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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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Rossiter, HC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln carried out by Adam Sutch on the 23rd of September 2015 with Mr Harry Rossiter who carried out a full tour as a wireless operator on Bomber Command. Harry, thanks ever so much for agreeing to this interview. It’s fantastic to get the chance to talk to people with, with such memories. Could we start with a little about where you come from and your background before you ever joined the Air Force?
HR: Yes. I was born in Stratford, East London on the 11th of August 1922. And when I was ten years old, we moved out in to Essex. In a place called Laindon which you may, talking of the Battle of Britain I had a ringside view of that. Anyway, we’ll come to that presently. In 1938 I was a member of a District Scout Rover crew whose aim in those days was to do anything for public service and learn to lead the proper life. And part of it was I joined the air raid precautions. That was in April 1939. I took an anti-gas course. Learning all about the various types of poison gas that might be used against the British civilian population. Following on from that I became a cyclist messenger when the war actually broke out in 1939, at the age of seventeen. And it was very well organised on a district basis. The idea being that if the telephone service broke down there was an admirable means of district communication. I served in that until I joined the RAF. I cycled up to the Romford Recruiting Centre where I said I’d like to be a telegraphist in the Navy. ‘There are no vacancies at the moment but the RAF desperately need wireless operator air gunners. What about that?’ So I said, ‘Well yes. Alright. If they’re so —' [laughs] So I could do six words a minute Morse code from my time in the Boy Scouts which came in very useful. Ultimately on the 16th of January I attested at Uxbridge as 1332079 AC2 Henry Charles Rossiter. And they said to a gang of quite a lot of us, ‘We’re not ready to start aircrew training yet as far as you’re concerned. You can go home and wait six months and we’ll send for you on RAF pay. Or you can come in straight away.’ So, we all looked at one another. Well, we’d all said our goodbyes and whatnot so we’ll come in. And so, a group of us was sent to Northern Ireland on ground defence outside Lisburn, Lisburn Landing Ground it was called, which actually was a blessing in disguise because by the time we did start aircrew training we was marching like all seasoned airmen. And I noticed that particularly. One of my, a chap I became rather friendly he came straight out of the [unclear] university and he was seen, found crying because he was homesick. But by the time we left there he was just one of us and quite a decent chap. I do hope he survived the war. His uncle was an air vice marshal and he wrote to his uncle several times, ‘When are we going to start our training?’ In August ’41 we did. I went to Blackpool to do Morse training. And then we were sent to ground operating to get experience and so I went to 16 Group Headquarters in Gillingham which was an area combined headquarters. And I was there for six months doing ground operating. Which is very useful. I’ll tell you a funny little story about that. The sets we had were like packing trunks. About, you know, about a foot wide, deep, called the Tin 84. Thirteen valve set, excellent radio. And there was a repair gang that used to go around keeping them in order. One of them was a Sergeant Moran and he was known, always known in his absence as Spike Moran. So, one day I’m sitting there and it went dead. And instead of engaging brain before mouth I said, ‘Spike. My radio’s dead.’ And of course, he came and thumped his fist on the table, ‘How dare you call me Spike? Sergeant Moran to you’ [laughs] Anyway, profuse apologies and the set was fixed. In August ’42 [pause] wait a minute. I’m ahead of myself. I said I went to Morse training. I forgot to say in the August, in the Autumn of 1941 we went to Yatesbury in Wiltshire where Number 2 Signals School where I did my radio. And I played, I played trumpet in a brass band in a dance band and cornet in a brass band and my training suffered for a little bit. But anyway, I passed and as I say we were sent on ground operating. Then in August ’42 went to Madley in Herefordshire to do flying training. We flew in the Domini. That’s a twin-engine aircraft with five, five students, the pilot and instructor. And we took it in turns to sit on the radio and do an exercise. I wondered what that scruffy looking biscuit tin with the rope handle was doing in the corner but I managed to keep my food to myself. That’s alright [laughs] Anyway, following on from that we did some training in the Percival Proctor. A single engine aircraft. Just myself and the pilot. And I passed alright and then I was sent to gunnery school in Walney Island just off the coast at Barrow. Now these, the Gunnery School there used the Boulton Paul Defiant. Rather unusual for gunnery training but that’s all they were fit for really after their initial success and of course they were quite good as a night fighter. But the fighter, fighter command couldn’t use them anyway. Did my training on Defiants. This is August. No, it was later than that. My memory [pause] where were we? Oh yes. I’ve got it here. September 1942 posted to Air Gunner’s School, Walney Island. And of course, it was still summery weather and after we’d done our little detail the pilot hopped along the beach to Blackpool and we flew along the sand almost at zero feet. All the holidaymakers waving to us. And after that we finished our gunnery school, gunnery course. ‘We want four volunteers for Coastal Command,’ So, Bomber Command’s not too clever these days. Yes, all right. What we didn’t know of course was that it was to train on torpedo bombers. The Bristol Beaufort which wasn’t very clever [laughs]. To cut a long story short we went to Number 5 OTU where they trained people on Bristol Beauforts. A crew of four. A pilot, the observer who was a navigator/bomb aimer and two wireless operator/air gunners. And we were quite a happy team as regards the crew. And then we did our torpedo training and then they said, ‘Right. You’re going off to —' They didn’t tell us in words of course. It was a bit hush hush but what it transpired, what it came out to us we were to reinforce 217 Squadron in Ceylon. So we found ourselves at Portreath in Cornwall on the 12th of June ready to fly out. But the radio, there was trouble with the radio so delayed for twenty four hours. Anyway, we flew out and when we got to Karachi in India where all the aircraft entering India had to be serviced and made ready for tropical service, you know. Water tanks and all that sort of stuff. Special air filters and all that. They declared all Bristol Beauforts were now obsolete. Considering that we went to the Bristol Aeroplane Works and collected a brand new Beaufort and it had got twenty hours off the assembly line it seems an awful waste of taxpayer’s money. But there it was. We kicked our heels at the aircrew transit port in Poona. And all aircrew in those days were more or less during the war quite multi-national. A lot of Australians. And of course they kicked up a fuss. They were a bit uninhibited and who could blame them? They’d come all the way from Australia and then they’d only been messed about by the stupid poms as they called us. Anyway, be that as it may. In November we left Bombay on a troop ship and got home eventually on the 4th of January. And after leave we went to the Advanced Flying Unit in Millom to start re-training on Bomber Command. And after training we joined a squadron, 115 Squadron on the 15th of August 1944. And the rest, and the rest as you say is history. Not quite I suppose because we had and we were very lucky. We were attacked by night fighters several times but the skill and the sharp eyes of the gunners and the skill of the pilot we never received any damage at all. The only time we did the Germans were holding out at Le Havre. We went there four times. The first couple of times were rather, was a bit tragic in a way because a lot of Frenchmen got killed. They’d sent us to the wrong place. But the last one we did we were well and truly we found them and they put a cannon shell in our port outer. We stopped it but a Lancaster can fly well on three engines so we were in no danger but that’s how low we were. They said, ‘Do not bomb below nine hundred feet if the cloud base is at such.’ The bomb aimer, being a very enthusiastic Northern Irishman, I won’t use his exact words he just said, — concern [laughs] ‘The flak. Let’s bomb.’ Which we did and as I say we got a cannon shell in our port outer for our sins. The only time we ever got damaged. And I remember standing up in the astrodome looking, plugged into my radio, making that extra pair of eyes and in the night time it was, well it’s as though you’re watching a film in a way. I can’t quite explain it. Deep down you were, you were scared. Anybody who says they weren’t either have got no imagination or they’re telling lies. You couldn’t help it. You knew damn well what was going on. I mean you could see a Lanc, a Lancaster, it wasn’t quite as pitch black as you might think. What with the fires we were flying over and the searchlights you could see quite a distance and you could see a Lancaster suddenly a big, a great big red ball of fire. A big ball of fire as they say, there it goes, and the bomb aimer would say, ‘Chalk port.’ Which meant somebody had got it, you know. And that’s how it was. And then we did a lot of daylight raids and that was another danger. I’ve got the piece here to show you in here. This is, this is A Flight. The Flight I was in. Yes. Those two aircraft, those mentioned on there, they said they collided. But we had other ideas about that because we were bombing on radar. Very accurate. There was a great deal of accuracy with this stuff called GH. And it resulted in several aircraft trying to be in the same spot in the same, in the sky at the same time. And of course, what happened? They dropped their bombs on the one below. And though it just, it just says they collided. But three times standing looking up I looked straight up in the open bomb bay of a Lancaster direct above us. Obviously, they knew we were there otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here but three times that happened. It was scary that was.
AS: And because both of these aeroplanes are down as collided —
HR: Yeah.
AS: The explosion took both aeroplanes out.
HR: Absolutely and that means Runnymede panel. That means there’s no known grave.
AS: Yeah.
HR: At Runnymede there’s a memorial to twenty seven thousand RAF and Allied aircrew who have no known grave.
AS: Yeah.
HR: So, some of them just, well they were all atomised I suppose you’d say. A full bomb load. Two aircraft colliding on their way to Dortmund. That’s where we were going. And the last occasion we were flying our last drop and there’s a bit of a tradition to be try and be the first back. So, the skipper tried a little experiment. I was looking out the astrodome and I could see the bursts of the anti-aircraft. They had got our height exactly and each burst was coming closer. The rear gunner said, ‘Skipper. They’re knocking on the back door.’ So he quickly dived back into the cover provided by Window. Metalised strips that confused the German radar. That was the other, that was the other case when we nearly, when we were in danger. But David, David Jenkins, the pilot, he was completely unflappable. If you look at that photograph, you’ll see. The next. He’s the tallest one. Now, that one, that’s Bill Ranson, a pharmaceutical chemist in civvy street. He was about ten years older than us. A hard headed Yorkshireman. And [laughs] they didn’t get on too well together but it never showed up because we functioned as a very good crew together. But he would sometimes say, ‘Jenks,’ he called him Jenks for short, ‘We’re one degree port of track.’ [unclear] Completely unflappable and he rightly got the DFC. If, if you look, if you look at that I can tell you. That’s the flight engineer. He was, he was a regular. He joined as a boy, a boy entrant, as a mechanic. That’s the mid-under gunner. Where are we? See that there? That’s a .5 sticking out the bottom. He sat astride a big hole with a .5 pointing up like that because the Germans used to go underneath.
AS: That is unusual. Does, does that mean then that you didn’t have H2S?
HR: That’s right. Yes.
AS: You had a .5 fitting.
HR: That’s right. Yeah. And next to him is Bill Ranson I told you about. That’s Bob. Bob Patton from Dungannon. The bomb aimer. And that’s myself. And that’s Bill Gorbon, the rear gunner and this chap is Reg Bijon from Vancouver. Royal Canadian Air Force. He’s the mid-upper. So we had eight in our crew instead of seven.
AS: So, many nations. From Canada to Yorkshire.
HR: Oh yes. Yeah. They had a lot of Australians, New Zealanders. One or two West Indians. Several Canadians. Bomber Command was really a multi-national force. One of our flight commanders was from the South African Air Force. And he achieved a little bit of notoriety. Well, that was the wrong way because he was doing a good thing. Towards the end of the war the Germans had taken all the food they could from Holland and they were starving. So 115 Squadron was selected to drop them some emergency food parcels. The Germans agreed not to fire on them and this chap, this South African, Captain Martin his name was, he led, he led the first drop of food to the starving Dutchmen. Later on, of course it was very well organised. And when the war ended the Americans joined in as well and dropped it. Ever so many food parcels for the starving Dutchmen. Anyway, so our tour came to an end of ops. We all went our different ways. I think I’m the only surviving member, they’re all they’re nearly all dead now, they are. I used to keep in, keep in quite contact with him. Bill Gorbon. He moved to Canada. Who else? Oh and of course, David. David Jenkins, the pilot. They’ve all, they’ve all shuffled off I’m afraid. I’m the last surviving member of the crew. Now, what are my thoughts about Bomber Command? Well at the time we were doing a job to shorten the war. Occasionally you thought, you know, those poor buggers down there are getting the rough end of it. But then we were told it was necessary because there was a lot of talk about area bombing. We were always given a target to bomb. Factories. Always factories. We did a lot of Ruhr bashing. And there’s only one, one occasion when we were aware of it. We did a raid on Stettin which is a long way away. We took off, we took off at dusk and landed at dawn. We were out all night on that one. Nine hours ten minutes. And it was a ship repair facility and the idea was to burn the workers out of their homes so that they couldn’t work on the ships. That was the idea. Now the only time we ever mentioned, ‘Your target tonight is the old city of Stettin which is occupied by a lot of people repairing ships. If your raid is successful, they won’t be able to any more.’ It wasn’t particularly aimed at the population. It was just aimed at their houses so they had to move out. Whether it worked or not I don’t know. We did several raids on Stettin. The raid I did was with another crew. That’s how I came to do thirty ops, because normally only the pilot, his first trip was with another crew so the rest of the crew only did twenty nine but I did another one with another crew and that’s how I did thirty. After my ops I was posted to an air sea rescue station at Beccles. They were flying the Warwick which was like a larger version of the Wellington and they could carry an airborne lifeboat. It dropped on three parachutes. And on the station strength there I was working in the ops room as what they called signals briefing. If a crew was going out they all took it in turns to put them up to date if there were any changes. I always used to remind them make sure you switch your sets on and check that they’re on. Because there was [laughs] an unfortunate incident that happened regarding a rather senior member. Anyway, that’s by the way. That was part of my job and while I was on the squadron. I was promoted flight sergeant. And in due course of time I was promoted warrant officer. Well, the station closed in August ’45. Just after VJ day. And 280 Squadron as they were were sent up to Thornaby on Tees. So, there we are. There were four of us, four warrant officers doing this job, signals briefing as it was called, and we were all out of a job. And the chap who took over the command of the station said, ‘Look you chaps I’ve got four jobs for you. Pick them out and please yourself.’ And we looked and one of them was station warrant officer. And that’s the one I picked. So, I suddenly found myself the senior NCO on the station. Only about a hundred and fifty men left because they were just packing up stores mainly. But I had a job to do and I did it. And one of them, before the signals staff were posted away, ‘Mr Rossiter would you like to take the wireless operators out in the perimeter track and give them a spot of drill?’ I thought yeah okay, ‘Righto sir,’ and I did. And they, you’re not supposed to move when you are giving orders. So, I’ve got a good voice and they’re marching along and a lorry went by just as I shouted out, ‘About turn.’ And you’ll never believe this. Half of them turned and the other half didn’t. So, they were [laughs] ‘About turn,’ and of course they both turned inwards and they collapsed with laughter, you see. This is perfectly true and it couldn’t, it couldn’t have been worked better if they’d prepared for it. It was so funny. But that was my experience of drilling. Anyway, the time came when the station completely closed and they sent me up to Thornaby to do the same job with the squadron. Briefing. Signals briefing. And I was discharged from there. Well there’s one little thing. My Lorraine was born in March ’45. She was just coming up to fourteen months old and my wife said, ‘Can you try and get a pushchair?’ Well there was a Halfords. Just across the river from Thornaby is Stockton on Tees and there was a Halfords there. And I bought a pushchair for the grand sum of two pounds ten shillings. Quite a sturdy thing and just before I left Thornaby the group captain said to me, ‘Well, I see you’ve had a year’s signals experience. You’d probably keep your rank if you stayed in the regular Air Force,’ because normally you drop a rank. He said, ‘You’ll probably keep yours but I can’t make any promises.’ I said ‘Well sir I’ve got a daughter — a wife and daughter, and I think my first loyalty is to them. So, thank you very much sir but I must decline the offer.’ So, the following day I’m walking out the station. I’ve got a kit bag, an attaché case and a pushchair. Transport. And I walked out and he came by and said ‘I see what you mean by domestic responsibilities!’ he said [laughs] Yeah. That ends my tale of RAF service and — any questions?
AS: Absolutely, Harry. That, that is the best, most joined up, most coherent presentation I have ever seen.
HR: Thank you.
AS: Ever heard. Thank you very much for that. I think we’ll pause and have a chat about some of the things that are in it if that’s alright.
[recording paused]
AS: There is of course more after RAF service, Harry.
HR: Yes. When I was discharged from the RAF in May 1946 I could strip a Browning gun in the dark and I could send Morse and receive Morse code at eighteen words a minute. I hadn’t got enough flying hours in to join civil flying so I went where I could earn money and it turned out to be the Ford Dagenham. Ford’s at Dagenham. Building gear boxes. The pay was good and their formula was very simple. You work and we’ll pay you accordingly and I got a decent wage but my health began to suffer. I did six years. There I was, half asleep, taking the gear box off the line, putting the back end on, putting it back on. Forty seconds that took and I could do it without thinking about it. Anyway, as I say my health began to suffer. I was always catching colds and my hands were perpetually permeated in grease. So wherever I did, you know. Anyway, I said to Edna, my wife, ‘I need to get out of there. I need an outdoor job.’ Right. You know, ‘You can see I’m not all that much.’ She said, ‘Why don’t you join the police force?’ Well, I was horrified. Me a copper? But it was the best thing I ever did.
AS: Yeah.
HR: Because I was outdoors. The middle photo there is when I was a village policeman. A constable. Village constable. And the one above is my wife standing at the door of the police house. A place called Horndon on the Hill in South Essex. And I had six very happy years there. Or we did. They used to come and speak to her as much as they spoke to me because if she didn’t know she knew where, some way to find out and she was very popular in the village. And she loved it and so did I. But in the fullness of time they decided to make me a sergeant and I was posted to Chelmsford and I was in the town there. And then I was sent on a rural section. I don’t know if you ever watched that programme “Heartbeat.” Well it’s similar to that but, mind you not all my men were on duty at the same time. I had to spread them out over like most of the day and night. But that was called a rural section at a place called Danbury which is an Essex beauty spot. I stayed there for six and a half years and then I bought my own, we bought our own house in Braintree. This particular job, a rural sergeant you had to live on the job. So they posted me back to Chelmsford town where I was a station sergeant for about six months. Then I asked to be transferred to Braintree where I was living. So, I finally finished up resigning, retiring from Essex police in August 1977 after twenty five years’ service. And then I went to the Lord Chancellor’s Department in charge of court security at Chelmsford Crown Court. And then I became a county court bailiff. And that was a most interesting job. As a county court bailiff you were entitled to, you were able to do, make legal arrangements. Suppose you owed this sum of money I would come to you and say, ‘Now, you owe this sum of money. How can you pay it? Have you got any way of paying it?’ Well we could manage so much a month. Well, I said, ‘Sign your goods over to me. So long as you do what you say you’re going to do you won’t see me again.’ And occasionally I would, if they were a bit overdue I’d call on them and collect the money. It didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t supposed to but the person got their money. That was the important thing. That’s why I considered that to be the most important. I did get a couple of pats on the back for it. Whenever you’re bending the rules a little. If they’re overdue you’re supposed to take their goods away. But then the plaintiff had got their money. You know. That was the most important thing. So I quite enjoyed doing that.
AS: That’s great. Look. I think we’ll pause again there.
HR: Okay. My arms hurt.
AS: Yeah.
[recording paused]
HR: We were all sent. The three of us, and my friends. The four of us who volunteered were sent to Turnberry. It’s now a golf course but it was an RAF station. On the top of the hill overlooking the golf course as it is now is a large hotel. That was an aircrew hospital. Anyway, I say there was a bunch of us and then there’s this big room. I seem to remember there was some booze knocking about. I’m not quite sure about that. I know it was all very friendly. And I started talking to a chap. He was a Londoner. A chap called Ted Hall. He came from Ely and he was a furniture designer. A bit older than me. So he came to me and he said, ‘I’ve found a nice pilot,’ he says, ‘I think he’s very intelligent. Come with me,’ So we went, and Bill Thompson his name was and he came from Largs in Ayrshire. Quite a well to do family. His uncle was Lord Mackay. He used to run British Caledonian but I didn’t know that at the time. A very likeable chap. Same age as me. A civil engineer. And then we looked around. Of course, we had what they called an observer. An observer being the one who had both trades of navigator/bomb aimer and he wore the O brevet. And we found this chap was sitting in the corner looking rather disconsolate so we went and spoke to him. He was an older man. [unclear] Monroe. He came from Wimbledon. And so he came and we, the four of us got on very well together. We were together for a year — 1943. And we never never ever had a crossed word between us at all.
AS: And you were all first tour were you?
HR: No. This was, we never did do a tour. This was Coastal.
AS: Yeah.
HR: This was Coastal Command training.
AS: Yeah. So, when you crewed up none of you had ever been on operations?
HR: Oh no. That’s quite right. Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HR: Yeah.
AS: Can you think back to, to what the OTU training involved?
HR: Yes. It’s a Coastal Command. As I say they were torpedo bombers. But they were also used for general reconnaissance. So did a lot of navigational exercises over the Irish Sea and to the northwest of Scotland. What’s the furthest outpost? I forget the name of it now. Out in the Atlantic. We had to fly there by dead reckoning and there was no problem with that. Spot on time. ETA. There it was. You probably know. I just can’t remember the name of it now. It’s a rocky outpost.
AS: Rockall?
HR: This is on the northwest of Scotland. I don’t think that was the name. No. I’m not sure. You may be right. I can’t remember.
AS: I’m rarely right, Harry. We can check that out on the map.
HR: I mean that’s, that’s how, sorry, he was good. Course we all clapped hands [laughs].
AS: Were you involved in the navigation with him? Were you taking bearings, QDMs and all the rest of it?
HR: Well, this involved mainly him. But he did ask me twice for a QDM. You know what that is of course. But mostly his mathematics were spot on which is one of the reasons why I couldn’t. I had to be a wireless operator because my, I left school when I was fourteen. A thorough training. A very good training. The 3Rs.
AS: Yeah.
HR: Excellent. Laindon High Road School. Excellent school. But, oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention. In November, when I was on the squadron the signals leader, he said, ‘Right son, I’m putting you up for a commission’. Alright but when it came to it of course the flight commander, a Squadron Leader [Gorrey?] I remember him very well. He put a piece of paper and on it was A+B=C. He said, ‘Do you know what that means?’ And it just blinded us. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I haven’t a clue.’ I mean the most simple. I know all about it now but I didn’t know then. So he said, ‘What sort of education did you have?’ I said, ‘I left school when I was fourteen, sir.’ ‘Oh I see. Well, I’ll pass you on to the squadron commander. See what he thinks.’ Wing Commander Shaw. I remember the name. He said, ‘Well, you’ve obviously got some quality otherwise you wouldn’t have been recommended but I’m afraid your lack of education shows.’ I said, ‘Yes sir. It’s no more than I expected.’ He said, ‘Try again in six months’ time. In the meantime, find a good officer and see what your shortcomings were.’ That’s rather funny. It’s all written down there. And the Irishman, is that him, yes Bob Patton from Dungannon. He got himself blind drunk. He was missing for twenty four hours. They found him in the toilet, dead drunk.
AS: The gents, I hope.
HR: Was he a good officer? [laughs] Flying officer, in fact he was. Anyway, there we are. But the war, the war in Europe finished in six months because I’d finished my ops in December ’44.
AS: On, on the Coastal you told us there were two wireless operator/air gunners. Did you switch duties?
HR: That’s right. Well we had a gun turret in the Beaufort. Two gun turrets. So, one worked it and then another day he’d say, ‘Harry, would you like a turn and I’ll go and sit in the turret?’ That’s how we worked. Very friendly. As I say this lot we performed quite well. We all seemed to do our job. There was no arguments in the air but when we finished our tour the group captain said, ‘We’d like you to go on Pathfinders. You’re a good crew. But you’ve got to go together. So he said, ‘I’m not flying with him anymore.’ So that was that. So there, as I say we had so we had a reputation as a good crew. Otherwise they wouldn’t have said that.
AS: So when, when you’d come back from India you’d been in the Air Force quite a long time.
HR: Two years. Yeah.
AS: Were you really keen to get on to operations or —
HR: Well, yeah we were really. I mean, we were completely in the dark as to what we were going to do. Didn’t know we were going on to Bomber Command. We guessed we might be. The possibility. But we didn’t know until all of us got our embarkation leave. We thought to RAF Number 2 Advanced Flying Unit. And that’s what it was about.
AS: And so you, in a sense you’re going through the training mill again.
HR: Yeah.
AS: For a very different job. What —
HR: So 1943 was a complete waste of time because that’s when we did all our Coastal Command training.
AS: Yeah.
HR: A complete waste of time. And then when you shudder, it makes you think, taxpayer’s money. I mean. There was about twenty crews. Not as many as that. About fifteen. About fifteen. I think it must have been at least fifteen crews flew out from Portreath to India. Diverted to join 217 Squadron in Ceylon. As I say that was as far as we got. Karachi and Poona. Poona was just a, just a rest camp really. It didn’t, the CO was a Wing Commander Beck and I really felt sorry for him because he did his best. Him and his adjutant was a Squadron Leader Findlay Fleming. They did their best to find us things for us to do but the Aussies didn’t appreciate it very much. One day, oh and incidentally we were all issued with 38 Smith and Wessons when we left to go to India. Why, I don’t know. We never knew. Anyway, afternoon in Poona all taking a nap and these Indians, there’s a road ran through the camp, these Indians with their monkeys performing tricks. ‘See the monkey dance sahib?’ You know. And suddenly a bang bang bang. Looked out and there’s these chaps running for their lives. And this Aussie is sort of clinging around this post of his, blazing away, over their heads of course. ‘You, waking us up. Waking us up you silly bastards,’ et cetera et cetera. So, there was a hell of a stink of course. They called in all our revolvers. We didn’t want them anyway. But there you are. That’s typical of Aussies. There was another occasion too when we were on OTU. A couple of chaps came in late and they were arguing the toss so one of these Aussies, ‘Put that light out.’ ‘Get knotted.’ ‘I said put that light out.’ Old gunner et cetera. So he pulls out an air pistol and shoots the bulb out.
AS: Yeah. On, on this year, or more than a year when you were training and then on the Coastal and out to India did your music, did you take that through or did, as well?
HR: Yes. At various because I used to do a lot of trumpet playing. Because what happened, when I was twelve I was in the Boy Scouts Brass Band and there was [unclear] at a place called the Manor Mission which is the only part of old Laindon left. Everything else has gone. Anyway, and they had an adult brass band and one of them volunteered to be the band master. So he said to my uncle who had played tenor horn in the band, ‘If we put Harry on tenor horn you’ll see he practises won’t you?’ He said, ‘Of course I will.’ And he did. That was quite fun actually. That’s when I started playing. But we didn’t use the expression cool in those days but it was cool really for a young man to play cornet. You were playing a tune you know. You were somebody. So I did, I graduated to cornet. I tried euphonia first for a while which I quite liked but I had to get on cornets which I did. And that graduated to trumpet playing. And I played in a village dance band called the Rio 7. There were never seven as far as I knew. Edna said they were crap. Those were almost exactly her exact words. But we were the only band in the village so we got plenty of work playing the trumpet. When I went into the RAF, if there was any opportunity, I did some trumpet playing. When I was on my signals course, as I say I played. There was a Training Wing dance band. I played second trumpet. A big band it was too. Mostly Glenn Miller stuff. And other places where we moved to if they had a dance band I’d go and sit along, sit down with them, you know. So I did a fair amount. And 1945 I was in the Beccles place after my tour. Of course, the end of the, the end of the war in Europe there was a lot of parties and that little band we had, we were in great demand and my nose started bleeding. When I saw the MO, he said, ‘Well you’d better pack up the trumpet for a while. It’s a good job it did bleed,’ he said, ‘It may have given you a stroke. High blood pressure like that. So leave it. Leave it off for about six months.’ So I was thinking, alright. I’ve got to play something. I know. I’ll learn to play the piano. So I go in to Beccles and find this lady, very well known in show business called Madame Shapiro. And she gave me the piano lessons and she said, ‘What you’ve got to do is to play scales and play scales every day for an hour at least. You’ve just got to do it and the sooner you can play scales without looking at the keys you’re ready to start playing.’ Well, I hadn’t got the patience. In any case If I started doing that in the sergeants mess I’d probably have something thrown at me. So, I never really did get, did master the piano. But it went off and I was back playing. In 1963 it was, in the police force, the Essex Police Band was formed and Edna said, ‘Well I know you like playing. You go along and play if you want to but you might regret it.’ Very prophetic. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. So I went along and played in the Essex Police Band and I was their principal cornet for a while till somebody along, came along a bit better than me. Then I was the deputy principal cornet. There we are there. That’s it. You can see me sitting. That one. That’s the Essex Police Band 1972. And I had some quite happy times. And what she meant by, ‘You might regret it,’ I was in charge of a small section in North Chelmsford called Melbourne Park and myself and five constables. And the chief constable came along to see me one day, Sir John Nightingale. ‘Sergeant Rossiter, why haven’t you passed your promotion exam?’ I said, ‘I suppose I haven’t studied hard enough.’ He said, ‘Well bloody well get on with it. I need inspectors.’ Well that was most unusual. I’m not kidding you. You don’t get chief constables telling that to sergeants every day. He was inviting me to be, he said ‘I want you to be an inspector but pass your exam.’ I never did. Too much playing you see. That’s what Edna meant. She said afterwards, ‘Well, perhaps you might have been a bit worrying. You’re happy being a sergeant, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah. It don’t worry me.’
AS: Fantastic. When, when you were back and it’s after D-day by this time you were posted to, to the heavies to crew up all over again. What was that process like? Much the same or —
HR: Much the same. Well it was slightly different. This was at Silverstone. A big old bomber OTU there. We went there in early April and, well actually what happened was in between OTU [pause] no, the AFU at Millom and the OTU we had, we had ten days leave so I got married. In March 1944 we got married. And there was another humorous situation because the vicar, we knew him quite well, I said I’ve only, ‘I’ve only got a few days,’ you know. So he said, ‘Oh that’s alright. I can get you a special licence. Don’t worry about the banns. You haven’t got time for the banns.’ So he got me a special licence. And we were married in this church, ‘And I now pronounce you man and wife’ and he said it, so funny, he said, ‘Oh go on Harry. Kiss her’ [laughs] as if needed prompting. Yeah. And so, there you are. And I, Edna said, ‘Well ask them for an extension of leave then. They can only say no. They can’t shoot you.’ So I did. And of course it came back, ‘No. Come back.’ So, when I started OTU which was at Silverstone, it was a big crowd, about two hundred of us sitting in this room. And the instructor said, ‘One of your number recently took himself a wife. He liked it so much he wanted an extension.’ Ha ha. And my friend said, ‘I bet that was you.’ It was [laughs] Anyway, he left and said, ‘Get yourselves crewed up.’ Well we were wandering about. Now who did I meet first? I can’t remember really. Yeah. Who was it who I met first? No. It wasn’t Bill. I think it was Jenks actually. Yes. I went up. I saw this tall chap with pilot’s wings and he stood here, I said, ‘You looking for a wireless operator?’ ‘Yeah. You’ll do,’ he said. ‘That’s alright. Yeah.’ And then we were joined, who was on next? [pause] One of the gunners. Which one was that? The French Canadian. Reg Bijon. He was the next one. And then, I don’t know how we got on to Bill. Bill Ranson, the navigator. I suppose he was looking sorry for himself. I don’t know. And the flight engineer. We did all our Bomber Command training on Wellington’s which strictly speaking didn’t need a flight engineer. But nevertheless he was part of the crew. And then when we learned to fly four-engined stuff, Stirlings it was called a Conversion Unit. A Heavy Conversion Unit. Then we acquired an extra gunner which was Bill Gorbon. A farmer from Northwich in Cheshire.
AS: Wonderful. Now, you, you’d come off twin-engined coastal. Virtually early, early war so you were doing wireless and DF. Did you have to learn a lot more to cope with the equipment in the heavies or was it much the same equipment?
HR: It wasn’t, it wasn’t a question of it. Just that the, there were, that’s why we had to go to this. Because of the Bomber Command way of doing things. It wasn’t very complicated and already got the basics thoroughly ground in after the service with Coastal Command. As they, as they say, take it on board. It’s quite easy really. Radio silence was strict but there was one. This trip I did with the other crew was different. It was a wind finding aircraft. It’s all in those notes. As you know when you drop a bomb it’s liable to be knocked off course by the wind. So they had to feed, to steer, you steered to allow for it. And that was called wind finding. So what they did, this particular crew every half an hour the navigator and the bomb aimer between them estimated the speed, the speed and direction and I was handed a slip of paper and told to send it back to base. In the Morse code, you know. It was all Morse code. I did it every half an hour. And when Bomber Command, because we weren’t the only aircraft doing it and they worked out what, decided what was a good mean average wind speed and direction and half an hour before zero hour on the raid it would be transmitted to the whole force to be used.
AS: So everybody set the same wind vector on to the bomb sights.
HR: Yeah. Yeah. And it did help but as you know in 1944 things were starting to get better because we had the Gee. The Gee. The Gee box as it was called. A very good thing. Oh that was another funny story. At Beccles this 280 Squadron, occasionally one of us would be sent up with one of the crews to see how they got on and we had a load of ATC boys. About four of them anyway. And the Warwick was quite roomy. A table about this big with, and, so one of them said, ‘Can you show us how you work out.’ So I said, ‘Yes. You —’ I had a copy of the receiver in the thingy, ‘See those bits,’ you know they were lined up, you know. And took the readings off them and put them on to the chart. And we were over the North Sea at the time but according to my calculations we were just off the coast of Cornwall. I thought my face was red. I was using the wrong chart, that’s why [laughs] So we got the right chart and managed to save my face.
AS: Because there, there was more than one Gee chain wasn’t there?
HR: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Could we talk a little, a little bit about preparations for, for a mission briefing and what not?
HR: Yes. Well —
AS: What was your, you know, day for a raid or a night for a raid? What would be a typical?
HR: Suppose it was a night raid. The, over the tannoy would come, ‘There will be a lecture for navigators at 12 o’clock,’ at so and so. And that was the beginning. That meant that we were going on ops that night and that’s how they announced it. So all the navigators got together and of course they were given all the details and usually joined by the pilots. They found it a good idea to do so. They were allowed to do so if they wanted. Most of them did. And then posted up in the sergeant’s mess and the officer’s mess would be the battle order. A big A4 sheet of paper detailing all the crews that were on it. And that’s when you knew. And then you went on to the main briefing which would be about two hours before or about an hour before take-off time due. Then first of all you’d would get the intelligence officer saying what the raid was all about. Then you get the Met. And then you get the squadron commander. Then you go into details and they used to talk about all, about all up weight, the amount of petrol you were carrying and all that sort of stuff. Don’t quite know what good that was but there you are. And then as I say the squadron commander would go into the details and what to avoid. What’s this and what’s that and don’t forget your banking. We didn’t have, didn’t have a mid-under gunner at first. We used to do banking searches like that to make sure nobody was hiding underneath. And there was, oh yes that was another funny thing which is in there. Before we got the mid-under gunner Paddy the bomb aimer said, ‘I’m going to drop a flare.’ You know, the bombs go. ‘Would you mind walking down and see if it goes?’ Well, we were at oxygen height so I clipped an oxygen bottle to my parachute harness and down I went. Down the fuselage and just as I got to the chute I saw it go down. Zunk. And then suddenly I was thrown off balance. We were being attacked. And I’m in pitch darkness I hadn’t a clue. There’s an intercom socket but I couldn’t find it. So about five seconds there was a bit of panic because I didn’t know what was going on. Whether we were going down in a dive or whatever. But I couldn’t stand up and the reasons why it was the bottle had become detached from my parachute harness and I was treading on it. And that was why I couldn’t stand up. I did. Plugged in and it was okay. I said it went, you know and that was all he wanted to know. But yeah, it’s one of the, one of the only times really when I really was what you might call blind panic because you don’t know what’s going on.
AS: So that was a fighter attack.
HR: Yeah.
AS: At this stage of the war what, were the fighters your chief concerns or the flak or collision or or what?
HR: Fighters really. Yeah. No doubt about it. But they had, they had choice, you know. They were spoiled for choice. And the infamous raid in March on Nuremberg. You may have, if you ever, if anybody talks about the Nuremberg raid they talk about the one in March which was a complete and utter fiasco. We lost a hundred bombers that night. A hundred. Ninety six were shot down, mainly by night fighters and another ten were written off when they got home and crashed. A hundred and six I think is the official figure. One of them is mentioned in there as being number ninety six or something. Shot down.
AS: Picking up on that, and not so much the raid but the loss of aeroplanes, what, how big a factor was, was the weather? Did you ever go out and the weather changed and you end up with this —
HR: Yes.
AS: Big mess over England.
HR: The very last one. December is when Glen Miller was killed. And I’ll tell you what happened. Well it’s been generally accepted what happened. December the 15th we were sent out to bomb a place called [Siegen?] and there was a lot of, the weather was putrid and all civilian flying was cancelled, you know. There was no question of it. Because what happened of course as we climbed up to fifteen to sixteen feet icing took over and one Lancaster, when one Lancaster crashed because of it they called us all back. Well we never landed with a full bomb load. We used to jettison our bombs in The Wash but others jettisoned them in the Channel. What the popular theory is now is that Glen Miller’s plane was brought down either by a direct hit from a bomb but more likely from a blast from a bomb. Because there was a rear gunner reported seeing a light aircraft plunge into the water. It must have been Glen Miller’s plane because there was no other plane out.
AS: Yeah.
HR: That’s the only time. There was another occasion I believe. In that box file is my flying logbook.
AS: Shall we pause and get that?
[recording paused]
AS: Okay. Harry, so we’re, we’re back again with the tape running. We’ve just been talking about an example where the smooth bomber stream perhaps didn’t quite happen on the [ Siegen ] raid. Could you tell me what happened then?
HR: Yes. There was very very thick cloud. A lot of Cumulonim about which was a rather dangerous cloud. So we were dodging that but when we finally broke cloud about fifteen thousand feet the bomber force — the Lancasters and Halifaxes were all over the sky. So whoever was leading the raid decided to do a big loop. A circuit I suppose you’d call it. And as he did it so we all formed up and so we headed for the target in some sort of order.
AS: So this was a force of hundreds of bomber aeroplanes.
HR: About two hundred and forty.
AS: Doing a merry go around in the sky.
HR: That’s right. Yeah.
AS: And not, not troubled by flak?
HR: No. We weren’t actually [pause] of course I couldn’t tell you where we were but we were certainly over the continent somewhere. Because of the thick clouds as I say when we finally, obviously trying to avoid collision in the cloud but when it finally did break through as I say we were scattered far and wide. And I was standing up looking out the astrodome. I saw it all happen.
AS: And this, this actually was your second consecutive trip to [Siegen ] and the first one.
HR: We didn’t.
AS: In your logbook says —
HR: Didn’t get there. Recalled.
AS: Duty not carried out. What was that about? Was that the weather?
HR: The weather, yes. Icing. Icing.
AS: Okay.
HR: After icing had brought down one Lancaster they called the rest of us back. And that was the day when Glen Miller was killed. And it’s a popular belief now that he was killed by jettisoned bombs in the Channel because he couldn’t land with a full bomb load. And our squadron jettisoned in the Wash so we weren’t responsible. But some squadrons jettisoned in the Channel. And we think Glen Miller was brought down by some of the bombs.
AS: Okay. Did you have, as a squadron and as a, as a group particular forming up procedures to join the stream and places to go?
HR: No. We were just told to fly in a sensible, sensible gaggle formation and just be careful to avoid collisions.
AS: And this was on daylights presumably.
HR: On daylight raids. Yes.
AS: Was it any different at night?
HR: Well you couldn’t see. Although, as I say visibility wasn’t as bad as you might think at night time but you couldn’t sort of, you couldn’t see everywhere and in any case another Lancaster, perhaps it was a half a mile away or so it would just be lost in the darkness. But we did see others sometimes and we always used to try and keep clear. But I don’t, I don’t remember any cases of collisions at night, strangely enough when you might have thought it would have happened.
AS: How about coming home? Did you, well your navigator would do it but did you come home on Gee to particular points?
HR: Well, we did, you had this course of course to come home on and we had Gee to help navigation. What we had to be careful of when joining the circuit to land was intruders. At Witchford they used to have, and all the airfields had a red, red light flashing out their code so you could know where you were. And if they were switched off that was to warn you that German fighters were about. Of course, you were coming in to land totally relaxed and they would nip in and shoot. In this book there’s a record of intruders at Witchford where, where I think three Lancs were lost one night through intruders.
AS: Wow. Can you remember the procedure then? What if the light goes out? What happened then? Do you scatter or go to a beacon or — ?
HR: No. You just continue flying but you’re very much on the alert. Until they just gave up and went off. It was all clear and the light would come on again and we’d land.
AS: When you landed and a big sigh of relief, switched everything off there’s the debriefing. Could you tell me some details of how debriefings used to go?
HR: Well, as soon as we touched down that was a moment for relaxing and a great sigh of relief. Whoopie we’re home again. Thank the good lord. Yeah. That was, that was the feeling and a noticeable lack of tension. Because when you were taking off you’re flying into the unknown. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Whether you would be coming back or not. But when you had come back and decided all was safe then we used to get out and say, ‘Jenks, well done,’ you know. And he’d say, ‘Well, never mind. I couldn’t have done it without you lot.’ It was a great relief. And then we used to go to be picked up by the crew bus and given cups of coffee with, laced with rum which used to, strangely enough helped us to sleep. And everybody got asked whether they had anything to say, you know. And we’d say, ‘I saw ——' And one would say, ‘Yeah. I saw a chop,’ he’d say. ‘Whereabout were you?’ ‘We were just passing over the middle of the target and saw a chop out to starboard.’ There was a little bit of, I don’t know what you’d call it but it’s put about that the Germans put up what they called Scarecrows. Things that explode to make you think it’s one of your bombers being, being hit by night fighters or flak. Well, the Germans denied any knowledge of that. They said, ‘No, we didn’t.’ So it did seem as a little bit of thing to try and keep the morale up. It wasn’t, well they weren’t, that was the Germans trying to scare us. The Germans said no that wasn’t the case.
AS: So potentially at least the Scarecrow story was put out by your own.
HR: Yeah.
AS: High Command.
HR: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. And you’re talking about, about tension and the release of tension. When, one of the things that what one certainly reads about that for trips, long trips sometimes Benzedrine or wakey- wakey pills were available. Did you as a crew or an individual have any experience of, of this?
HR: Well, you were, you were given the choice. You were given the Benzedrine tablets. I usually took one. We weren’t sillily taking them. Just the one. There was one raid when we were coming back and I found myself, see I sat in a seat with the bench in front of me with the Morse key on my right and the set in front of me and I was down under the, my head was banging underneath the table and I was sound asleep and I came, obviously because what happened when they wore off you didn’t exactly go faint but you’d used up all your energy as it were.
AS: Okay. What — so they were freely available. Were they, well they weren’t on the table like sweets but did the medical officer hand them out or —?
HR: You know I can’t remember.
AS: I’m not surprised.
HR: Let me think. When we were, when we were being briefed we were given flight rations. Glucose sweets, chewing gum. I don’t remember ever getting chocolate. I know we used to get these boiled sweets and chewing gum. Chewing gum was very useful because as you got higher so your eardrums tend to stick and if you’re chewing gum they didn’t. That was the reason for these you know, it’s [pause] And I just can’t remember about the wakey-wakey pills as we used to call them.
AS: It was certainly available to you and I mean looking –
HR: Oh yes.
AS: At your logbook here. Stettin is a nine hour flight.
HR: That’s when, as I say we took off at dusk and landed in the dawn. Out all night.
AS: So would you take them, as you say on take-off but regularly or just when the longer flights or a mix really.
HR: I have to admit I can’t remember.
AS: It’s not, it’s not surprising.
HR: You know.
AS: Yeah.
HR: I remember taking the odd one but I certainly never took them in the daytime. I know that. Never took them in the daytime. Only for night time.
AS: Okay.
HR: Because obviously in nature you sleep at night so you’re in opposition to your body’s usual clock so you had to take something to compensate to keep you awake. That’s what it, really the reason for them.
AS: There’s a lot of, a lot of notes on flak in your, in your logbook.
HR: Yeah.
AS: An ever present danger.
HR: Oh yes. The German ack-ack was extremely accurate. It was very good. That’s why we dropped these metalised strips which completely confused their radar screens. But if you were out by yourself you were dead. Absolutely a sitting duck as far as they were concerned.
AS: What was your crew or your skipper’s attitude to weaving to try and avoid the flak? Did he do it? Or did his navigator persuade him not to?
HR: No. As I say we didn’t seem to have that problem because of the Window. I can never, can never remember — I mean as I say that the last occasion I mentioned in daylight when it did. It certainly changed height. Got back in the Window stream as it were. But apart from that I don’t think so. We were more, we used to weave of course if they were, if we were being chased by a fighter which apparently obviously worked because as I say I wouldn’t be sitting here otherwise. I’ll tell you a little thing that I only thought about it in recent years. At being briefed, it might be about twenty odd crews sitting in the big room all around a big table. You know. Seven, seven husky young men and a few hours later their remains are being shovelled into one coffin.
AS: Did you — ?
HR: Didn’t know about it at the time of course. It’s only, it’s only come out recently. It’s all, it’s in here. It’s all in there.
AS: Yeah. Its perhaps a very insensitive question but did you, when you were looking around the room of twenty crews did you ever get the feeling well he’s not going to come back.
HR: Yes. It did. We wondered. You know, the chap sitting there. He might be brash and bragging about his feminine conquests or something like that, you know. Yeah. I wondered, I wondered if he’d be doing the same tomorrow night. You know. Or tomorrow morning. Did occasionally. Not, not very often. You’re too preoccupied with your own thoughts, I think. Am I going to make it somehow?
AS: Yeah. On, on those own thoughts. Although you were very close obviously as a crew did you keep them very much to yourself? Did you ever discuss in the crew these issues of survival or not?
HR: No. It was never, it was never discussed amongst ourselves. No. I suppose, well I can’t explain it really. When you’re on the ground and after raids or before it you would, you would talk about other things. Sometimes I’d talk about music because there was this Welsh flight engineer. He had a good voice. He used to like singing. And talk about Welsh music sometimes. Things like that you know. Anything but, shall we say. Yeah. I often chatted. And sometimes when you were up, when you were flying the skipper would say, ‘Cease idle chatter.’ Yeah. It didn’t happen very often though in the air.
AS: So, so is it fair to say that, as young men you, you had to fight this personal battle, internal battle as well as being on top of your training and doing your job?
HR: I can’t say I’m aware of that. I used to think of, obviously at the time when I was on ops I was married and Edna was expecting actually. You know. I’d think about her and what she would say if she got the telegram. If I didn’t come back, you know. But not a great deal. My memory doesn’t serve me all that well. I don’t remember ever being in very, in much intensive conversation. We used to go to the squadron pub called the Lion of Lamb which is now just called the village, The Village Inn it’s called in Witchford it’s called. You went in there and all sorts of silly things, silly games you know. Singing around the piano perhaps.
AS: Yeah. Your, your ops were, were quite close together. There’s not a lot of stand down time was there? At this, at this period of the war.
HR: Yeah. There was some of course. But as you can see in red and green. Any in blue would be non-operational. Sometimes we were called upon to, if an aircraft went in for a major inspection. It needed an air test and the very last trip we did together was an air test. That was in January ’45. I think you’ll see it there. Air test.
AS: Yeah. Yes. Transit Thornaby. Yeah.
HR: And the only one I ever saw again was David. The pilot. David Jenkins. I never saw any of the others again. I spoke to them. Bill Gorbon, the rear gunner, he emigrated to Canada. He died in Toronto, I think. He was living near Niagara Falls. And Bill, Bill Phillips, the flight engineer, he’s dead. As a matter of fact, it’s through him, writing to him, I’ve still got the letter somewhere that he got out, he sent a letter. It just came out of the blue really, “You may remember me. I was your flight engineer.” Et cetera et cetera. And that’s how I got in touch with the others. And he started it really. As I say two or three of them. I mean, I was told that he was dead, and that he was dead. I don’t know about, that’s Les [Algon?] the mid-under gunner. He comes from Edmonton, and Bill Ranson was from Doncaster but I never knew anything about them at all.
AS: It seems a fairly common part of of service, or at least Bomber Command life that crews were almost deliberately dispersed I think.
HR: Well, I don’t know about that. I’ve got, I’ve only got these records because they’re my friends and this is a boyhood friend of mine in Laindon. We were in the Scouts together and he was a navigator on 83 Squadron. And he had three lucky escapes. The first time — that was a raid on Stettin and the aircraft was damaged. Was fatally damaged and they ditched in the sea. And they all got in their dinghy and floating along. Suddenly one of them fell out. He stood up. And they were off the coast of Sweden and [laughs] they thought the rough seas, rough seas were coming their way. It was the breakers on the beach. So they were very lucky. And the second time they were coming, they went out on operation but they’d developed, two of the engines packed up so they had to bale out. And, but then he did a second tour and in November 1943 they were shot down over Berlin and he was killed in action. And this other one with, he was the one who gave me the dig in the ribs and said, ‘I bet that was you, his name was Peter Barnes. He was on Beauforts. We were on Beauforts together. And they were killed on their first op in a brand new Lancaster. The first, the first the first operation for the Lancaster and the first operation for them and they were shot down at Russelsheim. That’s why I keep those.
AS: Yeah, I can, I can understand that. Did you mainly have you’re your own aeroplane?
HR: Mainly yes. It survived the war. It’s HK5 78. That’s the serial number, you know. Because some of the aircraft went from squadron to squadron so they had different squadron letters. We were, as you might be able to see on there KOC. C for Charlie.
AS: Charlie. Yeah.
HR: KO was the squadron letters. Because there were three flights. Each flight, eight to ten aircraft so of course you run out of letters in the alphabet. So the Flight C had a different course, different letters. KO was A and B Flights and C Flight was A4. And in November ’44 195 squadron was reformed using C Flight. And they went off to a place called Wratting Common and then we acquired another C Flight with the letters IL. And that’s how it worked. And some squadrons did different. They would say C flight would have the letter, they would put the letter F2 or something like that. Another way of doing that. But that was number 3 Group. That was the way we did it in 3 Group. One squadron that was part of our base, 514, they put up twenty two aircraft. That was the Nuremberg raid. Only four came back. They lost eighteen aircraft. That’s how it was. Yeah.
AS: Did you ever have anything to do with the emergency landing grounds? Woodbridge or Manston or Carnaby?
HR: We knew all about them but no. No. We, as I say we only got, we only got damaged once and that was just the one engine. We knew all about them of course.
AS: Yeah. A different theme entirely if I may. When you weren’t on ops was there much training? Dinghy drills?
HR: No. The only thing that used to happen if you weren’t on ops each each aircrew trade had its own leader. So, all the wireless operators, all the air gunners, all the navigators if they weren’t on ops they had to meet up and the leader of their trade, I mean ours was called the signals leader would give you any latest information. Points to watch, you know and anything that was new and you had to go. I remember this one chap, the signals leader was a Flight Lieutenant Hartley. A very nice chap. A gentleman. But one [laughs] he had to tell him off about his language and the strange thing was about that man I had some email from a relative, “I understand you knew… his name was Marston, Sergeant.” ‘Yes, I remember Sergeant Marston because he was told about his language.’ He wasn’t the only one of course who swore but Mr Hartley didn’t like a lot of it in open. And as I say it was during one of these sessions that he said to me, ‘I’m putting you up for commission.’
AS: Going again in another direction. When you were in Bomber Command, out in the pubs or wherever or on reading the press and listening to the newsreels what sort of sense did you have of how the population thought about Bomber Command at the time?
HR: There wasn’t much to tell about that. If we, if somebody had said to them, oh think of all those civilians that were killed, you know. Hamburg was the worst. Forty two thousand people were killed in air raids in Hamburg. They talk about Dresden. Twenty seven thousand. I mean that’s bad enough. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all war is evil. Whatever people say. If anybody talks to me I say civilians were killed. Yes. But then all war is evil. But what people used to think at the time was ---— bloody good luck. They started it, you know. We remember Coventry and Rotterdam. Of course, as you know Exeter took quite a pasting. Now, I’ve got a book. Oh, it’s upstairs, called, “The Baedeker Raids.” And it’s a lot of, and there’s one [pause] now where was I at? Let me think. Is it in here? No, I don’t think so. No. Anyway, there was in the, in this book it mentions Exeter and it said Number 17 Regent’s Park took a direct hit and it wasn’t this house. It was over there. The numbers were different.
AS: Yeah.
HR: But then all the tiles were blown off. That’s why there’s a lot, there’s a lot of moss on them. Because instead of the earth with the material I’m thinking of? They’re concrete tiles and they, ‘cause the moss, a lot of moss. And somebody suggested I ought to have the roof cleaned. A number of builders came along and one of them, common sense, said, ‘Does your roof leak?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well leave it alone. There’s extra protection.’ I’ve never thought of that. But that’s why.
AS: Yeah.
HR: Anyway, there we are.
AS: So very much the public was, was supportive.
HR: Oh yes.
AS: Behind you during that.
HR: Absolutely. Yeah.
AS: When it was over and you went back to civilian life do you think that support changed over time as new ideas came in?
HR: Not in the current population because they were, it’s very well for the people to talk about in the piping days of peace. They’ve got to, people have no idea how people were during the war. They can only guess unless they, they’ve still got parents old enough to tell them. It’s so totally different. You can’t really reconcile the two points of view really because people thought differently. I mean some people saw their relatives blown to pieces by bombs. We know that we killed more of them then they did of us and two wrongs don’t make a right and war is evil. But there it is. That’s the war. I did, I did send a letter up once to The Express and Echo. I think it’s in one. I don’t know if it’s in there or not. I’m not sure. Talking about this and I said. Oh yeah. Talking about the Memorial. That’s right. It’s a waste. I said, ‘Never mind about your thoughts about civilians. That Memorial is to the fifty five thousand five hundred men who were killed in action. Not killed or wounded. Killed in action.’ No other, no trace of them, you know. Their graves are there to be seen. And that’s a lot of people and if you’d have told them, I mean as I say this chap when we were sitting at OTU and talking about it I thought, ‘You don’t know it mate but you’ve only got about four months to live,’ you know. You didn’t think of that. Didn’t think of it of course. We thought we’d all survive. I had some good friends. One of that crew that collided, the wireless operator, he was a Canadian named Joe Dunsford, Flying Officer Joe Dunsford. He always had a book under his arm. Never went without it, ‘Hiya Harry. Read any good books lately?’ And suddenly he wasn’t there. You know.
AS: Yeah. Did you go to the opening of the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park?
HR: Yes.
AS: Yeah.
HR: I was in the salute area. Gina was with me. I’ve got, I’ve got photos of all that. This lot is Sunday. Last Sunday at St Paul’s Cathedral.
AS: Wow.
HR: You show me what they are and I’ll tell you what they were. Oh, that’s Mitch coming out of St Paul’s toilet. They’re four members of the Yatesbury Association, three members of the Yatesbury Association who I met there.
AS: So you all trained or did part of your training at Yatesbury Wireless School.
HR: I did my training.
AS: Yeah.
HR: They didn’t. The other three are they were all post war. That’s inside, that’s inside the City of London Guildhall where they had a reception after.
AS: And that is a large chunk of your family.
HR: That’s it, yes. That’s Lorraine who you’ve just seen. Gina. Gina, my granddaughter. My son in law and my grandson. You know, the one who’s up there. The Batchelor of Science.
AS: Why is it that aircrew always attract stunning blondes?
HR: Do you know who that is?
AS: I don’t.
HR: Have a look. It’s somebody quite famous actually.
[pause]
AS: It’s Carol Vorderman?
HR: That’s right.
AS: It is.
HR: It is.
AS: She’s had her hair blonded.
HR: That’s right. Yeah.
AS: She lives less than two miles from me.
HR: Does she?
AS: I didn’t recognise her.
HR: And there’s that one. I was wearing, I’ve got a little pin badge shaped like a Lancaster. It's in my lapel. And she explained to this city alderman, she said, ‘See. That’s the four Merlin engines on the Lancaster,’ she was saying to him.
AS: The same.
HR: The same. That’s a copy of the same one.
AS: Yeah. Fabulous. I’ll just pause that.
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 Harry Rossiter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Sutch
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
2015-09-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
01:19:05 audio recording
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARossiterHC150913
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
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Rossiter grew up in East London but his family moved to Essex which gave Harry a “ringside view” of the Battle of Britain. He volunteered as a bicycle messenger and tried to join the Royal Navy as a telegraphist. He was encouraged to join the RAF to train as a wireless operator. He was originally posted as support for 217 Squadron in Ceylon but he was later returned to England and posted to 115 Squadron at RAF Witchford. His crew survived a number of night fighter attacks while on operations. He recalls the losses on Bomber Command and his demobilisation in 1946. Harry had always had a love of music and played the trumpet and cornet in dance bands throughout the war and into civilian life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
India
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
England--London
England--Cambridgeshire
Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean--Rockall Bank
Poland--Szczecin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
115 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Gunnery School
air sea rescue
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Defiant
Dominie
entertainment
fear
Gee
Lancaster
memorial
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
Proctor
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Madley
RAF Millom
RAF Witchford
RAF Yatesbury
training
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1246/16339/LCannonHO1802390v1.2.pdf
02d1cc01bf3ac2be0e21622c8fc94ce7
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
Neale, Ted
E T H Neale
Description
An account of the resource
123 items. The collection concerns Edward Thomas Henry Neale (b. 1922, 1395951 Royal Air Force) who served as a navigator with 37 Squadron in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy. The collection contains his training notebooks from South Africa as well as propaganda leaflets dropped by the allies in the Mediterranean theatre.
The collection also contains a photograph album, navigation logs and target photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alison Neale and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Neale, ETH
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
H O Cannon’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for H O Cannon (1802390) air gunner, covering the period from 29 December 1943 to 3 November 1944 and from 16 October 1952 to 8 October 1953. He was stationed at RAF Moffatt, RAF Qastina, RAF Tortorella, RAF Upwood and RAF Hemswell. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Wellington, Defiant and Lincoln. He flew a total of 28 operations with 37 Squadron 3 daylight and 25 night and 2 supply drops. Targets were, Brod Basanki, Smederavo, Romsa, Pardubice, Bucharest, Ploesti, Pesaro, Portes les Valences, Szombathely, Kraljevo, Genoa, Marseilles, St. Valentin, Miskolc, Bologna, Ravenna, Rimini, Hegyeashalom, San Benedetto, Borovnica, Tuzla, Ficarolo, Uzice, Klopot. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Reynolds, Major Bayford, Sergeant Merrick and Flight Sergeant Taylor.
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
LCannonHO1802390v1
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Austria
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Czech Republic
France
Great Britain
Hungary
Italy
Middle East
Romania
Serbia
Slovenia
Zimbabwe
Austria--Sankt Valentin
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Tuzla
Croatia--Rijeka
Croatia--Slavonski Brod
Czech Republic--Pardubice
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Marseille
France--Valence (Drôme)
Hungary--Hegyeshalom
Hungary--Miskolc
Hungary--Szombathely
Italy--Bologna
Italy--Foggia
Italy--Ficarolo
Italy--Genoa
Italy--Pesaro
Italy--Ravenna
Italy--Rimini
Italy--San Benedetto del Tronto
Middle East--Palestine
Romania--Bucharest
Serbia--Kraljevo (Kraljevo)
Serbia--Smederevo
Serbia--Užice
Slovenia--Borovnica
Romania--Ploiești
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1952
1953
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-17
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-22
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-07-30
1944-07-31
1944-08-03
1944-08-04
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-20
1944-08-21
1944-08-22
1944-08-23
1944-08-24
1944-08-25
1944-08-27
1944-09-12
1944-09-18
1944-09-20
1944-09-21
1944-09-22
1944-09-26
1944-09-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-06
1944-11-16
1944-11-23
1944-12-03
148 Squadron
37 Squadron
97 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
Defiant
Lincoln
RAF Hemswell
RAF Upwood
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1246/16340/LNealeETH1395951v1.2.pdf
4aa165447a71b30da38873f406b3d454
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
Neale, Ted
E T H Neale
Description
An account of the resource
123 items. The collection concerns Edward Thomas Henry Neale (b. 1922, 1395951 Royal Air Force) who served as a navigator with 37 Squadron in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy. The collection contains his training notebooks from South Africa as well as propaganda leaflets dropped by the allies in the Mediterranean theatre.
The collection also contains a photograph album, navigation logs and target photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alison Neale and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Neale, ETH
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
Ted Neale's observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for E T H Neale, navigator, covering the period from 25 August 1943 to 16 October 1945. Detailing his flying training, operations flown, wartime and post war flying duties. He was stationed at SAAF Port Elizabeth, SAAF Woodbridge, RAF Qastina and USAAF Tortorella, as well as serving in the Mediterranean Allied Air Force. Aircraft flown were, Anson, Wellington, Defiant, Argus, Hudson, Baltimore and Expeditor. He flew 7 daylight and 22 night operations with 37 Squadron. His pilots on operations were Fight Sergeant Schlote, Major Bayford, Sergeant Taylor, Sergeant Smith, Flying Officer Evans, and Flight Sergeant Wilson. Targets were, Brod Brodsanski, Smederevo, Pardubice, Ploesti, Danube, Porte La Valence, Genoa, Marseilles, Bologna, Ravenna, Rimini, Heg Yeshalom, San Benedetto, Bronzolo, Szombathely, Tuzla, Podgorica, Sjenica, Tuffee, Figarolo, Probij, Udine, Uzice and Fredbrad.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
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Mike Connock
Cara Walmsley
Format
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One booklet
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LNealeETH1395951v1
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Czech Republic
France
Great Britain
Hungary
Italy
Montenegro
Romania
Serbia
South Africa
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Tuzla
Croatia--Slavonski Brod
Czech Republic--Pardubice
Danube River
France--Marseille
France--Valence (Drôme)
Hungary--Hegyeshalom
Hungary--Szombathely
Italy--Bologna
Italy--Bronzolo
Italy--Foggia (Province)
Italy--Genoa
Italy--Liguria
Italy--Ravenna
Italy--Rimini
Italy--San Benedetto del Tronto
Italy--Udine
Middle East--Palestine
Montenegro--Podgorica
Serbia--Smederevo
Serbia--Sjenica
Serbia--Užice
South Africa--East London
South Africa--Port Elizabeth
Romania--Ploiești
Danube River
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
37 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Defiant
Hudson
navigator
training
Wellington
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Akrill, William
Billy Akrill
W Akrill
Description
An account of the resource
132 items. The collection concerns Sergeant William Akrill (1922 - 1943, 1436220 Royal Air Force). He was a navigator with 115 Squadron. His Wellington was shot down by a night-fighter on an operation to Essen and crashed into the Ijsselmeer 12/13 March 1943. The collection contains his photographs, letters, and cartoons as well as an oral history interview with Michael and Ann Akrill about their uncle. There is also a subcollection of letters written as a teenage boy to his father in hospital. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Michael and Ann Akrill and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. Additional information on William Akrill is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/200183/" title="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/akrill-we/ ">IBCC Losses Database</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-04
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.
Identifier
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Akrill, M-A
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
No 1436220 L.A.C. Akrill
Hut 14,
No 4. A.O.S., R.A.F
West Freugh,
Stranraer,
Wigtownshire,
Scotland.
Friday 15.5.42
Dear Mum,
Well, I’m afraid you’ve seen the last of me for some time. I’ve not gone overseas but I think I’ve found the most desolate spot in these Islands! I’ve not seen much of the camp yet. It seems to be situated in the middle of bare bogs & moors – with no other sign of habitation. Stranraer, which seems to be a bit bigger than Collingham is the nearest link with civilisation & is about a dozen miles away. Nobody can give us the slightest idea about how long we’ll
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
be here – months anyway - & no leave!! Gosh the mere sight of a civillian [sic] will be a treat! What a difference there is between this & all my previous stations – posh hotels, fashionable seaside resorts, country mansions – and now dumped in a wooden hut with the barest essentials in the middle of a swamp!! Ah well I’ve had the smooth & I guess I can take the rough. Food doesn’t seem too bad anyway – its not good & thinks [sic] ain’t very clean, but there’ll be no going out and getting the good feeds I was used to do when food got bad at Eastb. Its pouring with rain at the moment so things look even worse! I think we fly in Blackburn Bothas and Ansons but there are Defiants, Lysanders & a few others too. Most of our flying will be over the Irish Sea.
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined].
We had a rather tiring journey – left Eastb at 5.30 p.m. got to Vic, changed to Euston, left there at 9.30. for Glascow. [sic] Got into Glascow [sic] at 7.20, left again at 9.30 & got to Stranraer, Changed to a Raf bus & finally got into camp just before 1 o’clock. It seems crazy having to go right up to Glascow [sic] & then come South again.
Had a few spare mins. in London so walked through Russel Sq. to the YMCA canteen. Had a pleasant surprise coming back & bumped into an old aquaintance [sic] of the Clevedon Hotel – Mary Newborne & her sister. It was grand seeing her again – she still lives there – but I had to hurry to catch train – nearly made 2 others late as it was.
I never expected a home posting. Of course the weather’s getting better now so there will be more training
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
done in this country. I was [deleted] hoping [/deleted] looking forward to overseas though the training in Canada is very insufficient & if you go to Rhodesia you stay in the East for O.T.U. and Ops. A pity Denny isn’t with me. He was one in a million & wants to stay in this country.
Thank you for your letters & Ros too. The £1 won’t be much use now! Have some money to send home out of the way. Hope Harry’s alright after his accident. What luck he’s having. Tell him to go steady or he’ll be [underlined] all [/underlined] bandage. Glad to hear Mickey’s still doing fine.
Will write more later – feel like some sleep.
All the best of love
[underlined] Bill [/underlined]
[inserted] P.S. Joyce Blow has to come to Stranraer to get home. It’s the Irish Embkn. Post these days. [/inserted]
[inserted] P.P.S. Left Eastb. with farewell visit from Jerry. Crashing naval guns &c. Quite a Hell’s Corner! No war here anyway. [/inserted]
[page break]
PS. I want to get my bike up here if I can so do you think you could see if you can find a lock & chain for it. Perhaps Brewster or Bales would have one. Its not safe to have it here without one. Pity its no light either. If you can get hold of a chain & lock it would be very useful if you could send it to Stranraer station, though it’s a long journey. Let me know if you have any ideas about it. A bike’s about the only way of getting out of camp & a ride round the moors now & then would be a change & keep me from going completely mad. I could [deleted] then [/deleted] get into Stranraer as well then.
Love
[underlined] Bill [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Bill Akrill to his mother
Description
An account of the resource
Bill describes his new location in Scotland as a desolate place, comparing it unfavourably with his previous stations: 'posh hotels, fashionable seaside resorts, country mansions'. Stranraer is about 12 miles away. Mentions that there are Ansons, Blackburn Bothas, Defiants and Lysanders present and that most of the flying will be over the Irish Sea.
Describes journey to Scotland and few spare minutes in London. Bill remains disappointed at not going overseas. Catches up with home news and asks in a PS if they can get a lock for his bike, which he wants to get to West Freugh as it will be the only way to get about and into Stranraer.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-05-15
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
Format
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Five page handwritten letter
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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EAkrillWEAkrill[Mo]420515
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
William Akrill
Anson
Botha
Defiant
Lysander
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF West Freugh
training
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Watson, Clifford
C Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Clifford Watson DFC (1922 - 2018, 1384956, 188489 Royal Air Force), a memoir, his service and release book, and a scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as an air gunner with 150 and 227 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Clifford Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Watson, C
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Photograph
JUST ANOTHER TAILEND CHARLIE
CLIFF WATSON DFC
HUNTINGDON
JUNE 1989
[page break]
[underlined] SEQUENCE [/underlined]
[underlined] File [/underlined] [underlined] Page [/underlined] [underlined] Location [/underlined]
[underlined] GROUP O [/underlined]
D 3 Joining up [underlined] AC2 [/underlined]
4 Babbacombe - 11 ITW Newquay [underlined] LAC [/underlined]
8 Troopship HMT Mooltan - Freetown - Capetown
G 7 Southern Rhodesia - Bulawayo [underlined] LAC [/underlined]
8 EFTS Belvedere Scrubbed TIGER MOTHS [underlined] AC2 [/underlined]
10 A/G Course, Moffat ANSONS [underlined] LAC-Sgt [/underlined]
11 Polsmoor Transit Camp [underlined] Sgt [/underlined]
J25 14 HMT Monarch of Bermuda
15 West Kirby - Bournmouth
17 25 OTU Finningley - Bircotes - WELLINGTONS
18 30 OTU Hixon - Sieghford
19 Leaflets to Paris
Wedding
J26 21 West Kirby - HMT Johan Van Vanderbilt
K1 23 Algiers - Blida - 150 Sqdn WELLINGTONS
K2 27 Fontaine Chaude (Batna) [underlined] FIt/Sgt [/underlined]
LT 32 Kairoaun
LU 35 On leave in Tunis, Chad in Jail
MT 46 End of First Tour - 47 raids
47 2 BPD Tunis - 500 mls. by lorry to Algiers
HXM Capetown Castle - Greenoch - West Kirby
NS 49 Screened 84 OTU Desborough
50 Norton, Sheffield Discip. course
53 W.O - 6th June D Day [underlined] W/O [/underlined]
OS 55 Aircrew Pool, Scampton - HCU Winthorpe STIRLING
56 Syerston Lanc. conversion LANCASTERS
P 57 227 Sqdn. Bardney – Balderton [underlined] P/O [/underlined]
60 DFC [underlined] F/O [/underlined]
63 End of Tour - VE Day
Q 67 Redundant - Photographic Officer, Farnborough
68 u/t Equipment Officer 61MU Handforth
[underlined] GROUP 4 [/underlined]
69 Lager Commandant, Poynton prison camp
2W 75 Civvy Street, Whitehaven Relay Service [underlined] MR [/underlined] .
79 Development Manager, Metropolitan Relays London
44 83 To Kenya, Kirksbridge Farm, Kiminini Kitale
48 85 HM Prison Service Asst. Supt. gr2
555 95 Civil Aviation Radio Officer
556 Mbeya Radio Supt.
557 103 UK leave PMG1 – Flt/RO lic. C. & G.
670 104 Eastleigh - Mwanza
107 Royal visit
680 113 UK leave
114 Entebbe Telecomm. Supt
115 Kisumu
700 123 Nairobi Comm. Centre Ast. Signals Officer
720 129 UK leave
750 134 Nairobi HQ & retirement
800 135 Laikipia Security Network
96 151 Pye Telecommunications, Cambridge Project Engineer
[page break]
[underlined] ILLUSTRATIONS [/underlined]
12A Air Gubber Coiurse 24 CAOS Moffat
15A Finningley Reg. Whellams
20A Bride & Groom 1/3/43
CW in flying kit
CW & HF at Richmond
26A Stan Rutherford with Hilda & Cliff at Richmond
Bill Willoughby (NAV) at Whimpey port gun position
Bill Willoughby & Stan Chatterton in their pits at Blinda
44A Pantelleria target photographs
48A CW with Mum, Barnoldswick
Skipper & B.A. with Hilda at Richmond
Skipper & Hilda at Richmond
48B Skipper& [sic] B.A. with Cliff at Richmond
Stan Rutherford in the snow, at Bircoates
Outside Chalet at Blida
Wimpey at Kaircan
48C At Richmond CW & Hilda
52A Warrant Officer parchment
54A three of Aircrew peeling spuds at Scampton incl. Frank Eaglestone
56A F/O Forster DFM 2nd tour Nav.
C.W.
W/O Foolkes at rear of NJ-P
64A Crashed Remains of 9J – O
64B F/O Cheale, F/O. Bates
S/Ldr Chester DFA with F/O Cheale, W/O Foolkes & F/O Forster DFM
64C More of 9J – O
64D F/O Ted (Ace) Forster DFM, CW & W/O Pete Foolkes
64E CW with rear turret of 9J – O
CW with motor-byke
Sgt. Geoff (Doogan) Hampson, Flight Engineer
64F Newspaper cutting
Start of Second Tour – Frank Eaglestone, Ted Forster & Pete Foolkes
More of 9J – O
64G Ted Forster Ready for Gerry?
Lunchtime over Homberg [sic]
64H P/O Bates (My last tour Skipper)
Part of F/O Bates’ usual crew
64J F/LT. Maxted (Gunnery Ldr) Pete Foolkes and F/O Sandford (spare gunner or Sqdn Adj?)
More of 9J – O
64K Doogan again
More of 9J – O
64L DFC Citation
64M Apology from H.M.
64N F/O Croker’s Lanc. on Torpedo dump at Wyke
Christmas Dinner at Wyke
Reverse of Pete’s Xmas Card 1989
Part of F/L Croker’s letter with Xmas Card
66A-H Examples of Battle Orders
[page break]
[underlined] DEDICATION [/underlined]
The section dealing with my R.A.F. career is dedicated to Lady Luck who shows no compassion, is completely immoral and yet cannot be bought.
After a remarkable interview on television recently, Raymond Baxter asked of Tom Sopwith "To what do you attribute your tremendous and unparalelled [sic] success over such a long period?” In his 94th. year he replied “Luck, pure luck”. His reply was the same when asked again at his 100th. birthday party.
This must apply to every aspiring aviator, and I was no exception.
[page break]
[underlined] THE EARLIEST YEARS [/underlined]
My first ten year or so were spent in Yorkshire, having been born on the [deleted] 22nd [/deleted] [inserted] 11th [/inserted] of February 1922, at 45 Federation Street [inserted] the home of my paternal Gt Grandparents [/inserted], Barnoldswick almost opposite nr. 26 where my Grandparents lived, and about two years after my father was demobbed from the Kings Own Yorkshire Light lnfantry after the Great War. My sister Winifred Sofia was born almost two years later on the 2nd. of January 1924. About that time the family moved to a shop at 33 Rainhall Road where my father established a wireless business. I attended the infants school only 50 yards away, often joined by Winifred.
At the shop, my father built radio receivers of the "Tuned Radio Frequency" type, (TRF), a good 10 years ahead of the superhet. At the same time he held one of the first radio amateur licences in Yorkshire, with the callsign 2ZA. His aerial was a wire to the top of a 50 ft. pole in the back yard and starting with a spark transmitter his first radio contact was with another amateur in Colne, whose transmitter output was connected between the gas and water pipes, He had no means of measuring his frequency but thought it was somewhere around 300 KHz. (1000 metres) He soon progressed to using valves and gradually higher frequencies, though almost everything was really trial and error. When communication progressed to "working" other countries the prefix G was added to UK call-signs. He once told me that his first telephony transmission was achieved using a GPO carbon microphone in the aerial circuit. The only receivable broadcast wireless station at that time was the BBC's 2LO and when people heard it for the first tine there was indeed great wonderment and excitement
In 1926 came the general strike. Money was very scarce and people were hungry. There was no money coming in and the shop closed down. The family moved to a house in Rook Street, close to the railway bridge and opposite the cobler's [sic] wooden workshop. Most of us wore clogs in those days, with leather tops and laces, and iron-shod wooden soles.
Before going to war my father had served an engineering apprentiship [sic] , and worked with steam engines. With outstanding debts at the shop and a wife and two small children to support, he volunteered to work with L.M.S. railway company, and drove a train between Barnoldswick and I think Skipton. The engine was pelted with stones at some of the bridges and he was very unpopular with the strikers, althought [sic] many of them were quite happy to use the train. Thus the family was sustained and he received a letter of thanks and a medalion [sic] from the chairman of L.M.S.
When things returned to normal the family moved again, to nr. 14 School Terrace in Dam Head Road and Winifred and I attended the infants and Junior Schools across the back street. My mother was able to resume working at the mill as a cotton weaver with her sisters Molly and Annie. Their brother Jim -my uncle- was a 'twister', that is he connected the cotton threads on the warp to tails ready for applying to the loom for weaving. The noise. in the weaving sheds was deafening and weavers were quite adept at lip reading. This had a great influence on their broad northern accent. Most weavers operated six looms, loading manually the weft into the shuttles before changing them. My uncle Charlie -the brother of my paternal grandfather=- was a manufacturer employing about a hundred people running 500 or so looms. I remember the big warehouse doors and the lift which was operated by water pressure. To go up, just turn on this tap!. Going down transfered [sic] the water back into a holding
[page break]
tank. There were two offices, large wooden boxes, one on each side of the big doors and just under the ceiling. Accessed by ladders. One office was for uncle Charlie and his clerk, and the other for the more junior staff. When I called to see them in 1941 I noted the intercom. system between the offices. It comprised, at each terminal, two empty Lyle Golden Syrup tins one for speaking into and the other for receiving. they were connected by two lengths of taught string which vibrated the diaphragms being the bottoms of the tins. I was surprised at their effectiveness. There was also a loop of string pulled manually between the two places with a small box attched [sic] for transferring documents. I was impressed. Uncle Charlie said he would consider changing the strings after the war.
At School Terrace my father carried on building wireless sets in the attic and also helped his friend Tom Shorrock who owned the local radio relay service. This comprised a wireless receiver and amplifiers connecting some hundreds of houses with a pair of bare wires to loudspeakers at a cost of ninepence per week for each loudspeaker. The idea appealed to my father and he was able to instigate some technical improvements. By then the wireless manufacturing industry had become well established and radios became readily available. My father had paid off his debts and was discharged from bancrupsy [sic].
At this stage we moved into a new house at 25 Melville Avenue. which was nearer to Fernbank Mill for my mother but also had an inside toilet and bathroom. It also had electricity mains in place of the more customery [sic] gas lighting. An electric soldering iron must have seemed luxurious after heating a copper bit on a gas ring.
Our school was only a few minutes walk from home. Gisburn Road Council School. I remember it and the teachers very well, Mr Alfred Green Petty.the Headmaster, Miss Housen who tought [sic] music english and poetry, and above all Mr Heaton who tought [sic] arithmetic, citizanship [sic] and physics. Miss Housen did not think much of my efforts, I couldn’t sing and disliked poetry, but I got on fine with Mr. Heaton, who also tought [sic] my father over 20 years earlier. Over a fairly long period he gave me extra homework in arithmetic most nights, generally a problem or two and he checked the results next day. It was almost private tuition and thanks largely to him, I excelled in the subject. I think children’s attitudes' in the main were very different to those of the present day. Discipline was strict by consent, not fear. Reward was achieved by effort alone and there was friendly competition between us. Most of us got the cane for some minor offence like climbing over the school wall, in my case refusing to stand in the front of the class and recite ‘the wreck of the Hesperus’. We did respect our teachers.
About this time we moved to a house in Headingley for just a few weeks and then on to. Fence, which we knew as wheatley Lane. During that period my father was working in London at Stag Lane fitting the electrics in Rolls Royces. My mother worked at the cotton mill nearby and Winifred & I were looked after partly by Mrs. Ingham who had a sweet shop. Our stay in Fence was also [deleted] m [/deleted] of short duration.
Tom Shorrock was a friend of Mr. Ramsbottom who was struggling with a one programme radio relay system in Keighley. He already had thriving electrical business and Tom introduced my father to him. So we moved yet again, to Keighley, and my father became Engineer and Manager of Ramsbottoms Radio Relay Service in the centre of Keighley. From 33 Lister Street, the Receiving and Amplifying Station the wires branched
[page break]
out on the roof tops in all directions. By then there were two BBC programmes, Home Service on 342 mtrs, and the Light Programme on 1500 mtrs, so they converted to two pairs for two programmes. We were living at 25 Lawnswood Road but soon moved to a new house at 21 Whittley Road. I recall helping Leslie Wright – Dad’s foreman to erect a garage which cost £7.10.0 to house the new Austin 7 which cost £75 taxed and insured. The other personality I remember well was Walter Spurgeon, chief wireman.
Winifred and I attended Holycroft Council School. Some of the lessons were by listening to the radio, an innovation in those days, and it was my job to check the radio was working, each morning.
It was in Keighley that Mrs. Alice Kilham, my father’s secretary came on the scene. She lived in Oakworth with her daughter Mary, her husband being in a sanitorium being treated for TB. During very cold winter around 1933 the snow was six feet deep and they came to live with us at Wittley Road.
Winifred and I were in the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts respectively and we decided to take the Signaller badge which meant sending and receiving the morse code. We were told the speed required was 12. Having established a battery and buzzer, and a morse key and headphones by the beds in each bedroom, we soon memorised the code and communicated with each other, quickly reaching 12 words per minute. Eventually we progressed to 18 words per minute and then went to take the test. Only then did we find that the speed required was 12 LETTERS per minute, not words. 12 letters is only 2 words per minute. However this faux pas proved very useful about eight years hence.
After just a few years in Keighley, the system was working well and no longer presented a challenge. My father was approached by a group of businessmen from Norwich who were interested in the “wired wireless” system. They were owners of radio busineses [sic] who felt they shouId have a stake in the competition and bank managers hoping to earn a quick buck. All the bank managers were Yorkshiremen. So Norwich Relays Ltd. came into being with premises in St. John Maddermarket, and my father became Engineer and manager, taking with him his secretary and foreman Lesley Wright from Keighley. Allan Moulton joined the firm and was responsible for obtaining wayleaves, that is obtaining permission from owners to put wires on their property. He was a popular figure in Norwich, his main qualification for the job was that he played cricket for Norfolk and knew most people who mattered. Leslie died whilst in his thirties in Norwich.
Once again we moved house, to 119 Unthank Road, and Mrs. Kilham and Mary moved into a cottage in Blickling Court near Norwich Cathedral. Winifred I went to the Avenues Council School initially but not for long. I remember getting a prize for my ‘lecture' on how a TRF wireless worked, showing them the working radio I had made. Probably not very accurate but there was no-one present who could contradict me, fortunately.
At 13 I changed to the Norwich Junior Technical School in St. Andrews. Soon after we moved house yet again to a new house, “Wayside", in Plumstead Road, on the boundary of Norwich Aerodrome. Winifred then joined Mary at St. Monicas private school. On Saturday mornings I attended Art School on the top floor. I achieved very little there, the art master quite rightly concentrating on pupils who showed some potential. For an enjoyable two years we concentrated on technical
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subjects, woodwork, maths, physics, Chemistry, mechanics, technical drawing, metal and woodwork etc. The masters I remember well, ‘Chemi’ Reed the principle, Mr. Abigail, Mr. McCracken and Mr. Lishman. At the end of two-year course I transfered [sic] to Unthank College in Newmarket Road, joining the 5th. form. This was big change for me, the emphasis was on classical subjects, in English literature we spent a whole year studying Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream and Spencer's Fairy Queen. I couldn't: get interested in either but I later achieved a credit in the School Certificate by answering questions on A.G. Street’s Farmers Glory which I read in bed the night before the exam. Mr. Bertwhistle the English Lit. master was furious. For Physics and Mechanics I had tuition from Mr. Horace, the Principal's son and on Wednesday afternoons I visited “Chemi” Reed's house at 33 Britannia Rd. for tuition.
In early 1939 my father, Mr. Moulton and Mrs. Kilham acquired six run-down relay firms and the Nuvolion loudspeaker factory in South London from a Mr. Olivisi, a Frenchman. My father moved to Stretham to a flat in Pullman Court and Mrs. Kilham and Mary and to duCane Court in Balham where the Moultons also had a flat. My mother and Winifred moved to a house in West Norwood and I became a boarder at Unthank College. Soon after taking the School Certificate I joined my mother in London and we moved to a flat in New Southgate. I became articled to George Eric Titley, a Chartered Accountant in St Paul’s Churchyard, commuting to the city 6 days a week by underground. Rail fare was tenpence return per day and I was paid ten shillings per week. Fifty pence in 2004 currency The firm was Gladstone Titley and Co. at 61-63 St. Pauls Churchyard and I was the junior with qualified accountants Joe Oliver, Clarke and Jenkins, and Miss Miller the Secretary. It was amusing 6 years hence when I barged into a Board Meeting at 69 Lavender Hill, Sqdn/Ldr Jenkins still in uniform was sitting there when F/O Cliff Watson appearedstill [sic] in Battledress. Jenkins was called up in 1940 as an Account Squadron Leader.
On the 3rd. of September 1939 War was declared and any plans we all had for the future were kiboshed. During the blitz in 1940 to be nearer my father and to help out at Relays we moved home to Ascot Court in Acre Lane, Clapham.
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[underlined] JOINING UP [/underlined] .
The outbreak of war found me as a clerk articled to a Chartered Accountant in St. Paul's Yard. London. At the age of 17 1/2 it went without saying that within a year or two my occupation would be changed way or another. In the family Radio Relay business men were already leaving to join to Forces. My father was on an army reserve and expected to be called up at any time. I felt my best course was to abandon accountancy for the time being and try and help out; so I joined the firm as a General Factotum. During the Blitz on London my job was fault-finding and replacing the overhead lines, knocked down by Jerry bombers where buildings and whole streets were destroyed. The Radio Relay Service, a two programme four wire system in those days, linked the BBC with some tens of thousands of homes in South London, homes where the radio was never switched off. The system carried air raid warnings also. All too frequently the radio was interrupted by an announcer at Scotland Yard with “Attention please, here is an important announcement, an air raid warning has just been officially circulated". There were occasions when bombs were dropped before the sirens sounded, but never before the announcement was made on our Radio Relay System.
September, aged 18 1/2, I found my employers were trying hard to register me as being in a reserved occupation. The Manager, Allan Moulton, had already been successful in his own case, which was reasonable. Someone had to run the firm and my father had sailed off to Abbysinia [sic] in March. At the time I was working literally 18 hours per day and my fifty bob per week hardly paid for digs.
On a very rare afternoon-off I was walking down Kingsway and tried my luck at the R.A.F. Recruiting office. One look at an applicant for aircrew wearing glasses brought an instant decision from the man at the door. I walked along the Strand and down Whitehall, and having removed my spectacles tried the Royal Navy. I completed the application form and was told that I would be called for interview eventually, but there was a very long waiting list.
I tried the R.A.F. again about a week later having left-off my spectacles for several days, and an application form for training as a pilot was completed. Had I previous flying experience? Yes. Fortunately I was not asked for details, as a passenger with Alan Cobham's Flying Circus might not have carried much weight. - In 1936 we had lived at a house called "Wayside” in Plumsted Road, Norwich, on the Mousehold aerodrome boundary, with a panoramic view of the aerodrome, and I was fascinated by it all like most boys of my age. It was to be three months before I heard from the R.A.F. - the Navy had missed the boat – I was to report to the Aircrew Selection Board near Euston station, on the appointed day about a week hence, for 'medical and academic examinations'. The letter added that in the maths exam `log tables but not slide rules are permissable [sic] ’.
The great day arrived, and at 8.30 am. with about 80 other applicants we were told there would be three one hour written exams, Maths, English and General Knowledge, followed by a medical and a brief interview. Maths was a typical 5th. form end of term test, and English an essay with a wide choice of subjects. General knowledge was mainly common-sense. One of the questions I recall; "Is the distance from London to Warsaw nearer 100, 600 or 2000 miles?”. The Medical Exam was carried out by about 6 examiners, probably Doctors, on a production Iine basis.
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Then the interview after a delay of some hours. Three uniformed R.A.F. officers who had obviously been places in previous wars. "Why do you want to fly"? I have forgotten the particular piece of flannel I used, but it brought no comment and another member of the Board fired his shot, "Which is colder, minus 40 Centigrade or minus forty farenheit [sic] ? Instant answer to that, I'd hear. it before somewhere. The third member asked "that does your Father do" I replied "He is an officer in the R.A.S.C. fighting the Italians in Abbysinia [sic] ". This brought a chuckle from two of them for some reason and the interview was over. I would be advised by post of their decision after the exam. results had been studied.
A week later I was told to report to Euston for attestation, actual reporting for duty would follow after some weeks. There was a brief ceremony and I was given a document which stated that " AC2 Clifford Watson 1384956 has been accepted for training as a pilot in the R. A. F. and is to be prepared to report for duty of a few days notice". It went on to state further that his teeth should receive the earliest attention, one extraction and two fillings.
About three months later my call-up papers arrived, and meanwhile I had met two other local lads whose paths had converged with my own and were to stay parallel for the next six months or so. Raymond Colin Chislett, the son of a Battersea butcher, .and Tom King., of Wandsworth. The three of us reported to the R.T.O. at Paddington and joined a party bound for Babbacombe near Torquay.
During the week at Babbacombe we were issued with uniforms, introduced to drill and Service discipline, lectured on the history of the R.A.F. and told something of what the future held for us. We were made to feel that we really belonged and were indeed priveleged [sic] to be chosen to follow in the footsteps of 'The Few'. We were perhaps more than a little naive to think that we were all destined to become fighter pilots, but we were made to feel that the fate of England and the empire rested entirely with us. The Bombers were taken for granted and were not in the forefront of than news at that time. In any case we Londoners had seen our Fighters in action and - we admit it - imagined ourselves in their shoes. There was a tremendous urge to get on with it and to make a success of it. A great sense of urgency prevailed. I remember well that first day in the Royal Air Force. We were advised to write down our Service numbers so we wouldn't forget them, and above all, we had strawberries and cream for tea. The last I saw of strawberries and cream for about eight years, and as for forgetting one's Service number...! Perhaps it was intended as a joke, but we were taking everything very seriously. At the end of the week there was another Pep talk, very well delivered by a Squadron Leader - and equally well received. He remarked that about Babbacombe, people will say "Never in the History of human conflict, have so many been burgered [sic] about by so few". A misquotation of those immortal words. He went on to say that the two most important weeks in your R.A.F. careers are the first and last, and "you have already survived 50% of them, Good Luck chaps, and have a good trip". There was probably a lot more feeling and sincerity behind those words than we realised at the time. He had seen it all and been there 'in the last lot'. "Have a good trip” was to have real meaning in due course.
A short journey by train took us to no. 10 Initial Training Wing at Newquay for 8 weeks of ground training. We were accommodated in
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Trenance Hotel, one of many taken over by the R.A.F. Another hotel was used for lectures in Navigation, Airmanship, Aerodynamics, Engines, Aircraft Recognition, Signalling, R.A.F. Law and Administration, etc. etc. some drill and P.T., and swimming in the local baths. The sea and beach were out of bounds due to mines and other surprises awaiting the enemy. I had to concentrate hard in the classroom on everything, except signalling. The required speed for sending and receiving morse was 12 words per minute and I had been happy at 18 w.p.m. in the Boy Scouts.
The 18 w.p.m. came about through a misunderstanding. My sister Winifred (a Girl Guide) and I were learning morse for our Signaller badges and were told that a speed of 15 was required, so we practiced until we were competent at 18. It was only when we took the test that we learned the required speed was 15 letters and not words per minute. However this mistake was now serving me well.
The only part I did not enjoy was the cross-country runs, but someone had to be in the last three. After two weeks we were told now that we had smartened-up a bit we would wear white flashes in our caps so we would not be mistaken for real airmen.
There was great speculation as to where we would go for flying training. Maybe stay in Britain, or was it to be Canada, U.S.A., South Africa or Rhodesia, and was there not a possibility of it being Australia?. Meanwhile we must concentrate on passing the current hurdle, it could not by any means be taken for granted that we would all pass the course. In fact after only four weeks, four out of the original 50 were "scrubbed" - a new word to add to our rapidly 'increasing vocabulary.
After about 5 weeks we were issued with some flying kit, boots and Sidcot suits, goggles, helmet and a full issue of gloves - silk, wool, chamois and gauntlets. 4 pairs worn together, and a fifth, electricalIy heated, yet to came. We were not to know that it would be 15 months before we wore any of this. I doubt whether our destination was known to anyone at I.T.W. except that it was overseas somewhere. Seven days embarkation leave and the entire course was posted to West Kirby, no. 1 P.D.C., near Birkenhead on the Wirral. We were joined by about 300 other u/t Pilots from other I.T.W.s and it was just a matter of waiting for the draft. There were parades each morning and we were allowed out of camp at mid-day. It was here that Tom, Ray and I teamed up with John Heggarty, a u/t Pilot who had been at 11 I.T.W. in Scarborough. He was from Birkenhead, of Anglo/French parentage. The four of us visited Liverpool every evening, a place crowded with Navy, Army and Air Force types mostly in transit to somewhere or other. Scores of ships were loading in the Mersey, but after a couple of weeks it was a special train for us to Greenock on the Clyde for immediate embarkation on the "Mooltan", a merchant ship of same 30,000 tons. Our 350 were accomodated [sic] on "D" Deck, just above the water-line, where we spent most of our time, not by choice but by order. Some slept on the mess tables, others under them, with the top layer of bodies in hammocks, a crippling device. To realise that hammocks were the traditional sleeping arrangements for British sailors left me unimpressed and I felt that something far more superior could have been devised. However, navies of many countries seem to favour them. Once aboard, there was no going back. On the second day aboard we were tugged down the Clyde and next morning counted over 40 big ships steaming very slowly in a north-
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westerly direction out at sea. Obviously we were bound for Canada, hence the heavy flying kit .and four pairs of gloves. A week ought to see us in the St. Lawrence. How wrong we were. the convoy was shepherded by some very impressive naval ships, Cruisers, destroyers etc. and Sunderland flying boats were in constant attendance for the first few days. After three weeks of steaming in all directions, first into the freezing cold, then warmer and finally very hot indeed, at 0500 one day the engines slowed and finally stopped; a rattling of chains and then silence. All very dramatic but a buzz on the P. A. system told us we had arrived in Freetown. Portholes were to remain closed. We may go up on deck but on no account were we to remove our shirts nor buy anything from the natives. By mid-day the temperature below decks was almost unbearable and there was no respite from that for a further two weeks. Salt water showers were available at all times, it was just a matter of stripping and walking through the shower. No need for a towel, but in any case that was reserved for absorbing perspiration and we became accustomed to the salt water. Food on board was very good under the circumstances. Two orderlies from each "table" would collect it from the galley (vocabulary still improving) and dish up, and after the meal two more orderlies would clean the tables and wash up. The chores were shared on a roster basis at each table, and each had some duty to perform every few days. We were very fortunate in that we were cadets and not yet real airmen we spent some of our time attending lectures in the second class lounge. We estimated there were about 3000 troops aboard. There was lots of talent for the almost daily concerts. A daily newssheet called "DER TAG”, together with the P.A. system kept us up-to-date with the news. The 9 o-clock news was a must.
Five weeks out of Liverpool it who getting cold again, even below decks, and greatcoats were essential deckwear for the endless lifeboat drills. There were lifeboats but for most of us it was a matter of parading on deck near a stack of Carley floats. The subject was better not discussed, there was no satisfactory answer to abandoning ship.
The Mooltan carried one gun mound at the stern above the propellers, manned by a RoyaI Artillery crew in transit. It seemed to be of about 4" calibre but was not fired during our voyage. It was said the deck would cave in, but this might have been an exaggeration. There were also two ramps off the stern for depth charges of which there was a supply near the ramps. The sixth week was really cold and wet and we estimated our position as somewhere in Antarctica. We then turned more or less north and after a total of seven weeks dropped anchor late one afternoon a few miles out at sea, with much speculation about our location. At about 7 pm. the shore was like Blackpool illuminations. Wherever we are, don`t they know there's a war on? A buzz on the P.A. system told us we would be disembarking next day and our British currency would be of no use to us in this foreign country. We should hand-in all currency, and get a receipt which would be exchanged for local currency when we got ashore. Next morning we entered the docks and disembarked. It was only then we found we were in Durban and were taken straight to the Transit Camp at Clairwood. The army contingent remained on-board and were understood to be bound for action in the Middle
East. So we had arrived in South Africa, and a very congenial and pleasant place it turned out to be.
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[underlined] SOUTHERN RHODESIA [/underlined] .
Clairwood Camp was just a few miles from Durban and there we spent 7 days, very enjoyable, but for the first two days, stoney broke. We had handed in all our money aboard ship but it was to be 10 days before it was exchanged for local currency. However, we seemed to get into Durban every day and we were made very welcome in the Service canteens and clubs.
Before I left England, I was given a card which stated that LAC Cliff. Watson was the son of a respected member of the Battersea Rotary Club and any co-operation afforded to him would be greatly appreciated. I noticed the Rotary insignia at the doorway of a Barclays bank in Durban and asked to see the manager. Could I please borrow £5 and I would refund it as soon as I was paid. 45 years later I would certainly not undertake such a venture. It happened to be the first Friday in the month which was the day of the monthly Rotary luncheon. The three lads from Battersea were invited to lunch and each given £10 on condition that we did not refund it. This was hospitality indeed. Several times in Durban we were entertained by the local people, and of course the environment was completely strange to us, so were the bunches of bananas, pawpaws and other fruits.
After about a week to regain our land legs, we embarked on a train and steamed north. The train was a coal burner and we were aboard for 3 days bound for Bulawayo. Food on the train was really first-class. At one stage we were told to disembark for a spot of exercise [sic] and whilst this was in progress the train moved off. We were marched in a direction at right-angles to that of the train and met up with it about an hour later. This was my first experience of African trains, and the 4-berth cabins, rather superior to even today's "sleepers" in Britain. Looking back on it 35 years later when I was concerned with radio communications between trains and stations in the U.K., - my firm was trying to Introduce a communications system-, I recalled chatting with the Radio Officer in his Radio Cabin on the train whist he was on the morse key in contact with the station at Mafeking. It was many years later that communication with trains in Britain was established.
After a very pleasant three-day journey, we arrived in Bulawayo and buses took us to Hillside Camp, formerly the Agricultural Show Ground. We were accommodated literally in what had been the Pig Sties. These were merely wattle poles supporting corrugated iron roofs with hessian round the poles to represent walls. The whole structure was whitewashed and with plenty of fresh air the accommodation was ideal. There must have been about 600 trainee pilots at Hillside Camp, and we embarked on a second I.T.W. course of ground training. There was however a single Tiger Moth on which we learned to swing the prop. and start the engine. So at last we had sat in an aeroplane although it wasn't going anywhere. At least it was supposed to be anchored down, but an Australian did taxi it a hundred yards or so after an evening of celebration.
Our stay in Bulawayo was certainly very pleasant, we visited Cecil Rhodes grave at Matopas, the ancient ruins of Zimbabwe, spent weekends on farms, enjoyed the swimming and so on, but our minds were on the war of which we were not feeling a part. Pearl Harbour had brought the
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Americans into the fray, several Capital Ships had been lost and things were going badly 'up north'.
In January came a very welcome posting, to 25 E.F.T.S. (Elementary Flying Training School) at Belvedere, on the outskirts of Salisbury. Here the day started at 0400 and we enjoyed tea and toast of our own making before assembling at 0425 for two-mile march to the airfield. By 0500 half the course would be standing-by for flying and the other half lectures and more ground training. Breakfast was between 0900 and 1030 hrs. which included the 2 mile march each way, and after breakfast the two halves of the course changed over. Flying started on the sixth of Jan. with what was to be a typical day, with 30 minutes of flying instruction at 0515, and lectures after breakfast. Addresses by two ex-fighter pilots F/O Newton and a Flight Sergeant whose left leg was in plaster. The following day I managed to get in an hour’s flying with P/O Bentley, concentrating on turns, glides and climbing. From the outset the instructor frequently cut the throttle without warning sometimes deliberately putting the aircraft into a spin. then telling the pupil to get on with it. My next flying session was with Ft/Sgt Oates as P/O Bentley was on leave and in six weeks of flying instruction managed 12 hours with 7 different instructors. A final three hours was spent with F/O Newton in one hour sessions and I was full of confidence and looking forward to the C.F.I.'s test the following day.
Maybe in retrospect I was over confident, even though most of my friends had been "scrubbed", including Hancocks, Robinson, Morgan, King, Barlow, Vivian, Bolton, Friend, Britton, Jones and Fry. Having made what I thought were two acceptable circuits and landings, the C.F.I.'s final remarks were "Sorry old lad, but as a Service Pilot you make a bloody good rear gunner". I did not regard these as being the words of the Prophet, but so ended my career as a u/t Pilot after 9 months in the R.A.F.
All was not lost however, like all the others whose Personal file was stamped "wastage", I found myself at Disposals Depot, which also happened to be at Belvedere, and in good company. All of us were sadly disillusioned and disappointed at failing the Pilot's Course, and the reasons given for the apparent failure were seldom accepted. Where do we go from here in the long term was the main question, and the opportunity to influence this came at an interview at Group H.Q. in Salisbury. The only guidance came from others who had already had their interviews and were awaiting a posting. The alternatives appeared to be many, we could opt out completely and remuster to ACH GD, reduced to the lowest rank of Airman 2nd. Class and thence take pot luck with no trade and no personal ambition. But we had joined the R.A.F. with too much purpose for this to be acceptable. We could apply for training as Observer which at that time embraced both Navigator and Bomb Aimer duties, but we were meeting chaps just starting that course who had waited six months for it after failing the pilot's course, and this indicated that it could be a year more before we qualified. The most logical answer appeared to be the Air Gunner Course which lasted only six weeks, and apparently with hardly any waiting list, so in less than two months it seemed we could become a sergeant with half a wing, not quite what we set out to achieve, but a far cry from where we stood at the time.
At the interview at Group H.Q. I asked why I had failed and was shown the comments made by my instructors. With the exception of the
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C.F.I.’s comment they were all favourable and I became a little argumentative. For the first time I learned that on the C.F.I. test I had climbed at less than full throttle but at the correct air speed with the normal rate of climb. What I should have done apparently was give it full throttle, keeping the correct air speed and letting the rate of climb take care of itself. On the training aircraft the emphasis had been on speed and rate of climb whereas it should have been on speed only and full throttle.
I remarked that the C.F.I.'s aircraft was more like a Gladiator than a Tiger Moth. The alternative careers were as we had deduced amongst ourselves and I applied to remuster to u/t Wireless Operator/Air Gunner and to do the A/G course as soon as possible. This was approved on the spot, and my file was endorsed “Watson requests an A/G course merely for the quickness in getting onto ops." I was supposed to start the course the following week.
It was to be three months before I was actively posted to Moffat to do the Air Gunner Course, and the greater part of this was spent on leave, returning to camp periodically to check progress. We had only to walk along the road away from town to be offered a lift which generally meant spending the rest of the day with new friends, and quite often arranging to spend a week or so with them. It was on the 15th. of Feb. Tom King and I were spending 10 days leave with our hosts Mr. & Mrs. Bedford at Poltimore Farm, Marandellas that we listened to Churchill's speech, with the dreadful news of the fall of Singapore. This led to a general discussion on the likely future plans of the war and it was generally felt there would be an allied landing at Dakar with the assistance of the French, and the forces would move north and then east to catch Rommel in a pincer movement. Not too far out in our argument, only 2000 miles, but we had the general scheme and timing right. Later we were shown around the tobacco "barns" where 12,000 leaves were drying in each of 10 barns. My diary records that "one of the most interesting things we were shown was the castrating of 300 pigs" A rather messy business", perhaps I was less squeamish in those days. Later about 2000 head of cattle were dipped including 3 wicked looking bulls. The two children tried to keep us amused, and with great success. We repaired their bicycles, small car, swing and dolls' house furniture, the dolls house being about 20 feet square. We carved out the names Wendy (8) and Cliff (20) on a tree and really began to enjoy the Rhodesian way of life. We cycled over to Chakadenga Farm and had tea with Mrs. Nash and also met the local jailer. We tried to repay all this kindness by making ourselves generally useful, and I recall changing the oil in Mrs. Nash's Chevrolet and repairing the lights. We also refitted the long-wire aerial on the house radio and refurbished the engine house which accommodated the lighting plant and batteries.
We tried to spend.as much time away from camp as possible, our idea being 'out of sight, out of mind'. Occasionally the S.W.O caught up with us and we were detailed for guard duty on the aerodrome, a 12 hour guard working 2 hours on and four off. The complete guard comprised 6 airmen, 4 on standby in the guard room, one cycling around the aerodrome and one standing in a sentry box at the side of the double gates which were normally closed. There were neither fences-nor ditches linking the gate posts and it was easier to drive a car onto the airfield on the wrong side of the gate posts than to bother with the gate. Generally the Orderly Officer carried out his inspection about 7.pm. but on one
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occasion suddenly appeared about 3 am. from the direction of the airfield and drove up to the main gate on his way out, parking so near the gate it could not be opened. I turned out the guard, which took about 5minutes and we were treated to a tirade and lecture covering several subjects including how utterly futile the guard was. One of the chaps said “you are absolutely right Sir" which made matters worse and he stormed back into his car. The headlights had been left on and the car wouldn't start, so we leaned our rifles against the sentry box and pushed the car backwards so we could open the gates. Finally the entire guard pushed the car forward and it started without trouble, but headed back towards camp. We decided to remain at the open gate, and a few minutes later the car returned at great speed, and disappeared through the gate in a tremendous cloud of dust without further formality. We had good laugh but it did little for the morale of chaps whose ambitions had been thwarted and who felt they were wasting their time in the R.A.F. and, even more so in guarding a gate which had no real purpose with blank ammunition and rifles which it would be too dangerous to fire. By the end of March the aerodrome guard was taken more seriously and comprised 24 Europeans and about 60 Africans, which meant the remustering aircrew trainees were on guard every few nights. I was given the job running the Post Office and Stores which exempted me from guard duties but also curtailed my leave periods.
On the 3rd. April Tom King and 20 others were posted to 24 C.A.O.S. at Moffat, near Gwelo, about half-way between Salisbury and Bulawayo, for their Air Gunner Course. The intake was 50 per month and we wondered where the other 40 had come from. Meanwhile Ray Chislett the other member of the Battersea trio- was doing extremely well at Cranbourne flying Oxfords. Root and Robertson were killed the previous day in a Harvard whilst officially on practice instrument flying but actually beating up a tree and misjudging matters
On the 1st. of May, I was posted to Moffat and started the A-G course. Things seemed to be happening in our favour at long last; and had been delayed because of a large influx of remustered ground crews who had got out of Singapore just in time, and also another large influx of Aussies for Air Gunner training. It was good to see Tommy King pass out as a Sgt. A-G and for Cpl. Luck to receive his commission.
On Sun. the 10th. of May there was a church parade in best blues and khaki topee, held in Gwelo. Two days later L.A.C. Chick Henbest, u/t A-G ex u/t Pilot shot a large hole in his own aircraft's tail. When he as charged with the offence he brought an expert witness, the Station Armament Officer ! - to state that such a thing was technically impossible. The Air-Gunner training was partly intergrated [sic] with that of the Navigator's, and on the 13th. May on such an occasion 'Ace' Buchanan and another A-G, piloted by Sgt. Reed, force-landed near QueQue and were missing for 5 hours
In the four weeks at Moffat we carried out 9 hours of Air firing in Anson aircraft using a Vickers Gas Operated gun of .303 calibre. This was mounted on a Scarfe ring with the gunner standing and firing at a drogue towed by a Miles Master aircraft. 200 rounds were fired during each exercise [sic] , the 3 "pans" of ammo. having been filled by the gunner and then 'doctored' by an armourer with faulty rounds, and other simulated faults. The only turrets available were on the ground, and comprised an ancient Frazer Nash, Daimler and electrical Boulton & Paul. A total of 4 hours was spent in them. We were supposed to swing the
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turret aiming at moving light images on the wall but in practice the bulbs in the ring-sights were all faulty.
On the 29th. May we graduated and were presented with brevets and tapes. The course was posted to Capetown but I had to report to Salisbury to give evidence at Gooding's Court Martial. Gooding had stolen my Agfa Carat camera and scores of other items in Bulawayo. Meanwhile on the news, 1000 Bombers over the Rhur [sic] again and 37 missing. A few days previously the very first raid on this scale was made on Cologne with 44 aircraft missing. The Middle-East war was becoming more intensive and in Russia Jerry was in real trouble, but we seemed a very long way from it all.
One of my friends on the Pilots course was Ian Smith who lived in Salisbury and with whom I used to go looking for buck in the early mornings. Ian had failed the course like most of us but being a Rhodesian had obtained his discharge locally and joined the Southern Rhodesia Light Battery currently at the K.G. VI barracks. I went to the barracks in the afternoon and saw Norman, and was introduced to Solomon, Slim and other Rhodesians in the S.R. Army Medical Corps. After tea in the mess we went to the local bioscope to see 'East of the River'. On the 13th. of June I managed to get another 19 days leave which was spent with Mr. & Mrs. James at their farm at Gilston, about 16 miles south of Salisbury. With three Aussies we had a wonderful holiday, riding, cycling, tennis, swimming, all at the farm. We rode up to the bushman's caves in a copje 4 miles into the bundu and photographed them. To the Aussies it was like being home and I concluded there was no alternative to this sort of life.
On my return to Disposals Depot my stolen camera was returned to me and I found that Gooding was on yet another charge,- stealing a W/T Set - . A few more days leave to say cheerio to all my friends in Salisbury, and I returned to Gwelo to find that I was posted to Bulawayo to give evidence at the Court Martial. I stayed with Mr. & Mrs. Rose for a week or so and spent some time at the Cement works where Mr. Rose was Manager. I was offered a job there if I would return after the war and for a long time this formed the basis of my post-war plan, but a great deal was to happen before that time came. The Court Martial was a very formal affair, and Gooding was charged with theft on about 45 counts. He had not disposed of anything he had stolen for personal gain, and pleaded Kleptomania. He was sentenced to dismissal from the R.A.F. after immediate return to U.K., and recommended for psychiatric observation. He survived the war, certified unfit for Military service and resumed his career with a firm of solicitors in Surrey. The case was finished just in time for me to join the rest of the course on the 1st. of July at Bulawayo station. In Gwelo I had bought a tin trunk which was now nearly full of presents, pyjamas for Hilda, stockings for Mum, embroidering material, tobacco, cigarettes, jam and so on.
After a 55 hour train journey we arrived in Kapstaad and enjoyed Iunch with John Heggarty before joining another train to Retreat and the drive to Polsmoor Transit Camp by bus. It rained heavily for a couple of days and the activity was just one big reunion. I met friends I had not seen since Newquay. Dicky Aires and Jack Frost were there as Sgt. pilots, Howard Iliffe (1090111) and Bob Hildred also, having trained as pilots at George, in the Union. Arthur Brittain a Sgt. Observer and Stewart Evans who was in the Officers Mess at Kumalo. In the next four
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weeks we spent most of our time in Capetown, making a beeline for the Soldiers Club. The welcome we received from the South Africans was positively overwhelming, and people were literally queueing up to entertain us. On the 4th. of July a group of four of us including Ray Chislett and two Maltese soldiers met Mrs. Williams and had tea at her flat. After tea we motored out to a vineyard and got quite merry on four glasses of their own wine. On the way out one of the tyres was punctured and it took us less than three minutes to change the wheel. In the evening we went to the Odeon Bioscope at Seapoint with complimentary tickets which appeared from out of the blue. Howard. Iliffe, John Heggarty and I spent a great deal of time together in Capetown where Howard & I met two young ladies. One of them, introduced as Cheri de la Chene said she was French and had spent five years in Paris, but she could not understand my efforts at speaking French. John Heggarty had quite a brainwave and I introduced him as a member of the Free French Forces,-L'Aviation Francais Libre-. John was absolutely fluent in native French and soon discovered that Cheri was neither French nor a University student, but a schoolgirl of 14 at the Convent. Whilst in Capetown I met Binedall with whom I used to correspond before the war, and he gave me a large matchbox which I left with Mrs. Williams' mother to be collected after the war. I have left it rather too late. The climb up Table Mountain with Ray was very interesting and from the top we had a wonderful view of Muizeuburg. This reminds me of one night during a trial blackout at Muizenburg, Heggarty and I met Mrs. Macbeth who invited us to dinner on the following day. We gladly accepted and on arrival at the house next day referred to her as Mrs. Shakespeare. This was laughed off and we spent a very enjoyable evening. After dinner we went to a show in Muizenburg and met a lady who had lived near Battersea Park. In 1952 in Mbeya in Tanganyika I was talking to another 'Radio Ham' in Muizenburg arid mentioned my faux pas with Mrs. Macbeth's name. He said he was living in Mrs. Macbeth's guest house and she had related the story at dinner only a few days previously. Stuttafords of Adderley Street provided a very interesting experience for Heggarty and me. We wandered into a tea-room the likes of which we had never seen before, it seemed the ultimate in luxury. We asked mildly for just two cups of tea but up came the whole works of silver teaset with lots of pastries and cakes. We said no thankyou, really, just two cups of tea, but the lady was adamant. We said it was jolly nice but funds were limited and the cakes were beyond our means. She said she would be very cross if we didn't have at least half a dozen cakes and then gave us a bill -for 1/3d. Fixed charge for two, she said. Wonderful people, it was embarrassing at times. We called in a Milk Bar for a milkshake and they insisted it was on the house. We would buy a bunch of grapes for a 'ticky', -3d- and they refused payment. One Saturday Ray and I spent the day with the Brandt family who lived at Rosebank . We went for a run with them in the car in the afternoon, round Table Mountain and took some very good photographs. They also drove us to the Lion Match Company's factory in Capetown, where we were given a tour - and quite a lot of labels- a wonderful finale to my first trip to Africa.
After meeting up with our old friends whose paths had taken many different ways and finally converged, but not without the loss of several due to accidents, the resentment at failing the pilot's course had just about worn off. The original crowd of rookies at Newquay were still basically together and covering all aircrew 'trades'. Someone had
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[photograph]
[underlined] AIR GUNNER COURSE [/underlined]
[underlined] APRIL 1942 [/underlined] [underlined] 24 C.A.O.S. MOFFAT, GWELO. [/underlined] [underlined] S. RHODESIA [/underlined]
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[underlined] POSTSCRIPT [/underlined]
The A/G course was rather an anti-climax after the concentration and determined outlook on the pilots course. Most of us felt we had wasted our time and had been let down.
During a "lecture" on the Browning gun by Cpl. Paddy Gilligan he noticed correctly that my eyes were closed and pointing to me, yelled "You, what was I saying?", I replied "You were saying 'as the breach block moves to the rear the cam on the rear sear rides along that on the barrel extention [sic] . . . ' There followed a discussion on my detailed phraselogy [sic] and he wound up by shouting "Your problem Watson is you don't speak effing english". I replied that I try to speak the King's english Cpl! and that did it, he swore to fix me. Study of the Browning gun comprised learning parrot-fashion the sequence of events and other odd statistics such as effective range and rate of fire. There was a drawing on the wall which gave us some idea of what it looked like, but the Browning was something for the future, the R.A.F. currently uses the V.G.O. or so we were told. The following day Gilligan told me to go to the billet and make sure the African had cleaned all the lampshades, including the one in his little room. This I did and two hours later reported they were all clean. The next day with no preamble I was told to report to the Orderly Room immediately. I was marched in to the C.O. and charged with failing to carry out an order, and also making a false report. Gilligan gave evidence and said the lampshade in his billet was filthy, I could not have checked it. The C. O. accepted this and I was given a severe rep. and 7 days jankers. I went straight away to the billet and I asked the S.W.O. to accompany me. He delegated a Sgt. Clerk and together we checked the offending lampshade. Sure enough it was filthy. I found the african cleaner and he swore that he had cleaned the shade but the Cpl. had then made him change it for one in the next but where they were all dirty. We all trooped next door and saw that all were indeed filthy except one.
The Sgt. could see what Gilligan was up to and endorsed my written report addressed to the C.O. which also applied for redress of grievance. The result was that my Severe Rep. was cancelled and so was the balance of the jankers.
At the end of the course the exam. papers were marked by Gilligan and he gave me 61% in all subjects which was the absolute minimum for a pass. Again I wrote to the C.O. and he agreed that Gilligan was up to his tricks again. He changed the exam. results to an average of 93% If I had not been so argumentative I could very well have "failed the course"
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to fly the thing, but there was a lot of other work to be done also. A cutting from the Rhodesia Herald whilst at Moffat spelt it out:-
I wished to be a pilot,
And you, along with me;
But if we all were pilots,
Where would the Air Force be?
It takes guts to be a gunner,
To sit out in the tail,
When the Messerschmitts are coming,
And the slugs begin to wail.
The plot's just a chauffeur;
It's his job to fly the plane;
But it's we who do the fighting,
Though we may not get the fame.
If we must all be gunners,
Then let us make this bet;
We'll be the best damn gunners
That have left this station yet
Nearly half a century later it does seem somewhat corny.
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[underlined] OPERATIONAL TRAINING. [/underlined]
And so to the 2nd. August 1942; we boarded HMT J/6, The Monarch of Bermuda and were shown to our cabins, stowed our kit and were issued with passes to go ashore until 1500 hrs. A last look at Table Mountain and Kapstaad and at 1630 on the 3rd. we left South Africa, hoping and firmly intending one day to return. The 10 day voyage to Freetown was a very pleasant cruise, escorted by two Battle Cruisers and three Corvettes and accompanied by The Empress of Russia, we ploughed along at a steady 12 knots. Our favourite pastime was reading the inter-ship messages on the Aldis lamps. Among other things we learned that one of the Empress's boilers was u/s and shut down. Which limited the speed of the whole convoy. There were several U Boat warnings during daylight and these coincided with lifeboat drills, which were taken very seriously.
The accommodation was very good, all the R.A.F. NCOs being accommodated six in each cabin. The cabins were equipped as they had been for luxury cruising pre-war, each with a toilet room with saltwater shower. The portholes remained open the whole time, but this time we were on 'A' and not 'D' Deck. In the Sgts Mess Italian P.O.W.'s waited upon us, and make a very good job of it. All fatigues are carried out by them and they caused no trouble at all. The vigilance of the Polish guards probably influenced that, their bayonets being fixed ALL the time, and there were few words passing between the guards and prisoners, just a few gestures with the bayonet. The Poles had been in action since August 1939 and were a long way from home, first defending their country, evacuating to Yugoslavia, and then making their way to Abadan to join the British. There were 1800 Italian prisoners aboard, mostly captured in Bardia and Tobruk about two years previously. They were a meek and miserable-looking lot. One of our 'stewards' who we called 'Grandpa' was a Cpl Major, and had medals for the Bolshevist and Abbysinian [sic] wars. He spoke very little English, but excellent French, and in return for a few cigarettes made me a bracelet in which he put photos of my fiancee [sic] , Hilda, and me. The material was similar to duralumin and he claimed it was a piece from a shot-down British Bomber in Abbysinia [sic] , a most unlikely story. His only tools were a pen-knife, a razor blade and a 4” nail for engraving. The Italians were confident the Axis would win the war and were expecting Stukas, Fokker Wolfe Condors and 'U' Boats to appear at any time.
There were several hundred European civilians aboard, mostly evacuees from Alexandria and Cairo, who seemed to think they owned the ship. Many of them were ducked during the Crossing the Line ceremony, we claimed exemption, being old timers at that sort of thing!!
There was some form of entertainment almost every evening; mainly variety concerts organised by the troops. During one of these I recall a wounded ex 8th-Army Soldier impersonating Stanley Holloway in his Northern accent with a poem,
"The Reason Why"
The unity of Empire .is seen in ships galore,
As they plough in convoy fashion, to Britain's island shore,
Across the world's big oceans, around continents as well,
The Bulldog breed keeps up the creed that history will tell.
We've roughed it on this convoy, we've lived like herded sheep,
Yet all can see, it's got to be, if freedom's cause we'll keep
We're mixed like breeded cattle, the R. A. F. as well,
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That R.A:F. who two .years ago Just drove the 'uns to 'ell.
They say the good ship Monarch, J6 her tag, goes back to Afric [sic] shortly,
but always behind that Flag.
The Flag we're fighting Jerry for,
the Flag of which we're proud,
the Flag which may be a tattered rag,
but with honoured blood endowed.
In that environment and atmosphere this was pretty stirring stuff.
On the 14th. of August we dropped anchor in Freetown. Just as a year ago, it was very hot and humid, with an overcast sky. This time we were not restricted to below decks, but enjoyed the freedom of the ship and were able to trade with the natives. Sunderland seaplanes were seen patrolling out to sea, with Walrus amphibeans [sic] doing about 60. m.p.h., around the harbour. There was lots of signalling between ships and we could cope with the morse, but the semaphore was too advanced and clever for us.
Sunday the 16th at 0600 the Monarch and the Empress slipped out of Freetown and rejoined the Royal Navy out at sea. We were a little concerned for an hour or two, as the sun was rising on the port beam, but we eventually turned right and the sun returned to it's proper place, astern. We expected to reach England by thursday, but rumours of the invasion of France were rife and my diary actually records that this might delay us a little!. The general topic of conversation was what would it be like going through Customs. We were advised on the P.A. system to hand in any unauthorised arms and ammunition, including loot taken from the enemy. I had 3 kitbags, a tin trunk, suitcase and issue R.A.F. webbing and packs, and somewhere in that lot was 25 lbs. of sugar, 10 lbs of tea, 8 pairs of silk stockings, 2 dress lengths, 15lbs. of jam, lady's pyjamas, 2000 cigarettes and other dutiable material. I also had a very small .22 revolver in my pocket and decided to risk it. It was really a toy, hardly a weapon of war. In the very early hours of the 26th. of August we docked at Greenoch. An hour later our party of 240 or so assembled on deck with a mountain of kit, all newly trained sprog aircrew sergeants. The train pulled in to within 100 yards of the ship and in less than 30 minutes we were on our way by train to Glasgow, then on to London. Whilst changing stations in London, I telephoned the office, BATtersea 8485, at 0730 and was disappointed that Hilda was not yet at work!
We arrived at no. 3 P.D.C. Bournemouth and moved into luxury hotels, expecting to be sent on leave immediately, hardly worth unpacking, but this was not to be. We were interviewed several times, medically examined, kit reorganised and generally messed about for a week. According to my pay book, I was a Sgt. Air Gunner, u/t Wireless Operator, and at one interview I was told that this could not be so. Either I could stay as a Sgt. A-G or lose my tapes and become an AC2 u/t Wireless op., eventually doing a wireless op. course. It was emphasised that the whole business of training was highly organised into streams, and once in the main stream it was better to drift with it rather than to try and change course. Streams could not cross, but only merge. All very academic and enlightening so it was agreed that u/t wireless op. would be deleted from my paybook, and of course, having done a couple of tours as a rear gunner I could always apply for a wireless course.
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That's what the man said and I was in no position to argue, 'Just a couple of tours'.
A week later we were on leave, and Hilda met me at Waterloo after just over a year apart. We had a few hours in London before going up to Barnoldswick to take my mother by surprise. After five rather hectic days of visiting relatives and friends we returned to London and met Hilda's parents and relatives, for just one day before returning to Bournemouth.
We were billeted in an attic at Ocean Lodge and took our meals at the Vale Royal. The food was the most unappetising and uninteresting we had seen in the R.A.F. so far. Life in Bournemouth consisted entirely of parades, square bashing, P.T. drill, lectures and swimming, each activity taking place some miles away from the previous one.
Bournemouth was full of sprog air crews, 90% Sergeants, few realised what the future might hold, and; in retrospect, I don't recall even thinking about it.
We were clear of Bournemouth on the 2nd. of October, and posted to 25 O.T.U., Finningley. near Doncaster.
The first 14 days were spent in lectures, practical work on guns in the armoury, and in firing on various ranges. We were introduced to the FN20 rear turret and relieved to have the opportunity of stripping the .303 Browning guns. We who had trained in Rhodesia did not advertise the fact that we had never actually seen a real Browning gun, only a wooden model, all our air-firing having been carried out on V.G.O.'s [Vickers Gas Operated) guns. We had spent several hours in a turret on the ground in Rhodesia. A Boulton & Paul electrically operated mid-upper type as fitted to a Defiant but bearing no resemblance to the rear turrets of Wellingtons and Whitleys.
11th. November was relatively peaceful at Finningley. In the world outside the Allies had landed in North Africa and occupied the coastal strip from Casablanca, through Oran to 50 miles east of Algiers where the big build-up was taking place. Jerry was being pushed towards Tunisia and Rommel's Afrika Corps was in full retreat in Libya, having been pushed out of Egypt, The Huns marched into hitherto unoccupied France and hard fighting was still going on in Stalingrad. Madagascar was in British hands. My diary records that Jerry lost over 600 aircraft in two days, according to the B.B.C. Nearer home I also recorded that "I flew today for the first time with my pilot, Sgt. Rutherford, and with Sgt. Bishop, W/optr., on circuits and bumps. Our Navigator Allan Willoughby is at Bircotes doing cross-countries". For some of us the pace was slow, and some of the time was spent in 'Brains Trust' sessions. Here a team of experts would sit on the platform and questions on any subject would be asked by the rest of us. In reply to the question "How do you think we should deal with the Huns after the war?", the M.O. replied "Castrate the bloody lot, the R.A.M.C. could do that in only a couple of weeks". Most of the discussions however were in a more serious vain. Over this period the weather was not very good. No 14 Course crews have been helping the Landgirls digging up potatoes and 12 Course chaps were heaving coal, We then had coal and coke allocated and delivered to our billets, which eliminated the need to pinch it from the Officers' Mess. we were accomodated [sic] in the peace-time married quarters close to their Mess.
One of our Wimpies from Bircotes crashed into a Beaufighter near Caernarvon where my sister was stationed in the W.A.A.F. There were no
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[photograph]
[photograph] [underlined] REG WHELLAMS [/underlined]] 1333520
[underlined] AT 25 OTU FINNINGLEY [/underlined]
(10 FORSTER RD. WALTHEMSTOW E.17 )
16A
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survivors. A Defiant crashed near my home in Barnoldswick and we pressed on with the routine of local flying, stripping nothing more interesting than guns, and lectures and so on.
My diary records that on the 9th. December, after a little over two months we were taken by lorry to Bircotes to fly as a crew. Losses were high, on a Bullseye on London we lost three aircraft. One of them apparently ditched without trace near the French Coast, the only clue to this being their dinghy which would have been released automatically striking the water. A second crew headed by Ft/Lt. Anneckstein crashed into the watch office, killing the Bomb Aimer who was stretched out in the bombing position. A third crew crashed on landing at Bircotes, without fatality, but with the crew rather shaken-up. We were living Nissen huts about 2 miles from the 'hangars' and 3/4 mile from the in the other direction. The place was a sea of mud in parts and we generally washed AFTER breakfast for some reason which eludes me after 45 years
One point in favour of Bircotes, it was on the Great North Road and just before Christmas I enjoyed a 48 hr. leave with Hilda in London! I met Tommy King in Battersea who was a Rear Gunner on Halifaxes with three ops. to his credit, all to Italy. A brief respite and back to Bircotes. The flying aspect was proving more interesting now, I could see a little beyond my own situation and get involved to some extent in the general carry-on of working as a crew. We had a first-class Skipper, Sgt. Stan. Rutherford, a down-to-earth tough New Zealand sheep farmer. Our Navigator Allan Willoughby from the West country whom we regarded as the Academic member of the crew, but who suffered greatly from air sickness. On those occasions our Bomb Aimer Stan Chadderton from Liverpool took over the navigation without any problems. Stan trained as an Observer - which included both Bomb aiming and Navigating in the U.S.A. and we were thus very fortunate in having a standby navigator. Our Wireless Operator Harry Dyson was from Huddersfield possibly the socialite of the crew, and fancied his chances in the rear turret, giving me a welcome change on occasions.
I started the New Year well by having four runaway guns, over Missen, the bombing range, splattering a main road. The safety catches were 'off' and the guns ready for instant action almost all the time the air, and the reason the guns fired has not been fully explained. I vaguely put it down to a build-up of hydraulic pressure in the triggering system. This did not fool the Armourers who put it down finger trouble on my part - literally.
By the 7th. of Jan. we had completed all our day-flying details of cross-countries, bombing, air firing etc. and were suddenly posted to 30 O.T.U. Hixon, in Staffordshire to complete the night flying excercises [sic] . It took three days visiting various sections to obtain signatures on a Clearance Certificate before we were free of Finningly [sic] , and the after we arrived at Hixon, we were despatched to the satellite airfield at Seighford. A week later we were still without aircraft at Seighford and when the Skipper, Navigator and W/op went to Finningley to collect one, Stan Chadderton & I took French leave and shot off to see respective Hildas. It was on that leave that Hilda and I decided to get married and arranged for bans to be called in Seighford and Battersea.
On the 24th. Jan, our night-flying excercises [sic] almost completed we enjoyed a new experience. We were put on the battle order and briefed for an attack on Lorient. Everything was rushed and finally when
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boarding the aircraft -which was u/s-, the raid -or our part in it- was cancelled. We were to have dropped six 500 lb. bombs in 10/10ths cloud and were warned about the fighters and lots of flak. We found later that the Americans had bombed Lorient in the afternoon followed by 121 aircraft of Bomber Command that night. One Stirling was lost. In early Feb. we were doing a 6 hour cross-country operational excercise [sic] simulating a real trip and towards the end of it were joyfully bombing what was thought to be our target on the bombing range. After dropping two sticks of 11 1/2 lb. practice bombs the "target" lights were extinguished and although we remained over them for a further 20 minutes they did not come on again. Thirty minutes later "W" William landed at base amid great consternation. Apparently the O. C. Night Flying had thought we were lost and had been sending up rockets. These were seen by the Stafford Fire Brigade who came dashing out to Seighford expecting a major disaster. On reporting to the Watch Office the Skipper was congratulated upon a successful bombing attack on Hixon aerodrome.
A few nights previously Jock King and crew had crash-landed on the Yorkshire moors. They were over the North sea, badly iced up and losing height gradually until they ran out of it on the moor. The aircraft was a complete write-off and the Rear Gunner very badly injured by the Brownings crashing into his chest. On the 7th. Feb. the whole crew went to the local church and heard the Banns called. Two aircraft were lost from our unit the previous night, one piled straight in at Hixon, all killed, and Sgt. Browning bounced off the runway and finished upside down in the adjacent field. The 11th. Feb. was my 21st. Birthday and the Crew got absolutely sloshed in Eccleshall. It was a memorable party and the Skipper and Bomb Aimer got themselves lost on the way home and spent part of the night in a ditch. On the 14th. we completed the last of our cross-country details. The pages of my diary covering this trip are indistinct having been submerged in water in 1949, but there were problems. The first 4 hours were spent on accurately flown courses, but there was difficulty in keeping to specific heights. The aircraft seemed to climb and alternately lose height for no explicable reason and this distracted the Skipper from the required accuracy. Eventually with only 60 gallons of fuel indicated, the Skipper called "Darky Darky this is Nemo xx .....". Up came a 'gate' of two searchlights and signalled the direction of a friendly runway. 10 minutes later we all developed an instant inferiority complex, we had landed at Wyton, the home of 109 Squadron Pathfinders. One Wellington Mk.111 bombed up with four small practice bombs, was parked amid Lancasters, Mosquitoes and B17 Fortresses. However we were made very welcome and at 0400 hrs. thoroughly enjoyed the bacon, egg, fried sausages, toast and marmalade etc. Had I known then, that 40 years hence I would be retired and settled within 4 miles of Wyton I would have been a happier man. Aircraft on the first raid of the war had taken off from Wyton. The next two weeks were very active with little actually achieved. We were briefed almost every day for something which was cancelled every time but with one exception. We were told to do an air test on an aircraft which was parked near the perimeter fence. The rear turret was almost touching the fence at the other side of which was a haystack and chicken coop. The ground was muddy and rather more revs than usual were needed to free the wheels and move the aircraft forward. The hurricane strength wind created completely demolished the hen coop and the haystack, and many of the hens became airborne as never before. There
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was no time for recriminations however, on landing we went straight to the briefing room and learned we, were on a Nickel that night. The Oxford Dictionary gives a different meaning, but to Air Crews 'Nickel' is a generic term for a bum fodder or leaflet raid. It did imply that someone had some confidence in us, maybe. The target was Paris.
At last we were over enemy-occupied territory, still on our side of the Rhine, and still a long way from it, but we were getting nearer and there was no lack of confidence, at least initially. Problems developed, first my ring-sight ferrel broke off, so there was no hope of accurate aiming if attacked, then my intercom microphone ceased to function. The fault was later found in the Rotating Service Joint below the turret. We had a standby signalling system of push button and lamp, but that too was out of order for the same reason. I could hear the skipper calling me on a routine check but had no means of replying. Receiving no reply, Barry Dyson crawled back to the rear turret to check up, not knowing what to expect. He had overlooked the fact that we were at 15.000 feet - the highest we had been at that time- and almost passed out due to lack of oxygen. He reconnected his adapter to the system just in time. He was also inadequately clothed for a temperature of -18C but putting 1800 lbs of leaflets down the flare chute restored his circulation. Di banged on the turret door and we exchanged greetings. He returned to his office and reporting my situation to the Skipper. Meanwhile I was incommunicado for the rest of the trip, but I could hear the others conversing. Shortly after that I felt the rotation of the turret was becoming sluggish and I tried to fire a short burst. Three of the guns fired one round each and then stopped, but number one was working. I cocked and recocked the guns several times, tried firing them manually and eventually three were working. I fired a short burst and regained a little confidence. An hour after leaving Paris the turret rotation would not respond to the hydraulics so I ensured that manual operation was still possible. I knew that to bale out I would have to open the turret doors, then the aircraft bulkhead door, grab my parachute pack, drag it through both doors and into the turret, rotate the turret onto the beam, fit the 'chute, open the doors, disconnect the intercom and oxygen and go out backwards. I decided to give it a try except for actually bailing out - and decided it was probably not feasible in the time available, but I did get the parachute into the turret and tucked it down the side. I learned a lot that night, more had gone wrong in my department on that one trip than during all my training. Di learned the odd lesson too, to wear more clothing in case he had to move away from the hot air system under his table.
The following day we were advised that our O.T.U. course was completed and the Skipper was asked to state the crew's preference either to join a squadron bombing Germany or to go overseas. Our preference for Germany was unanimous; after all, I was getting married and most of us had already been overseas!. And so we went our separate ways on 7 days leave
March 1st, 1943 perhaps the most important day of my life, Hilda and I were married. Staying at Hilda's home I took my cousin Frank to Trafalgar Square and showed him the Lancaster bomber, then on to St. Pauls Churchyard where I used to work and showed him a Stirling Bomber. He was thrilled with London and with the aircraft in particular. At 1pm we met Mum and Topsy at duCane Court and lunched in Balham, and whilst Mum and the others went to meet Hilda's folks, I went on to the Church,
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St. Mary's in Battersea. Some years later when I saw the photographs I realised I was wearing a white shirt with my airman's uniform. Hilda joined me at the Alter [sic] and looked absolutely lovely in her white wedding dress. The service was grand and the organist played two hymns. The church bells remained silent, they were reserved for signalling a possible enemy invasion. We enjoyed a wonderful reception at Hilda's home and on Monday we went to Lancing on honeymoon, the guests of Mr. & Mrs. Pittock at 10 Orchard Avenue. After a few days at Lancing I returned to camp and somehow organised more leave. At 0300 on the 10th. however the police delivered a telegram-which stated "Report to Hixon immediately, posted overseas". I tried to convince them that it was a joke on the part of the crew, and I was not stationed at Hixon in any case. However, at 0700 Hilda accompanied me to Euston where we said goodbye on the platform for the last time for several months at least. One night spent at Hixon, and the following day we travelled by train with two other crews to no. 1 P.D.C. West Kirby.
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[photograph] [photograph]
1st. MARCH 1943 (WHITE SHIRT) 25 O.T.U. FINNINGLEY
[photograph]
SECOND HONEYMOON SEPT ‘43
20A
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[underlined] SECOND TIME TO AFRICA [/underlined]
At West Kirby we handed in our blue uniforms and were issued with army Khaki battle dress and tropical flying bowlers and helmets. Within a few days we embarked on a Dutch Vessel, the Johan van Vanderbilt in the Mersey, and were allocated first and second class cabins still equipped to. peace-time standards. Service in the Dining Hall was fabulous, staffed by natives from the Nederlands [sic] East Indies. The cuisine was superb, there was white bread and butter and sugar on the tables. A full breakfast at 0800, a peacetime lunch at 1300, tea at 1630 and dinner at 1900. Coffee was available in the Snr. N.C.O's lounge at any time during the morning. The Army Privates' quarters were similar to those we had experienced on the Moultan, sleeping in the same place as they eat, scrubbing everything by 0830 and with lots of bull. They had to wear greatcoats at all times whilst on deck and carry their life-jackets and water bottles. They not only manned the guns but were also detailed for lots of guard duties. Everything seemed to be guarded, but the reason was generally obscure. The cabins were shared with the Army Snr. N.C.O.s and they felt it quite a change to enjoy such comfort. The main topic of conversation was speculation about our destination, North Africa, Middle East or Far East? At a lecture on the 20th. March a senior Army Officer gave us a talk in the big second-class lounge, a very interesting run-down on the state of the war in all theatres. He dealt at some length with the North African campaign and said that very shortly the 1st. and 8th. Armies would meet and a few days after that Jerry would be slung right out of Africa. He wanted to dispel all rumours that we were part of a force invading the south of France. I cannot recall whether we were actually told in so many words, but we expected our destination was either Algiers or Bone.
The armourment [sic] on the Johann was comparatively small. We had about 10 Lewis guns, .303 calibre, and a naval gun at the stern, all manned by the army. There were about 16 ships in the convoy, with troops and cargo, protected by 5 Cruisers and Destroyers, and 2 Corvettes. Not as impressive perhaps as in August 1941, but a more wartime environment.
It was a feeling not entirely new to us, we knew by calculation that it was the 21st. of March and we were sitting comfortably in the First Class Lounge enjoying a coffee, but whereabouts on the Atlantic ocean was the ship? We know we had been heading east all morning so the chances. were we are heading for Gibralter [sic] , it was not warm enough for Freetown to be our destination. Where we were bound was open to speculation like most other vital factors affecting us. What were we going to do when we get to wherever it was? We were a Wellington crew which did not rule out finding ourselves on a Boston or Mitchell doing close army support work. And what after we had completed a tour of ops.? Chad the Bomb Aimer and Di the Wireless op. were both keen to remuster and train as Pilots. Allan Willoughby said he was 'marlish' and quite happy to carry on navigating. I felt the war would be over before we had finished our first tour. The Skipper said little but probably thought we were a bunch of dreamers, comparing us with his sheep back in N.Z.. We were not in fact approaching Gibralter [sic] , we had passed through the Straits during the night.
At 0300 on the 22nd. we were approaching the minefield off Algiers and were attacked by a Ju88 torpedo bomber. We heard the Johan's guns open up
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and the Windsor Castle received a direct hit from a torpedo on her stern, three members of her crew being killed. She also lost her steering and means of propulsion. Efforts were made to tow her into Oran without success but she sank at 1700 the same day. The Service personnel and remainder of the crew were taken aboard destroyers. Hurricanes arrived within minutes of the attack, but just too late and not ideal aircraft for the job at 0300 hrs. My diary - written up a few days after the event,- refered [sic] originally to The Duchess of Windsor and this was changed a few years later to the Windsor Castle.
There was no longer any secrecy about our destination. Di said the R.A.F. had opened an O.T.U. in Algiers, and we were destined to do another course. There were lots of rumours, but one fact was established, we had been in the R.A.F. over two years and we felt it was high time we did something towards the war effort.
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At 0300hrs. on the 23rd. March we were paraded on deck thankful for our greatcoats, which we were still wearing with great discomfort when we disembarked at 1100. A brief stop at an Aircrew Reception Centre, a large hotel on the sea-front, before going to the Aircrew Pool at Surcouf, about 30 miles from Algiers. There was no great feeling of urgency here, the Allies had landed at Algiers on the 6th. of November and the Germans had already been driven some hundreds of miles, to the East.
It was just a matter of waiting, something that most servicemen became very good at. We could not take the initiative and start our own war, but could only make the best of it. Quoting from my diary, "Life at Surcouf is perfect, we share the officers' mess and enjoy typical French peacetime meals. Lots of Bully Beef but the Chef - a French Civilian - certainly knows how to camouflage it. Our chalet is literally on the beach and the sea never more than 20 yards away. We could swim all day long without the formality of swimming trunks, or walk around the village. Sometimes we hitch-hike Into Algiers". There was very little to do in the village, and I recorded that I found the French very unhelpful and generally impolite. We all carried side-arms of course. There was practically nothing to buy except strange local booze, the Americans had seen to all that when they passed through, and the bars seemed to be open all the time. Algeria was, politically, a part of Metropolitan France in the eyes of the French, it was home to many Frenchmen, and they probably realised it might never be quite the same again. After a three-week rest at Surcouf we reported to 150 Squadron at Blida, about 30 miles south of Algiers. This place was most certainly at war, there were Wellingtons, Hudsons, Hurricanes, Commandoes and Albacores for squadrons of Bomber, Coastal, Fighter and Transport Commands, and the Fleet Air Arm. With the exception of Transports and 142 and 150 Wellington Squadrons, all aircraft were controlled by Coastal Command. We were part of the North Africa Striking Force - so we were told. Life was good at Blida, most of the food was tinned and we enjoyed eggs and bully beef every day in the mess. Generally in the evenings we would have a fry-up of eggs and bread with more bully on the primus stove in the billet. The Mess Hall was used as both dining hall and lounge. The arabs wandered round the camp selling eggs and oranges but prefered [sic] to exchange them for food -- more bully beef.
The currency in use was the French Franc with an exchange rate of 200 to the £1 sterling in which we were paid. BMA (British Military Authority) notes were also in use but the most popular currency outside the town was the tin of bully. We were billeted in chalets formerly the peacetime living quarters of the French Air Force. Each chalet had four large rooms-and accommodated two Wellington crews. It was very pleasant to sit out on the verandah [sic] . My rather battered diary records that on the 28th. March 1943 we were discussing what we proposed to do on completion of our first tour. Rather naive, we would have little or no say in the matter. We had been allocated an aircraft, "F" for Freddie, but it was a case of one crew to one aircraft and its present owners had not quite finished their tour and were reluctant to part with it. For two days they had been bombing and straffing [sic] a large German convoy bound for Bizerta which was not left alone even when part of it had docked. We finally took over the aircraft and for five days were airborne for several hours each day. On the afternoon of the 5th. April we took off
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in "F" for Freddie for an hour's fighter affiliation excercise [sic] with two Hurricanes. Employing violent evasive action to make things difficult for the fighters, we crossed the coast about 10 miles east of Algiers at 3000 feet and passed directly over a British destroyer. The Navy was wide awake and saw a heavy bomber being chased by two Hurricanes, immediately opened fire on us with considerable light flak. The pilot of a third Hurricane which was on an operational patrol saw the mini-battle and joined in. When he saw that one of his chums was only 100 yards from my rear turret and happy to stay there, he realised that we were in a different ball game, peeled off and, carried on with his patrol, finally returning to Maison Blanche.
On the night of the 6th. April we bombed the Marshelling [sic] yards at TUNIS, with 3500 lb. and 54 30 lb. incendiaries. We bombed in one stick from 8000 ft. and surprisingly were held in searchlights which we lost at 3000 feet. Not a very good effort on our part, the bombs overshot the target but hit the aerodrome 3 miles north according to the timing point photograph. All 28 aircraft returned safely, two of them damaged There was little light flak but some heavy stuff said to be radar controlled. For an hour on the return journey I changed places with Harry Dyson, our Wireless op. On the 7th. we attacked troop concentrations at night making several bombing passes at low level and finally coming in very low firing 7 Brownings. Chad the bomb aimer used the two guns in the front turret, I had four in the rear and we carried beam guns on these occasions. Only the front gunner could see what he was firing at. One aircraft of 142 Squadron, G George was shot down by light flak. On the 10th. we raided MONSERRATO aerodrome in Sardinia, an aircraft was seen over the target with navigation lights on, visibility was good and we moved away hoping the runway lights would be switched in. The aerodrome remained in darkness and we dropped our bombs singly. There was no light flack from the aerodrome to worry us, and the aircraft with lights on was not seen again. After a further 30 minutes of stooging about we returned to Blida. There was a reasonable amount of heavy flak which we learned on return had downed one aircraft of 142 Squadron. - 2 in 2 nights-. On the way back a searchlight opened up a few miles ahead and the skipper put the nose down so we were at 2000 ft. when we passed directly over the searchlight. Stan Chadderton in the front turret opened fire and the Skipper told me when to open up, aiming straight down. The light stayed on after we had passed, pointing vertically, maybe we did a little damage, probably not. Inside the aircraft however, the dive had caused the Elsan lavatory to come loose and scatter it's contents over the floor.
The following morning, fearing the wrath of the ground crew when they saw the Elsan, we stayed in bed until noon and breakfasted in the billet. Eggs and fried potatoes, fried bread and tinned pears and fresh oranges, served by the wireless op. and rear gunner to the Skipper and the rest of the crew still in bed. In the afternoon we were stood down and Joe Shields (Sgt. Rimmer's Rear Gunner) and I went into Blida to try and find presents to take back to England. The bigger French shops were all closed - no stocks- and we scrounged around the Arab quarters, without success. I mentioned earlier that we always carried side-arms and several times we were crowded by the Arabs. Production of the revolver dispersed them but it could have been very tricky.
On the 14th. April we raided MONSERRATO for the second time, the first run-in at 8000 feet and then 6000 feet. Direct hits were seen on
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the aerodrome this time with 1000 and 250 pounders. No incendiaries were dropped but 10 minutes was spent 8 miles north of the town dropping leaflets. The leaflets were the "laissez-passer" type printed in German instead of the more usual Italian. An aircraft over the target area sporting an orange light seemed to be signalling to a searchlight. We assumed it was acting as a decoy for a night-fighter and the only one of us keeping an eye on it was the navigator standing at the astrodome.
The rest of us searched the allocated parts of the sky according to the book!. All our aircraft returned safely and reported good aiming. Photographs confirmed the success, but we had borrowed "M" Mother which was without a camera. The return journey was uneventful and crossing Mare Nostrum Di tuned in to the 9 o-clock news from London. The announcer Alvar Lidell read "Algiers reports that the R.A.F. Strategical Airforce in North Africa has continued to batter aerodromes in Tunisia and Sardinia, damaging runways and destroying aircraft on the ground, without loss to themselves". Someone remarked "That's one way of looking at it"!. Actually a few nights ago 142 Sqdn. had lost 2 in 2 nights. 150 Squadron had lost one but the crew bailed out. Four of the crew managed to get through the enemy lines but the Rear Gunner was wounded and there was no news of him for several weeks.
The docks at TUNIS received our attention on the night of the 17th. April, with very careful placing of 500 and 250 pounders. Direct hits were observed in the docks area and there was concentrated heavy flack. It didn't worry us, we were well below it at 6000 feet. There was lots of light flack mostly concentrated on an aircraft displaying red and green navigation lights. At one stage this aircraft came to within 600 yards on the starboard beam and we converged to about 300 yards. We clearly identified it as a Wellington and gave it a long inaccurate burst from the rear turret. On this occasion every fourth round was a tracer. The nav. lights were extinguished and the aircraft was not seen again. There was no satisfactory explanation as to the identity of this aircraft. A captured Wellington perhaps acting as a decoy but attracting most of the flak. Possibly one of ours with the lights switched on accidentally, one shall never know. Two aircraft are missing, piloted by Sgt. Chandler of 150 and Sgt. Lee of 142. One sent out an SOS and ditched but there was no signal from the other. On our return to Blida there was a blanket of cloud over the whole area and our 23 aircraft were diverted to Maison Blanche. One aircraft was known to have a damaged undercarriage, which collapsed on touch-down and was a write-off but there were no injuries. Road Transport was waiting to take us the 30 miles or so back to Blida and we finally got to bed at 6 am. We shared the lorry with Sgt. Leckie's crew who had bailed out over Tunisia on the 14th. The Squadron Leader had flown to Sousse and brought them back to Algeria. Leckie had himself crash-landed the aircraft with no hydraulics and only one engine, somewhere in Allied-occupied Tunisia.
On the 23rd. April my diary records a tedious week of activity which achieved very little. Every day we were briefed for a night op. and every day we did our Daily Inspections and air tests, but in the late afternoon the Sirocco came up suddenly and the trips were cancelled. During the week, two Albemarles crashed on the runway, both from Gibralter [sic] carrying supplies which included mail from U.K.
Our uniform since leaving West Kirby has been British Army Khaki but with shoes and no putees. Our R.A.F. blue shirts with collar and tie and also blue forage caps were not exchanged. We have no tropical
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kit and it is getting very warm here. Our aircraft "F" for Freddie, has been grounded all week with "G" George, both with a trimming box problem. The policy is still one crew to an aircraft, and we enjoyed a very easy week. On the 28th. we managed to borrow "D" Donald and bombed DECIMONANU again, this time with a 4000 lb. 'blockbuster’ and a few incendiaries for good measure. After bombing we stooged around for 30 minutes having a close look at fires on the ground. Searchlights waved about apparently aimlessly and the light flack with tracer seemed equally haphazard. At 3000 feet we were caught by one searchlight and within seconds were held in a cone of five. The lights were dazzling and the three of us manning guns all fired point blank, it being impossible to aim. In theory a combined rate of fire of over 8000 rounds per minute should have hit something worth while, but after a very short burst my four guns jammed, a problem seldom experienced. At only 3000 feet we were quickly out of range of the searchlights. We were over Blida at 0700 hours which was covered in fog and diverted again to Mason Blanche. We were not very popular at Maison B, everyone had-their own problems which were not always appreciated by others on different types of aircraft performing widely differing types of work. We were in bed at Maison B. by 1000 hrs. probably without the knowledge of the 'owners' of the beds who had spent the night in then; and there we stayed until 1700. The tinned steak pie for tea made a very welcome change. Our aircraft "F" for Freddie still had a faulty-trimming box.
It was only in the air we were able to listen to the Radio News from London, although we had a reasonable supply of current newspapers brought out by the steady stream of aircraft from U.K. On the 29th. we logged another trip to BIZERTA, this time in "T" Tommy with a 4000 pounder. Take-off was at 0005 hours and the weather the worst for flying we had yet experienced in Africa. The target was the docks and all was unusually quiet. The coast-line was visible through about 4/10ths cloud and on our first run over the docks we dropped incendiaries. Positive identification of the target, so round again to release the 4000 pounder which the press were refering [sic] to as 'cookies'. It seemed that over Germany the lads were dropping 8000 pounders. The flak and searchlights opened up simultaneously and was relatively intense. We found later that we were the first to bomb. Some had difficulty in finding the target due to cloud and the enemy was trying not to attract our attention. Again there was low cloud at Blida and we were diverted to Maison Blanche. Two aircraft were lost on the Bizerta raid, one landed at Bone (now renamed Annaba) with one engine u/s, and a 142 Sqdn. aircraft did a belly-landing on the grass at Maison B. On our return we found that Sgt. Leckie, operational again after being shot down in Tunisia, had crashed into the mountain immediately after take-off. Another 150 Sqdn aircraft crashed on take-off, barely getting airborne, and it was assumed that he had engine failure. Two of the crew actually survived the explosion. It had been a fateful night, we were briefed for take-off from west to east, with a left turn onto course. Just before take-off a strong wind developed from the west causing the duty runway to be changed from 09 to 27 and we took off from east to west. Sgt. Leckie turned left instead of right, straight into. the Atlas mountains, all killed instantly. Our own Bomb Aimer Stan had flown on a raid with Sgt. Leckie only two nights previously. When I revisited Blida on business in 1978 I was astonished to appreciate just how near those mountains were to Blida aerodrome..
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[photograph] WITH HILDA & THE SKIPPER SEPT ’43 RICHMOND ON THAMES
[photograph] BILL WILLOUGHBY NAVIGATOR AT THE PORT BEAM GUN POSITION
[photograph] NAVIGATOR & BOMB AIMER IN THEIR PITS
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The following morning an aircraft of 142 was seen to be making a peculiar approach, and just before touchdown. one engine cut and the other was going flat out, resulting in a spectacular disintegration at the side of the runway, in which no-one was seriously hurt. By the end of April we had four aircraft all Wellington Mk.10s equipped for carrying 4000 pound bombs. Bomb doors had been removed and they were said to have a special main spar.
On the 5th. May it was farewell to Blida, the war was moving east. Each crew was issued with a First World War Bell tent and this together with official stores and personal effects was piled into the aircraft. I remember the Wireless Op. Di and I putting our (stolen) palliases [sic] aboard for our Ground-crew passengers to rest on during the flight. A very thoughtful act on our part said the Skipper. It was just that Di and I intended to sleep in the manner to which we were accustomed. Our destination was Fontaine Chaude, about 250 Kms. ESE of Blida. About half way in deference to our guests we opened a tin of spam and served slices of spam followed by stewed plums from a large tin we had been hoarding. Our destination was a stretch of desert near a tiny village. After landing we pitched our tent and organised our palliases [sic] into beds with the help of a dozen or so empty boxes. Meanwhile vehicles were arriving with our squadron personnel, more stores, aircraft and by late evening we had a small township. A small marquee served as a Sgts. Mess and on the first evening we enjoyed stew and green peas followed by pears and real cream. These had been provided by the Americans on an emergency basis. The following day was spent partly on an aerodrome inspection. The war had passed through Fontaine Chaude and it was possible the Arab scavengers had overlooked bits of war material which could do damage to aircraft, particularly the tyres. There were no runways, only sand with some coarse grass.
Back to war next day and Group Captain (Speedy) Powell briefed us for a raid on TRIPANI, a naval base in Sicily. We were 30 minutes late on take-off due to delays in bombing-up. We carried only six 500 pounders instead of eight, and some incendiaries. We were 20 minutes behind the bomber stream of 26 Wellingtons. 'The bomber stream'!. This was an expression used by a newly joined crew who were very displeased with having to finish their tour in North Africa after starting it over Europe. They treated our desert war with some contempt after their recent experiences over Germany, but were reported missing about three weeks after joining us. We were in cloud shortly after take-off and nearing the target came out of it at 12,000 feet. We moved over towards a concentration of heavy flak bursts and the bomb aimer thought he had found a pinpoint through breaks in the cloud. The bombs were dropped into the area of flashes and fires on the ground but it was not a satisfactory raid. We lost two aircraft. One was seen to go down in flames over the target having been coned by searchlights. Sgt. Pax Smith, a New Zealander and crew ran out of fuel in pitch darkness and had strayed too far to the west, over Algeria. My diary records "They bailed out in an airmanlike manner but the Bomb Aimer was concussed and the Rear Gunner broke both legs on hitting the ground and rolling down the side of a hill. Three of the crew are in the rest camp at Constantine and the two inured in hospital in Algiers".
The reader might be surprised at apparent navigation errors such as this, but the only nav. aid available was a QDM (course to steer) to reach in this case Algiers, which would not have helped. We had no M/F
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Beacons on which to take bearings. The Navigator worked on his dead reckoning plot backed up by a visual pinpoint from the bomb aimer map-reading if visibility was suitable. Quite often the only aid was the Rear Gunner taking a drift reading from his turret. Over the sea the Wireless op. would drop a flame-float down the flare chute, which would burst into flames on striking the sea. The Rear. gunner would rotate his turret and depress the guns, holding the flame in his ringsight for ten seconds, then read off the drift on the indicator by his side. There was sometimes a drift indicator in the 'Nav. Office' also. The same procedure was used over the desert during the day using a smoke bomb in place of a flamefloat.
We learned that Sgt. Leckie who was killed hitting the mountain was Commissioned two weeks before his death and had also been awarded a D.F.C. for his crash-landing in Tunisia. So Sgt. Leckie was really P/O Leckie D.F.C. and didn't know it, but the end result was the same. He and our own Skipper, Sgt. Rutherford 416170 R.N.Z.A.F. had been great buddies for a long time. (or what was regarded as a long time in those days)
May 10 my diary states, a Boomerang lastnight. We took-off with a 4500 pound payload for delivery to PALERMO, the Capital of Sicily. About 30 min. after take-off the petrol cover on the port fuel tank came open and the Skipper had great difficulty in keeping the left wing up. There was no option but to jettison half the bomb load in the sea and return to base. There was an enemy air-raid in progress at Bone and we kept a few miles to the east of it with the I.F.F. on. Our own night-fighters operating from Maison Blanche were known to be very active and we had great faith in our I.F.F. We were first back of course - not really having been anywhere!- and we waited for the others in the debriefing tent. To no avail, they had been diverted and returned the following afternoon. We enjoyed an afternoon and evening off, and went by lorry to Batna, a small town about 30 miles from our base. There was little to be seen and nothing to buy and no sign of any social activity. Conversation with the natives was difficult and they were not interested in the war.
On the night of the 12th. it was the turn of NAPLES again, 21 aircraft with 90,000 lbs. payload bombed within five minutes of each other. It was a lovely night, visibility 30 miles and not a cloud in the sky. As we approached Naples we could clearly see Mt. Vesuvius and convinced ourselves we could see the thin column of smoke drifting from it. Our last pinpoint on the way out was the Isle of Capri and we gave it a short burst of .303 for good measure. A futile act but the guns had to be fired occasionally. At NAPLES we went straight in, the target was clearly visible and the one stick straddled the railway yards and industrial area. My diary records that flak was intense and said to be some of the hottest in Europe, and reading that after a lapse of 45 years causes me to question the authority for such a statement. It was a small target compared to some of those in Central Europe, and the 40 searchlights at Napoli were quite effective, but would have been more so if it had been dark. All our aircraft returned safely after a 7 1/2 hour flight, not a bad effort for Wimpies with no overload tanks. As the W/op describes it, we climbed into our pits just as dawn was breaking. By 0900 we had the option of discarding our mosquito nets and being pestered by the insects, or enjoying a turkish bath due to the heat. Our 1916 vintage bell-tent was reasonable for our crew of five although in earlier times it accomodated [sic] , goodness knows how, 22 soldiers.
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At about 1400 we were happy to get airborne again on an air test where we could cool down, but at 1700 it was briefing again. A "maximum effort" - another phrase. imported from our colleagues bashing away in Central and Northern Europe, on CAGLIARI, a port and industrial town in Sardinia. All 26 aircraft were over the target area within minutes of each other, again visibility was near perfect. Bombing heights were staggered and we bombed from 6000 feet. Our 4000 pounder landed just north of the railway yards among some tall buildings and started a fire. Our W/op Harry Dyson claimed at debriefing that he could feel the heat from our own fire when we turned in again to see the damage. Di was prone to exaggeration by this time, perhaps due to frustration of monitoring broadcasts from Base and seldom touching the morse key. We came back over the target at 2000 feet and the flames were leaping high. We could still see the flames from 70 miles away at 8000 feet on our way home. Listening to the B.B.C. we learned that American bombers had raided Cagliari earlier that day, "wiping the place out". They also claimed they could still see fires burning when they reached the African coast. In daylight too; our W/op was not alone in the exaggeration stakes. However, it was a very satisfactory raid. We were in a shallow dive when the bomb was released and is thought to have scraped the fuselage under the aircraft where there was damage to the geodetics and six feet of fabric had been torn off.
On the 15th. our crew was stood down for 24 hours and I received four letters from Hilda, the first for many weeks. At this rate of completing ops I should be home in less than three months. It was very tiring night after night, particularly as is [sic] was not possible to sleep comfortably in the heat of the day. The target was PALERMO, and three of our 25 aircraft failed to return, including Sgt. Rimmer, and Sgt. Alazrachi, the latter a Free French pilot. It is not known what happened to any of them except that one aircraft was seen to go down in flames over the target. Rimer's Rear Gunner was Joe Shields, one of the best, and the crew had been with us since O.T.U. at Finningley. Polfrey the Navigator, Cave the Bombadier [sic] and Jack Waters the Wireless-op, all very keen types.
On the 16th. it was our turn to make a fragment of history. For the very first time, the R.A.F. bombed ROME. Rome, we were told was an open undefended city, and we were briefed to fly from the mouth of the River Tiber, over the city dropping leaflets, and return at 5000 feet dropping more leaflets, then bomb the LIDO DI ROMA near the mouth of the Tiber. Our first bomb went in the river and the last one in the sea, but the rest of the stick neatly straddled the buildings at the Seaplane Base. Over the city itself, there was considerable light flack with tracer, aiming point- blank without result. Not bad at all far an open undefended city, but we were forbidden to display any hostility except dropping leaflets. Even the lids of the Small Bomb Containers loaded with leaflets were secured with wire so as not to fall on the Romans. Later the B.B.C. claimed there was no flak over Rome.
An easier trip the following night which after the event gave me a slight suggestion of a guilty conscience for the the [sic] very first (and last) time.
"Your target" said the Group Captain, "is the German 'U' Boat refuelling Base at ALGHERO, in Sardinia, put paid to it". Our bomb load was 7 x 500 pounders, 4 S.B.C.'s of 30 lb. incendiaries and 2 x 250 pound bombs. We overflew the target at 4000 feet and first dropped several sacks of
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leaflets. These were in Italian and told the people of Alghera that when we very shortly occupied their country and liberated them from the beastly Germans, they would be treated better than ever before, provided with medical aid and food, and every other possible benefit. All we need is a little co-operation and understanding from them. Having spread the gospel, we made three bombing runs over Alghero, at 3000, 1500 and 700 feet, all perfect O.T.U. practice type runs. On the last bombing run, Allan Willoughby manned the port beam gun, Dyson the front turret and the [deleted] the [/deleted] three of us fired our 7 Brownings at point-blank range into the chaos below. The sole opposition comprised two small-calibre machine guns which were soon out of action. Maybe it was a U Boat refuelling base, but only in the sense that it was a small fishing village and happened to have a jetty where drums of oil could be trundled down to a U Boat at the end of it. Our vision of a Sardinian type Lorient or Brest was soon dispelled. The BBC reported 'our bombers based in North Africa attacked targets is Sardinia lastnight'.
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For a couple of days our conversation had centred around an incident over the Lido di Roma. A seaplane base consists mostly of water; on our first run over it we had difficulty in locating the buildings and were hoping to see a tidy straight line of parked seaplanes. The Skipper decided to drop a flare and asked the Wireless Op. to arm no. 1 of 4 already in position in the flarechute. As he removed the safety pin the flare ignited and the top part of it shot through the roof of the aircraft with flames pouring out of the lower end, streaking past the rear turret.
The blinding light startled Stan Chadderton at the Bombing panel and he instantly jettisoned all the flares, undoubtedly preventing a major disaster. How easy it was to be shot down by one's own flare.
According to Intellegence [sic] reports, there were 1,100 casualties in our raid on Cagliari on the 13th., most of them having been caught by a single bomb. This figure is highly suspect but it originated from an Italian report.
On the 21st. it was a stooge over Sicily with 18 250 lb. bombs.
A convoy was within range of the Ju88 Torpedo bombers based in Sicily and our task was to try and keep them on the ground, or if they did manage to take off, prevent them from making an airmanlike landing on return. Aircraft took off singly starting at 1700 hrs.; we were the 24th. at 2045 hrs., with two others to follow. A direct flight to Castelvetrano, identify the aerodrome and one bomb away, then set course for Ciacco, same procedure, and on to Borezzo. If a flare path is seen anywhere give it priority and stooge around in that area for a while. All the bombs were dropped on the three targets and no flarepaths were seen. We concluded there were no enemy landings or take-offs, but one aircraft was seen to go down in flames into the sea; probably Sgt. Williams of our squadron who was on his first mission from Africa, although he had done several over Germany. At Castelvetrano there was lots of light flak using tracer, and we felt the heavy flak in some areas was predicted. We were not experiencing the 'thick carpets' of flak ever-present over Germany, perhaps ours was more personal, just a few batteries carefully aiming at one or two Wimpies.
It was all go, and on the 23rd. we did an easy 3 1/2 hour trip. 2 hours of which was over Africa. We crossed the Tunisian coast and reached Pantelleria 20 minutes later, an island only 7 miles in length with an aerodrome on the western side. Visibility was poor, but we went straight in and dropped 4,500 lbs. in one stick. These were plotted later as just to the south of the aerodrome. We cruised around out at sea for 20 minutes at 7,000 feet, studying four barrage balloons clearly visible at 5000 feet. On our return however there was no support for this theory from anyone else and we were told it was only heavy flak. This was of course quite possible, in poor conditions and with tired eyes imagination can take over. Within a week however, it was generally accepted that the enemy were deploying barrage ballons [sic] although not in great numbers. Most of our aircraft were not fitted with cable cutters on the leading edge of the wings. Pantelleria was an easy trip and we were advised that it would count only as half a trip towards our 35. We had generally assumed the first tour was 30 trips but it did not seem to worry anyone. The day. after the Pantelleria trip, the Squadron mascot, Wompo, or Wimpy. a pedigree Heinz 69 was killed in action. Whilst he was
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merrily chasing some small creature he was accidentally hit by a jeep driven by F/O Langlois, a pilot of 150. He was so badly damaged that one of the lads put him down with his Smith & Wesson .38.
On the 24th. we staggered off the desert in "F" for Freddie heading for Sardinia carrying eight 500 pound bombs and some incendiaries and it seemed ages before we reached even 100 feet. I was not aware of the drama in the front office, both the Skipper and Bomb Air were struggling even to keep us airborne. At about 500 feet it was not possible to maintain height and the Skipper had no option but to lighten the load quickly. Two 500 pounders were released and seconds later there was a tremendous bang from down below, but the aircraft began to maintain height. We were just within sight of the Sardinian coast with the engines overheating when the Skipper jettisoned the remaining bombs and nursed the aircraft back to Fontain Chaude. That was our second boomerang. Had we been carrying a 4000 lb. cookie the episode would have had a very different ending. By the 2nd. of June we had completed 6 more trips and moved camp further east, to Kairouan. Our patch of desert was about 6 miles west of the walled City, said to be the fifth most holy in the Moslem world. The place was very dry, and the well 100 yards from our tent was out of bounds. The R.A.M.C. and the Afrika Korps had both marked it as poisoned by their repective [sic] enemies. It was said to contain human remains, but tests carried out just before we moved on showed the water had not been polluted and was 100% fit for drinking. Meanwhile our water was delivered by two water bowsers each of which travelled 30 miles east to Sousse several times each day. Many years later the record shows that neither the Germans nor the Allies polluted any water supplies. After all, both hoped to recapture them and put them back to their own use. On the first night from Kairouan we were credited with one more trip, having completed two halves! That is, two trips to PANTELLARIA.
We took off in waves of 3 or 4 throughout the night, arriving over the target 45 minutes later. Our aircraft was "C" Charlie which carried one 4000 pounder. On the first run in we overshot, but came round again and in a typical OTU practice run, Stan Chadderton placed the bomb neatly in the centre of the small town. A 45 minute flight back to base and an hour's respite whilst the aircraft was checked, refuelled and bombed up, then the mixture as before.
On the 27th. we were piling into a lorry to go out to the widely dispersed aircraft; the nightly German raid on Sousse was in full swing when a single Ju88 came over to look at our flare path. He was clearly visible and stooged around at will for about 10 minutes before making a run at about 1000 feet dropping 3 bombs in a salvo 300 yards from the Sgts. mess. Nothing was hurt except our feelings and there was no material damage. We had no A-A guns, so the Luftwaffe did not receive the same energetic welcome handed out to us. We relied on Beaufighter squadrons for defence. The R.A.F. policy was reasonable, as the aircraft were dispersed over a wide area and a single stick of bombs would be ineffective against a single aircraft as a target on the ground. We took-off half an hour later for a tour of Sardinia, again with a payload of eighteen 250 lb. bombs. Our only brief was to stooge around between aerodromes and generally make a nuisance of ourselves. There were no allied troops in Sardinia yet so no special care was called for. Our bombs were expected to be released on aerodromes, searchlights and guns. The
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main object was to keep the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica on the ground. These trips were not very popular and provided good practice for Ju88 night fighters. We were stood down on the 3rd. June after doing two ops the previous night. We slept all morning and in the afternoon crowded into a lorry and went to the seaside. Monastir, near Sousse and we had our first baths since leaving Blida. We were in good company and had Mare Nostrum to ourselves with tens of thousands of other Allied troops. I have been there several times since and always think of the mass of naked troops in the sea. A good target for the the [sic] German aircraft? Not really, the scores of light A-A guns made it a very dicey target. The Allies must have had well over a thousand aircraft of different types in the area. The Arab town of Monastir was out of bounds to the Army but not, for some probably invalid reason to the R.A.F. We had a 'shufti' and two of us invested in a sort of haircut. Most of the inhabitants seemed to be French, Monastir having been the fashionable part of the Sousse area,
The night of the 4th. June was an unlucky one for 150 Squadron. We lost three of our 16 aircraft on the ground without intervention from the enemy. The aircraft were bunched fairly close together, having been bombed-up and ready for take-off. During a final check, a Bombadier accidentally released a flare which lay on the ground. He dashed off to find an Armourer to make it safe but within minutes the flare ignited. Within 15 minutes the whole area was ablaze and three aircraft, M Mike, A Able and P Peter, each complete with over two tons of bombs and full petrol tanks blew up. Our aircraft which was to have taken us twice to Pantelleria that night 'N' Nuts, together with seven others, was severely damaged. About half the squadron went to Panteleria [sic] , 2 half-trips and in full moonlight reported a couple of Ju88's circling the island. One aircraft returned with about 40
square feet of fabric torn off.
The following night a new target was added to our growing list, SYRACUSE in eastern Sicily, only a little light flak was encountered, and it was just a matter of bombing the water front. Our main task was in fact to drop leaflets on several of the coastal towns, working our way anticlockwise round Sicily. We passed slightly to the west of Pantelleria on the return leg and saw the Wimpies from the Western Desert squadrons bombing the island.
The exact words written in my diary are "bashing hell out of the island".
Our own Group Captain - "Speedy" Powell also went to Pantelleria but complained that his bomb did not explode. We riled him that it went into the sea. We were now seeing a great deal more of the British army and the Americans and we were realising just what small cogs we were in all the activity. We had an American guest with us when he ran us over to the Ops. Room in his personal jeep to collect lastnight's aiming point photograph. He noticed in the caption at the bottom of the photograph "280 deg.T" and remarked "Geez, mighty hot up there aint [sic] it?". It refered [sic] to our course, not the temperature, but we did not add any further complication to trying to explain.
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in the next 12 days we carried out only two raids, the first an easy one to PANTALARIA [sic], which surrendered the following day, and the second to a new target, MESINA [sic], the straits between the toe of Italia and Sicile [sic] . on the way out we passed very close to our favourite island and across Sicily to the target. The target was already marked with 14 flares by the Western Desert squadrons, and for the first time in North Africa that part of the job was done for us. I noted at the time that "the A-A defences were baffled by the number of aircraft over the target at the same time. There were 34 aircraft and only F/Lt. Langlois ran into trouble. He was caught in the searchlights from both sides of the straits and dropped from 11,000 to 2,000 feet to escape them. In doing so he flew through the balloon barrage, but without further incident.
My diary has recently been opened for the first time in over 42 years, so I have not pondered over its accuracy. 34 aircraft simultaneously over the target probably did seem like a thousand bomber raid to us!. Our Bomb Aimer that night was Ft/Lt. Casky, our own being in jail in Tunis. After our last trip to 'the' island we went to Tunis on a 48 hr. verbal pass. The Skipper had the trots, which we all suffered from time to time, and he tried to rest in the tent nearest the toilet trench. Willoughby the Navigator, Stan Chadderton Bombadier [sic] , Harry Dyson the Wireless Op and myself, Rear Gunner. We were each issued with two boxes of American "K" rations, and hitch-hiked first to Sousse and then to Tunis. The first leg was in the back of an Army lorry and the main leg up the coast road by R.A.F. "Queen Mary" which carried about a hundred of us. The whole trip took only 6 hours. The town of Tunis had been in Allied hands for 4 days and there were still a few Germans in hiding. We had given no thought to accommodation which did not seem to be important. Leaving Stan and Di in a canteen abandoned by the Germans, Wally and I eventually found an hotel near the docks area where we were able to book two rooms. I cannot recall the name of the hotel, but the address was 49 Rue de Serbie. The hotel was in very poor condition, no water, all the windows had been blown out, doors smashed, walls cracked and so on. No catering but we had our 'K' rations. Opposite the hotel was a bombed church and all around the buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged. The docks had been our main target in Tunis, and they were destroyed, with all the warehouses practically levelled out. One cargo vessel was beached and two others rested on the bottom. The Arabs were mostly friendly and told us the bomb damage in town was done mainly by 4 engined bombers is daylight, which let us off the hook. The European French were not so friendly, possibly many of them having lost comfortable homes. Some were quite abusive verbally but to others we managed to explain that we flew Chasseurs, pas des bombardiers. In our minds we had liberated the people of Tunis - and the rest of North Africa - from the Germans. We did not fully appreciate that the Arabs saw it differently. The Inglisi and Americans were no different to the Germans and Italians, and they in turn did no less for them than the French. They lived for the day when they would be left to manage their own affairs. In our wanderings around town we met a Tommy who was a Prisoner of War on a ship which had. been bombed at night a few miles out of Tunis. The ship was Italian, homeward bound and had been straffed [sic] by Spitfires during the day. The ship was spotted by two Wellington crews during a night raid on the docks, and the ship was
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bombed, then straffed [sic] from a few hundred feet. The vessel came to a halt and the 20 or so Germans and Italians abandoned ship. Three of the several hundred British prisoners had been regrettably killed in the action and all the others managed to get ashore in lifeboats and floats in the final days of the Axis evacuation of North Africa. The ship was without lights which should have been carried. Another 8th. Army private told us he was a P.O.W. being transferred from a lorry onto a boat about a week ago when about 30 Spitfires and Kittyhawks arrived and caused chaos with their 20 and 40 mm. cannon. The guards were overpowered and most of the 500 or so P.O.W.’s managed to get away. He spoke highly of the fighter pilots, convinced the attack was a very well-planned sortie to release the P.O.W.'s., not just to blaze away at anything German that dared to move. He could very well have been correct,
On our last evening in Tunis the four of us shared a battle of wine with a meal at a roadside cafe. When we were paying the bill we found there was money left over and asked for another bottle of their excellent wine. As the wine was brought over, a Sgt. M.P. standing behind us shouted "no more wine for them", after which Stan told him to mind his own business. The M.P. then grabbed Stan's arm and held it to his back, but seeing threatening movements from the rest of us, released it. Stan then turned quickly and thumped the M.P. who promptly disappeared. Shortly afterwards two R.A.F. Sgt. S.P.'s came is and asked if we had had some trouble and if so would Stan like to put in a complaint to the Provost Marshal? This seemed like a good countermeasure to a possible charge made by the Sgt. M.P. and Stan accompanied the two R.A.F. S.P.’s to the Provost Marshal's office. In reality this was the jail and as they entered the door the Sgt. M.P. set about Stan who gave as good as he got. But this was inside the jail, Stan was at a big disadvantage and about to spend the first of three nights in it. The jail was is fact next door to our hotel is Rue de Serbie. Willy and I did not suspect that Stan was in trouble, we assumed our S.P.’s were just being helpful, so we sat down again with the bottle. Perhaps Di's conscience was not quite so clear, and when he saw the S.P.'s coming he made himself scarce. We caught up with him later asking an M.P. where he could pinch a Jeep. The M.P. humoured him and directed him to an American car park with lots of Jeeps, but Di had seen a tramcar and decided to pinch that instead. Fortunately the tramcar was off the rails, and he changed his attention to the French tricolour on top of a derelict building. He climbed the building and removed the flag, then Willy and I managed to get him back to the hotel. Di's condition was not due to a session of heavy drinking, we had seen very little of anything alcoholic for a long time and two glasses of local wine would have been more than enough to really get him going.
The three of us hitch-hiked back to Kairoaun and reported the loss of one Bomb Aimer to the Skipper. The following day Squadron Leader Miller D.F.C. flew to Tunis and demanded Stan's release from jail. He had a major row with the same Sgt. M.P. who started it all and who was asking what authority the Squadron Leader had. The Squadron Leader pointed to his 2 1/2 rings of rank and the D.F.C. and asked the M.P. whether he thought they were scotch mist. Stan was released and back at Kairoaun was charged with causing an affray, resulting in a Reprimand. The Sgt. M.P. was charged and given a Severe Reprimand and reduced to Corporal.
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By the 16th. of June we were operational again as a crew. the target was again NAPLES, a 6 hour 15 min. stooge and rather tiring. There was a full moon and visibility was 25 miles. We could clearly see Pantelaria [sic] to port, and later, north of Sicily, the small island of Maritimo, just the tip of a mountain sticking out of the sea. The Isle of Capri provided a good pin-point. Over the target area there was 9/10ths. cloud so we bombed from above the flares. Flak was moderate and widely spread. There was slight consternation when one of my turret doors fell off for no apparent reason. I wondered what else would fall off but everything else seemed to be intact so it was just a matter of strapping myself in - which according to the book should be so in any case. Just after "bombs gone" I reported a twin-engined aircraft starboard quarter up at 1000 yards. The Skipper started to weave gently. and Di went to the astrodome position to search above the horizontal whilst I -theoritically [sic] at least-- concentrated on below the horizontal. This is not an easy task when the rear gunner is expected to ignore one fighter leaving it to his colleague whilst searching for others. Di became somewhat emotional to say the least, said it was not a fighter but merely flak, and then went on to give a commentry [sic] on searchlight activity and flak at least - by then- five miles away, and of only historical interest. Whilst in a turn to port the other aircraft was directly astern and I identified it as twin engined and without the high tail fin of the Wellington. The Skipper did a diving turn to starboard and we lost the other aircraft. Di claimed it was another aircraft not to be confused with the one he identified as flak! Normally Di stayed at his radio position, it was better that way. On the return journey, either there was a raid on Trapani or someone had strayed off-course. On the 18th. it was again to SYRACUSE, an exceptionally clear night, almost no cloud and a full moon. We could have dispensed with the flarepath on take-off and we felt as if we were doing a day trip. Over the target there was tracered flak up to 7,000 feet and we were geared up to bomb from 5,000 feet. We expected night fighters, and even day fighters, so went straight in at 5000 feet, bombed and straight out again, down to 3,000 feet for a quick tour of several nearby small towns and villages where we dropped leaflets. We were glad to get home that night, such met. and lunar conditions were hazardous. SALERNO again on the 21st, a routine trip, but on the 24th. of June I got a message to call at the 'Orderly Room', which in reality was the bell tent next to the C.O.'s tent. There was great discussion on which particular crime had caught up with me, but it was all very innocent. I came out of the bell tent as a Flight Sargeant [sic] much to the annoyance of the Sgt. Skipper and the three other Sgts. in the crew. It didn't help very much when I told them they need not call me Flight Sgt. ALL the time, just once in the morning and again in the evening.
In the early hours of the 26th. June we bombed the naval base of BARI in S. E. Italy, and it was an almost complete fiasco. It was not possible to see the ground due to haze, and the Western Desert aircraft had dropped the marker flares in the wrong place. Fires were started over an area of about 60 square miles, maybe one or two on the target by sheer chance. The target was a small oil refinery built especially to deal with the crude oil from Albania. Important to the Axis because that particular oil needed special treatment which, we were advised, only Bari could provide. We were now spending more and more time over the Italian mainland, for the first time we were seeing concentrations of
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lights in the form of a triangle which were assumed to be Prison and Internment Camps. On the way out we saw Trapani being bombed by our colleagues from the Western desert. The following afternoon it was too hot to sleep and I flew with Sgt. Whitehouse, a new pilot from Britain, in a brand new aircraft, 'D' Donald. We traced the path of the 8th. Army to beyond the Mareth line, at about 2500 feet. There were few battle scars; It was hard to appreciate that this was a place of such dreadful carnage so recently.
Kairouan was placed out of bounds due to Typhus, and there was nothing in the walled city to tempt us to ignore the order. The Arabs were less friendly and our revolvers were not looked upon merely as a taken of authoriity [sic] . According to a report in a Daily Mirror which took a few weeks to arrive, the lads were reported to have been given a hearty welcome by the French people in the Holy City of Kairouan. Actually there were only a handful of French remaining. Another Daily Mirror headline we found amusing was "BLOCKBUSTERS ON BIZERTA". It went an to say that "Lastnight our Bombers based in North Africa again pounded Bizerta; During the entire raid, blockbusters were dropped at the rate of one every two minutes. Absolutely correct, it was a raid from Blida, but it did not say that the raid was of 2 minutes duration and that we had only two aircraft able to carry the blockbusters. However, we looked forward to reading even an old Daily Mirror and to listen to the B.B.C. when airborne. Some of the stock phrases brought a chuckle at times 'Fires were left burning..', "Rear Gunners straffed [sic] the target..." "All opposition was overcome.." "Many two ton blockbusters ...." etc. etc, It appeared far more impressive in print than in reality doing it. Generally all we saw were explosions and dull red glows, tracer coming up and curving away passed us, and being blinded sometimes by searchlights. We did not picture at the time the loss of life down below and the damage caused to factories and buildings of all descriptions, in any cases, mostly houses. Straffing [sic] was invigorating and served to let off steam, but the supporting arithmetic was disappointing. An aircraft travelling at 180 m.p.h. (264 feet per second) over a target 360 yards in length would take 4 seconds to traverse the target. A .303 Browning has a rate of fire of 1200 rounds per min., the four in the rear turret having a combined rate of 4800 per min., or 80 rounds per second. There is time only for a 4 second burst of 320 rounds - not a lot - The Reargunner sees nothing of the target until it is passed and needs to be told when to open fire by someone in the front office. On straffing [sic] details it is likely the front turret with two guns, and one beam gun would be in use, increasing fire power by 75%, Possibly even a four-second burst once experienced at the receiving end might cause the enemy to duck next time we come by. This was an acceptable technique along a straight road. The aircraft was often fitted with two beam guns, one on each side, but only one was manned. Vision was poor from the beam positions and normally we would pass to one side of the target with one wing low. The gun on the other beam would have been aiming upwards. On the 28th 150 Sqdn. was stood down for 24 hours, but the previous night we paid a visit to SANGIOVANI on the southern toe of the Italian mainland: This was a daylight trip with four squadrons of Wellingtons to the train ferry terminal, a dock or lock which the ferry would enter and the water level be adjusted such that the level of the rails on land and ferry coincided. The train would then be shunted an or off the ferry as required. Flack was intense for
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Italian targets and there were trains both on-the ferry in dock and onshore. The whole lot was successfully reduced to a shambles but 6 of our aircraft failed to return. Our heaviest loss yet in a single night.
The 30th. of June was Willie's birthday and we celebrated it over MESINA. According to the B.B.C. we are blitzing both sides of the straits, Mesina to the west in Sicily and Sangiovani on the Italian mainland. The straits are only 3 1/2 miles wide, and carry the greater part of all enemy traffic to Sicily, entirely in German control with concentrated light flack [sic] from both sides and from ships in the middle. A trip lasting 5 1/2 hours.
The whole crew is beginning to feel the strain of long periods of intense activity. Although most of the memories are of the actual bombing ops., that was only a part of it. Aircraft had to be inspected daily on the ground and also air tested ready for the next trip, before bombing up. The Navigator had to prepare his flight plan prior to take off and this was done also on the many occasions when trips were later cancelled. All of us spent at least some time in the Intellegence [sic] Section to keep up-to-date with the position of the front line and the general trend. It was perhaps in some ways easier for us than for our counterparts in Europe. We had fewer distractions. There was no looking forward to a pint in the local pub. nor getting home to the family for a day or two. Not even the local cinema. There was very little booze to be had, I seem to remember a ration of one bottle of beer per fortnight which I used to take up on an air test to cool it down, and then give to the Armourers after landing. The batman was not going to ask "which suit and shoes are you wearing tonight Sir? " as he did later at Spitalgate. Evening wear was the same as for the rest of the day, shorts, perhaps a shirt, certainly no socks, and sandals on the feet. On the few occasions when we went out of camp we generally wore khaki battledress which we wore also of course on ops. I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep my eyes open at night for long periods, and finding it very tempting to rest my head on the guns and have a doze, but to do so would be absolutely unforgiveable. The Skipper was under an even greater strain and a six hour trip was 6 hours of concentrated effort. On one or two occasions he dozed off for maybe just a few seconds, but fortunately by his side most of the time was Stan Chadderton the Bombardier who very quickly realised the position and watched points up front. The amount of nattering in the air was on the increase, also. It was standard procedure to use oxygen at night regardless of altitude, and the microphones with their electrical heaters were built-in to the mask. Everyone was connected to the intercom system all the time except for the Wireless op. who was able to switch out his own connection when using his radio. Microphones were switched as required by individual wearers. The Skipper's microphone was switched on all the time and so too was the Rear Gunner's in danger areas. Procedures were relaxed somewhat in our particular theatre of war; we could get along quite nicely without oxygen below 10,000 feet and I don't recollect flying much above that height. Whenever I reported anything Di dashed to the astradome [sic] and objected. If the rotation of my rear turret was not rythmical [sic] both the Skipper and Navigator objected. The turret and guns presented an assymetrical [sic] shape to the slipstream with a consequent rudder effect. If I kept the turret facing starboard for too long the aircraft would do a gentle flat turn to starboard. Meanwhile the Skipper was trying to maintain a course determined by the
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Navigator who was keeping a watchful eye on his compass, perhaps not appreciating that it was the rear gunner making things difficult. Although the sides of the turret were clad with perspex, it was difficult to see through it with the degree of clarity required. In fact the perspex in front of the turret had been removed to provide a clear vision panel. Even on the ground the whole crew was getting very irritable with each other. For almost a year we had lived worked, ate and near enough slept together almost without a break, the same endless routine, and anything to which we could look forward seemed an awful long way off. Whose turn to carry the water, became a very important issue at times and would lead to an argument [sic] . After some very harsh wards we would agree that it was stupid to argue about such a trivial issue, which in turn led to a bigger argument on who started the argument in the first place. I remember Chad the Bombardier putting paid to the row one day by getting off his bed - known as a pit - and announcing "Well, I've get to go for a **, anyone care to join me'? The loo comprised a trench, 20 feet long, several feet deep and about one foot wide over which one crouched. There was a choice of direction in which to face, and one or two of the bigger chaps preferred to straddle the trench. There was no need to interrupt a conversation in going to the toilet.
By the end of June the length of tour was clarified. First it was to have been 30 trips as in Britain, then it had been increased to 40 as some trips were not very hazardous, then some of the trips counted only as halves, and the tour was again changed to be 250 hours of operational flying. The Western Desert tour was said to be 40 trips or 250 hours, whichever was the less. However, there were other things to think about. Sgt. Lee and two other pilots were paraded before the whole squadron Air Crews and called "Saboteurs" by the Group Captain, having between them written off five aircraft in taxiing accidents. Group Captain 'Speedy' Powell was a very keen type and conducted all the briefings himself, was generally the first one off the ground and first back in time for debriefing. Whilst we were resting he would sometimes return to the target in an American twin boomed lightning to try and assess the damage - or find what we had actually bombed!
On the night of the 30th. June we were stood dawn and watched 142 Sqdn. take off for southern Italy. The starboard engine of one aircraft cut a few seconds before the aircraft should have get airborne. The aircraft swung and crashed into a jeep which was waiting to cross the 'runway', killing both American occupants and breaking it's back, a complete write-off. My diary makes no mention of the fate of the crew. We had just been issued with a new aircraft, 'B Beer' and I spent most of the day cleaning the guns and turret which were still all greased up as when they left England. Normally this work was carried out by the Armourers, but I was expected to take an active interest in the guns and turrets. The guns were removed, stripped, soaked in petrol, thoroughly cleaned and reassembled, replaced in the newly-cleaned turret and then harmonised. In Britain the harmonising of guns was carried out by placing a board at a predetermined distance in front of the turret and adjusting the ring-sight and guns to line up with specific paints or circles on the board. In North Africa we placed a can or any handy object on the ground 300 yards away and pointed the guns and ring-sight at it.
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Another day-off on the 2nd. July and Jumbo Cox, a Navigator on 150 Sqdn. and I hitch-hiked into Sousse and spent a few hours in the sea. After our dip we queued for 20 minutes at a huge marquee and enjoyed the most wonderful mug of tea of all time. I have thought many times in the last 40 years of that mug of tea.
The 4th. of July turned out to be the-hottest in temperature we had experienced for a long time. We had bombed TRAPANI in the very early morning. Intensive flack and searchlights with tracer up to 5000 feet. At 2000 feet the temperature was 95 Farenheit [sic] and not much lower at 9,000 feet, our bombing height. I was wearing only trousers and a shirt and was soaked in perspiration. Even the slipstream felt hot when I put one hand outside. Apart from the oppressive heat, it was a routine trip, and we managed to sleep most of the following afternoon, in 130 deg. in the shade. The wind was from the south-west, straight off the Sahara, and several airmen passed out with heatstroke. Metal parts of the aircraft were too hot to touch and a Wellington on the ground of 37 Squadron went up in flames. On the night of the 6th, we were briefed to attack aerodromes in Sardinia, and Sgt. Chandler piloted the first aircraft off. Both engines cut immediately after take-off whilst his undercarriage was still lowered. With full fuel and bomb load he somehow managed to avoid the inevitable and landed in a cultivated area at the end of the runway. Some of the crew suffered minor injuries, but it was 40 minutes before the rest of us were given a green to take-off. The wrecked aircraft was directly under the take-off path. Seven aircraft failed to get off the ground, including ours, all due to engines overheating after running for over 40 minutes on the ground. We had also lost air pressure for the brakes. Of the aircraft which did take off none was successful in finding the target, flouted by bad weather over Sardinia. Sgt. Valentine was above 10/10ths cloud with engines overheating and deemed it necessary to jettison his bombs "over the sea". We were not generally briefed with the positions of Allied shipping convoys, but were routed away from them without being given the reason. Sgt. Valentine decided to return by the shortest route and when has bombs whistled down on the convoy the Navies took a very poor view and let fly with everything they had. This was a well-established practice on the Navy's part, so there was no cause for complaint. In all, that night was a waste of 30 tons of bombs, 4000 gallons of petrol and over 150 flying hours.
On the 7th. we visited an aerodrome at COMISO in Southern Italy, delivering 4500 lbs, of bombs. It was a new target to the R.A.F., and apparently undefended, Only three of us managed to locate it and we were lucky in the timing of our 3 flares in obtaining a pinpoint. We obtained good aiming point photograph which showed our stick of bombs had straddled the dispersal area, with the last two landing in the olive groves.
Nearly half a century later I wonder why we did not use the radio for communicating with other aircraft in providing mutual assistance. We had no V.H.F. but the TR9 H.F. R/T would have been adequate. Observing Radio silence I feel was taken to extremes, our signals might indicate our presence to the enemy, but they were aware of that in any case. They might home onto us, but our transmissions would have been brief and on a frequency initially unknown to the enemy. They were not equipped to respond fast enough to information gleaned by monitoring, neither was the area covered with direction-finding
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stations. I feel this was one of the matters where a principle had been established and which was not reviewed often enough under changing circumstances.
On the evening of the tenth of July, just before briefing we heard aircraft engines and it was like being at a cinema show. Wave after wave of Dakota transports thundered overhead on their way to Sicily. It reminded me of the film "An Engishman`s Home" and the massive formations of German bombers, but these aircraft were American and British and were definitely not making a film. At briefing Groupie put us in the picture. "Accurate timing and accurate bombing, more so than ever before" was his opening phrase. We were briefed to bomb a specific part of SYRACUSE whilst paratroops were being dropped close by and other paras were already in position ready to capture our target immediately after the bombing. Flares were dropped accurately and the target successfully bombed, although some bombs went in the sea because of its close proximity. We noted a very large fire at Catania and "a number of queer lights which suggested fifth column activity" according to my diary. 45 years later I wonder how I reached that conclusion. Looking down from about 9,000 feet on the southern coast of Sicily on the return journey, we saw the Navy shelling the coast and several searchlights on shore began to sweep out to sea. One of the searchlights located a ship and held on to it, whilst the others went on sweeping. From another ship there were just three flashes of light, and seconds afterwards, three flashes on shore, one in front of the offending searchlight, one slap on it, and the third behind it. That was one searchlight out of action, and the others switched off in sympathy. The Navy carried on firing without further interruption. My panoramic view of the action from nearly two miles above gave no indication of the destruction and agony caused by those three shots.
The following, night it was the turn of MONTECORVlNO in western Italy, a new German aerodrome. Over the target we narrowly missed colliding with Jack Alazrachi in `Q' Queenie. His starboard wingtip scored our port wing and my diary records "a very shaky do". Our stick straddled the aircraft parking area and we took an excellent aiming point photograph of 15 aircraft an the ground. It was later confirmed officially that our two squadrons destroyed 40 aircraft and damaged many more.
On the 13th. at briefing, Group Captain Powell grinned and glanced down at his flying boots and said "Yes chaps, we are in for an interesting trip, Jerry is landing a massive convoy at MESINA and we are instructed to smash it." We went out at 6000 ft. above sea level which, over Sicily averaged about 2000 feet above ground. I found it difficult to concentrate on a formal rear-gunner type search, there was so much activity. Ground detail could be seen very easily and the Tactical Air Force was observed bombing all over the island. There were flares everywhere, bombs creating havoc, flak barrages and intensive shelling by the Navies. Over our target, the flak was intense but scattered. Sgt. "Pax" Smith's aircraft was holed, something went through his bombing panel and made two big holes in the front turret. This crew, like most did not include a full-time front gunner, the Bombardier occupied the turret as and when expedient and on this occasion had just returned to the second dickie seat when the aircraft was holed. One aircraft was seen to crash and another, in flames, exploded on hitting the ground. At debriefing we learned that one Wellington of 142 Squadron was missing,
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and this was manned by six officers, five of whom had completed one tour over Germany. The sixth, flying as 'second dickie' was on his very first trip.
Another new target to us, on the 15th, CROTONIA, an aerodrome on the east coast of the toe of Italy. A routine trip out, good visibility and straight in to the taget [sic] . There were four flak batteries, but Sgt, Mickie Mortimer was just ahead of us and his first stick silenced all four. Our single stick straddled the aerodrome and enlarged the existing fires among aircraft on the ground. We stooged around for a little while watching aircraft blowing up and more bombs adding to the havoc on the ground. When all was quiet we dropped to 250 feet and went in with guns blazing and between us fired about 4000 rounds into the fires, We must have hit something. There were dummy fires to the north and south-east of the aerodrome, very unreal and no-one was fooled by them. On the way out of the target area we were followed. by an aircraft sporting an orange light, and at one stage took light evasive action, but he did not attack. Several other rear gunners reported the same experience, non [sic] was actually engaged. We were routed back round northern Sicily, as usual Trapani was being attacked and other targets nearby were being bombed. We were hoping to see the 142 Sqdn. aircraft with the blue light which we nearly shot down returning from Salerno. The Bombardier in the second pilot's seat reported two aircraft ahead, one with a white light which we assumed to be a decoy. We expected the aircraft to allow us to overtake, and whilst the one with the light drew our attention his chum would sneak is from another dirction [sic] . We lost both the other aircraft for a minute or two, then the aircraft with the light - this time a blue one - reappeared on the starboard bow at about 500 yards. Meanwhile Chad had taken over the front turret, but held his fire. He identified it as a Wimpey. The Skipper altered course and we passed about 100 feet below the Wimpy. I got a plan view of him and confirmed the identification. As he fell behind I flashed dah dah dit, dit dit dit on my inspection lamp. There was no reply from the other aircraft but it landed 15 minutes after us and taxied towards 142 dispersal, On that same trip two of us saw an aircraft at 800 yards on our port quarter up which closed in to 500 yards. He was at too great a range for our .303s, but we were ready for an instant dive to port. He surprised us by turning away to port at about 400 yards, and again two of us identified it as a Wimpey.
Enemy aerodromes continued to take up most of our effort, and on the night of the 17th. it was three hours each way to POMIGLIANO near Naples, passing round Vesuvius with it's dull red glow. The target was initially very quiet and consequently not easy to locate. On our first run in at 6000 feet, we were a few minutes early, but dead on time at 4000 feet on our second run. We were caught and held in searchlights, and the light flak was point-blank. Allan Willoughby claimed he could smell it when the Skipper asked him for a course for home after the second run-in. When Stan the Bombardier announced that we still had nine 250 pound bombs aboard, someone suggested we should jettisson [sic] them on the town. Allan suggested we strike at a village a few miles ahead but Stan refused to drop them anywhere except the aerodrome at Pomigliano. The third run-in was at 5000 feet and the searchlights got us again as soon as the bomb doors were open. We were in a cone of eight and it seemed we had the aerodrome to ourselves. The bombing was accurate and we lost height to 2000 feet, all quiet again. My part in all this had
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really been that of a passenger listening to and witnessing the drama, and I was not popular when I suggested to the Skipper that we go back at low level and put a few lights out. Chad was in favour and had the front turret in mind, Allan was not keen and didn't like the smell of flak, and Dyson thought the idea was 'plain stupid'. Dyson was probably right for the wrong reason, but the Skipper was thinking we had got away with it for well over 30 trips so far, and there was no point in tempting providence. A three hour stooge back to Blida with nothing but silence on the intercom. Other aircraft were seen in the circuit and our TR9 radio was out of order. This was a very low power transmitter/receiver operating between 4 and 8 MHz. and used by the Skipper to contact Air Traffic Control at Base. If we still had an acceptable reserve of fuel we would have gone away and returned in 30 miniutes [sic] , but fuel was low and the Skipper decided to land without any formalities or delay. This aroused the wrath of the Flight Commander who tore a terrific strip off him next day. Our report at debriefing was very different to that of Sgt. Whitehouse and crew, who said it was a wizard O.T.U. run, bombs slap on the runway, no flak, no searchlights and the whole thing was 'a piece of cake'. He had in fact been to the wrong aerodrome, Crotone, which we had pranged on the 15th. where the defences stayed silent in order not to attract attention. - an old Italian custom -. The reason for the accuracy of the searchlights was a layer of cloud at 10,000 feet, a full moon and clear visibility. We were silhouetted against the cloud even without the searchlights.
Two nights later Sgt. Whitehouse, this time officially and with the rest of us, went again to CROTONE. We were all very tired and I found it difficult to keep awake. Visibility was 15 miles with a nearly full moon and on the way out for long periods we actually enjoyed the visible company of other Wimpies. On arrival at CROTONE we were surprised to see fires already started and spent a good five minutes in ensuring that it was indeed the target, Two bombing runs were made, at 3000 feet and 1500 feet, dropping nine 250 pounders each time. The bombs were seen bursting among aircraft on the ground, some of which were already ablaze. 400 yards from the burning aircraft was a small wood which had obviously been hit and was burning merrily. My diary records "from the ground it would have seemed like Nov. 5th.
Rockets were going up and verries by the score.
Someone had pranged a pyrotechnic store."
We made a third run at 200 feet and spent some 1500 rounds at the aircraft on the ground. Other gunners did the same. We were amazed to find everything so easy, and no opposition as far as we know, our raid on the 15th. should have given them a good idea of what to expect. There were no dummy fires and still they make no effort to disperse aircraft. The absence of fighters was strange; even day-fighters would have been very effective under those conditions. One crew reserved an odd bomb for the village south of the arodrome [sic] . It had a 36 hour delay and landed in the centre of the village. Not a very nice thing to do, and an act certainly not in accordance with our leaflets. Sgt. Pax Smith the intrepid Kiwi was on the last trip of his tour and elected to hit a railway bridge near the coast. It also had a' 36 hour delay fuse and missed the bridge by 50 yards. The British army was not at all happy with Smithy's effort, they planned to use the bridge within a week or two and were going to some considerable trouble to make sure the enemy
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didn't blow it up. They hadn’t counted on Smithy, but fortunately he wasn't quite up to scratch an that last trip.
One night off and then back try the 'Big City" , the capital of Italia, not to be confused with the really big one, the Capital city of Deutchland, with which there was absolutely no comparison. It was over two months since we had been to Rome, and it was still supposed to be an 'Open, undefended City'. Our specific target was PRACTICA DI MERE, an aerodrome just to the southwest of Rome. The Groupy had made it very clear at briefing, that nothing must be dropped on Rome itself. The target would be marked by flares positioned by W/O Coulson of 142 Squadron. We had no target map but the the [sic] aerodrome was plotted on the map of Central Italy - probably half million scale -. As we were passing the island of Maratimo, Chad was in the second dickie seat, map in hand and decided to get a clearer view of Maratimo by opening the sliding window at his side. The map disappeared out of the window, but with Allan's D. R. navigation we reached the target as Coulson's flares went down. Target marking at that stage of the war in Italy was in its infancy and was carried out with flares designed for lighting up the ground. These were very different from the coloured Target Indicators used to such great effect over Germany. Bombing was not particularly accurate, but well clear of Rome itself, where there was plenty of light flak and searchlight activity which exploded the myth about an undefended city. This activity extended down the Tiber to the Lido di Roma, where the Radio Station was still operating. The Vatican was blacked out very effectively
On the 25th. we started 8 days leave, taking an aircraft back to Blida for an engine change and major inspection. We took advantage of the stores at Blida and were issued with new uniforms, shoes and anything we wanted, just a matter of signing for it, it was two years before the system caught up with me and I was debited with the cost.
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[bearer document in English and arabic]
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[photograph]
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TWO OF OUR AIMING POINT PHOTOS
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The first three days were spent in Algiers with Harry Dyson at the Hotel Radio Grand but the inactivity - or something - was too much for Harry so we returned to Blida, only to find the rest of our party had adjourned to the rest camp at Surcouf. I spent most of my time in the next few days in Blida, partly with a French-Arab family Iloupcuse Moka Mourice Bijoutier, at 11 Rue Goly, Blida. 30 years later I was able to find the area but no-one recognised either the name or the address. Like most places, Blida had changed a lot in the intervening years. I remembered it as an almost typical French village, beautifully clean, tables and chairs outside the cafes, and a very pleasant atmosphere. After 20 years or so of independence it was a very different story, and I thought a rather sad one. I made several excursions into Algiers where the Yanks had become very well organised. They had-taken over and re-organised six cinemas, all with continuous shows for about 12 hours per day, and open house to Service personnel. I visited all six. The N.C.O.'s Club in Rue d'Isley was our base camp in Algiers, where we enjoyed endless cups of tea and cakes. The Malcolm Club, exclusive to R.A.F. personnel provided a good hot meat each evening. It was on this leave that I visited the local Match Factory at Caussemille, being an ardent Philumenist - collector of matchbox labels-. The factory was at that time owned and operated by the French and I was given a conducted tour of the factory. Most of the labels presented to me at the factory are in my collection to this day. My next visit to the factory was 37 years later, when I met with a very cool reception. The French had gone long ago, only their name remained. In that area of Algiers, all the street names were written on the street signs in Arabic except one, Caussemille. This was the name of an old French or Belgian family of match manufacturers possibly difficult to translate into Arabic. I met several of the chaps from the Rhodesia training days, one had joined Coastal Command and was detached from 'U.K. to Maison Blanche on White Wimpies. It had taken him six months to complete 100 hours and he was rather gloomy about the next four hundred to complete his tour. He was in fact rather nervous, his job being mine-sweeping; I asked him "what height do you fly at?" He replied that `it was a two-dimensional job, no such thing as height'. Causing magnetic mines to blow up by flying over them at very low level could not have been very pleasant. Maison Blanche is now known as El Beda, the International airport of Algeria, not so well organised as it was in 1943, and not half so busy! Blida aerodrome is the Headquarters of the Algerian Air Force and is a prohibited area to foreigners.
At the end of our 8 days in comparitive [sic] civilisation, we were glad to collect our newly serviced Wimpey and return to Kairouan. I was immediately recruited to fly with Sgt. Stone to MARINA DI PAOLA. We stooged over northern Sicily is daylight and very close to Trapani our old favourite which had been severely bashed about. During the invasion it was subjected also to heavy Naval shelling. Being with a different crew perhaps made things more interesting, seeing how they reacted to various aspects, and I thought they had a rather strange and formal appoach [sic] . We did not see our bombs burst and our photoflash failed to go off. There was none of the usual binding we experienced with our own crew, everyone was pleasant, courteous and cheerful. At debriefing Group Captain Powell said "Good Show chaps, I expect you are glad to get onto ops at last, and that's the first one done". I was speechless but thinking about their next 44, maybe they were also. I can see "Speedy Powell" very clearly making
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that statement, a memory revived recently in the film "Target for Tonight" in which he was the Flight Lieutenant taking the briefing; the same very distinctive and distinguished voice.
On the night of the 4th., the crew not feeling particularly refreshed after its leave, our target was BATTAPAGLIA. It was daylight almost to the Italian Coast and we arrived with 20 minutes to spare, circling the target area. 'Bang on time we dropped the flares, but there were no bright lights'. The twenty minutes of sight-seeing had upset the routine and the flares were dropped on 'safe', and therefore failed to go off. We still had two flares so went down to 3000 feet and dropped the bombs through 9/10ths cloud using individual flares. 90 seconds after bombing, Stan identified the target 4 miles ahead. We had neither bombs nor flares left, and were depressed at putting up such a rotten show on what turned out to be the last trip of our tour. We could have done a spot of straffing below cloud, but instead called it a day.
The following night we waved the boys off to MASINA, and we felt rather sad that we were no longer operational. Sqdn. Ldr Garrad and crew were also no longer operational, having failed to return from MASINA. Someone suggested staying and doing another tour, but Dyson thought the idea was "stupid" - like most other ideas - and with deep regrets we said cheerio to our friends on 150 and 142 Squadrons, and climbed in the back of a lorry bound for Tunis. Pax Smith and Mickey Mortimer and crews were with us and we sat back and enjoyed the scenery, some taking pot-shots at nothing in particular with their revolvers. We had in fact lots of unofficial ammunition of 9mm. calibre, captured from the enemy. This fitted nicely into our .38 Smith & Wessons and differed from the .38 ammo. only in that it had no ejection flange at the end of the cartridge. This had the effect that we could use captured enemy ammo. but they could not use ours because of the flange.
We arrived at no. 2BPD in Tunis just in time for dinner and a cold shower, the first shower for about nine months. During our week or so in the Transit Camp, we had a sort of parade each morning and then were free for the day. It was on one of these parades that our Skipper's name was called to approach the C.O. "Sir, 416170". With no prior warning, the citation was read out and he was presented with the D.F.M. Next it was the turn of Mickey Mortimer to march up and also receive a D.F.M. I seem to recall that he did a somersault before saluting in front of the C.O., or was it a back somersault after receiving the award? either of which today seems quite incredible. Pax Smith had already received a D.F.M for his earlier exploits. My one other recollection of the Transit Camp was an old Italian Water Tanker which was used as a static water tank. It held 10,000 gallons of water and must have weighed over 53 tons when full. All 24 wheels were firmly embedded in the sand up to their axles. It was when we departed from Tunis by lorry for Algiers that one of the Canadian officers decided to hitch-hike back to U.K. and to rejoin the party at the Reception Centre. I learned later that he flew first to Algiers with the R.A.F. and then flew to U.K. with the Yanks. He was an old hand at that sort of thing, having hitch-hiked from Blida to New York and back with a colleague in less than a week.
Meanwhile the rest of us travelled the 500 miles to Algiers by lorry along the coast road, and after a few days in the transit camp boarded a troopship, the Capetown Castle, a passenger liner of the Castle line. We were accommodated in 4-berth cabins with full peace-time fascilities [sic] .
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each cabin was allocated one Italian P.O.W. who slept outside the door, and attended to the cleaning, dhobi etc. We were not impressed by the Italians as fighting men, but had no complaints of their ability and willingness in the job they were then doing. It was a very comfortable voyage and we lived it up in a manner to which we were certainly not accustomed.
After a very pleasant and restful 10 days or so we disembarked at Greenoch and I recollect forming up on the key [sic] prior to joining a train for Liverpool and West Kirby. A rather pompous redcapped Military Policeman called us to attention, right turn, at the double, march! It was more astonishment than lack of discipline which caused everyone to stay put. He was told to get his knees brown and get a few other things too, and we walked to the train, deliberately out of step. Our first steps back in England were certainly not going to be at the double ordered by Red Caps.
This was my fourth visit to West Kirby, where we were rekitted, saying cheerio to our Khaki battledress and tropical kit, documents checked, medical exam. and then disembarkation leave. It was at West Kirby that our Crew was really disbanded, very sad after working as a team for so long, but another phase of our careers was completed.
Of the Crew? Stan Chadderton was commissioned on his second tour and we have met several times in the past 40 years, but I have no news of the Skipper and the rest of the crew. Stan met the Skipper, then a Flight Lieutenant at Brise [sic] Norton at the end of the war on his return from a German P.O.W. camp. We can only hope he returned safely to New Zealand and was able to return in the farm. Allan Willoughby is thought to have ended the war as a Squadron Leader.
My association with the Wimpy was not yet over, however, it was still in use in large numbers in the U.K. for operational training, and was to remain so until the end of the war. More "Wimpys" were built than any other operational. bomber.
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[document from C-in-C]
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[photograph] C.W WITH MUM BARNOLDSWICK
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[photograph] HILDA WITH THE SKIPPER AND BOMB AIMER
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[photograph] [underlined] WITH THE SKIPPER & BOMB AIMER – SECOND HONEYMOON SEPT. 1943 [/underlined]
[photograph] [photograph]
[underlined] AT OUR CHALET AT BLIDA [/underlined]
WATSON – RUTHERFORD- DYSON – CHADDERTON & PADDY (MORTIMER’S FRONT GUNNER)
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[underlined] OUR 150 SQDN. SKIPPER SGT. STAN RUTHERFORD 416170 RNZAF [/underlined] [underlined] A WIMPEY AT BLIDA [/underlined]
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[photograph] AT RICHMOND SECOND HONEYMOON
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[warrant officer parchment]
52A
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[underlined] Screened [/underlined] .
September 1943 saw me at 84 O.T.U. Desborough, a Flight Sgt. with 43 ops under my belt, and that wonderful feeling of being ex-operational. For the next six months or so I was to be a "Course Shepherd", responsible for 12 Air Gunners. Desborough was a typical Operational Training Unit where, in the main, newly-trained aircrew were introduced to operational aircraft and the techniques of dealing with the opposition which was by no means limited to the Germans. There were three courses running simultaneously which gave ample scope to the Captains in making one of their most important decisions, that of selecting their crews.
For the first two weeks or so the training comprised mainly lectures and familiarisation with equipment. Air Gunners were generally able to make an early start with the flying where even on circuits and bumps an extra pair of eyes was to advantage.
The Course Shepherd ensured the smooth-running of the Air-Gunners training. There were specialist instructors for lectures on subjects such as guns, turrets and tactics, but the C.S. supervised their flying aspects and work on the range, in detail.
I particularly enjoyed the Fighter Affiliation sessions, where trainee gunners would take over the rear turret whilst being attacked by one or two Miles Masters or any other "Playmate" who could be cajoled officially to co-operate.
I would stand at the astrodome guiding the gunner with the timing of his advice and instructions to the Pilot. The standard evasive action (referred to later in 5 Group as "Combat Manouvre [sic] ") was the corkscrew, well known to, and anticipated by, the enemy, I might add that until I arrived at 84 OTU I had never even heard of the corkscrew. During the OTU excercises [sic] the fighter pilots were generally sporting enough not to press home their attacks with too much determination, but to allow the bomber sometimes to 'escape', thus giving the rear gunners - or some of them-- the false impression that they actually stood some chance of survival.
I felt quite at home in the "Wimpy" and encouraged the pilot to throw the aircraft around, and make the corkscrews rather more violent to simulate a real attack, where a quick getaway was the only solution to survival. For fighter affiliation excercises [sic] , the turret was equipped with an 8mm. Camera Gun, fitted in place of one of the four .303 Browning machine guns, the remaining three Brownings being de-armed. Each gunner plugged-in his own personal film cassette, and results were assessed the following day in the cinema.
Air firing excercises [sic] were supervised, where the speed of the Wellington was reduced, and a Miles Master would overtake about 3 or 400 yards abeam, towing a drogue. The gunner would be authorised to fire when the towing aircraft was outside his field of fire. He would then fire off about 200 rounds from each gun (five 2-second bursts), at the drogue. It was more than likely that air firing during his initial training had been carried out using a single gun not mounted in a turret. Air to ground firing was limited to a single exercise on a range near the coast, there being little scope for this type of work for heavy bombers over Deutchland.
Not very popular with the coming of Winter weather were the exercises at the firing butts or range. Six trainees would each be given a rear turret, together with four belts each of 200 rounds. He would
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mount the guns and fit the ammunition belts. Take-off procedure with safety catches 'on', then firing a few short bursts, landing procedure, clear the guns, etc. . Generally a few faulty rounds were deliberately built-in to create gun stoppages which the trainee had to clear. Finally he removed the guns from the turret and stripped and cleaned them ready for the next trainee.
All this took about three hours and it was on one of these sessions that unpleasantness developed with one of the trainees. Of the 12 Air Gunners in my little flock, eleven were Sergeants and one was an Acting Pilot Officer on probation. Like the others, his previous flying experience was limited to about 8 hours, and he had not yet been within 10 miles of an operational aircraft. He had been top of his course at Gunnery School and granted a Commission. I found that one of the Sergeants had fitted the guns in the turret and armed them with the belts of ammunition for him whilst I was busy with the others. He had managed to fire-off the rounds, and eventually, with some assistance the guns were removed. He flatly refused to clean the guns, claiming that it was an inappropriate task for an officer. I put it to him that although on a squadron the guns would be lovingly cared for by the armourers, he must still be fully au-fait with every aspect of guns and gunnery. He firmly refused to touch the guns and soil his hands and I told him that unless he gets on with it, we should be late for lunch. Four of the sgts. each took a gun and cleaned them. Some very cryptic comments were made by the Sergeants and I told the Ag. P. O. he was foolish. Later that day, to my absolute astonishment, I was marched in front of the C.O. and charged on a form 252 with insubordination. I was advised that an N.C.O. does not give orders to officers and I replied with something to the effect that I was the instructor and the officer the pupil, giving orders was an essential part of the job. Nevertheless, I was severely reprimanded. I had on several occasions applied for a posting back to operations, and the following day the Station W.O. told me my request had been granted and I was going to a squadron at Norton, near Sheffield in Yorkshire. Which squadron and with what type of aircraft was unimportant. I had never heard of Norton, bit hush-hush they had said. I should have realised that something was amiss, I was not being posted, but only detached. On arrival at Norton I found I was on an Aircrew Refresher Course which I was slow to realise was a correction or discipline course, a form of punishment. There were about 150 aircrew at Norton, from Flt/Lts to Sgts, almost all operational or ex-operational. At least I was among friends.
The day started with a call at 0600, on parade at 0630 , march to breakfast and an inspection at 0730 with greatcoats, followed almost immediately by a further inspection without greatcoats. This was followed until 1800 by sessions of drill, P.T. and lectures, with a break for lunch. Drill was just ordinary uninspiring square -bashing, wearing aircrew-issue shoes, and not boots. The instructor, said to be an L.A.C. Ag-Sgt. shouted commands and abuse, and was indeed very smart and probably efficient at his job, but utterly ignorant and useless off the barrack square. There was no rifle drill, and requests to introduce it were rejected. It was too easy for us to obtain .303 ammunition. P. T. was equally uninspiring and great emphasis was placed on recording improvement in performance as the training progressed. Lectures were farcical and covered most aircrew subjects, including navigation, gunnery, bombing techniques, target marking, etc. etc. There was not a
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flying badge among the instructors and obviously none had any flying experience in any capacity. No-one could possibly take the lectures seriously and there must have been some hair-raising answers in the written tests. The main problem was that at the slightest provocation one could be put on C.O.'s report. This was not a formal charge - which would have been on record - but an interview with the C.O. which would generally wind-up with an award of an extra 3 weeks at Sheffield. My policy was to keep my head down, or in modern parlance, to maintain a low profile. I generally managed to be near the back of the classroom and in the rear ranks on the drill square trying to be invisible. We were allowed out of camp after 1900, with an inspection at the gate, but lights out was at 2200, not allowing much scope. Most evenings were spent in the mess comparing notes and discussing our "crimes"; the instructors were conspicuous by their absence. I recall no-one admitting to flying or taxiing accidents, or misdemeanours whilst flying. Most of the reasons seem to have been absence without leave probably through boredom-, saying the wrong thing in an off-guarded moment or making someone more senior look silly. There was no connection between Norton and aircrew who were alledgedly [sic] L.M.F. or those who were reluctant to fly. Rather than charge a man formally with an offence, the easy way out was to send him on a "refresher course" with no reference to alleged crime or punishment. Operational aircrew discipline is often quoted as having been unique. All jobs were carried out with the same degree of dexterity, and responsibilities in the air within a trade were the same irrespective of rank. The Pilot was the Head Man, whether Squadron Leader or Sergeant. In the air, there were no formalities. The Pilot was 'Skipper' and no-one called anyone 'Sir'. This was generally so on the ground within the confines of the crew, but if it was a non-crew matter or there were V.I.P.'s about, a low-level type of formality might be introduced. Neither was there time for formality in the air where an attack may start and finish - one way or another - in seconds or less. On sighting a fighter at 300 yards a Rear Gunner in a film picked up a microphone and was beard to say "I say Skipper, I think we are being followed". A Guardsman might come up with "Permission to speak Sir", but life's not like that in the air.
Nearing the end of the 3-week course at Sheffield came the farcical final exams. I sailed through everything except P.T. where we were required to run 100 yards in 14 seconds. I was feeling fitter than I had for many years, but that 100 yards took me 17 seconds. Not good enough, try again. The second attempt took 19 seconds and the third attempt 24. I was told that "we would keep doing it all bloody night until I achieved it in 14 seconds". I merely said there was no point in attempting the impossible and I refused to carry out an unlawful order. So for me it was C.O.'s report next day. The C.O. said it was within his power to grant me an indefinite extension to the length of my course. I realised that to argue was probably futile and I recall being contradictory by saying something to the effect that "I have nothing to say except to remind everyone there is a real war going an out there and the sooner some of us get on with it the better". I don't know why I said it or thought what it might achieve, but I was easily provoked. I was awarded an extra 3 weeks at Sheffield, and was very surprised next morning when I was issued with a railway warrant to leave that morning with the others on my "course". I was convinced this was a mistake and succeeded in remaining invisible until I was well clear of Sheffield.
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Most of us felt the invasion of Europe was imminent and we had discussed our plans in the mess within earshot of the 'instructors'. When the balloon goes up, we return to base regardless of the opposition on the grounds that it was our duty to escape from captivity. In retrospect this was not entirely logical thinking but it might have influenced the C.O., I don't know. As far as I know there was no mass exodus and I have no idea how or when R.A.F. Norton was finally closed down. Suffice to say that it was a disgrace and an insult to aircrew, it would have been far more British to charge a man if he had allegedly done something wrong rather than take this easy way out. In general, training and lectures were taken very seriously by air crew and it could be claimed that the type and standard of lectures at Norton were in fact dangerous. Most of us realised it was just a load of absolute rubbish and did not take it seriously, and we had learned long ago to assess the value of the spoken word relative to the background and qualifications of the speaker.
The question of L.M.F. is an even more deplorable but entirely separate subject. Books have been written about it and it became a highly controversial issue. There were indeed some chaps who took such a bashing they felt they had had enough and to continue would increase the risk to the aircraft and crew or even crews. Most other operational aircrew have no less respect for them for admitting it and asking to be excused. L.M.F. and R.A.F. Norton were totally unconnected.
However, feeling very fit physically, and mentally ready to deal with the Ag. P. O. who knew all about the form 252 but couldn't strip even a Browning gun, I returned to 84 O.T.U. Desborough. A written request for an interview with the C.O. was given to the S.W.O. within minutes of arrival. I saw the Gunnery Leader and learned that I was to resume charge of the same course but less the sprog officer who was last seen on his way to Eastchurch as L.M.F and unsuitable for operations. I found later that he had been reduced to the ranks. It seems the other instructors had given him a very hard time all round, and particularly with combat manouvres where he was sick every time he flew. It was just not done to issue 252's but his chances of survival were improved. The C.O. agreed later that a mistake had been made and on paper my case had been reconsidered and the severe rep. withdrawn. Sheffield could not be undone and would have to be written off to experience, but he would see if he could hasten my promotion to W.O. and a posting to a real squadron.
At this time, the O.T.U. instructors were all crewed up and ready to back up the operational squadrons if necessary. Many of us were getting restless seeing a great increase in ground activity to the south and southeast. Lots of real aircraft, Lancasters, Halifaxes, Mosquitoes, Gliders etc. etc. and our status with the Wimpies as ex operational did little for our ego, making us feel like the 'has beens' we really were.
At about 0200 on the 6th. June, now a Warrant Officer, I was Orderly Officer and asleep in the duty room. The Duty Officer, a Ft/Lt. was flat out in the other bunk. A message was delivered marked "Top Secret" and I awakened the Duty Officer. He told me to open it. The message caused his to open a sealed envelope from his pocket and his exact words were "Christ, it’s started". 'It' was "Operation Overlord". Within a minute the Tannoy was blaring "All Duty Flight personnel to their flights immediately" 'All sreened aircrews to the Briefing Room
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at 0500," and so on. There followed a day of intense activity; air tests, bombing up, briefing, changing the bomb load, rebriefing, and the job of Orderly Officer went completely by the board.
In July, the great moment arrived, and our complete second tour crew of five was posted to Aircrew Pool at Scampton en route ultimately to a 5 Group Squadron.
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[photograph]
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[photograph] AT AIRCREW POOL SCAMPTON AUG ‘44
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[underlined] SCAMPTON [/underlined]
For Wellingtons we were indeed a complete crew, but we were not destined for Wellingtons, but Lancasters, and we needed either a Navigator or Bomb-aimer and another Gunner. Our Pilot and Observer had already completed tours on Blenheims and were good material for Mosquitos. They said cheerio on our third day at Scampton and were posted to a Mosquito Conversion Unit. The remaining three of us had ceased to exist as a crew and had become “odd bods”. We began to feel like members of staff but eventually we went our individual ways. Indeed I was put in charge of the Night Vision Centre for two months, until I met a pilot who was a Flight Lieutenant with a tunic that had obviously seen some service, and he had over 3,000 flying hours to his credit. With him was a Flying Officer Observer plus DFM, obviously clued up and who looked the academic type, a cheerful Flying Officer Bomb aimer and a Pilot Officer Rear Gunner. Four clued-up characters forming the nucleus of a gen crew. Somehow or other I became their other gunner and we were joined by a second tour F/Sgt Wireless operator and a Sgt. Flight Engineer ex fitter. A few days later we were posted to Winthorpe to 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit and settled into a course on Stirlings, flying together for the first time as a crew.
Familiarisation with a four-engined aircraft was the main purpose of the course; important to the skipper F/Lt. Chester who had been a Flying Instructor on Tiger Moths in Canada for a long time. He was about 8 years older than the rest of us and we were happy with his rather more mature approach to the job. The Flight Engineer, Sgt. Hampson, whom we called Doogan for no apparent reason, had flown on Liberators over Burma and nothing seemed to worry him unduly. F/O Pete Cheale was successful on two or three practice bombing sessions, and to F/O Ted Foster DFM it was all just routine stuff. F/Sgt. Frank Eaglestone’s radio was the same as on his previous tour, the good old R1155 and T1154 (still in service in 1960). The Rear Gunner was P/O Harvey who nattered endlessly about a chunk of flack [sic] still embedded somewhere about his person, and his first tour in general. He knew it all, or thought he did, but it soon became apparent that his experience was very limited and he had yet to do his first trip against the enemy. Because of this I insisted that he should have the mid-upper turret, and as Senior gunner, pulling a negative seniority in rank, I would take over the rear turret. He didn’t like that at all, and he left the crew. What became of him I don’t know, but Flt/Sgt Foolkes appeared from somewhere and took his place. Pete was one to take everything in his stride and was welcome to either turret. He preferred the mid-upper, possibly finding it more comfortable, being much taller than the average rear gunner. As for me, one rear turret was very much like another, the same Frazer Nash FN120 we had used on the later Marks of Wellington. A few mod cons perhaps, such as Hot air central heating in the turret. I recall that when we touched down on the runway at Winthorpe, the rear turret was still over the graveyard on the other side of the main road.
Whilst at Winthorpe, I found that 150, my old squadron, was about 20 miles away at Hemswell. I paid them a visit, but their only real link with the 150 of North Africa was the squadron number. 150 Squadron had been disbanded in Algiers though it’s final station was Foggia in Italy. I left
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it at Kairouan just before the move to Italy. Later it was re-formed with Lancasters and in theory had been in action since the beginning of the war, having been at the forefront with Fairey Battles in 1939-40 in France.
After about three weeks of routine and not very demanding training we graduated to the “Lanc” Finishing School” at Syerston. There we converted to Lancasters with about 14 hours flying, circuits and bumps, the odd practice bombing exercises, fighter affiliation and a Bullseye over London, co-operating with searchlights. Just what the Londoners down below thought of this aerial activity without an air raid warning was probably misconstrued. We were still in one piece, feeling fit, very confident and ready to join a squadron.
Our next move was to Bardney, near Lincoln, about 160 bods, and judging by their ranks and gongs, a rather experienced bunch, mostly second tour types. Bardney was the home of 617 and 9 Squadrons, rumours were rife of course. Were we obvious replacements for 617, where prestige was high and directly proportionate to the losses, - the highest in the Command? Our luck held, we were to become a new squadron, 227, just an ordinary Lancaster Squadron to enhance the might of 5 Group. It transpired that we were to become “A” Flight, and the Skipper was promoted to Squadron Leader. Meanwhile “B” Flight was forming at Strubby.
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[underlined] 227 SQUADRON [/underlined]
The first op. by aircraft of the newly-formed 227 Squadron was on the 11th. of October 1944 and most of us at Bardney were not even aware of it. Only three aircraft of "B" Flight, forming up at Strubby, were involved, a short early afternoon trip to FLUSHING. Three nights later "A" Flight provided three aircraft and "B" Flight four aircraft on a more typical raid by 240 aircraft of 5 Group on BRUNSWICK. The Squadron was beginning to take shape and on the 17th., two aircraft of "B" Flight joined 47 others on a short excursion to breach the dyke at WESTKAPELL. Two nights later was a 5 Group effort to NUREMBURG, with "A" and "B" Flights providing seven and five aircraft respectively. This fourth raid by 227 aircraft was only "A' Flight's second involvement, the aircraft and crews really becoming attached for this purpose to 9 Squadron.
On the 21st. October we were transferred to Balderton, at the side of the A1 near Newark and joined the crews of "B" flight.
Our Skipper had been promoted to Sqdn/Ldr. in command of "A" Flight, and was very such absorbed in getting his half of the squadron organised and operational, with little time left for actual flying. Our crew was kept busy in their respective sections, particularly Navigation, Bombing and Wireless, but there was not a great deal to be done in the Gunnery office: The Gunnery Leader was Flt/Lt. Maxted who occupied a small office in a sectioned-off Nissen hut. It was barely furnished with a desk and a few chairs; posters on the wall amplifying the vital issues and a notice board. The state of readiness of each aircraft and gunner was displayed with a record of daily inspections completed. The D.I. 's were an important part of the routine, and the gunners generally took part in the air tests prior to bombing up.
Our first mission as a crew was to Bergen in Norway. It was also a personal first trip for the Skipper, Bomb aimer and Flight Engineer. It was my 46th. op. but also my first in the mighty Lancaster. The Navigator, Wireless op. and Mid-upper gunner were all veterans having carried out their first tours on Lancs.
Our flight out over the North Sea which used to be called the German Ocean by some was uneventful, and Bergen was approached from the east at 10,000 feet. With the target ahead and in sight to those in the front office, all was quiet except for engine noise through someones [sic] microphone which had been left switched on. Peace was shattered by an almighty bang and shudder, confirming we had been hit, and the nose of the aircaft [sic] went down. I was forced against the left side of the turret unable to move, and found later the speed had built-up to over 370 mph. The Skipper was shouting for assistance. Ace the Navigator somehow managed to crawl forward a few feet and found Doogan with his head in the observation blister admiring the view of Bergen above. The Skipper had both feet on the dash trying to pull the aircraft out of the dive. The only control Ace could reach was the trimming wheel on the right of the Skipper's seat and he turned this to make the aircraft tail heavy. The nose came up and so did the target. The Flight Engineer added his contribution by exclaiming "Coo, i'n' [sic] it wizard". That was his opinion, but we were heading straight up the fiord and Ace brought this to the attention of the Skipper very smartly. Our height was down to 1500 feet and Ace and the Skipper somehow managed to turn the aircraft through 180
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degrees without hitting either the sea or the hills. Still tail heavy, we gradually climbed away to the west, and for the first time I saw the target, dead astern, always a welcome sight, and I set about sorting myself out from the intercom. leads, electrical heating cable, oxygen pipe and also checking that the turret doors would still open. Silence was broken about 100 miles from Bergen by our brash young Canadian Bomb Aimer, Pete Chiele, "Skipper, we still have the bombs-aboard". I think It-was Ace, who pulled the jettison toggle. At least my turret seemed intact and I took the opportunity of the lull in the drama of opening the turret door with my elbows, leaning backwards into the fuselage and making sure I could reach my parachute pack. Then a quick reversal and I was again "on the job” after a break of less than ten seconds. On the Wimpey and Lanc. the Rear Gunner had a choice of exits, either through the rear escape hatch inside the fuselage, or direct from the rear turret. I was well rehearsed in the latter method, first to rotate the turret dead astern, using the manually operated handle if there was no hydaulic [sic] pressure, then to open the sliding doors. These never failed to open on practice sessions, but an axe was provided inside the turret just in case. Then to remove the parachute pack from its housing and drag it carefully into the turret, placing it above the control column. Off with the helmet complete with oxygen mask, intercom, 24 volt supply and associated pipes and cables and also the electrical heating cable connector. The parachute pack was then clipped on, the turret rotated onto either beam, lean backwards and push with the feet. The alternative exit gave one more room to manouvre [sic] , but the escape hatch itself was rather narrow for a Rear Gunner wearing his full flying kit, particularly the 1944 version of "Canary suit", so-called because of its colour. There was also the phsychological [sic] aspect of deliberately entering an aircraft which was probably on fire. On the Wellington Mk1C with an FN20 turret and only two guns, there was provision to stow the 'chute pack inside the turret. Also the doors were hinged, opening outwards and they could be jettisoned. Although I mentioned being well rehearsed, drill was carried out with the aircraft stationary and upright, not quite the same as in an anticipated emergency bale-out. My only excuse for claiming the checking of my 'chute as practice was that I felt I should be doing something more useful than just sitting there, whilst there seemed to be so much happening up front. There was even more drama unfolding, the Wireless op. had passed a coded message to the Navigator instructing us to divert to Holme on Spalding Moor in Yorkshire, but only the W/op was issued with the code-sheet of the day. The Skipper did not receive the message in plain language until we were in R/T contact with Balderton, which was closed due to thick fog or very low cloud. However, the Navigator knew our exact location and there was fuel in the tanks. Eventually we re-joined the tail-end of the gaggle and landed at Holme. I recall spending the rest of the night on the floor in the lounge of the Sgts. Mess. The following morning we took a walk around the hangars and Doogan chatted with some ground crews who were changing an engine on a Halifax. He actually told then they were not going about it properly and their reaction was quite startling and informative.
Our second trip as a crew was two days later, to WALCHEREN in daylight. This was more reminiscent of our raids from North Africa except that 110 aircraft, including 8 Mosquitoes, took part. From North Africa our "Maximum Effort" had been two squadrons, a total of 26 aircraft, which
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seemed a lot at the time!. 12 aircraft from 227 took part, each having its own specific target, ours being a gun battery which was already completely submerged in water when we arrived. Just ahead several aircaft [sic] were bombing the sea wall and the Skipper decided to back them up, bombing from 3500 feet. The wall was breached and the sea poured through, but our bombs were all fused for delayed action which would not have amused the natives. In fact too much damage was done which, according to a story in Readers Digest, took over six months to repair. However, the main object was to silence the German artillary [sic] and this was achieved. This particular trip had been our introduction to the "formation" known as the "5 Group Gaggle". Pilots were not very practiced at Straight and level flying, it had been seldom recommended, and it seemed to me as a Rear gunner that everyone weaved along in the same direction, taking great pains to stay as far away as possible from other aircraft, but remaining in the stream.
Two days later Ches. and Co. joined 16 other crews from 227 on an afternoon excusion [sic] to an oil plant at HOMBURG. The ground was mostly obscured by cloud and visibility at 17,000 feet was poor, about three miles. Approaching the target a Lancaster in front of us was hit by flak and one engine was on fire. The aircraft passed below us and the fire was extinguished, but its no. 2 engine was stopped. It remained just behind us until we were over the target. The target was marked by 8 Mosquitoes of 8 Group, but marking was scattered over a wide area and out of the 228 Lancasters only 159 bombed. Results were poor, a recce. next day showed that most of the bombs had hit the industrial and residential areas. One Lancaster was lost, due to flak.
The following night 15 aircraft of 227 joined a total force of 992 aircraft on DUSSELDORF. Our Skipper flew as Second Dickie to F/L Kilgour, and the rest of us kicked our heels. This was the last heavy raid on Dusseldorf by Bomber Command, and 18 aircraft were lost. F/O Croskell and crew failed to return, our first 227 Sqdn casualties, but news was received shortly afterward they were safe in Allied hands. They were operational with the squadron again in Feb.
On the 11th. of November, we surprisingly found ourselves on the Battle Order for an evening raid on the Rhenania-Ossag oil refinery at HARBURG, close to the battered Hamburg. This was a 5 Group effort with 237 Lancasters and 8 Mosquitoes. 7 Lancasters were lost, including 9J"S" with F/O Hooper and crew. F/O Bates' crew reported that "oil tanks were seen to explode at 1924 hrs". but German records make no reference to the oil tanks, only that 119 people were killed and 5205 others were bombed out. Flak was not intense and the bombing appeared to be mainly on target. There were fighters about but the return journey was uneventful for us. Once again we were beaten by the fog at Balderton, and as our new F.I.D.O. was not yet operational, we were diverted to Catfoss. The night was spent in the chairs in the Sgts. Mess, but the officers among us were luckier to find beds.
For most of the following four weeks we were without either a Skipper or a Navigator. The Skipper was detached "on a course" and then spent a couple of weeks on a Summary of Evidence. Ace the Navigator was detached to Newmarket racecourse to clue up on some new equipment or technique. For three days I was detatched [sic] to Waddington as a Witnessing Officer at a Court Martial, which I found depressing. It seemed that at Waddington there had been an old car which was used by anyone who could find some petrol to run it. It was the property of an unlucky aircrew
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member who failed to return one night. The car was very useful, but whilst having neither licence nor insurance it was eventually involved in a serious accident, and the R.A.F. took over where the civilian court left off.
0n the 6th. December I had a letter of complaint from my mother, enclosing a newspaper cutting from the Barnoldswick & Earby Pioneer, showing a photo of me and referring to my award of a D.F.C. Why had I not told her? I don't think she ever believed me when I claimed that her letter was the first I knew of it. On Dec. 11th., with Ace still at Newmarket, we became 'Dambusters' - of a sort - for the day. Bomber Command Diary states " "233 Lancasters of 5 Group and 5 Mosquitoes of 8 Group took part. Hits were scored on the dam but no breach was made. 1 Lancaster lost". The squadron diary reflects a successful sortie, in that direct hits on the dam wall were observed, but the 1000 lb. bombs were too small for the purpose. My own recollection of the raid was quite different. We were stooging along just above cloud in company with scores of other Lancasters when the others were seen to be doing a 180 degree turn. Within seconds the sky within my range of vision was empty and in all directions no-one could see another aircraft. The mid-upper and I advised the Skipper that we were now unaccompanied and for 20 minutes we tried to impress upon him that we were extremely vulneruble [sic] (or words to that effect). We were just a few hundred feet above and silhouetted against a layer of stratus and I asked him to fly just inside the cloud, or at least just to skim the tops, but he replied that it was too dangerous, too much risk of collision. The mid-upper gunner agreed, collision from Gerry fighters. Vocabulary worsened and finally the Skipper realised we were 40 minutes and over 200 miles from the rest of the gaggle, we turned round. It has been suggested that as Flight Commander he must display a press-on attitude, and we were all in favour of this, but there was no-one around to impress and it was pretty obvious to the gunners that either Frank had missed a diversion message or we were in the wrong gaggle. Bomber Command Diary disproves the latter, but there is still uncertainty in my mind about that particular operation. Both Pete in the mid-upper turret and I realised that if we were attacked by fighters the Skipper would not take the slightest notice of our requests or advice. We were not disputing that the Skipper was in charge and the one who makes the decissions [sic] , but in our situation he had no choice other than to take advantage of the cloud. We regarded this as an expression of no confidence in the gunners, and we made it very clear to him both then and later that it was no way to finish a tour.
It was 10 days before we flew again, our 6th. trip with 227 embarking on their 22nd. trip as a squadron. The target was the synthetic oil plant at POLITZ, in the Baltic. 207 Lancasters and 1 Mosquito were detailed, including 13 Lancasters of 227. Two from 227 experienced mechanical failure and aborted soon after take-off. This was a long stooge, and 3 Lancasters were lost, plus a further 5 which crash-landed in England. The raid was successful, the main chimneys having collapsed and other parts of the refinery being severely damaged. On return to eastern England we were again unable to land at Base due to weather, and were diverted to Milltown, in Scotland. Fuel gauges were reading zero or less when a weary Ches. and crew finally landed after a trip lasting 10 hrs. and 15 minutes. F/O Croker in 9J"K" wound up at Wick, in Morayshire, his aircraft being so badly shot-up it was declared
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a write-off. The following morning we flew to Wick to join F/O Croker and crew and give then a lift back to Balderton. Among others, there was a Met. Flight at Wick, equipped with B17s, Flying Fortresses. It was their job to climb to a great height, making Met. observations, and some of their trips exceeded 12 hours duration. I recall the armourers at Wick cleaned and polished our three turrets and 8 Browning guns without being asked, and making a very good job of it too. Everyone was provided with beds, and it seems the officers were so comfortable the Skipper decided to stay at Wick over Christmas. The town of Wick was "dry', no pubs, but among the N.C.O's, this made no difference, we had no money with us. Normally on a diversion we didn't need any money, but for a several day stop-over it was embarassing [sic] to be absolutely without. We would like to have taken our turn in paying for the drinks is the Mess. I seem to recall trying to obtain an advance from Pay accounts without success, accompanied by the other two W/Os in our crew. I was reminded of one incident at Wick by Ace, our Navigator; We were not like most other crews, sticking together as a crew. The Commissioned officers kept to themselves, the three Warrant Officers maintained their own little triangle, and Doogan prefered [sic] his own company despite the W/O's efforts to get him to join us. It seems that one night at Wick we carried him and his bed outside and he awoke next morning in the middle of the parade ground which was covered is snow. I have no personal recollection of this, but there it is in black and white in Ace's book, 'Just Another Flying Arsehole'. We returned to Balderton on the 27th., with 14 of us aboard, and did not see the ground until we actually touched down. For the first time we landed with the assistance of FIDO, which was probably very scary for the pilot. In the rear turret I just got an impression of landing in the middle of a fire.
The following night we missed a trip to OSLO, our squadron providing only 5 of the force of 67 Lancasters. On the afternoon of the 30th. we were briefed for an evening take-off to HOUFFALIZE, a total force of 154 Lancasters and 12 Mosquitoes. German Panzers had broken through the American lines in a desperate attempt to thwart the Allied advance, in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The weather gave the Germans the advantage, low cloud and thick fog prevented the 2nd. Tactical Air Force from playing its part to the full. With almost 100% Allied air superiority in the area, Typhoons and other fighters operating on a cab-rank principle responding in seconds to detailed requests from the chaps below, Gerry was learning what it was like to be at the receiving end of the slaughter he started is 1939. But not for that few days at the end of 1944 in the Fallaise gap. The close proximity of Allied troops called for great accuracy in bombing and straffing [sic] , and this was not possible in the prevailing conditions. Because of the bad weather in the target area, take-off was postponed every few hours but we were eventually relieved to get airborne about 0230. Conditions over the target were quite impossible and the flares dropped into the murk below probably caused hearts on both sides to miss a few beats. Some crews did bomb, but Chas. quite rightly felt it was too risky. We had not been briefed for any secondary target so our bombs wound up in the Wash. Finally, we landed at about 0830 after 24 hours of effort of one sort or another. Nothing really achieved, but at least we had tried.
It was about this time that my father visited the Squadron for a few days. He was a Captain in the R.A.S.C. recently returned from East
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Africa and awaiting release on medical grounds. He was very impressed with what he saw but we could not obtain authority for him to actually fly with us. On the Sunday morning he watched our parade and later mentioned that as the W/O called out names, one Ft/Sgt responded to at least five of them. Also that some were in best blues, some in battledress, one or two with greatcoats and one even with a raincape. Two were actually standing on parade with bicycles ready to shoot off somewhere immediately after the parade. His thoughts at the time were how can such an undisciplined lot perform any serious task. Later that morning sitting in the Gunnery Office, gunners came in with more of a wave than a salute, a brief word from them and I would put a tick on the board against their aircraft. I explained to my father that this was their way of reporting that their turrets and guns had received and passed the daily inspection. After lunch in the mess he noticed a great deal of activity and movement, and a clear but quiet sense of urgency. He asked what was happening and I showed him the Battle Order.
The following day he said how wrong was his first impression. Everyone had a job to do, they know what was required of them and they got as with it without any shouting of orders or people stamping around. I was Duty Gunnery Leader that night, as was my lot quite often over that period, and was able to show my father what made a squadron tick. He thoroughly enjoyed his stay, but I don't think he met the Skipper. In fact I don't think we saw anything of our Skipper during the whole month of January, by the end of which 227 had completed 33 ops. "A” Flight Commander's crew had totted up only 7 as a crew and some of us were not at all happy with this performance. On the 2nd. Feb. F/O Bates was short of a Rear Gunner and I could have kissed him when he asked me to deputise for WO Bowman. This was an experienced and popular crew who had already completed 14 trips of their second tour. Bowman was in fact the only one outside our crew I had known a year ago. We had carried out our first tours together on 150 Sqdn. Wellingtons, and he was the only other 227 bod with an Africa Star. I cannot recollect why he was not available that night. Our target was KARLSRUHE, a 5 Group effort of 250 Lancasters and 11 Mosquitoes, of which 19 were from 227. Cloud up to 15000 feet and the consequent difficulty in marking caused the raid to be a failure. 14 Lancasters were lost, including 9J"D" with F/O Geddes and crew. The total effort of Bomber Command that night was 1252 sorties. Targets included Wiesbaden's only large raid of the war, and Wanne-Eickel, neither attack was regarded as a success. Very little was achieved that night for a loss of 21 aircraft.
On the night of the 7th. Feb., F/O Bates was airborne again with 11 others from Balderton in a total force of 188 aircraft, to the Dortmund-Ems Canal. All 227 Sqdn. a/c returned safely, but 3 were lost in all. I was not with him this time although W/O Bowman was not available. After about 5 hours sleep the Battle Order for the coming night showed 18 crews from 227 sqdn., including F/O Bates, with F/O Watson as Rear Gunner. It felt great to be doing something useful. The weather en route was clear and there were still fighters about, largely responsible for the loss of 12 Lancasters, but the bombing was extremely accurate. According to Speer, the German armaments minister, the oil refinery was kaput for the reminder of the war and a big setback to the German war effort. All 227 sqdn aircraft returned safely, one, F/O Edge's 9J"B" having aborted with problems on 2 engines and landed safely at a farm in Norfolk. It was in fact F/O Bates’ 18th. and final trip on
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227 sqdn., a very satisfactory finish. It was a satisfying night too for 'our own' Navigator, Ted Foster who flew as a 'spare Bod' Navigator with F//Lt [sic] Pond. On the 14th. Feb., 6 weeks into what surely must be the final year in the war against Germany, we were no doubt startled to see our Skipper and crew on the Battle Order. A 5 Group effort, the target was ROSITZ oil refinery near Leipsig [sic] , a force of 232 Lancasters and Mosquitoes, including 12 from Balderton. Our aircraft was 9J"H" and a couple of hours or so after take-off the Skipper found he could not come to terms with his magnetic compass, the performance of which was erratic. An hour or so later the Giro compass also started to play up and fortunately the Skipper did accept the advice of the Navigator and turned back, navigating solely on "Gee" back to base. It was not possible to carry-on navigating to the target on "Gee", we would have [inserted] 14/2/45 Rositz [/inserted] been out of range long before the target was reached. 9J"G" skippered by F/O Tate had engine trouble just after take-off and returned on three engines. We were the second aircraft to abort on that trip. There were some ribald comments next day when the Instrument Section reported there was nothing wrong with either compass. The comments were not facetious however, no-one would seriously accuse either the Skipper or an experienced Navigator like Ace of pulling a fast one. Both I am quite sure would have preferred to take part in the destruction of Rositz This was in fact the Skipper's final trip, although we did not realise it at the time and still regarded his as our Skipper for the next two months.
The record shows that in the following four weeks Ace did three spare bod trips whilst the rest of the crew passed the time somehow. The spell was broken for me when F/Lt Hodson asked me to take over his rear turret on the 14th. of March. Ace had already done his last bombing raid although he too might not have realised it at the time. His grand finale, quite fitting was a daylight 1000 plus Bomber raid on DORTMUND on the 12th. of March, as Wing Commander Millington's Navigator. It was also to be the Wingco's final trip before swapping his duralumin pilot's seat with a little steel armour plating at his back, for I think a wooden one in the House of Commons where his back was probably just as vulnerable.
Our target was another oil refinery, at LUTZKENDORF, a typical 5 Group effort of 244 Lancasters and 11 Mosquitoes, 15 of the former being from Balderton. We enjoyed the company of F/O Howard as 2nd. Pilot. In fact five aircraft from 227 Sqdn. carried 'Second Dickies' that night. Out of a total of 18 aircraft lost, two were from 227 Sqdn., both with Second pilots. It was feared by many that carrying a Second Pilot increased the risk, but I did not share this concern. The Second Pilot it is true would take the place of the Flight Engineer who would either stand between the two pilots or sit on the dickie-seat. Some drills had to be slightly modified for the occasion, but I would have thought the presence of an extra bod would tend to put the others more on their toes. The crew I was with were on their 18th. trip and had been with the Squadron from the outset. Nothing untoward happened to us, there was the usual flack and searchlights, maybe fighters but one saw none. Bombing seemed reasonable well concentrated and photo-reconnaissance next day showed that 'moderate damage' was caused.
On the 7th. of April the squadron completed its transfer to Strubby, and was detailed for action the same night. I was favoured to fly once more with F/Lt Hodson and crew, LEIPZIG again, this time to the
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Benzol plant at MOLBIS. 13 Lancasters of 227 joined 162 others and 11 Mosquitoes, all from 5 Group. The weather was good, bombing accurate, and the oil plant put completely out of action. No aircraft were lost and the raid was considered a 100% success.
After a few hours sleep we were briefed for an attack on LUTZKENDORF, the same target as on the 14th. March. It had been attacked the previous night by 272 aircraft from 1 and 8 Groups who caused only moderate damage. I was detailed to fly with W/O Clements and crew who were on the 5th. trip of their first tour, in 9J"Q". On take-off the starboard outer engine failed and Ace who waved us off said he saw the aircraft sink to within a few feet of the ground; but that few feet made all the difference and the Skipper was able to gain height gradually until it was safe to jettisson [sic] the bombs in the sea. The trip was aborted and a safe landing made at Strubby. Subsequent inspection showed a fuel leak from no.2 port tank and oil leaks from the two outer engines. 242 aircraft were on this raid, and 6 were lost, but another oil refinery was put out of action for the rest of the war. The 19 aircraft put up by 227 all returned safely and were diverted to the west because of weather.
Two nights later, on the 10th. I was again with W/O Clements, to the Wahren Railway yards at LEIPSIG. The force of 230 aircraft comprised 134 Lancasters, 90 Halifaxes, and 6 Mosquitoes, of which 1 Lancaster and 1 Halifax failed to return. Immediately prior to take off I had trouble with the turret sliding doors, they wouldn't close, but I rotated the turret onto the port beam as was general practice for take-off with the doors open. This was spotted from the ground and the Skipper was told on R/T soon after we were airborne. I had to get out of the turret and through the bulkhead door to fix them, but finally managed to get then to slide. If I had failed to fix then nothing would have made me admit it, it would just have been a little draughty. The trip went very well, the marking was accurate and the bombing concentrated. Some flak and plenty of fighter flares about but we saw no fighters. It was a quiet return trip and all 227 aircraft returned safely.
That was my last trip and also the last for W/O Clements and crew. It was the 57th. involvement by 227 Squadron which was to carry out 4 more bombing raids, terminating with BERCHTESGADEN itself, on the 25th. of April. The war in Europe was virtually over, but our impression was that 5 Group was to form the nucleus of Tiger Force to help finish the job in the Far East and we would be a part of it. It was with these thoughts that I went on leave on the 26th. April, a spare bod without a pilot, but still expecting to fly again with the squadron..
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[photograph]
[photograph]
[photograph]
64A
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[photograph] [photograph]
F/O. CHEERFUL CHEALE R.C.A.F.
[photograph] [photograph]
F/O BATES F/O PETE CHEALE (BA) W/O PETE FOOLKES
S/LDR CHESTER (PILOT) F/O FOSTER
64B
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[photograph]
[photograph]
[photograph]
64C
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[photograph] F/O. TED FOSTER D.F.M.
C.W. PETE FOOLKES MID-UPPER
[photograph] [photograph]
64D
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[photograph] CLIFF’S OFFICE
[photograph]
[photograph] OUTSIDE OUR DES. RES.
C.W. & GEOFF HAMPSON (FLIGHT ENG
64E
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[newspaper cutting of D.F.C. award] [photograph]
227 SQDN W/OP – NAV – MID- UPPER
[photograph]
64F
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[photograph] [underlined] TED (ACE NAV) FOSTER D.F.M. BALDERTON NOV 44 [/underlined]
[photograph] [underlined] RUNNING UP ON HOMBERG 1/11/44 AT LUNCHTIME [indecipherable word] [/underlined]
64G
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[photograph] [underlined] F/O. BATES [/underlined]
[photograph] [underlined] F/O BATES W/O JENNERY (NAV) SGT. WESTON (FLT. ENG) [/underlined]
FEB 45
64H
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[DFC citation]
64L
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[letter from HM George VI]
64M
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[Sgt Mess Wick Christmas Menus 1944]
[photograph]
F/O CROKER’S LANCASTER AT REST IN TORPEDO DUMP XMAS ‘44
64N
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[inside of christmas card]
CHRISTMAS CARD FROM PETE IN CANADA
64P
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[photograph]
STIRLING AT H.C.U. WINTHORPE
[photograph]
AT BLIDA
[photograph]
LANCASTER AT SYERSTON
74A
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[letter of introduction to airfield manager in Iran]
154A
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[photograph]
F/LT. MAXTED (GUNNERY LEADER) PETE FOOLKES & F/O SANDFORD (SPARE GUNNER OR SQDN ADJ)
[photograph]
TED FOSTER WITH BITS OF 9JO
[photograph]
64J
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[photograph]
GEOF. HAMPSON FLT. ENG.
[photograph of 9J-O]
[photograph of 9J-O]
64K
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[christmas card]
CHRISTMAS CARD FROM PETE IN CANADA
64P
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[typewritten letter]
[underlined] PART OF F/L CROKER’S LETTER WITH XMAS 1990 CARD [/underlined]
64Q
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[location map for 1994 reunion]
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[underlined] FINAL LEG [/underlined]
Recollections of events in my final 15 months in the R.A.F. are reasonably clear but somewhat hazy of detail and of the order in which they took place.
I was still with the Squadron on VE Day, the 5th. April, on leave in London with Hilda. I recall going up to Leicester Square by tube train with my father, Alice and Hilda to join the celebrations and actually walking back the five miles to Lavender Hill in the early hours. This would explain why I had no knowledge of the Victory Parade at Strubby until I was shown a photograph of it many years later. I was on leave again in London in early August when the Americans dropped the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and suddenly the war was over. I was still in uniform and had to await my turn for demob.
I have no recollection of attending a Reselection Board when I was made redundant from flying, nor of actually leaving the Squadron. I think my first posting after the Squadron was to Gravely, as a Squadron adjutant. I had always thought that the Squadron was 106, but according to the Bomber Command War Diaries 106 was never at Gravely [sic] !. There is no mistaking the actual station, however, it is only 4 miles from my present home and parts of it are still recogniseable [sic] . I was astonished to find many years later that 227 Sqdn had transferred to Graveley about the 8th. of June and was disbanded there on the 5th. of September. I was there for about 6 weeks during which time we closed the Sargeants’ [sic] Mess and did a very little paper-work. We had neither aircrews nor aircraft, it was just a matter of holding office and very little else!. I probably spent most of it on leave.
I then became a Photographic Officer u/t and did a very interesting course at Farnborough which lasted 8 weeks. One of the instructors was a Sgt. Peter Clark, a leading Saville Row fashion photographer before the war and Hilda’s first employer. I went on leave yet again and was eventually told to report to 61 M.U. at Handforth in Cheshire as a u/t Equipment Officer. I duly reported to the Station Adjutant at Handforth feeling very much out of place. Of the hundreds of service types around only the ex-Air-Crew were in battle dress, the others were either in best blues or dungarees. I had always thought that battledress was the working uniform of the R.A.F., but it was not so at Handforth. I felt more as if I was in the Luftwaffe. The Station Adj. took me to see the Chief Equipment Officer, who was a Wing Commander and this feeling became even stronger. I reported formally and the C.E.O. said “And what the hell are you supposed to be?”. Those were his exact words and I did really wonder whether we were in the same air force. I replied that “I am here as a u/t equipment officer Sir”. “MM what’s your trade?” “Rear Gunner” – without waiting for the ‘Sir’, he exploded and almost shouted “That’s not a trade, it’s General Duties”. He was technically right but raising his voice unduly went on to add “You are supposed to be able to sit here and do my job, you’d feel a bloody fool doing my job, wouldn’t you!”. Fascinated by the smirk on his face and hypnotised by the Defence medal on his breast I just stood there in disbelief at this outburst and quietly laughed. “Well?” He wanted an answer and I said in a rather light vane “Yes Sir I would, but less of a bloody fool than some would have felt doing my job for the last three years”. That was it, he stood up and said “Right, come”. We went along the corridor and straight in to see the Station Commander, a Group Captain. The WingCo[sic] was very agitated and without preamble
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told the Groupie of my ‘gross insubordination’. He recited the dialogue in accurate detail and the Group Captain asked for my account. I agreed with the C.E.O.’s account but said that I was provoked, there was no reason for his outburst and I grinned only because I didn’t think he was being serious. Invited to comment the WingCo said he had been affronted by my being improperly dressed. I made no further comment and the Groupy told the WingCo that he would deal with the matter. The WingCo saluted and left, and I thought I was for the chop. The Group Captain sported R.F.C. wings and had obviously seen his share of action. He stood up and extended his right hand in friendship. “Sorry old chap, I didn’t get your name, do sit down”. I was back in the R.A.F. He asked “Where were you in Africa?” Not an idle question, followed by “Did you know Group Captain Powell?” Yes Sir, he was our Base Commander of 142 and 150 Squadrons, Speedy Powell of “F” for Freddie”. Speedy had been the Briefing officer in the film ‘Target for Tonight’. I mentioned some of his exploits and finally his loss, and the Group Captain was distressed. He told me that like the other 12 ex-Air Crew on the station, I was a square peg in a round hole, but to make the best of it and to go back to see him if I had a problem. In the mess that evening I met the others and soon found we were all on duty every day and every night. u/t Orderly Officer, then Orderly Officer, and through the whole range of Asst. Duty Officer, Duty Officer, Fire Picket, in-line Fire picket, Cyphers, Security, etc. etc. Only the ex Air-Crew Officers performed these tasks and after two weeks of this we agreed something must be done. One period of 24 hours I was Duty Cyphers Officer. This was just a title, there was neither Cyphers Section nor Intellegence[sic] Section and I found that for almost all the duties we were allocated there were no instructions. Several of us individually addressed the Station Adjutant in writing and one even enquired whether he should draw-up his own set of procedures for inclusion in Station Standing Orders. For reasons that could only have been sour grapes, there was a measure of ill-feeling between the ‘permanent’ equipment and Admin officers, and the air-crew types. Many of the former had spent the entire war at places like Handforth, and there is no doubt they did a vital job, and maybe were still doing it. In our case, the war for us was over, and after our experiences of the last few years there was a limit to the amount of being messed around that we were willing to accept. We discussed having fire drills with real fires and creating a few incidents for practice, but finally we drew lots and two of us applied through the C.E.O. to see the Group Captain. The C.E.O. refused permission so we made our request through the Station Adjutant. This was approved and we told the C.O. what was happening, we were being “imposed” upon from a great height. He called in the Station Adj. and told him that all Air Crew Officers would go on indefinite leave the following day. He told the two of us to ensure that all application forms were with the Station Adj. by 3 pm. And for me, it was straight to Whitehaven, in battledress.
I had applied for release from the Service under “Class B”, having an immediate job to take up which would in itself create work for 5 other ex-Servicemen. Hilda was in fact holding the fort in Whitehaven, and nothing came of the application.
It was about four months before I was recalled to Handforth, and immediately detached to no. 7 Site at Poynton to take over as Equipment Officer i/c and also as Officer i/c. the Prison Camp. There was an Equipment W/O running the Stores with about 200 Airmen and I agreed with him that it could
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stay that way. The Stores comprised 8 massive hangars full of equipment. I regarded my main job as O.C. the Stalag with its 1000 P.O.W.’s (750 Italian and 250 German) and my staff of 15 Air Crew N.C.O.s who had all been kriegsgefangener themselves. The Senior German prisoner was a Warrant Officer who spoke excellent English having studied it for 5 years in prison camps. Most of the prisoners, including the Italians, had been taken in the Western Desert. The Germans were very smart indeed, in contrast to the Italians, and the two axis partners had as little to do with each other as they could arrange. Gangs of prisoners were guarded by some of the 200 Airmen, supervised by ex-AirCrew NCO.s. The prisoners were not interested in escape, there would have been no point, but I put an immediate stop to their sneaking out of camp at night to try their luck. The German and Italian messes were separate from each other and staffed by R.A.F. cooks. The Germans asked if they could do their own cooking and I agreed but with nominal supervision of two airmen in case we had visitors. I made the same arrangement for the Italians but initially they refused. I appointed one of the Corporal Majors as Senior Iti [sic] and made him responsible. I threatened to fully-integrate them with the Germans if there was any nonsense, and with that some of them nearly burst into tears. They were a lazy shower. I had the Officers’ Mess all to myself, but that’s another story. It was a very cosy three months, with most long week-ends spent in Whitehaven where Hilda had taken-over the Relay system. It was also a tremendous anti-climax to the previous five years.
Eventually when the magic number 26 came up, I reported to R.A.F. Uxbridge for demob. and collected my pin-striped suit and a cardboard box to put it in. I realised then that my career in the R.A.F. was initially over. Straight to Whitehaven by train, still in battledress.
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[underlined] FIRST TOUR TARGETS [/underlined]
[table of targets and bomb loads]
71
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[table of targets and bomb loads continued]
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[underlined] 2nd TOUR [/underlined] [underlined] 227 SQUADRON [/underlined]
[table of targets and bomb loads with additions]
[underlined] 227 SQUADRON [/underlined]
After flying Beaufighters from Malta the Squadron folded in August 1944. The new Squadron was formed in 5 Group on 7/10/1944. Flying Lancasters from Bardney, Balderton and Strubby. Flew 815 sorties and lost 15 aircraft (1.8%) in 61 raids. 2 were also destroyed in crashes.
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[underlined] Back to Civvy Street [/underlined]
By early 1946 the great transition from War to Peace was taking place and many of us were gradually realising that we could now plan some years ahead with a very good possibility of surviving to carry them out. Of my colleagues at Metropolitan Relays, only Reg. Weller had paid with his life, having been killed in action in Italy, with the army. Allan Cutbush had been taken prisoner at Tobruk and spent some time in a prison camp in Italy. Eventually he escaped and spent a couple of years as an Italian farm worker. Soon after the invasion at Anzio he rejoined the Allies and had the greatest difficulty in convincing them that he really was a Private in the Royal Signals. Alan was first to be demobbed and rejoined the firm as manager of a newly aquired [sic] group of branches in the Mansfield and Retford areas. George Holah had left in 1939 to join the army, and spent the next six years in India, returning as a Major in the Indian army complete with an Anglo-Indian wife and family. George did not return to Relays, but joined the Metropolitan Police, and in 1975 was a Clerk in the Central Registry at New Scotland Yard. How he managed to transfer from being a private in the British army to a Commissioned Officer in the Indian army I don’t know, assuming it actually happened. I have not met George since 1939.
In June 1945, my father, Mrs. Kilham and Mr. Moulton bought privately another run-down radio relay system, West Cumberland Relay Services, Ltd., in Whitehaven, and I was invited to develop it. Although Germany had capitulated, the war was not yet over. Japan might have seemed a long way off but was still our Enemy and the job had to be finished. Meanwhile Hilda moved to Whitehaven and set-up home in the flat above the shop at 49 Lowther Street. Colin was then 9 months old and it was a further year before I was demobbed, but during that period I seemed to have spent most of my time in Whitehaven. Hilda kept the Relay ticking over, with very limited assistance from the staff, until March 1946 when I was given indefinite leave on compassionate grounds.
The relay was well and truly run down, with about 400 subscribers each paying 1/3d per week for two radio programmes. It was losing money fast, the entire network needed rewiring and the amplifiers and other equipment were just about a write-off. I had with me the name-plate from my office door at Poynton. One of the German prisoners had made it for me, a notice which proclaimed in Gothic characters
Obr. Lnt. Cliff. Watson D.F.C.,
LAGER COMMANDANT EINTRITT VERBOTTEN
I put this on my new office door, but drew a line through the bottom line.
Sorting out a fault on a 100 watt amplifier, I asked the engineer, Joe, for a soldering iron, and he said he never used one but preferred the special solder in a tube, which he handed to me. In that single sentence he had proved to me that his technical knowledge was just about zero. I demonstrated the solder’s futility by proving that it was not even an electrical conductor. Consequently all the equipment was full of dry joints and I spent a whole night in soldering connections. The stuff Joe was using out of a tube was for repairing small holes in pans and kettles. I was very disappointed in Joe, his technical
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knowledge was effectively less than zero. The next weekend he claimed to have worked all day Sunday clearing a line fault. He had deliberately caused this fault on the previous morning and I traced and corrected it myself within an hour of his doing so. He had shorted out two wires on our own roof and on Monday morning went straight onto the roof to remove the short. I was there waiting for him and sacked him on the spot for sabotage and dishonesty.
I thus took over the technical side but also looked closely at the system of collecting and keeping records of accounts and customers. The only record of payments was in the collector’s field book and there was no record of where the customers or relay installations actually were. I spent a week with the collector who was very reluctant to assist, and Hilda and I drew up a set of records and established a working system. In the next two weeks I found so many fiddles and had proof of so much skulduggery that I sacked the collector without notice. I found installations where the user claimed to have made one outright payment to the collector who had pocketed the money, a hundred or so loudspeakers recorded as being “on loan” which had in fact been paid for and all manner of other private arrangements. The collector was easily replaced, and Mr. Fee joined us. I was fortunate too in meeting Bert Wise, ex Royal Navy P.O. Telegraphist who had been on Submarines, and who took over the technical aspect including the outside lines. Bill Campbell, ex Royal Army Service Corps driver/mechanic was very quickly trained on installations and line work, assisted by John Milburn, a school leaver. John had a very broad Cumbrian accent and initially I found communication difficult, “As gan yam nar marra” meant “I am going home now chum”. I felt I ought to be replying in French or something other than English.
Bill Campbell’s first job was to take the train to London and bring back a vehicle. It was a new Hudson NAAFI wagon completely fitted out by Met. Relays and full of cable, bracket insulators etc. My first act was to buy a set of maps covering the area to a scale of 1:10,000, and display it on the wall. The idea was that if we could establish exactly where we were we stood a better chance of knowing where we were going. A basic plan for the overhead lines was derived and we worked as a team, stripping out old wiring, checking and replacing where necessary, and keeping a record of installations connected. When an installation was serviced and documentation complete we fitted a capacitor in the loudspeaker for technical reasons and a new programme selector switch. The capacitors were to prove very useful later. The service we had to offer at that time was poor, and although it was gradually improving, we were spending far too much time on fault-finding, diverting us from the main program. Within a month it was very clear that our top priority was to rewire and re-equip. I managed to convince the London Office of this and they sent me a team of 3 wiremen from London, led by Dennis Horton who was inherited as a foreman at Mansfield, complete with two Dodge trucks and tons of installation materials. For four months this team concentrated on rewiring for four programmes, gradually reducing and finally almost eliminating the line faults.
The receivers and amplifiers were at Harras Moor in a cottage, but this was at the end of a two mile line, too far from our main load. We ran a 6-pair cable the whole distance and used these as 600 ohm lines, to feed five 1 KW amplifiers at Lowther Street. A bank of 6 AR88 receivers was installed at Harras Moor and two “straight sets” on loop antennas for the BBC Home and Light programmes. In town we had 210v. DC mains and had to fit rotary
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invertors. We also installed a 9KVA petrol/paraffin engine-driven alternator for use during power cuts, which were all too frequent. I could never understand how the grid system could sustain power through seven winters of wartime industrial production and as soon as the war was over we had to live with power cuts. Harras Moor was providing us with four good radio channels, Home, Light and Third BBC, Radio Eirein, Luxembourg, Paris, New York and others from around the world. We were getting organised and I was able to concentrate on sales, keeping our own gang of three busy on new installations. Within two years we had 2,200 installations, including the two Music Halls, cinemas, and all the factories. In addition we were doing more than 90% of all the Public Address work in Cumberland, some of which were quite memorable. At Grasmere Sports the events included a Fell Race and the first year we gave a running commentary over our P.A. system. The runners were out of sight near the top of the fell, so for the following year we applied to the Post Office for permission to use an H/F radio link to cover the gap. This was refused, “you will have to apply for a telephone”! The following year Bert Wise and John Milburn climbed the fell with an Aldis Lamp and battery, and established themselves where they could see the runners at the top and the ‘ops room’ on the showground. I too had an Aldis lamp and Bert flashed me the numbers of the runners as they reached the top of the fell. This delighted the spectators but completely upset the bookies who alone had the complete information in previous years.
The Post Office were also upset, claiming they had a monopoly on signalling, but declining to put it to test in court. I suggested that to try and licence boy scouts to signal in morse code with torches was ludicrous. I enjoyed the atmosphere of these events and went to quite some lengths to obtain the appropriate marshal music. At a Conservative Party fete one particular rather rousing piece was played several times and I was asked by a retired General why the Hell I kept playing the Red Army March Past.!!
A month after taking over, Hilda and I went for a walk - with the pram - to Hensingham, about three miles inland, and I was surprised to see Relay wires between chimneys and lots of downleads. I had not expected to find another system so close and I checked at some of the houses, asking who provided the system! I was told it was owned by a builder called Leslie but it hadn’t worked for several years. Leslie was the fellow from whom the company had bought West Cumberland Relays, and on checking with him I found it was part of the ‘system’ we had taken over. Further search showed a line of poles stretching for about two miles across the fields which had originally linked the village to the lines in Whitehaven. It also showed that a whole area of Hensingham had no electricity, ideal for relay. There was already a big housing estate and this was being extended, and I decided there was adequate potential in the village, but to replace the trunk route to it would be too expensive. We compromised by obtaining four modified 50 watt Vortexion Amplifiers and four receivers from London. Fred Wright brought them by road in his small van, the logo on the side of which was “Radio Trouble-shooting Service”. I did my very best to put up a case for keeping the van, to no avail. The next day we installed the equipment in an air-raid shelter at Hensingham, as a temporary measure, and immediately started connecting subscribers. Within a few weeks the wiring reached the side of the village where the lines from Whitehaven went across the fields, and we began to replace one pair all the way to link with Whitehaven. With this in operation on the third channel we were able to switch
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off one of the Hensingham amplifiers. Later all four programmes were fed from Whitehaven and the station in the air-raid shelter dismantled. The amplifiers were put to use at Whitehaven Hospital and the Workhouse. Both places were wired for 4 programme relay, but at the flick of a switch microphones could be switched in for announcements, and in the case of the latter, to broadcast concerts from the stage.
It was at Hensingham that I found a row of about 30 terraced houses, all without electricity and all wired with three twin cables of different sizes. This rather intrigued me and I enquired further. Most of the houses had battery driven wireless sets which used a 75 volt dry battery for H.T., a 2 volt accumulator for L.T. and a 9 volt grid bias battery, and in one case I found one of these sets without batteries but connected to the 3 pair cable. The old lady owner said it had not worked for several years. I quickly found the man who recharged the accumulators and he confirmed that the cables I had seen were once used for providing power supplies to radios. I think the system must have been quite unique. Shortly afterwards, the houses were connected to the relay system. My only regret is that I didn’t buy up those radios and store them for 50 years. As more and more installations were connected on the Woodhouse estate, the load on the five mile line gradually became too heavy with a corresponding reduction in line voltage and therefore volume. To overcome this we rented an air-raid shelter from the British Legion on the estate and fitted 4 amplifiers to take the load. These were fed from the incoming line itself, but for emergency use we also fitted receivers. Later the receivers came in useful for about three months during reconstruction of an area over which our main line had been fitted. One of the radio dealers found that we were using local receivers and that they were subject to radio interference from vacuum cleaners, so he had a sales drive in the immediate area of our receiving station with rental vacuum cleaners at 1/- per week. Reception gradually deteriorated but after three months of emergency operation our main line was again complete and the receivers switched off. Reception then was near perfect on our system and dreadful for the rest when the vacuum cleaners were being used. He had put a lot of time and money into trying to wreck our system, and had a double-fronted shop in Lowther Street, but I was sorry to see his shop with a bicycle in one window and a Bible in the other when I left Whitehaven..
On a new housing estate where 5 new houses were commissioned each week, we took a gamble and wired them all. When the first tenants moved in the loudspeaker was playing and the tenant’s radio problems were resolved. After 3 or 4 weeks I would go along and generally sign them up. Some of them of course compared it to their own ‘wireless’ if any, which could not possibly reach our standard of reproduction and reception. There are very few places in and around Whitehaven where we had not fitted microphones and radio, and after reaching near saturation in two years there was little scope for further development.
Whitehaven had been a very satisfying experience, but was marred by the Williams Pit disaster where 160 miners were trapped underground and lost their lives. John Milburn’s father was among them. It was traditional for the eldest son to take over where the Dad left off, and we were very sorry indeed to lose John. Hilda had run the office and “showroom” assisted later by Connie Sim from St. Bees. Bill Campbell was still our mainstay on the lines.
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I handed over to Bert Wise, still wearing his Navy P.O.’s hat, and moved to Wandsworth as Development Manager for Metropolitan Relays. A flat was available for us above the shop at 111 Garratt Lane, but on arrival we found it occupied by squatters. For several weeks we lived with Hilda’s parents until the squatters moved to the second floor and we took over the first floor. They were a decent couple in their forties, and had been desperate for accommodation. Our shop had been empty so they moved in, knowing that when an eviction order was issued by the court, they would be allocated a council house or flat. It was a short-cut to the top of the housing list, and the firm had to go through the motions of demanding court action. The ground floor was established as a showroom, even with T.V. in the window, an impressive amplifier room and an office with the same old sign on the door, Lager Commandant!
The original plan was to develop the area working outwards from Garrett Lane and to use the linesman from H.Q. at Lavender Hill, but there was line work to be done from the very outset and it was this part of the job which would be the limiting factor in our rate of progress. I insisted that we employed our own gang of wiremen. Bill Cutler was my wayleave expert, and having planned the main basic routes of our main lines, it was Bill’s job to find out who the landlords were and to obtain their formal permission to fit our wires on or over their property, generally between chimneys. The easiest way was first to sell the relay service to the tenants and their order was used as the reason for our request to fit the wires. We started to run four main lines, no.1 along Garrett Lane to link up with the Lavender Hill system at West Hill. No 2 made a beeline west along Garrett Lane to a Council-owned housing estate which at the time had no electricity. No 3 went due south to Southfields and along Merton Road, over the Redifon buildings and on to Putney, and No. 4 went north towards Wandsworth Common. Everyone on the staff except me, but including Bill Cutler and the linesmen was given five shillings commission for each new customer they signed up. The average wage at that time was £7 per week (in London) and there were few days when the gang did not hand in the paper-work and deposits for customers they had signed up and probably already installed in addition to the day’s work allocated to them. Quite often we would have thousands of leaflets distributed to houses in a particular area which was proving difficult but which they needed to cross.
At about this time, my father retired and went to East Africa, settling at Kirksbridge Farm, Kiminini, 10 miles west of Kitale on the Kakemega Road, and about 260 miles from Nairobi.. He sold his controlling interest in Metropolitan Relays to Seletar Industrial Holdings, Ltd. and their representative, Colonel Slaughter, took over as Chairman. Mr. Moulton became Director & General Manager and I was Development Manager with sufficient shares to qualify for a seat on the board. At the time T.V. was still in its infancy, though beginning to catch on, but the main background entertainment would be the wireless for some time to come. Transistors were still in the experimental stage and Radio Relay provided an alternative to cumbersome and relatively expensive valve radios, with near perfect and trouble-free reception. As Development Manager I made sure I was not bogged down with routine day to day running, and at the outset established a reliable Manager at Garrett Lane, Jack Thompson, whose knowledge of the business was gleaned entirely from Bill Cutler and myself with on-the-job training. Bill had been with Radio Relay since about
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1930, except for during the war when he was a technician in the R.A.F. on Link Trainers.
I was asked to have a look at Yeovil in Somerset and see whether it appeared suitable to establish a relay system, and if I felt it so justified, to spend some time there making a detailed study. I spent a week studying the layout of the town, types of housing, probabilities of future development, the people and their attitudes and in discussion with the Borough Surveyor and Town Clerk’s office staff. I realised that Colonel Slaughter had been a senior army officer and also a senior civil servant for a long time, and that my future relationship with him depended to a large extent on the impression he gained from my first formal report. I recommended that it was a border-line proposition and included a financial budget for 5 years. It would be three years before the system was breaking even and this was too long. The Capital required was too high unless the system was subsidised by another well-established branch. I felt we could find better places to apply our efforts. The Colonel decided to have a look for himself and I went with him to Somerset a week later. Alone, he met the Council officials concerned and one of them agreed to support our application if a relative of his was given a seat on the board of the new company!. I had known of that before the meeting but thought it better not to be involved, nor to include thoughts of that nature in my report. The Yeovil proposal was dropped and I turned my attention to Maryport.
Whilst Bert Wise was on holiday Bill Cutler and I went to Whitehaven for two weeks to relieve him and also to investigate Maryport.
I had known Maryport for some years and I already knew that it would be a goer from the outset. With lots of Council houses (no wayleave problems on them), a working type population, even with an element of communism. It had known major unemployment and soup kitchens and was still a little Bolshie.
We had many friends in the area and a good popular working system in Whitehaven as an example. In that two weeks I produced the same type of report as for Yeovil, but recommended we should go ahead immediately. We saw the Council Officials and agreed a draft agreement with them, found suitable accommodation for a shop in town and a receiving station just out of town to which we could run our own lines. Two weeks later I returned with the Colonel and together we met the Council Committee and completed formalities. From then on it was all systems go. Bill Cutler asked if he could get it organised and he did a very thorough job, using the labour and resources from Whitehaven. He stayed on as Manager and a few years later took-over Whitehaven also when Bert Wise ran-off with his secretary, Connie Sim.
Meanwhile Garratt Lane was running smoothly, and number 1 line had reached East Hill. In a junction box on the wall of a block of flats we had two four-pair cables, one from Lavender Hill, and the other from Garratt Lane, and on an experimental basis we linked the two together, isolating the line at Garratt Lane. We were thus able to monitor the Lavender Hill system in our Control Room, providing their service to our installations on the way. The Garratt Lane amplifiers were fed by Post Office line from Lavender Hill, and each amplifier could provide 1 kilowatt of audio power, sufficient for 3000 loudspeakers. Most of the loudspeakers were switched to no. 2 channel, the Light Programme, still referred to as the Forces programme by the majority. Channels 3 and 4 were very lightly loaded and we were able to switch off the Garratt Lane amplifiers on these channels for most of the time. At that time my family
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home was the flat above the showroom at Garratt Lane, and was guarded by Rex, a huge Great Dane/Alsation [sic] hybrid. Only Hilda and the children could handle it, presumably because they fed it regularly, but everyone else - including me - had to be very cautious.
Eventually it took a bite out of the Manager’s wife and was returned to Battersea Dogs’ Home.
I was spending more time at Garratt Lane where progress was losing momentum, and extending our no. 3 line over West Hill to East Putney was proving difficult. Near Putney Bridge, still a mile from our lines was a highly suitable area of small houses and it was going to take a year to reach them at our current speed. Without much fuss we established a station in the basement of a shop in the middle of this area, using 4 receivers built by Fred Wright’s dept. and 4 small 50 watt Vortexion amplifiers. This station was identical to the one fitted at Hensingham. We then had a sales drive in that part of Putney with the emphasis towards West Hill, and in 4 months were able to link the two systems.
I was interested to recall that for monitoring our four programmes we used a modified aircraft type automatic bomb release mechanism. This was a uniselector type of relay unit which clunked round and changed programme every 30 seconds instead of releasing bombs.
All my staff were ex-Servicemen and there was a dynamic no-nonsence [sic] approach. In contrast to this, our General Manager Allan Moulton based at Lavender Hill, had a stock answer to any serious proposal for action put to him, of “Wait a little while and see what happens”. My attitude was that we know what we want to happen and it wont unless we make it. He didn’t like my Lager Commandant notice on the door either but there it stayed. In 1948 the war was not forgotten by most of us and many satisfactory business deals were made in that spirit of comradeship and trust.
In Feb. 1949 I found that someone called Fry had studied Belfast on our firm’s behalf and had strongly recommended starting a relay service there. The report came to me quite by accident and at the same time I found he was surveying Bath, introducing himself as Development Manager in Relay Association circles. I tackled Colonel Slaughter about it and he said it was news to him, but he took it up with Moulton to whom Fry was reporting. I found that Moulton resented the fact that I was responsible direct to the Chairman, and also that my contract detailed my renumeration including commission which was the £1500 per year, 4 times the average wage. To clear the air we had a formal meeting and I put forward my prediction for future development. I forecast that within 2 or 3 years a general rundown of the system would be inevitable with the increase of television; further that it would be prudent to reduce expenditure on “wired wireless” and to develop the rental side of both radio and T.V., but to reconsider with Fred Wright - who was not at the meeting - the policy of manufacturing T.V. sets. My prediction became factual and was influenced also by transistor radios of which we had no knowledge at that time. There was 33% Purchase Tax on most things including T.V. sets. This was payable at the point of sale and not on rentals. As our sets were never sold but remained the property of Met. Radio & T.V. Rentals Ltd. no Purchase Tax was payable. This loophole was soon to be closed, as forecast, and tax was payable on the rental itself. It became cheaper to buy sets from the big manufactures than to actually make them.
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The Colonel remarked that as Development Manager I was really saying we should stop developing, and I agreed. This set the scene for further discussion well outside the intended scope of the meeting. The Chairman asked Moulton for his views on likely technological advances, but Moulton had none and said we can only try and stay afloat, seeking support from Fry. The Colonel shot down Moulton completely and asked Fry to detail his relevant qualifications. After a silence Moulton was told to study the content of my prediction and not to go off at a tangent on development nor without reference to him. Fry was sent packing and the meeting was closed. I learned quite a lot from Colonel Slaughter, he had spent a long time in the Royal Engineers and one of his attributes was building a flat-bottomed boat on the Nile, one of the biggest in service. His personality was such that when he looked up and down disapprovingly at an obvious ex-Serviceman leaning over a bar, the man immediately took his hand out of his pocket and squared himself up. I actually saw this happen in Maryport, he had that effect on people. (That was in 1948, it might not be the same over 40 years later).
No more was heard of Fry, and I never did join the Board, I was too busy getting on with the job, but it was time for reflection. I realised that when my father was Chairman he had the engineering and technical aspects at his fingertips and he took care of them. He was succeeded by the Colonel who was a business-man but who had no backing on the engineering side. My brief was the Development of the Radio Relay Systems, I regarded technological changes as a matter for the General Manager, Moulton, but I was not responsible to him.
I met the Colonel again privately and I said it seemed that I was Development Manager in a firm which was not going to develop any further. Although there was plenty of routine work to be done I felt the Electrical Trades Union would soon start making things very difficult as it was doing in the Post Office. In view of the probable technological changes, I felt that Colonel Slaughter would rather sell-out than try to steer a ship without a rudder. I was being rather outspoken but straightforward and the Colonel approved of this. I told him I would like to call it a day and try my luck in Africa, Kenya was said to be a land of opportunity. If that failed there was always a job in Bulawayo 2500 miles further south of the Cement Works with Mr. Rose.
The Colonel agreed I could leave when convenient but if I wanted to return within 6 months, to drop him a line. It was four years since the war in Europe had ended. Britain was changing and so was the attitude of many people some of who were very disillusioned. Hilda and I agreed it was time to make a move.
And so in July 1949 I went to Africa for the third time, but with Hilda and the two children, not knowing what sort of a career I was seeking, but nevertheless full of confidence, and still with my Lager Commandant board.
The following year, Colonel Slaughter retired and Seletar’s controlling interest in Metropolitan Relays was sold to British Relay Wireless which later became Vision-Hire. Within a further 12 years the wired-wireless or Relay industry in the U.K. closed, being overtaken by technology.
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[underlined] KENYA [/underlined]
The flight to Nairobi was a very pleasant trip by Argonaut, calling at Rome, Benina, - which we had known as Bengazi [sic] -, Cairo, Khartoum and Entebbe. On the last leg of the flight we flew very low at times, quite unofficially to give us our first views of big game from the air. The flight was very enjoyable, in very easy stages, and in retrospect the Argonaut was about the most comfortable aircraft we were to fly in, in our many subsequent flights to Africa. It was I think the first and only time we travelled in first class.
We were met in Nairobi by Duncan Fletcher, a friend of my fathers, and spent the night at Torr’s Hotel, in Delamere Avenue, the leading hotel at that time. The Stanley Hotel across the road was being refurbished to become the New Stanley, and within a few years Torr’s was closed and became the Ottaman [sic] Bank. I recall the strawberry and cream cake for tea at Torr’s for which it had been famous for many years. The following day we journeyed the 260 miles by bus to Kitale. This was a road we would take many times in the years to come. The first half was tarmac, 100 miles of which from the top of the Nairobi escarpment, through Naivasha to Nakuru, having been built by Italian prisoners of war. From the top of the escarpment there was a wonderful view of the Rift Valley and Mount Longenot [sic], an extinct volcano, and to the west over the plains towards Mau Forest and Kisumu. The bus took us down the escarpment, dropping about 2000 feet to the floor of the Rift Valley, passed the little Italian church built by P.O.W.’s, and northwards past Lake Elementita and Nakuru, then the rough murram road to Kitale. The journey took about 10 hours, but was far from tedius [sic], there was so much to be seen.
Kitale seemed like a typical american western type of small town, the roads were not made up and the sidewalks were made of wood. Many of the buildings were made of timber clad with mabati - corrugated iron - and most europeans wore khaki drill. We were met at the bus station by my father and completed the remaining 9 miles of our journey to our new home, Kirksbridge Farm, Kiminini where a guest house had been built for us, about 100 yards from the main house. Colin and Wendy, aged 6 and 4 were introduced to the Ayah, the african nurse, called Nadudu, who spoke only Swahili and her tribal language, Kitoshi, but within a matter of days was communicating without difficulty with the children. Nadudu had her own rondavel, a thatched roundhouse on the lawn at the side of the guest house, and took care of all the children’s needs.
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[underlined] Hoteli King George [/underlined]
Life on the farm had provided a welcome anticlimax to just about everything that had gone before, but it could hardly be a long-term solution for a young couple with a growing family. We did not appreciate at the time the serious effects of the political unrest and changes which were beginning to take place. We thought that common sense would prevail and most of us felt we had a good working relationship with the Africans; only a misguided few claimed to really understand them! Neither Hilda nor I felt we were achieving a great deal on the farm and we agreed it was time to look further afield.
In April 1950, after almost a year in Kitale, I responded to an advert in our national newspaper, the East African Standard, for Prison Officers. Salary £550 per year, uniform and furnished accomodation [sic] provided, generous leave etc. Military experience advantageous, with the rank of Asst. Supt. of Prisons. One pip! At least the job would get us to Nairobi where most of the action was, and we would have an opportunity to look around, but it was also to give me an insight into a very different and often sordid aspect of life. My application was successful. Our family, Hilda and myself, Colin and Wendy, with Paddy and Jeep our two Alsations all crowded into the Austin A70 and once again made the now familiar safari to Nairobi. 150 miles of murram road, through the Transnzoia, and the plains around Eldoret settled almost entirely by South Africans from the Union, winding around ravines to Mau Summit, up and over the 11,500 ft. mountains at Timbarua to Nakuru then 100 miles of luxurious tarmac through Naivasha with its flamingoes [sic] , passed Elementita an extinct volcano, up the escarpment to Nairobi. The tarmac road was built by Italian prisoners of war in W.W.2, the best stretch of road in East Africa. We also took with us Edward Ekeke, an African driver who had been with my father in Abbysinia [sic] during the war. Although a Kikuyu he was a trusted servant, and if left alone by the politicians and other agitators would have stayed loyal, but tribal and other pressures on chaps like Ekeke were great, and in retrospect it was foolish of us to trust them. Ekeke returned to Kitale with the Austin for more personal effects and re-joined us after a few days. I think he must have finally returned to the farm by 'taxi', as the african buses were called.
As it claimed in the advert., accomodation [sic] was provided. It could have been described as a three-bedroomed chalet, the walls and roof being of mabati (corrugated iron), and was built on stilts about a foot off the ground. We learned that is [sic] was originally built at the other side of the prison and had been carried to its current location by 200 prisoners. As far as I remember, we moved straight into the 'house', and roughed it until Hilda made it comfortable. There was a bathroom, but the loo was a 'thunderbox' at the end of the back garden with a bucket which a gang of prisoners dealt with about 5 am. every day. The kitchen was a Colonial type near the back door, with a wood stove, and an adequate supply of kuni (firewood) provided by more prisoners.
The prison was totally enclosed within a high stone wall, designed to hold 700 prisoners, but with a prison population of about 1900 Africans, 180 Asians, 20 Somalis and 12 Europeans. Quite separate was a small compound for the Wamawaki, (women), with about 20 African and 1 Asian inmate (in for murder but only men were eligible for hanging, so she was serving life). The whole 2000 or so were in the care of about 9 European officers and 200 African Askari. The
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Officer i/c was 'Major' Martin M.C., W.W.1 Veteran,as [sic] Snr. Supt., his number 2 was Henry Thacker with 3 pips as a Supt. Henry spoke fluent Kikuyu in addition to Swahili, and in fact had a Kikuyu 'wife'. He had been in the Prisons service for 36 years at that time and sported one medal ribbon, on his right breast. Legend had it that it was awarded by the Royal Humane Society after he saved a cat from drowning, but Henry was on a totally different wavelength to other Europeans. Sid Swan with 2 pips was i/c the stores and accounts, having spent the war in the Kings African Rifles, and having been demobbed as a Major. Other junior officers like myself included Bunty Lewis, rather effiminate [sic] but nevertheless an ex Royal Artillery officer who had a Kenya-born wife; Paddy McKinney, a large hairy ex Irish Guards Sergeant; Jimmie Vant, ex Kings African Rifles, the son of a Keswick lawyer turned Kenya farmer. Jimmie and his wife Dulcie regarded themselves as Kenya settlers and claimed to spend most of their time at the ranch on the Kinankop, hence their landrover vehicle. Another officer, Whitehouse who joined about the same time as me seemed to spend most of his time off sick and did not stay with us very long. There were three other officers whose names elude me but they were all ex-service, and all lived just outside the wall of the main prison.
The Duty Officers i/c worked a shift system, 0600 to 1800, assisted by a "day-duties" officer during more or less office hours. The Duty Officer was responsible for the day to day activity in the main prison. We were each armed with an enormous ancient revolver of 0.45 calibre and six rounds of ammo., issued by Mr. Thacker. I objected to the rounds of ammo., pointing out they were dum-dums, the bullets having been filed down to within 1/8" of the cartridge cases., and they contravened the Geneva convention. I remember Henry saying "there is nothing in the Prisons Ordinance about the Geneva Convention, and that's all that matters"! We were ordered in writing to wear the revolver in its holster at all times when on duty, and I thought of my four Brownings of long ago to deal with one enemy, compared to a ridiculous revolver in a compound with nearly 2000 potential enemies. It was in fact general practice, strictly unofficial, to carry the revolver but to leave the ammunition in the safe, and the prisoners knew this. I did carry a loaded Czech. .25 automatic in my pocket of which the prisoners were not aware. Some months after I joined, the Snr. Supt. inspected Paddy's revolver and put him on a charge for not carrying ammunition, "contrary to station standing order number something or other". Paddy was eventually charged before the Commissioner of Prisons and pleaded not guilty, asking to see the written order. This was produced and the charge dismissed. The order refered [sic] to the revolver only, and not ammunition. All very childish, but Paddy of the Irish Guards was not one to be messed about. He produced his dum-dum bullets to the Commissioner who was astonished, and all the dumdums were withdrawn. Paddy also pointed out how ludicrous it was for a lone officer to carry firearms in a crowd of hundreds of prisoners, but the order remained. He was a likeable fellow and when the C.O. quoted the book of rules, Paddy made a detailed study of it. In addition to the Prisons Ordnance, we also had Station Standing Orders which gave Paddy ample scope for playing the barrack-room lawyer. He was seen one night at a party in the Military Police Snr. N.C.O.'s mess, and was put on [deleted] a [/deleted] two charges by Martin. Before the Commissioner he was charged with sleeping off the station and drinking whilst on duty. Again Paddy asked for the rule-book and pleaded not guilty. The book stated that an officer would not sleep off the station whilst
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on duty. Paddy agreed he had been at the dance all night and did not in fact sleep anywhere! case [sic] dismissed. Station standing orders also stated that an officer would not partake of alcoholic drink whilst on duty, but a further order stated that an "officer was deemed to be on duty at all times". It therefore followed that all Prisons Officers were required to be completely teetotal, and that was an unlawful order. Martin had met his match and was told to edit Station Standing Orders.
The day started at 0630 by unlocking the European cells and counting the inmates, whilst the Askari dealt with all the other prisoners. There was no point in an escape attempt by Europeans, they would not have got very far before being picked up, but for other races it was a different matter. They were guarded very closely. The four main racial groups were quartered separately for sleeping and eating, their customs and diet and indeed their whole culture differing considerably. Only the Europeans slept on beds, the others were not interested and prefered [sic] the floor, some with very thin mattresses. The Europeans wore shoes, the Somalis heavy boots, Asians wore flipflops and the Africans stuck to their bare feet which were generally tougher than any footwear. European food was probably similar to that in U.K. prisons, and with each race having its own traditional food, this was not a case of discrimination, each prefered [sic] its own. Each group also provided its own cooks. Some of the Asians in fact opted out of Prison food and had it sent in, but it was very thoroughly checked. Uniforms differed too, some compromise between standard prison garb and ordinary native dress. Europeans wore K.D. slacks and shirts with arrows printed on them. Africans wore white shirt and white shorts held up by string.
Two or three hours were spent in the early morning preparing prisoners for court, generally about 50 of them. Some were on remand, and others were convicted prisoners who were required to give evidence in cases where they were involved as witnesses. In the late afternoon all were returned to the prison possibly with changed status. The paper-work had to be watched very carefully, confusion could arise where one prisoner might have a conviction warrant on one case, a remand warrant on another and possibly a production order to appear as a witness in an entirely different case. It was not unknown for a prisoner to be involved in two cases under different names. Language sometimes presented a problem. The courts conducted the business in English and Kiswahili, but there were many tribal languages and quite often interpreters had to be employed. One such case was when 60 prisoners of the Suk tribe were charged with murder having massacred the District Commissioner and his staff of 12. The only interpreter who could cope with the Suk language translated into Kitoshi, and a second one translated from Kitoshi into Swahili. All 60 were hanged at the prison in due course. They seemed very young to me and I doubt if they really knew what it was all about. They were the ones rounded up by the Police after spears had been thrown at the D.C.'s party from a crowd of 2000 whilst he was reading the Riot Act -literally-.
Relationships between officers at the prison were generally very good, with the exception of Martin who thought he was playing soldiers and Thacker for whom we felt rather sorry. 36 years as a prisons officer must have warped his mind somewhat. After about two months I decided to be like the other officers and wear my medal ribbons, and that was when I first fell foul of Major Martin. He asked me what the first medal was and I told him. He said he
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had not authorised me to wear it and I laughed and said I didn't need his authority, the King's was good enough. Shortly after this I was on duty when 45 new African prisoners were admitted, but there were 50 warrants. Some were convicted on Capital Charges, (murder, manslaughter, rape etc). My Chief Warder had signed for 50 bodies and 50 warrants, but there were only 45 bodies. It was 5 pm and my obvious priority was to determine which 5 prisoners were missing. It took until 6.30 to sort it out, no-one was missing, the Court was at fault in issuing two warrants each to five prisoners, instead of one warrant and one production order each. Only then did I get around to locking up the European prisoners for the night, 30 minutes late, and I entered this in the log. The next day an Asian prisoner complained to an Asian Official Prison Visitor that the Europeans were not locked up until 6.30 whereas the Asian prisoners were locked up on time. This was racial discrimination and the official visitor reported the matter direct to the Commissioner. I was charged by Martin for failing to carry out a particular standing order in that I failed to lock up the Europeans at 6 pm. 'How do you plead?' saith [sic] the Commiss. 'I don't', I replied, 'I request the case be taken by the Member for Law & Order'. He was the member of Legislative Council equivalent to the U.K. Attorney General, and this was a genuine option available to an officer charged before the Commissioner, same sort of procedure as an Airman on a 252 asking for a Court Martial rather than take his C.O.'s verdict. The Commissioner suspended the charge for the time being and asked Martin why the charge was brought. I was then asked why I had failed and I said that I was the Officer responsible and in unusual circumstances I concentrated my action in what I considered the most important aspect, which was resolving the problem of the 5 apparently missing prisoners. I consider I acted correctly, regardless of Station Standing Orders. Martin said he had not known that and I suggested that he should read the duty log before signing it as seen, next time. I also suggested that an amendment be made to the standing orders to the effect that nothing contained therein would prohibit an officer from using his initiative when he felt it necessary. Anyhow, I went on, it is an unlawful order in any case, and that will be my alternative defence with the Member for Law & Order. The commissioner was intrigued and read out the order "You will lock-up the European prisoners at 6 pm.", looking to me for comment. I said it was an impossible order, locking-up people involves work which takes time, 6pm is a moment of time in which by definition no work can be done. I said the whole set-up is childish and the Commissioner asked Martin to withdraw the charge. It seemed I had joined Paddy in his war of attrition against Martin.
Our two alsations, Paddy and Jeep had settled-in very nicely, with only their hereditary training. Their self-appointed task of guarding Hilda and the children was unending. When the family was inside the house, one guard would remain with them whilst the other maintained watch on the verandah [sic] and patrolled outside in the garden. When the children were in the garden whilst prisoners were working in the area, either Paddy or Jeep would deploy themselves between the two groups. Only by instinct our dogs knew the prisoners were not to be trusted and were watched very carefully, but the African askari were regarded as allies. The prison was very close to the boundary of Nairobi National Park, and grew cabbages two feet in diameter in what must have been some of the most fertile land in Kenya, receiving all the effluent from the 2000 odd inmates. Late one afternoon an african prisoner in a work gang fancied his
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chances and made a run for it, sprinting along the road passed [sic] the house hotly pursued by about six askari. The askari were at a disadvantage wearing heavy boots and jerseys, but they were joined by Paddy and Jeep who caught up with the prisoner and arrested him in the Game Park. When the askari caught up with them they found the prisoner literally with his pants down, leaning exhausted against a post supporting a notice "Stay in Your Car, Beware of Lion".
It was essential but sometimes difficult not to become involved emotionally with the prisoners, almost all of whom had in their eyes suffered a grave injustice by winding-up in jail. One afternoon whilst I was on duty the Chief Immigration Officer, a Mr. Pierce, came to the prison and required me to serve a Deportation Order on a European Prisoner, Major Melbourn. I read the document first and found that Melbourn had been declared an 'undesireable [sic] immigrant' and was therefore to be deported within 5 days. Melbourn had in fact served about 12 months of a three year sentance [sic] for bigamy and would be required to complete the term in the U.K. He was 'undesireable [sic] ' because he had changed his job without permission. I remarked that this was a very lame excuse for such drastic action. After an exchange of views I said I had not sought his permission when I joined the Prisons Service and he advised me to do so without delay! A few days later I was detailed to escort the prisoner to Mombasa, and hand him over to the officer i/c of the prison at Fort Jesus. Meanwhile I had studied all the Melbourn files and they showed a good example of how a fellow could slip up over small technicalities which produced major consequences. Melbourn was a British Army officer serving overseas for almost the entire war. During the Blitz, his wife was in a Convalascent [sic] home in Liverpool which received a direct hit and she disappeared without trace like many others. He had been drawing a marriage allowance in the normal way and eventually reported to his C.O. that it should be discontinued because he believed his wife had been killed in an air-raid. He was advised that until he had proof of this the allowance would continue. He should have applied to the courts for it to be deemed that his wife had been killed but the environment of the Burmese jungle and other wartime pressures were not conducive to that sort of logic and he let the matter rest. After the war he made enquiries in Liverpool without result, and was eventually released from the Army having served for 30 years. Several years later he became engaged to the daughter of the French Consol [sic] in Nairobi, and when they were married he declared that he was a bachelor. They were Catholics and had he referred to himself as a widower, there could have been difficulties and the authorities would have required proof in any case, which he could not provide. Soon after the wedding someone who had been a clerk in the Pay Corps spotted the reference to 'Bachelor' and thought it rather odd that Melbourn had claimed a marriage allowance during the war. He reported this and the subsequent enquiry led to Melbourn being charged with bigamy and convicted. Whilst it was essential that justice must be seen to apply equally to all races, Europeans were the Bwana Mkubwas and were supposed to set an example. White men in jail were an embarassment [sic] to Government and wherever possible they were returned to the U.K. Melbourn had slipped-up on a second trechnicality. [sic] In the U.K. After [sic] demob. he and two ex-Army colleagues, all of whom had served in East Africa in 1945, decided to establish a business in Kenya, and the three applied for Entry permits, Employment passes, Dependants [sic] passes in two cases, and Residence permits. Complete with ambitious plans for the future and proper documentation
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the trio arrived in Nairobi and set about organising their new enterprise, one of the first acts being an application to register the name of their company. Whilst this was 'going through channels' problems came to light which could not have been foreseen and their plans had to be abandoned. Melbourn remained in Nairobi and obtained employment, and his two colleagues returned to U.K., disillusioned by the red tape. Whilst looking for a reason to declare Melbourn an undesireable [sic] immigrant the application for permission to work with a firm which did not exist came to light and provided the necessary ammunition.
On the night train to Mombasa Melbourn was very chatty, we were both in civvies, he was allowed to use his own money and I felt the best policy would be to let him have a few drinks and to sleep it off. He undertook to behave and understood that at the first sign of being unco-operative he would be handcuffed to his bunk. He told me his story which was the same as gleaned from the files, and added that he had made arrangements to escape at Suez and join the sister of one of the Somali inmates. I handed him over at Fort Jesus, wished him luck and had a look around Mombasa before returning to Nairobi on the night train. About two months later we learned that he had indeed jumped ship at Suez and was working as a Newsreader at Oomdemaan on Egyptian International Radio Broadcasts. I bought some brass plates from him in Nairobi which today are displayed at Wendy's home in Cherryhinton [sic] , and which remind me of the injustice metered out to one who served for 30 years in the British Army.
Another European prisoner, on remand, had been arrested for vagrancy. He was a British merchant seaman who felt like a change, had legally entered Kenya with proper documentation and had taken a job driving a native bus. The authorities deemed this was not a suitable job for a white man, declared him undesireable [sic] and deported him, by ship. He would have been quite happy to have joined a ship at Mombasa as crew-member or paid his own passage. He most certainly did not meet the definition of vagrancy, he had more than adequate means of support. I recall his bitterness when he said it was fair enough to drive a bloody army lorry for five years but not an african bus.
For nearly six months I relieved Ron Woods as officer i/c the Tailoring section of Prison workshops, whilst he was on home leave. In the workshop 200 prisoners beavered away sewing and stitching, 100 with sewing machines and the other half working by hand. We produced uniforms for all Government departments and also for prisoners and were allowed to undertake private work for anyone willing to provide their own material. One of the European prisoners had been a tailor in civvy street and he was very helpful. There was also a 'mechanical workshop' employing about 100, mostly producing articles in metal for Gov't departments, but also repairing and generally working on motor-cars. I took the opportunity of turning them loose on my father's Packard and they did a very good job. The Tailoring section even produced some seat covers for it without being asked. Shortly after the car was finished, a Salvation Army Major came to me and said that Johnson, a European prisoner who had worked on the car, had seen the light after several months of Bible study and was now determined to go straight. He was serving five years for armed robbery, having held up a taxi in Mombasa. The Major asked for my support for his application to the Parole Board and was in fact going to great lengths to secure the Prisoner's release. I declined my support, and told the Major he had been spoofed, Johnson would never go straight. However, the appeal
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was successful and Johnson suggested to me the night before his release that for a small fee he could arrange to 'steal' the car and drop it over Nairobi escarpment for me. Such were the people we were dealing it, [sic] [inserted] with [/inserted] but what finally became of him I don't know.
After several months we moved to a much nicer house in the prison officers' compound. Hilda was doing photographic retouching and finishing work in the city for Arthur Firmin, and life was without undue pressures. On saturday [sic] evenings we occasionally went to see our friends George and Iris Dent at the Oasis pub. George was an engineer with the Army Kinema Corporation and a very keen 'ham', VQ4DO, ex ZS6DO. At their parents' Pub George showed films which provided entertainment. This was before the days of television in Kenya. It was on the evening of one of our visits we were sitting in the Dent's home, Wendy was stretched out asleep on the couch and Iris's little boy was playing with his toy cap-gun. This reminded me that the pain in my rear was caused by my .25 automatic in my trouser pocket, so I moved the gun to my jacket pocket. Iris saw this move and said it looked a far nicer gun than her .38 and asked to see it. I handed it over, having checked there was no round up the spout and it was on safe. To our absolute astonishment, Iris cocked it, off with the safety catch and fired. The bullet demolished the leg of the couch less than a foot from Wendy's head. The song "Pistol-packing mamma" didn't seem at all funny any more. Colin was with us and had attended Nairobi Primary School for about two months. Wendy was looked after during the day by Nadudu, the Kitoshi ayah we had taken with us from Kitale. The children called her Bundudu.
With the withdrawal of the British Army from Kenya, George and Iris returned to South Africa, George taking up employment with the S.A. Broadcasting Corporation. Today the Oasis pub is thriving, still on the main Mombassa [sic] Road and close to Nairobi airport at Embakasi.
I was concerned only with Nairobi prison, but there were prisons in 8 or so towns, backed up by several camps. Later when Mau Mau really got under way, there were many more much bigger 'internment' camps. Some of them in my day were known as rather tough places. Hard Labour was still the prerogative of the courts; It meant exactly that, and was invariably stone breaking. A gang would be given a task of smashing up a number of very large boulders and feeding the fragments through a screen before putting them onto a lorry. Only when the task was complete would they be marched back to the living area. One of our camps was at Lokitong, about 450 miles north of Nairobi, and it frequently happened that prisoners had to be returned from there to Nairobi to attend court. There was no telephone, the only communication with the camp was was [sic] by a telegram to Kitale prison and thence a letter by bus and camel to the camp. It was generally a three-week process, so six weeks was needed to produce a prisoner from Lokitong to a court in Nairobi. I put up a written suggestion that in the absence of telephones we should establish a number of radio stations. I could undertake to establish the stations myself using ex-army 21 sets, maintain them and also to train the operators. The suggestion was submitted through Mr. Martin but addressed to the Commissioner, and according to the Chief Clerk went straight into Martin's waste paper basket. A few days later I delivered a copy direct to the Commissioner's office with a covering letter with my estimate of costs, about £100 per station plus my time and travelling.
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I promised instant communication with the camps but it was too revolutionary and there was no provision in the budget for it. About four years later the job was done for them by the Police at a cost of £700,000 with recurring annual expenditure of over £100,000. A lot of money in those days. Jimmie Vant became the Prisons Dept. Telecommunications Officer with no knowledge whatsoever of the subject. He didn't really need any, all the work was carried out by the Police which was staffed entirely by technicians on secondment from the U.K. Home Office. Such is the price of progress and sophisticated over-engineering. No doubt in the 1990s they will be able to spend even more millions and do the job via satelite [sic] .
Returning home one afternoon having collected Hilda and two other ladies from the city, and Colin from school, we found the prison surrounded by armoured cars and light tanks with hundreds of Police and Army personnel. Apparently there was a rumour of a pending mass breakout, but it was only a rumour. I regarded it as a show of strength for the benifit [sic] of the unruly.
The job in the Prisons Service was like no other I have held either before or since. It was work which started and finished according to the duty roster and activity was determined and limited by the various orders laid down. For every minor detail there had to be a written authority. The Prisons Service had become established about the turn of the century and the antiquated system did nothing to inspire enthusiasm. On one occasion Paddy Mc.Kinney and I were taking a five minute breather in the office and enjoying a coca-cola, when Martin came in and without preamble ordered us to put leg-irons on Mchegi, then stormed out again. Mchegi was a "casi kubwa", a 6'3" Kikuyu in a condemned cell. The leg-irons were a reprisal for Mchegi's offensive the previous day. Martin, on his round of inspection had moved aside the 6" square observation panel in the door of Mchegi's cell to look inside, and received the full force of the contents of the choo (night soil!) bucket in his face. Mchegi was awaiting hanging and had nothing to lose. He was a very dangerous individual who had already killed and because of his violance [sic] often remained in his cell during excercise [sic] periods. Putting leg-irons on this tough character was a formidable task and Martin knew that. Paddy startled me by suggesting that I should open the door of Mchegi's cell, and he would wait at the open end of the corridor where it entered the prison yard. I replied that I would rather he opened Mchegi's door and I would wait in the yard. However, Mchegi had no personal animosity towards me and Paddy's complete plan appeared rational. I opened the cell door with the greeting "Mjambo Mchegi", and he stepped out of the cell, seeing a clear passage to the prison yard and beyond to the open gate in the outside perimeter wall of the prison, with neither officer nor askari in sight. Mchegi recognised his chance to escape and made a dash for it. It was at the end of the corridor that Paddy stepped out hit him and simultaneously an askari tripped him up. Before Mchegi recovered four askari had rivetted on the leg-irons and dragged him back to his cell. A few minutes later Paddy and I were finishing our cokes in the office when Martin came in and remonstrated, "why haven't you carried out my order?" Paddy said we had done so and Martin exclaimed "impossible". When Martin was told just how it had been done we were both on a charge once more. The Commissioner reminded us that striking a prisoner was a very serious matter but when Paddy said it was the preferred alternative to shooting him, there was no answer, and the matter was dropped. Mchegi gave no more trouble and apologised to Martin for his indiscretion, and
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Paddy saw to it that Mchegi received his full ration of excercise [sic] time in the prison yard. It was about three weeks after the choo bucket incident that Paddy was in the yard and attacked from the rear by a prisoner with a pair of 12" scissors. Fortunately Mchegi was watching and although still in leg-irons tackled the assailant, overcoming him just in time. Paddy was still cut, but there was no doubt that Mchegi had saved his life. He took a great interest in Mchegi and asked why he had been a condemned prisoner for so long, just waiting for the death sentance [sic] to be carried out. Paddy saw to it that the stabbing incident received a great deal of publicity, and eventually Mchegi was released from jail. Some years later I found he was a Snr. Warder at the prison.
About the same time, a new recruit joined us, with the same rank, Asst. Supt. Gr.2, but we found his salary was in fact 2 increments (£120 per annum) higher than ours and we wanted to know the reason why. We were told that he had been in the armed services and was awarded two increments for war service. We, apparently, had been under the average age of entry for the Prisons service at the time of our war service. Our next move was to try and compare our respective efforts during the war, but the new recruit was very reticent about his service career, and somehow didn't seem to speak the language of the soldier. It was several weeks later we found he had been in the German Army and the rest of us felt this really was too much. Regulations on war service increments however did refer to the "armed services" and made no mention of which side a fellow was on. We were not still fighting the [deleted] a [/deleted] war, but we were a uniformed service after all. The Gerry could see he was not wanted and resigned.
After 12 months as a Prison Officer I was very disgruntled with the way of life and went to see the Commissioner and gave him one month's notice. This he accepted and on my return to the prison I was handed a letter terminating my appointment with immediate effect, signed by Martin.
I then set about thinking of another job, there was lots of scope and on the air next morning my father suggested I should go and see Joe Furness who was Director of Civil Aviation. Later that day, in prison uniform, I called to see the Personnel Officer of D.C.A., one Bert Leaman, and found there might be a possibility of joining the Telecommunications section, and arranged an interview for the following day.
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[underlined] CIVIL AVIATION [/underlined]
In April 1951 I joined the E.A. Directorate of Civil Aviation as a Radio Officer on a salary of £610 per year. I had no relevant qualifications for this job but I could cope with the morse code at 25 words per minute and had aquired[sic] a general background of aviation during the war years! The first two weeks were spent at R.A.F. Eastleigh studying the workings of the Telecommunications and Air Traffic Control systems, after which I was posted to Mbeya near the Tanganyika/Northern Rhodesia border at 6500 feet above sea level. The journey down to Mbeya was by road, 900 miles, and in the middle of the rainy season. Much advice was received, “all the hotels are closed”, “the roads are waterlogged and blocked”, “there is no petrol beyond Arusha” and so on. We decided to do the trip in four short stages of between 200 and 300 miles per day, with night stops at Arusha, Dodoma and Iringa.
Our 1949 Ford Prefect, KCC13, with 60,000 miles on the clock was reshod at a cost of £10. Recapped tyres were the vogue at that time, a practice which has since stopped, being said to be dangerous. However, those recaps. did 22,000 miles on some of the worst roads in the world, without problems, before being replaced, a better performance than the original new tyres. With the car loaded with household equipment, and with Colin and Wendy lying on blankets near the roof of the car we headed south down “the Great North Road”. The first 100 miles was tarmac and no problem in the pouring tropical rain. Always to the south of us -dead on track- were towering thunderheads of cumulo [sic] -nimbus, but nearing the end of the tarmac the rain stopped. Indeed for the next three days the rain stopped falling about twelve hours ahead of us, but also remained on our tail. On the second day, deep ruts in the road caused a broken rear spring near Dodoma, but this was repaired overnight at George’s Garage; very well equipped with spare springs was George. Crossing the hundreds of fords, or drifts was exciting and at times quite hilarious, many being over 100 years wide and comprising merely a strip of concrete 10 feet wide on the bed of the river. Most of them were covered by water, hiding the concrete and the only clue to its location was provided by the poles at each side of the drift. More often than not the river bed at the side of the concrete was worn away creating a drop of a foot or so. A piece of thick wire fixed to the front of the car together with a vertical line on the windscreen, could be lined up with the centre of the two distant poles. By ignoring everything else and having implicit faith in the navigational instrument, we always reached the other side without going over the edge. Without this blind faith there would have been a tendency to keep a little to the up-stream side of the drift. To go over the edge on the other side could have been disastrous. In two places on the second day we were really bogged down in mud but we quickly mastered the technique of driving in reverse over the worst parts, thus becoming front-wheel drive. The most interesting village we passed was Kondor Arangi, between Dodoma and Iringa, on the third day. A beautifully painted and spotlessly clean Arab village, probably unchanged for centuries and almost completely independent of the world outside. After over 35 years I can still recall the aroma of freshly-baked bread, and the welcoming atmosphere of the village. On through Iringa and the final leg of 250 miles of the beautiful scenery of Southern Highlands, completely unspoilt by development. After a night at the Iringa Hotel, we had made our usual early-morning start and reached Mbeya by mid-day. Straight to the Railway station in
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Mbeya, a typical East African Railways and Harbours station complete with platforms, but the nearest railway lines and trains were over 400 miles away. A search for Paddy and Jeep, our two alsations, which had been put on the train five days previously in Nairobi, was to no avail. It was to be a further three days before they reached Mbeya, very hungry and very thirsty. After a night in ‘Links’ Salter’s Mbeya Hotel we inspected our new home at the airport. Known as Wilson Airways Rest House, built in 1932 for use by British Airways – before the change of name to Imperial Airways, and B.O.A.C. – It was ‘U’ shaped with 2 kitchens and 10 bedrooms. No electricity of course but a dozen or so paraffin lamps took care of the lighting problem. An african [sic] was provided to carry water from a tap about four hundred yards away to keep our small tank topped-up. The house was very convenient at the side of the runway, actually the grass landing area. It was very pleasant to sit on the verandah[sic] where there was a wonderful view of Mbeya Peak. We had only two neighbours, the Claytons from Burnley who were ‘refugees’ from the groundnut scheme at Kongwa and now in charge of a tipper unit with the Public Works Dept., and Bwana Grigg, an old-timer who had been a prospector and was then a Weights and Measures Inspector.
Mbeya was our home for 2 1/2 years, the aerodrome had been up-graded from a one-man to two-man station open from 0600 to 1800 hrs. every day. My colleague was George Hanson, who originally hailed from Selby in Yorkshire, an ex-wireless operator in Royal Signals during the war who had joined E.A. Posts and Telegraphs as a Radio Officer in 1947. George had spent 3 years in Burma during the war and returned to Selby in 1946. To find his fiance [sic] in the arms of two Italian prisoners. According to George he gave the Italians a thrashing – which would have been very true to character – and left them with their heads jammed in the railings, to be released later by the fire-brigade. The Law caught up with him and George was given a dressing -down by the magistrate who said “We don’t want ruffians like you in this country”. George claims he told the magistrate to get some service in and his knees brown and the case was adjourned. At that time the Crown Agents were recruiting for East African Posts & Telegraphs Dept. and George felt it was time to emigrate. All aeronautical communications were handled by E.A.P. & T. until the end of 1950 when they were taken over by the Directorate of Civil Aviation. George and I had to cover 84 hours each week between us, thoeoretically[sic] a 42 hour week, but there was no provision for sickness, local leave, and the many chores which required both of us, like being in three places simultaneously. We were assisted by an african [sic] wireless operator, a Kikuyu 1200 miles from his home, a cleaner, a watchman, and a diesel mechanic, Kundan Singh Babra, all of whom lived on the station. George and I agreed our individual responsibilities, we would each carry out our 42 hours per week on watches, which included R/T to aircraft on HF and VHF, an aerodrome control function, W/T to Nairobi as required, originating meteorological reports each hour and coding them into Aero format, and customs duties. In addition, he would deal with all the admin., and I would see to the technical aspect of keeping the station on the air.
The station had been established in 1932 and the original Marconi M/F Beacon, a type TA4A was still in use and in immaculate condition. We had a stock of MT16 valves enough to last for another 30 years. We also had an ex-South African Air Force T1190 of 1933 vintage, fitted in 1940, and four ET4336 transmitters for working aircraft on R/T and Nairobi on W/T. Everything was in very good condition and gave me no problems. Our “office” was at the D/F
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(direction finding) station, and was fitted with one of the original DFG10 Marconi recieivers [sic] .
We could not see the runway from the office, which rather limited our scope in controlling it.
Each week, Mbeya had only 4 East African Airways scheduled Dakotas and Loadstars, on the Nairobi-Dar es Salaam route, plus a Beaver of Central African Airways from Blantyre in Nyasaland and one R.A.F. transport from Johannesburg to Nairobi. There were also up to a dozen or so charters which sometimes arrived with little or no notice. Our M/F Beacon was the only navigation aid for some hundreds of miles in all directions. The D/F Receiver was not in use and had a faulty power unit. This I serviced and used the receiver for monitoring Tabora’s M/F Beacon. We were operating also on 6440 KHz, the Salisbury F.I.C. channel, unofficially, to keep in touch with the Beaver aircraft which were not fitted with Nairobi F.I.C. channels. This proved very useful and also gave us a rapid link with Salisbury Ndola and Blantyre. One day and R.A.F. Anson called on [underlined] 6440 [/underlined] and reported his MF/DF receiver, - in his only [inserted in margin] NOT 6440 BUT 5190[?] [/inserted in margin] navigational aid – out of order. He was over mountains, - he hoped – in cloud, could we give him QDM’s, (courses to steer) on M/F ?. I told him to transmit on 333 KHz, the standard frequency for this purpose, and it took only a few seconds to retune the DFG10 to this frequency. For the next 2 1/2 hrs. I gave him a QDM every three minutes. The weather was bad and the aircraft eventually landed at Mbeya, staying overnight. The Navigator was visibly shaken, he did not know his position, only that if he acted on the QDM,’s he would eventually reach Mbeya. Only after landing could he calculate his ground speed, about 70 knots. On arrival over Mbeya the crew were able to see Mbeya Peak above cloud, This was five miles to the North of us and with a cloud base of 3000 feet above the aerodrome they were able to descent and land. All this would of course have been totally unacceptable to a civilian aircraft which would have possibly returned to it’s starting point. The R.A.F. aircraft without any Nav. Aids had really no option. Some weeks later we received a letter from the R.A.F. thanking us for the assistance we had given the Anson crew in providing M/F bearings thus preventing a possible disaster, etc. etc. Unfortunately this letter was also copied to D.C.A. H.Q. with another asking if the facility could be retained. The next mail brought a letter from our own boss, the Director of Civil Aviation.. “Whilst complimenting and thanking you for taking the initiative on this occasion…”. The letter went on to point out the legal significance of giving information to pilots and of undertaking to provide a direction-finding facility with 20-year old equipment and no spares. I made sure I could provide an alternative power supply of 2 and 130 volts which did not take much imagination and adapted some modern valves – type 6C4 – with bases to replace the original 1930 vintage triodes. There were not used in my 2 1/2 years in Mbeya and we continued to give bearings to the R.A.F. unofficially. About 2 years later a Pye VHF set was fitted together with a D/F antenna and also a modern Redifon M/F Beacon, both with an effective range no better than 25% of the 1932 equipment. This was not the fault of the manufacturers. In the case of the D/F the reason was the difference in propagation characteristics and with the M/F Beacon it would have been better to retain the original 1932 Marconi type antenna.
I have no notes of this period, but memories are many. I recall seeing a Cheetah on the grass landing area we called a runway, whilst carrying
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out a runway inspection. As I approached, the cheetah ran off. My foot was hard down doing 58 m.p.h. just behind it, but the cheetah gradually drew away. Daily inspection of the ‘runway’ was necessary. Ant-Bear holes appeared quite often, and just one of these was sufficient to wreck an aircraft. Africans had free access to the runway except when aircraft were actually using it. One evening a grass fire started and swept first along the windward side of the runway where the grass was long, and then crossed it in a line of flame and black smoke the whole length of the runway. Hilda and I were on foot at the other side of the runway and witnessed literally hundreds of snakes fleeing from the fire. There were lots of snakes and other creatures in that area which after all was open African bush. This was again highlighted at 6 am one morning when I drove to the D/F station and opened up the radio. It was still dark and there was a very pungent smell of pigs. I assumed there was a dead animal outside but within a few minutes it was daylight and having established contact with Nairobi on w/t and confirmed there were no overnight disasters requiring my attention, I went outside to investigate. There were elephants all over the place, standing there, and looking just as surprised as I was. I made a strategic withdrawal smartly into the D/F station and bolted the door. On my way to the office I had met the African nightwatchman who was waving his arms about and saying something about ‘tembo mningi sani”. The word Tembo was generally associated with Elephant Brand Beer, which was more a part of everyday life in our immediate area than the animal after which it was named. I assumed he had been drinking and thought no more of it. The africans too were soon awake and trying to chase the elephants out of the maize, throwing tin cans, stones and even pangas at them. Three africans were killed in the process. Meanwhile I telephoned the police who said it was not their shouri (affair), “tell the Game Warden”. It was then 6.15am. and the Game Warden would not take the matter seriously, claiming I was drinking too much, “see the M.O.”! There was a scheduled Dakota due at 7 am. and I asked the pilot to overfly the runway and make sure there were no elephants on it, and this he agreed to do. I gave him the surface wind and QNH and landing clearance, and he came straight in and landed, without checking. He too thought I was not being serious about the elephants. It was mid-day before the elephants left of their own accord and moved back towards the mountains to the south. The Africans said the elephant movement was a sure sign that Rungwe, our local dormant volcano was about to erupt, and the elephants had already received warning. They took me to the fire trench round the Shell petrol dump which was 10 feet deep, and showed me the alternate layers of volcanic ash and sandy soil, starting at the bottom with four inch layers. At the 5’ level about 8” layers, gradually thickening as compression decreased to a 12” layer of ash and finally, 18” of soil at the top. There was no record of the date of the last erruption,[sic] probably some hundreds of years ago. We did experience several earth tremmors [sic] in Mbeya, but it was a nice life and we decided to stick it out!
Colin and Wendy were attending Mrs. Maugham-Brown’s infants school in the town and were making very good progress. Hilda was doing retouching of photographs for Arthur Firmin which were sent to and from his Nairobi office by air mail. It was in Mbeya that I built my first amateur transmitter with bits and pieces from the junk box, and was soon in daily contact with the outside world on the morse key.
On the sixth of Feb. 1952 I called my chum in Liverpool as usual and he told me that all U.K. stations were closed for the day in deference to King
[inserted] G6YQ George [/inserted]
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George VI who had died during the night. Later that day Hilda and I went to Mbeya School to see Colin, expecting the football match to have been cancelled. I expressed my surprise to the Provincial Commissioner (the King’s direct representative) that the Union Jacks were not at half mast and the game still on. He told me not to spread rumours and he would deal with me after the game. Just after half-time a Police askari despatch rider drove onto the field and gave the P.C., who was referee, a message. The P.C. stopped the game and announced that the King was dead. He was very annoyed indeed that I had received the message direct from U.K., many hours ahead of the official channels. Mbeya had a local telephone service which did not connect with any other. It was also at one end of a single-wire line of about 1000 miles which was used for passing telegraph messages. This linked about 30 places ‘up-country’ with Dar es Salaam, the Capital. There was no other way officially of telecommunicating with Mbeya. It so happened that I had a pair of ex-military amplified telephones, which were battery powered, press-to-talk operation and which gave an amplification each of 20 dB (100 times). I sent one of these to Jimmie Waldron in Dar es Salaam and by arrangement he called me one morning at 0545 on this line. We had a first-class conversation which was truly remarkable. This was possible only because the operators at the 30 or so other stations were still asleep, and not interfering. I have no doubt this particular exploit would compare very favourably with the record longest telephone conversation over a single wire and earth, if indeed a record has been established.
George Hanson and I got on very well with each other, both being from Yorkshire and both being ex-Service, but eventually his tour of 2 1/2 years was completed and he was succeeded by Doug. Clifton, who was ex-PTT and R.A.F. ground wireless operator. We moved into the cottage vacated by George and family, near to the transmitting station, and I ran a mains cable underground between the two. This gave us 230 ac. Power for 12 hours a day and at night whenever the radio beacon was required for overflying aircraft.
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One quiet morning the Provincial Commisioner [sic] asked me to his home to discuss a problem, and on arrival I was told that the Governor, Sir Edward Twining was convalescing in Mbeya, having just arrived, but could stay only if he could speak regularly with the Chief Secretary in Dar es Salaam. The Police and Posts & Telegraphs Departments had already been approached and could not assist. I was authorised to cut clean across any rules and regulations in order to set up a communications channel. Back at the D/F Station I sent an official message on the Aeronautical W/T channel to CHF ZHTD (Officer i/c Airport Dar-es-Salaam) asking him to pass a message to Jimmie Waldron, P.T.T. Chief Engineer’s office. I told Jimmie of the Governors request and the powers bestowed upon us, and that I would call him on 7151 KHz which was just above the upper limit of the amateur 40 meter band. I would install a receiver at the P.C.’s house. Would he advise me of his transmitting frequency. Meanwhile I got the local P.T.T. to connect my second aerodrome telephone line to the second line to the P.C.’s house. This automatically provided a microphone for the P.C. and enabled me to make a simple connection to my amateur transmitter at the airport. Half an hour later I received a message on the aeronautical channel “Loud and clear on 7175, Dar es salaam calling you on 8775. A check on my local receiver and indeed there was Jimmie. I then drove to the P.C.’s house and retuned the receiver to 8775, and we had first class duplex communication. A lady’s voice came on “Is that you George?” “No Love, this is Cliff”. “Oh dear, this is Lady Twining, is my husband George there please?” I handed him the telephone and restrained myself from saying “It’s for you George, I thought your name was Edward”. For the next two weeks the link was in constant use and another letter of thanks was sent from D.C.A. in Nairobi.
Why the fuss one might say, but in 1952 it was the very first time [inserted] H E [/inserted] H.H. the Governor had spoken by private radio telephone to his Chief Secretary from outside Dar es Salaam. This was another ‘first’, also on an amateur basis.
At Mbeya Post Office I was introduced to the Manager of New Saza Gold Mine, which was about 100 miles north of Mbeya. He said his radio link with Mbeya had not worked for four years although experts from all over East Africa had tried to fix it. It was a simple w/t link to Mbeya Post Office where there was an operating position and transmitter set up on 3900 KHz which seemed to be a reasonable frequency for the job. “Fix it and you can name your price”, and I agreed to have a go on a ‘no pass, no fee basis’. I first set up a spare DCA transmitter keyed from the D/F station, rather than rely upon co-operation from the Post office. My own DCA operator would monitor. I called the local Post office from the aerodrome but there was no reply. This was the rainy season and it would be a three hour drive through the bush to New Saza, so I lost no time over the Post Office and set off in my Ford Prefect complete with two amateur transmitters and two receivers, any combination of which could do the job if all else failed. On arrival, their station appeared to be working and with adequate output, but I soon found the output stage was doubling to 7.8 MHz. and not amplifying straight through 3.9. A higher tapping on the coil fixed that and I called Mbeya Post office. No reply. Then I called ZEQ3, my own office at the D/F Station and my operator came up trumps. We were in contact with
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Mbeya. I asked my operator to ring the Postmaster asking him to kick his wireless operator. He found the transmitter had the wrong crystal in it and the receiver was also detuned. Having corrected this, all three stations were in contact. The station receiver at New Saza was a pre-war ‘straight set’, that is, not a superhet, and was not ideal, so I added one of my own receivers. In addition, I fitted a second operating position, with my own equipment and separate aerial, as a standby. The manager was delighted and I was rewarded handsomely. Only once in the next 18 months did I need to visit New Saza for a minor fault. Electrical and mechanical power for the mine was derived from a very old wood-burning steam engine of pre-1914 vintage and German manufacture.
On the road about half way to the mine, was Chunya, a typical American-type western one-horse town, the main street being unpaved and 200 feet wide. The place was almost derelict, a few prospectors still panned for gold in the stream, but in years gone by it had supported a population of over 2000. There was a Police post which sported a telephone connected to Mbeya Post office. The overhead line ran at the side of the ‘road’ and I had this in mind for emergency use. A field telephone was part of my standard safari equipment in the car. Later on I carried a transmitter on the aeronautical H/F channels in addition. Communications was often the key to survival.
One very hot day, about noon, George Blodgett, an American tourist, took off from Mbeya in his Cessna 180 with his wife and another passenger, continuing their round-the-world holiday. The aircraft carried the same load as when it took off from Dar es salaam without problem a week or so previously. But Dar was at sea level, and Mbeya at 6500 feet. Dar had a proper concrete runway with a clear flight path. Mbeya had a grass ‘runway’, much shorter and with a small hill at one end and a mountain within 4 miles at the other end. It was the slight banking to avoid the small hill which caused the aircraft to stall and plough along the ground, writing itself off. It took me several minutes to reach the wreck, to find a bewildered trio shaken-up, but physically unhurt. There was a strong smell of petrol which came from a 5 gallon can INSIDE the aircraft. The can had a hand pump and hose which fitted on the drain cock of a fuel tank inside the port wing. Transferring the petrol was achieved by opening a window and leaning out to fix the pipe. This rather surprised me as George was a very experienced pilot and was in fact the first to cross the Andes in Peru, solo, where some years later he went missing without trace. His life-story was written up in Time & Life and referring to his accident in Mbeya, it said he had crashed in the bush and the Despatcher from Mbeya trecked [sic] all night to reach the aircraft, to find George and his passengers surrounded by lions and tigers. Lions were a possibility but the only tigers in Africa are [deleted] a few imported ones in captivity. [/deleted] [inserted] in West Africa and are not tigers as we know them. [/inserted]
Mbeya was a peaceful place, and to a large extent we were able to plan our lives. Occasionally we became involved with the local tribesmen, particularly after one of their frequent skirmishes. Generally a small group would appear at the house bearing the injured on bicycles with blood all over the place, and asking me to take the casualties to hospital. The first time this happened I took them by car to the African Hospital and not really knowing the system, gave them my name. Some weeks later I received the bill. Subsequent deliveries were made in the name of Ramsey Macdonald!
Soon after joining DCA I noticed on one of many flight plans received the name of Iliffe as Captain of an incoming Dakota. When the First Officer
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called me on VHF I requested him to ask the Captain if the number 1090111 meant anything to him. Back came the reply, affirmative. I gave him my first service number 1384956 and after he had landed, went over to the Terminal Building to see him. There wasn’t much time for reminiscing but he marvelled that I had remembered his first service number. It was on a pay parade in Bulawayo that Howard’s name was not called with the others in alphabetical order. It was called at the very end when he gave his ‘last three’, somewhat disgruntled, as “Sir, One one bloody one”.
We had seen a great deal of each other on the troopship going to Durban and until our ways parted at Belvedere where Howard got his wings and my records were stamped ‘Wastage’. After his training at Belvedere, he completed S.F.T.S. on Oxfords and in U.K. converted to Dakotas. His war was on Transport Command, flying Dakotas. We met several times in the next 15 years, the last time being in 1965 when Howard was the Captain of a Comet of East African Airways returning to the U.K.
After 2 1/2 years in Tanganyika our tour was finished and we were due for 6 months leave in U.K.. We opted to travel by air rather than sea but did not realise when making the decision that this referred to trunk travel to U.K. from the International Airport of the territory in which we finished our tour. It was unlikely that we would return to Mbeya after leave, my successor expecting to stay for the full 2 1/2 years. All our effects were crated up whilst we spent the last week in Mbeya Hotel. The car was left with the Postmaster and Paddy our Alsation [sic] boarded with Mrs. Maugham-Brown. And so with four children, Christopher a baby of 4 months, we said farewell to Mbeya at the railway station, not by train but by diesel-powered bus - referred to as a ‘taxi’ by the Africans. The first leg took us the 250 miles through Southern Highlands to Iringa, where accommodation was reserved at Iringa Hotel. The next day was very similar, by another ‘taxi’ to Dodoma. The drivers were Africans, probably ex-Kings African Rifles, and their driving was of a very high standard considering the state of the road. There was some tarmac in the towns, but otherwise the road surface was graded murram, a well-packed reddish sand. This was apt to become corrugated after rain and scarred with deep wheel ruts. Ruts made by lorries could be quite deep and dangerous to cars with little clearance below. The ‘taxi’ took us direct to the railway station at Dodoma where we had been advised to request compartments as near to the engine as possible, where the sway is minimum. The first job was to wash all the nappies and as we had two compartments it was easy to sling a couple of lines and hang up the nappies to dry. It was very hot in Dodoma, and the carriage windows were all open because of the heat. In the evening the engine got up steam and the train moved off amid clouds of thick black smoke, most of which seemed to come in at the windows. For 18 hours we chugged across the plains with its tens of thousands of many different types of wild animals, gradually descending to the coast and becoming progressively hotter. Arriving in Dar es Salaam at about 4 pm., the temperature in the shade was 120 deg.f. and it was a great relief to flop onto the beds in the air-conditioned hotel. The evening was spent in trying to clean up our clothing and indeed ourselves, with Christopher’s nappies hanging on lines in the hotel room. The nappies dried within an hour but were still filthy. After a browse around the big stores in Dar, we handed in our 480 lbs. of baggage and placed ourselves in the capable hands of B.O.A.C.
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Our flight home was by Arganaut, [sic] 16 hours flying, stopping at Nairobi, Entebbe, Khartoum, Benghazi and Rome. Plenty of seat room, excellent food and a very comfortable flight. One engine developed trouble approaching Italy and we were delayed for 24 hours in Rome. The Romans were hostile to the British at that time, I cannot remember why this was so, but we enjoyed a conducted tour of Rome and first-class hotel accommodation. At breakfast next morning I thought I recognised a fellow at the next table. He was under the same impression and when he spoke to us there was instant recognition. He was the B.O.A.C. Rep. in Rome and we had seen a great deal of each other on the squadron in North Africa. He was then W/O Woolston, a pilot on 150 Sqdn. We arrived in London 24 hours late, but there were no complaints. B.O.A.C. had made the trip very enjoyable.
The greater part of our leave was spent in London with Hilda’s parents, and I took the opportunity of spending 12 weeks at the School of Telegraphy in Brixton, for an Intermediate C. & G. in Telecomms and a P.M.G 1st. Class licence. I was also on a course of Dexedrine to reduce my weight, eating very little and actually losing it at the rate of 1lb. per day, for 44 days. Peter Gunns, another D.C.A., Radio Officer had been at the school for 6 months and was doing the complete 12 month course for a P.M.G. second class licence. I decided to give it three months and take the first class ticket. The Principal at the school advised against it, almost everyone first obtained a second-class ticket before trying for a first. For three months I swatted hard, long into the night and then went to Post Office H.Q. in St. Martin-le-Grand and applied to take the P.M.G.1 licence. The Chief examiner asked to see my second-class licence and when I said I didn’t have one, he said “look son, try for a second class and if you pass, come back in a few years time and try for a first”. I replied that I was not interested in anything second-class and he shrugged his shoulders and booked me to take the exam. three days hence. The exam. took from 9 am to 5 pm., written and practical and was quite intensive. The final part was the morse test at 25 w.p.m. and the examiner was wearing an R.S.G.B. tie. I took a chance at the end of the test and sent, on the key ‘QRA? De VQ4BM’ and after an exchange of greetings he asked me if I was returning to Kenya. I replied “yes, but only if I pass this exam”. He sent QRX3 and left the room, returning with a smile and said “strictly off the record, you could book your ticket”. The next three days were taken up with City & Guilds exams, and I was delighted when my P.M.G. licence arrived by post. The following day, feeling on top line, Hilda and I went to M.C.A. Headquarters at Berkeley Square and I applied to take the Flight Radio Officer’s exam. I found this was held only twice yearly and by sheer coincidence the next one was the following day. I was told to just fill in the form, pay £3 and come back at 0830 the next day. I saw the Chief examiner and told him I wasn’t quite prepared for the exam. at such short notice, it was many years since I had studied the S.B.A. and Navigational aids. He told me not to worry about them and to check through the last 5 exam. papers, copies of which he lent me. They could be bought openly from the “shop” downstairs, but this was already closed. He also said “bear in mind that everything has its own natural frequency”. I spent until 5 am next morning making sure I could answer all the questions on those papers, and doubly sure of the compulsory questions. I noticed that
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year 4 had the same compulsory questions as year 1, and year 5 the same as year 2. Year 6 was to be my lot and if this was to be the same as year 3, on cathode ray tubes, all would be well, and I had a couple of hours sleep. It had taken me a long time to realise what the Chief Examiner had meant by “it’s own natural frequency”.
The exams were spread over a period of two days and I failed two of them. The first was a three-minute test writing down the phonetic alphabet and I wrote “Alpha bravo coca delta foxtrot golf hotel etc.” The examiner looked over my shoulder and remarked “what on earth have we here, have you never heard of able baker Charlie?”. I thought this was a catch and I said “yes but that went out three years ago when I.C.A.O. introduced this one”. It seemed that Britain was three years behind the rest of the world on this simple issue. I had however quite rightly failed on R/T procedure. All went well on a simulated flight from Manchester to Jersey when I received a chitty that both engines had stopped and we were on fire. There was already a M’iadez in force from another aircraft and I broke radio silence and put out my own “M’aidez” without the Captain’s authority and that was the end of the exam. FAILED! on two counts. I had passed two three hour written papers, a two hour practical exam., an hour’s morse at 25 w.p.m. and failed on two ridiculous details. I said I was sufficiently experienced to anticipate the Captain’s instruction to send out an SOS but the book does say that only the Captain has the authority. However, I paid another £3 which I could by then ill-afford and resat the two parts the following morning. The licence came by post a few days later. The R/T Procedure test was the same as before, and when we reached the point where I had put out my M’aidez I just sat tight. I heard the other aircraft transmit his SOS again and it was acknowledged by Jersey Approach. Without authority to transmit an SOS I could not break radio silence according to the regulations and I continued to sit tight. One minute of real time was equivalent to 10 minutes of ‘flying’ and after 30 minutes of theoretical flying time I removed my headphones and placed them on the table. The examiner did likewise and asked me what I thought I was doing.
I just said “swimming to the surface”. He laughed and said O.K. at least you didn’t originate a M’aidez. In the practical M.C.A. exam the equipment in use was the T1154 and R1155 and the main object of the examiner seemed to me to be one of getting me confused, argumentative and thoroughly rattled. Thanks maybe to the dexedrine I realised what his game was and remained very calm indeed. He admitted afterwards that he was trying to get me rattled, remaining calm and composed was all important in the air!. I cast my mind back 10 years but said nothing.
Meanwhile Peter Gunns was still plodding on and becoming very discouraged. I urged him to take the PMG2 the following week, there was little point in further delay. I spent a week with him going through every paper set for 5 years, and he was successful in the exam. A few weeks later we returned to Nairobi together. About 10 years later Peter died of a heart attack whilst on night duty in the Nairobi Communications Centre. He was taking a short break and read in the newspaper that Pinnocks had folded up. He had £15,000 invested with them, and the loss was too much to bear. After a few weeks at Eastleigh I was posted to Mwanza on the southern shores of Lake Victoria, again in Tanganyika.
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Our car, a Ford Prefect KCC13 (new price £400) and Paddy our alsatian, were nearly 1000 miles away in Mbeya and I was able to scrounge a flight as supernumery [sic] crew with East African Airways. The return journey by road with Paddy took 30 hours non-stop except for refuelling and for half an hour at dawn when driving was dangerous. The work in Nairobi was operating air/ground channels on R/T and W/T and also at the D/F station giving H/F bearings to aircraft on the Khartoum and Johannesburg sectors where navigation aids were few and far between. It transpired later that the D/F station was adjacent to the Mau Mau graveyard. I recall one day looking out of the door and seeing the police askari guard fast asleep with his loaded rifle on the ground beside him. More for security reasons than mischief I took the rifle inside the building and it was still there when I closed the station at 1830. But there was no sign of the askari, so I put the rifle in the loft of the small building, intending to do something about it next day. Somehow I forgot all about it for two weeks and then handed in the rifle at the R.A.F. guardroom and questioned why the police had taken no action. The askari had just disappeared without trace.
Once again our household effects were packed into crates, and despatched by ‘rail’ to Mwanza. We had exchanged our Ford Prefect for an Austin A70 and motored via Kitale (my father’s farm) to Kisumu where we boarded the M.V. Rusinga. The Rusinga ploughed clockwise round the lake shore calling at Musoma, Mwanza, Bukoba, Entebbe, Jinja and complete circle to Kisumu. Her sister ship the M.V. Usoga called at the same ports, but went anti-clockwise round the lake. A third ship, the M.V. Sybil was smaller and more or less a reserve vessel. Lake Victoria was the second largest inland sea in the world, and became the largest when its level rose 8 feet with the building of the dam at Jinja a few years later. The voyage of about 200 miles took a very pleasant 30 hours with one halt at Musoma. We were met at Mwanza Port by Johnny King who I was relieving. He said he expected to return to Mwanza in 6 months as it was his station and his wife’s father was Government entomologist permanently stationed there. His wife’s family were German, very domineering and forceful. I didn’t mind the mother’s clay pipe but took an instant dislike to her Bavarian-type husband. I insisted upon a proper formal take-over at the airport which was just as well, and the proper storage of King’s personal effects at P.W.D and not in the transmitter room. For a couple of weeks we stayed at Mwanza Hotel and then moved to a delightful house at Bwiru, facing north with a wonderful view over Lake Victoria. Palm trees in the foreground, paw paw trees in the garden and - we discovered much later - leopard in the hills at the back of the house. The water supply came from a storage tank half a mile up the hill via a metal pipe on the surface of the ground, and was always hot enough for a bath without further heating. The water had to remain in our roof storage tank for some time before we could regard it as being a cold water supply. Water and electricity could not be taken for granted in East Africa, but the house was connected to the town electricity supply.
The airport was a fairly new one about 10 miles east of town, by the lake shore, the single runway 18/36 being of grass. It was a neat little place, the transmitters being in the room below the Control Tower with two diesel engines and fire station being in a custom-built building 50 yards away. The
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transmitters were two RCA ET4336s, a G54 Redifon M/F Beacon and an ex-R.A.F. T1154. In the Control Tower was a Pye PTC704 VHF set with a direction-finding antenna. There were only 6 scheduled aircraft per week and an average of about 10 charters. This was a ‘one man’ station and my working hours were long. Perhaps the highlight of the tour was the four-day visit of H.R.H. Princess Margaret. The ten mile road to town was ‘tarmaced’ [sic] a few days before her arrival. The original murrum (red sand) surface was first graded and then covered by a quarter inch layer of chippings and sprayed with tar. The cost was £11,000 which was charged to my aerodrome maintenance vote. For the few days of the visit the road looked really superb, and then just a few days later it rained and the remains of the “tarmac surface” were cleared away by grader, the surface reverting to murram once more.
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Every effort was being made by the Administration to make the Royal Visit a success and the costs were covered somehow. The M.V. Sybil was in dock for 6 months at Kisumu being completely refitted so the Princess could spend just a few hours on the lake. An R.A.F. Shackleton flew down from Aden to provide an escort for the Sybil. Four radio stations were established on the boat, each with an operator, to contact the Police on H/F W/T, Aircraft on VHF, Mwanza Airport on H/F R/T, and E. A. Railways & Harbours. Just about every vessel afloat on Lake Victoria seemed to be milling around outside the harbour waiting for the Sybil and the Princess. A Widgeon aircraft, the only amphibean [sic] in E. Africa, was detailed to position itself at the end of the runway at instant readiness for take-off. The Shackleton took-off to patrol an hour before the Sybil was due to leave harbour, Captain Chris Treen positioned his Widgeon and stayed put with engines idling. All the Sybil's radios were tested and people were getting excited. We were then advised that it was a case of not tonight Josephine, H.R.H. had a headache, the trip was cancelled. The Shackleton, looking remarkably like a real Lancaster landed on my murrum runway, and the Widgeon had to be towed in backwards, the engines having over-heated.
In company with all the other Colonial officials I had been given six pages of foolscap telling me how to address the Princess and how to conduct myself in the Royal presence. There was also an application form for a Permit to be at the airport for her arrival and another application form regarding my being presented to the Princess. It was the two application forms which bugged me. I refused to apply for a permit to enter the airport where every aspect was my responsibility, if anyone denied me access, be it on their own head. "Before applying to be presented", the write-up stated, "You must qualify under at least one of the following headings:-
1. Be a Government Servant on a salary exceeding '£x'
2. Be a serving officer of H. M. forces,
3. Be a retired officer having held a rank above 'Y'
4. Hold a Civil Decoration equivalent or senior to an M.B.E.
5. Hold a military decoration.
6. Have already been presented to another member of the Royal Family.
There was virtually an order to apply if one qualified and this decided me to ignore the whole issue. I was not in favour of the pomp and circumstance and the relatively vast expenditure involved, and I was never any good at playing charades and other party games.
Just before the Royal Visit a gang of workmen turned up at the airport and were starting to fit a toilet suite in the 'Crew Room'. This was a small room where aircrews could relax and enjoy a little privacy between flights. Toilet facilities were quite adequate without specially converting the crew room for the Princess. I vetoed the plan, and finally the toilet wing, already with four Asian type and four European type loos was enhanced with one new and rather superior loo. The superloo did come in useful however; whilst the Princess was inspecting the guard of honour, the bare-chested Engineer of the Widgeon aircraft appeared inside the Terminal building,
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looking quite incongruous in his filthy shorts and sandals. I told him to keep out of sight until Princes Margaret had left. He did, and hid in the superloo. After the visit, someone fixed a royal coat of arms an the door to which I had the only key. I was tempted to replace the heraldry with a replica of the board made for me by one of the German prisoners at Poynton. written in Gothic characters "Lager Kommandant, Eintritt Verbotten".
The Royal Visit was the highlight of the decade for Mwanza, the road to the aerodrome was closed for three hours and all the Police were concerned only with the visit. It was during that three hours the villains broke into many European houses. We lost all our shoes which were not actually being worn at the time, some clothing, and all our clocks including a time-switch I had just repaired for someone.
There was one charter aircraft based at Mwanza, the Widgeon piloted by Chris Treen. It was a very busy aircraft, being an amphibean [sic] , going relatively short flights mostly around the lake shore. Chris had a full-time engineer who was not very co-operative, and the operation proved to be uneconomical although Chris tried very hard. He was on Transport Command during the war and later flew in the Berlin Air Lift, then flew the Widgeon from U.K., 6000 miles to Mwanza. The airline had its moments, on one occasion the Provincial Commissioner was climbing out of the aircraft at Ukerewe Island into a dingy which collapsed and he was nearly drowned. Submerged rack. and crocodiles added to the excitement
One of the busiest aircraft at Mwanza was a Miles Magister which, was owned privately and which has also been flown out from England by its owner, an official of the Lint & Seed Marketing Board, who also had an Aircraft Maintenance Engineers' licence. It became the main asset of the Mwanza Aeroclub and was very active at weekends.
The tribe an Ukerewe Island had it's own language, and the story goes that the District Officer studied the language and wrote a dictionary and grammar for it. Having done so he applied for the £60 per year "language competency allowance", and to qualify had first to pass the Official Colonial Office exam. in the subject. The Colonial Office department which organised such matters was duly asked to prepare an exam. and find an invigilator for it, but was not given the identity of the candidate. There was no record of anyone being able to speak the language, and they approached the obvious source, the District Officer Ukerewe. As a part of his normal chores he was pleased to prepare the two papers as 2 hours of translation each way between English and the native language of Ukerewe. On arrival in U. K. on leave, he received a letter from another Colonial Office department, addressing him by name and asking him to invigilate at as examination, giving the venue and date. Shortly after, yet another office wrote to him advising him that an examination had been arranged and wishing him luck in the exam. He hardly needed it, reporting as directed in his official capacities as both invigilator and examinee. Not only that, but he had also prepared the examination papers. He was the only European who knew the language and he got his £60. per annum. The common language with the natives was of course an up-country impure Swahili, as in all parts of East Africa.
I had studied Kiswahili in the Prisons Service and from books, but the grammatical version was spoken only at the coast and on the radio. The
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Africans in the Prison Service and those I worked with spoke the up-country version, almost completely ungrammaticaI. The further one went from the coast the more it became a matter of joining words together. Nevertheless, it was an interesting and descriptive Ianguage. Beautiful words like 'maradadi' which in fact is an adjective meaning 'beautiful', and 'tafadahali', said to mean 'please' , but I never actually heard an African use it. ' Asanti' meaning thankyou was frequently used. Calling someone a "shenzi" hardly needs translation.
The Caspair Lake Service operated daily. Based at Entebbe, a DeHavilland Rapide flew to Kisumu, Musoma, Mzanza, Bukoba and back to Entebbe. It called at Mwanza three times weekly and remained on the ground for 4 hours. Paddy O'Reilly was the most colourful of the pilots and on one occasion was missing when the aircraft was due to take-off. He had borrowed a native canoe and paddled out into the lake for some peace and quiet. He was very soon asleep and when he awoke he found he was two miles off-shore without a paddle. He was soon rescued and took off two hours late.
I had a very good African Assistant at Mwanza, Zepherino Shija, and he was a tremendous help in making things run smoothly. In fact my African staff were all good types, far from home, politicians and the trouble-makers to be influenced by them.
It was at Mwanza that I really became involved with radio repairs, and once I had repaired a few, word quickly spread and I was inundated with them. Many of the 'dukes' -shops- in town sold radios but hadn't the vaguest idea how they worked or how to repair them. Most of the radio owned by the Africans were powered by dry batteries, using a 4-pin plug on the power lead which was very often forced the wrong way into the socket on the battery. This instantly blew all four valves for which the shops charged 25 shillings each. I bought valves for 3 shillings each in quantity and sold them in sets of 4 for forty shillings, throwing in a new and better type plug. I must have repaired over a thousand radios in two years, plus many bigger sets for Europeans. Before very long I met Mr. Manning, the American Head of the African Inland Mission in the Province, and he showed me a room full of equipment, domestic radios, car radios, record players, tape recorders, transmitters, P.A. ampIifiers etc. etc. Every item was faulty. I was invited to repair what I could, keep what I wanted and throw out anything that was past it. Three trans-receivers were very attractive and they needed only setting up. Independent transmitter and receiver units powered from 115v a.c. but with rather limited frequency coverage of 5 to 8 MHz. I used them on the air for a couple of weeks and they were then taken by road to African Inland Mission stations in the Belgium Congo where they had a network on 7150 KHz. These sets were to prove very useful within a few years during the Congo rebellion which came with "Independence". It took me 6 months to empty the room, and all except three or four units were returned to use within the Mission organisation. Those three or four units caused a misunderstanding with Mr. Manning. I said "These units are U/S, best place for them is in the lake", and I could see that I had upset him. He associated my expression 'U.S' . with Uncle Sam, or the United States, but when I explained it meant ‘unservicable’ in English Service jargon a crisis was avoided.
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I met a fellow called Nawotsey, supposed to be a Belgian, who was making a fortune killing crocodiles for their skins. He had just about wiped them out on Lake Rukwa. His technique was to use an infra-red lamp and sniperscope at very close range, typically six feet. His equipment gave a lot of trouble and I charged him well over the odds for repairs. In reality he was German, and ex-German army. There were many of them in ex-German Tanganyika but few had the guts to admit it, and there was not a nazi among them, in theory.
Eventually one of the dukas offered me £50 per month cash if would stop doing radio repairs. This was not far short of my salary and quite a compliment, but not accepted.
We became very friendly with one German, Dr. Schupler, who had been a wartime Medical Officer in the Luftwaffe. He was serving in Dresden the night of the 13th. of February 1945 when it was attacked by over 800 R.A.F. bombers, followed by over 300 American Fortresses the next day, causing between them 137,000 casualties including an estimated 50,000 killed. A doctor somehow seemed to be in a different and acceptable category, but our talks had reminded one of a period I had almost forgotten, and about which I had stopped thinking. One good point in East Africa's favour, there was very little to remind us of the war. A row of ribbons perhaps on a police uniform, or a retired senior type using his old rank, but there were few occasions when we compared, notes on our respective war efforts. The Germans were supposed to be super-efficient, a myth already exploded, but in the main they were still mostly distrusted.
Mwanza was a peaceful place, there was only one murder during our 2 years residence, and that was committed by a mad african from Dodoma, 400 miles away. I could not have visualised at the time that within twentyseven years this nice little airport would be bombed by the Uganda Air Force. I can picture now the little bakery where the murder was committed. It was in same road just before we left that a hyena was running down the road to meet us. We were in the Austin A70 which already had a damaged right. wing and I put on full speed. We met the hyena head-on, relative speed about 70 and he was thrown completely over the car. He lay on the road for about two minutes, then picked himself up and loped off into the bush. We had ringside seats watching an interesting battle between hyena and baboon one evening. Our bungalow was on the hillside and the bedroom windows on one side were 15 feet above ground, and level with the tops of the pawpaw trees, heavily laden with fruit. The baboon were taking the fruit and being attacked by about a dozen hyena which were being thrown around by the baboon. The fight finished suddenly for reasons best known to the combatants. They might have sensed the presence of a leopard, which was very likely, but we were not aware of the leopards ourselves until a few weeks later. In the middle of one night we were awakened by a scuffling outside the window and there was the most obnoxious stench. There was the so-called laugh of the hyena and a deep sawing sound which we were told was a leopard. It seemed that a hyena had been dragging an old carcass along when it was disturbed by a leopard. The carcass was dropped outside our bedroom window and later one of them returned to collect it. Apparently baboon are the favourite diet of the leopard and everything including baboon and leopard dislikes the hyena. One of them cornered a neighbour’s dog in our garage and
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chewed off it’s vital parts before help arrived too late. Snakes too were in abundance around Mwanza, and a European girl had been crushed, but not fatally by a python near the lake shore. One of the houseboys hacked a monitor lizard to death, thinking it was a snake. Hilda recalls the occasion when I encountered a leopard on the driveway to the house and I got out of the car to tell her!. There was the occasion too when Paddy, our Alsatian was aware of a leopard outside the front door and Paddy's hair literally bristled. The leopard was probably aware of Paddy's presence also. I was away in Nairobi at the time
Some months before the end of our tour, we received a telegram from Les with the sad news that Hilda's father had died. At about the same time the Kenya Education authorities informed us that as we were no longer resident in Kenya, Colin and Wendy would have to leave Kitale School. The alternative was Kongwa, a school established at the time of the groundnut scheme, a British Government fiasco then almost fully wound up after wasting eighteen million pounds. Kongwa was about 400 miles away and difficult to reach from Mwanza, and as it would be only a temporary measure in any case, we felt it better that Colin and Wendy should return to U.K. We saw them off on the Dakota on an hour's flight to Entebbe where they were met by Flossy and Pi Reed. The following day they flew to London and stayed with Mum at Korella Rd., in Wandsworth.
In early June `57 it was time for home leave again and once more we packed all our household effects into huge crates ready for shipping to our next station which had not yet been decided. I had been promoted to Radio Superintendant [sic] in Mbeya and later to Telecommunications Supt. having passed departmental exams for the two lots of promotion. I was finally relieved by Sailor Seaman who immediately objected to the long working hours. The way of life on the outstations had a great deal to commend it. There was no television but we always had a good radio set. There was not the pressure we were to experience in later life and we made our own entertainment. It would be nice to go round again.
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Before leaving Mwanza I had ordered a VW Beetle on the home leave scheme stipulating the date and time that I would collect it in London. This resulted in a considerable saving. The cost was £330 delivered London whilst the price in East Africa was £1250. Colin and Wendy were already in Britain, only John and Chris were with us on this trip. From Mwanza we should have returned via the capital, Dar es Salaam, as we did from Mbeya, but for some weeks I had been pointing out the futility of the extra 1600 miles via Dar, when the the [sic] aircraft would go via Entebbe in any case. Sanity prevailed and we flew by DC3 to Entebbe, a nice lunch at the Lake Vic. and a 10 hour flight to the U.K. with one stop at Benghazi. I think that was our first trip by Jet aircraft, a Comet. I have flown in many jets since then, but none as comfortable and roomy as the Comet. The following day we went to Lower Regent Street and collected our new VW Beetle, which came into the showroom one minute ahead of schedule. I was very impressed by the German organisation. I was taken into a workshop and given some useful tips about the car which was to serve us well for over 200,00 miles most of which was on murrum, our reddish East African sandy soil.
In the following six months we made good use of the car, visiting my mother in Barnoldswick, the Yorkshire Dales, and whilst up north had a rendezvous avec Ace (Ted) and Mary Foster, Ace having been our second tour Navigator. Ted recalled this many years later and remembered an incident in a Southport restaurant. We were sharing two tables with Ted and Mary and their three children, making a party of 4 adults and 7 children. Ted alleges the waitress exclaimed “By gum are these all yours?” and claims I replied “No, they are from the local orphanage, we are just taking them out for the day”. She said that was right champion and gave us a discount! I went to Liverpool also and en-route noticed that a Police car had been right behind me for several miles. I slowed down to 30 for the next five miles and eventually the blue light came on and I was stopped. “What speed were you doing Sir?” An instant reply, “29.5 m.p.h. “The officer agreed with that and said “Why, it’s a lovely road and there’s no speed limit. When you slowed down from 80 to 30 we thought you had a problem, enjoy your visit Sir”. I had a “Visitor to Britain” sticker on the back which was supposed to help a little. In Liverpool I met Stan Chadderton, our First tour Bomb Aimer. I called at Stan’s house and his wife Hilda directed me to the Gladstone Dock where Stan was working, I seem to remember being introduced to his boss and Stan was given the rest of the day off. We adjourned to the Lord Nelson Pub and reminisced well into the night about our efforts in North Africa.
We had made another acquisition whilst in Mwanza. Clearly a base was needed in Britain even if my work was to be in East Africa. Les told us of a house in Glyn Neath called Glaslyn going for £1850 on the balance of a 999 year lease. I offered to buy it if the freehold was available. It was very quickly ours at a total cost £1910 and £25 solicitor’s fees. Hilda’s Mum moved into Glaslyn and Colin and Wendy had already joined her. Glaslyn was a comfortable and handy sort of place, only a few hundred yards from Aunt Doll’s cottage.
In early December I was told to report direct to Entebbe Airport to relieve Henry Day in charge of Telecommunications. I wrote to P.W.D. in Mwanza and asked them to send on our boxes and car by Lake Steamer to
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Entebbe, and completed other arrangements. Just before Christmas I handed over the new car to the A.A. near Tower Bridge and paid £75 for shipping it to Mombassa [sic]. Then with our four children and a mass of baggage we once again booked-in at Victoria Air Terminal and shortly afterwards we realised we had just been home for six months and were then in Entebbe. The Comet aircraft was flown by Howard Iliffe, 109011! but I discovered this too late to meet him.
At Entebbe we were met by Henry Day who had been in charge for six months in an acting capacity and he made it clear that as he was now demoted – with loss of acting pay – I could not expect any co-operation from him. For 10 days we stayed in the Lake Victoria Hotel, luxurious but not at all homely and with it’s population of some hundreds of cats living on the roof. We then moved into a house with a red mbati (corrugated iron) roof. Between the ceiling and the roof was a foot of sand and if the builders had been designing an oven it would have taken some beating. The red iron absorbed the heat from a tropical sun and it was retained by the sand. Entebbe was a pretentious place, not the capital of Uganda, which was Kampala 20 miles north, but where most of the senior Gov’t officials lived. The airport was a minor one to U.K. standards but trying very had [sic] to appear important. I found the whole place docile and yet offensive, “toffee-nosed” is the phrase which comes to mind. The job itself was not at all demanding, I had a team of about 8 Engineers including Frank Unstead and Gibby. Also three Radio Officers including Henry Day and several Africans to operate the teleprinters and radio links to Nairobi. There was little for me to do personally. Airport Management was taken care of by Uganda Government officers. The East Africa High Commission, of which the Directorate of Civil Aviation was a part, was responsible for Air Traffic Control and telecommunications. About six airlines had their own Station Managers and there was a great deal of empire building which led to over-manning and inefficiency. An individual’s importance was determined by the number of his subordinates and the extent of his warrant to incur expenditure. There was a great deal of ill-feeling too, between the officers of Government and those of the High Commission, later more appropriately renamed the East Africa Common Services Organisation. The latter was responsible for all communications in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, except for the actual maintenance of roads. It included E.A. Posts & Telegraphs, Railways & Harbours, Fisheries, Meteorlogical [sic] Depts., Civil Aviation and several Medical Research establishments. Politically, the scene was complex, Kenya was a “Colony & Protectorate” – some of each – Tanganyika was a Protectorate with a United Nations mandate and Uganda a combination of twelve Kingdoms formed into a ‘State’ with 12 Kings, a Prime Minister and also a President. It had its political problems but they were not mine. Dickie Dixon was Senior Air Traffic Controller and therefore Officer i/c Navigational Services in which capacity I was his deputy. As I was not at that time a qualified Air Traffic Controller, this led to friction, and as I have already implied, Entebbe was not a happy place. The crunch came when I was told by Dickie to compile all the Annual Confidential reports, including those for Air Traffic Controllers. I told him that I did not think it proper that I should report on officers whose qualifications I did not hold myself. He should do them himself and I would write them for all the Telecommom [sic].
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staff. The previous year he had reported on the Telecomms staff and I disagreed strongly with his findings in one case, that of Gibby who, he wrote, “was slow in carrying out a job”. He was indeed slower than most, but was also the most thorough engineer in the Department. When repairing an equipment he not only repaired the current fault but also brought it right up to the manufacturer’s specification. My personal relationship with Dickie deteriorated rapidly, and rather than speak to me he would write me memos. In one of his many memos he “required” a technical explanation of a particular problem, and I replied to the effect that “as the conductivity between the two points was less than half a mho, this was inadequate for proper operation”. He wrote to my Chief in Nairobi complaining that I was taking the Mickey, and this brought him a rude reply. I could have referred to “a resistance greater than 2 ohms” instead of “a conductivity less than half a mho”, which would have been more helpful, but I made my point.
One major problem at Entebbe was the absence of schools for European children, and Colin and Wendy had to go to Nairobi and Kericho respectively, as boarders. This would have cost little had I been stationed in Kenya and paid the statutary [sic] Education Tax, but as I was stationed outside Kenya and had not paid the Kenya tax I had to pay the full boarding fees. I was not alone in this of course, it was a problem for all families of the E.A. High Commission living in Uganda.
However, I learned that in June 1958 Dinger Bell was finishing his four year tour at Kisumu in Kenya, and I managed a transfer for myself, handing-over Entebbe to an officer returning from a U.K. leave. At that time we had two cars, and I remember taking the Austin A70 to Kampala and selling it in a bar to a consortium of five Africans for £25, each chipping in with a hundred shillings. We travelled to Kisumu by road, our effects going by lake steamer. It was an easy day’s drive round the north-east shores of Lake Victoria, through Jinja, with its crocodiles at the source of the Nile. This was in the days before the level of the Owen Falls dam was raised by eight feet. It was refreshing to arrive at Kisumu, and we were pleased with everything we saw. We spent the first week in the hotel, then moved in to Dinger Bell’s house at 55 Mohammed Kassim Road, near the African Broadcasting Service transmitting Station.
Kisumu Airport had been established about 1932, and had, like Mbeya been a scheduled stop on the Empire Air Route of (the original) British Airways. The lake was ideal for the Empire Flying Boats and our staff pilot, Capt. Casperuthus had many stories of flying Hannibal biplanes into Kisumu. During the Second World War it was taken over by the R.A.F. and used extensively by Catalina amphibeans [sic] and Sunderland seaplanes. R.A.F. aircraft of most long and medium range types were regular visitors, together with the 3-motor Junkers 52 transports of the South African Air Force. With two excellent murrum runways and four hangars, it had seen some service one way and another.
The Control Tower was a small two storey building of 1932 vintage, the ground floor being taken up completely by the transmitting room. The first floor comprised the Control “tower”, a small office, and store. Originally there had been a second floor with a glass top for good all-round vision but this had been removed at the end of the war and replaced with a tiled roof. The second floor became the loft and housed the VDF antenna. I
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found the transmitters had been sadly neglected for many years. Two RCA 4336 types were used on R/T., a third on W/T., and a new Redifon GR49 NDB. There was also a dual transmitter which was not on the inventory and which had in fact been ‘liberated’ from a Catalina, before it joined the other two scuttled in the lake at the end of the war. This set was the best of the lot, and certainly my favourite. It was complete with a 110v ac supply of 600 Hz, not 60 and within a month I had modified an old T1190 power unit to drive it. The M/F section was put into use in place of the Redifon beacon, and the H/F section performed wonderfully on the amateur bands.
Being a ‘one-man station’ my working hours were long, 7 days a week and seldom a whole day off, but I had a workshop and bench and put my waiting-for-aircraft hours to very good use, mostly repairing domestic radios. The transmitters were giving a lot of trouble. As an example, whilst tuning a rotary inductance on a 4336, a two inch nail providing an electrical contact dropped out and had to be bodged up again. The GR49, although nearly new, was using modulator valves at the rate of a pair every two weeks due to a missing relay and associated wiring which had actually been left out at the factory during production. Fortunately there was a good old T1154 which acted as a standby for all transmitters except VHF, so I was able to take each transmitter in turn out of use for as long as was necessary whilst I overhauled them. As this progressed I was enjoying the practical work and decided to make use of a three-foot cabinet which was not on charge. (I inherited quite a lot of useful ‘junk’ at Kisumu!). At the Fisheries office on the lake shore, also on the airport, I found that a vehicle had demolished a rondaval (a 12 ft. diameter building constructed of aluminium). I volunteered the services of my crash-tender crew to clear up the mess and to take away the wreckage. A few days was spent by the crash crew in cutting the best of the aluminium into 19” panels of standard sizes, and suitable chassis. One of the ET4336 transmitters was going to be off the air for several weeks waiting for spares, and in order not to delay my overhaul programme I built a two-stage transmitter on one of the 3 1/2” panels. This was a 6V6 crystal oscillator driving an 807 to a dipole antenna. The operator at Nairobi reported our signals as very good and better than they had been for a long time. 20 Watts in place of 400, but it was the dipole antenna in place of a random length of wire which made all the difference. Within three weeks the 3’ cabinet contained 4 transmitters and was providing all services except VHF and M/F Beacon. The overhauling programme was completed, the official transmitters finally tested and then switched off. For the next 18 months we operated almost trouble-free. My monthly engineering reports to H.Q. in Nairobi were mainly negative and referred to “routine preventative maintenance only”. However, Sid Worthy, Chief Telecomms. Engineer was not fooled, and in due course he wrote and asked why my monthly electricity bill was only a quarter of what it had been for many years. Before I had plucked up enough courage to reply, Sid arrived unannounced and went direct to the Transmitter room, finding the four big transmitters switched off. In the Control Tower he saw my all-purpose cabinet, and to put it lightly, he was not amused. I suggested to Sid that we should make our own single-purpose transmitters and dispense with the old uneconomical general-purpose types. He agreed there was no good technical or financial argument against this but what would he do with his army of 50
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or so engineers? He compromised and allowed me to leave my own equipment in use provided I removed it a month before I left Kisumu.
One of our friends at Kisumu, Jimmie Sanson was a very keen constructor of model aircraft and several he had made were lost in the lake. His final model was a rather superior type with six-foot wingspan and single engine using alcohol as fuel. The rudder was radio-controlled on 27MHz. and the aircraft made some very impressive flights at the airport. On one occasion it went up to about 2000 feet before it ran out of fuel and for almost an hour Jimmie kept it turning over the airport. The aircraft was trimmed slightly nose-heavy but apart from turns, he had no other control. Eventually it was so far down-wind that it was lost to sight and last seen heading for the mountains. After a period of calm, the wind changed in the early evening and Jimmie and I were standing outside the Control Tower lamenting his sad loss when one of the crash Crew shouted “Bwana, Ndegi ndogo narudi”. His eyesight was far superior to ours, we saw nothing until the aircraft appeared over the end of the runway and actually landed, after a record flight of over three hours. Up-dating the radio control was the next stage and two months and about £200 later an eight function system was completed, giving control of the engine, elevators, ailerons and rudder. The machine could then be made to taxi out, take off and carry out aerobatics. The engine was used in short bursts and as there appeared to be a permanent thermal over the runways during the warm days, thirty minute flights were quite routine. Eventually the aircraft was lost over Lake Victoria and probably joined the three Catalinas on the bottom. Perhaps one day a Catalina will be recovered from their fresh-water grave, but the Sanson special was lost for ever..
My official work ran quite smoothly, with a little excitement occasionally. At 3 am one night, Nairobi Flight Information Centre phoned and asked me to open up the VHF and call Alitalia 541 which was three hours overdue in Nairobi, from Khartoum, and with no radio contact for four hours. I sped through town doing over 70 m.p.h. to my Control Tower, switched on and called the aircraft. There was a weak signal in reply and I managed to get a class C bearing of 270 degrees. A second transmission confirmed this and I told the operator he was probably over the Congo, but certainly well to the west of Kisumu. I told him QDM Kisumu 090, but the pilot would not agree and said he was east of Kisumu, not west, and approaching Mombassa [sic]! His signals faded right out and I telephoned F.I.C. asking them to log the QDM of 090C that I had passed to the aircraft. After half an hour, whilst F.I.C was sending frantic messages to all points west, I heard the aircraft calling Kisumu and was soon in good contact giving QDM’s, his signals gradually improving. It was just 0530, 20 minutes before first light when I heard the aircraft and sent out the boys to light-up the gooseneck flares. Then he was overhead and decided to carry on to Nairobi. This was rather disappointing, and in fact the wrong decision, his endurance being insufficient for any further diversion. I was told much later that the Captain and Navigator had a row before take-off and were not on speaking terms. The aircraft was a DC8 and the Italian crew and passengers had been very lucky indeed. The police followed me through town and I was charged with speeding, but the fine of 60 shillings was refunded later by the court when the urgency became known.
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Some weeks later Nairobi F.I.C. phoned again, about 4 am., an Air Liban DC6 from Cairo was lost and was not within the scope of Nairobi VDF. The aircraft had made a brief contact on the area cover VHF through Lodwa, and another aircraft north-east of Kisumu had heard the DC6, but of course had no idea of range or direction. This time I went through town at a more reasonable speed, opened up the radio, and called Air Liban. The crash crew was called out and the boys started dispensing paraffin and setting out the flares right away. I called Nairobi on 5680 H/F R/T to establish my station was on the ball, and every two minutes called the Lebanese Airlines aircraft. About 20 minutes later the aircraft replied to my call and I gave him a QDM of 225, and was satisfied there was no risk of it being the reciprocal. Three minutes later I measured 230 and then 235. He said his Giro compass was u/s and his magnetic compass erratic, and that he would use a standby giro, set to my figure. He turned 10 degrees to port and the QDM increased, 10 degrees to starboard and the figure decreased, so he was heading for Kisumu, and not going away from it. The bearings were given every two minutes and were reasonably steady, and after about 25 minutes the pilot said he thought he could see the coast, meaning the shores of Lake Victoria. It was still very dark but a clear night (not a contradiction of terms) and the boys hurtled out to light up the goosenecks. I told the pilot the wind was north-easterly at 15 knots, he was down wind, duty runway 06. I reminded him of the very high ground 2 miles to the north of the airport and he replied “O.K. Bud, Thanks a lot, I’ll come straight in on 24, hope youv’e [sic] got some gas, we shure [sic] ain’t [sic]”. A few minutes later he made a good landing and parked outside the 1932 wooden terminal building. The Captain of the Air Liban DC6 was an American pre-war Veteran. I had completely forgotten to tell the East African Airways agent but did so at 0545. There was no catering at the airport so he found some buses and the passengers were taken to the hotel. I was also late in phoning the police who dealt with immigration, but they hadn’t a clue how to deal with 60 international transit passengers. Similarly, it was a new experience for Customs, so both departments decided to pretend it hadn’t happened.
The Captain asked me to tell the non-English-speaking African Shell Assistant to put 3000 gallons of 100 octane into the tanks. I translated to the startled assistant “Bwana Mkubwa anataka gallon elfu tatu, pipa sabini na tano”. That was 75 drums of petrol to be pumped by hand. Finally he compromised with 400 gallons, but it was still quite a task, even with only 10 drums.
The Captain was concerned about the limited fuel and lack of a reliable compass and we double-checked that the met. conditions to Nairobi were near perfect. A scheduled DC3 of East African Airways came in at 10am. And was taking off for Nairobi at 11 am. The two pilots talked together at length and studied the map. The DC6 took-off three minutes after the Dakota and the two remained in visual contact until Nairobi was in sight. Surprisingly, the DC6 did not carry a radio compass for M/F but relied entirely on VHF, which, in East and Central Africa was quite inadequate.
I was criticised by DCA for not informing them in detail of progress, and was conscious of this at the time, but had I done so, they would have confused the issue with lots of advice. A civilian airliner without a reliable compass would be a major issue. I operated an “aerodrome
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advisory service”, not being an Air Traffic Controller. F.I.C. would have tried to control my detailed activity, but with a bit of common sense, things worked out well.
The visit of Her Majesty the Queen Mother to Kisumu went off smoothly except that two European Police Inspectors on the airport main gate refused permission for me to enter without a permit. One of my passengers, an R.A.F. Wing Commander leaned out and said he was the Queen’s Pilot, better open the gate old chap. Police had been drafted in for this event from hundreds of miles. I remember little else about the Royal Visit, or it’s main purpose. On these occasions most of the senior officials climbed in on the act, establishing their own importance.
I do remember in detail the visit of Billy Graham. My brief from the organising committee was to provide the Public Address systems. The main system had to cope with an audience of 30,000 people, with three microphones for which I borrowed a 300 watt amplifier from Twenche Overseas Trading Co. in Nairobi and used my four 100 watt loudspeakers. In addition there were six other systems for separate areas where the audience spoke only their tribal languages. Each of the six would hear Billie Graham plus one interpreter translating into the appropriate tribal language for that particular group. There were nine microphones on the platform for the evagelist [sic] and 8 interpretors [sic]. In addition the Post Office ran a special line about a mile at the end of which they connected a candlestick type of telephone with a carbon microphone and place it with my nine microphones. This relayed the proceedings to another mass meeting in Nairobi. The microphone was ineffective until I connected the P.O. line direct to the main amplifier output via a suitable transformer. Billie Graham had a very efficient team. Harley and Bonnie Richardson are two I remember, both very hard working and leaving nothing to chance. They were backed-up by representatives from most church denominations.
The following Christmas, the missionaries approached me again, could I use my loudspeakers at the Church to simulate bells on Christmas morning. An interesting proposition, and someone had written to Bradford Cathedral to scrounge a tape of the Cathedral bells. I had to edit the tape considerably, as every two a rich Yorkshire-accented voice was superimposed with “You are listening to the bells of Bradford Cathedral”. I set-up the amplifier and loudspeakers at the Church at about 7 pm. On Christmas-eve and tested the system with a record of carols. Within minutes, people began to gather and joined in. The Vicar asked if I could connect a microphone and in no time at all he was conducting an impromptu carol service with a bigger congregation than he had enjoyed for a long time, well over 1500. At 7 am next morning I relayed the bells of Bradford Cathedral, but could not resist pre-empting them with a verse of ‘Christians awake’. The loudspeakers were in constant demand and were in use every day for two weeks during H.H. the Aga Khan’s visit. Events included H.E. the Governor’s barazas, opening a ginnery and so on, all official requests from the Provincial Commissioner. I was spending so much time away from the airport that I fitted a TCS12 Transmitter and a good H/F receiver in the car to work aircraft and keep in touch with the airport. At the African hospital I fitted a receiver and 50 Watt Vortexion amplifier imported by my father, and installed 30 loudspeakers round the wards. This was followed by a similar
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job at an American mission hospital about 30 miles from Kisumu, but more ambitious with microphones, tape recorder and record player. At the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Kisumu I fitted an amplifier and loudspeakers with microphones on the Altar and pulpit. Another system was fitted at the African Community Centre in Kisumu and one way and another I was kept very busy indeed.
The transmitter in the car was used also on the 40 metre amateur band to keep in touch with my father and amateur chums in Nairobi and other parts of East Africa. On one occasion Tom Mboya took an interest in it and was quite impressed. Tom was a Luo by tribe and a party leader of the Kenya African Democratic Union, a very nice chap with an attractive wife Pamella [sic], daughter of Mr. Odede, a Kisumu lawyer. Tom wanted to buy the transmitter but for me to sell it to him would not have been wise. Later Tom was shot and killed in Nairobi.
Kisumu was fairly well populated and within 10 miles or so of town we saw very few wild animals. The two exceptions were the protected herd of impala in Kisumu township and the hippo which abounded on the lake shore. They came ashore at night to graze and I encountered them on the aerodrome several times. One rather amusing occurrence, the airport was wide in area and Africans frequently trekked across the runway and even drove their cattle over it at most inappropriate times. On several occasions I impounded the cattle after due warnings and charged the owners with trespass under section 69 of the Colonial Air Navigation Act. When I found the offenders were getting six month’s imprisonment and losing their cattle, I stopped charging them and the Police insisted upon taking over this task. Finally they agreed to drop the practice, when I told them that I doubted whether the Colonial Air Navigation Act really applied in Kenya and in any case I had invented the content of section 69. However, the runways had to be watched carefully and checked every time there was an aircraft movement.
One morning at Kisumu a uniformed Prisons Askari I had known at Nairobi Prison in 1950 came to my Control Tower and after a smart salute handed me a note saying it was from Bwana Mkubwa ya Ndegi. It was from Commander Stacey-Colles R.N. Ret’d., my former boss and previous Director of Civil Aviation. He had arrived at Kisumu Prison only two hours earlier, and was serving a three year sentence. He had been found guilty of receiving money, a refund of an airline ticket issued by the High Commission and which he did not use. At the time he was in Britain having travelled home on a complimentary ticket from Air France. The official ticket was handed in to East African Airways and a refund obtained which was paid into his bank instead of the High Commission’s account. He claimed no knowledge of this and most of us believed him. He would not prejudice his career and Navy pension in this way, someone had fixed him. The note was a list of things he wanted, which I soon assembled and took to him at Kisumu prison, where I found I knew the Prisons Officer from 1950. A very embarrassing situation. I met Stacey and gave him the radio, writing materials, money, cigarettes and cakes from Hilda, on the first of many visits. Three days later the Askari was back with a long message in code for Muriel Pardoe, his former secretary in Nairobi. I sent this off straight away on the aeronautical W/T channel, addressed to HKNCHQPA, the ICAO address which would reach Miss Pardoe from any airport in the western world. HK was Kenya, NC Nairobi City, HQ DCA
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Headquarters and PA Personal Ast. To the Director. The code was in five letter groups with a double substitution of letters, a similar system to that used during the war.
The message was decoded by Muriel who obtained whatever it was Stacey was asking for and gave it to Capt. Casperuthus who was DCA pilot of the Avro Anson. Casper gave it to the Controller at Wilson airport who passed it to a pilot about to depart for Kisumu. The pilot handed it to me at Kisumu and I delivered it – whatever it was – to Stacey in prison the same day. Three days later the radio set came back to me with the askari, not working. Two of the valves had been swapped over, and I noticed a piece of paxeline had been fitted neatly inside the bottom of the set, forming a false bottom. Under it was a note asking me if I could fit a B.F.O. into it. This was a beat frequency oscillator and Stacey could want it for only one reason, to monitor morse, probably on the Prisons channel, to see what was happening. There were two spare holes for valve holders on the chassis and plenty of space for fitting a mains power supply, vacant in this case because it was a dry-battery receiver. I fitted the B.F.O. as requested, and also another valve as a flea-power transmitter, using just a channel freq. crystal about 6.5 MHz and a tuned circuit on the anode. Maybe 50 mW output, I had no means of measuring it, but I tested the set at a range of 2 miles using 3 feet of wire for an aerial it was received at the control tower. The morse key was just a matter of touching a wire to the chassis. I returned the set to Stacey personally and explained the switching of the B.F.O. and transmitter keying. He was delighted and agreed to be very careful, taking absolutely no-one into his confidence. About six weeks later I met my former colleague the Prisons Officer in town and he told me there was some concern over the prisoners getting confidential information before he received it himself. He quoted that a week ago a prisoner asked if he could change cells and share with a particular prisoner who would be transferred to Kisumu with three others on a date a week hence. He said the four arrived that day, how could the prisoner have known a week ago? It should have been obvious, there were many ex-service personnel who were good W/T operators and the Prisons Radio on 7 MHz could be monitored by anyone, the signals being in plain language morse. I said nothing. Stacey’s frequency was monitored at my office where I had a similar tiny transmitter. It was used at a specific time of day on only two occasions for test purposes, but he found it satisfying and consoling to have a personal and totally clandestine link to the outside world. It gave him a great deal of satisfaction and from my point of view did no real harm. Stacey was a great organiser and motivator.
The African Inland Mission in Mwanza had colleagues in the Sudan [author indicates with X and page footnote that it is Kisumu not Mwanza] who visited Kisumu frequently in their Cessna aircraft. They desperately needed two transmitters in the Sudan but were not able to obtain import permits. They could however get a permit to re-import a transmitter if it had been sent out of the country for repair. I suggested to them that they should send me a piece of otherwise useless equipment which might look like a transmitter to the uninitiated and send it to me as a transmitter for repair, together with the appropriate paper work. This was done and in an antenna tuning unit they brought me, I built a 10 Watt transmitter without changing it’s outward appearance in any way. A few weeks later a second one was built and the two did a very useful job in the Sudan for about six
[KISUMU NOT MWANZA]
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months until the African Inland Mission stations there were closed, and the missionaries withdrawn. The missions’ aircraft were also licenced on that frequency and I contacted them occasionally. It is most reassuring to be able to communicate with someone in times of trouble, and plenty of folks in Africa were in that situation.
But trouble was also brewing in the Belgian Congo, just across the Lake. Six months earlier, the Belgian Government had advised the missionaries and other settlers to leave, but many were dedicated to their work and some felt they were quite indespensible [sic]. The Belgiauns [sic] had handed over the reins of Government and administration hurriedly to a totally ill-equipped and unprepared Congolese. The consequences of withdrawal by the Belgians were clearly predictable but they succumbed to political pressures from all directions. There was human slaughter on a big scale, and the only information coming out of the Congo was on the frequency of 7150 operated by Mission stations, and also shared with East African amateurs. It was in Kisumu that I received a message from a mission at an Agricultural Station which read:-
“We are being menaced by 100,000 hostile savages. We have their chief as hostage and expect annihilation within one hour. We have ammunition but no guns, please advise Kamina”.
The amateurs among the DCA staff in Nairobi, of whom Viv Slight was one, had set up a W/T link to the Belgian Coast Station at Ostend, using a communications booth in the D.C.A. Communications centre and a powerful DCA transmitter at R.A.F. Eastleigh.. I relayed the message direct to them on the aeronautical W/T channel, and Nairobi passed it straight to Ostend, with a steady flow of other messages. Ostend relayed it to Brussels who passed it to the Military where it was relayed on it’s final leg back to Africa, to the Belgian Paratroop Base at Kamina. Within 20 minutes of my receiving the message at Kisumu, the paratroopers were airborne and the Agricultural Station was liberated. Hardly had I cleared the message when I received a correction to it which advised:
“Not one hundred thousand savages, only ten thousand”
When I passed this to Nairobi, the reply was “What’s the bloody difference”
There were many such stories during the evacuation of Europeans from the Congo. Uganda was the main escape route and DCA Nairobi asked that any aircraft available and pilots who could make it, should get to Entebbe and help in the evacuation regardless of Certificates of Airworthiness and Pilot’s licences. One of my ex-pilot friends evacuated about thirty people in several trips in a Rapide aircraft. The last aircraft he had flown was a Beaufighter during the war. Some thousands were got out from the Congo, one way or another, mostly via Kampala and Kisumu. The Kenya Girls’ High School in Nairobi (known as the Boma) was turned into a Medical Reception Centre the records of which show the dreadful experiences and medical remedial action taken. Wendy reminded me that she and all the other girls who were not taking G.C.E..s were sent home a week before the term was due to end, to maked [sic] room for the refugees. At Kisumu I met many who came out by road. Two middle-aged ladies came to my Control Tower and one phoned her parents in
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the United States with a terrible story of pillage and rape. A third, more elderly, who had three American Doctorate degrees – Medicine, Divinity and a PhD. – had devoted her entire working life to helping and teaching Africans, but she said a lifetime had made only a superficial advance from their savagery.
Most of our memories of Kisumu were of happier days. There was an excellent social club but we were not members due only to the lack of time. The children made good use of the swimming pool, the lake being too dangerous, not only with its hippo and crocs. but with Bilharzia and hook worm. Hilda enjoyed her painting and drawing and we even managed to take a few photographs.
After nearly three years at Kisumu, Colin was still at the Prince of Wales School in Nairobi and with Wendy at the ‘Boma’ we were not seeing very much of either. And so a transfer was arranged and we packed up our household once again and moved to Nairobi, to a lovely house in Nairne Road, near Wendy’s school.
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[underlined] D.C.A. HEADQUARTERS [/underlined]
It was then June 1960, the Mau Mau emergency was still with us, but 84 Squadron had finished their bombing of the Aberdares which had raised the eyebrows of a few ‘hasbeens’ like myself. I had talked with the crews of the R.A.F. Lincolns some time earlier at R.A.F. Eastleigh and it all seemed very unreal to me. Perfect weather, ceiling and visibility generally unlimited and no enemy opposition from either the air or ground. Bombing over the bush was a matter of a timed run at a specific speed from a firmly identified point on the ground. Hardly a challenge for the Chaddertons and Fosters of this world and I don’t know what comprised a tour. It reminded me of O.T.U. where I saw the log book of a fellow-instructor with 40 ops. to his credit. His first tour ops were shown in the normal way, Benghazi 0340, Benghazi 0345, Benghazi 0342, Benghazi 0350, about 6 pages of Benghazi and no other target. But then, there are those among us who never bombed B.G., so the song goes. I could visualise the log books with several pages of ‘Aberdares 0125…”. Some of the Africans reckoned it was “mzuri sana” (very good) for the terrorists, the bombing just laid on a supply of fresh meat without their having to hunt for it, but there was probably more to it than that.
My place of work was the Communications Centre in the High Commission Building, on the top floor, above the Inland Revenue office. My duties were those of Telecomms. Supt. i/c a watch, responsible for the operation of the telecommunications system. We were not really concerned with aeroplanes, only messages about their movements. We had Radio Teleprinter circuits with Johannesburg, Khartoum, Der es Salaam, Entebbe, and Gan, and teleprinters on line to R.A.F. Eastleigh, Wilson Airport, Nairobi (Embakasi) and the Flight Information Centre next door. Our internal communications, that is within East Africa, were mainly by W/T links, to Iringa, Songea, Mbeya, Mwanza, Tanga, Dodoma, Arusha, Kisumu etc. Every teleprinter link had a standby W/T channel and most of these were resorted to in the early mornings, about 4 to 6 am. Brazaville [sic] and Leopoldville in the Congo were only on W/T but there was little traffic to the west and none to the east except Gan. With Gan, we operated an emergency channel with a test message every twenty minutes, to supplement the R.A.F. network if required, but they seemed to manage quite well without us. We handled about 20,000 incoming messages per day in the Tape Relay Centre, and apart from one or two all had to be relayed out again and logged. We also had three ground to Air operating booths, two of which were always manned, working aircraft, one on HF/RT and the other HF/WT. The European Radio Officers preferred the latter, where often three messages per minute were handled for long periods.
As soon as an aircraft left, say, Khartoum, a message would be sent on the Fixed Service by RTTY to the Tape Relay centre which should reach F.I.C. within a few minutes of being originated, requiring two relays, at Khartoum and Nairobi Tape Relay Centres. The system was that the pilot would not need to call Nairobi until he reached the Flight Information Region Boundry [inserted] Boundary [/inserted] at 4 degrees North, as Nairobi F.I.C. should have already received all the information by teleprinter. However, this being Africa and therefore supposedly not very efficient, the pilot would call Nairobi as soon as he could after take-off, on HF/RT. On the older propeller jobs, (the real aeroplanes), this would have been
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carried out by the Radio Officer on W/T., where just a few groups in code meant a great deal, for example:-.
ZGU de VPKKL Nairobi this is VPKKL
QTN STKM 0201Z I departed Khartoum at 0201 GMT
QAH 24 TTT QBH My height is 24,000 ft. below cloud
QRE HKNA 0718 I am estimating Nairobi Airport at 0718
QRX FIR I will call you again at the Flight Information Boundary
The Radio Officer would write those 14 groups onto a pad and his Clerk would put two copies through the hatch to the Air Traffic Controller.
The Clerk would spend most of his time putting carbon paper between the pages, it was fast going during the busy periods, but was even faster before HF/RT was introduced.
The aircraft would remain in constant contact with Khartoum on VHF until it reached 4 deg. N. when Nairobi would become responsible. Many aircraft were still using W/T at the time. There was no really conscious use of code, it was as commonplace as plain language and to a radio operator the two were synonimous, [sic] as were the many technical and other abbreviations. One example which comes to mind was at a Board of Enquiry into an accident where an aircraft had crashed into Mt. Kilimanjaro. An elderly judge asked the Ground Radio Officer if there had been any radio message, and the R/O replied “Yes, I last worked the aircraft on C.W. at 0247” “What is C.W.?” asked the Judge, and the reply “C.W. is Charlie Whisky your worship” and the Judge nearly gave up, maybe thinking whether Irish or Scotch.
Some Radio Officers preferred to transcribe the morse and speech messages straight onto a teleprinter which produced a simultaneous page copy in front of the controller, but this method was not very popular. With several aircraft calling at the same time it was easy to make a mistake but too slow to correct it on the teleprinter. The F.I.C. Controller operated the VHF himself. The whole set-up was very well thought out and we were very well equipped. Communications were our line of business and we were highly organised.
The tour of duty was rather longer in Nairobi, where one had to work for 4 years to earn 6 month’s leave, compared to only 2 1/2 years in Tanganyika. I believe there was some reduction for the Kenya coastal strip. These were the rules established when East Africa was supposed to be an unhealthy and hostile place, and most of the Europeans were Administration officials. I always felt the home leave terms were over-generous, as we also enjoyed three weeks of “local leave” each year with railway warrants provided to any part of east Africa. Where there was no railway to our particular ‘holiday resort’ or we chose to travel by car we could claim car mileage costs. Most people preferred to go on leave by sea, depending upon the time of year, possibly home on a 10 day voyage via suez, returning on a 3 week cruise via the Cape of Good Hope, on Union Castle liners. Some preferred the long way round both ways, spending as much time at sea as possible and thus economising
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on accommodation costs in the U.K. My only experience of sea travel had been the four troop-ships and Hilda claimed she couldn’t swim; we wanted to spend as much time as possible with the folks back home so we chose to travel by air every time.
Within a year of our return to Nairobi, June 1961, political unrest was well to the fore and getting worse. Alice, my step-mother, was a Senior Secretary to an African Minister in the Secretariat, and felt it was getting too dangerous to remain. Luigi and Mary had already retired to Italy and Alice was preparing to join them. Most of us were expecting the balloon to go up at any moment and people were getting jittery. We had been close to the hiatus in the Congo and the more recent mutinies of the armies of Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda, and Europeans were beginning to leave. The weight of evidence of impending disaster was overwhelming and towards the end of June Hilda returned with the four youngest children to U.K., Colin remaining at the Prince of Wales School as a boarder. Alice and Brian returned to Italy shortly after and my father moved in with me at Nairne Road. My father and I had become very involved with emergency communications for the settlers up-country, which dominated our lives for the next few years, but this is a story unto itself and is dealt with in the chapter “Laikipia Security Network”. The mutinies referred to occurred soon after the British Forces had left Kenya, and the emergency was declared officially over. Some European Service personnel remained as advisers to the Kenya army - there was no Kenya Navy and the Kenya Air Force existed mainly on paper but with a few light aircraft. We awoke one morning to the news that the three separate armies many hundreds of miles apart, had thrown out their European officers and declared themselves independent of any authority. Within 48 hours and before they could organise themselves and cause any damage, very small forces of British troops appeared simultaneously near Nairobi, Jinja and Dar es Salaam, subdued and disarmed the lot, without any loss of life or limb. I recall a cartoon in the East African Standard, showing Jomo Kenyatta with both arms raised to paratroopers dropping from aircraft and the caption “How good it is to welcome old friends” - His arch-enemies for 10 years or so. I saw several hundred African soldiers sitting on the grass at Wilson Airport with three European soldiers guarding them with machine guns. There was a large pile of rifles and other weapons nearby, also guarded.
Life was not all traumatic, however, we had the occasional laugh. One of our officers, MacDonald, was on official leave of absence quite frequently and we understood he was masterminding a very hush-hush communications link direct to U.K. from Government House and even satellites had been mentioned furtively. This was before the days of the Sputnik when satellites were a part of science fiction. He was one of the [underlined] firt [sic] [/underlined] to retire and as he was leaving he let us into the secret. Mac. had indeed spent a great deal of time at Government House. He was a master baker and was responsible literally for the icing of the cake. He told us also that when he joined the Dept. he stated that his qualifications included a final City & Guilds Certificate. They did, he confided, as a Master Baker, but not in telecommunications.
One Sunday morning in October on duty at the Comm. Centre I found my African Supervisor was monitoring Reuter on teleprinter, and looking over his shoulder I read on the page copy that thousands of Africans armed to the teeth were surrounding the High Commission building and holding hostage the
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Europeans working inside. The report gave more detail of riots and demonstrations and gave the impression that we were really in trouble. I went out through a window and onto the flat roof of the High Commission building and gingerly looked over the parapet entitled to expect a hail of bullets. On the road was a police car with two officers watching a group of about 20 Africans, some of them supporting two banners on which was written “Wazungu Rudi Uliya” (Europeans return to Europe). That was the extent of the demonstration reported to the entire world in Reuter’s message. Had it occured [sic] in Cambridge it would not even have received a mention in the free local papers.
My tour of duty ended in December and I relinquished the house, my father moving into Plums Hotel. A nine hour flight to London, and I was home for Christmas.
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[underlined] Dec. ’61 ON LEAVE [/underlined]
Hilda and Anne came to London and I met them at Paddington. We intend to spend a week with Joan and enjoy a holiday in London, but Hilda had a rather worrying cold so we limited our stay to two days.
The next six months or so were spent on leave. With the exception of Colin who was in the R.A.F., the whole family was together in Wales at Glaslyn. My father was in Nairobi, and his regular letters referred to increasing unrest. He was working flat-out in building the ‘Watson Wonders’ and he asked me to take back 500 B7G valve holders and 150 modulation chokes
In May ’62 I said goodbye to the family and returned to Kenya. As I was unaccompanied, Sid Worthy the Chief Engineer asked me if I would housewarm for him whilst he was on his 6 months leave. This meant that he paid the rent but could just walk out without packing up his household and walk back into the same apartment on his return. There was a tendency for senior officers who were permanently based in Nairobi to try and retain the same house or apartment once they had found the right one. Rent was in fact 10% of salary and it was well worth it. My father moved in with me and together we carried on with the transmitters, having rented a workshop next to Stephen Ellis in Victoria Street. After only 3 months in the apartment I received a letter from Sid telling me he was returning immediately, could he please have his flat only a few days hence!. The following morning we were going up-country and I could see my father was a more than little depressed. He was driving like a madman down the Nairobi escarpment and I insisted that he let me do the driving. He told me he had to go to Mombassa [sic] next day, having received a telegram from Alice that she and Brian were returning on the Union Castle. This was supposed to be a surprise to him and I did not doubt that it was so, but Alice admitted later that she had in fact booked return tickets on the homeward trip. She had been totally dishonest in her statements about her intentions which had resulted in Hilda and the children staying in Wales. Our safari was cut short and we returned to Nairobi the same day, a 500 mile round trip. Alice’s return meant a complete change in plan; clearly she and my father expected to share my accommodation but with Sid’s return they had no option but to move into an hotel again. They were lucky in obtaining a couple of rooms at Plums, after only two nights in the flat. I moved into Woodlands Hotel, but applied for a housing allocation as my family had decided to return to Kenya. Hilda and the children rejoined [sic] me and we moved into a house at Likoni Lane, resuming a normal life except that it was dominated by the Laikipia network and work at the Comm. Centre. Within a year of my return I was promoted to Asst. Signals Officer and took over from Mike Harding As [sic] Officer in charge of the Communications Centre. This I had tried to avoid for a long time, not the responsibility, but the working hours. The new post meant working office hours and for the first time in my life I was working a five-day-week. On watches it had been a four-day cycle of say monday afternoon, tuesday morning and all tuesday night, then off duty until friday afternoon. The 2 1/2 days off within every 4 days had suited me very well and was a very popular roster with everyone. Office hours curtailed my visits up-country except at week-ends, but I did have every evening free. Very soon, each European Radio Supt. In charge of a watch had an African trainee assistant. Shortly afterwards one joined me. They were all supposedly bright boys from Secondary School and we delegated the routine work to them as much as possible. Their presence was resented by the old-timers among the
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wireless operators, who knew what they were doing and were very good operators, but their educational background was inadequate for the senior posts. Africanisation was the policy dictated to us and we bowed to the inevitable. I trusted most of my Africans, and there were about 180 of them working on the 4-day Watch roster at the Communications centre. Although many of them had served with the British Army both during and after the war, I could not completely lose sight of the fact that some had taken part in the Lare massacre when an African village was set ablaze and almost everyone slaughtered as they tried to escape. The majority of my staff were from the three main problem tribes, the Kikuyu, Meru and Embu, and a few of the Luo tribe from Nyanza.
My father’s farm had been abandoned long ago. It was not possible to obtain reliable labour during the Emergency, and the whole of the European settled areas was to be handed over to the Africans. There were already very few farmers left in the Trans-Nzoia and the Eldoret areas, the latter being mainly from South Africa. The Laikipia farmers were the last to hold out, except perhaps for the bigger ranches near Athi River.
Our next home leave was in June 1964 and the story of my activity over the three years leading up to it is synonymous with that of the Laikipia Security Network. The network seemed to priority over everything, but lives were at stake. Occasionally Hilda and the Children would go up-country with me, and one memorable week-end was spent with Tony Dyer and Family at their lovely home facing Mount Kenya. One afternoon Tony asked the children if they would like to go to a polo match and they took off in Tony’s Cessna from their own front door, landing at the side of the pitch. One of Tony’s sons was killed some months later whilst taking a gun out of the back of his vehicle. It was never discovered how the gun came to be loaded and with the safety catch off. Hilda and the children stayed too at the farm of Dr. Anne Spoerry, at Ol Kalau. Anne’s loo was a traditional type in the bushes down the garden, very comfortable and lined with bookshelves, full of the Lancet and other medical journals. Anne was a wonderful character. Only once did we go to the coast for a holiday, and this was two weeks spent at Likoni, near Mombassa [sic]. Unfortunately we chose to go in the rainy season but it was a welcome break. We took Chippy, our cockerel, and it followed us around everywhere, afraid of absolutely nothing. Chippy returned home one day in Nairobi with a broken beak and was unable to peck for food. Fortunately Jean and Dick Chalcroft came to stay overnight with us and Dick fitted a new lower section to the beak with the plastic resin we used in making dipole aerials.. It took an hour to cure, or set, and Jean and Dick held Chippy during that period, and again whilst they filed down the surplus plastic and polished the result. Chippy was ravenous and began to feed straight away, but was very aggressive towards humans, except for Jean and Dick, who took him back to their farm at Molo. I saw Chippy several times after that at the farm, lording it over the hens, and not another cockerel in sight.
One day I bought a petrol/paraffin engine-driven alternator and a bank of batteries, a complete 32 volt lighting set in fact, too good to miss for £25 in Nairobi. The dealer said the engine wouldn’t start although it had just been thoroughly overhauled. I knew that Jean and Dick were without power on their farm although their house was wired for a 32 volt DC system such as this. I knew too of Jean’s prowess with anything mechanical and I took the whole lot straight up to the farm at Molo. At 10pm. on the Saturday Jean started stripping down the engine whilst I was linking together the 26 alkaline cells
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and checking the house wiring connected to my car battery. Jean, assisted by Dick slogged on until 5am. in the light of an Alladin lamp, but she had discovered the trouble long before that. The timing was exactly 180 degrees out of phase. At 5am, just before dawn, the batteries being flat, Jean cranked the engine which roared into life, literally, we were deficient of a silencer for the exhaust. The batteries were taking a charge and we changed from petrol to paraffin and switched on a few lights in the house. The following evening the Chalcrofts were very proud of their lighting system. That sort of effort and co-operation did give one a great deal of satisfaction.
My recollections of work in D.C.A. over that period are very few.
We seldom talked of the war, but in the middle of one night I somehow got chatting to the F.I.C. Controller, Sqdn Ldr. Anderson DFC & Bar, who had also been in 5 Group on Lancasters. Andy said we were sometimes like a lot of sheep, he recalled one night having reached his ETA, all was very quiet except that markers had been dropped 20 miles to the south. Within minutes bombs were crashing down so Andie turned south for five minutes and joined in. Next day it was found that the target was 20 miles north of where most of the bombing had taken place. My reply was just “Politz”, we had done exactly the same thing, followed the flock. We talked together of flying during the war, several times, but my memories of the actual events are more vivid now, after 45 years, than they were 25 years ago. Perhaps because there was not a great deal in East Africa to remind me of it, compared to today, living 4 miles from Wyton on the approach to Alconbury. To see the Lancaster of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight fly over gives me rather more than a lump in my throat at times. Pathfinder House is not what it was with Don Bennet, either, it is now the place where I pay my rates, but they at least have a picture of a Lancaster on the wall near the Cashier’s office. A couple of years ago I asked one of the cashiers why it was called Pathfinder House, she had no idea, I asked what the aeroplane was and the answer was the same. I let the matter drop.
I had taken over the comm. Centre from Mike Harding who had retired prematurely, and his immediate predecessor had been “Bing” Crosby, ex Royal Signals. Bing was in Headquarters just along the corridor and came into my office every day to inspect an object pickled in a sealed jar which he had left on the shelf when he was promoted. Although he urged us to take good care of it, he used to look at it and say to it “You useless ruddy thing”, or words to that effect. Finally, on retirement, he came and collected it and let us into the secret, with the parting words “Oh don’t worry, the other one’s fine, you only need one you know”.
Alice and my father had left in May for Italy, to stay with Mary and Luigi. My own feelings were that he should have stayed in Kenya, possibly up country with Jean or with one of his many other friends among the Settlers. He had worked unceasingly on the network for over 4 years, but Alice insisted upon their return to Europe. In June ’64 it was time for home leave again. We were reluctant this time because there was so much happening up country and we expected it to be our final tour in East Africa together, unless I returned and carried on with communications on a commercial basis. This was still an option, communications had kept me very busy and with lots of ‘job satisfaction’, but it was DCA who had paid my salary. I still had a family to support, and there was a great deal of uncertainty in Kenya. And so it was we flew to London yet again, and joined Hilda’s Mum at Glaslyn.
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[underlined] ON LEAVE June 1964 [/underlined]
Before leaving for Wales we bought a second-hand Vanguard from a dealer in Putney which was to prove very useful in the next few months. At the end of our leave it was sold to the local Policeman for the same price.
A month or two before we returned, the house next to Aunt Doll had become vacant and was put on the market for £500. It was small and in shocking state, but a real snip so we bought it. Five months was spent in refurbishing it, building a bathroom, kitchen, replastering, new fireplace, rewiring etc. I remember John mixing at least a ton of concrete manually, he was a tremendous help. Electricity at the house had not been used for many years, and what little wiring remained, mostly twin flex, we ripped out. Electrical contractors quoted £900 to rewire, which was totally ridiculous, and finally John and I did it in one day, having spent about £50 on materials through an advert in Exchange & Mart. We tried to buy the field - or even part of it - at the back - of the house, but our lawyer said it was quite impossible to find out who owned the land. Many years later it transpired that it had in fact been owned for at least a hundred years by members of his own family.
Visits were paid to my other in Barnoldswick and to Joan and Ken in London, but the greater part of my leave was spent on the ‘new house’.
At the end of April Hilda’s Mum moved into her new home and made comfortable. From the house there was a wonderful view of the mountain separating the Neath and Rhonda valleys, with the river within 25 yards in the foreground. Perhaps it is only fair to mention the road between the house and river, but when the bypass was built a few years later this road carried little traffic.
In November ’64 I returned to Kenya unaccompanied, and being so, moved into Woodlands Hotel. The following day I was in touch with Laikipia and also back at work. I relieved Mike Harding as Asst. Signals Officer in Headquarters, Deputy to ‘Spud’ Murphy who was Telecommunications Officer (Operations). The job was just a matter of dealing with the steady flow of paper-work. Every piece of paper coming in was registered in Central Registry and filed by the Clerk. If he couldn’t decide which file to put it, he would open a new one. The file was then delivered - and booked out - to the officer thought to be the one who should deal with it. The officer would either add his comments as a minute and pass on the file to someone he thought might not return it to him, or if he felt he was authorised to make a decision, draft a letter for his immediate superior. Very occasionally, on an external matter he might even sign the letter “for the Director of Civil Aviation”. I was expected to finalise all matters concerning the operational aspect of the Telecommunications side of DCA, including all staff problems, their examinations and promotions.
Europeans were leaving the Directorate almost every week and being replaced by Africans. Those with African proteges training to take over the senior posts were most vulnerable. The Africans thought it was easy to sit back and authorise someone to go on leave, or to promote or reprimand another. The newcomers could read the many returns and forms but whereas a European officer could do every job subordinate to his own, the assistant had neither the experience, qualifications nor ability to do those jobs. In some cases the African was promoted and his former boss remained as his assistant. It was
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obvious who did the actual work. I found the work uninteresting, mainly it seemed just a matter of going through the motions and staying out of trouble by being non-committal, which was completely out of character. My main thoughts were with the 5190 Network, something that really mattered.
Sqdn. Ldr. Anderson was still with us and when he went on two week’s leave to the coast he asked me to sleep at his house, which made a welcome change from staying at the hotel. At about 3am on the third night there was a hullabaloo outside and a pounding on the door. “Police, open up”. I opened up, 9mm. Mauser ready, to be greeted by an African Police Inspector and about 15 Askari with enough weaponry to start a rebellion. Andy had told the Police he would be away for two weeks and would they please keep an eye on the house? I told them he had asked me to sleep there but they were not convinced. All my documents were at the hotel and eventually the Inspector ‘phoned the Acting Director of Civil Aviation at his house - Dickie Dixon, my old antagonist from Entebbe. Dickie was not amused, he never was, with me, but the Inspector was satisfied. A few nights later, about 10pm. I was lying on the bed reading, the house in darkness except for a small reading lamp. I heard footsteps on the gravel outside and quickly extinguished the light. I heard a key turning in the lock of the pateo [sic] door. By this time I was off the bed and standing at the bedroom door, left hand on the hall light switch and my Mauser in the right, cocked and with the safety-catch off. When the outside door opened I switched on the light and was startled to identify the intruder as Jimmie Sanson, whom I had not seen since we were in Kisumu. If he had been carrying a gun I might have blown his head off before it became unrecognisable. Andy had done it again, asking Jimmie also to keep an eye on the house. That night my car had been in Andy’s garage. On the following nights I left the car in full view outside, and with the a few lights in the house switched on.
For several years I had held one of the very few Flight Radio Officer Licences in the Department and frequently flew as Radio Officer first on the Anson VPKKK and later on its replacement, the Heron. On my last trip on the Heron we did a “tour of inspection” with visiting officials from ICAO in Montreal. Whilst supposedly inspecting the runways here and the Met. Station there, a V.O.R., D.M.E. and other aids to Aviators, in reality we enjoyed a visit to Zanzibar, flew around inside the Ngoro-ngoro crater, an extinct volcano well stocked with wild life, witnessed a specially-staged lion kill in Tsavo West National Park, and entered into the spirit of a very expensive ‘Cook’s Tour’. A few weeks later I did another tour of airports, inspecting the Telecomm. aspect and also giving morse tests to operators who were otherwise already qualified for promotion. I knew most of the staff and the stations also. 16 years previously I had first visited Iringa, which was then run by ‘Blossom’, Mrs. Brown, the only lady Radio Officer in DCA. Blossom was an ex-WREN officer who had specialised during the war in Japanese morse. I think she told me there were about 120 characters in their morse alphabet, and she used to transcribe in Jap. characters for hours on end. It was someone else’s job to translate them into English. Blossom had left some years previously. The morse tests were interesting, first the candidate sent for 10 minutes at 25 w.p.m. of 5-letter and figure groups, which was recorded on tape. The second test was 10 minutes of plain language, and the third receiving for 10 minutes of automatic morse. The fourth test was for the candidate to receive the morse recorded in the first two tests, without telling them of it’s origin. Many complained that the
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fourth test was unfair, the morse being very poor and difficult to read. Some found it difficult to believe the poor morse was their own! In general, the morse was, in fact, very good, most of the old-timers having been British Army trained, during the war.
Soon after the invasion of Zanzibar I flew there in the DCA Anson piloted by Capt. Casperuthus. The two Air Traffic Controllers had been deported to Mombassa [sic] and almost all the Telecomms. equipment was faulty. The teleprinter on line to Dar es Salaam still worked, however, and this was taken over by an African from Tanganyika. Zanzibar and Tanganyika became known as Tanzania and for the very first time customs and immigration formalities were introduced between the two. I recall paying customs duty in Dar es Salaam on 200 cigarettes bought in Zanzibar, although the price was the same in both places, and duty had been paid already to the same authority, the new government of Tanzania. There was no rational explanation to some of the politics in East Africa. Rumours were rife that a huge Russian biplane bomber made secret trips at night without contacting DCA, the aviation authority, and the machine was said to be in a particular hangar. We were intrigued by this and taxied very close to the hangar, a ‘deliberate mistake’, and took photographs of the aircraft. It was a biplane about three times the wingspan of a Tiger Moth, but we were not able to find anyone who had actually seen it airborne.
By May 1965 I was recovering transmitters from Settlers who were leaving the country, and these sets were more than meeting the demand for new ones. I felt that by the end of the year there would be very few Europeans left, and in that atmosphere of intense anti-climax I gave 6 months notice of my retirement. The leave earned would take me to just over my 44th. birthday when compensation for loss of office would be at its peak. Looking at this in more detail, compensation would have been reduced by £2,000 per year of delay. There was really little choice but to go.
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[underlined] JOB HUNTING [/underlined]
I returned home finally on the 11th. of November 1965 and joined Hilda and the family at Glaslyn, except for Colin who was in the R.A.F. in Aden. My father and Alice were settled in Voghera in Northern Italy. There was plenty of time to look for a job, as I was on full pay for about six months and could not really afford to start work until April. Had I started before that, it would have meant paying income tax at the U.K. rate for the previous year on my world income, so I was advised, probably wrongly.
I wrote many letters, one offering my services to O’Dorian of Redeffusion [sic]. They were at that time considering establishing a Radio Relay system in the African areas of Nairobi. Other firms were also interested and the City Council was monitoring a pilot scheme which I.A.L. had fitted about a year previously. The pilot scheme had been put out to tender and my father had submitted a bid to provide for a four-program system. The contract went to I.A.L. on the grounds that they had shown confidence in Kenya by being established there for many years and were a reputable firm. My father was invited to comment and said I.A.L.’s presence was nothing to do with confidence, they were wholly-owned by B.O.A.C. and were there to do aircraft radio maintenance for E.A. Airways also owned by B.O.A.C. As for being a reputable company, so are Marks and Spencers but like I.A.L. they have no experience in Radio Relay. I had seen the pilot scheme at Kaloleni. Each house had a loudspeaker on the wall with volume control, and the system was wired in D8 cable and flex, with no protective devices. Reception was poor and quality was that of a typical bus station P.A. system. I gave O’dorian [sic] a detailed report of what I thought could be achieved in Nairobi and also the whole of Kenya, together with the engineering detail, resources required, budgets etc. The report was mainly the result of my father’s efforts of two years previously, updated. I included my report of I.A.L.’s one programme pilot scheme the performance of which could induce the Council to reach only one conclusion about Radio Relay. One of not to bother with it. Transistor radios were then on the market at 40 shillings giving good world-wide reception, Moscow being a necessity. I mentioned too the near to impossibility of collecting payment from individual subscribers. Payment would have to be made by the authorities. O’Dorian thanked me for my interest and appreciated the report and said he would be in touch. About a month later he wrote again and said they had decided not to pursue any interest in Kenya.
I also tried West London Telefusion who I knew at working level in 1947, and had an interview in Blackpool with their M.D., and Personnel Manager, for a new post as Development Manager in Taunton, Somerset. The job was to establish a cable T.V. system. I was offered the job after a prolonged interview and at a good salary. I accepted there and then and was advised to start looking for a house around Taunton. Only the starting date was uncertain, but they agreed to confirm the appointment in writing and provide a detailed Terms of Reference. I was very surprised indeed a few weeks later when a letter from Mr Wilkinson said he was very sorry but had decided not to proceed with the Taunton project and all development was under review. I realised that cable TV was popular in fringe areas but more and more repeaters were being provided and the need for cable was reducing all the time. I am writing this in 1993 and the concept of cable TV has developed from the 1966 “amplified aerial” to a single coaxial cable providing over 30 T.V. channels, radio and telephone, and
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most recently, scanned T.V. Security Systems. The technological advances in Relay since its inception in my father’s time, around 1928 have meant many fresh starts for the industry.
I had an interview with Aero Electronics at Crawley – to whom I had a letter of introduction, and was offered the job of Development Engineer & Manager! I felt this was aiming rather high. The interview took place in a large country house, alongside which was a fairly new factory with lots of activity, and a sketch of which appeared on Aero Electronics letter heading. I later found that the factory had no connection with Aero Electronics, which was in fact a one-man show. The job would have been responding to overseas enquiries received mainly via the Board of Trade, designing a system and providing equipment, winding up with a quotation. On the face of it a very interesting prospect, but with no back-up of any sort, and relying upon other firms’ equipment. I felt it to be somewhat dicey, particularly when I was asked if I could type! I had to say it was a job for a team, not one man.
From Crawley I went to see G.E.C. at Coventry for interview as a “Production Team Leader”. The job turned out to be the leader of a team of about 12 assemblers and wiremen constructing telephone exchanges – one at a time. I was shown one being assembled and spent an hour with the Team Leader on one particular exchange which comprised thirty 7’ racks of relay panels, counters uniselectors, jack fields etc. As far as I could see it was just a matter of ensuring each item was in the right place and wired-in correctly. Turning down the job was the right decission [sic] for the wrong reason. There seemed to be thousands of people around all moving at the same time, and the environment depressed me. Although I was only vaguely aware of it at the time, that type of system would be giving way to electronic exchanges within a year or two.
Next stop was Redifon in Wandsworth, who were advertising for Test and Installation engineers. The job was described accurately but was basically testing H/F and M/F equipment at the end of the production line, with very occasional trips into the field on installation and commissioning work. There was great competition for the field work. I was offered the job but the Personnel manager told me to think very carefully, Wandsworth was a terrible place to live in. I was given two weeks to think it over, and turned down the offer. I asked the Personnel Manager what happened to the job I was offered in 1957. The requirement was for an engineer who had a PMG1 licence to operate on ships and an MCA Flight Radio Officers Licence to operate on aircraft. He was to take equipment to sea and into the air to ensure there were no problems, and if there were, to resolve them. That job really appealed to me and could very well have become what I cared to make it. Maybe. He looked up my file and told me the vacancy was not filled and the post was withdrawn.
I saw a job advertised for a Telecommunications Engineer for Gambia, 18 month tour, £3500 per year + 25% gratuity, and applied for it. A week later I was called for interview. I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of this happening, having applied out of interest and an expences [sic] paid trip to London. The interview went well and soon after my return to Wales a letter arrived asking me to confirm my acceptance on a salary of £2500. I was in a quandry [sic], I didn’t really want to go to Zambia, but wrote to the Crown Agents and pointed out the discrepancy between the advert of £3500 and offer of £2500.
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They regretted their mistake in the advert, and on those grounds I was able to decline
I applied for an advertised post of Signals Officer at the Ministry of Aviation’s Communications Centre at Croydon for which my D.C.A. experience fitted me well. The interview went off very well and I found that in some respects E. Africa was more up to-date than was the practice at Croydon. At the end of the interview they said they would write to me. About a week later their letter arrived and advised that I had not been selected but only because a more senior post would shortly become available and I was already short-listed for it. Good news indeed, but having heard nothing further after four months by which time we had moved house to Cambridge, I wrote to them. In their reply I was told that the letter offering me the job had been returned to them marked “Gone away”. As Communications Officer in charge at Croydon life would have been rather different.
Becoming more and more disillusioned with U.K. I went to see the Overseas Services Resettlement Bureau at Eland House, Victoria. I saw a Mr. Williams who was ex-Malaysia P.& T and we chatted for a while about the prospects of settling down to a job in the U.K. I had to agree that after 18 years in East Africa I was not impressed with what I saw in Britain nor with the people who occupied it, it was a vastly different place to the one I had left in 1948. He was quite right in saying that I first had to decide whether I wanted to stay and if so to make the best of it. What job did I want? I told him I had hoped to join Pye Telecomm’s technical sales dept. I knew Pye aeronautical equipment and felt I could fit in there, but had written and been advised there were no vacancies. “Did I still want the job?”. Having replied yes please he picked up the phone, and said “get me Ernie Munns at Pye”. Moments later he greeted someone in what I assumed was Malay, then switched to English “look Ernie, I’ve another bloody Colonial here, thinks Pye’s the ultimate., When can you see him?” We agreed 2pm the following day at Pye Telecommunications, Newmarket Rd., Cambridge. More words in Malay between them and he wished me luck.
I liked the friendly environment at Pye and was interviewed by Ernie Munns, head of Systems Planning Dept. and his deputy, Cyril Foster. The interview was constantly interrupted by the telephone and people barging in for instant decisisons [sic]. I recall Ernie asking whether I would be prepared to write a paper for a semi-technical customer on the relative merits of conventional VHF links and Tropospheric scatter and I said “yes”! Fortunately the phone rang and both interviewers were involved, which gave me a few minutes to think about it. I had heard of Tropo-scatter, but that was about all. I awoke to the question of “how would you go about it?” I replied that I would read up the subject in the Pye library. It must have been written up many times, I would study it and probably be able to quote a learned authority. I agreed that I didn’t know all the answers, and Ernie said “Thank god for that, one or two around here think they do”. I was told that my application was opportune, if I joined them I would be in the Aeronautical team headed by Cyril, which was currently preparing a factory order for equipment to re-equip 22 airports and several other sites in Iran, plus a lot of other orders for aviation equipment. Basically the job was block-planning of systems to meet the customers’ operational requirement, prepare quotations, to engineer the job in detail and to project manage the order to its conclusion. This was the sort of job offered by
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Aero Electronics but at Pye there was full backing from experts in all fields. The second part of the interview was with Cyril and the Personnel manager who said he would write to me with the result. The letter arrived a few days later offering me the post at £1250 per year and to start preferably on the first of April. This was gladly accepted. Hilda and I went to Cambridge and after a week’s run around by Estate Agents we found a nice 4-bedroomed house at 14 Greystoke Rd. near Cherry Hinton which was to be ready by the end of March.
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[underlined] AT PYE TELECOMMUNICATIONS [/underlined]
The first two years at Pye were spent as a Project Engineer in Systems Planning Dept, not in the Aviation team as hoped, but in Duncan Kerr’s team doing general systems. Also in the team were Jim Bucknell, Ian Douglas, and Mike Bavistock who had also joined Pye on April first. Duncan was away most of the time drumming up contracts with the Scottish Police forces but on our first day Mike and I did meet him briefly and he gave us two pink files. ‘Take one each’ said Duncan. ‘Turkey 10th Slice is now an order and needs a flimsy, and the Libya quote needs revalidating’. Mike and I hadn’t a clue on Pye methods and we decided to work together, providing a mutual back-up. It quickly transpired that we had something in common, Mike had been in the Gambia for three tours whilst I was in East Africa. I told him of my experience with the Crown Agents for the Gambia job and he had seen the advert for what had in fact been his post. He was not amused when he saw his £2500 a year job advertised with a salary of £3500.
Of the 36 people in the department, no-one was particularly helpful, in retrospect mainly because they were themselves under great pressure and had problems of their own. I saw the Chief Clerk, - later known as the Admin Group Leader – and said ‘Duncan wants me to do a flimsy, what’s a flimsy?’ He was most unhelpful although he was responsible for the admin. aspect of many hundreds of them. His philosophy was that he wasn’t going to help anyone who was on a bigger salary than his own. I had to go to Export Sales to find out what a flimsy looked like. It turned out to be an all-singing and dancing instruction to every dept. detailing all the action required in designing, manufacturing inspecting packing shipping and invoicing and even installation of a customer’s order. All the information available was entered on the forms and circulated around the departments. The initial circulation was programmed to take six weeks. The system was designed in detail and all the engineering information added with ammendments. [sic] Eventually there were so many ammendments [sic] I had to completely rewrite the flimsy after six weeks, and finally there was an issue 4. The job was eventually engineered by Dickie Wainwright – ex East African P.& T., following a departmental re-organisation, and I picked it up again at the delivery stage having moved to the Systems Installation Dept.
My performance on my first task in Pye was not at all brilliant, and about 18 months later when the installation was finished I issued a memo entitled “Lessons Learned on Turkey 10th Slice”. I started with saying that a week of training in Pye methods would have saved a great deal of cost and misunderstanding and went on to discuss the contract itself. The contract stated that ‘The Turkish Version of the contract shall be deemed to be the official version’, and it seemed there were many anomalies all to the advantage of the Turks, in particular to our agent, a chap called Avidor, who in fact translated the Turkish contract into English!. The system originally quoted was for a microwave chain the length of Turkey with a dozen or so links carrying teleprinter and telephones. We were awarded only the links, the radio parts of which were main and standby. One rediculous [sic] requirement in the Turkish version was that they wanted the main link in one place and the standby in another. We were providing main and standby transmitters etc within a link, not a completely seperate [sic] standby link. The whole thing was quite rediculous, [sic] no
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wonder it was given to one of the new boys and everyone else steered clear. The title of the contract simply meant that it was the 10th slice – or part – of a multi-million dollar allocation of N.A.T.O. funds. I don’t know how many slices there were, but one was enough for us.
With Mike’s first job, revalidating a quotation might on the face of it seem more straight-forward. It is just a matter of extending the date on which the offer expires, or is it?! The engineers who did the quotation with many versions over a period of 10 years, and the half dozen salesmen involved over different periods had all either left or moved on somewhere. Now they were all out of picture, it was Mike’s job, and he was on his own. Revalidation implied that he must thoroughly understand the customer requirement. The quotation comprised 18 volumes of A4 size, each 2” thick, plus a mountain of minutes of meetings and correspondance [sic] over a period of 10 years. Undertakings made in good faith years ago could well be quite impossible to honour, requiring endless variations to the tender document. Every change required approval from others in Pye. Every aspect had to be checked. Equipment from other manufacturers was included and confirmation of availability and price had to be obtained, every move documented and absolutely every aspect of the tender was Mike’s direct responsibility. When I think back to those days, I remember how every letter and memo originated had to be written out in longhand for the team’s typist to action. I understand the office system did not change in the next 25 years although there is much less of it. Mike asked me to sit in at his very first meeting on this project, the main purpose of which was to put him in the picture and answer any queries he might have. One item in the quote was ‘2 years Bavister £2000’ What’s that asks Mike. The finance dept man said it’s an accountancy term, just leave it in but add 10%. Two others had totally different ideas and finally a fellow woke up and said “I’m Bavister, I’m supposed to go out there for two years to help the customer”. There followed a discussion on the price of whether it was 2 or should be 20 thousand and which department accepted the responsibility. Mike asked why we are using scramblers bought from Redifon at £1200 each when we can make them. It turned out they were actually ours, produced in Cambridge for T.M.C. who sold them to Redifon who in turn mounted them on a panel with their label, and sold them back to Pye at about 10 times the price.
The Libya communication system itself was very good, a policeman on a camel with a hand-held portable could talk through a local Base station and several UHF links and an HF SSB link to his HQ 3000 miles away if required. Mike Bavistock saw the project through two revalidations and the tender’s final acceptance, and the production stage, over a period of 4 years. He went on to do many other big projects before deciding to resign and return to Africa to try and regain his sanity.
When I joined the department, one half prepared quotations and everything else with the exception of the detailed engineering. The other half were responsible for engineering and nothing else. The system was sound, one person should not have to divert his thinking from conditions of sale to pricing to shipping to the specific connections on a 131 way socket. After a while the system was changed whereby one man did the lot, and with a dozen or more projects on hand at any one time constant re-orientation was getting me down and I asked for a transfer to Systems Installation Dept. Meanwhile I pressed on
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doing many quotations and made sure I did not get involved with detailed engineering design or anything else which could delay my transfer. In fact I feigned some excentricity [sic] and got away with it. The pressure however was high and there was a great deal of jeolousy [sic] and backbiting in the department.
At one stage I did a couple of Fireman’s callout schemes and these were done on the electric typewriter by a typist who normally did only the conditions of sale. The only difference was in the number of base stations and portables, and the finance. Together using the same basic tape we could rattle off a quotation in half an hour. We made about 20 spare copies and sent them to Home salesmen who were not already in the know, to help them secure orders from their local fire services. This was very rewarding to Pye.
One monday [sic] morning I was given the job of providing a quotation to meet a requirement for the Yugoslavian police, to be ready by 4 pm on friday [sic] . It was a big job and I would have three chaps to assist me but I was not to make a start until the go-ahead was received from International Marketing Dept. At 2.15 pm I was told to forget it, it would not be possible to complete it in time. On Wednesday at 10 am I was told the job was on and vital, top priority. Drop everything and get on wth [sic] it. I would not have any assistants and would have to complete it myself. So one man had two days and two nights to do a job which was too much for 4 men in 5 days and 4 nights. I worked almost non-stop, all day and all night, mostly at home, and on the thursday [sic] I asked for a typist to be available for friday [sic] night. By 5 pm on friday [sic] the document was ready for typing, a very long technical description and equipment schedules. The prices had not been agreed with the finance dept, so I used standard Export price with 15% mark-up for luck. No signatures of approval were obtained from Snr. Management although a quote for over £100,000 needed signatures from three Directors and finally the Company Secretary. I did ‘phone Bert Ship who was responsible for determining delivery time and I put 5 months instead of his 9. The typist did not materialise, and as a last resort I took an office typewriter to my daughter Wendy’s home and she typed it overnight.
At 7 am on the saturday [sic] I assembled a batch of relavant [sic] publicity material and technical leaflets, and made 10 copies of the whole document, four of which I signed and gave to the Salesman at 9 am. He translated the Technical Description and schedules into Italian on his way to London Airport by road and to Milan by air. It was retyped into Italian on the Sunday and presented to the client in Rome on the Monday [sic] , by Pye Italy. A month later the Salesman told me we had got the job and thanked me, but there was no other official recognition. I was amused to have signed it myself, having cut through all authorities and proceedures. [sic] One copy of the file was circulated around for approvals by Mike Loose and this was completed a few days before we got the contract. Not all jobs were like that.
One particular quotation was done for Frank Mills, a salesman responsible for dealing with government departments in Wales. I had first known Frank when he was Provincial Police Signals Officer at Mwanza in Tanganyika when I was in charge of the airport. Prior to that he had been a Radio Officer with D.C.A. in East Africa. Frank had told me of his lucky escape when he went to Musoma on a routine inspection. An african [sic] sold him a live snake in a sack for a shilling and Frank decided its skin would make a good present. An 8 foot python for a shilling. First the python had to be killed and whilst still in the sack was placed in an empty 40 gallon storage drum. A pipe was connected between his
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landrover [sic] exhaust and the drum, and the engine left running. After an hour the python was removed and made ready for skinning, but first let’s take a few photographs. Off came Frank’s bush jacket, and the python wound round his chest and neck, with Frank gripping the snake’s head and looking it square in the eyes. The photos were taken and the snake lowered to the ground. It was sweaty work and Frank sat on the back of the landrover [sic] drinking a cool beer. After a few minutes the python slid away into the bush. However, Frank had arranged to collect the quotation at 1.30 pm. and as the hour approached it was ready in triplicate except for the three front labels. All the typists and secretaries were enjoying their lunch break, most of them sitting at their desks knitting or reading. Not one of them would type the labels, so I used a spare manual machine and typed them myself. It was their right to stop work between 1 and 2 and they would excercise [sic] that right regardless of everything else. Most of them didn’t speak to me for weeks. This childish attitude was only too prevalant [sic] throughout the organisation and was completely foreign to me. However, Frank collected his quotation and we had a short chat about old times. Tragically he was killed in a road accident next day whilst on the way to see his customer with the quotation.
After my 2 years or so in Systems Planning, Bill Bainbridge one of the two Field Controllers in Systems resigned to start his own business, Cambridge Towers, and I was fortunate in succeeding him. At the same time Harry Langley Head of Systems Installation moved into Sales and D.A.D. Smith took over as Manager of Systems Installation Dept., (S.I.D.). I got on very well with Harry Langley, he had been with the Kenya Police as a Radio technician seconded from the Home Office. Howard (Jimmie) James was the other Field Controller and between us we managed all S.I.D. projects, mainly installing and commissioning systems in the field, about 60% being overseas. In theory we had a Project Engineer heading each Installation team but as each was involved in several jobs at any one time it was never possible just to sit back and let the P.E. get on with it. He was likely to be abroad when most required.
[underlined] IRAN [/underlined]
One of the first jobs allocated to me in S.I.D. was the Iranian Airports project, Pye being a member of a consortium with Marconi, C & S Antennas, Redifon, G.E.C. and S.T.C. All came together as the Irano-British Airports Consortium to re-equip the major airports and aviation facilities in Iran. This was the project mentioned to me at my interview when applying to join Pye and Cyril Foster and Allan Breeze had devoted their last two years entirely to it, and much of 5 years before that. Allan in fact eventually went to Iran to commission the F.I.C. console. I had a great respect for him when we went to Iran together and whilst I was struggling along in French he was talking in Farsi with the hotel staff. He had been quietly studying it in Cambridge and could even read it, which was a tremendous achievement.
I became suspicious when I received a memo from D.A.D. Smith the Departmental Manager enclosing a change-note and asking me to confirm that we could still carry out our installation committment [sic] in Iran for the £85,700 he had quoted. A change-note was a notification from a Lab. making a minor change in the design or manufacture of a piece of equipment. In this case it refered [sic] to a resistor which would make no difference to anything except the parts list.
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[photograph of the head and shoulders of a man]
[Arabic writing]
[stamp]
[Arabic writing] G. Watson [Arabic writing]
[signature]
[Arabic writing] JSB/100/14/6/T [Arabic writing]
154A
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Not “will the change-note make any difference?” His subtle phraseology was making me responsible for the whole installation amount, not just a possible minor differe [deleted r [/deleted] nce. His figure was derived by taking 5% of the factory transfer price of the equipment which had no real relationship to the cost of fitting it, and was totally unrealistic.
I studied the draft contract and drew up an installation plan, and after a few days replied to my manager that “if the work can be carried out in the 12 month time scale as in the contract my estimate of costs is not £87500 but £250,000. I believed the work would take at least 5 years, it would not be possible to co-ordinate the many scores of officials with their different loyalties and the organisations involved. The final cost could very well be double the £250K. The end customer was the Iranian Director General of Civil Aviation, represented by Aerodrome Development Consultants Ltd., (A.D.C.) apparently a private firm, but wholly-owned by the then British Board of Trade and staffed by their officials. They were more than loyal to their Iranian masters.
After a great deal of arguement [sic] with A.D.C. and other Consortium members about methods, division of responsibilies [sic] , consequential losses and costs etc., the quotation was accepted including my price of £250K, and the contract signed. I was to live with that contract for exactly 10 years and have been sorely tempted many times to record the frustrations, stupidities and almost impossible business of working with the Iranians whilst retaining any degree of sanity.
It was the custom in Pye at the time, and a very good one, that before work was started on a major quotation, the comments of people with recent similar experience were sought as to its desireability, [sic] and with the question “Do we want the job?”. The file, an informal one came to me and in answer to that question I wrote in a light-hearted moment, “pas avec un barge pole.” I didn’t know that our masters Philips in Holland were involved until a minute came from them asking ‘vos ist ein barge pole’? This surprised everyone as the Dutch generally have no sense of humour where money is concerned.
One year from the signing of the contract, bang on time, we airfreighted the 26 racks of equipment and a mass of other material for installation at Meherabad airport, a direct flight from Stansted to Teheran where it was to be fitted. The pilot spent 36 hours under armed guard first for not having a “Certificate of no objection” from Iranian Airlines and secondly for paying a parking fee for only a 12 hours stay. There were many problems with that first consignement [sic] which provided a good pointer to the difficulties to follow. It was 12 months before the equipment was released from Customs and then it was stored in the open air outside the Meherabad receiving station for 6 months. Soon after that first air shipment I returned to Iran and spent 6 weeks studying the first 12 airport installations, including Meherabad, and re-formulating detailed plans. Meherabad was the main International Airport and included the Flight Information Centre. One problem at the F.I.C. was how to fit a 24 ft control console manned by 6 people whilst maintaining a full service on the old console which occupied the same floor space. In addition the contract stated that 12 racks would be fitted in the old equipment room on the fourth floor and 14 in a new equipment room on the second floor. This really was quite impossible and I was keeping the problem to myself. When I was discussing with the Iranians the work involved in their own equiupment [sic] room,
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they became extremely worried because their wiring was an absolute shambles with hundreds of multipair cables actually threading their way in and out and through racks which we had to replace with no interuption [sic] in the service.
They finally startled me by laying down the law and insisting that we stay right out of their old equipment room, and they would knock down walls between six offices on the second floor to house all 26 racks. This area was very close to FIC and made our job not only possible, but easy. Also the change was their firm requirement and we charged them £17,500 extra for the priveledge [sic] .
On Kushi Nostrat mountain, Marconi were to fit a Radar scanner, which we were to link to Meherabad by a 7GHz link, but the only way to reach the site was by helicopter, unless one was a mountaineer. There were no civilian helicopters in Iran and it was only when I put the problem to A.D.C. that I found the Radar stn. was to be at Kushi Basm and not Kushi Nostrat, a totally different mountain. This had an access road and Meherabad was a line-of-sight path of 32 miles. At a critical distance was a salt pan and we were supposed to go round this desert on a dog leg using a microwave link repeater. There was no suitable location for the repeater because of the “change” in location of the Radar site. This resulted in another variation to contract for a frequency and space diversity single link, less equipment than in the original contract but we got away with charging £18,000 more. Some of the problems were pathetic, others amusing. When I checked the earthing and lightening arrestor system at Meherabad I found the one inch copper earth lead was terminated not with an earth mat in the ground but to a spike stuck in a concrete plantpot on the first floor verandah. That was and probably is still there and highly dangerous. Incredible but true.
At Bandar Abbas Airport I prepared a detailed installation plan which together with others was discussed later at a monthly progress meeting in London. It bore no resemblance to a plan prepared by Redifon two years previously and we realised that since Redifon’s visit a new airport had been built about 9 miles away. More variatons [sic] to contract. There were 260 of them finally. At Bandar Abbas, the port of which was the main base of the Iranian Navy, I was with the Provincial Governor, an Iranian Air Force General and the Airport Manager. All three agreed it was permissible for me to use my camera. Later when an army corporal confiscated the camera they all denied it and simultaneously lost their ability to speak fairly good english, resorting to french in discussion with me. I had already met the works manager in charge of the extensive building operations who spoke excellent english and was apparently all-powerful. He not only recovered my camera from the army but also gave me a fine selection of photographic prints together with detailed architect plans of all the buildings. I did not see the three senior chaps again but the works manager put a car and driver at my disposal. I think he must have been related to someone important, maybe the Shah-in-Shah, or maybe he was a member of the secret police, there is no knowing.
A consignment of Redifon transmitters was held up in Customs for over two years with a documentation problem, and even the fixer employed was quite ineffective. To clear through customs it was necessary to get 120 signatures and rubber stamp impressions on the release document and this had to be done in a single day. This was finally achieved after the Shah had decreed that the equipment must be released, but the chap on the gate seemed to resent this interferance [sic] and refused to release it. The document with the signatures was out
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of date the following day so the man’s boss supported him and the equipment remained a part of the scenery. A week or two later, another department came into the act and gave notice that if Redifon did not remove it within 7 days, it would be sold off by police auction. Redifon did not appreciate my suggestion that we should go to the auction. The problem had arisen because one small item of equipment was refered [sic] to as a “tone transmitter”, the word transmitter being anathma [sic] to Middle east types. It did not appear on the schedule [deleted] d [/deleted] of approved tranmitters [sic] and was regarded with grave suspicion.
It took four months to amend the contract to exclude the tone transmitter and substitute a tone oscillator, - the same thing -, but even then 36 copies of the invoice had to be changed and re-submitted.
The Consortium offices belonged to the G.E.C.O.S. agent who kindly trebbled [sic] the size of them at the Consortium’s expence [sic] . All the members’ staff in Iran moved in and made themselves comfortable. About three weeks later a gang of workmen with demolition equipment reduced the new buildings to rubble and said “sorry, no planning permission”. Two months later the lawyers proved that all the proper authority and permissions were completely in order. The gang returned and said “sorry, ok you build”.
Despite all the red tape in Iran it was generally possible to get results eventually, the main difficulty was often finding out just which palms had to be greased. Our man in Iran for three years was Mike Cherry and he was successful in getting an amateur radio licence, with the call-sign EP2MC. Mike fitted an SSB125 transceiver in the office in Teheran and I was in daily contact with him from both my house and the office in Cambridge. By using very carefull [sic] phraeseology [sic] I was kept right up to date with progress in the field.
I was talking with Mike from the office one evening on 14 MHz when Dr. Westhead the Chief Executive came in and asked who I was talking with. I replied “to Mike Cherry, our man in Teheran, Sir”. He grimaced and said “Ah well, ask a stupid question..” The public telephone system to Iran was diabolical most of the time. I used to book a call for 4.30 am the following day and take it from home, which saved a great deal of time in both places. Teheran time was 2 1/2 hours ahead of U.K. On most occasions the Post Office telephoned several times during the night to confirm the call or advise of delays, which was very tiresome.
Monthly progress meetings were held in London, and at one of them I was asked to quote for additional work at Esfahan during the 2500 year celebrations, which were to take place before the new equipment was fitted. They required to talk with aircraft and I suggested they should do so on a mobile set which would be quite adequate. Our team would already be on site with the mobiles so without any fuss I quoted £300 which was put forward. At a board meeting a week later this was confirmed and the Pye member of the Board, Pat Holden who was also our International Marketing Director promptly withdrew it as I had not gone through the proper channels. The next day he sent for me and instructed me to cancel my quotation, and with a great thumping of the table told me to increase it £3000. Then followed a lecture that “we are here to make money, add a nought”. I told him the job would take about an hour and £300 was more than adequate. £30,000 was utterly rediculous. [sic] I told him “I was doing no such thing, put it in writing through the head of my department and meanwhile you are clear to return to earth”. I then excused myself and left him
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to it. I returned to my own desk 20 minutes later to find a note asking me to go and see the boss, not surprisingly. I told him exactly what had happened and he laughed. I said I thought I had burned my boats with Pat Holden and David Smith my boss said “far from it, he admires you for standing up to him and asks you to forget it.” I took no further action in this and in the event there was no income at all, but the job took only 30 minutes for one engineer.
Another equally challenging job was the installation and commissio [deleted] m [/deleted] ning of a UHF system within the London Stock Exchange. This employed 520 adjascent [sic] channels. The Base Stations in the basement comprised a transmitter and receiver for each channel, all being combined into one “radiating feeder”. About 600 pocketphones on the Stock Exchange floor were used by dealers working into this system. An invitation to tender for this job had been received by Pye about two years previously and comments invited from all technical departments. It was unanimously agreed that the job was quite impossible and must not be attempted. Pye did not quote for it and the contract was awarded to S.T.C. Mobile division. Nearly two years later Pye or Philips aquired [sic] that organisation and half the installation had been fitted. About 60 channels were in use and very unsatisfactory. Dealers received messages intended for others and signals faded out at the crutial [sic] moment. Firms were receiving wrong messages and transfering [sic] and buying shares erroneously through these faults. The task of bringing the job to a conclusion was allocated to me and I chose my favourite team of Nick Fox, Aussie Peters and Jack Faulkener.
There was a local Service Dept. depot at the Stock Exchange of four engineers who were struggling to get the system working and we took over from them. On arrival there was a flap on, a dealer had acted on a false message and bought some tens of thousand shares for which he had no client and he was stuck with them. He said he was going to sue Pye for his loss. He dropped that idea next day when he sold them at a profit. The main problem was loss of signals into the pocketphones on the Stock Exchange floor but we were not allowed onto the floor during dealing times to make tests. Eventually we were given an ultimatum to either fix it or remove it and face an enormous claim for damages.
This was very serious indeed and I reported back to Cambridge. The Engineering Director, Frank Grimm showed me a copy of his comments of two years ago when he said the job was quite rediculous [sic] and impossible, and that was the end of it. No-one wanted to know, “It’s your problem Cliff, get on with it”. So it was back to the Stock Exchange, and I demanded permission to see for myself what was actually happening by being on the floor during dealing hours, otherwise there was nothing more we could do. The Chairman gave permission, quite unprecedented and we were then able to make a more scientific approach. We stayed on that evening and with Jack Faulkener in the basement at the transmitters we measured signal strengths which were astonishingly high and with no blind spots. Jack reduced the base station transmitter power at the input to the antenna system until even with the antenna completely isolated the signals were far more than adequate. This provide the mathematicians were all wrong and we were all barking up the wrong tree. We then carried out the most elementary test of all, whilst receiving properly on a pocketphone we transmitted on other pocketphones – on other channels – at a distance of ten feet. We had found the reason for the problem, simple R/F blocking which should have been checked in the Lab. at a very early stage. That evening we modified 6
[page break]
pocketfones [sic] , fitting a 2 pf. capacitor at the receiver input and completely bipassing [sic] the transmitter output stage. They worked perfectly, and with no blocking even at 2’ distance between portables. We had found the answer and the next day, friday, [sic] we recovered all the 160 pocketfones [sic] and over the weekend modified the lot. Everything worked as it should and the customers were delighted. We had received no co-operation from anyone in Cambridge but word soon reached Cambridge that all was well. We deliberately kept them in the dark until I issued a formal report. I had of course no authority to modify equipment but deliberately flouted this on the grounds that someone had to do something constructive or we would have been thrown out of the Stock Exchange. It did not improve my popularity with the people who could influence my career.
In 1979 after being responsible for some dozens of major projects three more Field Controllers were appointed, Dave Buller Mike Simpson and Clive Otley and I felt that a change was long overdue. Relationships with the Departmental Manager and his yes-man deputy Joe were deteriorating rapidly. I transfered [sic] back to Systems Planning Dept. and overnight became a specialist in Radio Frequency propagation. I was in a small team headed by Dave Warford, and including Lewis Wicker and John Ewbank, and a trainee. Our job was to plan Radio Links and area coverage systems, within the parameters laid down by D.T.I.
At the outset my knowledge of R/F propagation (or Electromagnetic Radiation) was limited to my practical experience of what had been achieved and what had failed to work. The theoretical aspect was highly mathematical but fortunatly [sic] the subject was well written up and the principles well established. Dave Warford and Lewis Wicker were a great help in getting me onto the right lines.
A typical job would be a request from a salesman asking whether a radio link on a particular frequency band would work between two specific sites and if so what aerial height would be required? The first step would be to study the Ordnance Survey maps of 1:50000 scale, and plotting all the contours on the direct line between the points. From this information a profile of the earth’s surface would be prepared including the earth’s curvature
[inserted] To be continued [/inserted]
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[underlined] Dresden 13 – 14 February 1945 [/underlined]
At the end of January 1945, the Royal Air Force and the USAF 8th Air Force were specifically requested by the Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff to carry out heavy raids on Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig. It was not a personal decision by Sir Arthur Harris. The campaign should have begun with an American daylight raid on Dresden on February 13th, but bad weather over Europe pre-vented [sic] any American operation. It thus fell to Bomber Command to carry out the first raid on the night of February 13th. 769 Lancasters and 9 Mosquitoes were dispatched in two separate attacks on Dresden and at the same time a further 368 R.A.F aircraft attacked the synthetic oil plant at Bohlen near Leipzig. A few hours after the RAF raids 311 bombers of the 8th US Air force attacked Dresden. The following day (15 February 1945) the USAF despatched 211 bombers to bomb Dresden and a further 406 bombers on the 2nd March.
As an economic centre, Dresden ranked sixth in importance in pre-war Germany. During the war several hundred industrial plants of various sizes worked full-time in Dresden for the German War machine, Among them were such industrial giants as the world famous Zeiss-Ikon AG (Optics and cameras). This plant alongside the plant in Jena was one of the principle centres of production of field glasses for the Armies, aiming sights for the Panzers and Artillery, periscopes for U-boats, bomb and gun sights f or the Luftwaffe. Dresden was also one of the key centres of the German postal and telegraphic system and a crucial East West transit point with its 7 bridges crossing the Elbe at its widest point.
In February 1945 the war was far from over. The Western Allies had not yet crossed the Rhine, Germany still controlled extensive territories, and Bomber Command lost more than 400 bombers after Dresden. The war was at its height, the Allies were preparing for the land battles which would follow their crossing the Rhine, the Russians were poised on the Oder. This destruction of Dresden meant a considerable reduction in the effectiveness of the German Armed forces.
The Germans followed Hitler even after the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 when its horrors were broadcast to the world. They continued to follow Hitler even after they watched the thousands of living skeletons from concentration camps being herded westward in early 1945.
A quote from former POW Col H E Cook (USAAF Rtd) "on 13/14 Feb 1945 we POWs were shunted into the Dresden marshalling yards where for nearly 12 hours German troops and equipment rolled in and out of Dresden. I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars …. transporting German logistics towards the East to meet the Russians.”
[signed] Jim[?] Broom [/signed]
[page break]
[curriculum vitae page 1]
[page break]
[curriculum vitae page 2]
[page break]
[autographed photograph of Lancaster bomber]
[page break]
[history of Jack Railton and Emma Sharpe]
[page break]
[history of George Henry Watson]
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[history of Herbert Kilham]
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[history of Herbert Kilham continued]
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[photograph of male]
[page break]
[history of George Henry Watson]
[page break]
[history of Jack Railton and family]
[page break]
[history of Jack Railton and family continued]
[page break]
[history of Cliff Stark’s early years]
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[letter from LMS railway to C.W. Watson page 1]
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[letter from LMS Railway to C.W.Watson page 2]
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[letter from LMS Railway to C.W. Watson]
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
Just Another Tailend Charlie
Description
An account of the resource
A memoir written by Cliff Watson divided into 20 chapters.
The Earliest Years.
Born in Barnoldswick, then in Yorkshire, now in Lancashire in 1922. His father ran a wireless business until 1926. He describes his years at schools and a move to Norwich. The family then moved to London where he started an apprenticeship as an accountant.
Joining Up.
Cliff left the accountants to work in his father's radio business. Initially he was rejected by the RAF because he wore spectacles. He reapplied and passed various written, oral and medical examinations. Initial training was at Torquay then Newquay. Once training was complete he sailed from Greenock to South Africa.
Southern Rhodesia.
After acclimatisation in South Africa, Cliff and his colleagues were put on a sleeper train to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Training commenced on Tiger Moths but he was 'scrubbed' or rejected. He was reselected as an air gunner and completed a course in Moffat, also in South Rhodesia. Hospitality in Rhodesia and South Africa was described as generous and excellent.
Postscript.
Cliff describes a run-in with a training corporal who took a dislike to him. Despite faked evidence he proved his points and emerged with a clean record and passed his exams.
Operational Training.
In August 1942 he sailed back to the UK. He was sent to Bournemouth for assessment, then on to RAF Finningley for training then RAF Bircotes for operations. Next was a move to RAF Hixon and its satellite airfield at Seighford. He married Hilda on 1st March 1943 during a week's leave.
Second Time to Africa.
He was then sent to West Kirby, Liverpool to join a ship sailing to Algiers, for further training. Their destination became Blida where they started operations on Tunis and Monserrato airfield. They then moved to a desert strip to the east by 250 kms. From there they continued operations into Italy. Later they moved to Kairouan and continued operations into Italy, mainly Sardinia and Sicily. Each operation is described in great detail.
He has included a letter in Arabic with instructions to take the bearer to British soldiers for a reward. At the end of his tour they sailed back to Greenock.
Screened.
After some leave Cliff's next posting was at Operational Training Unit Desborough where he helped train new gunners. Due to an argument with an officer he was sent to RAF Norton for correctional training. On his return his case was reviewed and the severe reprimand was removed from his record.
Scampton.
Scampton was Cliff's next operational base then Winthorpe for its Heavy Conversion Unit on Stirlings, followed by Syerston on Lancasters then Bardney.
227 Squadron.
Cliff joined 227 squadron at Bardney. Again he covers in detail each operation. His flight was later transferred to Balderton. During this period he was awarded the DFC.
Final Leg.
His squadron was transferred to Gravely at the end of the war. He did a photography course and was transferred to Handforth. There was little work, some unpleasantness and eventually a period of extended leave, a spell at Poynton looking after prisoners then demob.
Back to Civvy Street.
Cliff returned to Whitehaven to revitalise a radio company. He gives great detail about the improvements made. Later he set up a similar enterprise at Maryport. Wired radio services were set to become less popular and financially worthwhile so seeing the writing on the wall he decided to emigrate.
Kenya.
Cliff and family flew to Nairobi, then bus to Kitale where his father was.
Hoteli King George.
Dissatisfied with life on his father's farm, Cliff took a job as a prison officer. He and his family moved to Nairobi. He relates several stories about prisoners and their better qualities but in the end he gets restless and leaves.
Civil Aviation.
Cliff joined the East African Directorate of Civil Aviation in April 1951 as a radio officer. He and his family were relocated to Mbeya, 900 miles from Nairobi. His skills as a radio engineer were well used in this remote location. After 2.5 years the family returned to UK on leave. On his return he was posted to Mwanza, also in Tanganyika. He describes in great detail a royal visit. They left on leave in June 1957 and collected a VW Beetle for transport to Kenya. Their next move was to Entebbe. This was not a happy posting and led to a transfer to Kisumu in Kenya. After three years they transferred to Nairobi to spend more time with their children, who were at boarding school there.
D.C.A. Headquarters.
His role here was Telecomms superintendent. He describes in detail the operations of his section. This was an unsettled period in Kenya with many Europeans returning home.
Dec' 61 on Leave.
Leave was spent at their house in Wales then in May 1962 Cliff returned alone to Nairobi. His family did return later. By this time his father had abandoned his farm and was building radios.
On Leave June 1964.
He bought another house in Wales and spent his leave restoring it. His wife's mother moved in. In November 1964 Cliff returned alone to Nairobi. he left within a year due to the worsening situation.
Job Hunting.
Several electronics firms were approached offering Cliff's services. He attended an interview with Pye who quickly offered him employment.
At Pye Telecommunications.
He found his colleagues unhelpful. A great deal of time was spent on a Turkish quotation that had been in progress for 10 years. A quotation to the Iranian Directorate of Civil Aviation contained complications leading to Cliff revising the quotation. Later there was a complicated installation job at the London Stock Exchange. Eventually Pye pulled out from the bid but a rival company won it, only to be taken over by Pye. At first the system was troubled but after a simple modification it worked perfectly.
Dresden 13-14 February 1945.
A one page description of the bombing of Dresden.
Curriculum Vitae.
Cliff Watson's CV, dated 1976.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cliff Watson DFC
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1989-06
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
192 typewritten sheets and photographs
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SWatsonC188489v1
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.
Great Britain
England--Huntingdon
England--Yorkshire
England--Norwich
England--London
England--Torquay
England--Newquay
England--Birkenhead
Scotland--Greenock
Sierra Leone--Freetown
South Africa--Durban
Zimbabwe--Bulawayo
South Africa--Mahikeng
Zimbabwe--Harare
Singapore
South Africa--Cape Town
England--Bournemouth
France--Paris
Algeria--Algiers
Algeria--Blida
Tunisia--Tunis
Italy--Sardinia
Italy--Cagliari
Tunisia--Bizerte
Italy--Monserrato
Italy--Decimomannu
Italy--Trapani
Italy--Palermo
Italy--Naples
Italy--Rome
Italy--Lido di Roma
Italy--Tiber River
Italy--Alghero
Italy--Castelvetrano
Italy--Pantelleria Island
Tunisia--Sūsah
Italy--Syracuse
Italy--Messina
Italy--Salerno
Italy--Bari
Italy--Comiso
Italy--Crotone
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Italy--Paola
Italy--Battipaglia
England--Desborough
Norway--Bergen
Netherlands--Walcheren
Germany--Hamburg
Norway--Oslo
Belgium--Houffalize
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Berchtesgaden
England--Whitehaven
Kenya
England--Yeovil
Kenya--Nairobi
Kenya--Kitale
Tanzania--Mbeya
Tanzania--Mwanza
Uganda--Entebbe
Kenya--Kisumu
England--Cambridge
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Düsseldorf
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Sierra Leone
France
Algeria
Tunisia
Italy
Netherlands
Germany
Norway
Poland
Belgium
Tanzania
Uganda
Iran
North Africa
Germany--Nuremberg
Iran--Tehran
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Germany--Homburg (Saarland)
Tunisia--Munastīr
Tunisia--Qayrawān
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Cumberland
England--Devon
England--Hampshire
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Somerset
England--Lancashire
Italy--Capri Island
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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Contributor
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Peter Bradbury
109 Squadron
142 Squadron
150 Squadron
1661 HCU
227 Squadron
25 OTU
30 OTU
5 Group
617 Squadron
84 OTU
9 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Albemarle
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
Beaufighter
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
C-47
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
ditching
FIDO
flight engineer
Flying Training School
Gee
ground personnel
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Hurricane
Initial Training Wing
Ju 87
Ju 88
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
mess
military discipline
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
prisoner of war
RAF Balderton
RAF Bardney
RAF Bawtry
RAF Catfoss
RAF Desborough
RAF Eastleigh
RAF Farnborough
RAF Finningley
RAF Graveley
RAF Hemswell
RAF Hixon
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Milltown
RAF Norton
RAF Scampton
RAF Seighford
RAF Strubby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wick
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Wyton
searchlight
Spitfire
sport
Stirling
Sunderland
Tiger force
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force