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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1376/24329/MFordTA1585520-170411-14.2.pdf
0acf2c189aab6d3d793b1066ff56da7a
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Title
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Ford, Terry
Ford, T
Description
An account of the resource
135 items. The collection concerns Terry Ford. He flew operations as a pilot with 75 Squadron. It contains photographs, his log book, operational maps, letters home during training, and documents including emergency drills. There are two albums of photographs, one of navigation logs, and another of target photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Julia Burke and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Ford, T
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[Drawing of an aircraft flying over a single gravestone]
The Flying Gopher
SEPTEMBER 1942
[Page break]
[Advert for the Dickson Hotel and Café]
[Advert for Rialto Billiards]
[Page break]
Officers’ Mess
Gossip
CENSORED
Space donated by …
WARREN’S DRUG STORE
1
[Page break]
[Advert for Commercial Café]
[Advert for Walker Fruit]
[Page break]
[Drawing of an aircraft flying over a single gravestone]
The Flying Gopher
The Journal of The Royal Air Force, No,41, Service Flying Training School,
Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Published by the Kind Permission of Group Captain E.C. Emmett, M.C., D.F.C.
VOL. 1. SEPTEMBER, 1942 No. 4
Editorial
[Drawing of a thoughtful gopher with writing quill at a desk]
There are some changes this month – as doubtless you have noticed. Changes both apparent and inward have affected the production of the fourth edition of your Flying Gopher. Note the cover, for instance, which we hope will have more appeal to the casual eye. It’s a plain cover, we admit, but it has caused almost as much headache as all the inside pages put together. We were loath to part with the vastness, and yet our title required more punch. There you have it, and if anyone has any further ideas, bring them along.
Turning to the first page, the reader will notice that the seed catalogue which graced that prominent place is conspicuous by its absence. Names are boring at the best of times and we are sure that the contents page was merely a waste of space – you don’t pick your articles, you read the lot, don’t you, dear readers?
Further along it is to be noticed that more variety is embodied in the make-up of the pages. Like the idea? We do wish you would let us know. There must be a good deal of improvement which can be made if everyone’s minds were turned to it instead of just the few who edit the magazine.
Finally it was suggested that while we were making sweeping changes we might as well cut out the editorial. But no, a place to let off a little steam is a good thing to have here, and anyway, by omitting the editorial we would be forced to throw away the cut of our Editor-in-Chief, the Gopher and we think it’s such a lervely picture…!
THE EDITORS.
3
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[Advert for Duncan & Russell]
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Doc Vyse Forgets
[Drawing of a doctor with stethoscope and syringe]
The title may seem a strange departure from the reminiscences which have appeared opposite the rather compromising cartoons firmly incorporated in recent issues of The Flying Gopher, but don’t let the title mislead you.
Any man who sits at a service office desk knows that a small oversight may start a long chain of complaints descending upon his head by telephone and expedite signal until nearly every section at the station is involved. So forgetfulness doesn’t pay. My experience has been an exception. I recall with chagrin the occasion some two years ago when S.M.O. Group visited the Sick Quarters I was nursing. In the excitement of night calls to the Tarmac and ministering to an exceptionally sick padre, I forgot the approaching S.M.O’s. visit, and with the result that lamp shades, overhead office shelves and doorway ledges didn’t get the extra polish they had the right to expect. After what I thought was a pretty satisfactorily conducted inspection, the S.M.O. planted himself in front of the office fire and summarized, “Well, Vyse, I can’t congratulate you… ,” an anticipatory smile must have crept over my face as he continued, “Yes, I must congratulate you on having the Filthiest Sick Quarters I have ever seen.” Incidentally I did not forget this incident when I visited this S.M.O. twelve months later when he was a patient in hospital.
However it is generally accepted that one forgets unpleasant incidents in one’s life, which probably explains the delusion under which certain people labour when they assert that their school days were the happiest in their lives. My opinion is that the honest man who is interested in his job will admit that there is no time like the present. Maybe it is difficult to count our blessings until afterwards, but I have a shrewd idea that in years to come many of us will be talking as warmly of our visit to Canada, our stay in Weyburn and our weekend visits to Regina or the Lake and certainly our friend, the Gopher, as we now fondly recall the rain of Manchester, or the rumble of London. And I don’t think the apparent change of heart will be entirely due to the pint of “old and mild” that may accompany the reminiscing.
[Signature]
5
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The R.A.F. Comes to the Wild West
Let us consider Weyburn as it was before the blue of R.A.F. uniforms began dotting the streets of our illustrious city. The burg is bereft of its young men, its old men, its middle aged men,- in fact of almost anything given to wearing long trousers, excluding masculine-minded females. Our life is a mere existence, and a drab one at that – rising in the morning to do our small and dolorous daily tasks – wandering down to the Inevitable Club for a Coke – trying to lend an appreciative ear to some slapstick comedian on the radio or a jitterbug jive – listening with longing ears to a broadcast from our boys in the services.
Then came rumours, floating here and there through the district, carried on “I-don’t-know-whether-it’s-true, -but-that’s-what-I-heard” wings, and soon spreading thick and fast in the female-filled city, to the effect that the R.A.F. were soon to fill with their charm the inconspicuous city of Weyburn. Some disbelieved, some elaborated, others patiently waited, until one day all these surmisings were resolved with the arrival of --- (number censored) “blokes” to our then under-construction airport.
Weyburn took on a new appearance, and a very distinguished R.A.F. blue one at that.
At first the Old Country brogue was like a Babylonian jargon to us, but as acquaintances grew this obstacle was overcome in the face of their charming manner, their story-telling ability, and – a characteristic common to many of them – their wavy, sleekly oiled hair.
At dances, these boys’ popularity never wanes. The uniform perhaps, so scarce during the summer months, was a call to arms – the arms of girls, ladies, women, dames, hags, sacks, and what would you. Where such vast numbers of the fairer or not-so-fair sex came from will always remain for us a sixty-four dollar question still unanswered.
However, these jives and jitterbugs, or nervous wrecks set to music, began their task of dancing with gentlemen so cultured, so well taught in the art of ballroom dancing. We found ourselves two beats ahead of our partners in a slow fox-trot, two feet lagging in their slightly quicker style of waltzing, and generally falling over ourselves when our well-meaning assailants tried their feather steps and palais glides. As time wears on, our compromise in styles is markedly successful.
To us, too, the eagle-crested chaps have brought a station band, held in very high esteem, and appreciated especially by those who know that a waltz does have a definite tempo, while a quickened step has another.
A Hostess Club has come into existence to entertain the boys, and it is unnecessary to tell of the pleasure which we derive from providing this home-away-from-home. We have enjoyed many a quiet get-together in these home-like surroundings, helped on by the smiles of the hostesses.
The bowling alleys, the theatre (or cinema), the swimming pool, the football field, each has donned a new atmosphere of bustle, excitement, and a good-time-was-had-by-all air.
For this we can thank our winged service men. They have brought home to us something of how the other half of the world lives, they have given us their companionship, they have brought with them memories of their forefathers, and for all this we salute them.
And without them too, I know that I, as well as many others in category Female No. 1 Single would now be sitting at home, knitting sweaters for Cecil.
FEMALE CITIZEN.
[Page break]
Prairie Vista
[Photograph of a serviceman sitting on a block in a field, looking pensive]
We offered prizes for pictures illustrating Weyburn, and here you see what happened. We point out that Weyburn really is a quiet place at times and that those we have chosen for this issue merely tell one all about the undulations of the scenery round about.
If those fellows laying claim to these photographs will call on the editors, they will hear something to their advantage.
[Photograph of a railway line heading to the distance]
[Photograph of Weyburn Fire Station]
7
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Gremlinology
After a variety of reports from a highly skilled assortment of u/ts now flying with “D” Flight, we record this warning to all pilots and pupes on this station. We have long suspected this, and now it has been definitely established. We can wait no longer. We must give you the terrible news.
The Gremlins are operating here on the Prairie ! ! !
Wait, reader! Don’t dispose of this with an airy shrug and turn over the page. This is pukka gen. Both the long-experienced pilots on this station will already be familiar with the Gremlin, but for the benefit of the uninitiated we may explain that gremlins are the little folks of the air who are responsible for all those minor mishaps which occur while you are airborne. They sit quietly on the mainplane for a while, and then, when you are beginning to feel that you really can fly, they open up. What do you think it is makes for a heavy landing? Your flying? Never! It is the gremlins jumping on the deck, lifting the runway up about ten feet, and then dropping it back while you are holding-off. Decent types, in fact.
We believe this is the first appearance of gremlins in this country, and at first we thought we had discovered a new species, the Prairie Gremlin, but after careful investigation, we can state with certainty that they are of the British variety, Gremlin Mk II, a very unpleasant species, stowaways on the U.S.S… It may be that the gremlins are only operating on “D” Flight kites, but we give this warning in case they should migrate to lower forms of station life.
Our first experience of the Gremlins came soon after our course had started, when we were smitten with a plague of ground-looping. This was obviously no fault of the pupes, and we realize now that the Gremlins jumped from our kites on to the runway just as we were landing, and pulled down a wing on to the tarmac, then clambering back on to the kite and chuckling with glee at the efforts of the pilot to extricate himself. It is on record that one of our instructors, particularly popular with the Gremlins, booked himself out for “Exercises 8 and 9 ground-looping”.
Only yesterday a certain sergeant from the Nav Flight, distinguished for his frequent reversion to his habits of recent Tiger days in switching off Harvards in fine pitch, was emitting a sigh of relief and surprise at making a reasonable landing when a group of gremlins planted a large area of mud dead in the path of his aircraft …
Take heed to our warning, then you fliers, and profit by our experience.
A word to our instructors. If you have noticed some slight errors on our part, landings with the undercart up, or taking off full flap, don’t blame us. It’s those Gremlins at work again. And a last word to fellow pupes. Next time you write off an aircraft, don’t let it bother you, just tell your Flight Commander it was the Gremlins, and he will give you another kite straight away. After all, what’s a few aircraft at a time like this? Think of all the Gremlins you may have written off too.
H.W.F.
[Boxed] Wanted
In this edition appear several items of interest from people outside the camp. These missives were received by the staff at various times during the last month and, since they show a remarkable insight into the life and living of No. 41 S.F.T.S., the less libellous paragraphs are littered about our pages.
The Editorial staff makes this public appeal to the writers to come out into the open and reveal their identities. We should like to express our appreciation of these witticisms and establish a closer liaison …
The anonymous contributors were all ladies of Weyburn and its surrounds … [/boxed]
[Page break]
[Advert for Gold Seal beer]
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[Advert for Kempton’s Book Store]
[Advert for Lee Sing Laundry
[Advert for Bill’s Café]
[Page break]
Romance in Regina
(A tale of the wide open spaces)
By “Prairie Oyster”
[Drawing of an airman with his arm around a pretty girl] “She thrilled as she felt a hand on her shoulder.”
WHAT’S HAPPENED UP TILL NOW:
Mary Anne Svenson is still a slip of a girl; sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Her faithful chum is Penelope Picklove – a dusky young beauty. In spite of the vivacious zest for life, and all that goes with it, shared by the two girls, they are closeted in Saint Agatha’s Convent for Good Girls Only, in Regina, Queen-of-the-Prairies. This, of course, is the biggest, smartest and best Finishing School north of the American line.
Already Dan Cupid has struck deep at Mary Anne. She is going steady with a handsome Old Country aviator called Patrick Alexander. But, alas, the girls of the Convent are only allowed one late pass each month, and then only till 22.30 – so courtships are slow. But not with our heroine, Mary Anne Svenson.
However, nothing daunting, the dashing lovers keep secret trysts. Where there’s love there’s a way. But now both are in trouble – serious trouble. Patrick is about to be court-martialled for roaring low over the terrified convent-girls, and blowing kisses to his own true-love. And now, horror of horrors, Mary Anne has been summoned by the cruel matron, Sister Immaculata, who caught her behind a bush with her dearest Patrick.
“Tomorrow,” roared the dread matron, “you will be publicly expelled. They are in need of a practitioner at the Weyburn Mental.”
NOW READ ON IMMEDIATELY, DON’T WAIT A MOMENT:
Mary Anne, looking more than ever like a scented rose at dewy dawn, felt cold all over. Creeping from the presence of the terrifying ogre-matron, she sought the faithful Penelope. Finding her peeking thru the keyhole as she left the room, she staggered sobbing on her shoulder. “Worse than death,” she whispered hoarsely.
The faithful Penelope soon soothed our crestfallen heroine with a bag of liquorice all-sorts and a story from True Confessions. As there was no school that day owing to all the instructors being on a 48, she persuaded the damp-eyed Mary Anne to take a stroll towards Regina’s famed lake. There the pair sat on the grassy sward, gazing thoughtfully into the deep watery stillness.
Meanwhile Patrick had returned to camp, his hopes of being able to be an ace with the Canadian and British airmen overseas being dashed to the ground. One thought only saved him from immediate suicide – the thought that soon he might see his beloved prairie flower once more. As he fell to pondering over the blissful tryst of the previous nite, he became less browned off and the light shone in his steel-gray eyes once again. That night he was to play center-forward for his team in the Semi-Final of the South Sask. Soccer League. As he thought of the evening soccer game (Old Country fashion), he resolved that he would leave his mark as an ace footballer, even if he was not to be an ace-aviator.
Mary Anne stared wistfully into the lake; her impending public expulsion
11
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From Saint Agatha’s, and the consequent wrath of her stern Puritanical parents, steady farmers at Expanse, Saskatchewan, cast a somber cloud over her usually sunny disposition. Like a flash the one and only solution to her troubles crossed her turbulent mind. She must escape from the toils of the dreaded Immaculata. Escape she must; and escape at once.
By the time faithful class-chums had returned to the convent at near-dusk, Mary Anne had decided on a plan of action.
At the same time, Patrick had played his last game for his station. It was a ding-dong struggle, and the pent-up spectators held their breath as his station struggled with Medicine Jaw for the lead in the S. Sask. League. The score was 1-1 when the ball came to our hero. (Square 4.) Like a second Babe Ruth he dribbled it up to the field (Old Country style) and scored a magnificent goal a second before the whistle shrilled for the end of the thrilling match. In what had been the greatest game ever seen in the three Prairie Provinces, Patrick had lead [sic] his station team to victory; repeat, victory. Everyone was happy. Even the S.W.O. smiled. The C.O. personally congratulated Patrick, as he (Patrick) was held shoulder-high by his more-than-delighted team-mates.
That night as the team was celebrating in the Y with milk-shakes and bubble-gum supplied free by the Imperial Daughters of the Empire, a lone figure made its way through the shadows surrounding St. Agathas.
Patrick, as we already well know, was a man of action. It was only the work of a trice to corner the young sport-loving C.O. after the Celebration Dinner. With the aid of many “Big Chiefs” and the thought of his timid blondie, Mary Anne, he poured out his sorrows to the understanding Group Captain. At first he, the Group Captain, was unimpressed and dwelt at some length on the importance of discipline and Section 7, Para 3, of C.A.P. 100 and the Stockbrokers Gazette. But as the merrie evening wore on he loosened up and at dawn he left Patrick promising to make him acting Pilot Officer unpaid, and furthermore promising that he would instruct his lawyer in Watrous (Prairie Regional) to buy up all the evidence against Patrick.
Meanwhile Mary Anne tramped the streets of Regina, wondering what might befall her. She stopped in at the Dominion Hotel to spend her last nickel on a cup of ersatz coffee. Staring into her coffee cup in a deep reverie, she suddenly noticed out of the corner of her eye a small placard, “Good-looking assistant wanted.” Immediately applying to the manager, she was given the job at the same pay as an ACH G/D. (K.R. & A.C.I. para. 2295).
By this time the whole convent was in an uproar. Even the calm Immaculata was in a flat-spin. Even Penelope Picklove had no idea of the whereabouts of beauteous Mary Anne. All feared the worst.
All the following day Mary Anne toiled in the Drug Store, frying eggs and cutting sandwiches. Late that evening just as she was serving a David Harum to a Lance Corporal in the S.S.R. she felt a hand on her shoulder. Her heart leapt with girlish excitement. Could it be Patrick. She was scared to look round for fear it might be some forward stranger. But it was Patrick; as handsome as ever in sky-blue with glittering brass buttons. Soon he had persuaded her to slip away from her drudgery, and to go dancing with him in the Silver Dell.
The nite, as usual, sped by blissfully for both. Finally, as dawn broke over the golden wheat fields outside of the city, Patrick took her home to the Dominion Hotel. As the couple entered thru the swing doors, Mary Anne Swooned into her lover’s arms; for who should be standing in the foyer waiting for her, but her wrathful parents, Mr. and Mrs. Svenson.
* * * *
That’s all this issue. Buy the next issue to find out where on earth the faithful Penelope has gotten herself to, and what Mr. and Mrs. Svenson have to say about their daughter’s capers.
FILLUP
You’ve heard of the airmen’s canteen,
Where they say the language’s obscene,
You’ve heard of the Corporal’s place
Their dances they say, are “Disgrace”
You’ve heard of the Sergeant’s bar,
Where they drink too much by far.
…BUT! Have you heard of the Officers Ball
When it ended up in a “free for all.”
[Page break]
[Photograph of a man in uniform on the telephone]
Key Men No.1
The Adj.
No, this is not the Mental Hospital. You must have the wrong number. … What is it? The Royal Air Force, of course … No, not the R.C.A.F. That’s something different. This is the English one. We’re all English here … Yes, that’s why I talk with a frog in my throat … What do we do? Oh, teach people to fly … No, we can’t give you a joy ride. Certainly not … No, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I must ask the Flight Sergeant … Dammit, what else do you want to know/ I’m a worried man … Do we wear spotted ties? Most certainly not.
Weyburn Newsfront
So many of our readers have written in asking us how The Flying Gopher manages to score its numerous newsbeats over its competitors that a word of explanation might be interesting.
Events move so quickly on the camp these days that every available means of communication must be utilized in order to give our readers “stop-press” news. Not trusting the telephone (the enemy has many ears), Flying Officer Rogers, in shorts, may frequently be seen rushing up the road with the latest watch tower reports, followed by a gust of censored weather.
Formerly, news from the remote reaches of the station require several weeks to reach the editors, coming by means of camel train (now discontinued since Flight Sergeant Tillman is unable to supply the beasts with retreads, sampan (requisitioned to ford the floods of last spring), dog team, and finally, pogo stick (to keep the carrier’s head above the mud on the main roads).
It is now suspected that Flying Officer Colchester will be using a carrier service to forward his news, since, whenever sports are mentioned, he invariably replies, “That’s my pigeon.”
Red-hot news is conveyed by AC. Rowing-Parker on the station fire-tender.
Corporal Rae, our postman, brings highly secretive news, but unfortunately we are unable to use any of it since all his letters are invariably addressed to someone other than the editors. He is apologetic about this, but when the hell is he going to bring something, even if it’s just a letter from the girl friend?
Finally, there is one method of transmission which is faster than Flying Officer Rogers in his shorts, Rowing-Parker on his fire-engine, AC. Harrison with his signals, faster than Aldis lamp. radio or television. The method has been perfected beyond any other system for getting news spread farthest to the mostest, and only one little kink needs to be ironed out – the method is utterly unreliable. We refer, gentlemen, to Rumour.
No, the Flying Gopher does not have to use Rumour to scoop the news-beats of the world!
13
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Society Page
Night Life on a Prairie Airport Can Be Fun
The well-sleeked hair of RAF airmen glistened brightly in the light of the photographer’s flash bulb as he took these pictures of dancers enjoying a quiet evening in the Airport “Nightclub.” Accounts Section as always appears to be well to the fore – notice “Stinker” Simmons and “Flash” Morgan – while closer scrutiny reveals that the Flights, Maintenance and Equipment Sections have all sent their representatives along.
[Photographs of a dance]
[Page break]
More Archaeology
In our last issue we deserted our serious research into the life and existence of the Men of Raf to enquire into their sports and pastimes. We now return to our examination of their Social Order, and perhaps it is time we paid a little attention to their monetary system.
It seems the Men of Raf had risen, if only a little, above the system of Barter, and each member of the community received reward for his labours. Again the characteristics of tribal life are evident and we find that the task of organizing and carrying through this complicated system of remuneration was the responsibility of the Klan of Akkownt, verily a learned Tribe.
That this was appreciated by the other Men of Raf is borne out by documents recently recovered, in particular a letter from a member of the Klan of Kwip to a brother Kwippite situate [sic] in the distant land of Ukay in which he states “verily, the Klan of Akkownt are wonderful men; strange and mystic are their ways. According to the High Chief of the House of Rek I did stand in favour with the God Kred to an amount of Fifteen Bob, but lo, and behold, now I am arrived at the Land of Wey, the High Chief Jaycee doth tell me that the God of Deb does frown on me to the extent of Two Bucks Two Bits!” Reference of this matter to the disciples of Einstein has confirmed that the problem, though abstruse, can be solved by the application of sufficient Relativity; hence the motto of the Klan of Akkownt, “relatively speaking – “.
Here is should be mentioned that the Klan of Akkownt was a divided tribe. Years and years ago the Klan of Akkownt did arrive at the strange Land which they found already in the possession of the Tribe of Kwip. Now both being learned Tribes and having great respect for each other’s qualities it was natural they should arrive at the conclusion that the life then lived by the Men of Raf was too, too simple to be continued. Hence the Heads of the two Tribes did sit in conclave for many moons, formulating mystic rites and customs to improve the social organization of the Men of Raf.
And that is where the trouble started. The Klan of Kwip were convinced that the system of Barter would prove the best. The greater part of the Klan of Akkownt were in favour of making use of a new element they had just found and which they had christened Munny. Munny’s the time they were to regret that decision.
Apparently the idea of the Klan of Kwip was to issue each man with the necessities of life in regular quantities on prescribed dates, thus: “Notice to the Men of Raf – Be it known that on the sixteenth day of the month of February, the amount of labour performed by the members of the community having at last reached that determined by the High Priest of the Klan of Kwip, there shall be issued to each man the following –
Quantity, one: Article, Paste, White, Dental, Effervescing, Airmen for the use of.
Quantity, enough: Article, Liquid Blue, Copper, Sulphate, Bath, Foot for the filling of, Airmen for the use of … - and so on.
Here the Munnyites in the Klan of Akkownt did object that the wants of each and every man did differ, and hence the system of barter would give much encouragement to the underground worshippers of the evil God Aakket, in whose honour Men would perform the rites of Swop and Swipe. But there were several of the Klan of Akkownt who were in favour and to their fellow tribesmen they became known as Kwip Akkownts, or, in times of stress, Twip Akkownts. This section it is which also imbibes vast quantities of the Dish of Vowcher. A nasty habit, and one apparently which stimulates queer dreams and ambitions.
Some members of the Klan have been known to aspire to membership of the Klan of Ayr, in the tribe of Wop, trade of Gunner, and have roamed through the mighty places of the Klan singing “Oh for the wings of … “ before being brought to account. Yet others of the Klan were taken with a strange sickness and did wander around in a dazed condition continually chanting in the manner of Kroon, which was indeed a bad thing for the men of Raf, but when these
[Page break]
15
[Advert for Burge’s Meat Market]
[Advert for Weyburn Hardwar Ltd.]
[Page break]
afflicted creatures did encounter the totem pole of the Men of Raf, known as Myke, in the presence of which their voices did acquire greater strength if not sweetness, then was it night unbearable!
May we ask our readers to avoid confusing the insignia Myke with the mystic drink Mikky. Both seem to have had an evil influence on certain sections of the Men of Raf, but I think it can be safely concluded, from the evidence we have, that Mikky had a far wider and much more general effect. (In this connection I refer you to Chapter XXXIXXVII, para 12345 in the “History and General Treatise on the Habits of the Klan of Sarj,” which informative volume I regret will not be found in the Station Library).
The crucial point in the history of this Section of the Men of Raf arises as a result of their migration from the Land of Ukay to the province of Wey in the Land of Kan. It was quite natural that they should bring with them their own Gods and Deities, one or two of whom we have mentioned above, and for quite a time they lived a peaceful and undisturbed life. Tribute was regularly paid to the Gods Kred and Deb, and many members of the various Klans had occasion to be honoured with the Noble Order of Ritoff. It was therefore a great shock to them to find that the Land of Klan was ruled by High Authority known as Cas, with its partners Afhq and Rcaf, often called the Terrible Three.
One never-to-be-forgotten day these Three did smite the Klan of Akkownt and shake them from head to foot, abolishing all their old Deities, in particular the Gods of Kred and Deb, and making it a law that all the Men of Raf, on each Festival of Pay should bow their heads to Sine; as a result of which many members of the Klans of Erk, Lak and Korp did discover with amazement that they still had knowledge of the Art of Riting, even if, in many cases, they were not fully conversant with the Art of Spelling. It is noted that rumour indicates that, consequent to the initiation of the tribute to Sine, many of the Klans had to unearth the old tribal records to discover hereby a true knowledge of the Names accorded to each member, in order that he might not commit offence in the eyes of the new Deity.
In closing it should be mentioned that the Klan of Akkownt was one of the few Klans to devote its whole energies to the task allotted to it in the social order of the Men of Raf. Each year they were allowed a period of absence wherein to recuperate from the strain of their labours, but if reports are to be believed they joyfully spurned this chance to rest, and did travel many hours to the West, to the East, to the North and to the South, only to continue the fascinating study of Figgers. There can be np doubt that Figgers are and will continue to be, the beginning and, in many cases, the end of the Klan of Akkownt.
Medical Meanderings
A man goes sick on M two five,
And feels he’s only just alive.
The M.O. looks, and hums, and he
Places the man on M. & D.
But some are not so fortunate,
Or so they think, at any rate.
Their troubles here have just begun,
They are put on forty-one.
They saunter through the office door,
And answer questions, one or more.
The twerp presiding gives a look,
And puts partics in a little book.
And then the fun begins, they say,
If M.O. looks the other way.
The orderly, with eyes agleam,
Makes him happy it may seem.
The patient, he is sore depressed,
His work on others now will rest.
They bring him coffee in a cup,
And send old Bliss to cheer him up.
So Bliss comes in with hook in hand,
When patient is in sleepy land.
He wakes him up, says “Hello mate,
What is your enlistment date?”
He then is placed on two four o,
And written in for a day or so.
But office twerp, he wants some gen,
So wakes the patient up again.
Once more he tries to go to sleep,
But office gen, it will not keep.
The office twerp comes in with mirth,
And wakes him for his date of birth.
And so he asks for his discharge,
He’d rather be with the boys at large.
He walks out of the dock with zest,
And goes to billet for a rest.
F.C.B.
17
[Page break]
Weyburn Has A Library
Certain very puzzling questions keep coming into the mind of the Librarian – questions which she can never answer. She will be most grateful for any assistance in the matter of solving these highly perplexing problems.
It might be only fair to state here that any resemblance to you or anyone else in any of the following remarks is highly coincidental.
Now, as to the questions.
Why do you airmen, or at least some of you, persist in thinking that the library is financed solely by the takings from the R.A.F.? There seems to be a common misapprehension that the librarian lurks behind the bookshelves waiting to pounce upon innocent airmen victims. If any of you, as yet uninitiated into the solemn rites of membership of the W.P.L., have heard that ugly rumour, please ignore it. It is true that certain of the fellows have been most generous in the extent of their contributions, but this is due only to the fact that they will insist on ignoring the Librarian’s grim warning that horrible penalties will be exacted from him who fails to return his books on the prescribed date.
Why, again, do some of you insist on making unpleasant insinuations as to the integrity of the staff? “Did you have a good time at the Fair with my fine money?” That sort of remark is calculated to make a more sensitive person quail.
Then why do you so consistently ignore the polite little reminder cards which are sent out? They should, of course, be regarded as a friendly gesture, for their sole purpose is to prevent the fines from mounting higher and higher. Still, there is always the fear lurking at the back of our minds that someone may try to abscond with a book, which of course would lead to serious repercussions, the extent of which is unpredictable. Certainly it would bring down the wrath of the Librarian on the heads of the offenders, and that wrath is indeed a great wrath.
And this brings us to the ultimate Why, the crux of all our Whying. Why don’t you bring your books back on the due date? Life would be so simple if only you would look at the date stamped on your card in the back of the book.
Last of all, why don’t more of you use the Weyburn Public Library? If anything you have read in the above tends to frighten you away, please ignore it. We really do like to do business with the R.A.F.
G.N.G.
Archimedes
look forsooth
see a youth
writing a letter to his love
can’t find a rime
spent lots of time
can’t find a rime
for amelia
goes to bed
with aching head
inspiration
light
see the officer of the law
rat-a-tat at the door
see the judge
we must stop these violations
of the blackout regulations
ten pounds
says the judge
pays the fine
pleasure’s mine
because i’ve found the rime
i wanted all the time
listen
or fair and beautiful amelia
i like you better than celia
eureka
eureka
wedding bells
F.R.S.
[Page break]
[Drawing of a beautiful girl on the telephone] “But mother, the Airman here says it’s not true about those gooseberry bushes.”
19
[Page break]
The Padre Ponders
[Photograph of a padre and two women sitting]
“Padre – you’re posted to Weyburn”
Weyburn! For was not Weyburn in the district in which I had ministered as a civilian priest of the Church of England some few years ago; a district with headquarters at Milestone?
I remember arriving in that town, which has shown some excellent hospitality to the men of this Station, and wondering how anyone could exist, let alone live, in such a desolate and flat district. But, as the months passed by, I realized that “man does not live by bread alone.” For the prairie, so drought stricken, taught me that common hardship and suffering can bring out the finest qualities in man. The people found great joy in that which is so necessary to-day, e.g., co-operation. Co-operation with God; and co-operation with our fellow-men.
I am once again the district and I am pleased to be here at such an interesting stage in the development of 41 S.F.T.S. Just as in civilian life, so in Service life there must be that oblation of self to God and to the welfare of our fellow-man if we are to possess a truly happy Station. Ways and means are daily discussed and are being put into operation to attain this end. The prairie will not look half so grim, especially in the winter, if we each give whatever talents we possess to the Station, both spiritual and social.
I leave you with a thought – “The people who make no roads are ruled out from intelligent participation on the world’s brotherhood.”
Sincerely,
THE PADRE.
The Padre Acts
A play which has enjoyed a long run at the Old Drury Theatre in London, must possess outstanding qualities of entertainment. Such a play is “French Leave,” to be produced in the near future by F/Lt. Clarke (Chaplain).
Casting is not yet completed for this hilarious three-act comedy, but we have a spot of news for you:
Inside information: The female parts will NOT Be taken by hairy-legged Airmen, but by members of the fairer sex from Weyburn. The cast will be announced later. It’s anyone’s guess.
“French Leave” is a good story, well written in the dramatic sense. Our director has had considerable experience, with the added advantage of having already produced this play at Carberry and Winnipeg.
Here is an opportunity to co-operate in a worth-while venture. The padre is looking for volunteers, for acting parts and to assist in the stage production. Let’s make a go of this!
20
[Page break]
[Advert for Fred Barber’s Man Shop]
[Advert for Anderson’s Café]
21
Bus Ride
I had just received my ticket from the conductor as the bus stopped at Marble Arch. The usual mixed crowd of London bus passengers jostled each other on. It was then I noticed her … she sat directly opposite, just inside the bus where the seats face each other. I couldn’t believe it – a glance told me she also recognised, but could no more understand than I. She was exactly the same, tall, fair, with that expression of determination which camouflaged a certain nervousness; the very same expression that had caused me to look twice on the night of March 8th, 1941, when I first met her in a little café in Old Compton Street. I had gone to the café to rest and regain control of my distressed mind for I had been dragging people out of the Café de Paris, … the aftermath of a direct hit.
It all came back to me, as clearly as if it had been yesterday. I had sat smoking in that little café, endeavouring to compose myself, for I was badly shaken; blood and dead bodies had no part in my life previously. It was then I saw her for the first time. She was just the same, tall and fair with that same expression which was so attractive and yet pathetic. She brought me a coffee and withdrew quickly behind the counter. I was fascinated, not so much by her beauty, for indeed she was beautiful, but by this unique expression; I was unable to take my eyes off her until forced by the counter which rose some six feet in the air, and I lost sight of her, the counter, and everything, as I sailed through a plywood window, which would have been glass but for a previous raid.
Slowly human life took shape again, and I realised someone was speaking to me in a strained, pathetic voice …no! it wasn’t to me for my name is not David. Then full realisation came to me, as at the same time a gas main ignited and the whole scene was made visibly clear. There she was, lying on a stretcher not two feet away from me, and as I saw her I was mentally aware that I was only shaken, but she was obviously badly injured. Almost inaudibly she commenced to speak, and then the words became clearer: “David, David, forgive me, kiss me and say you forgive.” Some kind of impulse made me, forced me to comply with her wishes …
As I drew my face away from her, I was touched on the shoulder by someone standing at my side, and a masculine voice said, “Your wife? I’m sorry.” “No,” I replied. “Fiancee?” “Yes,” I lied, for then I felt guilty of my actions. “Too bad,” he said, and then added, as if in consolation, “There’s no pain.” During this short conversation my eyes had not left her face, which was now beautiful in the full sense of the word; for her smile was one of supreme happiness. I took her hand in mine to comfort her and as I did so I knew she was no longer with me …
…And yet here she was in the seat opposite, reading the advertisements above my head.
P.D.C.
The New Arrival
Squadron Leader “A” was browned off. He had waited twenty minutes for a taxi, and he was particularly keen to get back to the mess … someone had had a baby or something, and he was licking his lips in anticipation. Eventually the taxi came, and, seated beneath three or four erks, he travelled back to camp. “Never again,” he muttered as he extricated himself from the taxi at the camp gates, and fumbled for his share of the dollar. “Never again,” he muttered when he hurried into the Mess to find the celebrations at an end. It might be a long time till someone else had a baby, and his throat was very dry. What with the R.C.A.F. accounting procedure, and the S.A.O. a bit peeved about the tire shortage, you had to go a bit carefully these days.
“And you really do recommend this one?” “Yes, sir, I am sure this specimen will give you every satisfaction.” “Right, I’ll take it. Wrap it up, will you?”
And lo and behold a beautiful yellow bus at the camp gates, straight from the Army and Navy Store at Regina, wherein we travel to and from the city at regular hours and in considerable comfort!
Thank you Squadron Leader “A”!
[Page break]
[Advert for McKinnons]
23
[Page break]
Legal Laugh
Maintains Our Resident Attorney
Everyone loves a legal story. The judge who innocently asks “What is nagging?” never fails to stimulate us. The smart-tongued witness, standing up to counsel, always gives us joy. The obstinate client, the advice of whose solicitor was taken much too late for it to have been any value, for ever brags about the futility of consulting lawyers on commercial matters. Yet lawyers flourish.
The layman, primed by his daily paper with full details of the latest murder, would feel disillusioned if he knew how little most solicitors know, or even care, about such matters. But the layman listens attentively to all that falls from any lawyer’s mouth concerning it, for all men love to see behind the scenes. The trappings of the law can thrill, and they who put them on command respect. So much for lawyers in real life. And when we turn to fiction we still find that, on the whole, a lawyer’s ways are stern.
Gray hairs, ill-fitting for a fool, all lawyers long for. Proudly, at thirty, bowler-hatted, I had mine. Man thought me forty-five; at least I hoped so. For the lawyer, forty-five seemed to me to be a very desirable age, for one is then old enough to have experienced everything, but not too old to like to do new things.
Law in the Services usually concerns punishment. But a solicitor in general practice spends his time dealing with problems and people, arising out of every conceivable combination of curious circumstances, and living in almost every class of society. It was only comparatively lately that I began to appreciate the never-ending interest which can, at any moment of the day, be found in simply carrying out one’s work as a solicitor.
I took up Law as a sedative, after War Flying. In the whole of my peace-time career, I never handled any case concerned with aviation. The nearest approach was when a lady consulted me about the arrangement for her approaching marriage. She believed that her intended husband had an ample fortune. Ought she to insist that substantial trust funds be settled upon her, prior to surrendering herself?
I promised to look into the matter. It was the Wednesday before Easter.
Late next afternoon I wired to her as follows: “Your fiancée ex-R.A.F. Officer. Exercise extreme caution.”
P.R.
Ich Dien
This is the tale of AC. Sprog, who sailed the mighty seas.
He slept in ancient blankets which scratched furrows in his knees;
His collar was as black as ink, he smelt like ancient cheese –
He was serving his country and his King.
Early in the morning you would find him at the rail,
A-feeding if the fishes, and at evening without fail
You would find him at the rail again, in sunshine, wind or hail,
Nobly serving his country and his King.
They set him peeling onions, they sent him up to guard
The upper deck, though the wind was blowing very hard,
And Sprog obeyed them gladly, and his chest stuck out a yard,
For he knew he was serving his country and his King.
Sometime Sprog would peep inside the Sergeant’s Mess, and there
He would contemplate the scene of ease, and sigh and tear his hair,
To think how distant was the date when he would take his share
In such noble, glorious service of his country and his King.
- SIGMA.
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[Page break]
True Yarn
As everyone knows, when the Royal Air Force began to expand in 1938 hundreds of ex-officers were given commissions and posted to ground jobs.
And so, in a burst of zeal, and confident that a large-sized war was in the offing, Peter Robinson, who had served in the 1914-1918 mess as a commissioned officer in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, and later in the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force, offered his services, in September, 1938, to the Air Ministry.
In due course, our “hero” was summoned to Adastral House to appear before a Selection Board and about three weeks later he received a short note to the effect that he had “been found fit for employment.”
And so, Robinson, who was running quite a tidy business, handed over to his wife and prepared to get back into uniform.
After a lapse of some weeks, he was ordered to report to Cardington for a Balloon Course and so for ten very weary weeks, poor Robinson pulled balloons about, drove lorries and winches, climbed all over balloons, inside and out, and finally passed the examinations with flying colours. In his innocence, Robinson thought he would then be posted as a Balloon Officer, but oh no! He was sent to a brand new Station, not nearly completed, as Adjutant! At least, he did all the work of and Adjutant but was only graded and paid as an Assistant Adjutant, since in those far-off piping times of peace, on a Station which had a Squadron Leader Admin, the establishment allowed an Assistant Adjutant only.
His first office was a contractor’s hut and as the buildings were completed, the Station Headquarters successively occupied an N.C.O.’s bunk in a barrack hut, a portion of the Seregant’s [sic] Mess, the Station Sick Quarters and on a never-to-be-forgotten day in July 1939, moved into the Station Headquarters building with all his staff, i.e., three clerks, G.D., two civilians and a runner.
During his trekking period, Robinson had been sent to Rollestone to attend the Anti-Gas Course and duly completed a very pleasant three weeks. On his return to his Unit he became Station Anti-Gas Officer, and by the outbreak of war, he was Adjutant, Assistant Adjutant, Anti-Gas Officer, Officer i/c M.T., Officer i/c Sergeants’ Mess, Messing Officer, Fire Officer, and Code and Cypher Officer. Oh yes, he had done half an hour’s course on Codes and Cyphers. On the 3rd September, 1939, he shed most of his jobs and for months he did nothing but test respirators and bob in and out of a gas chamber.
Then, the practical joke department got busy, and he was posted to a Group Headquarters in Scotland as Armament Officer, his sole qualifications being the fact that he knew the difference between a Vickers and a Lewis gun. And so he spent many months in Bonnie Scotland, very happy since he was out of doors most of the time, but scared stiff that his A.O.C. would find out his total lack of knowledge of all the thousand and one gadgets which constitute “Armament”.
Our Robinson was then bold enough to apply for an Armament Course – after ten months in Scotland – and the practical joke department at the Air Ministry stirred themselves again and sent him on the Junior Administrative Course at Loughborough! Another happy three weeks followed with lots of golf and visits to that very nice hostelry at Quoon, and then another branch of the practical joke department woke up and made him a Squadron Leader in Command of a Training Wing not a hundred miles from Warrington.
And so we leave him. By this time I expect he is either an Accountant Officer, or perhaps an Equipment Wallah.
E.T.
MORE FILLUPS
A Squadron Leader we’ve christened chips,
Spends hours in workshops making bits,
He built himself a bedside table,
Then found he was so very able,
He started on a set of chairs,
When thro’ the window C.O. stares.
He quickly donned an airman’s tunic,
And looked just like the Station Eunuch.
25
[Page break]
[Advert for Forteath Cabins]
[Advert for Four Star Taxi]
[Advert for Weyburn Bottling Works]
[Advert for Lee Lang Laundry]
[Page break]
Wakee Wakee
The gentle click of a switch, then a scream of WAKEE! WAKEE! from an enraged Sergeant. Some of us fall out of bed in surprise, others with lower numbers hardly stir. GETOUTAVIT! and with a bellow of rage the Sergeant hurls someone out of bed, a top bunk. Then with a crash of the door which knocks off half of the clothes off their pegs and breaks two lamp bulbs, he is gone. Muttering curses of “He ought to be shot!” everyone scrambles back to bed, and within five minutes if soring peacefully …Another day is dawning.
Time sweeps by, and five minutes before the end of breakfast some early worm yells “EGGS.” With a mighty shout and a “Why didn’t some fool wake us?” we are up and charging at the door. The last but one slams it. It is anticipated that, on his discharge some months hence, the last one will be repatriated. With mugs flying, we dive into the Cookhouse and race up to the counter. Some little squirt a foot in front of us moves off to a table with the last egg. There is a muttered rumble of “Who said ‘EGGS’?” from the corporal i.c., and we followed him back to our stye, hungry, dirty and discontented, … ready for sleep.
[Drawing of a sign with Corporal Stripes on]
Corporals’ Club Comments
This month we cannot report the appropriation of animals by club members. The billiard table has not yet arrived and there is really a pronounced lull on the twin striped front. The “last on the right” is a very staid and stolid residence these days. Of course it is summer and apart from fellows going up there to visit the canteen section they appear to be preferring the great open spaces to the confines of a club room. But, in the words of George Formby “winter drawers on” and it is expected that great things will come of our club in the winter months.
There is one lecture which is outstanding in its popularity – the fortnightly dance. That is by now quite an institution both on the camp and down town – even though we do say it ourselves – and far from the cautious preparations which preceded initial functions they now more or less “run themselves.” – We have quite good numbers up there.
It is not the intention of the writer to name the comings and goings of members of the Corporals’ Club during the last month, suffice it that we wish departing members luck in their new abodes and extend a welcome to the several who have either been made up” [sic] or arrived on the Unit since the last publication.
Of Much Interest
The competition for a station motto has been won by the Padre for the following:
“Gopheres magnopere gopherimus.” (“We gopher the gophers in a big way”).
Who was the U-T pilot who thought that the so much talked about second front was something out of a Met. report?
Flight Sergeant Snooks, a member of the R.A.F. No. 41 Service Training School at Weyburn has been transferred to Ottawa. He was a most popular member of the station, and he will be missed by both his friends, who will also have missed their promotion. In anticipation of his posting he has recently been passing babies.
27
[Page break]
[Drawing of a sign with Sergeant stripes on]
Sergeants’ Mess Gen.
Farewell to W.O. (Columbus) Grundy and W.O. (Sebastian) Earp who having been posted left Navigation Flight after a short spell on “binding” Cross Countries. We shall miss these corpulent and genial pilots.
Surprise item of the month is the excellent piano playing of W.O. Campbell who distinguished himself by joining Sgt. Ryckman in Duets after the Officers v. Sergeants Soccer Match. As regards the latter, the least said the soonest mended. We are still wondering how the Officers managed to beat us the first time …
Sgt. Johnny Love has now settled down in Dauphin, and elsewhere in the “Gopher” you will read of the romance between ex-Sgt. “Jock” Leeming and Sgt. Love’s sister. Sort of Love is the sweetest thing.
Back from a hectic leave is Sgt. Hal Jones, who managed to take in New York and Chicago, whilst Sgt. Norman has also returned from a spell in Detroit.
They both say that it is swell to get back to the peaceful life on the prairies. I know that Sgt. Tom Riby definitely boobed in Toronto; opinion is, he thought that the parade was in honour of the select company present.
How are the queer people in Port Hope? We ask of W.O. Kavanagh.
Sgt. “Torchy” McCartney has resigned his post as frog trainer, and he is still looking for the infant that strayed in the Quarters the other day.
Will someone tell us why Sgt. “Johnnie” Johnson didn’t send last month’s issue of the “Gopher” home, and who was that Squadron Leader who wrote from Ontario asking awkward questions?
Sgt. Tom Collinson, a stalwart of the Soccer Team, has now passed his course and we lose yet another fine player. We wish Tom good luck.
F/Sgt. Ayres made a fine job of the drumming in the Station Orchestra recently when he walked into the show at the last moment and took over in his usual competent manner.
Surprise for lots of airmen when they saw the S.W.O., W.O. Mallinson, playing soccer. He played a straight-forward game and shook the troops with his speed.
Lost … Sgt. Richardson.
We would like to see Sgt. Mays dancing the Tango, and Sgt. Collick leading a Male Voice Choir …
That’s all…
Correspondence
Sir,
I have never been wont to complain, but more silence would drive me insane. I received my last wash looking all clean and posh, but I found to my sorrow when I came on the morrow to undo the package to dig from the wreckage, some odourless footwear, the good lady had put there some thick strands of cotton, which I thought was rotten.
Now, dear Mrs. Este, please do not get testy when I thus decry the way that you tie my gent’s natty half hose (with holes in the toes) with knottings divine in pieces of twine. I know all socks shrink when given a drink (a thing which your daughter blames on Weyburn water), and its quite comme il faut for only one toe to find room to arrive where there used to be five.
But although cogitation makes this explanation seem fairly near truth, I still hold, forsooth, that to spend hours just sitting and merely unknitting isn’t really much fun, and, in fact, Isn’t done.
That’s all there is to it. Mrs. E, please don’t do it.
In deepest distress,
Yours, etc.,
P.
[Page break]
Who’s Who?
WHO IS:
The fair corporal who “gives out” in a deep bass voice an accompaniment to a certain group of singers scheduled to meet at regular intervals on the corner of main street? He must have thought they needed some moral support to be so willing to join their throng.
WHO IS:
The party of four that awakened the neighbourhood from a very peaceful snore at the unoriginal hour of 1.30 a.m. by kicking cans down one of the main streets of the town. Of course, we don’t mind them having their fun but we hope that next time they pick a more respectable hour.
WHO IS:
The P.O. now becoming very interested in milking machines. Couldn’t be he’s taking up farming as a sideline. Oh, no!
WHO IS:
The airmen besides Stinky Miller who believe in sprinkling all the fair roses of the town with Ben Hur or Sweet Pea perfume.
WHO IS:
The airman who refused to pay the charges on the hair restorer that came C.O.D. Better try “Neet,” it works much better.
WHO IS:
The Corporal who instead of exiting a taxi via the door, tried “going out” the windshield? Thinks it’s not such a good idea after all.
WHO IS:
The LAC. “Bobbie” who for the love of – well not the camp, - goes on Jankers, not once but twice in the past three weeks.
WHO IS:
The R.A.F. chap who might like to submit an ad similar to the one below:
FOR SALE: Lines: - fish and otherwise, complete with tackle of pukka gen. Reason: Complications. Explanation given below.
After telling my friend of my prospective marriage to an out of town girl, date, Wed., Spet.2 this friend promptly sent a telegram of congratulations to the address and on date given, much to the surprise of the addressee who was still to be told of the event.
Moral: No more lines complete with gen to be sold, lent or given.
WHO IS:
The airman who asked a young lady at the dance if she had any spare tires. The fair femme now wonders if he had a car or if he just had a flat tire.
WHO IS:
The fellow who, at the corner of main street, tried to ride a borrowed bike but was unsuccessful. Reason: Only one pedal. We know!
THE EYES AND EARS OF WEYBURN
The above from a Weyburn Wag. – Ed.
Works and Bricks
If you want a gadget fixed
Just telephone to Works and Bricks.
You’ll hear a voice, so gentle fair,
But don’t forget what needs repair.
Just exercise your vocal organ,
And ask the girl for FO. Morgan.
Then if you’re lucky and he’s out,
To her your soul you may pour out.
29
[Page break]
[Drawing of a chequered flag] Flight Notes
B
Until now, “B” Flight has been inarticulate. The outstanding qualities associated with us have been strength and silence, coupled with an efficiency which has been reflected only in our football, the success of which, we hope, has produced apprehension in “H” Flight. Admittedly we share the personnel of the team with “A” Flight, but they can safely be left to shoot their own lines.
However, we have now swallowed our dislike of the effete practice of literature, and have decided that a certain amount of self-advertisement is necessary, as we have imported at no cost whatever a tame scribe from “C” Flight, who had endured him just as long as was humanly possible. So that until we too get tired of him, the evil chuckles of Sgt. James will echo through the pages of the “Gopher,” as well as striking terror into the instructors’ hearts, and Cpl. Westwood’s pipe will smell foully to a larger audience.
The activities of the permanent members of the flight have included latterly the absorption in a competitive spirit of a certain about of liquid in connection with the passing of No. 54 Course; a detailed account of proceedings would be revealing, if not edifying. We are, however, not prepared to go into the matter in detail, but we will add that the occasion was one of celebration too, for the promotion of “the Boss” to the exalted rank of Flight Lieutenant, and the rapid slide through the ranks of the warrant officers made by P.O. Dixon, and we pause for a moment to wonder if Tubby Dyson’s inactivity on the football field was occasioned by his saving himself for the “do.”
Life has been made more interesting by the pleasantly cosmopolitan character of No. 62 course, and by the vagaries of the new inter-com. We are looking forward to forced landings, too, for by the time we start teaching them, we should be able to tell the direction of the wind by means of the rippling of the grass in the garden. Unfortunately, Sgt. Dakeynes’ hair will not serve to usual purpose in that connection, as it was cut, according to schedule, at the end of the last course.
P.S. We train only Flight Commanders for the U.S. Army Air Corps.
D
Yes, shamefacedly we admit it, we were too lazy before to write in the “Flying Gopher.” But now pangs of remorse smite us in the breast, and we borrow a pen and set to work.
Suggestions are pouring in from all sides, but above all the tumultuous shouting, the voice of AC “Taffy” Tomlins bursts upon the ear drums, “Tell ‘em about our Soccer team.”
At this point a general argument starts, led as usual by “Taffy” and involving “Will” Harris, “Ted” Horrocks and “Sniffy,” Eventually we arrive at the conclusion that, up to the time of writing, we have a good and promising team, bolstered up by members of 58 Course (loud cheers from the end bed), and we are expecting some good results. To aid us in our fight we now go about our daily tasks wearing furious scowls and practicing blood curling oaths. We notice that, since his kick on the shin whilst playing against the cookhouse team, Ted Horrocks has acquired strong views on Soccer, and for the next few minutes we are treat-
30
[Page break]
ed to a general discourse on players, referees, football fields and spectators. The Greeks had no word for it, but Ted has, and we listen admiringly.
We take this opportunity of congratulating Cpl. Ward on his promotion and his wife on her safe crossing. We hope Mrs. Ward’s crossing was better than ours.
Since the arrival of the SE.s life has been fairly easy compared to the days of the old Annie and we have even had a bang at gardening. We planned a garden comprising a border of flowers surrounding a swimming pool, to be used as a safe retreat from the “skeeters” in the summer and converted to an ice rink in the winter. After reviewing the amount of ground to be dug to a depth of six feet we hastily amended the plans and substituted a goldfish pond. But when the first three spadefulls had been dug up, all ideas of pools were promptly forgotten.
So now we have just a plain garden with plenty of grass seed on it, and we hope, some flowers. The flowers have yet to make their debut and the lawn rather resembles Smiffy’s chin … but we live in hopes.
F
We welcome Flying Officer Whiteside who succeeds Ft.Lt. Henley as Flight Commander, and Flight Sergt Hudson who takes over from Flight Sergt. Brockington, who is sweating (and how!). We wonder whether Brock also handed over his address book together with “all relevant publications.”
We are now in the market for a large lawn mower as the lawn is becoming positively jungle-like. For a small fee we may even consider allowing personnel from other Sections to come and sunbathe.
We would like to ask Cpl. Lothario of the Other Flight on this side of the hangar to tell his lady friends his working hours. Of course, we are always willing to lend a helping hand in such a deserving cause, but it becomes rather difficult at times to explain that the Corporal isn’t in the hangar and really we don’t know WHERE he is.
We have discovered a new type of Gremlin. To the uninitiated we might explain that a Gremlin is a being which haunts the upper reached of the atmosphere and causes all the little troubles for which pilots are not responsible.
The new branch of the family amuses itself by breaking Harvard windows, and we never can nail the blighters for a report.
- F.T.R.
H
We must apologise for our failure to write any notes last month, but must plead pressure of work in trying to attain the elusive line and get 52 course out on time. The high pressure work necessary is best illustrated by a pupil’s remark to the Flight Commander when asked if he was on the night flying programme. “I am never on the ground long enough to read the notices.”
Another amusing episode occurred at dawn one morning when the kites were sent for just one more circuit, and the A.C.P. noticed one rush down to the Christmas tree, do a circuit of 800 ft. and come into land before anyone else had taken off. Deciding to teach him a lesson, he was given a red, which was followed by a circuit at 500 ft. so another red. Afterwards the conversation went something like this: “What was the big idea?” “I only had 10 gallons left.” “Well why didn’t you blind your rear lights?” “The battery was flat and the nav. lights weren’t on.” “Anything else wrong?” “The flaps would only come down 20 degrees and there was a mag. drop,” Wonderful crates the old Annies.
Having got them away to time, our instructors had to learn all the vices of the new “buzz- boxes” that were to replace our trusted (?) twins, during which time “G” flight undertook to get our pupils solo. Many thanks to you, as you probably saved us a few ground loops.
Don’t our pupils appreciate the sterling qualities of our Flight Commander? They make frequent efforts to blow him out of his office in a shower of dirt, and though the voluntary contribution is stepped up each week they still find it worthwhile.
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[Advert for Club Café]
[Advert for Weyburn Motors]
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One day when the “coke” flag was put up, a questionnaire elucidated the statements that extra speed was used on the approach on a windy day so that you got to the aerodrome more quickly, and in a glide approach so that the plane descended at a reasonable angle and didn’t just float around.
I wonder if “F” flight are still complacent on the success of their soccer team. They certainly are a lucky side, fancy getting three goals against us.
X
What a busy month it has been. Airmen, pupils – even instructors have de-digitised. “We MUST finish before the snow comes” … “The Flight will be a credit to the Station” … “Do you think HE will notice it?” are among the many remarks overheard in the crew room. The identity of “HE” can only be surmised from the hushed tones in which the word is uttered. The product of the proverbial bull has been widely sought after to hasten results. F-Lt. Goon gazed from his window between cups of tea and looks for people running up in front of “My Office,” his little-tin-box in his hand jiggling reminiscently. A certain “Middleton” has been discussed with great reverence, but perusal of nominal rolls has failed to reveal the Section honoured by his presence. You may be under the impression that we are striving to get the course out ahead of time – but have I mentioned flying? A mere detail. We MUST finish the garden first!
- L.W.
G.I.S. Jottings
Amongst one of the periodic showers of paper delivered to the G.I.S. the other day was a memo which commenced with those all too familiar words “Your contribution is now due.” This was duly passed to those who sit in judgement and authority and finally found its way back to me endorsed “Pass to Stooge for action.” Same old story – voluntary compulsion!
There is, of course, little to report. There never is. Pupils come and P-Os and Sergeants go. I may even make an odious comparison by saying that the G.I.S. may be likened to a sausage machine. True it is that mysterious ingredients are put in! The output in our case consists of a very fine line of Pilots duly burnished by Flying Wing! To a small cog in the machine it is all very inspiring.
Highlight of the month must be the sudden removal of our N.C.O. Discip. Unlike his Irish predecessor he did not return to the Emerald Isle although he is much nearer to it than he was. We regret that we are a little extravagant on Discips and will, in future try to make them last a little longer at least.
No. 56 Course are in the process of “Passing Out.” Many of them passed out quite early on and the remainder are wondering how “So few can repay so many.” The passing out celebration is to be held in the privacy of the telephone pay station in the Y.M.C.A. Our heartiest congratulations go to this course who may consider themselves the most select course we have yet had.
The phrase “What’s Cooking” really does mean something to us. One of our busy Navigators now does a little plotting on the Diet Sheet. It is extremely interesting to be right in the “gen” and to know what one HAD for dinner.
One of the Armament Instructors recently returned from an aircraft recognition course. He has since spent hours pinning up posters on the walls of the entire building, missing not even the most unusual places. We hope that these posters will be of great INSTRUCTIONAL value.
The Airframes and Engines instructor recently returned from Detroit. He said that he had had little sleep during his stay. Asked why this was so he replied in his broad Scots accent that he was afraid of missing something.
At the time of writing, Sgt. “Hal” Jones id still on his official visit over the border. Someone said that his visit was in connection with lion shooting. We THINK they said “lion.”
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[Advert for Charnell Studio]
[Advert for Expert Dry Cleaners]
[Advert for The Sun Café]
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Lease-Lend Dept.
Accts. Forwarded - - - Transition Period
One fine summer morning, as is not his wont, the writer awoke when the sun’s rays were at a slant, and finding the desire for slumber had mysteriously disappeared, he sought to occupy his mind usefully, with what success the read [sic] may judge thereafter.
In the August issue, brief reference was made to the far-reaching and paper-consuming changes recently made in Accounts procedure. For example, if AC. 1 Plonk’s wife in the far-off Motherland presents his father with a grandson, or LAC. Budd blossoms forth as P/O. Prairie Flower, extra shipping space is needed to convey the required forms so diligently prepared by our now so-bumff-hating stooges.
Prior to and during the transition stages the contents of Big Chief Two-and-a -half-ringer Culbertson’s in-tray assumed abnormal proportions. Thereafter it became at times almost the hourly channel of communication of fresh “gen” and amendments are still coming in. How familiar became the words, “Coming over! More Bumff! No Bumff!” accompanied by some expletives suited to the occasion. Little Chief Where’s-it-laid-down’s desk shuddered at the impact, ink splashing right and left as the tomes landed with a thud – a dull, resounding thud, somehow suggestive of impending overtime. The thud usually caused the lighting system to fail, heralded by weird and wonderful noises from the Telephone Exchange opposite.
While the Big Chief consumed these bulky products – perhaps indigestion resulted and might explain certain remarks on messing – the dupe and tripe copies were passed by the most direct manner as described above, to Little-Chief-Stooge. Then, unless they had already swiped a copy, to either Chiefie A.M.Os., who, like the mosquitoes, gets results. Uncrowned-Three-Striper Pass-the-Buckman, or Sergeant Acquaintance Roll(ey) for information, consumption, necessary action, and onward transmission to the Lesser Stooges who do the donkey-work.
The “New Order” requires that the Stooge A.O., now keeper of the moneybags, shall be referred to as the “Responsible A.O.” Any reflection on the character of previous holders of the money-bags in hereby refuted. The possibility of more time being available for Bridge at first appeared, but such fond hopes have long since been dismissed.
Odd Points
Little-Chief-Stooge Where’s-it-Laid-Down’s secret desire is to let all personnel on the station help themselves to the money-bags on pay-day. What’s his size in bowler hats? They never did suit him, anyway, and it is thought that he would lose his “responsibility,” so perhaps he must curb his altruistic desires after all.
After the loss of the Accounts Sections’ laundry, the idea of having a washing line of our own was mooted. It had, however, to be abandoned, because the AC1. Sergeant-Air-Gunner shot a line which was unsuitable for the purpose.
We hear of a certain Corporal who will insist on bursting forth with “Deep in the Heart of Texas” at the slightest provocation. Why don’t the Corporals, with their wealth of musical talent, teach him at least one other song? – or perhaps they would prefer him to forget the one he HAS learned? At the time of writing, we await the return of another Corporal from his trek down south. Gosh! Supposing HE returns with a “Deep in the Heart of” complex! ‘Orrid thought!
-v-
LOST – Ronson Lighter. Engraved. “Bill from Laura, 22-9-41.” Valued as a keepsake. Finder please return to Mrs. V.M. Tomlinson, Weyburn. Reward.
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Minor Bottlenecks
Having a few spare moments from the onerous task of keeping A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and Navigation flight aircraft serviceable, (Why the ‘ell can’t they do it themselves or are they just too busy gardening?) we have decided to contribute a few notes to the Station Magazine.
We welcome Sergeant Haskell to our Section; he is being initiated into the skilful art of “Where can I get one” by our inimitable “Sandy.”
We have noticed that a certain Senior N.C.O. has been very busy the last few days – they say e has changed his name to “One Splice.”
Is it true that a certain red headed Fitter is going to move his kit into Weyburn?
A few of our personnel spend their weekends on farms in the district – are they getting the harvest in or do they just Mou-land?
Our F-Sgt. Has joined the happy band of the Pensioner brigade and, although he despises crutches, he is pretty good on stilts.
Upon reading the August issue of the Flying Gopher, it was noticed that the Minors football team had been omitted from the League table. Why, Ed? We are not as bad as that – or are we? Congratulations to LAC. Williams in making the Station Soccer team – nice work “Ginger.”
Ed. – Error regretted.
Maintenance Changes
In the Orderly Room, Sergt. Jack Lloyd has taken over the duties of F-Sgt. “Ginger” Ayres, the latter as Chief Clerk now occupying that worthy seat in the Holiest of Holies – Station Headquarters.
Providing there is an ample supply of “FLYded,” the new Sergeant is determined to see that no flies are observed in his Orderly Room.
He wants to know if it is true F-Sgt. Ayres shouted “Come in”, to a knocking on the door last winter, and a bear nosed its way into the office.
The roster for Duty Crash N.C.O. now includes the names of three new arrivals. Also one additional Flight Sergeant who will no longer chuckle gleefully when the list next appears in D.R.O’s. Allowing for leave and other contingencies, this duty should permit the lady friend to take a night off once in every three weeks.
More Accts. Sec.
Squadron Leader name of Cox
Keeps all our money in a box.
Credits he is loath to pay,
Even on our “Eagle” day.
What’s he do with all our dough?
That’s what we all want to know.
Says our credits go to blighty,
His girl’s got another new Nightie.
Postal Rates
The Flying Gopher can be sent to people in England under present postal rates for 2 cents if unsealed, or 7 cents if sealed.
Join!!
We know all these jolly little committees which have been springing up right and left during the past few weeks? Well, someone came down from the S.W.O’s. office the other day binding something awful because he had been told to warn someone he was on the Sewage committee or the Cat Welfare Committee or something, and he couldn’t find him anywhere. And he showed us a list, at the bottom of which was “LAC Artetta” …
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[Advert for Wilson Pharmacy]
[Advert for Service Hardware]
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[Drawing of two men dressed for gold and fishing]
Fort Qu’Appelle
Fort Qu’Appelle offers many attractions for week-ends or longer leaves. It is 75 miles north of Weyburn on a chain of lakes in which good fishing may be had. Boats may be hired at 25c per hour. There is an excellent swimming beach and a nine hole Golf Course with grass greens on the outskirts of the town.
The hotel is comfortable and cheap. Fort Qu’Appelle may be reached quite conveniently by train or ‘bus.
Small Ads
WANTED – By Service Police. One pair of thick rubber soled boots; one deer stalker’s cap, and a dog called Tinker.
WANTED – Retired Donkey to eat super-abundance of carrots. Box WEY. 5.
WANTED – By Cookhouse. Mincing Machine, to replace one written off by VERY fair wear.
WANTED – Secondhand lift. For use of tired airman occupying top bunk.
WANTED – By P.T.I. Officer. Two fitter Britains (or Rigor Mortis) to undergo short course.
EXCHANGE – Two permanent early dinner chits required. Would exchange for anything useful. Box WEY. 2.
LOST – Between Padgate and Weyburn, 7 days pay, a lot of kit, and ring (gold).
PERSONAL – S.M.O. “What price the stork?” C.N.I.
PERSONAL – S.A.I’s. “Are you Grand Arch-Cardinals yet?” L.T.I.
FINALLY WANTED – One seaworthy vessel. By one thousand airmen, must have room for at least one hundred. With stationary decks. Price to include delivery to Weyburn.
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[Advert for The Leader Store]
[Advert for National Musical Supply]
39
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[Advert for McDonald’s Show Store]
[Advert for Arnett Electric]
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Etter Plugs the Jive
The two already run off were surely great successes, weren’t they? The committee in charge of the dances is anxious to have you have a good time., fellows, so let’s have constructive ideas on the subject. These efforts are carried on each second Wednesday evening in the Recreation Hall. Tickets are on sale the Saturday previous in the Y.M.C.A. Because the capacity of the Recreation Hall is limited, the number of tickets available is now limited to 150. Come along early and get your tickets. Good prizes are given each time to the winners of novelty dances, the Swing Commanders play for dancing which starts at 9.00 and ends at 12.30. With the bus running regularly there is no reason why Airmen here can’t make these one of the outstanding events of life on 41 S.F.T.S.
Recreation Reviewed
With the Fall, outdoor activities will be curtailed for the personnel of No. 41 S.F.T.S. After an enthusiastic season, soccer is coming to a close, with only a few plaster casts around to remind us of many strongly contested matches. Cricket and swimming have not long to live, and already skating and hockey are waiting for the freeze-up.
Our Flying Gopher has been examining his burrow to see if he will be comfortable for the winter. Unlike his hibernating brothers of the prairie, he refuses to lie dormant – therefore he wants to know “What’s cooking?” So, sticking his nose into the lair of the Central Committee, he has unearthed a program of activities on the station which will keep him happy digging until spring.
The editors have sifted the mound of information piled up outside their den and here present an analysis of its contents.
Of interest to every man on the station, this program is designed to provide as much variety as possible. There will be no need for any man to be bored and this winter will be a very different affair from the last.
Certainly no town of similar size could have shown more hospitality than has Weyburn to the men of No.41. Weyburnites have taken many men into their homes and entertained them with typical western conviviality, and as for the home cooking, well – we know where we can get apple pie just like mother used to make. The Canadian Legion and the attractive Hostess Club along with other organizations, have made us feel right at home in Weyburn. We are very grateful for all this and wish we could repay some of the hospitality.
But where the number of men on a large military station almost equals half the population of the nearest town, as it does in this case, there will be many men who feel as Tootles when he goes to town, bored and a little disillusioned, unless the men themselves have an organization on the station for providing their own recreation.
We have the organization now, a complete program arranged by the Central Committee for the Fall and Winter. There are activities to satisfy the most varied interests. Through the P.S.I. funds all the necessary sports equipment ahs been provided and more will be forthcoming as the demand grows. Art Etter’s “Y” plays a valuable part in this program.
Romantic Spree
The latest news from the Officers’ jigs,
Where they stuff lemons in little pigs,
Is Flight Lieutenant D.F.C
Embarked upon a romantic spree,
He talked to a maiden fair and twenty,
Of loving cup he had drunk plenty.
He thrilled her with his hectic life,
Then found she was the Padre’s wife.
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Grand Impending Sports Meet at Weyburn
No. 41 S.F.T.S., August 30th. – Alarm is expressed in Service Police quarters here at the violent partizanship which is developing between different factions which will participate in the Giant Sports Day to be held in the Weyburn Stadium on Wednesday, September 23rd. Corporal Neathway, S.P., usually unmoved by anything short of invasions warns that delicate women and children should be chaperoned by husky airmen, since it is rumored on good authority that two factions intend to rub each other out with cream puffs at ten paces! The spectacle of members of the fairer sex cheering for their favourite airmen competitors is likewise not calculated to make this a dull affair. A promising feature is the hair-pulling contest between two girls each with an airman in the 440.
In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, we expect that hundreds of the people of Weyburn will attend. By permission of the Commanding Officer, the station will be shut down for the afternoon in order that the R.A.F. may be out en masse.
All Invited
This is an open invitation to the people of Weyburn and the surrounding district to attend.
Proceeds from the small admission charge will be devoted to the purchase of sports equipment for the men of this station.
Teams from other R.A.F. stations and from R.C.A.F. stations have been invited to compete in a program which will last about two hours. All preliminary heats will have been run off previously and only final events will be contested.
Dance At Night
To round out the Sports Day entertainment, a Station Dance will be held in the Drill Hall on the same evening. The hall has been specially decorated and the Station Dance Band will be augmented for the occasion. The Y.M.C.A. is catering for the evening, and this dance should be the highlight in a very full day.
Sports Officer Lets Cat Out of Bag
Browsing through sports equipment the other day, our reporter was startled to discover, framed between a festoon of boxing gloves and tennis racquets, George, The Moustache. Behind whom resided the genial features of Flying Officer Colchester, our Sports Officer.
“Ah, ha,” he exclaimed, “just the man I’m looking for. Take a look at that?”
“That” was the sports program for September 23rd, at the Weyburn Stadium. Here, at last, was the long awaited news. We give it to you now – the main events for Sports Day –
SPRINTS: 100 yards, 220 yards and 440 yards.
DISTANCE: 880 yards and one mile run.
FILED EVENTS: High jump, long jump, pole vault, discus, javelin and shotput, and hurdles (if priority can be obtained for lumber to build them).
OBSTACLE RACE.
LADIES RACE and comic events.
Well, there it is. The halt, the maimed, and even the binders are expected to turn out and practice for these events on order to turn back the invasion from outside stations. Let it never be said that No. 41 could not put up a good effort when its very reputation was at stake.
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At Your Service
Sports Department
[Photograph of a man with a magnificent moustache] ED COLCH. Now in Weyburn.
Hello, Fellows! Maybe that’s the snappiest way to greet youse all. It certainly is the dandiest thing to be allowed to write you a piece in the “Gopher” and to be able to tell you all what a swell bunch of chaps you are, and why I am here at all. Now, don’t forget to say “hello” to me on the streets of 41 when you see that browser mustache [sic] and line-shooting tea-cosy with a football badge on the front. As the great bard said, I guess “A kiss without a mustache [sic] is like a hamburger without dills.” You see I sure do wanna get together with all you great Old Country boys.
The sports department is for sports, don’t please ever forget that fact. Those of you who have been here some time will have some idea of where my office is. Just drop in for a coke with me any time you have some little personal sporting problem you want to thrash out. I’m usually there blowing up footballs in the morning – and always at your service. However tricky your problem don’t hesitate to step right in and have a talk with the Sports Supervisor. The name is right there on the door.
It is my aim to give you all a body like mine, and make the square the gathering-place for all you lads, on Wednesday mornings in particular. We are flat out to make the square a reely [sic] attractive spot; and I certainly am going to make sure that a first rate decorating job is done there. I guess I’m not speaking out of turn if I tell youse fellows the “Y” is going to lay down some really snappy carpets, and put flags up all around the joint.
Say, bo; let me be your father. I am here to jazz up cricket and drill you for you all. Just buy a tiger skin and drop in.
Your one and only,
ED. COLCH.
Tail Piece
From the Diary of an R.A.F. Hurricane Pilot in Malta, Aprl 6, 1942.
“There was a short service for readiness pilots outside the dispersal hut. The hymn was “Fight the Good Fight.” This struck a chord in my memory. When I was confirmed, the Bishop of Kingston gave as his text, “Fight the good fight of faith,” and that same evening when I opened a book sent to me by my aunt, the first words I read were identical with the text. And now they recurred again. I mentioned this to the Padre afterwards. The coincidence comforted.”
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[Advert for Standard Garage and Machine Shop]
[Advert for Co-op. Dairy Products]
[Advert for The Hi-Art Theatre]
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Ice
If a good many RAF chaps at this station are eating off the mantlepiece this winter it will not be from riding horseback but probably from taking the bumps at ice hockey. The enthusiasm with which fellows who had never skated took to the narrow blades last winter augers well for the sport this season.
A new rink is being built behind the recreation hall, largely for hockey, but another rink will also be constructed for straight and figure skating. Sonja Henie, look out! By the end of the winter No. 41 S.F.T.S. may be touring the country with the Weyburn Ice Follies. At any rate, a public address system will be installed to provide music for the skaters. There will no doubt be Visitors’ Nights when AC Tootles will be able to show his colourfully dressed girl friend how well he can waltz with only a few spills for punctuation marks.
As for organized hockey, we are fortunate to have a good coach in Lieut. Bigelow of the Dental Corps. It is hoped to organize a Service League but that depends on how well the players develop. We may not have any Wally Stanowski’s from the Maple Leafs, but it should be a good effort.
Basketball
We are sorry, but you are wrong. Neither soccer nor horse-racing draw the biggest total number of spectators in sports, but basketball. Started over thirty years ago by a Dr. Niran, who used peach baskets for the first hoops, the game now has the largest fan following of any game in the world. Hundreds of teams compete in national competitions in the States and many thousands of spectators attend games from the high school tournaments to the national finals.
Yes, the game has something. It is very fast – requiring the peak of physical condition in the players in order that they might stand the pace. But, it is a game which can be learned in easy stages. Already at No. 41 S.F.T.S. we have quite a few enthusiasts – it is expected that organized games will take place nearly every night in the Drill Hall. Want a new sport thrill? We can recommend basketball.
Boxing
“Come on now, keep them up, keep them up! That’s better. Don’t signal your punches.”
Sound of leather on hard chests, the shuffling of feet, quick gasps from straining lungs. It might be Cpl. Wheel or Cpl. Farley or AC Rowing-Parker coaching a lad in the art of self defense, but whoever is the coach or whoever the pupil, they are having a cracking good time, literally.
The boxing ring is completed in the Drill Hall, with mat and ropes. There are plenty of gloves available. Practises already reveal promise of future Dempseys to uphold the honor of No. 41 S.F.T.S.
Maybe you are a dark horse, already experienced in the ring, or maybe you have had no experience but would like to cuff AC. Tootle’s head up a peak (probably he feels the same about you). In any case, come out for boxing and have a good work-out.
Badminton
This sort of thing has got to stop. This chap Burkeman (F/Sgt. Burkeman, know him?) is getting to be too much of a good thing. The guy is getting too chesty. What I want to know, is there any game the bloke can’t play and play well? The other night we thought we had him – we would be able to smear him at badminton, anyway, but no, this Joe Burkeman wore us down to a grease spot and he was still smiling at the end as unruffled as you please.
For heaven’s sake, won’t someone come out and pin Joe’s ears back? He tells us he will take on all and sundry. (Joe’s a right nice guy really, but we have to make him the villain of this piece in order to have a story).
Anyway, Flying-Officer Colchester will be only too pleased to supply you with badminton rackets and “birds” whenever you want a go at this fast game. There are four courts in the Drill Hall – you can easily arrange a game, with any type of player.
A Wing Commander very fly,
Is sometimes called the C.F.I.
His Flight Commanders hover round,
With useless pupils they have found
He interviews them one by one,
A second glance he gives to some,
But see him at a graduation,
This really is a revelation.
45
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“A and B” Flights Win Armit Trophy
In Hard Fought Final
When the soccer team from “A and B” Flights met “H” Flight on Wednesday evening, it appeared that half the Station had turned out to watch the game – the other half learned of the score before the evening was out. The occasion was a momentous one in Station Soccer for it was the final of the League Championship, the winners being the first to hold the Armit trophy. Both teams have been hot contenders for the title and truly the game was a battle royal. It had all the ingredients of an English cup-tie game – the highly partisan crowd, grand football, with first class tackling and heading, an eventual penalty, a last minute goal, and, finally, the players being carried from the field shoulder high.
Excitement ran at high pitch throughout the whole game. It was clean and openly played. “A and B” truly deserving their victory of 2-0 by reason of a fine show put up by their forwards. Thompson at centre was a constant menace with his clever rushes down the centre of the field and his accurate distribution of the ball.
After a very even first half, in which neither side scored. “A and B” forwards, aided by their half-backs, dominated the play from the restart and it appeared obvious that a goal was soon forthcoming. “H” Flight made a quick reverse, however, and for a while it seemed that they would be the first to open the scoring. Charles, however, was unfortunate in shooting over an open goal.
First blood was drawn when, during pressure by “A and B” forwards, Corporal Wallace, “H”, handled the ball in the penalty area and gave Molloy a chance to score the opening goal of the match from the kick. This unexpected point caused excitement to rise to high pitch and fast and furious play ensued as “H” tried hard to wipe off the setback with an equalizer, but their forward line could not get going against the close play of their opponents and in the last quarter minute of play, LAC. Lord, a pupil, clinched the issue with a smashing goal from the inside right position.
The team was fully deserving of the applause it gained for a brilliant game. As for the losers, they were a plucky side, hindered by the injury, early in the game of LAC. Cook and this loss undoubtedly was responsible in some measure for their lack of smoothness. Their forwards were too often off side and it was unfortunate for them that they could not find the smooth team work which enthused their opponents from start to finish of the match.
Last Month’s Crossword
[Answers to the crossword clues]
The first correct solution opened was sent by Miss D. Bakstad, 405 Government Road, Weyburn, to whom a cheque for $5.00 will be forwarded as soon as the Editor returns from leave … or it may have to be deferred until the following pay day. Anyway, Mis Bakstad, you shall have your $5.00.
The Flying Gopher is published on the 15th of each month by and for the entertainment of the personnel of No. 41 S.F.T.S. (R.A.F.) at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada. Printed for the Publishers by the Weyburn Review.
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[Advert for Pilsner beer]
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[Advert for Stinson-Powers Lts.]
[Advert for the Royal Hotel]
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[Advert for R.H. Williams & Sons]
[Advert for Snelgrove’s Sundaes]
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[Advert for The Lounge]
[Advert for Victory Cab]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Flying Gopher September 1942
Description
An account of the resource
This edition has adverts, an Editorial, reminisces by Dr Vyse, an appreciation of the arrival of the RAF at Weyburn, photographs of Weyburn, stories about Gremlins, a fictitious love story, photos of dances, Weyburn library, poems, love stories, a story about one man's postings, odd goings on around Weyburn, Notes by the different Flights on the base, light hearted station news and sporting news,
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
41 SFTS Weyburn
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-09
Format
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52 printed sheets
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MFordTA1585520-170411-14
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
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
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Saskatchewan--Weyburn
Saskatchewan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-09
aircrew
entertainment
gremlin
Harvard
love and romance
sport
station headquarters
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1376/24330/MFordTA1585520-170411-15.1.pdf
8a624186f68dac2e4128dd6e39edf7e9
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Title
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Ford, Terry
Ford, T
Description
An account of the resource
135 items. The collection concerns Terry Ford. He flew operations as a pilot with 75 Squadron. It contains photographs, his log book, operational maps, letters home during training, and documents including emergency drills. There are two albums of photographs, one of navigation logs, and another of target photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Julia Burke and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-13
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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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Ford, T
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[Deleted] Garden Show [/deleted]
Grass Dance [deleted] Pubs [/deleted]
[Drawing of an aircraft flying over a single gravestone]
The Flying Gopher
JANUARY 1943
[Page break]
[Drawing of an aircraft flying over a single gravestone]
The Flying Gopher
The Journal of The Royal Air Force, No,41, Service Flying Training School,
Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Published by the Kind Permission of Group Captain E.C. Emmett, M.C., D.F.C.
VOL.11. JANUARY, 1943 No. 2
Editorial
[Drawing of a thoughtful gopher with writing quill at a desk]
THE ad-less “Gopher” makes its bow. It is a thin creature, but you will find that appearances are deceptive. And that it contains almost the same amount of reading matter as its advertisement-padded predecessors. We hope you will find it no less interesting reading.
This is a memorable issue if only because every flight has rallied round and supplied us with the inside gen on its goings-on during the past month. This we think is a very good sign: we have been trying for some time to get a greater measure of contributions representative of you Maintenance and Flying Wing people, for it is you who really constitute the Unit; the rest of us are lesser, presumably necessary adjuncts.
We want your suggestions for improvement in your magazine. Tell us what you like and what you don’t like; if you know a chap who is a good cartoonist, or who has anything interesting to write about, persuade him to come out of his shell, and if he won’t come, let us know his name. We have our methods …
Deadline for copy will in future be the last day of the month. This means that everything topical will be at least two weeks old by the time it appears in print. We should, of course, prefer to serve it up warmer, but this is the best we can do with the production arrangements at our disposal. And by the way, when we fix that deadline, we shall be very glad to have as much copy as you can give us before that date, to save us any last-minute panic and excessive overtime.
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[Drawing of a Padre with wings, playing a harp]
BOMBS GONE
We’re sorry Flight Lieutenant Clarke
Prefers to leave you in the dark
Regarding his activities,
His likes, dislikes, proclivities,
His views regarding prohibition,
His most insistent inhibition …
We begged for something for the “Gopher,”
But this is all he’s written so far –
No Comments
[Signature]
We can but guess what his excuse
Can be for hiding thus the truth.
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SOLOSPROGGY
(With apologies to Lewis Carroll)
‘Twas flying, and the flaptious lac
Did tweek and puckle in his clogs.
The Gremlins lured, all ticipant,
And callous lurked instructor dogs.
Beware the Undercart my son,
The horn that blows, the lights that gleam.
Beware the Earlycheck, and shun
All aircraft on the starboard beam.
He took the gripple stick in hand,
He gave her boost, the waspie roared.
Fine was the pitch, the mixture rich.
He squeaked “I’m airborne! Praise the Lord!”
And so he reached the down-wind leg,
His throttle back, his wheels came down.
The cross-wind tension, pilot grim,
And crying “Gumptf,” came whiffling in.
“The circuit’s done, I haven’t spun”.
The gripple stick no longer slack,
He slipped it in, and with a grin
He came taxiffing back.
“And hast thou flown the Harvard bird?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Soloo! Solay!”
He chortled in his joy.
“MOONSHINE.”
THE PADRE PONDERS
The subject upon which to ponder is not difficult at this time of the year. For, by the time these words are read we shall have passed into another year with all its hopes.
The question which will come to the lips of many is “What has the new year in store for us?”
I think that one of the best mottoes to carry with us into and through the coming year is “Wise to resolve, and patient to perform.” Surely our past mistakes, our unwise choices, our impatience with places or people should convince us (if we are to transform obstacles into stepping stones) of the fruitfulness of both wisdom and patience.
What, then, of the future? Please God we shall experience times of happiness and joy, of peace and contentment, of encouragement and success. For. With these two weapons, wisdom and patience, in our hands, sorrow and loss, sickness and suffering, disappointment and disillusionment cannot destroy the inward peace.
When we look back on the failures of the past, let us remember that the present is ours, out of which a brighter future may be forged.
If any lesson has been learned from this little “pondering” let us practice it in our daily life; so that our own lives, the lives of others, and the welfare of our Station may be made sweeter by our presence. The will it be that which I wish you – “A Happy and Blessed New Year.”
Sincerely,
THE PADRE.
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[Underlined] OUR GRIPPING NEW SERIAL. [/underlined]
PRAIRIE PASSION
[Drawing of a girl sitting in a rocking chair, reading a book]
OUR red-head heroine, Gardenia Godlieb, intent in the pages of her book, was lounging in a rocking-chair in the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus K. Godlieb, Fifty-seventh and Tortoise, Pemmican, Sask., famed co-organisers of the Pemmican Parents’ Guild.
Slim, saucy, cherry-lipped Gardenia, her gorgeous green eyes sparkling with excitement, chewed her pointed blood-red fingernails feverishly as she read the gripping tale of life in the Active Air Force, a book lent her by her latest beau, D’Arcy Dwindleberry, a real live LAC. who ran the flying side of the nearby R.A.F. No. 48 S.F.T.S.
The telephone rang. With a snort of disgust at the interruption and a muttered “Blast!” Gardenia laid aside her book, obligingly laying it with the cover uppermost so that we could see the title. Ah! Small wonder that she was so absorbed in her reading, for the book was none other than a copy of C.A.P. 100.
“Hul-lo,” she said languidly, casting as admiring glance at her dainty pointed shoes. “Oh, hi-ya, Moytle … Yeah, fine … Yeah, they’re both out … Aw, jest reading … My romance? Oh, jest fine. I had to tell him last nite I wasn’t That Sort of Goyl … What, he kissed you? … An officer? … A Pilot Officer? Not a real Pilot Officer? … What, me jealous? … Say, lookit here, Moytle, if you think I’d ever be jealous of a skinny little squoit like you … Aw shucks! And say, lookit, I’ll tell you sump’n. How many rings does a Pilot Officer have? … What, only one? Well, lookit here, I’ll get to grips with an officer with two rings on his arm, so there! … Yes, I betcha … Why, you skinny alley-cat, you tailless gopher you …” But Myrtle had evidently rung off.
Returned to her rocking-chair, our heroine again took up the Pilot’s Primer. But she could not concentrate, and even the visions conjured up by that gripping story could not hold her attention long. You, gentle reader, our astute observer concealed behind the chiffonier, could see her gorgeous green eyes gallivanting around, gazing unseeing at the cuspidor, tastefully inscribed “A Present from the Prairie,” which sat conveniently on top of the piano.
At last, with a determined snort she jumped to her feet, flinging the Book into a corner. (Mark this well, Reader! This is sacrilege, the first sign of the decadence of our Gardenia. There will be other signs, for sure, but do not despair – goodness will triumph over sinful impetuous youth. And don’t forget, folks, next time you pop in at the groceteria, buy a packet of Gobbo Gingers-up the Glottis. Sixty-five cents a large packet.)
If we could have but entered into the mind of Gardenia at this moment, settling behind those gorgeous glittering green eyes, we should have witnessed the successive conception and rejection
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of a score of plans. Gardenia is a girl of her word, and find that Flight Lieutenant she will, or perish in the attempt.
Cat-like she paced the floor, and every time she passed the window it was a full-time job for us to restrain you gentle Reader from jumping up and spoiling the whole effect by falling on your knees and declaring your love for the gorgeous Gardenia. For the rays of the setting sun limned her glorious coiffure, which seemed to leap into flaming life at its touch. (Is your hair becoming to you? If not, you had better be coming to Brer Rabbit’s Drug Store for a bottle of Hippo – Hippo Helps the Hair Grow Gorgeous.)
At long last our heroine hit upon a plan which seemed to satisfy her; she stopped, and with a self-satisfied smirk which suffused her satin cheek she cried “A-ha!” and hurried from the room. This exclamation was fortunate, coming when it did, for our Gardenia’s smirk revealed to us watchers behind the chiffonier so perfect a set of pearly molars that we whistled loudly in unison (Dentyne chewing gum, Dentyne chewing gum. If you want to keep fit, chew a bit of it. Chew Dentyne chewing gum.) But all is well. Gardenia was too preoccupied with her own plans to hear us.
Upstairs, propriety forbade us to follow the lovely Miss Godlieb, but we had not long to wait. A moment later she came racing down again, and we turned aside to conceal our blushes as, in the speed of her descent, an unduly great proportion of her exquisitely formed lower limbs was revealed to our innocent gaze. She made for the telephone, and asked for – the Legion Hall!
“Is there a dance on? … Are many Air Force Officers there? …” She slammed back the receiver and was out of the house like a flash of glamourous greased lightning.
Quickly, Reader, let us follow her, and pray that we may save her from the consequences of her rash act, as she enters the Den of Iniquity.
(To be continued.)
PRAIRIE MADNESS
There’s a majesty in space
That rivals mountain’s weight …
There’s a frankness to a place
That has no bars nor gate –
The prairie stretches out and yields
Full length and breadth of soil
Bearing swaying wheat in fields
Through which the giant combines toil.
But man must seek for priceless gems
And so must leave the highway,
Following a trail between the stems
Of wheat – past the stack of hay,
On to open prairie wild,
Where tumble-weeds bloom and die,
And crocuses are beguiled
To nestle the turf where they lie.
Past the farm, down to the slough,
Where wilds ducks cry and trouble
The rush-fringed water, through
Each small pool and sodden stubble.
Nor does the charm pass with the day
As sunset reeks across the sky,
With warrior reds and stormy grey
To paint a majesty of fury –
A storm of dust, a thunder clap,
A sudden flash, a fork of flame –
Then part the clouds, and through the gap
Shines down the moon as if in shame.
H.G.V.
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STOP! POLICE!
This is the result of being caught yarning one night by the Ed. He asked for it, and here it is.
I remember those early days well – I’m going back nine or ten years now, mind you – but I still remember them well. I have good reason to do so. The first few days in uniform on the streets of London you never forget. The particular yarn I‘m going to spin you is of something which happened in my first few weeks of beat duty. I was on late turn (i.e. 2 to 10 p.m.). The time was about 7.30 p.m., and it was dark.
Having not been long out of Peel House, I was pretty full of everything, and my craze at that particular time was for remembering the list of stolen cars. Things were quiet, and I was doing no more than watch the flow of traffic, catching as many numbers as possible. After a few minutes of this, it happened. I repeated a number to myself and suddenly leaped about three feet into the air, and had my car list out before touching ground again. Yes, it was there – a Stolen Car!
I saw a glorious future ahead - my Great Chance – capture the car and the thief – commendations – promotion – and without delay I jumped into the roadway and stopped the nearest car. Standing on the running board, I yelled to the driver ”There’s a car ahead I want to catch – go like hell!”
The driver looked at me astonished – a gleam came into his eye.
“You mean it?” he said. “Flat out? No lights to stop me – no limits?”
I had time to nod, and then the fun started. The driver shot up the street like a bat out of Hades. His car was a V8 and it certainly could move.
After thirty seconds I realized that I was for it. I had one foot on the running board, and one hand on the door handle – the rest of me was swinging in the wind. The rush of air had me speechless. I couldn’t signal the driver to stop before he had to. I think he had dreamed of such a chance as this all his driving life, and he certainly saw to it that all his dreams came true. He passed everything there was to pass on the road, ignored traffic signals, drove on either side of the road or the pavement when there wasn’t room, kept his horn going steadily, and just kept flat out.
I had just about reached the limit of my endurance – my fingers were beginning to lose their grip on the door handle – when he leaned over to ask for further instructions. I think from the look on my face he saw I rather wanted to stop, and he started slowing down. When we were still doing a good 20-30 m.p.h. I couldn’t hold on any longer, and I went flat in the road, rolling over and over, and finishing up in a not too clean gutter.
I was sitting on the kerb when he came up to me – apologising for not having been able to catch the car for me – and all I could do was mumble some thanks and get rid of him. He left me there, and I was a sorry sight – greatcoat torn, bruised, skinned and filthy.
It took me ten minutes to find my helmet again. It cost me 2/6 for a taxi back to my beat, and when I got there I found I had missed a “ring in.” It took me another half hour to provide an excuse for that, and I spent the rest of the time till 10 p.m. getting myself clean.
That night after booking-in I retired to bed, a wiser and sadder man, realizing that in future when I saw a stolen car it would be much easier and couldn’t be less successful to carry out the official instructions, simply telephone to the proper quarter at Scotland Yard, and leave the rest to the squad cars.
EX-COPPER.
An airman in distant Ontario
Applied for a shift to the prairio.
But oh! When at last he got thario
And found all the prairie barrio
He had a most horrible scario,
And ran all the way back to Ontario.
The moral, we think, should be clario:
Ontario’s better than prairio.
[Drawings of two single flowers]
[Page break]
[Photograph of a mountain valley] BOW VALLEY]
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TAIL-END CHARLIE
The warm clad flyer shifts uneasily in his narrow perch – these turrets are not built for comfort; their’s is a stern purpose and the lives of others rest on this man’s shoulders. The restless, searching eyes are never still and the trained hand is never far from the compact but deadly little gun.
He knows his responsibilities and bears them with the confidence of a man who has been in tight corners before and has won through by his skill and coolness.
The keen eyes pause and narrow in their questing sweep as a small dark speck resolves in the haze of distance and grows. The speck becomes a shape and the shape – an aircraft, but still the eyes maintain their vigil, scanning the seemingly innocent blue of space; long and costly experience has endowed an extra sense that now warns quietly but insistently that danger threatens from another quarter. Away to the right a second winged shape confirms this inner warning.
An impatient hand slides to the gun trigger with the ease borne of practice while the cold eyes choose the nearer of the two slim silhouettes as the first target. The plane is nearer now, and the pilot’s head is dimly visible in the streamlined cockpit, peering ahead, with deadly concentration gauging the distance. Nearer yet, and the longing finger tenses around the tiny steel projection speeding on its grim mission.
A convulsive jerk and the gun has fired – the explosion is drowned in the crescendo of the engine’s roar, an angry red glare illuminates the startled features of the young pilot in the approaching plane. He opens his throttle and breaks away, his previous intentions forgotten – he now has troubles of his own. The figure in the turret shivers …
“It’s a bit of a bind being Aerodrome Control Pilot in this weather!” mutters the pupil, thrusting a fresh signal cartridge into his Very pistol in the turret on the yellow van …
J.S.R.H.
PRAIRIE LAMENT
The friendly flag at Weyburn is waving in the breeze,
The hard-worked Duty Pilots are all down on their knees;
We love to see it waving, its message glad to tell, -
For do we want to fly, Sir? I’ll say we do – Like H - !
And when they haul it down, Sir, our tears we cannot hide;
We push the kites around, Sir, and it’s ten below outside;
We start the censored engines, and they make a censored roar,
But if we had our way, Sir, we wouldn’t fly no more.
We wave the chocks away, Sir, and we leave the drome behind.
The censored hood comes over (another censored bind!)
The gyro spins like fun, Sir, I’m feeling cold and sick,
And P/O Prune up forward keeps yanking on the stick.
At last we’re back to earth, Sir, another hour to book,
And all the P/O gives us is a should-be-censored look;
But now we’re past all caring, as anyone can see,
And the only thing worth living for is Ops in ’43.
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Key Men – No. 5
O.C. “SPARKS”
[Photograph of a man sitting talking on the telephone]
The C.O.? No, I’m sorry. The Adjutant? No, not today. Squadron Leader Johnson is decorating the Recreation Hall … Will I do? Yes, the Adjutant’s adjutant …
What’s this, Corporal? A signal to sign? Oh, it’s alright by me if it’s alright with you …
Oh, Taylor, ask Greer if he’s seen the shorts we had on last week … He can’t find them? I mean the celluloid ones – no, not cellophane, fathead!
You like my overshoes, Harrison? What’s that? Remind you of boats? Don’t mention that word to me!
What was that, Williams? You don’t know the meaning of the word. Why, when I was in Jericho …
&@lb @H GZ@lb @lb&& J… Oh, so sorry, I was speaking in cypher. Here’s an easy one for you, anyway:
LLOR NO EHT TOAB.
YOUR MONEY
Very often we hear people saying “What happens to the P.S.I. funds? I don’t see what good we get from them?”
Last month we told you a little of some of the things which have been done for you from the Service Institute Funds. We give below the chief expenditures made from the Funds during the first year of the Station. The figures are accurate to within a dollar or two either way.
Billiard Tables (4) and Equipment … $2,388.00
Dance Band Instruments … 1,241,00
Military Band Instruments … 1,316.00
Library books … 150.00
Pianos and Radios … 465.00
Gramophone Records … 317.00
P.A. Unit … 300.00
Stage Props and Scenery, etc. … 200.00
Skates … 1,000.00
Sports Gear … 2,500.00
Washing Machines and Electric Irons … 239.00
Extra Messing during year ended December, 1942 … 3,410.00
In addition to the above many lesser grants and expenditures appear in the P.S.I. accounts, which are open for inspection by anyone at any time at S.H.Q.
Figures cannot lie. We hope you ae satisfied now that your money is well spent.
If you have any constructive suggestions regarding the administration of the Institute funds, we look to you to hand them on to any member of the P.S.I. Committee.
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LOOKING BACK
Capt. Charles A. Greene
(Late Flight Lieut. R.F.C., R.A.F.)
“Maurice Farmans, B.E. 2 c’s, R.E 8’s, D.H. 4’s, D.H. 9’s, 10’s and 11’s, Avros, Snipes and Bristol Fighters – what the devil is this man talking about?” asks P.O. Prune.
Perhaps I had better explain. These were some of our training and fighter machines of the last war. If I had space to draw them, then Prune would indeed think he had a hectic night in the Mess the night before.
Pictures of the Wright Brothers’ early machines will convey the lines of most of them and such dazzling speeds as 40 to 100 miles an hour cover their propulsion through space. Three ply, doped linen and lots of wires endeavoured to keep body and soul together, and although surprising, did so in about 80 per cent of our fighting craft.
How were they to manipulate? Well, I can best describe them by a simile. Have you ever driven, say, a Morris Cowley?
To seat me in a modern kite reminds me of the Rolls Royce, and as explained by quite a number of instructors, providing one still retains a good memory, then flying is easier today.
To sit on one of the old buses – well, it was like the Cowley – one definitely had to drive it, and even at its best it called for 100 per cent effort of concentration and real physical exertion in order to get the best out of it.
Do not think for a moment that I am old fashioned to the extent of being prejudiced, as I realize only too fully that what was to us a long flight is now only a testing flip, but from my simile what I would convey to the modern pilot is that in the old buses one did not get any automatic assistance wither from the machine or its instruments, and that they were solely an engine that had the habit of developing all kinds of mannerisms unwanted in the air, combined with a fuselage usually of thin wooden slats, doped canvas and, as we called them, bits of string to hold everything together.
Open cockpits, of course, were the order of the day, and no flying helmet unless the weather was really atrocious.
Parachutes were then in their infancy and although we were equipped with them, one never really wanted to join “The Caterpillar Club,” as a good average for opening safely was about seven out of ten, and one always feared that he would be one of the three which proved the rule.
Training? – well, I think it would appeal to you guys. Usually, if you were lucky it took three months. One month was occupied in getting absolutely perfectly physically fit, both in body and mind – to realize that for the first time in your life you were alive. Don’t misunderstand or underestimate the time of training. It was called “intensive” in official circles and by many another name in other circles.
You were either made or broken and always faced with R.T.U. (Returned to Unit). It was a 5.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. day, during which you were equipped as an Infantryman, including rifle, and underwent square training and plenty of slow marching, whilst the C.S.M. fired general knowledge questions at you, such as: “Where are you facing?” and “What was the chief item of war news this morning?” Failure to register usually brought the retort: “Fancy, you are going to be an officer and a gentleman and yet your mind does not work above the drill you are at present performing>” You are supposed to be drilling automatically, leaving your mind clear for any emergency that may arise.
Interlaced with squad drill was a form of compass bearings on foot, which combined compass readings with a route march, inasmuch as, given a number of bearings, one tramped the countryside to the given intersection and reported. Failure to report on several occasions would bring the inevitable R.T.U.
Rigging, engines (theoretical and practical), cameras, bombs and general aeronautics all found their allotted place in the syllabus.
From there on to your Flying School, where from the first few flips on a Maurice Farman (a pusher type) one progressed to a dual control on Avros. What a sensation when, unknown to yourself, the plane was landed and your
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instructor told you that you had done it “all by your little self.” I believe it was from that proud moment that one developed a “wing” chest and strode forward with an exaggerated thrust of the left shoulder. Fifteen hours of dual, and then your first solo. The sensations of this, your first solo, need no description from me. You have all experienced them and Anno Domini has not changed.
From then onwards, fear of R.T.U. became more distant, especially as the call for more pilots at that period strained the R.A.F. to its utmost.
Fifteen hours of fairly good solo flights, comprising bombing, aerobatics, etc. and you were booked for “the other side” or perhaps more specialized training for “lighter than air” craft. Often when one had finished and had that urge for a first encounter, one had to be content and have another three to four weeks’ training to fit one for a “Blimp” or a semi-rigid ship which was used very often in the last show for convoy work.
However, looking back, this had its brighter side, as one was pretty sure of surviving if on the “lighter than air” side of flying, whereas flying a heavier than air machine during this period was always a risk, even in the Mother Country, owing to the lack of knowledge and exercise by our designers and also rushed and short training. Do not think I am belittling our designers as this would be an unforgivable crime, but only years of development and wars can bring to almost finality the type of craft which we use today.
Good machines and lengthy instruction can bring only one result, and that is air supremacy; so, when the training seems long and you are itching to take your place among our front line men, remember this and try to realize that when your training is complete, you are 100 per cent pilot and have every chance of coming out on top.
GROUND SCHOOL GOSSIP
I’d much rather write “X“ Flight Notes than set down the doings of those who pass their days in this academic pile. Why? Well, in the first place there is so little difference between one month and another and secondly, while the school still possesses many “good types” there is a tendency with every change in our staff, for the School’s personnel to become less colourful! However, full of remorse and Canadian hospitality (in the reverse order) I, faithful stooge that I am, bring you the highlights of the school’s new news as furnished by D.R.O’s., Pupils Standing Orders, etc.
Prior to the Christmas holiday, the C.G.I. gathered the staff together to wish them “All the Best.” A pupil peeking through the door of the lecture room during the proceedings was heard to remark “Oh Boy, if the Devil would only cast his net now”!
Returned from the festivities I decided that it might be of interest if I could find out how our GEN MEN passed their leisure during their five days break. Possibly I started a little too early in the day for, on interviewing the Chief Gun Man, I was greeted with a nasty scowl. “How did you enjoy Christmas?” I asked. “xx - // !! Oh my head – Get Out!” The Nav. instructors were next. “Bed at three in the morning and up again at twelve” was all I could get from this section. “That’s not news” I thought recalling that they had all been to Regina (Q. of the P.). Sgt. F.E. Carr was abrupt but civil. “I did nothing wrong,” was all he would say. WOPerational Sgt. Blacklock had little to say and the only statement he would make was “What with one thing and another, not to mention Command, I hardly noticed anything.” There was nothing being given away by Sgt. Jock. He said “They do the same in Moose Jaw as they do in most places.”
So now perhaps you see what I mean. These people are NOT NEWS and yet “The Gopher” cries for more.
ANSWERS TO PUPILS’ QUERIES
Q. I was playing cards with three sergeants and at one time there were five aces on the table at the same time. I did not say anything. But is this rare? – PUZZLED.
A. Yes and No. The ordinary civilian pack, except in race trains, etc., contains four aces only. But these things occur. You were quite right to make no comment.
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[Drawing of a Christmas Tree] CANADIAN CHRISTMAS
Canadian Christmas, 1942, now belongs to memory.
For a few days many of us escaped in some measure from the clutches of Service thought and routine, became warmly flesh and blood again, satiated the inner man, purged the spirit, and return invigorated to camp to work and grouse harder than before. How we behaved or misbehaved, what we did am what we should not have done, belongs not to these pages but to the pages of memory.
Those of us who stayed in Weyburn will not easily forget this Christmas. In the homes of our friends most of us spent at least a part of the Day, and we found there that cheerful friendship which has endeared you Canadians to us, only it now appeared in ever increased force. We became members of your families, and the Christmas we enjoyed with you proved a very good second best to those we remember in previous years on the other side of the Atlantic.
On the following Sunday our very good friends of the Hostess Club gave us a most enjoyable evening, and to them too, we are grateful.
Many of us left the camp, and in New York, Vancouver, Regina, Winnipeg, Chicago, Saskatoon, Calgary, Minneapolis, Toronto, Milestone, Lang, Ceylon, Minot, and many other places we found ourselves again. To all who helped in any measure, by a cheery greeting, a card, a gift, a smile, we say “Thank You!”
CHRISTMAS IN CAMP
Christmas or not, the war goes on, and many of us had to spend our Christmas in and around the camp. Our Christmas was none the less a festive season, however, and on later pages we reproduce some of the photographs taken by out photographer as he wandered around the camp.
The Christmas Spirit came really into evidence on December 22nd. True, for some time past we had been denied access to No. 2 Dining Hall, and coloured lights showing through its windows conspired with Christmas trees placed strategically around the camp to prove that the calendar wasn’t lying, and that it really was the eve of Christmas. But the Pantomime really brought this home to us, for to us from the Old Country the very word Pantomime has a Christmas ring.
If you saw the Panto, we think our photographs will remind you of it better than any write-up on these pages; if you missed it, the loss is yours, and nothing we can write will atone for it. But a word of thanks would not be out of place to Flight Lieutenant Whiteside, the producer, LAC. Wedd, writer of the lyrics, Len Churton, who attended to the musical side, and to all members of the cast and stage staff on a really splendid show.
Christmas Day brought the traditional Christmas Dinner, its production a triumph for the cookhouse staff, headed by F/Sgt. Towns, and its serving undertaken without major disaster by the Officers and Senior NC.Os. True, the Padre’s fingers looked milky, and we saw F/Lt. Whiteside with his hands literally full of pudding, but these were minor mishaps. We have it on reliable authority that Sister Johnson was issuing I.O.Us., there being a deplorable absence of mistletoe … A general issue of the latest of late passes brought a memorable day to a close.
On December 19th a special show had been organised in Weyburn for the local children, and a week later on Boxing Day a large number of children were entertained to a party in the camp, where fun and games were the order of the day.
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[Photograph of a man in uniform on a slide holding a child] Our younger visitors enjoy themselves on Boxing Day.
The handful of unfortunates who were compelled to spend their Christmas in Sick Quarters were not forgotten. On Christmas Eve, members of the concert party put on a show for their benefit, and Christmas Day itself was fully planned, from a visit by Father Christmas, suitably loaded, and a program of carols in the morning to a quiz and entertainment in the afternoon, and a film show in the evening.
We would rather have been at home, of course, but we think that our Christmas on the prairies could not easily be improved upon, and we offer our thanks to all those from C.O. and S/L. “A” to AC2 C and B who contributed in any way to our enjoyment.
[Photograph of men listening to music in the Sick Quarters] A Merry Christmas in the Sickery.
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OFFCIERS’ MESS (!)
Proposed New Club – Members to date: (in order of seniority): F/O Colchester, F/O Rutledge, F/Lt. Meyer, Lt. Brechin, P/O Jones (E.L.), F/Lt. Everett, P/O Hearn (Old Country member), P/O Butt.
Who are the Rats?
Which three girls were recently chosen “Miss Weyburn – 1943”?
Too good for words – F/O. Large
S-Kate-ing on thin ice – Fickle F/O. Frank.
Once upon a short time it was all BUTT – now we hear it is all but over.
We understand that F/O Wheeler retired early at the Mess Formal. Luckily F/O “Snake” St. John was standing by – and standing IN at the Pantomime a few evenings later.
We think F/O Hirsch gets wirsch and wirsch.
F/O Rutledge is seeing things from the ground – and singly for a few days.
Delightlful, d’lovely Delaney reappeared recently and was seen “flashing” at the Panto after a terrific reception.
After the last formal dance, F/O “Jonah” walked straight to his quarters. Surprising.
Heard at the “formal” – “No, the real one wears a moustache.”
S/Ldr. “Uppards” Greenwood was a recent winner at the Sergeants Draw.
They closed the Draw before P/O Coney could win the Bar Stools.
“Wingy” Johnson recently held a super-exclusive promotion party.
S/Ldr. Cox recently declared, quote: Everything matters now – including Victory.
Importers at the Formal Dance, P/O Gable-Pearce, F/O Dick Clancey and P/O (Brownjob) Bowering. P/O Jones contented himself with “Local Fare.”
The “formal” was a great success – many officers brought their ladies and pranced around to “Swinger” Churton and Company.
S/Ldr. Thomas was fortunately in town for the event. He departed for an unknown destination (by air, of course) at dawn the next morning.
Doc. Halson (Did you recognise him?) almost neglected F/Lt. Stealey’s and F/O Miller’s partners.
K.H. “Line-Shoot” Ledbrook left to entertain a new audience in New York.
Searchers for post-Formal entertainment rendezvoused at stately down-town McKinnon block. There seemed to be a shortage of taxis from Weyburn city that morning.
New Mess Motto: “Careless Talk Costs Wives.”
After a wet evening at the Sergeants’ Mess, P/O Riby is writing a new book – “Mein Dampf.”
P/O Carruthers’ recent stay in Station Hospital was brightened by a frequent charming visitor. Interviewed, F/Os. Wheeler and Reade and P/Os Webster and Parkin each said “What can I do about it?” Hart-less, we think.
Laidler-Whiteside scored a great success with his Station Panto. We understand he is working on a special Officers’ Panto, entitled “Doc and the Mess Talk.”
F/Lt. Morris wishes to thank all officers who recently presented him with a new best blue barathea.
1943 Saying – “Where there’s Hope, there’s Life.”
“Uncle Tom” Isaac is due back any day from a trip to “lil ol” New York. He just could not believe all those stories Dick Clancy, Doc Halson and Lionel Wheeler told him.
Heard at the Formal – “No, No, that one’s her husband.”
Decorating Dixon helped to make the Mess bright for the festivities.
He himself was well lit at the dance.
Which Medical Officer did NOT receive a greeting card from the local undertaker?
Which Officer – uninvited to Hawaiian party in McKinnon block – attempted to force-land on the doorstep during night flying? Sarong thing to do.
F/O Wheeler was found asleep in the Mess at midnight recently, (contrary to O.M. Regs. And C.O. No. 14). Dreaming of a White Christmas?
Incidentally C.O. No. 14 was to our surprise introduced the very day “Flash” Henley departed on Christmas leave for a date with the stork.
An Officer BELIEVED to be F/Lt. Collingwood was recently seen in the Mess.
(Continued at foot of page 15.)
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CORRESPNDENCE
To: O.C. Works and Bricks
From: L.A.C. F---.
Sir,
I beg to submit this report on a collision with one of your vehicles, together with my suggestions as to the way in which repetition of this accident may best be avoided, which latter are submitted in accordance with D.R.O. No. 310, dated 30th December, 1942.
2. At 4.49 p.m. B-U-L-O-V-A Bulova Watch Time on December 30th, whilst proceeding on my lawful way about the camo I was made the recipient of a large quantity of snow, blown into the air by a large moving object, yellow in color (colour), which was engaged in clearing the road running between the Drill Hall and Airmen’s Mess. This machine is, I gather, known as a Snow Blower, and in operation it attempts to remove hard caked snow from the camp roads by picking it up by means of a form of scoop and blowing it backward through a bent chimney.
3. But I do not wish, Sir, to question the efficacy of this device at the present time, so I will continue with my account of the collision. As I turned into the road on which the collision occurred, I walked into the cloud of snow blown back from the blower. I was, of course, totally unaware that it originated from a machine, and, believing myself caught in a blizzard, took appropriate action, lowering my head, placing my hands in the pockets of my greatcoat, and proceeding in small stumbling paces, cursing vehemently between clenched teeth.
4. As I proceeded in this manner, head well down, flaps down too (20 cents), my groundspeed evidently was greater than that of the blower, with the result that I came into collision with the rear of the said machine. Fortunately neither your machine nor myself sustained serious injury, and apart from the inconvenience of having a large quantity of snow deposited upon my person, I was to all intents and purposes able to continue on my way to my biller.
5. In order that further incidents of this sort, from which the airman concerned will not always of necessity escape unscathed, may be prevented, I beg to suggest that a signal hooter be affixed to the machine to indicate its presence to anyone traversing the same road as the machine. Failing this, I suggest that a suitably colored or coloured dye be injected into the snow before it is expelled from the machine, in order that personnel may be able readily to distinguish between a blizzard and the handiwork of the snow blower. (It is observed that even in Canada a maroon blizzard is something of a rarity).
6. I submit Sir, that until some precautionary measures are taken this aforesaid Snow Blower constitutes a serious hazard to the life and limb of many an innocent airman, and should be withdrawn from service.
I am, etc.,
R.W.F.,
We are pleased to record that S/Ldr. Cox has had no further Safe trouble.
Even P/O Ellis put up a new decoration for Christmas.
Does P/O Germain really like Station Orderly Officer Duties?
F/O Thomas’s car and a tractor recently made Weyburn city.
At the Formal, when someone asked F/Lt. Stealey for the loan of his partner for a dance, Stealey looked quite Stealey – if you know what we mean.
Showers – even when greatcoats are worn – are to be taken only in accordance with D.R.O. No. 303 dated 21/12/42.
Is P/O Whitfield Prim and Proper?
Heard after the Formal – Doc. Halson’s remark: “I feel like a million dollars – overdraft.”
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A SHORT HISTORY OF B FLIGHT
ON the occasion of our impending first anniversary as a flight, we are, without any apology, about to reminisce.
It is not generally remembered that “B” Flight was in existence even before the first course started flying, for the purpose of getting our five kites into the air, equipped with two parachutes, held together thanks to Mrs Hancocks’ foresight in providing the C.I. with equipment to overcome all eventualities, and also to “convert” our T.E. instructors. We boasted at that time three experiences S.E. pilots, F/O (now F/Lt.) Stealey, F/O Jones, and P/O Greenhalgh, all of whom had the glorious total of 30 hours on type, and three who were in need of conversion, having nil hours, to wit F/O Provenzano, ex Eagle Squadron, and our first graduate to the U.S. Army Air Corps, Sgt. De Roeck, now a P/O at Kingston, and Sgt. Easterman, now Flight Sergeant, and of course F/Sgt. Rowlands (now W.O.), who managed miracles of maintenance with approximately one screwdriver.
During the first three weeks of flying, which were probably the finest three weeks of flying weather we have yet experienced at Weyburn, some of us were duly converted, and others departed to commence instruction of the never-to-be-forgotten 36 Course. F/O (“When I was on ‘ops’”) Provenzano was still Flight Commander, F/O (now F/Lt. and the Boss) Bennett had joined us, and the remainder were F/O Steadley, P/O Greenhalgh, P/O Large (alias P/O Prune), and F/Sgt. “Tubby Sebastian” Earp (“I’m tired of flying”).
And with the beginning of No. 36 Course began also our efforts to find heat, and our curiously coincident movement from hangar to hangar to hangar. Thus every few days we were bundled into a new hangar, there to huddle together in the Flight Commander’s office, wearing greatcoats, flying clothing, and newly acquired winter hats, with flaps down, into, and across, and down wind.
In spite of it all, though, and in spite also of the fact that the chequered flag became more and more familiar, No. 36 Course began to go solo, and everyone started learning about our flying machine. “Chiefy” Rowlands began to acquire more tools, and in their spare time the ground crew – Molloy, Parker, Hardstaffe, Thompson and Allin, supervised by Corporals Tomes and Westwood, constructed chocks or just used blocks of wood. Bradford even went to sleep over his charts.
Then came the thaw - and Buttress. On the F. 17s appeared the magic words “From Buttress – to Buttress,” and Ansons took off with staggering loads of potential pilots. The most remarkable things were done at Weyburn and at Buttress to keep the aircraft serviceable, and words cannot describe the extraordinary way in which “Chiefy” Rowlands and “Robby” did their splendid jobs of work. The telephone worked overtime, the ground crew worked overtime, and the aircrew sometimes got stuck. But of Buttress more in the next issue. The whole episode deserves a magazine to itself.
EVERY DEBIT
Once more the festive season is past, together with its usual complement of full stomachs and hangovers, and regretfully the Accounts Wallahs realize that they must put their noses to the grindstone once more and keep their pencils well sharpened. It is with feelings of great trepidation that we look forward to the New Year, with Pay Accounts wondering how many more procedures are to be thrust upon them, and equipment living in dread of the Auditors’ forthcoming descent to disturb their somnolent calm.
At the time of writing, most of the staff have not returned from their Xmas leave and it occurs to us who are left to wonder what sort of a line our “Rush – this is for a soldier” A/G. has been shooting to his tootsie from Brooklyn, whether our resident of Berkley Square has really got himself married in Lethbridge, how many girls in Minneapolis now have broken hearts over those two gallant heroes of the skies Cpls. Luffman and Warren; whether Cpl. Longstaffe really did tell the folks in Chicago that his “A” only means Auxiliary, and whether Cp. Drewery has been “nipping around smartly” in spite of his “Blighty” feet. However all our questions and many more will be answered in a few days and so we sink back into our lethargy with the inevitable cry “Roll on the Boat.”
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SERGEANTS’ MESS NOTES
Many farewells this month. At last “Chiefy” Brockington is on the boat and he has taken with him Sgt. “Blondie” Evans. Brock had a great send off from the gang and no doubt he will remember the Mess-on-the-prairies for many years to come.
* * *
We shall miss Tom Riby. Tom has now received his commission and his departure from our Mess to the Officers’ coincided with our losing Ryck Ryckman on posting to Winnipeg and W.O. Doug Campbell who has been whisked across Canada to somewhere in New Brunswick. Thus most of the Sergeants’ Mess Concert Party left us in one day. It only eaves Hal Jones and Frank Hartnell, and rumour has it that Hal Jones in sweating on the boat and may be away shortly.
* * *
The Quiz programme on Saturday nights has “caught on” and the “Oscar” (now worth $6) has not yet been won.
* * *
Members who stayed in camp over Xmas were treated to a very unusual sight for someone shaved off half of Flight Sergeant Harrison’s moustache off. He was very proud of his half moustache until he woke up on Boxing Day morning and looked in the mirror.
Visitor to the Mess was W.O. Sowerby who paid us a call from Penhold; at the request of Lofty Rainey he did he celebrated settee act. A table of four sat up till the early hours binding about the past.
* * *
The Xmas Draw was a wow.
Over $200 in prizes were distributed during the evening and Mrs. Hancocks and Mrs. Ayres presided over the draw. Amongst the winners were the Group Captain, S/L. “A”, Wing Commander Hancocks, and the two gem prizes went to P/O. Coney who won a Bottle and a Cocktail Set.
A packet of ExLax was won by F/Lt. Ross.
* * *
And, in conclusion, we enquire whether “Tubby” Earp has built that road from Estevan to Froude? … If Flight Sergeant Holland ever reads D.R.O.’s …? If Bob Betts can do A.C.P. by remote control from Regina? … Who smacked the geranium at Ron Gee’s house? … Is Dick Richardson really posted to Servicing? … Was Sgt. Blacklock playing in an orchestra at Command …?
STORES GOSSIP
Amidst masses of inventories, vouchers, C.A.Ps., and all the other paraphernalia connected with our job, and faced with the pleasant prospect of five days absence from it all ahead of us, we are attempting to contribute our monthly effort to this month’s “Gopher.”
Our building has recently been caged in and put outside the camp gates. There have been several rumors floating around as to why this has been done, but we can assure you that it wasn’t done to keep you out – we can never hope to do that it seems! We are pleased to observe, however, that with the aid of Station Standing Orders, D.R.Os., our prominent notice board, and umpteen verbal instruction, people are generally getting to know our hours of business.
A year or so ago we were housed temporarily in No. 5 Hangar, trying to post vouchers with one gloved hand and tend a smoking stove with the other – and thinking of home. Today we are permanently settled within our cage, working in comparative comfort (if no one leaves the door open!) – and still thinking of home. Who knows, tomorrow may see our dreams coming true – and pigs might fly!
At the moment we are looking forward, like everyone else, to a well-earned rest, and – curse it! there goes that bell. “Yes, Sir, the Padre’s inventory is ready … No, Sir, there are no clothing parades today … Yes, Sir, the paper work’s almost up to date. … Er, can I have an early chit, Sir?”
Look out, Winnipeg, here I come!
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SPORTS
[Drawing of a man playing basketball]
BOXING
The major sporting event of the month was the first Station Boxing Tournament, held in the Drill Hall on December 15th. A very good evening’s entertainment was enjoyed by a large crowd. Several of the contestants seemed rather short of training, but the standard of boxing was generally high.
The results were as follows:
LAC. Thompson beat LAC. Jones (k.o.).
LAC. Walters beat Cpl. Tate on points.
LAC. Marshall beat AC. Howard on points.
Cpl. Farley beat LAC. Harris in the second round.
LAC. Willis beat AC. Annear on points.
Cpl. Roberts beat LAC. Adams on points.
LAC. Recile beat LAC. Taylor on points.
LAC. Stokes beat AC. Scott on points.
During the interval a mock “pro” bout was fought to a bitter and surprising end. It took the form of a challenge match between “Delayed Action” Hartnell and “Tornado” Robinson. The former, in spite of a flagrant disregard of the training rules regarding smoking (he entered the ring behind an outsize cigar) administered the k.o. with such paralyzing effect that it was not until the arrival of the stretcher that his opponent fell to the floor.
Another boxing tournament is planned for 17th February. There is plenty of time between now and that date for training. There must be many people on the camp who have sufficient knowledge of boxing at least to make a showing. We hope that they will come along, and thereby encourage others to take part. Pilot Officer Ryley, who organized the first tournament, has several assistants, all of whom are eager and willing to instruct and help you in any way they can. Take advantage of their knowledge, and turn up to the practices in the Drill Hall.
BASKETBALL
Most of us are very much beginners at this game, and in order to help us the Weyburn Collegiate team have offered to come up to the camp and show us how. We have already met them once in Weyburn, when the Station was beaten during extra time by 32 points to 26. This is a pretty good effort for our first game, but the result is not the important point. What mattered most was that those who played saw their mistakes, learned something about tactics, particularly the zone defence, which presents a very formidable barrier. The Collegiate team will be visiting the camp shortly to give us another game, and we hope that as many of you as possible will come along to take advantage of this opportunity of seeing the game.
[Drawings]
A drunk in Manitoba
Thought he sang like Tauba
His neighbors talked it oba,
And shot him dead – and soba.
The moral then, is woba
Tide him, drunk or soba,
Who sings like Richard Tauba
And lives in Manitoba.
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THAT CHRISTMAS DINNER
AT YOUR SERVICE
[Photograph of a group of people behind dining tables]
…BUT YOU SHOULD SEE IT AT CHRISTMAS!
[Photograph of rows of dining tables in a decorated canteen]
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[Drawing of a chequered flag] Around the Hangars
H
We wrote the most brilliant notes ever for the December issue, but like so many of our ace pupes on cross-countries, they got lost for no apparent reason. This month, however, we are rather at a loss, as there has been so little flying that the pupes have had little chance to do anything very Prune-like; no ground loops, no prangs, no nothing … Or can it be because we are so efficient?
First let us congratulate Flight Lieutenant Walker on his elevation to the Temple as Examining Officer. However, we also sympathise, as owing to the size of courses he will have to insinuate himself into the back seats of the despised buzz-boxes rather more often than he would wish.
We also extend a welcome to our new Skipper, F/O. Griffiths, who has already made his presence felt by subletting all the awkward jobs to each and every one of his stooges. We haven’t seen F/O. Miller out in the garden with his pick and spade.
Have any flights evolved new formulae for the “hours flown” charts? If so, please give us the gen, as the ever-increasing red sector is demoralising us, and the coffee flag is flying so regularly that our timekeeper hasn’t a chance to use his abundant supply of sharp pencils.
We cannot be accused of lack of keenness, as our skipper is always off to Lang before daylight to examine the weather from all angles – has the two hours I.F. per month anything to do with this? And what else but our enthusiasm can have caused the flare path party to ask for danger money?
G
Since we last wrote, some changes have taken place in the Flight, notably:
P/O. Stevenson’s carrying the whip around for Chief Ledbrook, who is visiting happier hunting grounds.
P/O. Nairn is growing a moustache to confuse his pupils.
P/O. Jones became of age!
And P/O. Gerdes has become a total abstainer since becoming a victim of a savage attack by hordes of pink elephants.
Sergeant Evans was suddenly snatched from us and posted far away, together with Taff Bevan and Snag Allen. Although he Backbone of the Flight has gone, we hide our tears as best we can and carry on. At least we have now two vacant chairs, and can sleep in comparative peace. We take this opportunity of welcoming Sgt. Patton and AC.s Meara and Bellamy, and would like them to know that if things ever become complicated poison can be obtained from Watts at a cost of two cents.
On behalf of the ground crew we wish to thank Mr. Stevenson and the other instructors for kindly remembering them at Christmas, and can assure them that from now on their engines will fire on all cylinders.
LAC. Staines was so good in the Pantomime that we have asked him to put on a floor show in the instructors’ room. Corporal Bryan, with the kind permission of the boys, is doing his part; he has promised to swallow broken glass, followed by two pints of liquid cement.
Doctor Watkinson, having enjoyed a White Christmas, is now ready to resume his advice to those contemplating marriage. All such advice is free, and satisfaction cannot be guaranteed.
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A
Christmas fills the mind of everyone, and those not in the process of being blackmailed are busy blackmailing.
Here are some gems we have picked up whilst passing through Pete’s hangar:
“In only five days I spent $1.50. Expensive places, these farms!”
“I’ll send you a mink coat, several diamond rings, and a box of Kleenex.” (The Kleenex has arrived.)
“Remember the wizard blonde and that brunette, like Lamarr, and that redhead – gosh, that redhead!” Heard three carriages away on the train: “I don’t worry, I’ll be home by April!”
Enough of that! Let’s switch on the microphone concealed in the pupils’ room …
One of our pupils seems very fortunate in his allocation of instructors: it seems he struck a prima donna. When asked what his first experience of a Harvard was like, he replied: “Well, I wouldn’t say they were quiet, but what shook me was their vocal ability. I looked up to ask my instructor where the music came from over the inter-comm. but I decided against it when all I could see in the rear vision mirror was a set of gleaming teeth and a quivering moustache.”
We seem to be blessed with a brilliant pair of financiers amongst the “A” Flight ground crew; rumour has it that Birch and Love can turn a five dollar bill into a hundred quarters. We envy them.
They say our Ledbury is flying high these days. Perhaps those pyjamas have gone to his head.
Our ex-boy, Blondie, seems to have the real Service spirit, always opens his eyes at Reveille, picks up a paper, lights a cigarette, and lies back to reap the benefits of his early morning work. He must enjoy listening to the Australian vernacular, or perhaps he’s only young and wants to learn to swear.
Heard a Certain Sergeant talking about a Kiwi from Aotearoa. Seems this Kiwi took an unholy delight in demonstrating advanced aerobatics to a certain pupil of his who had been partaking of the holiday spirit. But why the blazes turn around and ask with a cynical smile “Did you like that last one?” You have to be polite in war time, more’s the pity.
They tell me the Calgary air is very bracing these days, and is an ideal place for war-weary tourists to regain their lost vitality. But the tourists we saw there the other day, the vitality they discovered didn’t leave them with that Vitamin A look. But is might have been Vitamin E …
It seems a certain Squad Commander was once a Navy man. But we don’t think it’s quite the thing to whistle “Anchors Aweigh” when he calls at 6 a.m. These “wallabies” certainly have queer habits.
We, the “boys,” and the Boss himself would like to take this opportunity of wishing one and all the very best of New Years.
Back to the old grind now? Let’s do that, eh?
F
Amid a fanfare of gosports in harmony, “F” Flight, No. 64 Course, passes from grim reality to colourful memory. When jet-propelled stratocraft are landing at Weyburn airport, senile greasemonkeys will foregather to relate how, back in ’42, they helped to pull the chocks away for the Flight that set up the all-time flying record. U/t riggers of future autogyro limousines will listen in awe to an octogenarian propswinger telling of how they set the night flying record at 41 S.F.T.S. Nor will the tale of E. and F Flights’ joint night-flying figures lose anything in the telling.
Hark ye, pupes of 1943, the times set up by the last of the 1942 courses …. (Deleted by censor).
Such an achievement can only be celebrated in one manner. To the accompaniment of the whirling drone of props in fully fine, a virgin aircraft, unsullied by pupes, was wheeled forth from the immediate reserve. Threefold D.I.s were scrupulously and ceremoniously performed by airmen with not less than two G.C. stripes each. A brave and selfless pilot stood forth to perform the ceremony. Amid much wailing and lamentation he took the p lane forth to Lang and dashed it headlong into the ground. A fitting dedication. The pieces were gathered and used as gremlin charms. (N.B. Courses to follow please note that this ceremony can only be performed by a ginger-headed airman.)
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But though the letters of loved ones flowed into the officers’ mess some days before the Wings Parade, members of the Flight feel they have failed lamentably. Despite all their efforts, P/O. Hopeful still tries to land his kite as though it were fitted with skis. Sergeant Netherlands’ acquaintance with accommodating duty pilots has Improved faster than his flying. P/O. Sedge still insists upon practising aerobatics long after the chequered flag goes up.
Stoogepilots Twister and Deadly were of course beyond hope when they came here, and it would take more than a hurricane to drag W/O. Blessemall from his bed before noon.
We have done our best, but there was too much for one course to do. Training the C.I. to lower the undercart and not the flaps is a job for future courses. To them we hand over the controls, in the earnest hope that they in their turn will leave their instructors a little better than they find them.
And so, with a flourish of chequered flags, the last of the 1942 courses passes on.
X
Its me agane, Joe. They avnt found im yet (Willy Prangit I mene.) The F.C. (see larst munth for wot that menes) cuddent tell yew ware e wos (Willy) on akownt of no wun to releave Im (the F.C.) on the Arty. He opes to ave is tail reddy by nex munths gofer.
December was wot they call Instrukters Paradice they rushed into the krew room shouting Bagzerclamp and Werzertee evry day and after droring lots to se hoo ad to bind the pupes spent the mornin playing poker. Of corse we ad to clene the kites long after every wun ad gorn. It’s the same the ole world over as they say. Cor thares that sarjint agane he binds us rigid orl day. “Yor kite as bin down 2 minits … The egzaminin officer wonts is nashin in arfanour” … “Wossermrrer wiv 72” … “Pushumin pushumout pushumin. “26 mister Ross sez …”
Why didn’t I join the army?
Appy noo yer.
Joe.
C
It is now two months since “C” Flight last contributed to these columns, but in a general glow of benevolence engendered by the prospect of five days buckshee leave, we are prompted to ask a few questions:
Which u/t always takes an unopened packet of English Players with his to Link?
Which instructors will become of age next month? And will they then really be allowed to go up without a pupe as a safety pilot?
If a u/t drops his pencil on a Cross Country, Willie slow roll to recover it?
Who caught the clock on Christmas Eve?
Does No. – always fly with a side panel off?
Is there a future in O.O. or is it just for old times sake?
There are a lot more things we want to know, but the train is due in any time now, so here we go.
Happy New Year, fellows!
E
We must apologise for missing out on last month’s Flight Notes. We hope the “Gopher” sales didn’t drop too badly.
Once more another course of dashing aviators has come and gone. The best of luck and Happy Landings to all of No. 64 Course!
Calling Cpl. Cooper, “D” Flight! Please send over your chief gremlin catcher. Two of your pets are tying knots in our aileron control cables.
Welcome to Cpl. Cocks, who has joined us from Majors. They say he went away at Christmas and came back with a cute bride. Congratulations, Cpl. And Mrs. Cocks, and Best Wishes from the Flight.
Congratulations to P/O. Riby on obtaining his commission.
Before we leave our crew room and go off on our New Yea’s grant, we cast an eye on the Serviceability Board. We are most surprised to see that all our aircraft are serviceable! This would call for investigation at any other time, but we’ve got to run like mad for that train, although it’s bound to be late.
22
[Page break]
B
After having disposed of No. 62 Course in the usual manner, we turned, not without a twinge of uneasiness (or was it remorse?) to the purveying of gen to No. 70 Course, who eventually took to the air after waiting nearly a week for the notorious Canadian winter to demonstrate to what lengths it would go in order to keep them on the ground. (“Oh, yes, in Canada there are 360 flying days each year.”)
Meanwhile Sgt. Dakeyne went into retirement, recovering from the mumps, going on sick leave, filling up clearance certificates, pushing out the boat, buying a uniform, and eventually emerged a Pilot Officer, complete with a lofty winter cap. He is now hovering uncertainly between Minneapolis, Weyburn, and Calgary, and is the recipient of our most sincere congratulations for having at last vacated the position of “Joe,” the occupation of which is now undisputed.
“The Boss’s” time is now taken up with trying to think of things to tell Cpl. Lambeth to invent, and with murmuring “What a beautiful chart; not a mark on it!” whereas P/O. Dixon is always as busy as anything, drawing, writing peremptory instructions, and contributing greatly to the growth of grey hair on Sgt. Tomes’ head by putting unserviceable any aeroplane he lays eyes on. Flight Sergeant Plummer gets so disturbed about it that he sometimes puts the other leg up on the table.
We have lost two of the ground crew, LAC. Mark and AC. Huck, due to sudden activity on board the Boat. While we are sorry to see them go, we cannot commiserate with them. We are more than envious.
Hitler has no advantages over Flying Wing Headquarters when it comes to New Orders. They are so prolific that P/O. Knowles takes them up and down the tow-line with him. He says they take his mind off things.
D
Great news! LAC. Birkhead has at last caught The Boat, after sweating on the top line for several months past. When the news was broken to him he sighed and said he didn’t want to go, and they had to escort him round the camp to make sure he got his clearance certificate signed.
We welcome to the Flight Cpl. Thompson. He takes the place of Cpl. Fearon, now thoroughly organised at Moose Jaw, to judge from recent reports.
Since one of our pupes, LAC. Marshall, won his boxing bout in the recent Boxing Tournament LAC. Steele has been fancying his chances as a professional. Thanks to the excellent advice of LAC. Morley, he can now beat up his own shadow.
F/O. Rutledge is getting rather worried over one of his pupes, tall, dark and handsome Romeo Marriott, who is now wandering around with a far-away look in those “come-hither” eyes of his. We wonder who it can be this time …?
The whole Flight Was amazed the other day at the sight of “Flash” Harris, told to deliver a message to F/O. Stephen. As the weather was cold, “Flash” quickened his step almost to running pace. Amid great applause from the lads he charged down the tarmac, past F/Lt. Martin, who was so surprised that he dropped his parachute, and at last reached the brave Sir Galahad of the skies. “Dual only, Sir!” he panted, and then turned around and thundered back into the hangar.
LAC. Horrocks claims the entire credit for this amazing occurrence. And we must agree that his cocoa is a most dangerous brew.
B.J.C.
You know, getting out this magazine is no picnic. If we print light stuff, people say we are silly.
If we don’t, they say we are too serious.
If we clip things from other magazines, we are too lazy to write ourselves.
If we don’t, we are too fond of our own stuff.
If we don’t print contributions, we don’t appreciate real genius.
If we do print them, the magazine is full of junk.
What would you do, chum?
23
[Page break]
WOPPORTUNISM
I have discovered a secret weapon. No, not that sort of Secret Weapon the Ground School instructors tell you is a deadly secret, and no telling tales out of School, yet which every magazine you read makes a point of revealing I full detail. No, my Secret Weapon is the fully aerobatic gopher.
In this game of Commish. Last week my Flight Commander taxied into the kite I was trying to start up. He didn’t noticeably damage it. There I was. And there was he. I knew he couldn’t make it, but he wasn’t going to call out a joe to yank his tail wheel round with a pupe as an audience. I felt a sudden push, and he swung gaily into position. That, he thought, was that.
And it very nearly was. But, my dear Sir, not quite. For there comes a day when the editor of any station magazine goes into a flat spin. That day is known to the initiated as the day of going to press. Pat him on the back and hand him a manuscript right then, and he’ll grab the vilest piece of blackmail as “copy.”
Now, then … Is it Commish? Or do I … ?
So much for the preamble. Did it ever occur to you to apply the gen that drops from the lips of that clan of paragons, the Wireless Ops, to wider spheres of experience? For instance, that preamble text-ending business …? Can’t you just heat those ex-brats beginning “Now, when you’ve been in the Service as long as I have …” Preamble. Just plain preamble. Ultimately you find they’ve about as much service (and a fellow who can find nothing more to boast about than the length of time he has been in the R.A.F. is nearer the lunatic asylum than those fellows who put on skates and “crack the whip” there) – about a much service, I say, as the fellow I met at Grove Court. He had just learned to say “brassed” with the correct slant, and was complaining bitterly of life in the R.A.F. I asked him how long he had been in. “All day!” he replied.
The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking to and fro’;
They binded rigidly to see such quantities of snow.
“If seven erks with seven brooms should sweep for half a year,
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“They’d then please Sergeant Cur?”
“How the heck would I know …
And anyway, who cares,” said Chips, who always was a cantankerous old codger.
THERE [underlined] IS [/underlined] A “FUTURE” IN IT
At the Christmas dinner the Commanding Officer congratulated the Unit on the way in which everyone on the Station had worked together to make the Unit a happy one.
Here at Weyburn we have probably as full a program of recreational, social and entertainment events as any R.A.F. Station, but in most cases all the work is done by a handful of enthusiasts, who give up much more of their time and energy than we should reasonably expect of them.
It is very easy to criticise destructively, but destructive criticism is generally valueless. The only person qualified to engage in constructive criticism is the fellow who is good at that very job himself, or who at least has ideas which would be much more valuable if they were presented before the show or whatever it is which is being put on. There is no place at this Unit for the back seat driver.
Shall we see to it that during this second year of No. 41 each of us finds a job to do in which he really can play his part in promoting the happiness of his fellows. The Bands, the Concert Party, the Dramatic Society, the Male Chorus, and – yes, you guessed it! – this magazine, will be especially glad of your assistance.
The Flying Gopher is published on the 15th of each month by and for the entertainment of the personnel of No. 41 S.F.T.S. (R.A.F.) at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada. Printed for the Publishers by the Weyburn Review.
24
[Page break]
state it reflects the sky-waves of H/F & M/F
[Underlined] SKIP distance [/underlined]
[Diagram]
No reception between attenuation of ground wave & return to earth of sky wave.
[Deleted Night [/deleted] wave for D/F is ground. Reflection no good. [Diagram]
347. P/O WATSON SELF 1 hr
1 AB 2 3 3m 4567 10 20 22
[Page break]
[Underlined] Frequency Grouping [/underlined]
M/F 1000 K/Cs to 3000 K/Cs
H/F 3000 K/Cs to 30,000 K/Cs
V/HF 30,000 K/Cs + over.
MF long ground wave for Direct communications + DF. [Diagram] Sky wave absorbed by heaviside
HF Shorter ground wave suitable for short distance D.F.
Long Distance on reflected sky wave heaviside layer. [Diagram]
VHF. Short, easily attenuated ground waves.
Sky wave. Due to high frequency penetrates heaviside layer does not return to earth.
[Underlined] Height of aircraft [/underlined]
Min height for D/F is 2000 ft.
[Underlined] Heaviside Layer [/underlined]
A layer of ionised air about 200 miles above earth’s surface.
In the daytime Heavyside layer is not very dense, with the result that it can absorb the sky waves of M/F & H/F At night time the layer descends & contracts & becomes denser. In this
Dublin Core
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Title
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The Flying Gopher January 1943
Description
An account of the resource
This edition covers an Editorial, poems, the padres notes, romantic fiction, a car chase in London, a list of expenditure of the station's social funds, recollections of flying in the Great War, Christmas stories, Officers Mess gossip, a story about the snow blower, Sergeants Mess stories, sports news, stories from the station Flight groups.
Additionally there are two handwritten pages of radio notes.
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41 SFTS Weyburn
Date
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1943-01
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25 printed sheets and two pages of handwritten notes
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eng
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Text
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MFordTA1585520-170411-15
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Saskatchewan--Weyburn
Saskatchewan
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Anne-Marie Watson
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1943-01
aircrew
arts and crafts
entertainment
gremlin
Harvard
love and romance
sport
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17105/BHollisANHollisANv1.2.pdf
a070b81c7aaffa390a66bba596e34d7c
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Title
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Hollis, Arthur
Arthur Norman Hollis
A N Hollis
Description
An account of the resource
56 items. The collection concerns Arthur Hollis (b. 1922) who joined the RAF in 1940 and after training completed a tour on 50 Squadron before becoming an instructor. At the end of the war he was deployed as part of Tiger Force. Collection contains a biography and memoir, his logbook, correspondence, training records, photographs of people, aircraft and places, his medals and flying jacket. It includes an oral history interview with his son, Richard Hollis.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Hollis and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-07
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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.
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Hollis, AN
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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A Memoir
By
Arthur Hollis
[page break]
[photograph of Arthur Hollis]
[page break]
A Memoir by Arthur Hollis
I was born in Highgate, North London, on 11th August 1922. My parents who had married a year earlier had an apartment there.
In 1924 they moved into a new bungalow near Hornchurch in Essex. It was all very rural then. We had gas for lighting and mainly coal for heating but no electricity. A special treat for me was to be taken down the lane to a forge to watch the horses being shod. At the age of four or thereabouts I was sent to a local "dames" school. It was mainly girls but there were a few boys. I didn't like it as the boys were not particularly favoured. I did have one little girl friend, Tina Branston. We were inseparable for years - in fact until my parents moved from the area around my eighth birthday. Tina was the penultimate child of a large family; the eldest was 22 years old and taught at the school. I was reproved by my mother for calling her "Christine" as, of course, all her family did. I was told very firmly "Miss Branston to you". Such were the manners of those days. Tina and I did have a favourite pastime which was to get into the long grass to explore in detail the differences between boys and girls. I thus had a very good early education between the ages of 6 and 7. I could also read, write and recite the multiplication tables up to number 12.
Events which took place during our stay in Hornchurch were the births of my brother Gerald and sister Rosemary. On each occasion I was sent off to Dover to stay with Grandpa Leigh (mother's father) and Aunt Mary who house kept for him. I loved my stays there in an old house in the lovely old town it was then and I was "spoilt rotten"
A great day at Hornchurch was when my mother was given a wireless - an old set which was operated by batteries. In the evenings we used to sit "listening in" with headphones over our ears.
As I have already recalled during the summer of 1930 my parents decided to move. The Ford motor factory had just come to Dagenham and the whole area was changing. They bought a house in Carshalton Surrey. The move took place during August. My parents chose a school for me to go to, more on the basis that I could walk there taking Gerald with me than for its academic attractions. It was an awful place and taught me very little. Anyway in the course of events I would have moved to a local secondary school at the age of 9 or 10.
My principal activity outside school was in the Cubs. By the time I left, when I went to Dulwich, I was a Sixer (platoon sergeant) with an arm full of badges indicating my ability to boil an egg or sew on a button or swim a length.
As mentioned later I was at the age of 8 in hospital for a mastoid operation. Shortly after discharge I was back in hospital again for a few days having gashed my leg very badly while riding another boy's bicycle. My parents thought things might be safer were I to have my own bicycle. For my 9th birthday I was taken to the then cycle manufacturer James and Co. in Holborn and bought a simple bicycle. This made a huge difference to my life. Apart from a few main roads which were taboo, I was free to cycle all over the district and beyond. It gave a great sense of freedom. Before my 12th birthday the bicycle was passed to Gerald and I was given a larger machine - a Raleigh with hub brakes and a three speed gear - a veritable Rolls Royce. For years thereafter Rodney Dove and I used to cycle frequently together all over Surrey and on some days would get to the south coast and back. When I was about 14½ years old I cycled alone down to Dover to stay with Grandpa Leigh. It was useful to have a bicycle there as another school friend (one "Clod" Jarvis) was in the Dover district at the same time
[page break]
and we were able to spend time together. I have used the word "Clod" as that was his nickname. He went to Rhodesia after leaving school and we wrote to each other rather infrequently. I found it difficult to write to an elderly gentleman as "My dear Clod" but I found out only from his widow that his name was Alan.
In 1932 my mother received a legacy from the estate of a widower uncle, Harry Webb, which amounted to about £2000. This gave my parents the background capital which was a financial protection for them. The plans for me were that I was to go to Dulwich College at the age of 11. Shortly after my 10th birthday I sat the Entrance Exam but was found to be weak in all subjects. I was immediately removed from the awful school mentioned above and sent to Wallington High School as I was now deemed old enough to cycle or take a bus. I flourished there under the headmaster who was an excellent teacher and determined that I should pass the Dulwich Entrance Exam next summer. I responded well and happily worked hard for and passed the exam.
In September 1933 I started in the 2nd form at Dulwich. It was hard going. Most of my contemporaries were there on scholarships from the London, Surrey or Kent County Councils and were therefore a pretty bright bunch. I was rather idle for the first few terms and content to coast along halfway up the form. When my time came to go into the Upper 3rd I was put into "Treddy's" form. Mr Treadgold is a legend to many Old Alleynians as a very strict task master. Personally, I respected and liked him. Whether through fear or dislike of failure I soon learned that by working hard I could be amongst the first few in the form. This stood me in very good stead later on.
I have jumped about slightly and could have mentioned that in the summer term of 1935 I was persuaded by my great school friend Rodney Dove, who was a very good swimmer, that we should try for a quarter mile standard medal (under 10 minutes for a bronze and under 7½ mins for silver). We both got a bronze, I in 9 min 7 seconds and he in under 9 mins. Not bad as we were both about 13 years of age. Rodney was an exceptionally strong swimmer. This may have contributed some years on in 1942 to his being picked, as an RNVR sub lieutenant, to carry out the horrendous task of riding a "human torpedo" and putting an explosive charge under an Italian troop ship. He did this and received a well earned DSO but was a prisoner of war until 1945. He was also a good boxer and we used to box together a lot when we were about 11 or 12. I later went on to become the Dulwich Middleweight Champion in 1939.
My mother spoke fluent French having spent some months at the age of 16 living with a French family. Between the two wars my mother's married brothers, Norman and Jack, lived and worked in Paris. Both had French wives. My parents visited them for Easter 1936 and took me with them. I had a tourist's view of Paris. During September 1937 I was kindly allowed to visit them for a fortnight on my own and spent many hours in the International Exhibition then on there as well as wandering on foot around Paris and Versailles.
I tend to be rather cynical when I hear someone say ''the best days of my life were at school." My reply is apt to be ''what a dull life." Nevertheless I did enjoy my years at Dulwich. I had many friends, some of them lifelong I was very sad when in the spring of 1939 my father said "I think that you have achieved most worthwhile things at Dulwich. I think that you should leave now and I will help you to become a Chartered Accountant." He was probably right and I was grateful. I had sat under some excellent mentors. I had obtained credits in all subjects in school certificate. I had obtained rugger and boxing colours. I was a corporal in the OTC with Cert "A". I was Form Captain and had been so on previous occasions. There was not much more that mattered to do. The Master (i.e. the Headmaster) was rather upset at my going but that was natural.
[page break]
So in early May I reported to the offices of Legg and Smith Chartered Accountants in the City of London. There were about five other Articled Clerks several years older than I was. My immediate senior Donald Draper became a life long friend. As junior I was given only rather menial jobs to do and I was rather bored but when war broke out four months later the managing clerk and myself were the only staff left, all the others being mobilized in various territorial units. My Principal, J.F. Legg said to me "You have rather quick promotion. I will give you any help you need." I had eighteen months very hard but rewarding work ahead of me.
One could not have had a more excellent man to work for than J.F. Legg. He was a friend of my father, they both having been soldiers in the 1 st battalion of the London Rifle Brigade when it went to France in 1914.
Unfortunately during the May of 1940 I suffered a burst appendix and was in the War Memorial Hospital at Carshalton for some weeks. This was a very serious condition at that time as there were no antibiotics although I think I did have penicillin when I had rather a relapse after three weeks.
I had had a four week stay in the same hospital when I was 8 years old having a mastoid operation, again very serious. During my stay there I was very sad to be told that Tina Branston had died of meningitis. That, together with scarlet fever and TB, were killers of children on quite a large scale. I mention these rather grisly facts to record how medical science has made great strides during my lifetime.
As soon as I was well enough after discharge from hospital I joined the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers) when invasion by the Germans looked a probability. A parade looked like the Peasants' Revolt - no uniforms, no arms (apart from the odd shotgun or pitch fork). Afterwards as arms became available from the USA the Home Guard replaced the LDV. Although we all enjoy a good laugh at Dad's Army it was generally more efficient than that. There was not much time between the two wars. Men who had fought in the trenches were still only in their early forties; they could shoot fast and straight. There would have been a lot of dead Germans had invasion been attempted. I was made a corporal probably on the strength of having Cert A from the OTC. About this time I embarked upon my life of crime. I was cycling on Home Guard Duty without front or rear lights when a special constable loomed out of the blackout and charged me. I had to go before the local magistrate. I made an impassioned plea and thought I had won when he said "Very dangerous, Mr Hollis, pay ten shillings." A severe punishment - it was a week's allowance.
After my 18th birthday in August 1940 I felt eligible to join one of he [sic] services. Not the Army or the Navy as I was too young to be considered for combat duty and I decided therefore to go for pilot training in the RAF. I mentioned this to JF (as Legg was known). He was very sympathetic having himself risen to the rank of Lt. Col. in the 1914-18 war but he asked if I would defer for a few months to allow others to catch up with me for work in the firm. I agreed and volunteered my services to the RAF early in 1941.
The RAF had rather a bottleneck of potential pilots at that time and for a start I was sent on a 6 month course at Manchester University to study such subjects as higher mathematics, mechanics, meteorology, air navigation etc. I arrived at Hulme Hall, Manchester in early April 1941 and found myself with about 20 other RAF cadets. We were a happy bunch who helped each other along. Some were more advanced than others in various subjects. I do remember our being always hungry. Although the food in Hulme Hall was well cooked and wholesome, the whole country was now severely rationed and we were very lacking in meat and fats. We used
[page break]
to meet in each others rooms of an evening and make toast; a small amount of butter and plenty of jam was produced.
After leave in September we were ranked as LACs with white flashes in our caps to indicate air crew in training and mustered for a sea trip to the USA to be taught to fly. We sailed from Avonmouth at the beginning of November in a 7000 ton ship which in previous days had done the New Zealand meat voyages. We were now the carcasses. The North Atlantic in November is a cruel place. We had an escort of naval corvettes for the first part of the voyage but one could seldom see them as the poor devils spent much of their time half under water. We were in hammocks close slung together and as most people were sick, the nights were very unpleasant. I volunteered to fetch food from the kitchen to mess table, partly because I was the only one interested in eating anything and the kitchen was warm and fairly close to the centre of the ship thus having the least movement. It was a great relief to reach Halifax, Nova Scotia. I shall always remember that first breakfast on shore. Plenty of eggs and bacon etc. etc.- things then unknown in the shortages of the UK. Life was not very comfortable in this staging station where we stayed for three weeks. It was December, the outside temperature was -20c., the huts were grossly overheated by primitive coal stoves and the latrines outside in the open air were very primitive.
After about three weeks we boarded the first of several trains on our journey to Florida. A most interesting journey. In three days we passed from the snow covered land of eastern Canada to the semi-tropical atmosphere of Florida.
The RAF station of modem comfortable huts around a parade ground and a swimming pool was just south of Lake Okeechobee (Fort Myers 70 miles west on the Gulf of Mexico, Miami 100 miles south east on the Atlantic). After the sun went down the insects on the screens to our living quarters had to be seen to be believed. Four engined mosquitoes. We slept under nets. The station was run by three RAF officers. The flying and ground instructors were American civilians. The flying instructors were good, the ground instructors were useless. If we were to pass the written wings exam we should need to study our manuals very resolutely.
After a day or so of settling in, we were paraded and inspected by the CO Wing Commander Kenneth Rampling. He appointed me as Course Commander. I was made an acting corporal (unpaid) and had general responsibility for the behaviour of the Flight (about 50 cadets). There were four Flights in the school at one time. As one passed out another one arrived. We trained on the PT 17 which was the primary trainer of the US Army Air Corps - like a Tiger Moth but rather more solid. After about eight hours in the air, most of us went solo. Thereafter the training continued until the mid-term ten days leave. People went various ways. Some adventurous chaps got as far north as New York. I preferred to stay with a couple of fellow cadets, Peter Cowell and "Flossie" Redman on the Gulf of Mexico coast. We ended up at the home of three elderly ladies who had befriended us. I have since renamed them "The Golden Girls". I have also since been told that one of them took "a particular shine to me". - the opportunities one misses in life!
After leave we went onto the Vultee BT13A - a monoplane, and after a further short leave, onto the Harvard, at that time the fighter aircraft of the Army Air Corps - just as well they didn't have to fight the Battle of Britain although the Harvard was a very nice aircraft to fly. At the end of that course we took the Wings exam and qualified. On the evening before the Wings Parade I, together with my two section leaders, was invited by the three officers to a celebration at the Clewiston Inn where they stayed. What a night. I arrived back at camp wearing the C.O.'s trousers, mine having got wet in a rainstorm. The next morning the Flight was drawn up on parade and I marched up to Kenneth Rampling to report "all present and
[page break]
correct. Sir." He said "Christ you look 'orrible" to which I replied "not 'alf as 'orrible as I feel". Just as well the doting onlookers could not hear these remarks. Dear Kenneth Rampling; he was killed two years later as Group Captain DSO DFC. CO of a Pathfinder Squadron.
We were at that time officially sergeants although a number of us were expecting to be commissioned officers once we got to Canada. We set off on an evening train. After three days of various stops and changes, including several hours in New York, we arrived at Moncton, New Brunswick, from where we had set off the previous winter.
Life was better. I was now a Pilot Officer. I met up again with other friends of the horrible voyage out. They were now fellow officers, some of them destined for distinction such as Bill Reid V.C.
After several weeks wait at Moncton, we boarded a train for New York where we went aboard the Aorangi, the ship which was to take us back to UK. This had a maximum speed of about 15 knots. I have since learned that it was the worst month of U Boat sinkings. We were nevertheless oblivious of this and had a happy voyage. As we neared UK shores the Americans on board, feeling that they were entering a war zone, mounted machine guns around the deck rails. After they had nearly shot down a Spitfire, which was foolish enough to come too close, we RAF officers were detailed to stand by the guns telling them when not to open fire.
We landed at Greenock, the port of Glasgow, and boarded a special train which took us all the way to Bournemouth where we spent two or three weeks getting uniforms, having medical and dental checks, several days leave etc.
I was then posted to Little Rissington in the Cotswolds to fly Oxfords, twin engined machines, so as to practice map reading (much more difficult than in USA) and to prepare for the larger machines of Bomber Command. After several weeks I was posted to a Wellington OTU at North Luffenham, Rutlandshire where I crewed up with FO Dick Palmer (navigator), Sgts Ted Kemp (bomb aimer), Tom Cheshire (wireless operator) and "Jock" Walker (rear gunner). We started working together on cross country flights, range bombing etc. It was all rather dangerous; a number did not finish the course. When we stepped out at night there was generally a blaze indicating that Cottesmore, our neighbouring station, was flying. As opposed to the Wellington Mark Ills which we had, they had only MKICs which I had later to discover by experience were underpowered. I had one or two near scrapes. I was a pupil one night with others when the aircraft flown by another pupil went out of control. It was righted by the instructor who then "bailed out" the remainder of the personnel. I had my parachute incorrectly fastened so that when I jumped the harness would have gone straight up over my head. Fortunately it caught on the edge of my flying jacket, giving me just enough time to grab hold of it so that I could come down holding it by hand and I slipped it off on landing. As I lay on the ground sweating somewhat, although it was a cold dark December evening, I heard a voice "Don't shoot Dad ! It may be one of ours". I yelled "Don't shoot I am one of yours!" Soon afterwards I was before the fire of a Fenland labourer's cottage being restored with cups of tea. I should have liked something somewhat stronger! Soon I was pleased to learn that all had landed safely. I still have the flying jacket with the small tear in it that saved my life.
The last exercise at the OTU was to fly over enemy territory. I set out with three other aircraft to drop leaflets over Nancy one night. There was a massive cold front over the English Channel with dangerous cumulonimbus clouds. Two older more experienced pilots turned back. I pressed on but as there are dramatic wind changes on the other side of a cold front, it is unlikely that our leaflets went anywhere near Nancy. After a rather eventful return I landed at base. The fourth aircraft was missing. I will just elaborate on the words "eventful return". The whole of our journey there and back over France was over cloud. When I judged on our return
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journey that we had reached the English Channel or the low lying land over northern France I ventured to break cloud. I was then able to see what I thought to be the Cherbourg Peninsular. It was in fact the English coast, probably near the Isle of Wight. Feeling now completely lost I called May Day (the SOS signal). Immediately what appeared to be every searchlight in England lit up and waved me towards North Luffenham. I was so impressed that I forgot to cancel "May Day". I duly landed to be met by a very irate Wing Commander (Chief Flying Instructor).
We next moved on to Swinderby, Lincolnshire to convert on to Lancasters. There I collected two more crew, Sgts Bob Yates (mid upper gunner) and Don Adshead (flight engineer). The only incident there was a fire in an engine on a night cross country flight. The curious thing was that there were no visible signs although the engine was burnt out. Another lucky escape.
On finishing the conversion course we were posted to 50 Squadron at Skellingthorpe, very close to Lincoln.
I have heard since the war from Tom Cheshire (wireless operator) and quite recently from Bob Yates (mid upper gunner). Both son with wife and grandson of Bob Yates have been to Westwell to see me. Letters are in my Log Book.
Our tour of operations was mainly spent in what was afterwards known as the Battle of the Ruhr.
The Ruhr area, although separate towns, constituted the German industrial area and was therefore very heavily defended. Its one consolation to us was that it was reasonably near (large bomb load, small fuel load). I hated the place. Late in our tour I was badly shot up over Essen, the main town. This is recorded in the citation for my DFC and written up in the Daily Telegraph. I'm told that it is also on the internet. Earlier in the tour I had about six feet of wing cut off over the Dutch coast and had to make my only early return. In order to achieve the maximum concentration of aircraft over the target, the practice was to congregate together over the Dutch coast and then move on to enemy territory. As it was very dangerous from the collision point of view to have so many aircraft circling around, the instruction was if one was early to do a "dog leg" so as to arrive at the rendezvous at exactly the right time but not before. One aircraft, I think flown by a Wing Commander no less, did not follow the instruction to "dog leg" but was circling with disastrous results for my wing and our morale. I could just about hold the aircraft in the air back to base.
We also carried out raids on the U boat pens at St Nazaire (rather useless as the concrete was too strong for the bombs then carried), Berlin, Pilzen, Hamburg etc. An interesting trip was with a special force chosen to bomb Friedrichshafen where special radar spare parts were stored. As it was then mid-summer, there was not enough darkness to return to the UK. We therefore went on over the Med to North Africa. The personal map which I marked up and tucked into my flying boot is in my log book.
The last trip of my tour was to Milan. Italian targets were regarded as fairly soft. My usual aircraft was pronounced unserviceable rather late in the day. Group Captain Elworthy. (later Marshal of the RAF Lord Elworthy) the then Base Commander was very anxious that I should finish on this trip. He therefore arranged for an aircraft at another Station to be available and took me personally in his staff car to that Station .. My crew were taken there by bus. There was at that time an accusation going around that crews were bombing short. I maintained that the aircraft cameras which were meant to record where the bombs landed were wrongly set. I therefore arranged with Ted Kemp that when the target came into his bomb sight he would give me a sign. I would count to ten and then call Bomb. We brought back an aiming point photograph. Many years later Bun and I were lunching with some Italian friends in Milan.
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After lunch we were taken for a walk and visited a rather ruined church which had been bombed in August 1943. An important feature which was being repaired consisted of a mural of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. As we were going home, I said to Bun "Guess who destroyed the Last Supper?" Shortly after August 1943, the Italians withdrew from the war. I think that the destruction of a religious artefact was too much for them! I recently told the story to an artist friend who remarked dryly that the bomb damage was not half as serious as the damage inflicted by the subsequent garish and overdone restoration.
I was then posted for instructor's duties to an OTU at Westcott, Bucks. I felt it was rather like leaving the Brigade of Guards for the Ordnance Corps but there was no choice. Most of the instructors were New Zealanders - a very jolly bunch of chaps. My immediate senior and Flight Commander was one Squadron Leader Fraser Barron DSO DFC DCM., a New Zealander.
He ranked at the age of 21 as a Pathfinder ace and was killed next year as a Group Captain, the immediate successor to Kenneth Rampling mentioned earlier in this narrative.
I also mentioned earlier the underpowered Wellington Ic. Westcott and its satellite station Oakley had Ics. I was sitting one night in the instructor's seat next to an Australian pupil pilot who was doing a cross country exercise. On returning he made rather a mess of the landing approach and I said "Go round again." Immediately ahead of the main runway at Oakley was Brill Hill. Good pilots could clear it easily but my pupil was not in that category. After looking up at the trees as we went over Brill Hill I let him have another attempt at landing. He did the same thing again, after which I said "Up to 3000 ft and we will change seats". The aircraft used for cross country flying at Oakley had no duel controls.
The autumn and winter continued. During March 1944 I had a message that my dear mother needed a surgical operation for kidney disease. I got compassionate leave and spent a week visiting her and we had nice talks. Alas, the other kidney, which had been expected to pick up and do the work of two, did not do so. She died within a few days. It was a severe blow to the family and her many friends as she was much respected and loved.
In the late spring of that year I had the great good fortune to meet Betty Edmunds, one of the staff in the watch tower at Oakley. I was OC night flying at the time. We soon discovered that we both came from Carshalton and had many mutual friends. Our friendship developed. We used to play tennis together. She always won. Partly because she was a much better player than I but also because whenever she bent over to pick up a ball I was completely unnerved and my mind was not on tennis. On her days off, if I was on leave, we met for a day in London. We also visited Cambridge on one or two occasions to see my brother Gerald who was spending two terms at Jesus College prior to National Service. In early September we got engaged. I said at the time " I suppose we ought to wait until the end of the war to get married.". She said" Oh do you? I was thinking about this coming 2nd December". And thus it was. We had a very quiet wedding as most young people were away on active service and anyway catering was very difficult to arrange. But it was a very happy day and we set off by train for honeymoon in Torquay.
We already knew that we both wanted children. Betty wanted four. I thought this might be rather too many to educate properly. Thinking about things over the years and knowing my darling Betty's quiet way of getting what she wanted, I think she had made up her mind to start our family on her honeymoon. I had no hesitation in helping.
After returning to duty, we used to cycle into Thame to spend the night at a hotel. This is rather an exaggeration; they were mainly rooms over bars in pubs. The beds were generally
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rather primitive and rattled terribly. I often wondered why the bar conversation would suddenly cease. We spent Christmas with Betty's parents at The Bull in Aylesbury.
At New Year there was an officers' dance at Oakley. As Betty was only a Sergeant she had to get her CO's permission to attend. This was refused. My fellow officers were most indignant that the Oxford ''tarts" were likely to be there but an officer's wife was refused. I didn't particularly mind as the signs were that Betty was pregnant and would therefore automatically leave the WAAF.
I have raced ahead and not mentioned that throughout our engagement we frequently spent nights with our friends Steve and Sylvia Hogben in their caravan. Betty slept on one of the narrow beds and I slept beside her on the floor. She had a firm intention, which I respected, of going to her wedding a virgin. I mention this as most young people these days would consider such conduct rather strange.
About two days into New Year I was telephoned by Group that I was promoted to Squadron Leader and was to command an instructor's flight at Turweston (Northants) satellite of Silverstone (now a racing track). I had 2 months earlier been categorised A2 by a visiting examiner from Central Flying School. An A2 instructor's category was rare and the highest one could obtain in wartime. At about the same time Betty was posted to Upper Heyford. Still in the same Group but quite far apart. Anyway news reached me that Betty was in hospital at Stoke Mandeville. She was suffering from the family weakness of cystitis which combined with the pregnancy and being generally run down made her quite unfit for RAF duty. After about a fortnight she returned to Upper Heyford to be discharged from service. I had previously phoned up the senior medical officer at Upper Heyford, explained the situation and told him rather emphatically that I didn't want her having to wander round the Station getting clearance chits which was the usual procedure. She told me afterwards that she got out remarkably quickly. She went to stay with her parents. Meanwhile I was searching for somewhere near Turweston for us to live together. A hard task. Any sort of accommodation was very difficult to find. Fortunately a Flight Lieutenant was posted and offered me his billet which consisted of 2 rooms with facilities in a council house in Brackley.
The tenants of the council house, Mr and Mrs Blackwell, made us very welcome and were pleased to accept some rent. I had at that time Sue, a miniature bull terrier bitch, a 21st birthday present from cousins Harold and Vi Fuller-Clark. When I was posted overseas as I later record, I was in some quandary as to what to do with Sue. Betty and I decided that we would give her to the Blackwells. They were delighted to have her and gave her a very happy life. Nearly every Christmas thereafter we were sent a photograph of Mrs. Blackwell with Sue. There was a strong resemblance but Mrs Blackwell was always the one wearing the hat.
After only four happy months at Turweston I was telephoned by Group to say that that I was posted as a staff officer to the advance party of Tiger Force then being formed to set up a Bomber Command on Okinawa. I was to proceed as quickly as possible to the assembly point which was a dreary RAF equipment storage station in Staffordshire. Having said a profoundly sad farewell to my beloved pregnant wife I proceeded there on VE day. The saddest day of my life as there was a strong risk that we would not see each other again. Events changed that somewhat as it became apparent that British Forces were not wanted in the Pacific by the Americans although Winston C was determined that we should go. I had a series of embarkation leaves and I finally sailed during early July.
During our stay at Turweston I was sent for a month to the Advanced Administration Course at Hereford. Betty came to visit me over a long week-end. We attended the Easter Sunday service
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at Hereford Cathedral. I was informed during the service that "the Widger'' (later named Jennifer) had quickened. I don't whether anything is to be read into that.
The ship that was to take me to Okinawa was the "Empress of Australia", a 25000 ton ship with four funnels. It had been the Kaiser's yacht (quite a yacht) until it was taken over by the British in 1919. Apparently our route was to be across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal across the Pacific and then on to Okinawa. We set forth from Liverpool.
The weather got warmer and warmer. As we neared the West indies we were amused by dolphins playing alongside in the bow wave. A wait for a day or so in the mouth of the canal and we then had the wonderful experience of passing through it. Fabulous locks and tropical birds of many colours flying alongside. For about two weeks we crossed the Pacific to Hawaii where we docked and were allowed shore visits over two or three days. Wonderful swimming and we were well entertained by the local residents. I was flirted with and mildly seduced by a beautiful young woman in the presence of her husband and boyfriend. I should put it the other way round as the boyfriend was clearly the favoured one. How one envied him.
While we were in Hawaii the atom bomb was dropped. I remember the mixed feelings with which I discussed the situation with my fellow officers. We were horrified that science had reached this far but grateful that our lives and probably about two million others had been saved.
What was to be done with us? There was a shipful [sic] of about 3000 craftsmen, builders, medical units, air sea rescue units etc. Surely we must be useful somewhere. After a certain amount of cruising around with a shore stop at the Admiralty Islands we went through a formidable storm to Hong Kong.
At Hawaii something must have got into the ship's drinking water. The whole ship's company was smitten with sickness and nausea. I went round to see the senior medical officer and said "Can't you do something?" He replied "Hollis, old boy, you'd better have some of my pink stuff-this is what I am giving out today but it won't do you any good."
We docked in Hong Kong a day or so after the British Pacific Fleet. They were very pleased to see us. They had declared martial law and were trying to stop the Chinese from looting the place. Headquarters had been set up in the Peninsular Hotel on the mainland side of Hong Kong. The original colony is on Victoria Island reached by Ferry. I had an office on the ground floor of the Peninsular Hotel. It was a cross between an information centre and a command post. I had a constant queue of ex civilian internees wanting a passage back to UK, Australia etc. , Japanese officers fully armed who with their discipline were being sent for guard duties etc etc. I scarcely slept for several days and was somewhat hungry as we had given up our rations to the ex occupants of the internment camps. The Japanese were later used for hard work in repairing the colony. They lived in POW camps and were not overfed.
After about a fortnight things became rather more normal. Marine Commandos arrived from Burma as did elderly colonial administrators from UK, the latter dressed in Colonel's uniform straight from Moss Bros. And I moved over to a newly formed RAF Headquarters on Victoria Island which at that time had a small provincial town atmosphere. There was Government House, the Cathedral, the cricket pitch and, of course, the statue of Queen Victoria and, about two miles away, the race course. At about this time I had word from the UK that I had a baby daughter and that Betty and she were both well. I think that a signal had been most kindly arranged by my father-in-law, Chase Edmunds, who had important contacts in maritime circles.
The air journey Hong Kong/UK was six days. One went by Dakota. The route leaving Hong Kong was Kung Ming then "over the hump" to Karachi -Aden-Cyprus-Rome-UK.
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Although distressed to be deprived of my loved ones, one could not have been in a better place than Hong Kong at that time. The weather was perfect between the great heat of summer and the murkier weather of winter. In winter it does not get very cold.
Although we wore normal blue as opposed to tropical kit, I swam in the sea on New Year's day. I was alone. There were few non Chinese apart from the forces. We had all the transport. A jeep was always available to me. We virtually owned Hong Kong. As Org1 (as I was in RAF language) I was involved in accommodation for growing numbers of RAF personnel. This involved a small amount of requisitioning but I did this distasteful task with great sympathy towards the Chinese population , a number of whom became good friends. I was invited to dine on several occasions with one H.S. Mok who was a fellow Old Alleynian . I was also involved in conducting Courts of Enquiry on various matters. A difficult job as the Chinese coolie always gave as evidence any story that came into his head. I also sat on a number of Courts Martial, being sometimes president, During my stay in Hong Kong both brother Gerald and cousin Dan Hollis arrived at different times on HM ships. We were able to see quite a lot of each other.
I had earlier put my name down for a permanent commission in the RAF. After my marriage Bun and I decided that this was not a good idea and the intention was that I would revert to the original plan of being a Chartered Accountant. Bun sent me out some books and I started to study - not very hard as the social life was too good.
In July 1946 my turn came to be demobilised. I set course for home first by taking a passage in one of HM ships to Singapore. After a pleasant three weeks there I got a place on the Empress of Australia (by a strange coincidence) and set course for the UK. I arrived in Liverpool one wet afternoon. The ship's tannoy went requiring the presence of Squadron Leader Hollis in cabin X. I proceeded thence and was greeted by an Air Marshal who was there for the purpose of offering me a permanent commission. I have always been pleased that I didn't accept. There were severe service cuts a few years later and I have had an interesting life.
I arrived home to Carshalton Beeches where Betty and Jennifer were. My first memories of Jennifer were of a nappied bottom hastily disappearing under the bed - no doubt to avoid the strange man who had suddenly appeared ..
After a short holiday period I had to get down to work. The final exam to become a Chartered Accountant was a formidable hurdle. We had no home but were offered a flat in Dover. Betty and Jennifer lived there and I went there at week-ends. I spent the week getting more practical experience with Legg London (as my original firm had become) or staying with my father to study. I had the right atmosphere for this as my father liked silence. All very well but for poor Betty it was a lonely life. After some months we received an offer to share a house with some cousins of Betty in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex. At least we could be together although we disliked the area.
In summer 1948 three events almost coincided: we moved into a flat in the Paragon Blackheath where we spent fifteen happy years, I passed the final exam and became a Chartered Accountant and Sylvia was conceived. Our joy at the last happening was tempered by the fact that Betty had five months of very intense pregnancy sickness. At about the end of this time she contracted measles. As a result Sylvia was born very prematurely and her life was only saved by being put into neat oxygen. It was discovered a short while later that neat oxygen destroyed the retinas of premature babies. Thereafter the oxygen was mixed with air but too late to avoid Sylvia's blindness.
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After some months I joined the firm of Hugh Limebeer as an assistant with partnership prospects. It was an interesting firm. After some weeks I was engaged on an audit in Paris and in the summer of 1950 I was asked to spend some months with a client in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The British had been a powerful force in the Middle East until about that time; shortly after my visit it was to change. I flew first to Paris, thence to Cairo where I was well entertained by representatives of the client. Lunch at Shepherds, a visit to the Pyramids, then tea and dinner before I boarded an Aden Airways Dakota to Jeddah.
Jeddah was then a very primitive town. I felt myself back in the Old Testament. Through the initiative of the client I was visiting, ducts had been built to take water from mountains about 100 miles away into Jeddah. Prior to that the water supply had been by donkey cart. Non Saudis were allowed to have alcohol provided that this was kept strictly private. I arrived on a Thursday; there was a party that evening which was normal. It was a place for parties but one met always the same people. The next day, Friday, was the Sabbath and therefore a holiday.
The custom was for small parties to meet at lunchtime on the Sabbath and drink beer. I was taken to a party and amongst the guests was St John Philby, the famous Arabist and Muslim. This didn't stop him drinking a large quantity of beer before going off to say his prayers. During my three months there I attended a few Arab parties; one in the desert given by a prince who I think was Foreign Minister. They were deadly dull affairs. Refreshments normally tea and sweet cakes, no alcohol, no women.
When my time came to go back to UK I decided to travel by sea and land. I first flew across the Red Sea to Port Sudan and waited there for the British India ship which was expected to arrive that week. It did arrive on the Saturday and after I had returned on board hospitality to my friends there, we sailed. This B.I. line started in Mombasa and called at all the African ports up to the Suez Canal. Thence Marseille and the U.K. I intended to disembark at Marseille, take the Blue Train to Paris thence to U.K. This I did. The Med can be very unpleasant in February.
During my absence in Jeddah Betty had some gynaecological pains. She consulted the local expert Keith Vartan. He advised that all would be well if she had another child. So on my return we bore this in mind. After a few months she was again pregnant but had a miscarriage. We put things on the back burner for a few months. After starting again Richard was conceived. Betty had some hormone injection to prevent any miscarrying. Shortly after that she was smitten with polio in July 1952.
During the period after my return from Jeddah in February 1951 and July 1952 Betty and I were very occupied with the girls' education. Jennifer was doing very well amongst the juniors at Blackheath High School - that was normal - she was always a self starter. Our problem was helping Sylvia with her blindness. A very harrowing experience. How does one teach one who has never seen about colours? How does one answer the question "Shall I be able to see when I am ten?"
I had a very full Autumn 1952. Apart from daily visits to Betty in the Brook Hospital, Jennifer also had a spell in hospital. Sylvia was living with her Edmunds grandparents. A cheering note was when in November I was offered a partnership with Limebeer and Co. starting next 1st April.
Becoming a partner did not immediately change the work I was doing. One is for at least a year or so doing work and services for clients provided by others. I inherited from others work in Belgium and Germany. In doing some work for an Italian client I met William Middleton who was a Solicitor. He had an Italian mother and English father. He had been brought up in
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Rome and had law degrees from both Rome and London Universities. His English and Italian were impeccable. Many leading Italian companies were putting a toe into U.K waters at that time. The first thing they did was to go and see Middleton and he invariably involved me. He must have been very impressed by our first working together. Also during the 1950s Limebeer and Co. took over a small practice through the death of a sole practitioner. He had rather specialised in musical clients but when we took over, some famous names had either died or disappeared. However one of those left was Yehudi Menuhin. We soon became good friends. I was able to help him become resident here without his being made bankrupt by our tax laws.
He expanded his activities and always involved me. I soon got to know his leading Swiss lawyers and they produced some work for me. I was well away. I also got involved with some stage clients - Dinah Sheridan and her daughter Jenny Hanley. All these people were not only clients but became good friends.
Soon after Yehudi had taken up residence in Highgate he set about his long held ambition of founding a school. For the first year or so it had few pupils, shared premises and no money. A management committee, of which I was one, was formed. Things changed shortly with the appointment of an excellent secretary, one Monica Langford. I well remember visiting with her and a fellow committee member (an old friend), F.R. (Bobby) Furber the premises which are now the Y.M. School. They were discovered by Monica They were then much simpler and on sale for around £25,000. We decided to persuade our fellow committee members that the premises must be bought and the money raised. What a task. I was looked to as the person to go about this together with a newly appointed Governor, Major General Sir John Kennedy. We gradually enlisted help from corporations and individuals, Lord Rayne being prominent. Sir John unfortunately died after a short while. Bobby Furber and I were joined by Lord Redesdale (Clem) and Sir Maurice Fiennes (Maurice). We got things well underway and had a lot of fun in doing so. I well remember some rather noisy and lengthy lunches at the City of London Club of which I was a member. I have been Vice President of the school since 1989 and from 1977-90 I was a governor of Live Music Now.
One of the Governors of the Y.M School was Ruth, Lady Fennoy (a Lady in Waiting to the Queen Mother and grandmother of Princess Diana.) She was a fine musician and very close to the Royal Family. Following her death the Prince of Wales organised a concert at Buckingham Palace in her memory. Betty and I were invited and when we were seated the whole royal family from the Queen downwards entered to sit in the front row.
During the late 1950s Bun and I had the idea of leaving the Paragon flat as our main home but buying a country house with some land for mainly summer use. A silly idea but whilst we were looking around we suddenly came upon Court Lodge. I immediately said "That is where we are going to live. Sell the Paragon flat and go for it." So in 1963 I bought Court Lodge. It was terribly run down and needed a lot spent on it. We bought from a most charming person, Mrs Harvey Moore. She was a niece of Lord Baden Powell and therefore keener on camping than creature comforts.
We moved in January 1964. It was rather cold and cheerless. There were open :fireplaces in every room but keeping them stoked was a full time task. We virtually camped from one room to the next while a team of artisans did their work. Anyway, we were able to put things back as they should have been and being a house of at least three periods of history we set out gradually to acquire furniture etc. to suit the rooms. I am forever grateful to my son-in-law Maurice Fitz Gerald for guiding me in the realms of books and paintings in which he has considerable knowledge. We attended many sales at Sotheby's and Christies where we had a lot of fun.
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Betty and I became very active once we were settled into Court Lodge. I particularly so during the late 70s and early 80s. I was Chairman of Westwell Parish Council from 1976-9 and in 1980 became Chairman of Ashford Constituency Conservative Association and in 1991 Vice President. Ashford Constituency extends from Chilham near Canterbury in the north and southwards almost to the sea on the Sussex border. During May 1982 I was installed as Master of the Worshipful Company of Woolmen for the coming year. I later wrote a full account of my year which was typed and bound. Copies are amongst my mementos. I was delighted when Richard later became Master in 2008.
During the 1970s/80s Betty and I enjoyed a considerable amount of social entertaining at Court Lodge. One highlight of our year was the occasion that came to be known as Jesus Night. This took place when our friends Peter and Belinda Gadsden (Sir Peter ex Jesus Cambridge and about that time Lord Mayor of London) stayed with us for the weekend so that Peter could shoot with me. We had a number of friends in the vicinity who were also Jesuans. We were joined by my brother Gerald (two classical firsts at Jesus) and his wife Audrey. I, although without the benefit of a Cambridge education, represented my grandfather Hollis who was at Jesus where he obtained two mathematical firsts in about 1880. Later as the older Jesuans tended to pass into higher service it opened into a Cambridge occasion and we were joined by a number of younger Cambridge friends including my nephew Adam, Gerald's son, and his wife Sarah, and of course Jennifer and Maurice.
Betty and I were very lucky with our continental travels during the 1970s and 1980s as apart from my fairly frequent visits to Italy, Maurice was in the Diplomatic Service and he and Jenny were during the 1970s resident first in Paris then in Strasbourg and finally in The Hague. We had most enjoyable stays with them. At least once a year when I went to Florence I took Betty with me and we used to manage about ten days holiday either in Florence or Venice where we were lent an apartment on the Canale Grande by friends Manfredo and Veronica Moretti degli Adimare. We also used to go annually in July to Geneva where I had some work to do over a few days. We stayed at the Hotel du Lac in the charming little village of Coppet.
One year in December I had various continental visits to make so we booked a rail journey starting in Amsterdam and ending in Rome, leaving the train at Mannheim, Milan and Florence en route. The whole of the journey was in snow. Rome was free of snow but very cold.
Whilst writing about travel I must not fail to mention a very good friend at Westwell, Simon Jervis Read C.B.E., M.C., scion of a distinguished family, Wykehamist, Chindit, Lt. Col., Diplomat and very knowledgeable naturalist and ornithologist. He quickly invited me to join in shooting activities, not only on shooting days but also for rearing and keeping. He was about to become UK representative of the EEC Field Sports Association when he suffered severe heart problems and was unable to travel. I was invited to stand in for him where travel was involved. This entailed travel to various places in Europe - Brussels, the Ardennes, Nuremburg, Paris, Zurich. Later Betty and I were invited as private guests on visits to Copenhagen and Senegal. The last was especially interesting. Senegal has great virtues in climate and people. The only disturbing thing was the poverty. On one occasion I was particularly moved to be asked by a young girl for "un stylo pour aller a l'ecole." Alas I didn't have any; I would like to have given her a boxful.
I have now lived in Court Lodge for more than four decades. During this time the house from many sources has acquired great character and beauty. When my darling Bun was in hospital for the penultimate time, just after our 65th wedding anniversary, she complained "I shall never see my lovely house again". I was warmed by the thought that she viewed it thus and she did see it again but, alas, not for long.
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Title
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Memoir by Arthur Hollis
Description
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Second page has colour photograph of Arthur Hollis, wearing blazer with medals, standing in a field at an event. Narrative covers early life in Hornchurch and Carshalton including schooling and hospital admissions. Writes of Dulwich College studies and sport. Mentions visit to Paris. Career as chartered accountant. Joined local defence volunteers in 1940. On 18th birthday decided to apply for pilot training. Covers training in Manchester and the United States. Life in the States and training on PT-17, Vultee BT 13-A and Harvard. Describes subsequent training in Canada, journey back to United Kingdom and training on Oxfords and Wellington. Goes on with conversion to Lancaster, posting to 50 Squadron and describes life and operations. Instructor tour follows and goes on to describe meeting future wife and subsequent career in RAF including posting to Tiger Force and trip to Hong Kong and subsequent activities. Finishes with post war career and activities.
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A N Hollis
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Fifteen page printed document with one colour photograph
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eng
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Text. Memoir
Photograph
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BHollisANHollisANv1
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
United States Army Air Force
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Great Britain
England--London
France
France--Paris
England--Lancashire
England--Manchester
Canada
Nova Scotia--Halifax
United States
Florida
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
England--Gloucestershire
England--Rutland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Buckinghamshire
France
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Czech Republic
Czech Republic--Plzeň
Italy
Italy--Milan
Germany--Friedrichshafen
England--Oxfordshire
England--Northamptonshire
China
China--Hong Kong
Nova Scotia
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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
5 BFTS
50 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
British Flying Training School Program
civil defence
Distinguished Flying Cross
Harvard
Home Guard
Lancaster
love and romance
military living conditions
military service conditions
Oxford
pilot
RAF Little Rissington
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Turweston
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Westcott
Stearman
Tiger force
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/934/36536/MLovattP1821369-190903-75.2.pdf
51c3fbced3b1e3bd9c7237f2cb79c94a
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
Lovatt, Peter
Dr Peter Lovatt
P Lovatt
Description
An account of the resource
117 items. An oral history interview with Peter Lovatt (b.1924, 1821369 Royal Air Force), his log book, documents, and photographs. The collection also contains two photograph albums. He flew 42 operations as an air gunner on 223 Squadron flying B-24s. <br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1338">Album One</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2135">Album Two</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nina and Peter Lovatt 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
2017-09-27
2019-09-03
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.
Identifier
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Lovatt, P
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Reminiscence of the Flying Characteristics of Many Old Type Aircraft
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed analysis of very early aircraft and their flying characteristics.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Air Marshall Sir Ralph Sorley
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Felixstowe
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
England--Calshot
England--Bembridge
Atlantic Ocean--Spithead Channel
England--Cowes
England--Stroud
Scotland--Montrose
England--Sunbury
England--London
Monaco
Egypt--Cairo
Iraq--Baghdad
England--Felixstowe
England--Aldeburgh
Iraq
Middle East--Kurdistan
Middle East--Palestine
Jordan
Iran
Middle East--Euphrates River
Syria
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
Singapore
Australia
Borneo
China--Hong Kong
England--Kent
United States
New York (State)--New York
France--Paris
Nigeria
South Africa--Cape Town
Yugoslavia
Norway
Portugal
Spain
Denmark
Japan
Belgium
Argentina
Austria
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Greece
China
Lithuania
Estonia
England--Weybridge
Scotland--Island of Arran
England--Kingston upon Thames
France--Dunkerque
England--Hatfield (Hertfordshire)
Newfoundland and Labrador
New Brunswick
Maine
Maine--Presque Isle
Washington (D.C.)
Massachusetts--Boston
Pennsylvania--Philadelphia
Maryland--Baltimore
Washington (D.C.)--Anacostia
Tennessee--Nashville
Arkansas--Little Rock
Texas--Dallas
Texas--Fort Worth
Texas--Midland
Arizona--Tucson
California--Burbank (Los Angeles County)
California--Palm Springs
California--Los Angeles
California--Beverly Hills
California--San Diego
Arizona--Winslow
New Mexico--Albuquerque
Kansas--Wichita
Missouri--Saint Louis
Ohio--Dayton
New York (State)--Buffalo
Ontario--Toronto
Québec--Montréal
Newfoundland and Labrador--Gander
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Germany--Rheine
Germany--Osnabrück
India
Switzerland--Zurich
Lebanon--Beirut
Pakistan--Karachi
India--Kolkata
Singapore
Indonesia--Jakarta
Australia
Northern Territory--Darwin
New South Wales--Sydney
South Australia--Woomera
South Australia--Adelaide
Victoria--Melbourne
Sri Lanka--Colombo
Spain--Madrid
South Africa--Johannesburg
Kenya--Nairobi
Sudan--Khartoum
Greece--Athens
Italy--Rome
Zambia--Lusaka
Zambia--Ndola
Zambia--Mbala
Heathrow Airport (London, England)
Turkey--Istanbul
France--Nice
Utah--Salt Lake City
Italy--Genoa
Atlantic Ocean--Firth of Clyde
Italy
France
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Kansas
Maryland
Massachusetts
Missouri
New Mexico
New York (State)
Ohio
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
New South Wales
South Australia
Victoria
Northern Territory
Egypt
Sudan
North Africa
Ontario
Québec
Germany
Indonesia
Iraq
Kenya
Lebanon
Netherlands
South Africa
Switzerland
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Turkey
Yemen (Republic)
Czech Republic
Slovakia
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
England--Surrey
England--Sussex
England--Great Yarmouth
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 Navy
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
82 typewritten sheets
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971-08-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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MLovattP1821369-190903-75
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription
aircrew
Anson
B-17
B-24
Battle
Blenheim
C-47
Chadwick, Roy (1893-1947)
Defiant
Dominie
Fw 190
ground crew
Halifax
Harvard
Hudson
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lincoln
Lysander
Magister
Manchester
Me 109
Mosquito
Oxford
Photographic Reconnaissance Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Eastchurch
RAF Hendon
RAF Henlow
RAF Martlesham Heath
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Pembrey
RAF Prestwick
RAF West Freugh
Spitfire
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
training
Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979)
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1375/23740/PEdgarAG19010081.2.jpg
6ab53e2dc418a02c7ac8babe9c4f1ac6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1375/23740/PEdgarAG19010082.2.jpg
010fa70ff40e6db7a255ff4a9734473f
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
Edgar, Alfred George
Edgar, A G
Description
An account of the resource
83 items. The collection concerns Pilot Officer Alfred George 'Allan' Edgar DFC (b. 1922, 172180 Royal Air Force) He flew operations as a pilot with 49 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Pip Harrison and Sally Shawcross nee Edgar, 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
2018-07-04
2019-10-01
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
Edgar, AG
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
Harvard Landing
Description
An account of the resource
The wing of a Harvard as it lands on a snowy airfield. On the reverse 'We slash down the runway on a Winter morning. What's snow & ice to men like us!!! Cheers, I'm half dead with cold. Nov 42'.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Alan Edgar
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942-11
Format
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One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PEdgarAG19010081,
PEdgarAG19010082
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
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-11
Harvard
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/595/8864/PLashamB1501.2.jpg
da6d480d6a799fe46724652cc35229e9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/595/8864/ALashamB150716.1.mp3
8a9d33f42649006ef03208c246e5f74a
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
Lasham, Bob
R L C Lasham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lasham, RLC
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer R L C Lasham DFC and bar (1921 - 2017, 161609 Royal Air Force)and a photograph. After training in the United States and Canada he flew 53 operations as a pilot on 9 and 97 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Lasham and catalogued by Nigel Huckins..
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay, so this interview’s being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody and the interviewee is Bob Lasham, and the interview’s taking place at Bob’s home in Wilmslow on today, the 16th of July 2015. So, thanks for agreeing, Bob, and if perhaps if we can start off and just tell me a little bit about early life, schooldays, et cetera?
BL: I’ll start at the beginning. I’m a Cockney; I came to be a Cockney because they say a Cockney’s someone who is, was born within the sound of Bow Bells, and I was born within two hundred yards of the Whittington Stone, where Dick is supposed to have heard the Bow Bells. Well, we had the Underground running underneath, tram running outside, I might not have done. But Laura and I [?] were on holiday to the Isle of Wight and the [unclear] Centre’s there, and I submitted their claim to them, they came to me [?] and they said ‘You’re trying to cheat, aren’t you?’ [slight laugh] So that was that. Elementary school, passed what they called a trade scholarship, so I went to a junior technical school in Kentish Town, travelling to and from on the Underground, penny return, yeah. [clock chimes]And – got my hearing aid in and it sounds so loud!
AM: And, as you can hear, it’s now eleven o’clock and the bells are chiming.
BL: Looking around for an apprenticeship, my parents said, ‘Look for a company which has a pension scheme.’ Went to three companies: Smiths, who used to make motorcars and instruments; a tool-making company in the middle of London, I would have liked to have gone there but they only had employed just over a hundred people, no pension scheme, so I went to British Thomson-Houston, very well-known company making heavy switchgear, electrical engineering. I realised later on I should have gone for mechanical engineering, but I wanted a reserved occupation. And, of course, the air raids started, and I realised ‘There’s a lot of work in this’. Whenever it was –
AM: [whispers] Sorry, carry on.
BL: Air raid one night, we all overlooked some playing fields, it was, like, a girls’ high school there, I used to look out of a window and watch them playing hockey, you know, dirty old, dirty old man, I was a young lad! [slight laugh] And the house directly opposite was bombed, we suffered some damage. If the bomb was at least a couple of seconds later, if it were coming from the east, it would probably hit our house. My parents were there, were in the Anderson shelter, I was asleep in the back bedroom, and I woke up covered with the ceiling. I think about that time I thought maybe it was safe to get out of London, and I think it was in about January or February ’41, signs were going up: people in reserved occupations can volunteer for flying duties in the Royal Air Force, the Fleet Air Arm, as part of [unclear]. So, couple of weeks later, I went down and volunteered, at somewhere near Euston it was, had an interview, very quick medical, and that was that. And three weeks later, had a letter from somebody or other saying would I go and report there again to register? I went in and saw the same people, said ‘Haven’t we seen you before?’ I said ‘Yes, you saw me about three weeks ago.’ ‘Oh, we’ve got all your details, you’d better go home.’ And I went home and waited, and finally called up in July, just after my twentieth birthday.
AM: So July 1940?
BL: 1941.
AM: ’41, sorry.
BL: ’41. By that time, well, production of air crew was like a Ford production line, it was running so smoothly. And [unclear] an Air Crew Reception Centre, AR – ACRC, known to everybody as Arsy Tarsy. Still to this days, you meet people, ‘Oh, were you at Arsy Tarsy?’ Yes. And er, there for, we were there for about ten days where we were kitted out, inoculations, FFI - Free From Infection. Look at the curly bits, make sure you’re not carrying livestock around. That continued as long I was an airman or an NCO, but once you were commissioned, they didn’t do it anymore; yeah, officers wouldn’t have to take their time with people [?], I suppose. While we were there – I can remember our first corporal – oh, we reported to Lord’s cricket ground, and there must have been an intake of, every week, about, I would say, three or four hundred, divided into flights of fifty, and the person in charge of our flight was Corporal Schubert. Whenever I hear a piece of grotty music, I always say ‘That sounds like Schubert’, and someone said ‘How’s that?’ I said ‘You’ve never met Corporal Schubert!’ But he was a good-hearted soul. A lot of the corporals had a grudge on their shoulder; they’d been in the Air Force for ten or fifteen years just being corporal, they knew we would be sergeants, you know, within no time at all. [Pause] Catering: we used to queue up in flights of fifty, eat in the London Zoo, and before we had a catering shed [?], knives and forks, as you walked out, you swirled about in a bucket of water and put them to dry; [stage whisper] I think the bucket of water was used for soup later on! But I seem to remember, we seemed to live mainly on kippers and sausages. Not many animals left in the zoo, but those that were, I’m sure, were fed a lot better than us. Still trying to think of the people I know; amongst the people I did know, a fellow called Harry Wilson, I’ll tell you about him later on. And we finally got our uniforms, and we used to have a little white flash in our caps to say you were a training air crew, and we all trooped off to, I think it was the Odeon in Leicester Square, to see “Target for Tonight”. I think we saw that and, when we came out, having made a big mistake. Anyway, next stop, Babbacombe Initial Training Wing: basic navigation, lots of keep-fit exercises, we had our own section on the beach, we could go swimming, were there for, I think it was about six weeks. Now, night train, next stop, Wilmslow [comical sotto voce] in the wild, woolly north, you know, and I can remember getting out of the station and walking through what is now Wilmslow Park – probably Wilmslow Park then– to the RAF camp, with carrying a kit bag very heavily loaded, and we were there for, again, for about couple of weeks. The second week there, we were all issued with civilian clothing, so we knew we were probably going to America. Two days later, they took them back again. I can - the only thing I can remember about it – the little belts children used to use with a sort of snake buckle on it, that was to keep the trousers up, yeah! Anyway, the Americans were not in the war, but they changed their laws so we could go into America in uniform – more of that later. And, once again, we travelled by night up to Gruddock /Grenock[?], all got on board the Louis Pasteur-it was a French cruise liner, French cruise liner. Some of us were sleeping on the floor, some on – stretching out on the tables with their heads up. I was a lucky one, I managed to get a hammock. We were there for about twenty-four hours, the boat was – in Gruddock [?], the boat was rocking up and down, and got up the next morning, there was a north westerly gale blowing, and a very small convoy, only about six, six vessels, and I was sick, practically everybody was sick, I should think. And then, that night, we left the convoy and sailed straight for Halifax. It was a fast boat like the Queen Mary, and we were there in eight, was it eight days, I think. Greeted at Halifax, a sort of [unclear] WVS, and they arranged to send telegrams to our folks in England saying that we’d arrived safely in Canada. Was a place called Malton in [pause] I’m not quite sure what the state was, except that it was a dry state, no alcohol for sale, and we were there not very long and, again, got on the train – four days. I couldn’t realise, no country could be that big, no! We had one stop in [pause] we stopped in Washington on the way down, that’s right, and we had some hours to spare, so some of us got hired a taxi, went to see the Washington Memorial and – Lincoln, sorry, the Lincoln Memorial –
AM: Lincoln Memorial.
BL: And then we arrived at Jacksonville in northern part of Florida. Again, we got off and we were taken out for dinner by the people of Jacksonville, I suppose, fifty of us by then. Was another night train and we arrived in Clewiston. I don’t know the geography of Clewi- Florida; at the bottom, there’s a very big lake-
AM: Yeah, I’m just working my way down.
BL: Lake Okeechobee, and we were just on the edge of Lake Okeechobee, in the middle of nowhere. Clewiston was a one-street town; they had a cinema, the Dixie Crystal – it’s funny how you remember these things – a bowling arrow – a bowling alley with a black boy to put the, ah, the skittles up afterwards, we did that. And they were surprised to see us in uniform because they had not been using it, and on the way down, someone enquired if we were an American football team ‘cause we were in uniform! [laughs] That’s beside the point. And we arrived overnight – seemed to have lost clothing overnight [?] – into breakfast, and there was this jug of light brown liquid to drink, it was cold tea! I never drink cold tea, but it was a great thirst-quencher. And we started flying on – it was called a Stearman, Stearman PT-17, and instructor was a chap called Tom Carpenter, and I was having trouble going solo – talk about luck! Half the course had gone solo and he hadn’t really told me what I was supposed to do, but on our desk – we had a big desk we used to use for swotting [?] – there was a book on flying training, and looked up landing. You – as you level out, you let the speed decay and finally your paces [?] down on three points; he didn’t tell me that I had to do that! Following day, I did three landings, he got out of the aeroplane and said ‘You can go solo’. [Unclear] he said ‘Look, Lasham, I was a bit bothered about seeing you doing that, sending you solo, but I’ve seen you recover from so many bad landings, I knew you’d recover from that.’ [laughs] And training proceeded. They had what they called a basic aeroplane then, a BT-13. My instructor was a Mr Dirigibus [?] - I think he had [unclear] – and he sent me solo very quickly; he didn’t like flying himself, I didn’t do much instruction with him. And then on to the Harvard afterwards, which was a nice aeroplane, and – remember the name of the – Charlie Miller was my instructor, he was a very nice fellow. Finally passed out, got my – we got our wings, I think it was in May.
AM: So how long had that taken?
BL: It took us about six months and quite a lot of the course failed. At that time, we were going out to America never, never having sat in an aeroplane at all, and usually about a dozen of the fifty would fail because they had no depth perception. And suddenly, someone in the UK realised we wasted a lot of money doing this, so they started getting people to start going solo in Tiger Moths over here before the sending them abroad, and the people in Canada, people in America, people in South Africa, people in Rhodesia, all over the world. And I finished me training, back to Canada, came back in a slower convoy, arrived in Liverpool. Liverpool was packed! [pause] I think that was the post, another charity appeal, I expect [sound of mail coming through the letterbox]. I’m sure you could have walked from Liverpool to Birkenhead just jumping from boat to boat. What a relief it was to get back in the UK! And down to Bournemouth, just two or three days in Bournemouth, we were sent on disembarkation leave, so I went home and saw my parents, saw my grandparents – they can bring you down – saw me granny, you know, sergeant’s, wing sergeant’s stripes, walked in, first thing she said: ‘Have you been up in an aeroplane by yourself yet?’ [laughs] Had no idea what was going on. Anyway, there’d be [unclear] an Advanced Flying Use, AFU, at Shorebury – you try saying ‘Shorebury, Shrewsbury, Shropshire’, which was the address, when you’ve had a couple of beers, you’re spitting over everybody! – and converted to Oxfords. And by that time, they’d ask you what you wanted to do, and, having been bombed in London, I thought ‘Oh, I’d like to be a night fighter pilot!’ So, came from there to RA – what was RAF Usworth, now, I think that’s the North East Air Museum now, just outside Sunderland. [Telephone rings] Forget it.
AM: You ignore the telephone, Bob?
BL: I, I do, yes; I can always pick it up later, see if there’s been a message. Err…Sunderland, near Sunderland. The, what they called the [unclear] side, the one hangar, was north of the Sunderland-Newcastle road. The southern part, which was the airfield, is now buried under the Nissan car factory.
AM: Right.
BL: Yes, yes. Anyway, they always had a medical when you arrived there, medical [?] inspection. I was in this chair, there was this beautiful, blue-eyed, young assistant, Joyce Farleigh [?] [pause, sounds of someone moving around the room]. Anyway, I saw her a couple of days later, we started going out together, and we were flying Avro Ansons, training radio observers. It was the airborne radar, preparation for going on to night fighters and, ah, [pause] were there for three or four months, so I got in quite a few more hours, which was useful later on, and then to Cranfield, for night fighter OTU, and enjoyed that, because we flew Blenheim 1’s, Blenheim 4’s, Blenheim 5’s, and then went on to Beaufighters. And taxied in one night, I put one beer on my Beaufighter whilst I was taxied [?] away onto the mud, put off the course [?] They were picky choosy, as my, as my grandchildren would say, and over half the course were failed. So I then went down to Brighton for what they called reselection, and [unclear] selection mark [?] ‘What would you like to go? Would you like to go to Air Transport Auxilliary, ATA?’ I said ‘No, I’d like to go to Bomber Command.’ So, finished up on Lancasters. Went to [pause] I – did I? No, I had to do another AFU on Oxfords, another few hours, and then finally to a place called Brigsley in Lincolnshire (that was really out in the sticks) and did my Lancaster conversion. One hour – two hours on Halifaxes and the rest on Lancasters, I’m glad I didn’t fly Halifaxes, I can’t remember the name of my instructor. Station commander there was a Group Captain Bonham-Carter. But basic radio receiver in the air force before that was called a TI-9 transmitter reception set, and he had a microphone in his battledress pocket ‘cause he was hard of hearing, and – I’m going aside a bit now – there was a museum at Winthorpe, just outside Newark; he founded it after the war.
AM: Oh, right.
BL: Back to where we were. He always made a point of [unclear] all the navigators, bomb aimers and pilots before they left. And I mentioned a chap called Harry, met up at ITW, he went to South Africa for his training, failed his pilot’s course, moved to old [?] Rhodesia and did his bomb aimer course. And we met up at Cottesmore when we were growing up; he said the first word he said to me was ‘Aren’t [?] you looking for a good pilot?’ and I said, you could [slight laugh] I said ‘Yes.’ He went in for an interview, Bonham-Carter, and got around that he’d failed his flying test, and Bonham-Carter said ‘What were you flying?’ He said ‘I was flying a Hawker Hart’ and that was the end of the conversation: Bonham-Carter deaf and a bloke who can’t fly a Hart. Switched off and Harry walked out! [laughs] What else happened there? Had a flight engineer - again, no flying experience. Waltzed through [?] his flight engineer’s course, airborne, and he was airsick every time he went up, so he had to be taken off-line. Now, a chap on the course with me was Mike Beetham [?].
AM: Oh, yes, yeah.
BL: Now, he’d gone off on a short course, I pinched his flight engineer, chap called Bill Gates [?], and he flew with me the rest of my operations. And then, from there to 9 Squadron, got there just before the Battle of Berlin. Not much happened there, oh, yeah, well, I suppose things did happen. Second, second dicky flight with a second pilot to fly it with – we didn’t, see, you just stood behind the chap who was flying – and it was the opening of the Berlin, Berlin and back, then, two or three nights later, going with my own crew, Berlin again, not, not a good start. And coming back – mind you, I was away [?] and new my first operation – Rear Gunner Eddie Clarke, now, he was an old man, he was in his thirties.
AM: Very old.
BL: Oh, ancient, yes, he’d been a driving instructor, and his oxygen had failed, and heating, obviously [?] had failed, and the net result was, he lost all the toes on his right foot, was taken off-line and we never communicated again, I think he pa – later on, when I was more experienced, I’d have come down to a lower altitude, but then they said ‘Stay with the stream’ and stay with the stream I did! [laughs] Great shame. I imagine, then, he probably had a job in the air force, he’d have kept his gunner’s badge, kept his sergeant’s stripes, possibly as a driving instructor. Incidentally, my wife did her driving at Liverpool – no, I’m sorry, Blackpool, yes, and passed her test there. [Pause] Anyway, 9 Squadron, again, luck. We used to do what was called bagging searches, so that I could look out my side and the flight engineer could look out his side, and we’d just started to roll and we were fired at, I don’t know, a [unclear], probably, so went into a corkscrew, and as we came up, I got another couple of bursts. If I’d have started that hanging search one second later, we’d have been shot out of the sky. My voice is going, isn’t it? [laughs] Anyway, we survived that. Again, rear gunner – from then on, we were getting any spare rear gunners – chap called Jack Swindlehurst, known as Jack Singleburst because he was a gunner, and a cannon shell hit the fire extinguisher behind his head and it peppered his shoulder with what was like gunshot wounds, but wasn’t seriously hurt, he was back flying again within a week. So, we carried on, and don’t think there were any other major, major instances there, and then Pathfinders.
AM: So this was 97 Squadron?
BL: 97 Squadron, yes, it was 9 Squadron before at Bardney. I wanted to go to Pathfinders, wireless operator said he’d be quite happy, so was my bomb aimer. Well, by that time, I’d collected another gunner, and a chap called Casson [?] (more on him later), and so off we went to Pathfinders. Now, a story goes around – I’m not sure this was my crew, which I suspect it was – three of them went to see Bennett and said ‘We don’t want to come to Pathfinders, we want to go back to your own squadron.’ He said ‘Well, I could post you back, but I’ll post every one of you to a different squadron.’ So they just decided to stick together. I made a promise, because people fell by the wayside, they’d be off flying, that I would carry on until everyone had finished his forty-five, which, that’s what took me up to fifty-three. So, off we went to Pathfinders. [Pause] Ah, luck again! I’ll come back to 9 Squadron: we were going to Leipzig, and I had a black navigator (my [unclear] chap was off with an appendix), Jamaican, the only black aircrew I ever met, very new, and they didn’t know anything about jet streams and so everyone arrived at the target early, apart from us, ‘cause he took us so far off track, we arrived there just as the raid was starting and came home, said there’ll be [unclear] there tonight, found out they’d lost sixty or seventy bombers that night. People were arriving early and circling, waiting for the Pathfinders to mark on time. They couldn’t mark early even if they arrived early, so again, luck came into it, yeah. Anyway, off to [pause] Warboys, that’s where we did three weeks’ Pathfinder training, including cross countries with an instructor, using the ground-marking equipment, H2S, and then to 97 Squadron at Bourn, and we were only at Bourn for three weeks, less than that, two weeks, didn’t operate from there, and we were posted back to 5 Group to do the marking for 5 Group, and Cochrane was CO, was Air Officer Commanding; it became known as Cochrane’s Private Air Force. Going back to Casson, my rear gunner. Just before leaving 9, I was allocated Casson, I think his crew had been killed, and he was unfortunate individual; he’d been a corporal physical training instructor, and I think he was rather keen to get the money of becoming a sergeant air gunner, but the only chap I’ve ever had had to have put on a charge. I felt he was – the crew used to go out to the aircraft every day, and the wireless operator was – wireless operator, rear gunner, [unclear] my upper gunner, and he never arrived on time and they had to clean his guns for him, so he was put on a charge that was modest and told not to do it again. But when we got to [pause] Warboys, doing our Pathfinder training, I was called to see Bennett himself, and my rear gunner had said he wasn’t going to – he was refusing to fly anymore, so Bennett said to me, ‘Well, when you get to squadron, don’t mention it to CO, because I think I’ve talked him out of it,’ but he hadn’t; when he got to Coningsby, he refused to fly, but I think he had more psychological problems. I gathered from my crew, amongst other things, he was incontinent, you know, he used to wet the bed, things like that, and he was taken off-line, what happened to him, I don’t know. Anyone who went – used to call it lack of moral fibre, anyone who had that disappeared quickly, because, in case it was catchy! Anyway, I was called in to see my CO, Wing Commander Carter, think it was, yes, and he told me what had happened, I said ‘Yes, I know.’ He said ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said ‘Well, Bennett told me not to,’ and I said ‘AOC tells you not to, you don’t,’ he understood that. And then I picked up a fellow called Edward Coke – Edward Cope, known as Joe to everybody, he was one of the fellows [?] before – he’d been on Sterlings, and he’d done with the [unclear] on Sterlings, and we flew together for the rest of the war. Not much happened at 97; we were very badly shot up over Bordeaux on one occasion in daylight, finished up diverting to Manston. Crew said they found over eighty holes in the aeroplane, mid upper gunner suffered some facial injuries; I think the Perspex surrounding us was shattered, bit went into his face, but even in later life, on certain days, you could just see the scars ‘round here, but he was very lucky, you know, all the rest of us got away with, without any problem at all. [Pause] Was that during the –
AM: How many operations did you do with –
BL: Fifty-three.
AM: Fifty-three.
BL: That was Bordeaux. [Pause] Collateral damage, we were bombing Munich, and I always used to make a point of going into the briefing room to find out where the latest searchlight belts were, used to do this at 9 Squadron. There was three of us used to be there: myself, Pilot Officer Blow and a chap called Bill Reid, we were the only three who ever did this and we all three survived our operations. So, we were over Munich, and we were coned by searchlights, you could see people weaving all over the sky to avoid it. I knew that it was clear to the near [?] south-east: full power, downhill as fast as we could go, and suddenly there was the most almighty clatter [coughs] we didn’t know what it was, and had to put one engine out of action, came back on three. We’d been hit by the small incendiary bombs, and they hadn’t burned; they made some holes in the wings, they knocked an engine out, and we came back –
AM: Came back on three engines.
BL: On three engines, they flew wonderfully well on three engines, and then [pause] I’m getting towards the end of my tour then. [Pause] D-Day; I remember D-Day very well. Wing Commander Carter, this target-if you can call it a target-we were over the French coast for about ten minutes, that was all, and we also had a Norwegian crew on board, chap called Jespersen. Lost two crews that night: Carter the CO and Jespersen. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, there was a Ju 88 patrolling there, got both of them. Everyone else thought it was a bit of a doddle, but on the way back, Harry was calling the H2S, he was, he’d become [?] my bomb aimer, there’s a set operator. Actually, because crews haven’t as a good a H2S, they just kind of scanned the channels; of course, it was full of ships, when we got back, we found it was D-Day.
AM: So you didn’t know it was D-Day, going to be D-Day?
BL: No, we were not told, we were – obviously, it was very important, because we always used to test our engines before we went to mix the magnesium – mag – magnetos were working, but the first time, there was a problem with two of the plugs, and the whole squadron, the squadron commander stationed and engineer were there, but – ground crew again: when the engine skipper ran the engine, switched it off, they knew which plugs it was, and we were on our way within five minutes and caught them up, so that was Operation D-Day. Operated again D-Day that night, I was rather pleased about that, and I think it went all fairly smoothly from there. I was off sick for a time, can’t remember what it was, and going back to a chap, Bill Reid, who’d driven across country, I said ‘Bill, do you think you could go up to Millfield, RAF Millfield?” That was where Joyce was stationed as an MT driver. I should say – go back again, when we – Joyce and I got engaged in 1941, and by nineteen-forty [pause] nineteen-forty – 1942, 1942, and then, when I went to Bomber Command, we decided to put it on hold – I mean, chances of surviving – so it was on hold. And we could [?] going up to Millfield, ‘Could you fly me up to Millfield?’ He said, ‘We could do that,’ he got the details there, he said ‘Well, I can get it, get it in, I think I can get it out’ – it was the middle of the, middle of the Cotswolds – not the Cotswolds, the, ah –
AM: Chilterns?
BL: No, meant up on Northumberland, the – ah, the Cotswolds, that’ll do, is it near Northumberland? No, the Cotswolds are lower.
AM: No, the –
BL: It’s the, ah [pause]
AM: Can’t remember.
BL: Should do it.
AM: It’s up above the Pennine Way.
BL: Oh, yes!
AM: It’s the – anyway, near Northumberland.
BL: And we arrived there. It was a fighter leaders’ school and they were training fighter leaders, and there was this great big aeroplane came in, and they were looking around at the great big bomb bay, and, sheer luck, Joyce was going on leave, so I waited for her. Went down to Newcastle, I spent the night in the YMCA, met her next day, went back to see her parents, and got [unclear] re-engaged. I only had two more to do, did the two ops, and then I finished. From the day going up to Millfield to see her to getting married, about three weeks went by. People now, saving up to get married, five thousand pounds, ten thousand. It cost me two pounds, three shillings and sixpence. And way I remember that, we had to – I went up with Joyce’s mother to arrange the wedding, saw the vicar, and he says, ‘That will be two pounds, three shillings and sixpence’, and two-three-six was also the phone box number of RAF Millfield where I used to talk to Joyce occasionally, and we spent the night in the same house; I slept with her father and Joyce slept with her mother.
AM: [laughs] This is the night before the wedding?
BL: The night before the wedding. We didn’t have a best man, but there was a, a relative who had a shoe shop, he was called in as best man; Joyce had an aunt, Aunt [pause] oh, I’ve forgotten her name now, her husband was in the air force but he was motor transport driver, he was a North hatter [?], she was Matron of Noffon [?], Matron of, ah, Honour. So, we walked down to the church, no taxis available – well, it was only just down the road, RAF Wooler – is it Wooler, in – what are those hills called, what would they be?
AM: Cheviots, it’s not the Cheviots?
BL: It is the Cheviots.
AM: Cheviots.
BL: Cheviots, of course, those are the big ones called the Cheviots.
AM: We got there between us!
BL: Yes! [slight laugh] And we walked back again and – where did we stay? It was an old lady we stayed with: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and she’d had Joyce a piece of lace done, and she wanted it back before we left, and we had our breakfast, caught the bus to Morpeth, stopped off and had tea, caught another bus to Newcastle, went to the cinema, the night train down to London packed like sardines. London – we, well, we were going to have our honeymoon in Exeter, the hotels were full, but Joyce’s parents knew someone who had a guest house down there, so booked us in there. So we had some – so I went up to see my mother, and she had met Joyce, and then down to Paddington Station, finally arrived in Torquay and met by somebody who took us to the house, absolutely shattered. Went to bed, we both fell fast asleep. [laughs] Anyway, I still remember the next day, I said to Joyce, ‘Well, what do you want to do now?’ She said ‘I’d like to buy a shopping basket, I won’t feel properly married ‘til I’ve got a shopping basket,’ and that was it, our honeymoon! Then back to the squadron, and they discovered I had a large spleen, so they were doing all sorts of investigations, I was at Coningsby for quite a long time; I thought I was on squadron strength and evidently I wasn’t, I was on station strength, so I finished [?] in October but I didn’t leave the squadron until beginning of January. They took me into Rawsby [?] Hospital. It had been what they used to call lunatic asylums, it was, yes, no privacy, all the doors opened both ways and the WCs, it was like the doors going into a Western saloon, know, they open both ways, so you – anyway, I had a, I still had a large spleen, so they gave me a temperate climate only better, ah, better category, which was just as well because it was about time they were thinking of going out to Japan and you would have had to go through tropical climates. Anyway, I was at Coningsby just doing nothing, you know, and eventually – oh, the commanding officer was a chap called Evans Evans, Tiny Evans, a Jimmy Edwards character - I’m going back, I’m going into reverse now. He decided he wanted to do some operations, so they said he could take my crew, and they did a couple of cross countries with him, so the first time, he put the aeroplane down and bounced over the [unclear] onto the aeroplane; the other time, he visited his brother, almost a twin, who was RAF commanding an American station, and he, he went down there with the crew and had a very liquid lunch, so he came back by taxi and the RAF took me down by transport to pick them up, and I met my crew outside the aeroplane, and the Americans were looking up at our bomb bay, their bomb bay was not as big as a sofa there, they could carry four thousand pounds, of course, we could carry eighteen thousand pounds, and to thrill them back [?]. One or two of them, they’d spent the night there, I think, had got these American woolly sheepskin hats on, one or two were smoking American cigars. Incidentally, people say that everybody smokes here, my crew didn’t smoke, I didn’t smoke.
AM: You didn’t smoke either?
BL: No, nope. And that was about the – oh [pause] Evans Evans, I got to know him quite well, very, very pleasant chap, and he wanted to sponsor me to go to Cranwell, he knew my background in engineering, to do an engineering course, and I said no, I wanted to carry on flying, so there was this vacancy going, Fighter [Unclear] Flight, flying Hurricanes. That was really good fun! Our CO was Les Munro –
AM: Oh, yes.
BL: Yes, he was New Zealander, wonderful character, and I remember when we were there, one night, we had a few drinks at the bar, and we knew we were operating, so we wouldn’t – the squadron was operating, we wouldn’t be working the next day, and I said ‘Would you mind if I took a Hurricane up to Millfield, to see my wife?’ and he said ‘Not at all.’ So, off, went off the next day, he’d forgotten: ‘Where have you been?’ ‘I’ve been to Millfield, you said I could go there!’ [disgruntled mutter-nonverbal]. One funny incident – well, funny for people who were watching it - at Metheringham was a FIDO station, you know, where they used to burn petrol and [pause] if you could imagine a triangle about so big with a metal pipe across, they used to pump petrol into it and that would clear the fog. I was waiting to take off in my little Hurricane, some other man [?] had a Spitfire: ‘Proceed to the end of the runway and use the taxiway.’ He started to turn off. ‘Proceed to the end of the runway and use the taxiway!’ Too late: there was the Spitfire standing on its tails [?]. Poor fellow, he spent the rest of his life trying to get, trying to explain why he did this, and everyone has heard that ‘cause he couldn’t say he couldn’t have heard the instruction. And then, about that time, maybe a bit earlier, an Air Ministry Order came out, an AMO: people who’d completed two operational tours and two non-operational tours could apply for secondment to BOAC or go to the Empire Test Pilots.
AM: So this is 1945.
BL: I’m in 1945 now, yes.
AM: Yeah.
BL: So, I applied for BOAC and got it and that was it, yeah. And I enjoyed it, I [pause] we did our training on Lanc – on Lancasters because we were going to fly Lancastrians, never came to anything-I had a Lancastrian on my pilot’s licence-and then we went down to Whitchurch, was a little aerodrome, it was the airport for Bristol in those days before they moved, and converted to Dakotas, and there was a couple of flights out as a second pilot to Cairo and back again and then they were, they were on a – just, what a lot of [unclear] – let’s say, anyway, I went to Northolt, where BEA – it was on land [?] BOAC, which was going to become-
AM: So they were just setting BOAC up at the time?
BL: Yes, but I was still in the air force on secondment and offered a contract with BOAC, and then BEA was formed, so I applied to fly for BEA and they offered me a contract, and they said, ‘You will never be worse off if you come to us instead of going to BOAC,’ flying out of Northolt. It was, it wasn’t no break going back to civvy life, it was like being on a squadron again, I knew half the people there, all second-tour people, and eventually, I got my command – Captain – and six hundred pounds a year. Six hundred pounds a year in 1946 was a lot of money; I remember when I was an apprentice, I was looking forward to the day when I’d be a rich man and earning five pounds a week! Six hundred pounds a year makes –
AM: In 1946!
BL: And, and then went into work one day and told I was going to Jersey. No choice in the matter, British Airways had nationalised Channel Island Airways and they wanted three Dakota crews out there, so myself, chap called Bill Hen, an ex-Battle of Britain pilot, and I can’t remember the third went out there with the three first officers, flying Dakotas and then flying de Havilland Rapid – de Havilland Rapide: [unclear] biplane, made of wood.
AM: Where were you flying to and who were the passengers? Were –
BL: Oh, this was civilians.
AM: So it’s a commercial airline by this time?
BL: Oh yeah, yeah, and became BEA, you see.
AM: But still on Dakotas, which had been flying in the war.
BL: Yes. Initially, BOAC would be carrying fifteen passengers and BEA were flying with eighteen passengers, and eventually they were modified, took the radio officer away, air officer away, and they called them Pioneers. We had thirty-two passengers, really squeezing them in in a Dakota.
AM: Thirty-two! So what was it like inside, then, for the passengers?
BL: Packed solid, yeah! The seats were about so wide –
AM: Bit like now, then, Ryanair.
BL: Yes, and flying Rapides, that was a – initially a seven-seater with a radio officer, and then a, and an eight-seater when you got rid of the radio officers. I must be one of the few people still living who flew Rapides into Croydon and into Gatwick, which was an, ah, a grass airfield.
AM: Oh, right! [laughs]
BL: A lot of grass airfields around at that time; Madrid, masses of runway, now, that used to be a grass airfield. And I carried on flying Dakotas in Jersey and –
AM: Did your - had your wife come over to live in Jersey?
BL: Oh, we’d all moved to Jersey.
AM: Okay.
BL: No NHS there; BEA paid my medical fees, I had to pay for Joyce and my son, quite expensive, ‘specially when you – antibiotics were a frightful price. We moved – we never bought anywhere in Jersey, we moved around in rented accommodation, and I quite enjoyed it there: come off a day’s flying, you know, and Joyce would meet me, have a swim before going home, and see so much more, know, you could swim from April through to September. I remember once, we come over on leave and up and gone to Druridge Bay in Northumberland, lovely summer’s day, I said ‘I’m gonna have a swim.’ I went off, I came back: ‘I thought you were gonna have a swim?’ I said ‘Yes, I got enough up to here, that was it!’
AM: So not cold up in Jersey?
BL: Well, yes. So, I think, in around Jersey, the tide doesn’t move in and out, it stays in the Gulf of Saint Malo, slowly, slowly warms up. My only accident occurred there; I stood a Rapide on its nose. No passengers on board, I put the brakes on too hard, it landed on its nose, bent propellers, and needless to say, there was a court of enquiry. But BEA was divided into two divisions then: British and Continental, and chief pilot of the British division was an old group captain I’d known in the air force, it was the old pals’ network.
AM: Old boys’ club.
BL: Yeah, he said ‘You can do’ – I spent the whole month doing [unclear], it was twelve flights a day, fifteen and twenty minutes, and nobody liked them because, it doesn’t sound very much, but twelve take-offs and landings, it was very tiring. [Pause] He was the chap – no, no, I was thinking of somebody else, at Northolt. There was one day, it had been snowing – this was nothing to do with me – and there was a Dakota took off and covered with snow and they’d had to clear the wings, and landed on top of a school and – sorry, landed on top of a house, just missed a school, and nobody was hurt, there was nobody in the house, all the crew got out. Needless to say, for the rest of his life, he was known as Rooftop Johnson, yeah, and he rose to great height and became a flight manager eventually. Viscounts, enjoyed flying those, and I – leaving Jersey, where did I want to go to? Well, my parents were living in London; Joyce’s mother, she was already by then in [unclear], so I chose Manchester, in the middle of nowhere, and –
AM: And that was Ringway Airport?
BL: Ringway Airport, yes, yes, little runways then, yes, passenger accommodation was in one of the hangars, and Smallman’s – was it Smallman’s – had the, had the restaurant there, the old RAF control tower, it was all very friendly. The crew hut was made of wood, you know.
AM: What year would – what year would that have been on now? Fifty -
BL: That would be 1953, yeah. And they booked me in at the Deanwater, Deanwater, just, just a room with a washbasin, no mod cons in those days, party on nearly every night, so getting to sleep was a bit difficult, and I was flying the next day, said to Joyce, ‘Go out and look for a house.’ Well, Joyce almost got lost, she picked me up, but we saw an advert, houses being built just the other side of Wilmslow, went to see one, saw the plot we liked and booked the house and [pause] by that time, I’d, was living in Baton [?] Road, Manchester, sharing a room with a wireless operator, he moved out and Joyce moved in with me, and we got the extra room, Michael was away at school, and we lived there ‘til we moved into the house, I quite enjoyed that. And then charge [?] came to convert to Tridents, which I did, yeah, lovely aeroplane, the Trident, and –
AM: How big is that, then? How big is the Trident?
BL: It was initially a ninety-seater with the –
AM: Ninety?
BL: Ninety.
AM: So much bigger.
BL: Much bigger, but the Viscount was about seventy or eighty, I think, I had the ninety-seater, and then there was the Trident 2 and the Trident 3, and the Trident 3 was – I think they’d gone up to about a hundred seats by then. They didn’t – it wasn’t really a commercial – they built a lot of them, though there’re many variants, I don’t think anybody made any money out of them, and [pause] back to Viscounts. Landing at Geneva, and, whilst I was with [unclear], and I was doing what we call a flapless landing ‘cause the [unclear] had been damaged, and landed, and as the nose wheel touched the runway, the whole back bit of the strut broke off, so we started to turn to the left and clear the runway, and there was a lot of smoke coming with the hot hydraulic oil. Passengers were evacuated, they didn’t use the chute, they got them out on the steps, and the fire was put out immediately. I’ve still got the headlines, was it ‘Bomber hero lands blazing aircraft [slight laugh] at Geneva’? And the reporters came ‘round to see Joyce, she knew nothing about it; well, she’d just had an airport – phone call from the airport saying ‘Bob, your husband, will be late coming home.’ The way they exaggerate these things!
AM: ‘Bomber Command hero’!
BL: Yeah, Bomber Command, oh, yes.
AM: Did they have air hostesses on the planes at this point? Did they have air hostesses and things like that on the planes at this point?
BL: No – oh yes, they did!
AM: Yeah.
BL: Yes, in Jersey, they were called flight clerks because they did all the paperwork as well.
AM: Okay.
BL: And all they did was hand out sick bags and barley, barley sugars, yes. [Pause] I’m trying to think of the funny incidents. When I was First Officer at Northolt, and I’d been flying – it was an unfurnished Dakota, the seats were there but nothing on the floor, and those days, the pilot had to brief the passengers, and chap called Panda Watson, he had a great big moustache, he was the skipper, and he went up to them all and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ and at that time, he slipped and fell on his –
AM: Oh, no!
BL: So, from then on, I – he kind of got me to do it. I remember doing briefing one day, just telling them where the escape exits were, where the life jackets were, I had one passenger say, ‘If I’d known it was so dangerous, I wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have flown!’ My parents used to come and see me in Jersey, but they wouldn’t fly; I would pay for their tickets, no, no, they came by boat, but Joyce’s mother came over several times and she was quite happy to fly. And, living in Jersey, we had a dear old neighbour, Mrs Brett, one of the old school, she lived next door, she was a widower for the second time, and she had some friends, and she used to go out, and going down to see her friends: hat on, folded umbrella or walking stick, upright, and she’d come back, hat on one side and a bit shaky on the stick. She liked – was it tonic red wine? I’ve forgotten what it was.
AM: Not, erm –
BL: It was – it wasn’t Sanatogen, it’s [pause] anyway, she was rather fond of it, and she was a dear old lady, she would knock on the door and say, ‘Are you at home?’ And we invited her in one day, we’d just got television in Jersey, and the Queen’s, Queen’s confrontation –
AM: Coronation, 1953.
BL: Queen’s coronation, not confrontation, she has many of those with her husband, I think! And she enjoyed that, and she used to talk about a wine she’d had in Italy called [stage whisper] Asti Spumante, a sparkling, sparkling, sweet, Italian wine, so we got a bottle of it and we had some sandwiches and she thoroughly enjoyed it. And when we moved from that house to another one, she gave Joyce a little silver napkin ring, and outside, this replica of sugar cane; her first husband was in trade, he was in sugar, yeah, and they lived in the Bahamas for many years, no children, but her second husband was a barrister, Mr Reginald Brett, so she always called herself Mrs Reginald Brett, never found out what her Christian name was, yeah. She died shortly before we left Jersey. Anyway, I wanted to get onto another type of aeroplane and we decided, like I tell you [?] to move to Manchester; people say ‘Why did you move?’ so I said ‘Well, we kept falling off the edge, so it was time to go.’ And that was almost the end, now: up to Manchester, converted to Tridents, and then on New Year’s Eve nineteen [pause] 1968, it must have been, Joyce had a – we were going out to a party, Joyce had a massive heart attack, went to Macclesfield. No – there was nothing there for heart attacks then, she was in a side room just receiving normal medical treatment, no, no resus units, no – what do they call them now?
AM: The – ah, the heart -
BL: Yes. Anyway, she survived, and that time, Manchester was converting to the Bac 1-11, the twin engine jet, and they were going to do a lot of, a lot of German internal flights, so I was going to be away for five or six days, or probably more than that, a month, five or six day tours in Germany, didn’t want to do that, so I stayed with the Trident and that did – I finished up going down to Heathrow for my last four years. [Pause] Nice little house in Windsor, it was a terraced house –
AM: In Windsor?
BL: In Windsor.
AM: Oh, very nice – oh well, so, sorry [?]
BL: Yes, it was, was nice, yes, we enjoyed it, Joy – but [unclear] Joyce never, apart from my working colleagues, she never got to know anybody there, they don’t speak to you there, we were living in Datchet initially, until we found somewhere to live. In Datchet, we were living in a 17th Century cottage, lovely old cottage, and it was run by two old dears next door, two ex-WAF who I think were both living together, if you know what I mean, yeah.
AM: I do.
BL: And then we got our own, own property, we saw a house in Datchet but decided against it; occasionally, the river would [?] slowly come into Datchet, then go out again, and we didn’t want a house that was going to be flooded.
AM: No.
BL: Whole thing, insurance premium would be very high, stayed in Windsor until I retired.
AM: So you flew all your working life?
BL: All my working life, yes, I retired in nineteen – retired from BEA in nineteen [pause] 1973, and moved back here, living in a very, very big house at Disley, almost a mansion, as someone called it, we were in, I think, four bedrooms, and, over the course of the year, made me bother [?] that they were used four, five times, so we cut our losses and moved here.
AM: And moved here. And it’s lovely, isn’t it?
BL: And got the Golden Wing [?], and then in nineteen-seventy – ’79 – through the old boy network, there was a job going, flying Viscounts up at Teesside, so I thought –
AM: So, after you’d retired –
BL: After I’d retired, the old boy network again, I knew the chap – it was a strange organisation, it was called Airbridge Carriers, so I was flying for Airbridge Carriers, being paid by Fields Aviation, and flying BenAir Viscounts, it was quite a mix-up. And so, we were flying out of Teesside, took the caravan up there, and that was it, we were quite enjoying that, ‘cause the people were friendly, Joyce wasn’t far from her mother, and then they decided we would have to go to Bristol. So, I decided I’d – I could have moved to Bristol, I couldn’t maintain my base where I was initially [?] at at Teesside, so I went down to Bristol, I was always accommodated in a hotel there, used to get [unclear] allowance, used to get so much an hour for being away from home, and flying the Viscount down to Bristol. Finally gave it all up and retired.
AM: And that’s it, you retired.
BL: I finally retired in nineteen – 1981, I finished flying, same year my father died, 1981, and that was it, end of flying career.
AM: Yeah. Blimey. The one thing I didn’t ask, go whizzing right back to the war years, was you’ve got the DFC?
BL: DFC and bar.
AM: And bar?
BL: Yes.
AM: So what did you get the DFC for?
BL: It was just end of, end of, end of tour.
AM: Okay, so doing a full tour.
BL: And the bar was end of second tour.
AM: And the bar was the second tour. Right.
BL: Yeah.
AM: Crikey.
BL: Yeah.
AM: There we are. I’m going to switch off now.
BL: Right, switch off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bob Lasham
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
2015-07-16
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALashamB150716
Conforms To
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Pending review
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.
Format
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00:57:50 audio recording
Contributor
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Richard Bracknall
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
Bob Lasham began an electrical engineering apprenticeship with British Thomson-Houston before volunteering for the RAF in 1941, aged 20. He trained at Babbacombe and Wilmslow before continuing to Clewiston, Florida, to complete his training as a pilot. On return to the United Kingdom, he underwent further training before being transferred to Bomber Command where he converted to flying Lancasters. He joined 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney and participated in operations to Berlin and Leipzig. His aircraft was heavily attacked and his rear gunner lost the toes on one foot because of oxygen and heating problems. He transferred to 97 Squadron Pathfinders; his aircraft was badly damaged over Bordeaux, returning from an operation to Munich. He flew on D-Day and later joined a Bomber Defence Training Flight. After two tours, he became a civil pilot and flew with BOAC and BEA. He also relates his engagement and marriage; the role of luck in his survival; and the support of a veterans’ network after the war.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
Florida--Lake Okeechobee
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Munich
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Florida
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1944
5 BFTS
5 Group
9 Squadron
97 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
African heritage
aircrew
Beaufighter
Blenheim
bomb struck
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
C-47
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Harvard
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
love and romance
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
pilot
RAF Bardney
RAF Cranfield
recruitment
searchlight
Stearman
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/613/8882/PMotterheadN1501.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/613/8882/PMottersheadN1504.1.jpg
b581a06e8e60fa9f61b82d95c8c5526d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/613/8882/AMotterheadN150719.2.mp3
ee7de033ffb55e3132da3953f9123f73
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
Mottershead, Bluey
Nevil Mottershead
N Mottershead
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mottershead, N
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader 'Bluey' Mottershead DFC (b. 1922, Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He flew operations as a pilot with 158 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
2015-07-19
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: Ok. So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is me, Annie Moody and the interviewee is Bluey Mottershead. And the interview is taking place at Mr Mottershead’s home in Brailsford on the 19th of July 2015. So, off you go. Tell me a little bit about your, your childhood.
NM: Yes.
AM: And leading up to why you decided to join the RAF, Bluey?
NM: Well, I was born on a farm in Shropshire. I was the sixth child of my parents but they had lost two previous to me arriving on the scene and therefore, when I arrived I was treated something special. And that special has been with me all my life. And my best friend from my youth, in my youth, was also, had joined the Royal Air Force for aircrew duties and he was in a place called Honington. On a live station in Suffolk. And while they were taking a NAAFI break a bomber came over, dropped a bomb, hit the NAAFI and killed four of them. And then thereafter I was stood in the churchyard of my village while they were burying him. There went the past and so —
AM: What age would you be then Bluey?
NM: Eighteen.
AM: You were eighteen.
NM: And so, when it came around to the January after Christmas I thought I have got to go and revenge for my friend. And so, on the 18th — on the 8th of January 1942 I went to Shrewsbury and signed up for aircrew duties and I became nineteen at the end of that particular week. And so I was sent home on what they called deferred service following the medicals that I had at Shrewsbury and going to Cardington for forty eight hours to have the medicals there. And when I returned I received this letter from the Air Ministry, shall we say, saying, ‘You are now going home on deferred service and we will call you when we’re ready.’ Well, I thought that date would never come but anyway, eventually I received information from them which said report to Lord’s Cricket Ground on the 7th July 1941. No. That would be wrong. No. 1941 it was.
AM: ‘41.
NM: And there was hundreds of us there. All from over the country. The same men who had been on deferred service and they were all called together to the, to Lords Cricket Ground. And then were allocated sleeping accommodation in St Johns Wood. In a lovely place called Viceroy Court. And we were lying on palliases on the floor and there was no furniture but quite obviously the flats would be luxury flats. And having done that they decided right we can’t keep all these men here. It would be rather dangerous. There were thousands of us in a very small area and if the Germans had got to know, then bombed the area they’d have killed thousands of us. And they decided to send parties of us out and I was sent to Scampton. Just the job. And of course Scampton was a live station and we were all very interested to watch these Hampdens and things taking off. The Hampdens I didn’t care two hoots for. In fact, I did go to one of the satellites of Scampton and had a ride in one which I didn’t think was fit for purpose. And so when that was over came back to St Johns Wood which was called ACRC.
AM: What did you actually do at Scampton? Did you just —
NM: Oh just normal.
AM: Square bashing.
NM: Square bashing and all sort of things connected with the air [pause] I’m sorry. My –
AM: Oh don’t worry.
NM: Identification of aircraft and all that sort of thing, you see.
AM: Right.
NM: But anyway we were shipped back, back to ACRC at St John’s Wood and from there I was sent to Newquay in Cornwall for my ITW. Now, having completed all that we then were sent to a little airfield by High Wycombe called Booker and there we were introduced to the Tiger Moth. And I had a very senior flight lieutenant, old flight lieutenant as my teacher sort of thing. And he and I got on very well and in the end I discovered afterwards that having been sent on for the next stage I’d never gone solo in this Tiger Moth. I’d flown it time enough again with him in there. So, then the time came they said, ‘Right. Off you go home. Take a bit of leave at Christmas and report to —' a place at Manchester. A park. Something.
AM: Heaton. Heaton Park.
NM: Heaton Park. Heaton Park. There once again there was thousands of us and we were billeted out and I was billeted with a family — together with a friend of mine, Ron Champion and we were there. And funny things happened which don’t, have nothing to do with my life’s —
AM: Oh no. Tell us. Tell us.
NM: We [pause] there was a small area within the park itself was RAF property. And outside that, outside that we were ourselves again and of course we were staying with these people. Well, one young lad was seen walking around outside the RAF area after midnight. And so of course they called him in and said, ‘What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘Well, my landlady keeps getting in bed with me.’ And [laughs] do you know there must, must have been fifty or so had been there before and they never said a word and he had to go and let the cat out of the bag. After completing all that of course it was decided because we had not got the facilities in this country to train two thousand pilots and so it was decided to send us overseas and I was very fortunate in as much as in the January 1942 we sailed out of Liverpool for Halifax, Nova Scotia. And I do not recommend being in a smaller boat crossing the Atlantic at that time of the year. There was a little, a Polish destroyer with us and he kept disappearing out of sight and coming up the other side. How the hell they kept stuff in their whatever they call them. Where they keep — do all the food for them. I can’t remember.
AM: The galley.
NM: The galley. And anyway one or two of them the first morning out — the boat we were [pause] I think it was lunchtime. No. It had got to be morning and the boat did this. Twice.
AM: Rocking about in the sea.
NM: And everything on the table went whoosh in to a ruck on the floor. Well half of them looked at it and since they were little bit of somehow or other being affected by being at sea half of them went [laughs] went missing the next, the next day and boy could I eat, and I ate everything that came in front of me.
AM: You were not seasick then.
NM: No. No. It didn’t trouble me one little bit and then having landed we got on the train and went to Moncton. The PDSI. Personnel department of the –whatever it is. I can’t remember. And there we stayed. And one of the lads on the boat —I said, I said to him, ‘Shall we go to St George’s Church tonight? To the service.’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ So we went to the service and there we made friends with a family and I’ve been in touch with that family right after the war and they came and stayed with me. How wonderful things are. And then it was decided then we were ready and we were going to be shipped down to the United States. So, we got on a train and we were on that train for two days and three nights. It stopped at Toronto and I managed to get somebody on the train to contact my cousin in Toronto and he was, he came to the train to see me. Well I didn’t know him because he was in uniform and the last time I’d seen him he was in civvies. And he didn’t know me because I was in uniform. But nevertheless it went ok and on we went down into, into Georgia. Turner Field, Georgia. After a short time there they divided us up and I was sent in to, in to Lakeland in Florida.
AM: Yeah. We’re ok.
NM: Yeah. Lakeland in Florida.
AM: Actually. [pause] Ok. I think we’re ok.
NM: And then we were flying Stearmans and having completed what was necessary we were then shipped to Macon in Georgia to fly in the second stage. They called it Advanced Flying School. And we were flying multi —whatever the plane was called. I ought to have my logbook here. That would have helped a great deal. But nevertheless we were flying. And I was very lucky that the instructor that I got was, had been a pupil himself in class 42a and I was in class 42i. We had reached that stage there were so many classes. And we did all the necessary and then we were passed on to Valdosta which was Advanced Flying School. And there we were flying twin engines. Three types of twin engine as well as the A6 which we called [pause] we called the Harvard. And my instructor was an American lieutenant and so he said, ‘Come on Mottershead. We’re going in the Harvard today.’ So off we go and get in this Harvard. And he said, ‘Right. Do the checks.’ So, I did the check. ‘Ok. Taxi around and take off.’ Everything alright, but my right wing was down, and my left wing was up there and I couldn’t get the damned thing right. I thought what have I not done? And I realised the lock that was in the joystick — I hadn’t pulled it out [laughs] so then the wing came up and everything was nice. He said, ‘I shouldn’t do that again if I was you. Watch it in future.’ [laughs] And got back and landed and he said, ‘Right. Off you go and fly it yourself.’ So I did do. And it was a beautiful aircraft to fly. It touched down on all three wheels. No trouble at all. So, having completed there we then on the, in the October, came up for our papers of authority as being a pilot under the United States Army Air Force and I’ve got my silver type wings. The American wings. Then it was a case of I went before a board of four senior American officers and they looked at all my paperwork and said, ‘Would you like to stay behind and teach future classes of UK,’ and because of something that had happened while I was at Macon, Georgia I had to say, ‘I’m very sorry, but I can’t.’ I’ll tell you that separately. And so, on the train back to Macon —back to Moncton in New Brunswick of course I’d already made contact with the family, so I re-made the contact with this family and got on so wonderfully well but the main thing about being here in Britain and being over there was the fact that we were limited by ration books to XYZ whereas they —it was there for you to buy and eat etcetera. Marvellous. And of course, I could eat. There’s no argument about it. So, after a while they said, ‘Right,’ — get your knapsack, not your knapsack, the bag with all your bits and pieces in. ‘There’s a boat in for you.’ So, right, we got on the train, landed in Halifax and walked off on to the quay. You can say that again. A boat. It was the original Queen Elizabeth. Oh dear. And we got on board that feeling millionaires. But there was that many on from different countries and different regiments and all the rest of it. All coming across with one purpose in mind and that was to kill Nazism. And so, we crossed the Atlantic unescorted. Our liner was doing twenty six knots during the day and through the night she was doing thirty two ‘cause that gave it that little bit extra to get out where the Germans might well have figured out where we might be on such and such a time and so, one morning we woke up and we were in the Clyde.
AM: Just like that.
NM: Just like that. We’d gone through the boom and we were in the Clyde. So we had to then gather our things together and come down stairs after stairs ‘til we came to water level. And then we got on tugs which took us over to dry land and there was a train waiting for us to take us to [pause] well you’re asking me now [pause] well-known place up in Yorkshire anyway. And of course they said, ‘Right. Well you’re here now. Right. Take a bit of leave. You’ve been away three —six months.. Go and see your parents,’ etcetera which I did do and then I got notice, right —'Report to Little Rissington in Gloucestershire.’ And that’s where I was flying Oxfords. I had a little student tuition on the Oxford and then the instructor said, ‘Right. Mottershead go and get yourself some practice.’ Now –
AM: So how big was an Oxford? What?
NM: Oxford aircraft.
AM: Yeah. How big? How big was that?
NM: Twin engine.
AM: Right. Ok.
NM: The American when they open the throttles get hold of the throttles get hold of them and pull them back. We do this. Get behind the throttles and press them forward. So I was more or less getting the American system out of, out of use and back in. So he said, ‘Right Mottershead. Take that one and go and get a bit of flying yourself.’ So me — I flew at about two ninety. Something like that. And flew until I picked up the River Severn and I flew up the River Severn until I got to within a mile to where I lived and I flew around and around and around. And after a while I thought, right, well I’d better get back. In the meantime a front had moved in and I was above cloud. And I was flying down towards back in the general direction of Little Rissington and I did not know where I was. And I’ve got, I came up with —I shall either A) I can jump out with my parachute and let my aircraft go and crash in to something. Or B) I can go down through and hit something that I wouldn’t wish to hit like a church tower or something like that. And as I was pondering over it I looked on my port beam and there was an aircraft coming towards me and he passed in front of me and I said to myself, ‘If you know where you’re going I’m going with you.’ And I followed him and he, it was a, it was a radar station where —not radar. Signals and all the rest of it. At a place called Madeley near Hereford. And he landed and I landed after him. And so they just picked up the phone and rang Little Rissington, ‘One of your boys has touched down here.’ So he came over and I took off and followed him home. Went the day well. Having done all that I was then posted to Harwell where we had clapped out Wellingtons who’d done all the necessary they wanted to or at least they were wanted for and were in a clapped-out situation. And as we stood there we crewed up. I did not choose anybody. I just stood there.
AM: I was going to ask you about crewing up. How that went.
NM: I stood there, and they came and joined me. It was as easy as that.
AM: Yeah.
NM: Right.
AM: Together or in ones and twos?
NM: Well, I don’t whether they’d been talking with one lot over there and they looked at me and thought well I like the look of him and so they came over and joined me. So, I’d got everything except the flight engineer and the second gunner at that stage. Well, I didn’t stay at Harwell but I went to one of their satellites. A place we called Hampstead Norreys near Newbury and we were flying out of there. Well, we had been warned, ‘Don’t over shoot.’ Come in and land properly because there was a big pit, gravel pit at the end of the runway and people had gone in. Oh dear. The trouble. Anyway, we flew that and did all the necessaries and then having finished they said, ‘Right off you go home and get some leave and report to a place called Riccall,’ near –
AM: York.
NM: Yes. Selby. There we go, there we were introduced to the Halifax. Four engine bombers.
AM: So, you finish your training, you’ve got your crew and you’ve gone to Riccall. Have you been assigned to a squadron at this point?
NM: No. Not yet.
AM: Right. Ok.
NM: And there at Riccall I picked up a flight engineer and another gunner. And once again in latter years I said to the flight engineer, ‘How did you come to join me?’ He said ‘Well, I saw you standing there and I walked over and stood with you. It’s as easy as that.’ And so the same with the gunner. He came and joined me. And then of course on completion of that but before then the chief flying instructor at Riccall was called Harry Drummond. So, I got used, just used to flying the Halifax. He said, ‘Right, Mottershead take your crew and there’s, one of the planes over there. One of the Halibags. Take that and get a bit of flying hours in with them.’ Fair enough. Thank you very much and off we went. We got in this aircraft. Taxied around to the runway. Ok. Right. Open the throttle. I was belting down the runway and looked at my speedometer. I hadn’t got any. No speed. And it was too late to stop so I took off without it. And I flew without a speedometer around a time or two. And we tried to, what had happened we’d left the cover on the pitot head. Once again checking beforehand. We tried — first of all we opened the hatch in the front and tried to push it off and we couldn’t do anything like that. We couldn’t reach it. And so I switched on the heater and the heater wouldn’t burn it off. I thought, ‘Well, righto. Well, I’ve got you up here. You lads. I’d better get you down again.’ So, I said, ‘Right, we’re going in now.’ And I approached a little too fast because I didn’t want to stall and go in before I reached the runway. And so, I sort of hit the runway and bounced a little bit which wasn’t good for old Halifax bombers and whipped around and parked up where I’d taken it from and the crew got out. The wireless operator stood on the shoulders of the flight engineer, reached up and took the pitot head cover off just before Harry Drummond arrived around the corner. And he gave me a rollicking for landing the way I did but I didn’t tell him what had gone wrong. Went the day well again.
AM: Yeah.
NM: And so the day came that we had to go to Lissett. We were transferred to Lissett. Now, I think I’d probably heard of Lissett but we all went. There was Doug Cameron and his crew and myself and my crew. And of course, we had to get a bit of flying in together before we went on operations. I arrived there. Can you switch off a second, I’ll go and fetch —
[recording paused]
NM: Are you on?
AM: Ok. We’re back on.
NM: Right. I arrived at Lissett on the 15th of June 1943. And after a familiarisation on the 16th and the 17th — on the 21st was my first operation. To Krefeld. Now, all targets, as Bomber Command will tell you, have got searchlights and flak as well as fighters waiting to get hold of you. So, we went, went through the — etcetera. And poor Doug Cameron — a different story. I must tell you about him. Not on my record. And as a result, when we got back — you see a rear gunner never sees what’s ahead of him. He can only see what’s behind and he could see the fires in Krefeld burning thirty miles away. So when we arrived back at Lissett we went to the debriefing room and he said to me, ‘I’m not bloody going again.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I am not bloody going again.’ And he was taken out and stripped straightaway of his brevet, sergeants and all the rest of it. What happened to him I don’t know but in, in hindsight he did me a very good turn. For they took my other gunner, mid-upper gunner from me and a couple of gunners had just completed a tour — a Canadian pilot’s tour of operations. But they needed another five runs themselves so, one of them related, the Groupie, said to — ‘Go around and see Mottershead. He’s looking for some gunners.’ And they came around to see me and we were discussing one thing or another. And I said, ‘Right. This is the position. My job is to fly that thing. And if you tell me to dive to port I shall dive to port. Don’t you worry about it. Everything you tell me I shall do.’ They said, ‘We’re in.’ And so they stayed with me for their five ops which cleared them. Then I got my original gunner back. Mid-upper gunner back.
AM: Mid-upper.
NM: Having lost the rear gunner. And then I had nineteen different gunners on my tour of operation which was must be a flaming record with the exception of perhaps a wing commander and that who had to grab a crew where he could get one.
AM: Why did they keep changing, Bluey?
NM: Well, I had to have gunners and they [pause] Smith and Edwards were the names of the two gunners were and we got on a like a mountain on fire and so it went on one after another. I went to Berlin on three occasions. I went to [pause] oh hell. Where’s the cathedral?
AM: Oh.
NM: We went —
AM: Dresden. Not Dresden.
NM: No. Cologne.
AM: Oh Cologne. Yeah.
NM: I went to Cologne on three occasions. I went to Mannheim on three occasions and in between all the other nights that we were bombing etcetera. On the second visit to Mannheim we were, people do not realise this, we were flying in complete darkness and other than the fact we saw markers ahead so the bomb aimer led us, led me to it, and he said, ‘Right. Bombs gone.’ Two or three seconds later there was such a hell of a bang. I said, ‘What the bloody hell was that?’ And what had happened an aircraft above us had dropped his load and hit my port inner engine. It sheared the blades off the engine. Off the propellers. And of course, the engine ran away and with it going like that it shook the plane as though it was really in trouble. Anyway, fortunately I’d got a very good flight engineer. He shut the engine down. Closed it down. Then he pumped all the fuel out of the tank nearest to the port inner across the wing to the tanks on the other side you see. Now, my reaction was, when that happened — stick the nose down let’s get out of here which I did do. Because the explosion had hit the Perspex around me on the port, especially on the port side and did other damage etcetera and so it was, we were down to five thousand feet before we could make headway. Now, everyone in Bomber Command will tell you if you are on your own flying at five thousand feet by heck you’ll soon have somebody on your tail. So, we were crossing and as we flew cross country in the dark I could see the lights of this town or city, whatever it was, I could see all the street lights because being under Nazi control they didn’t have to have a blackout. And so I said, ‘Right, get some Window ready in case the searchlights come up,’ etcetera. And we gave a dose of Window and they didn’t come on and we kept flying and I crossed —
AM: What’s Window?
NM: Window.
AM: What’s that mean?
NM: Slips of paper, silver backed paper.
AM: Oh yes.
NM: And that dropping by the millions fill their, their —
AM: The radar.
NM: The radar.
AM: The signal.
NM: What we call Grass.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
NM: They couldn’t pick out what was what and [pause] where’d I got to —
AM: So, you’re on your way back.
NM: On our way back –
AM: You’ve seen all the lights.
NM: We crossed the coast and I said to the flight engineer, ‘What’s the fuel like?’ He said, ‘We’ve got enough to get back to Lissett.’ And so, we went back to Lissett. Now, the hydraulics on the Halifax is controlled by the port inner engine. The hydraulic. And I didn’t know whether my undercarriage was locked. So I called in and they said, ‘Right. Fly down the runway as low as you can, and we’ll put the searchlight on you and have a look at you.’ So, having done that they said, ‘Right. We think you’re locked in alright.’ I said, ‘Right.’ So I went around again and landed. Went the day well.
AM: Again.
NM: We were back home. And it went on until the last. My last trip was to Berlin on the 22nd of November 1943 and the Wing Commander Jock Calder was on that night. I feel sure he was on. So when we came, you know, came from our aircraft in to debriefing Jock said to me, ‘That’s it Bluey. No more.’ And that was the end of my tour. The end of my flying altogether. I never did fly anything else.
AM: Ever.
NM: Ever.
AM: DFC.
NM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I then, they decided they needed controllers for operating Oboe. Now, Oboe was controlling aircraft over Germany from, from either — the main station was in Norfolk. Winterton. Did you happen to see the programme last night on — it was all about the lighthouses turned into houses etcetera. And Winterton was the Cat station. Now there was another station down in Deal in Kent and that was called the Mouse station. And the Cat station was controlled — the Cat station controlled the pilot. The Mouse station was talking to the navigator, bomb aimer. We’re talking about Mosquitos. And so, he would, when he reached the area he wanted to he’d pick up our signal. If he was too near he had dots. If he was too far out he had dashes. He had to have a steady signal and kept flying at a distance from the station in Norfolk at a distance of say two hundred and fifty miles away. And if he kept flying he would complete a two hundred and fifty mile circuit all around us, you see. But [pause] so, I had to go down to Swanage to learn all about this Oboe business at a little place called Tilly Whim. Down there. They seemed to have a station of the same thing. So when we’d finished. Right. I had no say on where I was going and I was sent to Winterton in Norfolk. Not to the one in Kent. The next morning after I arrived there I walked into the signals office and there was a young lady on the teleprinter talking to headquarters for 8 Group. Headquarters at — I forget the name for the moment. On the tele — on the teleprinter. And when she’d finished she looked at me and I said, ‘You’re wearing too much makeup.’ I’d found my wife. So —
AM: What did she say back?
NM: She didn’t. She [laughs] she was, she was a WAAF, you see. Oh dear. Oh dear and then of course that went on until the war had finished and then they didn’t want anybody there then.
AM: So what exactly were you doing there, Bluey?
NM: I was watching the younger part of the air force. That they’d got everything set up alright. The distance and all that sort of thing. What was going on. And I was even taken from there and posted down in to Deal. The Cat station. For a while.
AM: The Cat one.
NM: Anyway, when the war was over we didn’t need either of them. And so of course I had met Kay and there we are, by hangs another tale. So, I was still in the air force and they decided well you’ve done a lot of link trainer flying. The link trainer aircraft in the dark. It’s a statutory thing but you’re all closed in. You can’t see what was going on. You had to fly by instruments. And so, I learned, I learned how to do that and they posted me first of all to Prestwick in Norfolk.
AM: In –
NM: In Ayrshire. To the airfield there well that was then being taken over to become the airfield for Glasgow.
AM: Yes.
NM: The main airfield. So, I was on there a very short time and they said, ‘Right. Well we’ll post you to Marham in Norfolk.’ And I was on the same thing but when I got there and set up everything and ready for pilots they said well the war’s over we don’t need to do this anymore. And so, the rest of my time I was doing all sorts of jobs. Particularly, orderly officer and all that sort of thing and then I reached the stage where I thought, ‘Right. Look. We’ve got to go ahead now. We’ve got civilian life ahead,’ and so my dear wife and I decided —
AM: So, you were married by this time.
NM: We were getting married then.
AM: Ok. Yeah. Sorry.
NM: The war had finished up. We had already arranged the marriage up in Lanarkshire because she was a Lanarkshire girl, for the 18th of August 1945. The war finished in the Far East the 15th of August 1945. And so, we went up there and got married and thereafter settled down and I didn’t quite know what to do. Like a lot of people who had been in the services it was difficult to know exactly what to do. Anyway, there was a company in Liverpool called Silcocks Animal Foods that supplied to farming communities and I’d been a farmer’s son. And the position I was in and a decent sort of looking fellow the Silcocks agent who used to, who went to Shropshire, covered Shropshire said, ‘Well why don’t you join us?’ And so, I made enquiries and I joined Silcocks. I was sent to Nuneaton under an agent who had been there years to help him and I did all the necessary. And then came a vacancy of an area in Derbyshire and so I was sent from there to Derbyshire and landed in Brailsford on the, in August 1952. Something like that. And settled down and I was going around the farms and of course they knew I was a flying type and at that time Brooke Bond had a certain types of cigarette. Not cigarettes but cards in the thing.
AM: Yes.
NM: And that helped me to get familiar with the families etcetera. Swapping and one thing and another. And I reached the stage where one Remembrance Sunday morning at Brailsford, after that Mr Cecil Dalton who ran Silkolene Lubricants at Belper said, ‘Neville, will you come and work for me?’ And I said, ‘Mr Cecil, I will come and work for you.’ And I went and worked for Silkolene Lubricants until I retired.
AM: Right.
NM: Good.
AM: Neville. It sounds funny to hear you called Neville. I always think of you as Bluey.
NM: Yeah. Well I’m still known as Bluey of course. As you know.
AM: Just tell me why you became called Bluey.
NM: Because of my hair. I had ginger red hair. Now, the Australians — those big kangaroos in Australia which have reddy brown hair were called Blues. And so, when the first Australian saw me he said, ‘Well you’re a Bluey.’ And that’s it.
AM: It stuck.
NM: And it’s been with me ever since.
AM: Can I ask you a little bit about the 158 Squadron Association.
NM: Yes.
AM: And you became chairman I think. Tell me a little about that.
NM: Yes. Well I started looking, I started when I came [pause] when I’d finished. Well as soon as I could, I can’t remember exactly, I decided to draw up a register of all those who had been with 158 Squadron and [pause] now I’m looking for something in particular. I think I left it next door. But it’s the book with all the names in. The complete crews. And I kept getting these names of these, of these people and inviting them. And so in 1989 I think it was I got the freedom of entry into this town of Bridlington for the squadron and that’s how it developed from there. And I’m still now president of the squadron until such time as I kick my boots and somebody else will take over.
AM: So, every year you go up to Lissett.
NM: Every time. Yes. Yes. Yes. Now I’ll —
AM: And what about the memorial? Tell me a little bit more about the memorial at Lissett.
NM: Yes.
AM: How did that come about?
NM: Well. After Lissett the old airfield became a farm. Belonged to a farmer. And the powers that be decided it would be the ideal site to put up wind generators. So they put up twelve wind generators on the old airfield. In the meantime, 158 — if you reverse those figure you’ve got 851 and that was the number of young people who were killed on that squadron alone. Eight hundred and fifty one. Eight hundred and fifty males and one female. The one female was a sergeant WAAF in the Met office and she’d never been in an aeroplane and she went on a flight with someone unscheduled just to show her what went on. The damned thing crashed on [pause] that Head that comes out north of Bridlington. Crashed there and killed the lot of them. And she was one of them. So there was eight hundred and fifty airmen, men, who were killed and one WAAF. And so, it was decided by the people who were going to put these generators up that they needed a memorial and of course we were behind it and said yes. And that memorial is still drawing people. Just as the Angel of the North drew people to see it so the one at Lissett. Is that still on? In fact, the other day, one of our members who lives up in the Wakefield area had been up there and gone to have a look at it. He said, ‘It looks awful,’ he said, ‘All we’ve got is stalks left.’ What happened is there are flowers which bloom.
AM: Yeah. There’s poppies there.
NM: And then it’s all left so that the seeds from that drop down to the ground and re –
AM: Yeah.
NM: Come alive again. And he went at the bad time of the year. So, when he rang again I said, ‘Look there’s nothing I can do about it. As much as I appreciate you ringing me and telling me. I know what its like. But,’ I said, ‘We have nobody in that area at all to do anything.’ But the locals do it. Anyway, I understood that they’d even called in the East Midlands, East Yorkshire organisation had called in people to go and have a clean up there.
AM: People.
NM: I hadn’t ordered it. They just went and did it.
AM: Excellent because it’s a lovely memorial isn’t it.
NM: It’s a lovely memorial. A friend of mine from Derbyshire whose funeral I attended this year — he always talked about me and us and I said, ‘Well take a run up there and have a look at the memorial yourself.’ So he, along with another couple and he and his wife went to see it and then I saw him a few days afterwards. I said, ‘What do you think of the memorial?’ And he said, ‘It’s a very very wonderful thing.’ He said, ‘I read every name on that memorial and yours wasn’t on it.’ [laughs] So, I said, ‘Well it won’t be will it? I’m still here.’
AM: Still here. They’re the ones that are not.
NM: He didn’t realise that you see. But it really is. Oh, and let me go and fetch something first.
[recording paused]
AM: So I’m looking at a picture of the first meeting of the Squadron Association.
NM: In 1947.
AM: Ok. Were you there? Are you on it?
NM: Yes. Yes. I’m on the back row. You’ll see me.
AM: Point. Point yourself out to me.
NM: This little chap here, look.
AM: Oh of course you are.
NM: And that was arranged by Scruffy Dale at — I forget the name of the place now. And we all turned up for this and that photograph was taken. And there’s all sorts of people on that photograph and I can — there’s no one left on that photograph as far as I’m concerned. Only me. All the rest are gone. Now, I want to show you this because this is what I’m working on.
AM: Bluey’s showing me the most beautiful tapestry. Is it tapestry or cross stitch?
NM: No. It’s tapestry.
AM: Tapestry of the Halifax and —
NM: The crew.
AM: The crew and it’s beautiful and we’ll take a photograph of it.
NM: It’s not finished yet ‘cause I’ll go and fetch the other bit if I haven’t got it here. This is the other bit.
AM: How long have you been doing this for Bluey?
NM: [laughs] Oh heaven knows.
AM: It’s lovely. I’m going to end the interview now but we’ll take a photograph of this — of the tapestry that Bluey’s been doing.
NM: Now that fits. That will be fitted in there.
AM: Right.
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 Bluey Mottershead
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
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
2015-07-19
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMotterheadN150719
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:45:34 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Born on a farm in Shropshire, his best friend from his youth joined the Royal Air Force as aircrew and was killed at RAF Honington when a German aircraft bombed the station. A desire for revenge made him enlist for flying duties in January 1941. He was sent to RAF Scampton for basic training where he had a flight in a Hampden which he rated as "not fit for purpose".
Flying training commenced at RAF Booker on Tiger Moths and he was then sent out of England as part of the Empire Training Scheme. Flying training on Stearman aircraft recommenced at Lakeland in Florida followed by multi-engined training at Macon in Georgia and Valdosta for advanced training. In October 1942 he became a pilot under the American Army Air Force System and declined an offer to stay and become an instructor.
Returning to Britain on an unescorted Queen Elizabeth liner, he trained on Oxfords at RAF Little Rissington. Posted to RAF Harwell to fly, in Bluey's terms "clapped out Wellingtons" he describes the system for forming a crew. They were posted to RAF Riccall to fly the Halifax.
The next posting was to an operational squadron at RAF Lissett where he did his first operational flight to Krefeld in June 1943 and trips to Berlin, Cologne and Mannheim. After his trip to Krefeld, his rear gunner refused to fly and was removed. On his second trip to Mannheim, Bluey's aircraft was struck by a bomb from an aircraft flying above. They had to reduce height and so used Window to disguise their location. The final trip was to Berlin in November 1943 and, having completed his tour, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Bluey never flew again. Sent to Tilly Whim, Bluey was trained to operate Oboe and explains the device. Posted to an Oboe station at RAF Winterton to monitor junior operatives, he met his future wife.
After the war had finished he became an instructor on the Link Trainer and sent to various RAF stations and finally to RAF Marham from where he was demobilised and returned to civilian life. In civilian life, employment in the farm feed industry was followed by time in the lubricant industry until retirement. Bluey compiled a register of all crews that flew with 158 Squadron and formed a Squadron association in 1947, of which he became president, and organised a memorial to the squadron at former RAF Lissett.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-06
1943-11
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
England--Gloucestershire
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Canada
United States
Florida
Florida--Lakeland
Georgia
Georgia--Macon
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Mannheim
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
158 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
Halifax
Hampden
Harvard
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
love and romance
memorial
military ethos
Oboe
Oxford
pilot
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Honington
RAF Lissett
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Marham
RAF Riccall
RAF Scampton
recruitment
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2067/34136/MStimpsonMC155249-190922-09.2.pdf
b6cb8a35f5ba8ab8b917af1abba6e572
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
Stimpson, Maurice Cecil
Description
An account of the resource
124 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Maurice Cecil Stimpson DFC (1921 - 1944, 155249 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs, documents, and pennants. He flew operations as a pilot with 156 Squadron and was killed 15 February 1944. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Tony France and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Maurice Cecil Stimpson is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/226992/">IBCC Loses Database.</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-09-22
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
Stimpson,
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Embossed Crest]
COCHRAN FIELD
Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center
1942
[page break]
[Drawing]
[page break]
[Drawing]
[page break]
[Blank Page]
[page break]
[Drawing]
[Photograph]
ARMY AIR FORCES
[page break]
[Drawing]
[Photograph]
WINGS over America
For their assistance in furnishing pictures and editorial assistance for this volume and their co-operation in numerous other ways, grateful acknowledgment is made to the following: Public Relations Office, Army Air Forces, Washington, D.C.; Public Relations Office, Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center, Maxwell Field, Alabama; Gulf Coast Army Air Forces Training Center, Randolph Field, Texas; Public Relations Office, First District, Army Air Forces Technical Training Command, Miami Beach, Florida.
[page break]
[Drawing]
Foreword
As members of the United States Armed Forces, you do not have to be told of the magnitude and importance of the task that lies before you.
At every base, station, and training field of the United States Army Air Forces, you are preparing yourselves for the great test of arms which will prove that the forces of democracy can destroy the evil power of the totalitarian nations.
Soon, you will take your places, as Bombardiers, Navigators, Pilots, and Gunners, alongside of our allies who have been fighting so valiantly. As mechanics and supply personnel, and in every type of ground duty, you will have the vital responsibility of making sure that our airplanes will be second to none.
We can win this war, and we will win it, but only if every officer and enlisted man puts forth all the fortitude and resourcefulness that Americans have always displayed in time of war.
There are trying times ahead, times that will test the mettle of all of us, but I am confident that the personnel of my command will acquit themselves with honor and distinction, no matter where and when we shall meet the enemy.
[Signature]
Lieutenant General, U.S. Army.
Commanding General, Army Air Forces.
by Lieut. General H.H. Arnold
[page break]
[Drawing]
[Photograph]
LIEUTENANT GENERAL HENRY H. ARNOLD
[Photograph]
Captain Beck, Lieutenant Arnold, Captain Chandler, Lieutenant Milling, Lieutenant Kirtland.
[page break]
[Photograph]
1908 Orville Wright
First flight September 5, 1908.
With the reorganization of the aviation setup of the United States Army, on March 9, 1942, has come the latest phase of the development of the nation’s military aviation from its groping, experimental days to its present status as an autonomous unit within the structure of the Army.
The story of the rapid growth of our nation’s military aviation, from an unimportant subdivision of the Signal Corps before the first World War, through the period when it was a corps of its own, the Air Corps, and now to a degree of tremendous importance as the Army Air Forces, co-equal in prominence with all the other Army combat arms combined, is a stirring saga of courage and inspiration, of indomitable will and far-sighted genius, all within the short space of 33 years.
The utilization of aviation by the Army, however, antedates 1909, the official birth year. Civilian aeronauts made observations from captive balloons for the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War, and later the Army purchased a balloon in France which was used in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
It was not, however, until the experiments of Langley, Maxim, Lillienthal, Bleriot, the Wrights and others had focused attention on the possibilities of heavier-than-air machines did the Army consider seriously this newest military adjunct. It was not until the Wrights had demonstrated that a heavier-than-air machine was not only feasible, but practical did the Army advertise for bids for the construction of an airplane. An aeronautical division of the Army was created in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer of the Army on July 1, 1907.
The Wright brothers produced an airplane which was delivered to Fort Myer, Virginia, on August 28, 1908. It as a biplane with a wing spread of about 40 feet and a wing area of some 500 square feet weighing approximately 800 pounds. The lateral controls were affected by warping the wings. The double elevator and the rudder were supported in front of the wings by an outrigger. The landing gear consisted of two runners, or skids, and the plane was launched from a monorail. After a series of disappointing accidents and many tests, the Board of Officers appointed to examine the plane made a favorable recommendation on August 2, 1909, and the Chief Signal Officer approved the recommendation the same day. This date is considered the birthday of the Army Air Forces.
While thus inaugurating the air arm of the service on this date, the value of aircraft in a military way was not immediately apparent, particularly to a nation at peace, and it was not until March, 1911, almost two years later, that Congress for the first time specifically appropriated money for aviation…to the tune of $125,000. By September, 1913, Army aviation had grown slowly until it had 17 planes, with a personnel of 23 officers and 91 enlisted men.
Inasmuch as the original conception of the role of aircraft in warfare was purely that of observation the control of military aviation was left in the hands of the Signal Corps, and indeed aviation remained in this branch until 1918, when it was divorced from the Signal Corps and expanded into two departments – the Bureau of Military Aeronautics and the Bureau of Aircraft Production. Upon the termination of the war these two departments were consolidated into the Air Service.
The first actual use of aircraft by the Army began in March, 1916, when the First Aero Squadron, composed of 16 officers, 77 enlisted men and eight airplanes began operations with the Punitive Expedition in Mexico.
The World War, of course, with its constantly accelerating emphasis
Wilbur Wright at Fort Myer, July 27, 1909.
[Photograph]
Orville Wright in flight, Maxwell Field, 1910.
[Photograph]
[page break]
The DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY AIR FORCES
upon air power, was responsible for the rapid expansion of the American aviation. By the time of our declaration of war upon Germany in April of 1917, Army aviation consisted of 65 officers (35 of whom were flyers, 1,087 enlisted men and 55 airplanes. No better commentary can be made upon the changing role of air power at the beginning of the World War and of the present conflict than to compare this number with the 10,697 officers, 126,660 enlisted men and 8,707 aviation cadets which we had on June 30, 1941, with the number constantly increasing under the impetus of the greatest expansion program in history.
During the first eight years of its existence, 1909-1916 – a total of 142 airplanes had been delivered to Army Aviation. Congress, in July of 1917, appropriated $640,000,000 for Army Aviation, the largest appropriation which had ever been made up until that time for any single purpose. Working as rapidly as possible, the country began the gigantic task of catching up in production with countries long at war. The first task as to train American flyers and for this purpose flying schools and ground schools were set up at a number of schools and colleges. Nearly 15,000 flying cadets received training in this country, and about 1,800 in Europe. By March, 1918, our Army Aviation strength was 11,000 officers and 120,000 enlisted men.
At the time of the Armistice we had 757 pilots, 481 observers with 740 planes and 77 balloons at the front, and 1,402 pilots, 769 airplanes and 252 balloon observers had entered the Zone of Advance.
While at the time of the Armistice less than 25 per cent of the planes flown by American pilots were of American manufacture, we were already beginning to swing into large scale production, principally of British designed DeHavillands and Handley-Page’s equipped with the American Liberty motor, the greatest contribution of American manufacturers to the war effort.
American aviators were officially credited with the destruction of 491 enemy airplanes, of which 462 were accounted for by 63 aviators. We had 43 squadrons at the front at the time of the Armistice.
Following the conclusion of the war, our air strength was allowed to dwindle to 1,000 officers and 10,000 men.
The Army Reorganization Act of 1920 provided for 1,516 officers and 10,300 enlisted men for the Air Service, and the Air Corps Act of 1926 authorized a “Five Year Program” which contemplated at its conclusion a personnel strength of 1,650 officers and 15,000 enlisted men with 500 cadets, and equipment consisting of 1,800 serviceable planes.
On March 1, 1935, the famous GHQ Air Force was established, embracing all tactical Air Corps Units within the Continental United States. Prior to its formation combat squadrons were trained under widely different methods, depending upon the conceptions of the Group Commanders. The purpose, which was accomplished, of the GHQ Air Force, was to coordinate the systems of training so as to produce uniformity and the ability to operate together as a team. Another accomplishment was the later development of the combat crew as a fighting team. In practice, the same officers and men were assigned to the same airplane, and each team, through constant cooperation and practice, was able to attain a high degree of efficiency.
Even more important than all these innovations, however, was the fact that the Air Corps, as it was known then, was, for the first time, under a unified command, and under an air officer, Major General Frank M. Andrews (now a Lieutenant General in command of the Caribbean Defense Command). Here was another notable step toward the fullest development of our Army Air arm as an independently functioning entity, complete within itself.
This organization of air power into a highly mobile striking force of great unified power had, as its backbone, the function of Bombardment. The GHQ Air Force was divided into three Wings.
The First Wing, with headquarters at March Field, California, comprised two Bombardment Groups, one Attack Group, and two Reconnaissance Squadrons.
The Second Wing, with headquarters at Langley Field, Virginia, comprised two Bombardment and two Pursuit Groups, and two Reconnaissance Squadrons.
The Third Wing, at Barksdale Field, Louisiana, was composed of one Attack and one Pursuit Group.
But even this organization was to be changed soon by the pressure of ever-increasing expansion of our Army Aviation. On June 23, 1941, the Army Air Forces was established. These included the Headquarters, Army Air Forces, the Air Force Combat Command (which superceded the GHQ Air Force), the Air Corps and all other air
They Flew Them When. – Major H.H. Arnold, Major Thomas Dewitt Milling, pioneer military aviators, and Army planes of 30 years ago – taken in 1912 when Army air strength consisted of two planes.
[Photograph]
Burgess Tractor – 1914.
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
Early Curtiss Training Plane No. 30 – at North Island, San Diego, California
WORLD WAR NO. 1 AND OUR
units. At the same time an Air Council was created to review and coordinate major Army aviation projects. The Air Council included Assistant Secretary of War for Air, Robert A. Lovett (ex-officio). Lieutenant General H.H. Arnold, president of the council, Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons, Major General George A. Brett, and the Chief of the War Plans Division of the War Department General Staff.
In addition to his duties as Deputy Chief of Staff (Air), General Arnold became Chief of the Army Air Forces. General Emmons was made Chief of the Air Force Combat Command, and General Brett, Chief of the Air Corps.
At the end of May, 1941, the Ferrying Command was organized to speed up the process of getting bombers to our English allies. Originally under the command of Colonel Robert Olds (now a Brigadier General in command of the Second Air Force at Spokane, Washington), it is now commanded by Brigadier General Harold L. George, and designated Air Transport Command. Since Pearl Harbor its activities have been vastly expanded into a huge world-wide organization engaged in the transport of all types of aircraft, plus supplies, equipment, and personnel to all the fighting fronts.
By the final reorganization, or “streamlining” which took place last March, the Air Corps ceased to exist, even as a purely administrative organization, and the Combat Command was eliminated, as well. The various combat Air Forces, which are complete units of themselves, are now directly under the command of overall field commanders such as General MacArthur, another step forward in unified command. It is interesting to note that many of these field commanders, whose commands comprise all arms of the service, are themselves air officers, such as General Andrews, in the Caribbean. Each Air Force is, of course, commanded by an Air Force Officer, of general grade, whether within the continental United States or overseas.
These combat forces include all units of military aviation such as bombardment, interception (fighter squadrons), observation, and ground-air support, together with the necessary maintenance service.
As a result of the March 9 change, the Air Forces are recognized as one of the three elements of the Army, together with Ground Forces and Supply. This new organization, designed to simplify and speed up the chain of command, and to provide the flexibility and efficiency of operation necessary to accomplish the enormous task that lies ahead, designates Lieutenant General H.H. Arnold as Commanding General, Army Air Forces, and also as Deputy Chief of Staff for Air on the Army General Staff. By the same reorganization, Lieutenant General Joseph T. McNarney, one of the ablest American air strategists, was made Deputy Chief of Staff.
In addition to these two officers, however, the Air Forces have a far greater representation than ever on the General Staff. As a matter of fact, the General Staff, as now constituted, is about one-half composed of officers from the Air Staff.
The Air Staff, which is rather like a Staff within a Staff, and which is a purely Air Forces organization, is similar in general outline to the General Staff, but on a slightly smaller scale, with designations such as A-1, A-2, etc.
The complexity and extension of Army aviation from its simple Signal Corps days until the present is no better illustrated than by a brief review of the various branches of the Air Forces. The overall picture of the Army Air Forces organization may be summed up under four key words: Policy, Forces, Operations and Commands.
The Policy function has already been discussed at the start of this article. It is handled by the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces and the Air Staff, plus the Air Forces participation in the Army General Staff. In addition to the Assistant Chiefs of the Air Staff (A-1, A-2, A-3 and A-4), there is an Air Inspector.
The various Air Forces, which are the combat organizations of the Army Air Forces, have been covered in paragraphs above.
The next group in the logical breakdown of the Army Air Forces organization is the Operations Staff; this is divided into Military Requirements, Technical Services, and seven administrative agencies: the Public Relations Officer, Director of Personnel, the Air Surgeon, Air Judge Advocate, Budget Officer, Director of Management Control, and Military Director of Civil Aviation.
Now for the fourth element of the organization of the Army Air Forces: operating directly under the Commanding General of the
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Army Air Forces, seven great commands compose the last stages of Air Forces preparation for combat units. It may be of interest to outline the functions of these various Commands.
1. The MATERIAL COMMAND. Experimental aviation activities, which were carried on at Washington by a few technicians prior to the World War, were concentrated at Dayton, Ohio, on November 5, 1917, under the command of Colonel V.E. Clark, Signal Corps. The laboratories, located at McCook Field, were supplemented by offices in Dayton. In 1926 the Air Service became the Air Corps and the functions of supply, procurement and maintenance of aircraft were added to this division, and the name changed to “Material Division.”
The location of the division was changed from McCook Field to Wright Field in 1926.
The Material Division has figured directly or indirectly in nearly all important aircraft developments, commercial as well as military. It is the great experimental and testing branch of the Air Force and includes among its many accomplishments superchargers, the “Whirlwind” engine, use of ethylene glycol for high temperature cooling, high octane gasoline, vibration control, metal propellers, night and instrument flying, haze penetrating film for aerial photography, night and color photography, and many other developments.
2. THE FLYING TRAINING COMMAND. While the Headquarters of the Air Corps Training Center began to function at Duncan Field, San Antonio, Texas, in 1936, flying training in the Army has been continuous almost since the purchase of the first Wright airplane in 1909.
The first Army flying school was established at College Park, Maryland, in October, 1909. Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm and Frederick E. Humphreys were the first students of the Wright brothers. Lieutenant Lahm later became a Brigadier General and commanded the Training Center from its inception in September, 1926, until August 31, 1930. This veteran flyer is now Air Officer of the Second Corps Area at Governors Island, New York. Among the first five Army aviators were Lieutenant H.H. Arnold, now Lieutenant General. Among them also was Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulois, now Major General, retired. General Foulois became a Brigadier General at the age of 38 as Chief of the Air Service of the First Army, American Expeditionary Force. He became a Major General and Chief of the Air Corps on December 20, 1931.
The function of the Flying Training Command, is, of course, to co-ordinate and direct the immense job of providing officers and men for the vastly expanding Air Forces. In order to accomplish this with the greatest efficiency and to eliminate the possibility of administrative bottlenecks, General Arnold set up the Flying Training Command, as it now exists, under the command of Major General Barton K. Yount, with headquarters at Fort Worth, Texas. This command is divided in three great regional training areas, one in the Southeast, on in the Gulf Coast region, and one in the Southwest. All of these regional training areas are complete within themselves, providing their own Reception Centers, Replacement Centers, Primary, Basic, and Advanced Schools (for pilot trainees), and Navigator Schools. Bombardier trainees, however, are all sent to schools located in the Southwestern part of the country, where weather conditions are best
AIR FORCE STRENGTH GROWS
Top Picture: 213th Aero Squadron, Second Army – Enlisted Men. Bottom Picture: Officers and Planes – N. 13 Pursuit Squadron, Third Pursuit Group.
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Captain C. Def. Chandler and Lieutenant Roy. T. Kirtland – in Wright Type B airplanes with Lewis machine gun, June 7, 1912. – The first machine gun ever fired from airplane (Lieutenant Kirtland was pilot for test).
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for this particular type of training. The Flying Training Command also provides for instruction in fixed and flexible gunnery.
3. The TECHNICAL TRAINING COMMAND. The first effort to train Army aviation mechanics systematically was during the early days of the World War, utilizing state universities and civil technical schools. The system was a failure, due to the large costs involved as well as other reasons. Therefore, the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, established schools at St. Paul, Minnesota, and at Kelly Field, Texas. The Kelly Field school was discontinued after the Armistice.
In 1921 the school was moved to Chanute Field, Illinois, and in 1922 the Photographic School, at Langley Field and the Communications School, at Fort Sill were consolidated with it.
The school outgrew its area and in 1935 another site was sought for a second school, and a second school was established at Lowry Field, near Denver, Colorado.
The present expansion program of Army Aviation has necessitated the further expansion of the mechanic training program in order to provide the ever increasing Air Forces with an adequate supply of trained mechanics, particularly in view of the fact that engines and equipment are constantly becoming more complex as well as progressively more modern.
The Technical Training Command provides technical training for Army Air Forces personnel not trained by the Flying Training Command. Under this category come not only ground crew personnel,
Lieutenant Henry H. Arnold in Wright B airplane, College Park, Maryland, 1911.
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such as mechanics, but also such aircrew members as the aerial engineer and communications officer.
4. The AIR TRANSPORT COMMAND, as discussed previously, is concerned with air transport, for military use all over the world.
5. The AIR SERVICE COMMAND operates air depots, repairs aircraft, and distributes aircraft, equipment, and supplies to air units in the United States.
6. The TROOP TRANSPORT COMMAND transports air-borne troops and equipment, parachute troops and equipment, and tows troop- and cargo-carrying gliders.
7. The PROVING GROUND COMMAND operates proving grounds to test aircraft and equipment.
AIR COMBAT
It is quite probable that it is entirely too soon to attempt to define the role of the airplane in relation to the other combat forces of a nation. In spite of that fact there has been raging, and indeed still goes on, a debate between those who feel that air power has to a large extent superceded sea power and even land power as the deciding element in modern warfare, and those who feel that this extreme theory has yet to be supported by actual facts. There are extremists who argue, like the Russian designer Seversky and the Italian General Douhet, that the day of the surface fleet is over, and that the future wars will be decided by the relative merits of the air forces of the combatants. On the other hand, we have the sure evidence of the failure of bombing alone either to permanently disrupt the war effort of a country or to terrorise its civilians into demands that its government surrenders. In neither the Spanish Civil War nor in this war, up until the present, has it been possible for the advocates of air power alone to prove their contentions.
At the same time it must be granted that no nation has as yet been able to mount the type of air attack envisioned by those who hold that it will be air power that will decide the war. It seems likely, however, that this theory will be given a thorough test before the war is done.
Certainly it is true that the conception of the airplane has already undergone a remarkable series of changes since the beginning of the World War, when it was regarded not in the light of a combat weapon at all. Indeed the first airplanes used in the World War were almost always of one type, a two-seater designed for reconnaissance work. As the war progressed specialization appeared and a class of airplanes designed first for air fighting then for bombing appeared. Several nations, prior to the war, has experimented with the arming of aircraft with machine guns, but on the outbreak of the war no plane on the front was so armed. Rifles, carbines, pistols and hand grenades were carried by the pilot and observer. The tactics of air fighting were rudimentary. The pilots simply flew close to the enemy and when within range the pilot and the observer blazed away with any weapon they happened to have handy.
In the summer of 1915, belligerants began to mount machine guns in the planes, usually on a swivel bar at the back of the observer’s seat. The observer could only fire the gun backward toward the tail of the plane, firing over the pilot’s head, which made for a very restricted zone of fire. This necessitated that in order to fire on an opponent, the plane had to fly away from the enemy, thus making it very difficult to be effective. The British experimented with a type of plane in which the gun was mounted in the front and the motors faced the rear. This type gave the advantage of frontal firing, but was so slow on climbing and flight that it was abandoned within a short time.
The first real fighting aircraft to make its appearance was the German Fokker monoplane. Fast, maneuverable, and of the tractor type, the plane had a machine gun mounted in such a fashion as to synchronize with the revolutions of the propeller, thus allowing it to be fired straight ahead. The pilot aimed the gun by aiming the airplane. This plane was so obviously superior to those of the Allies that command of the air had passed to the Germans throughout the rest of the year. In 1916, however, the British were able to challenge the Germans by producing their own type of front firing plane, although it was not until near the end of 1916 that the Allies were able to produce machine gun mounted planes of the Fokker type.
The success of the Fokker airplane was responsible for the advent of formation flying. Casualties among the French and British had grown so heavy that individual flights were discontinued and flights of three or more planes took their place. The Germans retaliated and by the end of the war patrols were the accepted form of air tactics.
It early became apparent to air-minded officers that great damage could be inflicted upon the enemy by dropping bombs from aircraft on his troops, ammunition dumps, factories and other military installations. Indeed, many of the early fighters attempted some rudimentary bombing flights, using hand grenades. These were usually
Wright airplane – First plane in Philippine Islands at Fort McKinley, 1912 – Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm, pilot.
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First plane used by American aviators in France during World War (1918), Morane Roulier, airplane.
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99th Aero Squadron officers in front of planes.
Salinson plane. 91st Squadron.
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Wright machine; with P. Parmalee and Lieutenant M.S. Crissy with first explosive aerial bomb.
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Ineffective except in rare instances. Bombs were then devised which could be dropped from the plane. In early bombing raids the bombs were carried in the cockpit of ordinary fighter planes and heaved over the side by the observer whenever he judged himself to be in a position to hit his target. This was a clumsy, inaccurate system, however, that soon lead to the design of an entirely different craft made for bombing alone, and equipped with machine guns for protection. These planes, which were growing larger and larger as the war progressed, were equipped with bomb racks controlled by mechanisms within the bomber, and carried crews from three to six men. They were utilized at first as lone raiders, depending on stealth and surprise to accomplish their tasks, but by 1917 there had evolved the system of formation attacks by squadrons of bombers escorted by fighter planes as a protective screen. The Germans used this system first to great advantage, and by concentrating very large flights were able not only to concentrate the power of the bombing assault, but have enough fighters to sweep the skies of the opposition.
In addition to the duties of Reconnaissance, the original role of the airplane, had been added the duty of patrol, straffing and bombing, with the Bombardment arm always tending to become more and more important.
After the war the Air Services of all countries began to experiment more and more with the development of bombing planes of increased power and destructive ability. It was realised that it was increasingly possible for planes to inflict very heavy damage on the enemy from the air.
The development of bombsights by all the major powers was to a large degree responsible for this. The American bombsight was recognized as being probably the most accurate of any developed in this period. Accuracy in hitting a predetermined target was coupled with increased altitude which made the planes more safe from enemy fighters and antiaircraft attack. Increased speed and range of the planes has developed down until the present time, when every belligerant possesses bombers capable of flying immense distances with heavy bomb loads.
The United States was among the first to develop the art of dive bombing, wherein the plane is pointed downward at the target and releases its bomb very low, depending upon the tremendous speed of the dive for protection. The dive bomber is very accurate inasmuch as the pilot has the target before him on the way down and does not release his bombs until just above it. It remained for the Germans to develop this to the highest, and it was employed with great success in the battle of France. Many military experts say that the Stuka dive bomber is the greatest single contribution of the war to air combat. The Germans also experimented with and developed the use of air-borne soldiers, utilizing the parachute, originally a safety device, as an instrument for the dropping of offensive men behind the enemy lines. The Russians also have used this extensively, and paratroops are now a part of every belligerant Army. Troop transports capable of carrying many men, supplies and equipment have also been developed, and in the battle of Crete the Germans used air-borne troops to carry the brunt of the battle.
The Japanese and the British have both added chapters to the development of air combat by the use of the torpedo-carrying planes as an effective weapon with which to attack enemy warcraft which are not heavily protected by fighter planes. The English at Taranto and the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and off Malaya demonstrated that unprotected warships can be sunk with relative ease by planes of this type unless they are in turn protected by fighter planes based either on land or on accompanying aircraft carriers.
The day of the spectacular individual air “ace” has apparently closed, as pilots are taught more and more to fly and to fight in absolute formation. Formations are increasing in size as the strength of the warring nations in the air continues to grow.
There has been a growing belief on the part of military men that the day of air power in combat is only begun, and that this war will produce innovations and changes equally as great as those produced in the World War. It is certain that each day, all over America, more and more fighters, bombardiers, navigators, observers, gunners, mechanics and technicians are being trained for whatever role shall be assigned them in America’s growing air armada.
CHIEF OF THE AIR CORPS (Now Army Air Forces)
During the World War, Army Aviation was divided into the Bureau of Military Aeronautics, directed by Major General William L. Kenly, and the Bureau of Aircraft Production, directed by Mr. John D. Ryan, the copper magnate. With the advent of peace, these bureaus were consolidated under one title – Air Service – under the command of Major General Charles T. Menoher, who had commanded the 42nd (Rainbow) Division overseas.
On October 4, 1921, General Menoher was succeeded by Major General Mason M. Patrick. He remained in command until his retirement on December 13, 1927, and was succeeded by Major General James E. Fechet, who served until his retirement in 1931.
Major General Benjamin D. Foulois served for four years, until December, 1935, when he was succeeded by Major General Oscar Westover, who served until his death in a flying accident in 1938. At that time Major General (now Lieutenant General) H.H. Arnold took over and to him has fallen the immense task of directing the Air Force through the present period of war.
96th Aero Squadron officers (Lieutenant Samuel Lunt, fourth from right).
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ARMY AIR FORCES ACCOMPLISHMENTS
From the end of the World War to the present time, the Air Forces have pioneered in numerous aviation activities. A few of these flights and activities, chronologically arranged, are as follows:
1920-February 27. Major Rudolph W. Schroeder established a world’s altitude record of 33,000 feet.
1921-February 12. The Army Air Service successfully completed a Washington, D.C., to Dayton, Ohio, flight.
1921-September 1. The Army Air Service successfully completed a total of 396 forestry patrol flights in the Northwest.
1922- October 6. Lieutenants Oakley G. Kelly and John A. Macready established a world’s endurance record of 35 hours, 18 1-4 minutes.
1922-October 18. Brigadier General William Mitchell established a world’s record for speed over a measured 3-kilometer course of 224.38 m.p.h.
1922- November 4. Lieutenants Kelly and Macready established a world’s record for distance with a flight of 2,060 miles, from San Diego, California, to Fort Benjamin, Indiana.
1923-April 3. Six Army land planes completed a flight to Porto Rico and return.
1923-April 19. Marooned inhabitants of South Fox Island, off the coast of Michigan, were afforded relief through the dropping from Army planes of food and clothing.
1924-March 17. Four Army Douglas World Cruisers departed on an aerial journey around the world. Two of the planes successfully completed the flight of 27,550 miles in 175 days.
1925- November 20. Lieutenant George W. Goddard, Air Corps, made the first successful night aerial photograph.
1926-April 19. The first maneuvers involving the entire Air Service were held at Fairfield, Ohio, in which a total of 45 officers and 67 enlisted men participated, utilizing 44 airplanes.
1927-May 2. The “Good Will” flight returned from South America, after covering a distance exceeding 20,000 miles since December 21, 1926.
1927-May 4. Captain Hawthorne C. Gray, Air Corps, in a free balloon, reached 42,470 feet, the highest altitude ever attained by man up to that time.
1927-June 29. Lieutenants Lester J. Maitland and Albert F. Hegenberger, Air Corps, landed at Honolulu, Hawaii, after having spanned 2,400 miles over the Pacific Ocean from Oakland, California.
1928-June 30. Captain William E. Kepner and Lieutenant William O. Eareckson, aide, representing the Air Corps in the International Free Balloon Race, won first honors, giving the United States permanent possession of the Gordon Bennett Trophy, since it marked the third consecutive time American aeronauts won this trophy.
1929-August 31. Captain Albert W. Stevens, Air Corps, photographed Mt. Rainier from an airplane which was at a distance of 227 miles from this mountain, exceeding by 50 miles any previous record in long-distance aerial photography.
1929-September 24. Lieutenant James H. Doolittle, Air Corps, in a public demonstration of “instrument flying,” accomplished a take-off and a landing solely through the use of instruments, for which he received the International League of Aviators Trophy.
1930-June 20-21. Randolph, San Antonio, Texas, Headquarters of the Air Corps Training Center, was dedicated.
1931-May 18-30, The annual Air Corps Field Exercises began at Dayton, Ohio, and ended at Washington, D.C. The Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Virginia was covered. The First Air Division participated comprising 692 officers, 69 flying cadets and 643 enlisted men. A total of 667 airplanes of all types was utilized in these exercises.
1932- May 9. Captain Albert F. Hegenberger accomplished the first solo flight entirely by instruments.
1933- Master Sergeant Ralph W. Bottriell, of Kelly Field, Texas, was presented the Distinguished Flying Cross for having made the first jump from an Army airplane with the free type parachute, in May, 1919. It was as a result of Sergeant Bottriell’s pioneering that the Air Corps developed the present type parachute.
1934-December 27. The Secretary of War approved the GHQ Air Force organization, and Lieutenant Colonel Frank M. Andrews, designated as its first Commander, was appointed a Major General.
1935-March 1. The GHQ Air Force was officially organized.
1935-August 29. Air Corps engineers made the first flight using the radio compass to control the automatic pilot and thus providing automatic radio navigation.
1935-November 11. Captains Albert W. Stevens and Orvil A. Anderson, Air Corps, reached 72,395 feet in the stratosphere balloon.
1935-December 27. Army bombers scored direct hits on the lava flow from the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii which was menacing the city of Hilo. The bombing tended to divert the lava flow to other channels.
1936-March. The Second Bombardment Group of Langley Field, Virginia, dropped 8,000 pounds of food and medical supplies to communities in Pennsylvania isolated by flood waters. A total of 45 officers and 100 enlisted men participated in these relief missions, utilizing 30 airplanes.
1936-February 10. Major Barney M. Giles, Air Corps; Second Lieutenant J.H. Patrick, Air Reserve; Staff Sergeant D.E. Hamilton and Corporal Frank B. Connor, Air Corps, took off from Concord, New Hampshire, about midnight and located seven CCC youths marooned on drifting ice in Cape Cod Bay. Major Giles circled over the party to show their position to Coast Guard personnel and other planes, which dropped food and blankets. Each of the four airmen received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
1936-June 29. Major General Frank M. Andrews made a non-stop distance record for amphibian planes by piloting the Douglas OA-5 1,425 miles from Porto Rico to Langley Field, Virginia, in 11 hours and 9 minutes.
1937-August 5. The Air Corps substratosphere plane, the Lockheed XC-35, made its initial performance flights at Wright Field, Ohio. Being equipped with a supercharged cabin, oxygen equipment was unnecessary.
1937-August 23. Captains Carl J. Crane and George V. Holloman, Air Corps, and Mr. Raymond K. Stout, Project Engineer, all of Wright Field, made two entirely automatic landings under adverse weather conditions.
1938-April 20. Four officers and five enlisted men began instruction at Patterson Field, Fairfield, made two entirely automatic landings under adverse weather conditions.
1938- February 15-27. Six B-17 bombers flew from Langley field, Virginia, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and return. The trip south involved landings at Miami, Florida, Lima, Peru, and Buenos Aires. Returning landings were made at Santiago, Chile, Lima and Albrook Field, Panama Canal Zone.
1938-April 14. During a period of four days, all food, grain and supplies necessary for a Cavalry detachment of 30 men and 30 horses were dropped from an airplane in the mountains of the Big Bend District in Texas.
1939-February 4-6. Major C.V. Haynes, Air Corps, with a crew of 10 officers and men, flew the XB-15 bombardment plane from Langley Field, Virginia, to Santiago, Chile, with a load of vaccines and other medical supplies, totalling over 3,000 pounds, needed for earthquake sufferers. The distance of about 5,000 miles between Langley Field and Santiago was accomplished in 49 hours, 18 minutes elapsed time, and in a flying time of 29 hours and 53 minutes.
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CLASSIFICATION
PRE-FLIGHT
Fully equipped and proud of his new uniform an aviation cadet leaves the receiving building, a new man.
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Beginning CADET TRAINING
The first half hour is the easiest when a young American reports for training in the Army Air Forces. Having been examined, passed and signed up in his home town, he is then sent to the cadet Classification Center for actual induction – the first step on the tough but exciting road to his Army Air Forces Wings. What happens to him immediately on arrival is shown on this page. Having gone through the “first half hour” shown here, the cadet will soon be classified by aptitude tests for bombardier, navigator, or pilot training, and
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WHAT NEXT? is the cheerful attitude of a typical aviation cadet as he plunges into a new life at one of the Classification Centers. In less than half an hour he will be fully transformed from a civilian to a completely outfitted cadet.
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Above: THE COMPLETE CHANGE takes place in one large building. In the first room the aviation cadet is assigned to a squadron. On the next counter he will check in his luggage. Signs make questions unnecessary, and arrows on the floor lead cadets through the transition process from start to finish.
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Left: BLOCKING THE WAY ON THE “MAIN LINE” through the building is the shower room where the aviation cadets are required to give themselves a good scrubbing and to put civilian clothes in one of two barrack bags handed them. Second bag is for military clothes to be issued them.
Below: In footprints painted on the floor, the aviation cadet stands while experts size him up as to physical development. Expert alligns his backbone with two strings to see if it is perfectly straight. Physical records are kept on cadets throughout the training period with a view toward correcting minor ailments by specialized exercises.
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ON PARADE
sent to a specialized school in one of the training centers. Less than a year later he will emerge as one of the best flying officers in the world, ready to join Uncle Sam’s mighty air armada in actual combat.
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Above: Gone for the duration are civilian clothes. This aviation cadet tries on one of two pair of neat Army oxfords issued him. Civies are laid away in duffel bag.
Below, Top Picture: High-flying Army Air Forces fight low-crawling athlete’s foot effectively simply by preventing it. Each cade wears paper sandals from the shower until the time he puts on his shoes.
Bottom Picture: Snappy coat and cap are issued cadets at the end of the long clothing line. To transform this outfit to that of an officer if he is commissioned Second Lieutenant at the end of the course, cadet has only to put on Regular Air Forces insignia and remove blue band from his cap.
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Tug o’war on the athletic area.
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On the pistol range.
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Over the hurdle on the obstacle course.
PRE-FLIGHT TRAINING
After completing the tests in the Classification Center, the new air corps man is assigned to a pre-flight training school for a training course prior to being sent to a Primary Flight School.
Future pilots who are to receive their pre-flight training are sent to one of several fields, where they undergo nine weeks of intensive training.
The training program for the pre-flight pilot is in three major divisions, stressing athletics, military and academic work. They are given one hour a day in athletics and one hour is devoted to military training. The military training consists of close order drill which tends to improve military carriage and to teach discipline. Each man is drilled in the elements of military courtesy and receives actual practice in firing the 45 caliber pistol.
The academic program includes extensive studies in mathematics, physics, military law, citizenship, national policy, organization of the United States Government, the Air Corps, the Army, current events, types of Air Force equipment and armament, command and administration in small units, the firing of the 45 caliber pistol, and defense against chemical attack.
Each four and one half weeks, a new group is sent in from the Classification Center to the Pre-Flight Pilot School and each class moves up. The upper class members have their first actual practice in some of their training as they take charge of the new pilot students and get the new group settled. As the new group begins their nine weeks’ course, the upper class moves into the final phase of their training before graduating to the Primary School.
The Pre-Flight Navigator is sent from the Classification Center to one of several Navigator Pre-Flight Training Schools, where he undergoes nine weeks of training which is basically the same as the pre-flight pilot. There the work is divided into the same three categories with their academic work placing more stress on mathematics. Their other studies include Morse code, air forces, flags of all nations, ground forces, physics, naval forces, meteorology, photography, maps and charts, communication, procedure, cryptography, and target identification.
They are also taught military discipline and the proper ways of safeguarding military information. They spend five hours each day in these classes with new clases [sic] coming in every three weeks. Their military training consists of 45 minutes each day spent in close order drill and inspections each Saturday. During the nine weeks course the men are also given some training in chemical warfare and the use of gas masks and how to recognise the various types of gases.
The ultimate aim of the Navigator School is to give officer training and to give work valuable to them as aircraft observers and to give work
Cadets line up with their ladies.
Cadets arrive from classification center.
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At the piano in the cadet recreation building.
A typical room scene in cadet barracks.
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Grand march under sabre arch at Cadet Ball.
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Rifle inspection.
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The Colors.
which is prerequisite to the advanced schools. The Navigation School works in conjunction with the advanced schools and at the end of each nine weeks a new class is ready to begin the advanced work.
The Pre-Flight bombardier is sent from the Classification Center to one of the many bombardier schools where he also is subjected to the nine weeks of basic pre-flight training. His academic training lays particular stress upon work in bombardment aviation and particular training in observation from the plane. Other courses are practically the same as those required for a pre-flight navigator.
Throughout the first each “half hour” at the Classification Center and the nine weeks of pre-flight training, the would-be pilot, navigator and bombardier, all have one thought uppermost … to do their best and to get one step further along the road that leads to … WINGS.
PREFLIGHT
Preparing for Saturday inspection.
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Awarding trophies.
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PHYSICAL TRAINING WITH WANDS
Cadets entering the huge mess hall for dinner.
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The shrouds on the parachute must be right.
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Classroom instruction.
The PRIMARIES
Seasoned and well-drilled, with a fair idea of what military life is about, pilot trainees arrive at one of the Army Air Forces Training Center’s elementary flying schools.
These schools are civil airports under contract to the Air Forces. They have lost their indolent look of Sunday afternoon. The leisure is gone out of them. No groups of civilian pilots
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Primary trainers.
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Do it this way.
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loll around in leather jackets. No variety of civilian ships hang around in the afternoon sunlight. The ships are now all blue and yellow trainers – or PT’S. They go up one after another in steady drone. Their motors make a business-like, determined cadence in the air. The atmosphere is calmly serious, for here at elementary school is where the cadet must prove whether or not he has the “stuff” to become a military pilot.
His instructor is a civilian. Before the elementary period is up, this instructor must be able to say to his student:
“You have the inherent ability to fly. You have proved it by soloing within from eight to 12 hours. You have taken your ship up and brought it down countless after countless times. You have done infinitely more than this. You have gone up alone and done acrobatics. You have fought back your uneasiness and done loops and snap rolls. You have put your ship in a bad spin and have brought it out … which, as I say, proves nothing at all except – you are ready to go to Basic School … and luck go with you.”
That is all a cadet can hope to get from elementary school, a solid foundation in flying and a boost into a more difficult curriculum. A considerable number of all who enter elementary school never realize this hope, since they “wash out” for lack of “inherent flying ability.”
Thousands, however, do make the grade. From the Primaries every nine weeks pour a new crop of cadets, men assured of only one thing – that they can fly a PT, understand its simple movements, and comprehend its rudimentary instrument board.
They take with them to Air Corps Basic School this experience – and hope.
LEARNING TO FLY PT’S
Flying blithely through the air may be the dream of many a future pilot when he arrives at a primary training school, but the actual art of successful piloting is no fantasy. The cadet finds that it’s a combination of hard work, intense concentration, a fear of the “washing machine” and an intangible something that he either has or he hasn’t.
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Last-minute instruction.
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Top: Along the obstacle course
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A parachute is better than a rabbit’s foot.
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Right: Mass athletic drill.
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This is what makes it fly.
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Ready for the first ride.
He arrives at a primary school and after being quartered and fed, reports early one morning at the flight line for his first ride. With four or five other cadets comprising his group, he is assigned to an instructor. First he has to learn how to don a parachute, which is an art in itself. He then climbs into the rear cockpit and sits down to look it over. A “stick”, two rudder bars, a throttle, an altimeter and tachometer are the chief instruments he must learn to use in governing the flight of his ship.
First he hooks on his gosports, which are rubber tubes through which his instructor can talk; and much to the consternation of many a “dodo”, he learns there is no way to talk back. Ready to go, he “shoves the coal” to his “crate” and taxis in S curves, for better visibility, out to the runway.
All clear, the cadet, with a slight sinking sensation, inches the throttle forward as the ship gathers speed, gradually applies forward pressure to the stick. Then, just at the right time, he hauls back on the control and pulls the nose up into a long, shallow climb.
“Not so steep … take it easy … Do you want to stall this crate?” the instructor barks in his ears.
A fleeting glance downward causes the cadet to gulp a couple of times to keep his heart down. The ground drops swiftly away. He circles the field to gain altitude, all the time being careful to conform to the local traffic pattern.
At last he reaches the altitude for straight and level flight.
“Left wing too low – Pull ‘er nose up – Watch that tachometer, she’s revving too high – Ease back on the throttle – Hold a little right rudder,” the instructor cautions.
Correction after correction burns up the gosports as the instructor’s monologue becomes a steady drumming in the ears of the chagrined cadet.
As days go by, the cadet learns the “feel” of the plane, becomes dexterous at the more simple maneuvers of flight and recognizes the various plane altitudes and their relations to maintaining his course. He is now ready for that glorious experience when, for the first time, with hight spirits and sinking heart, he takes off, flies and lands, without the comforting companionship of his instructor. He solos.
After the “solo” he becomes familiar with various acrobatic maneuvers. Slow-rolls, snap-rolls, loops, spins, chandelles and lazy eights are part of the concentrated training program.
Then suddenly after weeks of primary training, he gazes upon a new world. A world he dared not even dream of heretofore – the world of Basic Flying School.
He is no longer a “dodo”. He rapidly is developing into an Army Air Forces pilot. If he ever had a sinking sensation upon looking at an airplane he probably has lost it by now, and when anyone asks him if he can fly, he can answer “yes, sir” in a low, reserved tone – but with one eye cocked toward days to come.
[Drawing]
Leaving the hangar.
[Photograph]
[24]
[page break]
[Photomontage]
BASIC TRAINING
Off we go into the wild blue yonder, climbing high into the sun:
Those first line of “The Air Corps Song” provide the setting for this photomontage of men and planes. Dominated by that sleek, stub-nosed master of the skies, the advanced trainer at the left, the picture shows (bottom to top) the Corps of Cadets on the march, with the Stars and Stripes of America flying beside the British Union Jack, and the U.S. cadet and the R.A.F. standards billowing next to them. Directly overhead is a scene on the flying line, and above that are the “Three Musketeers” of the air – the combat team of pilot, bombardier and navigator. Surmounting all is an echelon of warbirds, ready to loose their thunder on any enemy who dares to confront them.
[25]
[page break]
READY TO FLY
[Photograph]
Life IN BASIC TRAINING
Stepping on to the whirligig of basic school, the cadet’s first warm glow of enthusiasm soon changes to puzzled bewilderment. The very speed with which he is carried both in his new ship in the air and in the classroom on the ground reminds him of an old phrase he heard quite often in the first week of training: “Wipe that smile off your face, Mister.”
In addition to more difficult flying technique, he steps into even harder military routine, and to the casual observer his thrust-out chest is likely to appear as the only visible part of his anatomy. His memory, constantly being polished up on matters of military discipline, begins to shine like the wings he strives for.
The weight of the world is on his shoulders when after four or five hours instruction comes the day when he must take his heavier and faster ship up for “solo”. It is only after this accomplishment that he begins to warm up once more to the possibility that he may still have the makings of the world’s hottest pilot. By the day of his second solo he is getting downright eager.
But always present, outstriding by just one step his rising enthusiasm, are the upperclassmen to keep his “eagerness” at half throttle. Once he is allowed to sit on the “little red stool” or to count himself a member of the “Eager Squadron,” he may be convinced that no one is perfect – not even himself – that all is not perfect, and that maybe his even a “gross” cadet.
WARM HAND OF WELCOME FOR UNCLE SAM’S ENEMIES. Etched again sky, traditional Army .45’s are aimed by Army Air Cadets. The revolvers may be no match for dive bombers but they are mighty handy in hand-to-hand fighting on the ground.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[26]
[page break]
Instructor’s favorite method of demonstrating plane altitudes is with his hands. Below: An instructor explains a formation maneuver while cadets “follow through.”
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
At basic he makes his first sundown trek to the flight line, and, after many anxious moments, and by the light of the moon (if he is lucky) he shoves his plane up toward the constellations and realizes he
is making his first night flight.
After that comes instrument training, and more night flights, and cross-country flying and more night flights, the use of the radio, and still more night flights.
By this time also, he has learned that there is such a thing as “flaps,” and has learned how to use them. With his hair standing on end he perceives there are times to use flaps and times not to use flaps.
Finally, comes that day when he happily watches the upperclassmen move on to Advanced Training. A self-satisfied smile spreads across his face, for now HE is an upperclassman.
Immediately, he turns to the new arrival from Primary and barks, “Brace there, Mister … Where did you get so gross? What country club did you come from?”
There is little time to “lord it.” His time now is taken up sunk in navigation problems to prepare him for cross-country flights. He is quite busy getting a firm hand on his tricky BT.
Basic seems to become very “gross” toward the end. The cadet becomes conscious of a new world, the last to be thoroughly toured before he gets his commission to the world known as Advanced Flying School.
Cadet mess.
[Photograph]
Basic trainers on the line.
[Photograph]
[27]
[page break]
[Photograph]
NIGHT FLIGHT
ADVANCED TRAINING
“Where the pig iron is taken and molded into the finished product.” The third and last phase in an aviation cadet’s training is at Advanced, and it is here that the polish is applied and the kinks taken out before sending him out as an officer. For the first time, the cadet is considered a pilot – and the instructor, his flight commander. He learns to carry the responsibility which will soon be his – to know that in his hands are the lives of others as well as his own.
Having completed Primary and Basic training, the boys decide they’re pilots and that this Advanced “stuff” isn’t going to get them. No Sir! After handling those basic trainers, the AT’s are going to be easy. All goes well – the cadets report in. No hazing from the upperclass – in fact, no trouble at all as long as they remain “eager.”
The first ten hours of flying at Advanced is devoted to transition. During this time the cadet learns to handle the faster and heavier ship with its additional equipment, such as retractable landing gear, hydraulic flaps, and constant speed prop. These are the days of worry, for what cadet wants five stars? However, the time goes quickly, and the cadets say “Goodbye” to the time when they could take up a plane by themselves and fly as they desired, for formation flying walks in the door and remains. Instrument flying is an important part of the training, part of it on the ground in the “Jeep”
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Left. Top: THE OLD PUSH-UP is a standard “man killer” in the Training Centers, but cadets, becoming tougher and tougher, refused to be tired, come back for more.
Bottom: Final Exams.
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[page break]
the ADVANCED
[Photograph]
Ready for Oxygen Hop.
(Link Trainer) which handles just like the real airplane. In these are taught the procedures which are later practiced in the air on team rides under the hood. Altitude flights are made to accustom cadets to the use of oxygen and the reactions of the plane in the lighter atmosphere. One of the most thrilling of all the cadet missions is the first night cross-country trip. Having flown “night local” at Basic, night flying itself is not so unusual, but to follow the light lines to another city means a new step in training. Flying takes but half of the day – the remainder is spent in the classroom, at athletics, or drilling.
Then for ten days, the class has a break in their advanced training – ten days of gunnery practice at another school. Here cadets practice at ground and aerial gunnery. With machine guns mounted on the trainers, each man shoots several hundred rounds every day.
Yes, at any advanced flying school is taught the necessary subjects which any Army Air Forces pilot must know, to prepare him for service in the field as an officer.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Above, Top: AT Advance Twin Engine Trainer. Bottom: A.T-6’s on the line.
Close up.
Trainer with control unit.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Bank her this way.
Testing their oxygen masks.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Watching the flight.
Ground crew off duty, but still “talking shop.”
[Photograph]
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[page break]
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Top Row, Left: Gentlemen with swords once settled their quarrels at dawn. But these gentlemen, aviation cadets in the Training Center, work out with foils in order to develop cat-like quickness and dexterity which will be valuable to them in settling scores in air combat. Center: After a long flight.
Right: Cross country preparation.
Middle Row, Left: Back to the barracks after a hard day’s work in the air. Center: British cadets fold Old Glory at Retreat. Right: Advanced navigation trainer.
Bottom Row, Left: A sextet of aviation cadets in the air as they are determinedly making a broadjump on the obstacle course used in the physical training program. When the full story of this war is written, there will be a special chapter devoted to the hours of scientific study, the subsequent hours of manpower, prespiration [sic] and drudgery now being expended to toughen our combat fliers for the fight. Men were not made to fly at rarefied altitudes of 30,000 feet, nor were they built to be wrenched in the air at speeds of 500 miles an hour. But our enemies are doing it. We must. And the rugged physical conditioning program in the Southeast Training Center is the successful answer to how we can. The keystone in the training program is the development of those muscles and nerves most used in combat flying. Center: Sky Bound. Right: Advanced Trainers.
[Photograph]
Left: Like a man from Mars with a “death ray generator” in his hands, this Army Air Force photographer draws a bead as squadrons of planes roar across the cloud banks of the Southland. Anywhere he may point his finder he will catch the growing flights of aviation cadets doing precision formation flying.
[Drawing]
[page break]
[Photograph]
BOMBARDIER TRAINING
The whole striking power of the Air Forces, insofar as destructive power is concerned, is carried at the tips of the Bombardier’s fingers. Isolated and alone in the glassed-in “greenhouse” right in the very nose of the power bomber, it is his duty to direct his plane to the proper point above his target and release his bombs with such split-second timing as to insure their finding their mark.
For much of the plane’s flight the bombardier is merely a passenger, but as the plane nears its objective it is in his hands, and his alone, that the success of the mission rests.
Aided by the finest instruments for precision bombing owned by any nation in the world, the bombardier must make allowances for such things as plane speed, height, air temperature, weight of the bombs, wind and cross drifts and other factors.
He sets these facts into his bombsight, which is in essence a calculating machine, and at the right moment releases his bombs.
Before he reaches that target, however, the bombardier spends twelve crowded weeks learning the fundamentals and the fine points of his destructive trade. The bombardier is selected for his task at the Classification Section of the Air Forces. He is selected because
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[page break]
BOMBARDIERS
he has shown marked ability at manual dexterity so that he can twist knobs without fumbling, muscle control so that his adjustments are always precise, serial reaction so that he can apply data in orderly sequence, and a calm temperament so he won’t get rattled easily.
Once he has been selected for his rigorous task the embryo bombardier is sent to one of the large bombardier schools, where he is first introduced into the theory of bombing. He attends classes and discovers the intricasies of what makes bombs fall as they do. He learns the composition of bombs, their various reactions to different conditions and situations. Above all, he spends many hours practicing on the bomb trainer, a platform some 12 feet above the ground which stimulates actual bombing conditions.
Over and over again he works out the various problems that are connected with his intricate art, learning to turn dials, straining his eyes, learning to coordinate mind and body so that his movements will be swift, sure and above all, accurate. As time goes on he finds that he is acquiring the sure timing and accurate adjustment necessary to make of him a finished bombardier.
He learns in classrooms about such things as probable error, the reason behind pattern bombing, learns how to calculate wind drift and other such problems.
As he grows more proficient he works out advanced problems involving all these factors on his training platform, so that by the time he is ready to take to the air for his practice trips he has a clear idea of just what problems he will face and what his responsibility is.
When the time comes for him to make his practice bombings he is carried in a modern fast bomber. He bombs at day and he bombs at night. He lives and thinks bombing. The practice bombs are loaded with black powder instead of high explosive and when these detonate the bombardier can see just how far he missed his target. He gets practice bombing from all angles and under all kinds of conditions. He learns to bomb from his altitude when his bombs are released three miles before he reaches his objective, and he learns to bomb from low altitudes when his bombs crash right on top of his objective.
He is schooled in the use of the Norden and Sperry bombsights, our most vital military secret.
At the end of nine weeks he makes his “record runs,” the final examination for a bombardier which determines whether he is a first, second or third class bombardier. If he graduates as a first class bombardier his position will probably be in the nose of the leading plane in his flight so that he can help the following bombardiers in the proper releasing of their bombs.
During his last three weeks of training the bombardier is in the air almost constantly, bombing on the practice range under all types of combat conditions. He learns how to release his bombs at very low altitudes when he can’t use his sight, but must rely on his own sight and judgment; he also learns to bomb from so high that he has to use oxygen to enable him to breathe. He learns how to check his
[Photograph]
Shown through the two racks of bombs is a bombardier cadet waving an all-clear to the ground crew as he goes up to the “nose.”
[Photograph]
Bombardier training.
Instructor at the blackboard explaining diagram illustrating the fall of the bomb as aviation cadets look on.
[Photograph]
Where to this trip? The cadets check the mission schedule to get their destination and “target” for the flight.
[Photograph]
[page break]
IN THE MAKING … [Drawing]
[Photograph]
This Douglas B-18 bombardier training ship with its bomb racks loaded with practice bombs and manned by aviation cadets en route to target range.
data and release his bombs within 20 seconds of sighting his objective. He learns how to loose his bombs either in a string, which is one at a time, or in a salvo, which is all together.
At the end of his 12 weeks he is graduated and gains his coveted wings. From that time on he is a finished bombardier. He may be used to train other bombardiers or he may be assigned to a combat squadron anywhere on the face of the earth where the far-flung armies of the nation are in combat.
Like the pilot and the navigator, the bombardier is a highly specialized man. He is trained to function as an integral part of the bomber crew, and he knows that he was picked for his task, just as the pilot and the navigator, because of special skills which have been further developed by the course of training which he has undergone.
From bombardier cadets, eager to go “upstairs” for one of their regular training flights at an advanced flying school, check out their flying “tack” at Supply Headquarters.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Planning the “Pay Load.” Tools of the cadet bombardier’s important trade are these 100-pound training bombs, ready to be loaded into the giant belly hatch of a B-18 bomber.
[page break]
NAVIGATION
[Photograph]
Hundreds of two-engined training ships like this whisk students aloft on 1,000-mile missions. Ships carry a crew of five, the pilot, navigation instructor, and three students.
They call him the Little Tin Guy.
His nerves seem all metal, his mind works like a compass, and his job is to get our bombers there and get ‘em back, over land, over water, through weather and rain and hail and fog – through anything!
He is better known as the navigator and he is being trained at specialized schools.
The Little Tin Guy is being hammered out by the hundreds, and he will be hammered out by the thousands. He was present to smash the Jap fleet at Midway, and he carried the fire to Tokyo with General Doolittle. If he had not been along with his octant, his dividers and compasses, his maps and charts and unpronounceable gadgets, there would have been no victory at Midway, no fires at Tokyo.
[Photograph]
HITS OR MISSES? Whether our bombers, hurtling across thousands of miles of ocean waste like this, smash targets or miss objectives completely, depends largely on the navigator, dubbed “The Little Tin Guy.” Above, a training ship from one of the Navigation Schools flies a plotted course over the Atlantic. Below, left, a student navigator keeps on course by shooting the sun through the blister in the ship’s top. After graduation, young navigators with motto, “Get ‘em there – Get ‘em back!” can take bombers anywhere – Tokyo not excluded.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
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Below, right, in the back seat, another navigation cadet navigates the same course by pilotage, or by checking points on his map with corresponding points on the ground. The river he sees coiled below is a well-known landmark.
[page break]
[Photograph]
WITH MAPS NEATLY ROLLED and instruments in their cases, young navigator march to the flying line and board ships assigned to them.
Without the navigator, bombers would be freight loads of destruction rushing at terrific speed through tractless space, but rushing without purpose, without hesitation.
The navigator CAN get ‘em there. He CAN get ‘em back. This is why: He doesn’t just happen to be a good navigator. He is made a good navigator.
Appointed an aviation cadet, he goes to a classification center. By mental examinations and weighted psychological tests it is determined whether he is by nature best qualified to be a navigator, bombardier, or pilot.
To be classified as navigator he must be a steady-nerved, cool-headed individual capable of making lightning decisions. He must have plenty of grey matter between the ears for he must master the equivalent of a full college course in a short time. He cannot be merely the bookworm-type intellectual. He must have the brawn and the wind to move around in a plane at high altitudes, forsaking his oxygen. He must be able to work complicated problems at dizzy heights where the average man cannot add three and six.
Classified “navigator,” he is put through weeks of elementary training and then sent to a navigation school for the real thing.
[Photograph]
Cadets sit one behind the other at desks in the belly of the ship. Here students have several minutes to figure their course while the pilot circles the field.
With E68 computer, called “The Navigator’s Wife,” because, cadets say, “It does everything in an airplane but cook,” a cadet estimates time of arrival to the next familiar landmark … Meanwhile another cadet, who must figure entirely by instruments, looks through driftmeter to see if wind is knocking the ship off course … To be triple sure of the airplane’s location, the pilot puts the ship on “automatic pilot” and lets it fly itself while he studies his map. If student gets off course, he will not correct him, but will keep his own bearings and tell student his mistake later … OXYGEN MASKS are worn by all crew members above altitudes of 10,000 feet. The Navigator must be in top physical condition, for in combat missions he must forsake oxygen and move around the ship to use his octant. In actual combat he mans a machine gun.
[Photograph]
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[page break]
“LITTLE TIN GUYS” ..
[Photograph]
BEFORE A FLIGHT cadet navigators at one of the fields training navigators crowd the ready room with maps and charts which will guide each man on a different mission.
This school hands him an intensive, practical course. He gets a course in the Navi-trainer, a machine which simulates all conditions of air navigation. He goes to ground class for eight hours a day, and for three hours at night. He is awakened in the dead of night and routed out to study the stars. He learns the theory of celestial, radio, pilotage and dead reckoning navigation.
Then his classroom goes to the sky. He flies in the two-motored AT-7. The ship carried three students, one instructor, and a pilot. The students sit at three desks one behind the other in the belly of the ship.
Usually the student in the front sea works his problem by instruments. He is not allowed to look at the ground. (The ground may not be visible to help on combat missions). The other two students do pilotage or follow the course on the map by recognizing corresponding objects on the terrain.
The new navigator spends 100 hours in the air. The courses he charts take him over several states. He directs the ship through day and through night on four-hour missions, on eight-hour missions. He mustn’t go to sleep. He mustn’t blink an eye.
“Zero Zero” is the navigator’s ultimate objective. Zero Zero in navigation means perfection. It means navigating through hundreds or thousands of miles of space, cloud rack, wind and weather and hitting a dime-size objective “on the nose” at the precise second you predicted you would hit it on the nose. One inch off is not Zero Zero. One second early or late is not Zero Zero. Zero Zero means right on the button, right on time!
It is not easy. New navigators say, “If you got there Zero Zero the driftmeter plays “The Star Spangled Banner” and hands you a cigar!”
But at the end of the course they do get there Zero Zero, and they get their Wings.
Then to units for further tactical training where they work for a while as members of a fighting team before they go to combat or to a ferry command.
The navigator’s first assignment may be to navigate a quarter-million-dollar Flying Fortress and its seven-man crew from Florida to a pin-dot airbase, surrounded by enemy-held territory-overseas. The ship is his personal responsibility. If he misses, too bad. But he doesn’t miss.
The best and most independent old pilots warm up to their navigators in direct proportion to the distance they have to fly. Flying in this war is almost all long-distance flying. The emphasis is on the navigator. The emphasis is on the Little Tin Guy!
[Drawing]
[page break]
[Photograph]
[inserted] Control Tower AT MAXWELL [/inserted]
SOUTHEAST ARMY AIR FORCES TRAINING CENTER
MAXWELL FIELD, ALABAMA
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[page break]
HEADQUARTERES
SOUTHEAST ARMY AIR FORCES TRAINING CENTER
Maxwell Field
Montgomery, Alabama
July 3, 1942
To All Members of this Command:
Since its inception on July 13, 1940, the Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center has developed from a mere directive on paper and a total of five officers, to its present strength of thousands of officers, cadets, and enlisted men stationed throughout sixteen states. It has been a tremendous job, and only the loyalty and unsparing efforts of the entire command have made possible this progress.
In the coming days and months the obstacles will be no less and our output must be greater.
To all those who have labored so well in making the Training Center a vital link in the Army Air Forces, I want to express my personal appreciation for a job well done. I have the utmost confidence in your ability to meet the increasing responsibilities of the future.
To the thousands of cadets who have received their training here, and to the thousands still to come, - we dedicate our efforts.
[signature]
W.W. WELSH,
Colonel, Army Air Forces,
Commanding.
[Drawing]
[page break]
[Photograph]
WILLIAM W. WELSH
COLONEL, AIR CORPS
Commanding Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center
Colonel Welsh was born in Denver, Colo., September 16, 1893. Enlisting in the Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, May, 1917, at Omaha, Neb.; called to active duty December 20, 1917, reporting to the School of Military Aeronautics, Austin, Tex., for ground school training. Assigned to the Cadet Concentration Camp, Fort Dick, Dallas, Tex., later to the flying school at Park Field, Millington, Tenn. Commissioned a Second Lieutenant, aviation section, Signal Corps, May 28, 1918.
Transferred to Payne Field, Miss., serving as instructor until October, 1918, then transferred to the Aviation Concentration Depot for overseas service. The Armistice was signed prior to his departure, however, and he was sent to Carlstrom Field, Arcadia, Fla.
Saw service at March Field, Calif., Brooks Field, San Antonio, Tex., France Field, Panama Canal Zone and Kelly Field, Texas; 1931-36 stationed at Louisville, Ky., as Commanding Officer of Bowman Field and on detached service with the Organized Reserves.
In August, 1936, attended the Air Forces Tactical School, graduating in 1937. Since then he has been on duty continuously at Maxwell Field, serving first with the Tactical School until it was rendered inactive in 1940, and then with the Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center.
He holds ratings of command pilot and combat observer.
[page break]
GENERAL STAFF
[Drawing]
[Photograph]
JOHN G. WILLIAMS
Colonel, General Staff Corps
Chief of Staff
[Photograph]
ALBERT M. WOODY
Lieutenant Colonel, Air Corps
Executive Officer
[Photograph]
A.L. PRICHARD
Lieutenant Colonel, General Staff Corps
A-1
[Photograph]
AMZI G. BARBER
Lieutenant Colonel, General Staff Corps
A-2
[Photograph]
JOHN F. McBLAIN
Colonel, General Staff Corps
A-3
[Photograph]
LEDCREICH STUART VANCE
Lieutenant Colonel, General Staff Corps
A-4
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[page break]
[Diagram]
“The Best Training in the World” sounds like a big statement – and it is – but that’s what America’s young men get when they are accepted by the Army Air Forces for training as pilots, bombardiers and navigators. The above chart, prepared by the Southeast AAF Training Center, shows the progressive stages of training Army aviation cadets undergo from the time they pass the physical and mental examinations at a local board or Army Post, until they emerge as Second Lieutenants or with the newly created grade of Flight Officer. (Both ranks carry the same pay, and Flight Officers may later be commissioned as Second Lieutenants). Upon graduation from the last stage of Training Center preparation, the young officers are assigned to a Combat Unit and are ready to meet the enemy. And because of their exceptional training, they will meet him on better than even terms in knowledge and ability. That means greater safety for themselves – and bad news for their opponents!
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[page break]
[Photograph]
School Squadron Building
[Photograph]
Maxwell Field Post Headquarters.
VIEWS ….
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
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[Photograph]
Left to Right:
Commanding Officer’s Quarters.
Non-Commissioned Officers’ Quarters.
Bachelor Officers’ Quarters.
Maxwell Field Officers’ Club Lounge.
[Drawing]
[42]
[page break]
[Photograph]
“PX” CAFETERIA, FOR ENLISTED MEN AND CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES
…. AROUND MAXWELL FIELD
Today, three Army Air Forces Training Centers, each operating as a separate unit, but all constituting one great United States Army Flying Academy, are working day and night to attain the goal of producing the necessary pilots, navigators, bombardiers to blast the Axis forces off the ground and out of the skies. They are the Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center, with headquarters at Maxwell Field, Ala.; the Gulf Coast Army Air Forces Training Center, with headquarters at Randolph Field, Texas, and the West Coast Army Air Forces Training Center, with headquarters at Santa Anna, Calif.
The Southeast Training Center is typical of all three, and more than either of the other two, it started from scratch.
On November 16, 1940, the Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center launched its aviation cadet program. Major General Walter R. Weaver was put in command of the Center and at that time it consisted of nothing more than its present headquarters at Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Ala.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
To the Right, Top: Austin Hall, Headquarters of the Southeast Army Air Forces Training Center, Maxwell Field, Alabama. Bottom: Office of the Commanding Officer, Headquarters, Southeast AAF Training Center.
[page break]
Today scores of air schools are operating in the Training Center. Many others are soon to be activated. Webbed as a single unit around their command headquarters at Maxwell Field, they dot the land from the State of Wisconsin to the tip of Florida, extending as far west as North Dakota. In fact, the Southeast Training Center has long since outgrown its name. Here in this part of the United States, lies the greatest air training center in the world today. The sky is literally the limit for the facts and figures of the expanding program and for the number of men fast undergoing the transition from shaky-winged fledglings to dependable Army flyers.
As though this were not job enough, the Center swung open its doors in June, 1941, to British aviation cadets, who after completion of their training returned home for duty with the RAF. The total number of British students graduated from the schools in the Center is a military secret, but the total figure runs into the thousands.
And in May, 1942, a large contingent of sun-tanned Dutchmen from the East Indies arrived in this country for training in the Southeast Training Center.
Call it discipline, organization, mass production, or what you will … The Southeast Training Center is producing a large share of the nation’s pilots, navigators, bombardiers. A new class of aviation cadets enters the training center every five weeks. From all over the country, from many different vocations, climates and ways of life, they come to sign up with the Air Forces. They have three things in common: a minimum amount of luggage, a yen to fly, and a desire to come to grips with the enemy.
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Above. Top to Bottom: Mess Call. Cadet Mess Hall. Post Exchange, Maxwell Field. Post Library.
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COCHRAN FIELD
[Photograph]
CONTROL TOWER
MACON , GEORGIA
1942
[45]
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HEADQUARTERS
ARMY AIR FORCES BASIC FLYING SCHOOL DDF/w
COCHRAN FIELD, MACON, GA.
To the Men of Cochran Field,
I welcome this opportunity to greet each and every one of you. I have had the privilege of being with you men here and of working with you and for you. You and I have seen fertile land change from the production of farm crops to the production of fine men. Some of these men must leave, but some stay to help us. I am proud of you, your work, and our products. I am glad that you too are proud of our accomplishments.
My sincere best wishes to each and every one of you. Thank you for your loyalty, your hard work, and your high ideals. May the spirit of this command continue to be expressed by the words, “We can and we will.”
[signature]
D.D. FITZ GERALD
Colonel, Air Corps
Commanding.
[page break]
[Photograph]
DONALD D. FITZ GERALD
Colonel
Commanding Cochran Field
Born in Washington, D.C., December 13, 1896. Graduated from Pennsylvania Military College with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1917. Completed Post Graduate course at Yale University in 1926 with a M.S. in Electrical Engineering.
Was commissioned Second Lieutenant, Field Artillery, June 1, 1918, and transferred to the Air Service as an Aerial Observer on August 28, 1918. Commissioned First Lieutenant, Air Service, July 1, 1920; Captain, Air Corps, January 1, 1934; Major (temporary) August 26, 1936; Major (permanent) July 1, 1940; Lieutenant Colonel (temporary) March 15, 1941; Colonel (temporary) January 20, 1942.
During his military career has been stationed at Saumur, France, in 1918, as Field Artilleryman; Tours and Chattil on Sur-Seine, France, in 1918, as a student observer; Treves and Coblenz, Germany, in 1918, with the Army of Occupation. Was at Mitchell Field, Kelly Field, and Fort Bliss in 1919; at Camp Knox, Fort Sill and March Field for pilot training in 1920, attended Signal School at Camp Vail in 1922-23; back to Kelly Field in 1923-25; McCook Field in 1926-28; Brooks Field, 1928-31; Hawaii, 1931-33; Rockwell Field, 1933-35; the Air Corps Tactical School, Maxwell Field, 1935-36; Bolling Field, 1936-39; Randolph Field, 1939-40; Gunter Field, 1940-41; Maxwell Field, January, 1941 – April 1941.
Colonel Fitz Gerald has been Commanding Officer of Cochran Field since its conception in April, 1941. His leadership of Cochran Field has been superb.
[47]
[page break]
STAFF
[Photograph]
RICHARD H. WISE
Lieutenant Colonel
Post Executive Officer
[Photograph]
WILHELM C. FREUDENTHAL
Lieutenant Colonel
Operations Officer
[Photograph]
JAMES W. CLARK
Captain
Adjutant
[Photograph]
OTTO E. KELLER
Captain
Intelligence Officer
SPECIAL STAFF
[Photograph]
JOHN F. GORMAN
Major
Special Services Officer
[Photograph]
RAYMOND V. MARLAN
Major
Quartermaster
[Photograph]
CHARLES E. WILSON
Major
Administrative Inspector
[Photograph]
CHARLES R. CROSS
Major
Provost Marshal
MAXWELL C. HARRINGTON
Captain
Ordnance Officer
[Photograph]
ALLEN D. SMITH
Captain
Surgeon
[Photograph]
MYRON R. BITTIKOFER
Captain
Engineer
[Photograph]
PERCY F. HERRING
Captain
Chaplain
[Photograph]
[48]
[page break]
[Photograph]
PATRICK D. HUFF
Captain
Signal Officer
[Photograph]
FRANK P. GALLO
Captain
Personnel Officer
[Photograph]
MORRIS J. DROBECK
Captain
Athletic and Theatre Officer
[Photograph]
EDWARD J. MACK
Captain
Finance Officer
[Photograph]
HOWARD L. DAVIS
Second Lieutenant
Communications Officer
[Photograph]
R.J. ERFLE
First Lieutenant
Transportation Officer
[Photograph]
WILLIAM E. WALK, JR.
First Lieutenant
Base Weather Officer
[Photograph]
OWEN W. SILVEY
First Lieutenant
Chemical Property Officer
SCHOOL STAFF
C. CONRAD PRATT
Major
Director of Training
[Photograph]
FRANK W. ISEMAN
Major
Commandant of Cadets
[Photograph]
JOHN M. WINGE
Captain
School Secretary
[Photograph]
ARTHUR L. HUFF
Captain
Director of Ground School
[Photograph]
[49]
[page break]
HISTORY OF COCHRAN FIELD
A site containing about a thousand acres was purchased by the City of Macon, Georgia, in December, 1940. This land, located nine miles south of the City on the Hawkinsville Highway, was designated by the Federal Government in February, 1941, as the site for buildings for Flying School Number 1 and construction was started on March 15th.
Thus was Cochran Field begun. At that time the land was typical middle Georgia farm land and was covered by several sizeable peach and pecan orchards, some truck farms, numerous dwellings and a church.
The field which was at first known as Flying School Number 1, from its priority of construction, was later named for Robert J. Cochran, who was born in Camilla, Georgia. He died in action in France during the first World War while serving as a First Lieutenant with the Eighth Aero Squadron.
On April 15, 1941, five officers with seventy-five men arrived at Cochran Field in a truck convoy under the command of Captain R.H. Wise. They came from Gunter Field, Montgomery, Alabama, and reported to Lieutenant Colonel D.D. Fitz Gerald who had arrived from Maxwell Field on April 7th.
Many of the men were key non-commissioned officers. They were the nucleus around which the Basic Training School was formed. These members of the original detachment were assigned to quarters in tents while Lieutenant Colonel Fitz Gerald began his command from a make-shift desk.
On May 15th, the field was designated as a Basic Army Flying School. The first planes arrived from Gunter Field on May 23rd. Paving had already begun on the gigantic runways and was soon completed. These runways are equivalent to scores of miles of ordinary paved roadway.
Training of the first aviation cadets, who arrived on June 3rd, began June 4, 1941, three days ahead of regular schedule, and the first class was graduated August 13th, five days ahead of schedule. On August 18, 1941, the first class of British cadets arrived to begin their duties. Classes of both American and British cadets have been held continuously since that date.
Lieutenant Colonel Fitz Gerald was appointed to the rank of Colonel (temporary) on January 20, 1942, and Cochran Field under his guidance has emerged from a red, muddy orchard to become one of the finest training schools of the Air Forces. The station is continuously turning out officers and men who are fitted to carry on our battle to victory.
[50]
[page break]
COCHRAN FIELD
ACTIVITIES
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
READY FOR ACTION
[Photograph]
CADETS TAKE TO THE AIR
[Photograph]
PLANE PARK
[page break]
[Photograph]
Lieutenant James and Civil Service pilot just before take-off.
[Photograph]
Last minute instructions.
LOOKS LIKE A VICIOUS MONSTER READY TO SPRING
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Top: The take-off.
Above: P.T. trainer on the line.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Top: A line of planes go into position for take-off.
Above: A squadron takes off.
A cadet has taken to the air.
[Photograph]
All set for a take off.
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Top: Drying parachute. Above: Sewing parachute.
Folding.
[Photograph]
Almost finished.
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
LINE MAINTENANCE MAKES A 100-HOUR CHECK-UP
LINE MAINTENANCE
[Photograph]
Left: The men in the line maintenance section are thoroughly trained in the general construction principles, repair, adjustment, inspection and maintainment of the complete airplane, engine and affiliated equipment. On the shoulders of these men rests the responsibility of keeping the planes running smoothly. Although the modern plane is built to withstand much harsh punishment there is always a day of reckoning and that is where the line maintenance comes into its own.
[page break]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Top: Washing and checking a plane, part of the plane park is seen in the background. Above: The line maintenance gasses ‘em up.
[57]
[page break]
[Photograph]
SCRUB-UP TIME
[Photograph]
25-HOUR INSPECTION
[Photograph]
100-HOUR CHECK
[page break]
[Photograph]
COCHRAN FIELD BAND
Below. Top to Bottom: Dental clinic. Microscope work in Medical Detachment laboratory.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Below. Top to Bottom: Headquarters Building. Post Chapel. Post Hospital.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Top: Weather tower.
Above: Radio operator at receiving set.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Top: Plotting “winds aloft” map in Weather Department.
Above: Routine in the Weather Department.
The Minds Behind the Men in the Air
Light gun in the control tower.
[Photograph]
Map study in Airways Section.
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
Observing balloon by theodite.
[Photograph]
Studying the enlarger in the photographic department.
Below: Giving instructions from inside the control tower.
Bottom: Cadets check in with an M.P.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Below: Crash truck.
Bottom: An M.P. issues a pass.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[page break]
ON THE MARCH
BELOW: CADETS FORMATION. BOTTOM: RECRUIT SQUADRON ON THE MARCH.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[page break]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Swimming and diving is a favorite off duty activity at Cochran Field.
FAMILIAR SCENES
Right: Officers’ Club. Right, Below: A chess game in the Recreation Hall. Below: Mess inspection.
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[page break]
VIEWING THE 27TH SQUADRON
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
Top Picture:
THE 27TH SQUADRON LINES UP
Center Picture:
GAS MASK DRILL
Bottom Picture:
A SERGEANT GIVES ORDERS TO TRUCK DRIVER.
[page break]
Personnel
COCHRAN FIELD
MACON , GEORGIA
1942
[65]
[page break]
[Photograph]
JOHN R. KNIGHT
Major
[Photograph]
JAMES W. LILLARD, JR.
Captain
[Photograph]
ROBERT MARTENS
Captain
[Photograph]
FREDERICK G. McNALLY
Captain
[Photograph]
JOHN MONACO, JR.
Captain
FLYING OFFICERS
[Photograph]
SAMUEL S. RIDDLE, JR.
Major
[Photograph]
FRANK A. SHARP
Captain
[Photograph]
WALTER A. SMITH, JR.
Captain
[Photograph]
DAVID B. TUDOR
Captain
[Photograph]
WENDELL M. VAN SICKLE
Captain
TRUMAN F. ANDERSON
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JAMES A. GIBSON
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
VINCENT A. BLACK
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
EDWIN H. BOYERS
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
COLIN F. BURCH, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[66]
[page break]
[Photograph]
CHARLES A. CUTHBERT, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
WILLIAM W. EVANS, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
BERNARD J. FINAN, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ALEX H. GAY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
RAYMOND L. GEORGE
First Lieutenant
JOHN D. GORHAM, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
SAMUEL D. HALEY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
DeALBERT S. HOKE, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ROBERT B. HUTCHINSON
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ROBERT R. JONES
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
WILLIAM P. KOCH
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
KENNETH M. LEGHORN
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JAMES A. MAGUIRE
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
RICHARD H. MAY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ROBERT E. MONROE
First Lieutenant
STANISLAW J. PODOLAK
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
DORSEY A. PULLIAM
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
AMOS L. SLUDER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HARRY W. SHOUP
Captain
[Photograph]
HARRY J. SHUFFLER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[67]
[page break]
[Photograph]
HAROLD D. STANHOPE
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
L.V. TEETER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
PETER S. WALKER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
PHILIP G. WARNER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GEORGE O. WHITE
First Lieutenant
WILEY S. TAYLOR
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GEORGE BECHTEL
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HARRY K. BLAKE
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
WILLIAM J. CANTWELL
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOHN D. CARTER
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
HAROLD C. CHAPLIN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
CHARLES E. CHAPMAN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
BUFORD T. CLARK
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
WILLIAM F. CROWLEY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOSEPH W. DAVIDSON
Second Lieutenant
ANDREW W. FULLER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
CALVIN H. GIBSON, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
LEON H. GOLINSKY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GORDON M. GRAHAM
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOHN E. GUINN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[68]
[page break]
[Photograph]
EDGAR W. HAGEMEIER
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MYRON A. HUSTON, JR.
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MARVIN E. JACOBS
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
RICHARD B. JEFFREY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
RALPH F. JORGENSEN
First Lieutenant
LAWRENCE P. GIARRIZZO
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JACK F. KELLER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
CLIFFORD J. KRONAUER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
PAUL E. LEAS
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HAROLD O. LUNN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
JOHN R. MARTIN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
EUGENE K. MAXWELL
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HOLT A. MURRAY
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
RALPH PAPANI, JR.
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
EUGENE A. PERESICH, JR.
First Lieutenant
ROBERT G. PETRANEK
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GEORGE F. ROBERTS
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
LOUIS J. DeSAUDRO
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOHN A. SHAW
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
CHARLES T. SHEAN, II
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[69]
[page break]
[Photograph]
WILBUR R. SHEIBLE
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HOWARD G.SHIDAL
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
WILBERT D. SHOCKLEY
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HOWARD W. SIMCOX
First Lieutenant
EARLE M. SMITH
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
RALPH L. THOMAS
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ROBERT E. TRIMBLE
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GORDON S. TURNER
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
CLYDE R. VAN HORN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GORDON O. VARNEAU
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MARK H. VINZANT
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
EDGAR S. WARDELL
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GEORGE G. WHITE
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HIRIAM H. WHITE, JR.
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
DAVID B. WHITLOCK
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HOLLIE L. WHITTEMORE, JR.
Second Lieutenant
[70]
[page break]
GROUND AND ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS
[Photograph]
CHARLES N. BEHRENS
Major
[Photograph]
ELLIS A. MANSHIP
Major
[Photograph]
JOHN H. BARTON
Captain
ANTHONY V. BENINCASA
Captain
[Photograph]
J.E. BROKAW
Captain
[Photograph]
DONALD R. FERRIS
Captain
[Photograph]
ALBERT S. GUERRINA
Captain
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
GEORGE O. HANFORD
Captain
[Photograph]
ROBERT C. INGRAM
Captain
[Photograph]
CLAUDE H. IRBY
Captain
[Photograph]
H. STEWART JOHNSTON
Captain
[71]
[page break]
[Photograph]
ALFRED M. MARTIN
Captain
[Photograph]
MICHAEL R. ZITO
Captain
[Photograph]
HERMAN SCHRAMM
Captain
[Photograph]
J. WILLIAM WELLS
Captain
[Photograph]
LAWRENCE A. CLANCY
First Lieutenant
FRANK S. COHEN
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
CYRIL R. CULP
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ABE L. FEUER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
HARVEY J. GRAY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOHN T. HIGGINS
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
PALEAMON L. HILSMAN
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
J.J. MALONE
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOSEPH I. MATHIS
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
LEONARD J. MILLER
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
GERALD E. MILLER
First Lieutenant
RONALD D. MILLER
Captain
[Photograph]
CLYDE R. MOSES
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
EDWARD B. RANDALL
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
FRANK A. SHARP
Captain
[Photograph]
JOHN O. SHOLAR
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[72]
[page break]
[Photograph]
JOHN J. SQUADRITO
Captain
[Photograph]
FRED S. SWAFFIELD, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JAMES T. THOMAS, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ALFRED P. VALENTINE
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
WILLIAM D. WARRICK
First Lieutenant
ALBERT S. WHITFIELD, JR.
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
FREDERICK H. WILLCOX
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MALCOLM C. ALFRIEND
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
ROBERT W. BAILEY
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOHN N. BEASLEY
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
GEORGE G. EMBICK
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
OSBORN B. HEYWARD
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
EARL D. JAMES
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
SYRUS H. JOHNSON
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOHN M. LEEPER
Second Lieutenant
ATHOL D. LIVELY
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOSEPH J. O’HANLON, JR.
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
JOHN J. O’MARA
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
PHILLIP F. STARKMAN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MILTON WAYNE
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[73]
[Photograph]
JAMES L. PATTERSON
Captain
[Photograph]
DONALD M. WRIGHT
Captain
[Photograph]
ROBERT T. HALL
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
FRED H. KUHLMAN
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
FRANK W. GARWACKI
First Lieutenant
COCHRAN FIELD NURSES
ROSA LEE FAGGART
First Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MARGARET R. BUCKO
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MARGARET E. DANIEL
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MARGARET HEATH
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
VIRGINIA G. JOHNSTON
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
THERESA A. MEDLIN
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
MIRIAM R. PIERCE
Second Lieutenant
[Photograph]
BERTIE MAE RHODES
Second Lieutenant
[74]
[page break]
[Photograph]
JAMES L. KEITH
Flight Lieutenant
[Photograph]
CHARLES P. ALLEN
[Photograph]
CYRIL D. BEST
[Photograph]
MAURICE K. CHICK
BRITISH PILOT OFFICERS
ALSTAIR A. CROSSE
[Photograph]
C.S. DILLIMORE
[Photograph]
D. GIFTKINS
[Photograph]
LEONARD J. KENT
[Photograph]
RALPH KIRKER
[Photograph]
[Photograph]
CYRIL G.F. PARSONS
[Photograph]
DENNIS H. PAYNE
[Photograph]
GEORGE A. RICHARDS
[Photograph]
FRANCIS W. SAVAGE
[Photograph]
GEOFFREY TASKER
[75]
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
UPPER CLASS (AMERICANS)
[Photograph]
FRANK W. ISEMAN
Major
Commandant of Cadets
[1 row of 4 photographs]
Cadets Adams, Stephen Shepherd; Banks, John Wilbur; Benson, Bertil Emil William; Brooks, Dudley Wilder.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Brusek, Frank Anthony; Carroll, James Leo, Jr.; Casey, James Francis; Cook, Coleman Bertram, Jr.; Corrie, Wirt Haley; Dobkowski, Joseph Thaddeus; Gianforte, Joseph Charles.
Second Row: Cadets Harvey, Elliot Bishop; Herrmann, Robert Henry; Hoelzer, Kenneth William; Hogue, Lucius Matlock; Holstein, Elmer Merriman; Hungerpiller, James Arthur, Jr.; Kelley, William Arlington.
[76]
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
UPPER CLASS (AMERICANS)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Kernodle, Harold Lee; King, Joseph Hoffman; Kubasak, Emil Steve; McAdams, William Benton; McLaughlin, James Joseph; Millett, Clyde Lawrence; Morris, James Cleveland.
Second Row: Cadets Muir, Donald Watson; Netzer, John Joseph, Jr.; Newman, Riley Rape; Olfston, Junior Walter; Parker, Gerald Arthur; Peterson, Cletus William; Reeder, Owen.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Ridemour, John Western; Rock, James Francis; Root, Francis Henry; Rowe, Scott Rumnels; Simmonds, Harold Maurer; Smith, Frederick Noah, Jr.; Smith, Harry Franklin, Jr.
Second Row: Cadets Smith, Kenneth Barton; Smith, Kirby Enos; Smith, Robert David; Sykes, William Joseph; Wallace, Joseph Wilkins, Jr.; Williams, Thomas Albert; Woodroofe, Philip Benson.
[77]
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
LOWER CLASS (AMERICANS)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Allison, George Frederick; Arnspiger, Varney Clyde, Jr.; Austin, Daniel Vincent; Barnett, Clarence Vernon; Barry, Gerald Hayes; Battalore, John Russell; Beake, William Gunther.
Second Row: Cadets Belenky, Eli Larry; Bolton, Louis Saul; Bond, Willis Franklin; Bruther, John Richard; Caldwell, Carlos Freeman; Carter, John Tredway; Caseley, Raymond Perrie.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Clodfelter, Thomas Clarence; Cohalan, Eugene Conway; Commins, Louis Shelly; Corwin, Joseph Bower; Cromer, Harold Nicholas; Cymbalak, Michael; Davis, George Porter.
Second Row: Cadets Donovan, Neil Charles; Duesing, Louis James; Durbin, Robert Frederic; Egan, James Martin; Ericson, Allan Oscar; Evans, Robert Jay; Farley, Robert Henry.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Fellows, John Baptiste; Ferriss, Lester Ruthven, Jr.; Fowle, John Allen; Frey, Ernest Albin; Gage, John Oliver; Gerber, Frank Andrew, Jr.; Gordon, Allan Thomas Jr.
Second Row: Cadets Gramzinski, Arthur William; Grandy, Howard Leon; Gruden, Peter William, Jr.; Hackett, Earl Thomas; Harrold, James Franklin; Haverlin, Jack Flehro; Hensley, Clarence Everette.
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
LOWER CLASS (AMERICANS)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Hill, LeRoy Carlile, Jr.; Hodgen, Robert Johnston; Hodowski, Leo Maxmilian; Jones, William Thomas; Knowlton, Kenneth Stebbins; Kuch, Theodore Horner, Jr.; Levy, Robert Maurice.
Second Row: Cadets McFadden, Kenneth Laurie; McNeill, Herbert Warren; Metz, Charles Frederick, Jr.; Michael, Florence Sherwood, Jr.; Mitchell, John Thomas, Jr.; Moore, Robert Lee; Myers, Max.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Ohl, Charles Owen; Parke, William Neel; Paton, George; Pollingue, Alvin Michael; Pultz, Frank Howard; Revoir, Kenneth Joseph; Richman, Mac.
Second Row: Cadets Roman, Julio Enrique; Schley, John Dearing, Jr.; Shankle, Willard Mayes; Sherman, Gilbert Roger; Smith, George Fisher; Smith, Robert Malcolm; Smith, Warwick Vosper.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Sommers, Paul Adams; Spelman, Robert Arthur; Stan, Raymond Henry; Stanley, Carl Seaton; Swartz, Alan; Tanner, William Frank; Terry, Prosper Umbert.
Second Row: Cadets Tilotta, Anthony; Topham, Arthur Hallett; Upchurch, Joseph Staley; Wemple, Donald Lester; Wight, Douglas Roberts; Witoff, Arnold Abraham; Woodson, William Drake.
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
UPPER CLASS (BRITISH)
[Photograph]
JAMES KEITH
Flight Lieutenant
[1 row of 3 photographs]
Cadets Adams, Cyril Gilbert Roy; Adams, Thomas Eric; Addis, Harold William.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Allden, Basil Eric Edward; Astle, Charles Wilson; Baxter, Alan Russell; Beveridge, James Lawrence; Bingham, Frank William; Black, Ian Campbell Bennett; Blades, Donald John Morrison.
Second Row: Cadets Bolam, Warwick Hall; Bolton, Wm.; Botsford, Robert Harry; Bowman, Alexander Henderson; Boyd, Richard Edwin; Breffit, Raymond Hulley; Brooks, Oliver Villiers.
[80]
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
UPPER CLASS (BRITISH)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Brothwell; Robert Sidney; Brown, Frank; Bryan, Maurice; Brydson, John Alexander; Canham, Morris William; Carey, John Charles; Champion, Ronald Treweeke.
Second Row: Cadets Charlton, John; Chatting, Kenneth Frederick; Cheek, Richard Leslie William; Christie, Brian Hamilton; Christison, Albert Ernest; Clague, William Henry; Clements, Walter Leonard.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Coe, Dennis Norton; Cooper, Norman Maylin; Cooper, Peter Frederick; Cowell, Dennis William George; Cray, Stanley; Creed, Frank Charles; Daniel, Arthur James.
Second Row: Cadets Dart, Anthony Christopher; Davie, Charles Kenneth; Davies, Kenneth Thomas; Davies, William Norman; Davison, Kenneth Arthur Frederick; Draycott, Sydney; Dunn, James.
[81]
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
UPPER CLASS (BRITISH)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Elder, Edward Vladimir Austin; Eldridge, Douglas Reginald George; Ervine, William Denis; Fenner, David Hendry; Findlay, George Allan; Fisher, Leonard William; Ford, Robert John.
Second Row: Cadets Frost, T.J.; Gibbons, Howard Paistowe; Gibson, Robert Brumwell Desmond; Gilmour, James Murray; Goodwin, Richard M.; Grant, William Joseph; Gray, David Anthony Athelstan.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Gregory, Bruce Leonard; Hadwin, Derrick; Harrison, Charles, Haye, Norman Raymond; Hayward, Robert Frederick; Heard, Stephen Arthur; Herrick, Charles H.
Second Row: Cadets Hicks, Reginald Jack; Hunter, Hugh Fraser; Huxstep, Maurice; Inshaw, Eric Norman; Isaacson, Aubrey; Isard, Phillip C.; Jackson, Donald Herbert.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Johnson, Victor Horace; Jupp, Harold Edward; Kershaw, Geoffrey; Large, Ronald Dive; Larkin, Kenneth Richard; Lillie, Gerald Ernest; Lodge, Joe Thomas.
Second Row: Cadets MacKenzie, Alasdair Leslie; Maltese, Francis Reginald Antony; Marsh, Kenneth Ernest Mark; McDougall, Robert; McManus, Charles Patrick; Medcalf, Henry John; Miller, Stanley Edward.
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
UPPER CLASS (BRITISH)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Milne, Alec; Milsom, Geoffrey William; Mitchell, Willie; Molyneux, William A.; Moran, Leonard Edward; Munro, Donald John; Nicholls, Bernard.
Second Row: Cadets Nichols, John Francis; Ormston, John Thornton; Parkinson, Ronald Chesterton; Payne, Peter Henry; Picot, Raymond Charles; Plumb, Donald Ivan; Puddephat, Leslie Thomas.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Rogers, Eric Oswald; Sampson, Kenneth John; Saunders, James John Milne; Savage, Leslie Norman Gordon; Smith, John Edward; Starling, Frank Edward; Stephenson, Jack.
Second Row: Cadets Stimpson, Maurice Cecil; Storer, Colin Harrison; Swain, Matthew Alec; Taylor, Arthur Graham John; Taylor, Harold James Strickland; Thirkell, Albert; Thorpe, Alan.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Topping, Thomas; Trew, Leonard Frederick; Waldron, William George; Walker, Frederick John Thomas; Wallani, Edward L.; Ward, Ernest Frederick; Ward, James Francis.
Second Row: Cadets Warnes, Charles Arthur; Warwick, Harold Frank; Wears, James; West, Joseph Bernard; White, Kenneth Peter; Willey, Frank Noble Edward; Williams, Derek Gordon.
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
LOWER CLASS (BRITISH)
[1 row of 3 photographs]
Cadets Adams, Donald Albert; Adamson, William Ian; Affleck, Douglas, Jr.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Ainsworth, Kenneth William; Ames, Kenneth Robert; Appleby, Ronald Kendrick; Ashton, James; Ashton, William; Ball, Frank; Barr, William, Jr.
Second Row: Cadets Barry, Claude Van Renen; Barton, Cyril Joe; Beattie, Frederick Donald; Bellis, John Lynton; Binney, Robert; Bishop, William John Barrie; Blow, Harold.
[84]
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
LOWER CLASS (BRITISH)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Booth-Smith, Peter William, Boulter, Herbert Edward; Braund, John Prower; Braund, Marwood Paul; Brightwell, Geoffrey Charles; Broadhurst, Leonard James; Brookes, Eric William.
Second Row: Cadets Brown, Allan Arthur; Brown, Peter Knight; Browne, Ronald George; Bruce, Derek James; Bull, Edward Bert; Bullus, Alfred, Jr.; Carter, Philip Henry.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Chapman, Herbert Henry; Cheal, Druce James Henry; Clift, Stanley William; Cole, Frederick Walter; Collins, Peter Oswald; Cromarty, John Donald Rangs; Cutler, Joseph Henry Frederick.
[page break]
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Edgington, William Philip; Edwards, Alan Claud; Ellis, Kenneth Albert Jackson; Evans, Reginald William George; Fanning, Thomas William Beeching; Farmer, Stanley Arthur Frederick; Feaver, Reginald James.
Second Row: Cadets Fenning, Ernest Hatfield; Firth, John Arthur; Flyn, James Henry; Forryan, Donald Percy; Forsythe, James Roy; Fox, Albert Thomas; Fuller, Russell Edwards.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Gallop, Roy; Gibson, Thomas, Jr.; Gilham, William Henry; Goldring, James David Spencer; Gosling, Harry, Jr.; Grayson, Harry; Hannigan, Cyril Richard.
Second Row: Cadets Hardwick, Dennis Henden; Harper, Raymond Thomas; Harrison, Geoffrey Dennis; Haymes, John Dominic, Jr.; Hayward, John Anthony; Heller, Peter Kevin; Helmore, Terence Martin.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Henderson, George Neville; Hewett, Thomas Hugh; Hicks, Raymond James Edgcomb; Holes, Leslie George; Holland, Dennis; Horler, Harold; Horspool, Jack Higginson.
Second Row: Cadets Hunt, Derrick; Hurley, Daniel James; Illston, Robert Kenneth; Jeffrey, Peter Law; Jewell, Ronald James Martin; Johnston, Albert; Johnson, Eric.
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
LOWER CLASS (BRITISH)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Keeling, Arthur Edward; Kent, Ronald Herbert; Key, Evelin Leon Joseph; King, John Edwin Thomas; Kirby, Geoffrey Phillip; Kirkpatrick, James Harvey; Knight, Frank Roy.
Second Row: Cadets Knott, Kenneth Sidney; Lamb, Ian Inglis; Lawler, Maurice Rupert; Lett, John Joseph; Lewis, Allan Bennett; Lofthouse, Gerald; MacDonald, William Ian.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Mallon, John Leslie; Mandelson, Norman Peter; Marks, Anthony Raymond; McIntyre, Peter James; Mills, Maurice William; Myers, Granville; Neil, Ronald Frederick.
Second Row: Cadets Neilson, Thomas; Norris, John Henry; Oram, Dennis James; Partridge, Hubert Robert Frederick; Phippen, Charles Dennis; Pinkerton, Thomas Colville; Porter, Reginald Edward.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Postlethwaite, Gordon; Powell, J.E.; Price, Eric David George; Proudfoot, Robert Laval; Ralph, James William; Ramsay, Kenneth William; Reed, Arthur.
Second Row: Cadets Reed, William Charles; Richardson, Colin; Ricketts, Alexander Campbell; Robinson, Adrian John D’Egar; Routledge, William Burrell; Rowland, Roland William; Ruff, William Frederick.
[page break]
AVIATION CADETS
LOWER CLASS (BRITISH)
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Saunders, Maurice Walter; Short, Roger Lee; Slipper, Desmond Wallace; Slimon, John; Smith, John Batten; Smith, Stanley Ernest; Smith, William Richard Cuffel.
[2 rows of 7 photographs]
First Row: Cadets Tucker, Anthony Maxwell; Turner, Herbert Henry; Twitt, George Henry; Varley, Francis George; Wallace, Edward Peter; Wallnutt, Bernard Joseph; Walton, Peter Anderson.
Second Row: Cadets Warburton, Cyril; Watkins, Robert Frank; West, Kenneth Leonard, Wheeler, William Francis, Jr.; White, Frank Anthony; Whitelock, Norman Henry; Wigelsworth, Robert Armfield.
[1 row of 4 photographs]
Cadets Wills, George Saunders; Wilson, Jeremy Charles; Wiscombe, Rex Edward; Wolfe, Williams Reginald.
[88]
[page break]
61ST AIR BASE HEADQUARTERS AND AIR BASE SQUADRON
[8 rows of 5 photographs]
[photograph]
JAMES T. PATTERSON
Captain
Squadron Commander
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Master Sergeant Parker, Wilmer A.; First Sergeants Burdick, J.C.; Holmstrom, George A.; Technical Sergeants Dill, Luther E.; Fleming, Newell D.
Second Row: Technical Sergeants Herbert, Rex M.; Laverty, Dennis G.; Robertston, Brent; Stovall, Frank S.; Wynne, Owen G.
Third Row: Staff Sergeants Bedsole, Andrew; Blake, James E.; Bush, John W.; Clifford, Stephen J.; Fugere, Lucien G.
Fourth Row: Staff Sergeants Goldsmith, Carl S.; Goldstine, Martin L.; Greenfield, Harry; Gunn, Denzal; Guzak, Peter D.
Fifth Row: Staff Sergeants Hansard, Lester B.; Hill, Vincent A.; Kubler, Charles A.; Laney, Albert G.; Larson, Allan J.
Sixth Row: Staff Sergeants Leonard, Frank M.; Moore, Wilber G.; Reed, Harold J.; Seay, William M.; Short, William B.
Seventh Row: Staff Sergeants Spadafore, James A.; Thiele, Karl G.; Welch, Willie G.; White, Thomas H.; Sergeant Allen, Roy H.
Ninth Row: Sergeants Barton, Joe T.; Blake, Harold L.; Blankenbaker, William G.; Booth, Mose B., Jr.; Bromley, William A.
[89]
[page break]
61ST AIR BASE HEADQUARTERS AND AIR BASE SQUADRON
[10 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Sergeants Carlisle, Charles D.; Cohen, Leonard; Denmead, Edward; Fischer, Werner; Flanders, Hubert L.
Second Row: Sergeants Gordon, W.F., Jr.; Gower, Robert L.; Groo, Richard D.; Gugle, Eugene D.; Hartin, Arlie.
Third Row: Sergeants Hess, Joseph E.; Hollenberg, Elmer M.; Juneau, Dominique; Kasnevich, Alex; Knowlder, Charles F.
Fourth Row: Sergeants Kornhoff, Elmer D.; Krajeski, William S.; La Pointe, Percy J.; Lenz, Emmett M.; Marchione, Leo M.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Masters, Arthur E.; Milne, Jack H.; Pierce, Weston V.; Postle, Paul W.; Poulos, James G.
Sixth Row: Sergeants Rogers, George; Rollins, J.; Louis P.; Shepherd, Robert B.; Simmons, William C.
Seventh Row: Sergeants Thelen, Arthur F.; Tinney, Jack G.; Waugh, Harold C.; White, Alan D.; Wolff, Theodore H.
Eighth Row: Sergeants Worthey, Ernest W.; Zelonis, Edward J.; Corporals Allen, Robert H.; Andelman, Morris H.; Angelica, Salvatore B., Jr.
Ninth Row: Corporals Blake, Marvin G.; Brewer, William H.; Briney, Leo M.; Bunting, Howard S.; Carpenter, Glenn R.
Tenth Row: Corporals Cox, Donald C.; Doughty, Ennis N.; Dunn, James F.; Evans, Virgil R.; Freeman, Fred H.
[90]
[page break]
61ST AIR BASE HEADQUARTERS AND AIR BASE SQUADRON
(Reading from Left to Right)
[10 rows of 5 photographs]
First Row: Corporals Griffin, Henry S.; Howland, Lawrence R.; Kern, Melville C.; Kilcorse, William P.; King, Harvey L.
Second Row: Corporals Krumholz, Peter N.; Kucinski, Walter; Lineberger, Herbert M.; Lundelius, Raymond L.; Lutz, Ewing M.
Third Row: Corporals Machtemes, John P.; Mankinen, Vilho V.; Mathern, Albert J.; McIntosh, William L.; Moody, Philip W.
Fourth Row: Corporals Nutter, George L.; Peedin, Albert F.; Phillips, Frank; Pondillo, James G.; Raymond, Frederick W.
Fifth Row: Corporals Riffe, Herman C.; Russo, Andrew; Shindelus, Theodore H.; Solt, Cornelius J.; Straub, Charles E.
Sixth Row: Corporals Sudduth, William L.; Suknaic, Stephen J.; Trudeau, Donald B.; Veltre, Edward C.; Wages, Clarence I.
Seventh Row: Corporals Walls, John H.; Weller, Harold D.; Welter, Donald L.; White, Charles E.; Technician Fifth Grade Calloway, Robert C.; Jr.
Eighth Row: Technicians Fifth Grade Kemp, Howell E.; Pastuszak, Raymond; Whitaker, Charles W.; Privates First Class Ash, George A.; Bodarky, Clifford L.
Ninth Row: Privates First Class Bruell, Frederick M.; Cullname, John R.; Damico, Joseph S.; Klavuhn, A.H.; McKeague, Bruce E.
Tenth Row: Privates First Class Neal, Perry W.; Newton, Robert E.; Purificato, Generose J.; Reed, Walter W.; Scarbrough, Frank R.
[91]
[page break]
61ST AIR BASE HEADQUARTERS AND AIR BASE SQUADRON
[9 Rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates First Class Schiffman, Max; Sidoli, Andrew J.; Slivinsky, John; Smith, Max H.; Stringer, Kenneth L.; Thomason, Lance D.
Second Row: Private First Class Tumey, Robert L.; Privates Andrews, Wayne S.; Bailey, Edward J.; Barten, Melvin F.; Bartkowiak, Joseph; Bartlow, Howard L.
Third Row: Privates Blanton, Curtis L.; Boushaw, Howard H.; Boyd, James C.; Brashear, Clyde T.; Braswell, Ernest R.; Bridges, William H.
Fourth Row: Privates Bokaw, Thornton F.; Browning, Newt B.; Carey, John J.; Carson, James F.; Close, James E.; Corne, James A.
Fifth Row: Privates Culler, Joe H.; Curry, James M.; Davis, Bedford L.; Davis, John T.; Davis, Marvin F.; Dennis, William J.
Sixth Row: Privates DiBauda, Louis J.; Dill, Nelson W.; Dowell, Ralph H.; Fakes, John M.; Fisher, Albert F.; Fleischer, Martin A.
Seventh Row: Privates Fortuna, Alex C.; Fortune, Willie B.; Foster, Ray; Free, James F. Jr.; Fritsch, Clifford J.; Garman, Harry.
Eighth Row: Privates Garrard, Roy; Goldsberry, Herbert; Gnotta, Leo A.; Greene, Paul C.; Griffin, Edward K.; Heckle, Irving J.
Ninth Row: Privates Heller, Robert C.; Heyner, Frank W. Jr.; Hires, Walter B.; Hollis, Rufus W.; Holodick, Michael J.; Hummell, Jack H.
[92]
[page break]
61ST AIR BASE HEADQUARTERS AND AIR BASE SQUADRON
[9 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 3 photographs]
(Reading from left to right)
First Row: Privates Isaksen, Albert A.; Johnson, Claude E.; Johnson, Roe H.; Jones, John L.; Jones, Teddy L.; Kammer, Arthur B.
Second Row: Privates Kanoza, Mitchell; Kaplan, Benjamin; Kelly, J.D.; Korbein, Wilbur O.; Krupa, Conrad T.; Kulstein, David I.
Third Row: Privates Kuyers, Raymond C.; Ladegast, Oscar H.; Lake, Frank V.; LaLiberte, Roland R.: Lamkin, James E.; Lawless, Clifford F.
Fourth Row: Privates Lewis, Valda A.; Lindahl, Bruce M.; Lippman, Herbert J.; Lycos, Paul W.; Macken, Francis C.; Marchewka, Frank.
Fifth Row: Privates Mau, Henry G.; McBrearty, Charles F.; McDonald, Thomas J. Jr.; McGee, Harold W.; Moate, Wendell S.; Moessen, Herman G.
Sixth Row: Privates Morrone, A.R.; Nathan, Ralph M.; Nicholls, Clifford L.; Nicholson, Wesley R.; Packett, Sedrick O.; Pasquinelli, Phillip P.
Seventh Row: Privates Peterson, William E.; Pridmore, Leonard; Proctor, Kennth D.; Purdy, James S.; Repko, Joseph J.; Ruppert, Joseph C.
Eighth Row: Privates Ruttenberg, Robert L.; Shuart, Clifford J.; Stith, Forest B.; Taylor, Harold K.; Tomlinson, Charles F.; Tracey, Carl J.
Ninth Row: Privates Tries, Enlow E.; Tuite, Richard J.; Voorhies, Donald S.; Wells, J.D.; White, Robert; Woodruff, Geo. R.
Tenth Row: Privates Wroble, Joseph W.; Zaruba, Elston G.; Zick, Joseph J.
[93]
[page break]
321ST SCHOOL SQUADRON
[Photograph]
BERTRAM H. WITHAM, JR.
Captain
Squadron Commander
[4 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
(Reading from left to right)
First Row: First Sergeant Arman, Robert S.; Technical Sergeants Bulka, Peter; Coffey, Edward H.; Fountain, Rufus C.; Martin, Andrew J.; O’Neal, James M.
Second Row: Technical Sergeants Richey, Leo; Scaggs, Wick K.; Staff Sergeant Bolduc, Raymond H.; Brock, James V.; Burns, Bernard; Gibson, Leon F.
Third Row: Staff Sergeants Ginaitt, Bernard G.; Hanson, Hjalmar J.; Patterson, Edgar E.; Roberts, Gilbert B.; Rudde, Clemens A.; Sallen, Eugene G.
Fourth Row: Staff Sergeants Sermon, Albert J.; Weaver, Horace L.; Werner, George; Sergeants Barbour, David A.; Bard, George L.; Beazley, Malcolm K.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Bent, Allen E.; Brasher, Robert L.; Brooks, Billy B.; Caratenuto, Joseph P.; Cavanaugh, Edward.
[94]
[page break]
321ST SCHOOL SQUADRON
[10 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Sergeants Diorio, Joseph J.; Doney, John R.; DuBois, Dean A.; Earle, Albert G.; Goodman, Louis; Green, William.
Second Row: Sergeants Gustafson, Leonard, A.; Hahn, Herman R.; Hall, Orie L.; Hand, Bliss A.; Harju, Eli M.; Johnson, Charles.
Third Row: Sergeants Kapner, Kermit H.; Klawitter, Franklin; Larkin, Joseph A.; Lortz, Fred E. Jr.; Lyle, James L.; Mackinnon, Harold W.
Fourth Row: Sergeants McLaughlin, Eugene J.; Miller, G.F.; Moore, Max J.; Popek, John P.; Pescott, Sewell E.; Prunty, Ardeth D.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Rapp, David; Reinhardt, Richard J.; Renfroe, Douglas M.; Repici, Angelo J.; Roemer, Carl E.; Schultz, Albert A.
Sixth Row: Sergeants Skolsky, John H. Jr.; Starinieri, Frank; Tillotson, William B.; Tokach, Daniel; Vaughan, Edwin A.; Walcott, Philip T.
Seventh Row: Sergeant Whitaker, Leroy C.; Corporals Bracy, Ronald P.; Brent, Landon H.; Buckley, Mariott B.; Clark, Alfred A.; Cobb, Harold C.
Eighth Row: Corporals Cooper, John J.; Crane, Harold D.; Czartowicz, Leo; Debonis, Alphone; Elms, Randle D.; Eyges, Edward.
Ninth Row: Corporals Ferris, Claude J.; Goldney, John H.; Hewitt, Dorance G.; Hodges, Asa G. Jr.; Hounsell, Philip B.; Jackson, Larry E.
Tenth Row: Corporals Kaminsky, Albert H.; Kohl, Robert E.; Kovalycsik, Robert A.; Krieger, Charles; Maietta, Patsy R.; Matern, Herman A.
[95]
[page break]
321ST SCHOOL SQUADRON
[10 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Corporals McCleery, John J.; Metzdorf, Robert C.; Palmer, Paul E.; Ringwood, James F.; Salvatore, Albert P.; Saunders, Robert N.
Second Row: Corporals Thomas, Paul E.; Vigliotti, Andrew V.; Privates First Class Andrews, George T.; Broome, James T.; Carter, Wilburn S.; Chandler, Sequard E.
Third Row: Privates First Class Green, James D.; Hills, James; Piccolo, Joseph J.; Private Anderson, Samuel W.; Arney, John R.; Atchley, Fred J.
Fourth Row: Privates Baxter, Robert D.; Bell, John J.; Berkow, Benjamin L.; Bonds, Rader J.; Brady, Robert J.; Brigham, Clarence.
Fifth Row: Privates Brown, Russell F.; Bunton, Oscar F. Jr.; Byrd, Elmer E.; Carroll, James; Chicha, Milan; Cleghorn, John G.
Sixth Row: Privates Cowan, Edward; Cronk, Earl W.; Dahlstrom, Robert O.; Denesiuk, Nicholas L.; DeVito, Frank; Donecho, James Jr.
Seventh Row: Privates Dressler, Stanley; Eckart, Joseph C.; Farese, William A.; Farrell, William M.; French, John Thomas; Gallagher, Myles W.
Eighth Row: Privates Gloystein, Robert E.; Goldberg, Jack; Gosa, Earl J.; Gould, Edward; Graham, Marvin C.; Gray, Robert E.
Ninth Row: Privates Greenfeder, Herman; Gregg, George F.; Hannon, Joseph F.; Hearn, Frank C.; Hebrock, Charles S.; Hemion, Nelson, Jr.
Tenth Row: Privates Herdt, Lester C. Jr.; Hiland, Edward M.; Holland, Thomas F. Jr.; Johnson, Joseph O.; Jorishie, Jacob W.; Kapsner, Edmund L.
[96]
[page break]
321ST SCHOOL SQUADRON
[7 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
[2 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates Kelly, James A.; Lamson, Robert; Lang, Gerald; Large, George A.; LaVoie, Warren M.; Manz, Carl H.
Second Row: Privates Marino, George; Mathieson, Thomas H. Jr.; McCann, Charles F.; McCullough, Samuel, Milano, Anthony Jr.; Morton, Julius.
Third Row: Privates Moye, Earl V.; Mynyk, Michael; Norton, Clifford; Oller, George B.; Ponas, Harry; Reed, David H.
Fourth Row: Privates Repole, Angelo V.; Romotsky, Isadore; Russo, Frank; Shoaff, Earl E.; Shome, Carl W.; Smith, Oma S.
Fifth Row: Privates Staub, Frank T.; Trombley, Donald J.; Vitalbo, Julius N.; Warren, John E.; Weinstock, Solomon; Weiss, Donald C.
Sixth Row: Privates Whitley, Jesse John; Whippel, Harold F.; Wilkowski, Edward J.; Williams, Arthur F.; Williams, Charles E.; Winn, Horace M.
Seventh Row: Privates Womack, George H.; Woodward, William R.; Yergens, Jack W.; Zakrzewski, Clarence A.; Zembenski, Leonard W.; Zimmermann, John G.
Eighth Row: Attached Personnel, Staff Sergeant P’Pool, E.L.; Sergeants Booth, Lester H.; Britt, David A.; Schulz, William R.; Stehlik, Irvin F.
Ninth Row: Sergeant Swenson, Elbert H.; Corporal Brady, Charles E.; Chumbley, Paul E.; Cummings, William J.; Ortlip, Howard S.; Private First Class Kenaga, Grant J.
Tenth Row: Privates Carroll, Gerald E.; David, Walter A.; Hill, Frank D.; Shepherd, John B.; Standage, Duane E.; Witze, Huhgie F.
[97]
[page break]
322ND SCHOOL SQUADRON
[Photograph]
DONALD M. ALEXANDER
Major
Commanding
[6 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Master Sergeant Garrett, H.J.; First Sergeant Axford, W.R.; Technical Sergeants Goodman, Troy A.; Lilliott, J.K.; Marti, J.L.; Wallace, Dell T.
Second Row: Staff Sergeants Anglin, Lewis L.; Dail, B.; Fisher, William M.; Flanagan, J.C.; Galligan, F.J.; Grondalski, Francis P.
Third Row: Staff Sergeants Karajian, B.M.; Lowik, O.J.; Maguire, John J.; Martin, R.A.; Skalicky, W.M.; Sledd, R.J.
Fourth Row: Staff Sergeant Smith, Hoyt R.; Vertrees, E.; Vowels, T.J.; Watson, R.; Whitsitt, W.E.; Winters, H.L.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Back, B.; Chase, Edwin F.; Conto, A.; Collins, Clynton J.; Corder, C.; Dick, Louis C.
Sixth Row: Sergeants Delise, Ralph; Donth, L.W.; Eure, Lankford; Evans, E.; Francescone, Salvatore; Gish, James L.
[98]
[page break]
322ND SCHOOL SQUADRON
[9 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Sergeants Goff, H.C.; Harmon, James H.; Harmon, J.C.; Holt, M.A.; Huston, C.E.
Second Row: Sergeants Jacobi, Erwin H.; Jakobiec, J.F.; Kelleher, C.P.; Kelly, Joseph J.; Kreutzfeldt, Charles.
Third Row: Sergeants Kuran, J.W.; Kwolek, R.L.; Meade, L.; Meyers, V.; Mihalic, J.
Fourth Row: Sergeants Mills, E.; Norton, D.J.; Pierce, Bob; Pittz, L.J.; Ripking, W.H.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Shrewsbury, James R.; Smith, E.C.; Stamper, Fred; Tedder, A.F.; Vovolka, J.
Sixth Row: Sergeants Welch, P.; Wright, Glenn W.; Corporals Asmus, C.H.; Bauer, Louis H.; Carafello, E.A.
Seventh Row: Corporals Charland, Albert J.; Cook, R.W.; Evans, W.L.; Fisher, Don R.; Floyd, Joe E.
Eighth Row: Corporals Frakes, William g.; Friesen, A.R.; Gardo, N.; Gibson, James H.; Handrow, Wesley A.
Ninth Row: Corporals Havens, W.; Huettig, Hans G.; Johnson, K.W.; Keyser, James A.; Kline, Lawrence R.
[99]
[page break]
322ND SCHOOL SQUADRON
[9 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Corporals Lehner, C.E.; Litsenberger, John A.; Mayse, Richard D.; Metzger, George O.; Moore, Herman W.
Second Row: Corporals Naypaver, Frank J.; Nelson, L.O.; Obosla, J.; O’Neal, Noland L.; Price, Jack J.
Third Row: Corporals Rabinak, K.; Schaefer, O.M.; Siddens, R.; Wiederspahn, Clarence; Private First Class Arnold, Ralph H.
Fourth Row: Privates First Class Britt, Ralph W.; Drayton, A.; Ford, Benjamin F.; Glauberman, J.; Harber, Clarence E.
Fifth Row: Privates First Class Lewis, J.P.; Williams, G.R.; Privates All, Harry; Aune, Earl B.; Ball, Harry N.
Sixth Row: Privates Bryde, Glenn M.; Burgerhoff, William; Busch, Ed.; Caggiano, Ralph; Czajkowski, Leo S.
Seventh Row: Privates Devries, S.; Dittmeier, Raymond e.; Dooley, T.C.; Fox, F.E.; Frank, Lloyd.
Eighth Row: Privates Giele, Louis; Gilley, Lawence L.; Gnatowsky, Emanuel; Gustafson, Edwin A.; Herzog, Henry A.
Ninth Row: Privates Hughes, Robert E.; Hurley, J.J.; Johansen, Harry J.; Kloepfer, Frank M.; Korzun, Frank A.
[100]
[page break]
322ND SCHOOL SQUADRON
[1 row of 3 photographs]
[6 rows of 5 photographs]
[1 row of 3 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
Rirst [sic] Row: Privates Kotarba, W.J.; Lacker, W.W., Lehman, Walter.
Second Row: Privates Lieberman, Louis; Lotus, W.S.; Mackey, E.; McDaniel, Clarence N.; McLellan, A.M.
Third Row: Privates Meyer, Bernard F.; Moss, James J.; Murray, John J.; Newman, E.H.; Novin, Jack.
Fourth Row: Privates Offshany, Edward A.; O’Meara, William P.; Pauley, John L.; Payne, David C.; Perewoznik, Louis P.
Fifth Row: Privates Ranch, John H.; Rice, John J.; Rose, John H.; Rosenberg, E.; Routt, Weldon B.
Sixth Row: Privates Schohl, Albert W.; Sciscoe, Thomas W.; Smestad, H.O.; Staniszewski, E.; Stewart, J.E.
Seventh Row: Privates Wealot, Johnnie H.; Wesenyak, H.; Whittington, Isaac S.; Wilburn, Reed S.; Witt, John H.
Eighth Row: Private Yanik, J.; Attached for Duty and Training, Fortune, W.; Haynes, Jack W.
[101]
[page break]
323RD SCHOOL SQUADRON
[Photograph]
CHARLES E. STIVEN
Major
Commanding
[6 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: First Sergeant Reese, Leo E.; Tripple, Herbert S.; Technical Sergeants McCarthey, J.W.; Scott, George E.; Wyndham, C.H.; Staff Sergeants Bennett, P.
Second Row: Staff Sergeants Carr, Archie F.; Frush, Charles E.; Garris, Leonard R.; Guinn, R.; Hull, James J.; Kopczick, R.A.
Third Row: Staff Sergeants Kundrat, M.; O’Donnel, Arthur F.; Palmer, W.D.; Riley, C.W.; Shoup, James C.; Sickers, Jack B.
Fourth Row: Staff Sergeants Simpkins, William T.; Steger, Fred O.; Sturcke, C.H.; Trent, Alva C.; Wagner, Robert C.; Sergeants Allen, Thomas R.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Assidio, Albert A.; Baker, Lewis J.; Bertino, Russell P.; Burress, E.W.; Campbell, Donald E.; Carpenter, Harold C.
Sixth Row: Sergeants Carpenter, Walter L.; Clineman, George F.; Consalvo, J.J.; Couillard, Charles H.; Crist, M.J.; Cutlip, William E.
[102]
[page break]
323RD SCHOOL SQUADRON
[9 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Sergeants Daniels, Joseph J.; Danielson, F.L.; DePalma, Fedele J.; Fishman, H.; Gaines, Joe D.
Second Row: Sergeants Gallo, John J.; Golt, William M.; Hailwood, W.T.; Hill, Henry, I.; Holder, Enos M.
Third Row: Sergeants Howard, Kelly; Jaworski, B.J.; Jacques, Vincent H.; Kasprack, Joseph M.; Lawrence, William D.
Fourth Row: Sergeants Nestor, John; Ovimette, J.F.; Pape, Pasquale A.; Petersen, Lawrence; Pordon, Guido J.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Rich, Richard; Schubert, Charles W.; Schultz, Milton J.; Seward, William H.; Smitson, J.
Sixth Row: Sergeants Swanson, Roy C.; Uhleman, M.; Vavra, Vance L.; Wagner, Louis J.; Ward V.
Seventh Row: Sergeant Young, Oscar R.; Corporals Abel, Jack W.; Accettola, Rocco L.; Assenmacher, John; Bonini, Frank P.
Eighth Row: Corporals Brown, F.H.; Capawana, L.C.; Eldridge, Charles A.; Goodwin, Frederick C.; Herod, John W.
Ninth Row: Corporals Hughes, P.E.; Jackson, Waverly T.; Kalinoski, Theodore W.; Kelly, Lawrence L.; Kleb, William A.
[103]
[page break]
323RD SCHOOL SQUADRON
[10 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Corporals Kmiecik, Alfred; Kurley, Donald M.; Malecky, William; Mayberry, Edward R.; McClintock, Calvin L.
Second Row: Corporals McLaughlin, Ellsworth; Mittendorf, William F.; Monks, Theodore V.; Muckleroy, Lance G.; Newman, Alfred.
Third Row: Corporals Nyberg, Francis; Palmer, Arvo O.; Pando, Samuel; Quinn, James P.; Smith, Joseph J.
Fourth Row: Corporals Stupka, Franklin; Suter, Edward M.; Szymczk, Harold J.; Walls, Kenneth; Washler, J.
Fifth Row: Corporal Weiss, William W.; Privates First Class Armstrong, Harold L.; Beaird, Henry E.; Bivens, M.F.; Blair, Robert G.
Sixth Row: Privates First Class Bleck, Frank J.; Bragg, William E.; Burney, William r.; Bush, Harold B.; Drejman, John J.
Seventh Row: Privates First Class Freisen, John; Fulk, Raymond; Hilton, James G.; Howk, Elmer D.; Huniu, Sam.
Eighth Row: Privates First Class Justice, James N.; Labardini, Julius G.; Lafay, George, Sr.; Lent, James; Machado, Richard.
Ninth Row: Privates First Class Maddox, J.W.; William J.; Magalass, J.; Martin, Frank C.; McMinn, Obie D.
Tenth Row: Privates First Class Mellin, Allen; Morgan, Morris E.; Nelson, Clarence G.; Nelson, Roy L.; Pugh, Alfred E.
[104]
[page break]
323RD SCHOOL SQUADRON
[10 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates First Class Rowe, Ivan R.; Shinnick, Edward C.; Stone, Richard N.; Van Kleeck, George; Private Andrews, Byron T.
Second Row: Privates Andrus, Walter T.; Atkins, Roy E.; Bader, Abraham; Bailey, Lucius S.; Blackburn, William H.
Third Row: Privates Blickhan, Anthony A.; Bond, Edward J.; Bozzo, John M.; Brackman, Elmer; Briscoe, Joseph P.
Fourth Row: Privates Brumbelow, Ernest C.; Cantrell, Leroy; Carey, Joseph P.; Cassidy, Frank C.; Crom, Edmund A.
Fifth Row: Privates Dadek, Joseph; Davis, Robert R.; Doviak, Steven; Estes, Jerry J.; Feigert, Robert.
Sixth Row: Privates Ferry, Joseph J.; Forseth, Edwin O.; Gillespie, William B.; Godin, Leo M.; Gogan, Francis.
Seventh Row: Privates Gold, Harry; Graves, Conley F.; Halick, John M.; Hake, Paul; Hamoutz, Andrew M.
Eighth Row: Privates Hendrzak, Joseph; Hibner, Chas. H.; Hill, Albert S.; Holeman, Robert L.; Hooker, Leon G.
Ninth Row: Privates Jacobson, Orace J.; Johnson, Roy H.; Kaffenberger, Frederick H.; Kamke, Willard W.; Kelley, Albert J.
Tenth Row: Privates Klitzke, Donald K.; Kosiek, Mitchell S.; Kurkowski, Edward A.; Kurowski, John G.; Lanham, John T.
[105]
[page break]
323RD SCHOOL SQUADRON
[9 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 4 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates Levy, Stanley H.; Logan, Richard W.; Lukhardt, Hiram E.; Malinowski, Henry J.; Marshall, Stanley E.; Marx, Ralph D.
Second Row: Privates Mascia, Ralph A.; Massey, Emmette B.; McCoy, Charles B.; McGuire, John J.; McLaughlin, James I.; McLaughlin, Ralph W.
Third Row: Privates McMahon, Raymond E.; McNeill, Edward V.; Meiller, James H.; Mulrean, John J.; Murphy, James H.; Mussori, Guy A.
Fourth Row: Privates Nannis, Morton; Norell, Olle A.; Nyeste, John A.; Ouillette, Wilfred J.; Painter, Robert S.; Pantzer, Frank J.
Fifth Row: Privates Price, Charles M.; Paine, L.A.; Remis, Walter A.; Rizzo, Patsy; Schladweiler, Arnold J.; Schiffer, Frank J.
Sixth Row: Privates Schneider, Morris; Schoen, Harry E.; Scully, Walter A.; Seiber, Donald W.; Sloane, Thomas P.; Snyder, Henry F.
Seventh Row: Privates Starkey, Otto W.; Stener, Bernard W.; Thompson, Tilman J.; Tibbetts, Harry; Toci, Bruno; Towers, Lawrence A.
Eighth Row: Privates Triezenberg, Simon; Van Aken, C.E.; Varade, Frank A.; Vaszuez, Gabino L.; Waldrep, William J.; Willem John.
Ninth Row: Privates Wilkerson, Walter Floyd; Wisniewski, Paul; Wittschack, Rudolph H.; Wright, William C.; Zachman, John J.; Zamesnik, Norman C.
Tenth Row: Privates Zintner, Emil, E.; Zmiejko, John J.; Zucca, Merritt F.; Zukowski, Felix.
[106]
[page break]
439TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
[Photograph]
S.H. JOHNSON, JR.
Captain
Commanding
[5 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: First Sergeant Gillespie, Earl; Technical Sergeant Noojin, Howard D.; Staff Sergeants Binkley, Howard H.; Bottoms, Ralph S.; Brasher, Arvin B.; Comsia, John.
Second Row: Staff Sergeants Elefterin, John; Felland, Trumen M.; Goldbaugh, James R.; Gregorczik, Edmund; Hall, Emerson G.; King, Harold B.
Third Row: Staff Sergeants McLoughlin, Norbert; Lane, William C.; Rowe, Lloyd A.; Sergeants Beck, Robert W.; Brasher, Rayford L.; Carpenter, Roy W.
Fourth Row: Sergeants Floyd, James H.; Gardner, Richard H.; Godsell, Jack E.; Grantham, George, Jr.; Green Ira W.; Gunn, Jack A.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Hallman, Joseph H.; Jr.; Hejl, Raymond J.; Herd, Charles E.; Hilgren, Victor A.; Hill, Jack C.; Hill, James O.
[107]
[page break]
439TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
[10 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Sergeants Hines, Lawrence F.; Howard, Foy J.; Jr.; Howes, Harry R.; Hurdis, Elmer W.; Jagodinski, Walter E.; Jones, Grover C. Jr.
Second Row: Sergeants Kaler, Harold A.; Kane, Leroy J.; Masters, Azel E.; Mulligan, Leo J.; Morgan, Lyle E.; Onsgard, Albertus T.
Third Row: Sergeants Pence, William R.; Ruzicka, Gerald G.; Singleton, Thomas; Smith, Thomas H.; Webb, McKinley; Welborn, Leslie P.
Fourth Row: Sergeants Whitcomb, Peter B.; Williams, Willie M.; Corporals Anderson, James S.; Bussler, Rudyard A.; Chestney, Bard S.; Cobb, Haskell T.
Fifth Row: Corporals Cox, John A.; Dodd, Hugh C.; Griffis, Bryce E.; Harris, Walter A.; Hawkins, Chester E.; Hite, William B.
Sixth Row: Corporals Johnson, Eugene r.; Kess, Raymond P.; Matlock, Samuel A.; McKain, Newell R.; Miller, William F.; Pabich, Francis F.
Seventh Row: Corporals Pennington, Hubert W.; Rodriguez, Celso, Jr.; Spencer, Wayne C.; Smiczek, Leonard J.; Stark, Ernest F.; Walker, Cecil M.
Eighth Row: Corporals Ylimainen, Uno E.; Privates First Class Barrow, Arthur W.; Betts, Albert W.; Bradbury, Frelan C.; Breon, Eugene E.; Charles, Joseph H.
Ninth Row: Privates First Class Cooper, William C.; Cubbedge, David L.; Cummings, Charles E.; Daugherty, James Q.; Kellems, Robert B.; Kottke, Howard H.
Tenth Row: Privates First Class Martin, Loral; Papai, William J.; Ridgeway, John R.; Stump, Ralph R.; Privates Aaron, Harry J. Jr.; Acker, Junior H.
[108]
[page break]
439TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
[9 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates Agnew, James L.; Alquin, Eugene W.; Anderes, Albert C.; Attaway, J.A.E.; Baecker, John A.; Baker, J.W.
Second Row: Privates Baumann, R.A.; Boswell, Bon E. Jr.; Bozmoff, George M.; Bragdon, Lloyd F.; Brazell, Frank W.; Bream, William H.
Third Row: Privates Brodeur, Albert S.; Brown, Willard E.; Burns, Vincent J.; Butsko, J.; Crouch, Glen L.; Davis, Harry R.
Fourth Row: Privates De Vault, John R.; Dixon, Erb T.; Dougherty, Frederick G.; Ewing, Harry S.; Friedel, George R.; Gomery, Clair T.
Fifth Row: Privates Gordon, W.G.; Hassing, Philip; Heider, George R.; Hinkley, Robert W.; Horton, Travis G.; James, Thomas E.
Sixth Row: Privates Jeffreys, Van C.; Kautz, Harold E.; Kramer, Harry W.; Lankowitz, George; Lipis, Elias L.; Locke, Selden B.
Seventh Row: Privates Lyon, Robert V.; McAlpin, Marion B.; McQuillan, Patrick J.; Mandeville, Joseph L.; Mason, M.; Moss, Julius.
Eighth Row: Privates O’Kane, Robert P.; Rafter, Francis E.; Robinson, Arthur W.; Robinson, Horation A.; Schwab, Morris; Schwager, Stephen.
Ninth Row: Privates Seddon, John R.; Simmons, Adelbert P.; Smith, Charles J.; Smith, Herbert B.; Soudant, George D.; Taylor, George A.
Tenth Row: Privates Trombley, Robert R.; Wagner, Joseph D.; Wassilak, Adolph F.; West, Wayne D.; Withelm, James R.
[109]
[page break]
440TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
[Photograph]
BISHOP P. PARRISH, JR.
Captain
Commanding
[5 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Master Sergeant Rice, Douglas G.; First Sergeant Mitchell, Marston L.; Technical Sergeants Davis, Edward V.; Wiggins, Eugene W.; Staff Sergeants Arrington, Richard; Bacorn, James W.
Second Row: Staff Sergeants Blanchette, Robert A.; Embovitz, Adolph E.; Field, George H.; Gilbertson, Robert L.; Guthrie, James A.; Hewitt, John F.
Third Row: Staff Sergeants Kolling, James A.; Lenz, Clarence A.; MacQuarrie, John M.; Mason, George L.; Morris, Ted; Ordway, Richard.
Fourth Row: Staff Sergeants Pendell, Eugene G.; Seaman, Richard O.; Sergeants Campfield, Arthur W.; Carlo, Samuel S.; Carpenter, Colon T.; Cochran, Jack.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Danforth, Thomas C.; Davis, Howard; Dobberpuhl, Chester A.; Faling, Marvin R.; Foley, Edward C.; Galloway, Leo A.
[110]
[page break]
440TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
[9 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Sergeants Goddard, Clarence L.; Graff, Alvin G.; Hancock, Robert L.; Hoke, Dennis E.; Jarrett, William E.
Second Row: Sergeants Jensen, Howard W.; Jensen, Warren E.; Knight, Evert L.; Kramp, Paul A.; Kunsaitis, Anthony F.
Third Row: Sergeants Lutz, Eugene R. Jr.; McCormick, Kenneth P.; McNeill, John W.; Murray, Paul J.; Newell, William J.
Fourth Row: Sergeants Pochodzay, Marion; Pouliot, Roger; Pounds, Armond H.; Potts, George T.; Risinger, Harry B.
Fifth Row: Sergeants Russell, Ralph K.; Saxton, Cecil G.; Schaefer, Carl J.; Sevier, William F.; Shull, Donald C.
Sixth Row: Sergeants Starr, William G.; Taylor, Kenneth M.; Tribbett, Walter A.; Weronko, Chester J.; Wey, Karl W. Jr.
Seventh Row: Sergeants Whalen, Kenneth L.; Wolak, Edward W.; Woodward, John A.; Corporals Bauman, Jack; Brennan, Bernard.
Eighth Row: Corporals Coil, Stanley F.; Crowley, Bernard J.; Cunnnigham, Richard W. Jr.; Dalby, Charles W.; Forish, Joseph M.
Ninth Row: Corporals Frank, James M.; Fraser, Donald M.; Fritsche, Walter E.; Gilman, Frank R.; Haigh, Harold B.
[111]
[page break]
440TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
[10 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Corporals Harmon, Bennie D.; Harmon, John R.; Harter, Raymond H.; Hogue, Richard P.; Jett, Malcolm B.
Second Row: Corporals Korns, Dudley W.; Lindy, Ansel; Machaczka, Theodore; Magazzini, Michael; Mayes, Charles E.
Third Row: Corporals Moffett, Raymond P.; Patton, Hugh D.; Reid, Ralph M.; Rickey, John W.; Shields, Kenneth S.
Fourth Row: Corporals Smeck, Harold E.; Smith, Richard C.; Stevens, Loyd H.; Thibodeaux, Joseph N.; Thompson, Kermit L.
Fifth Row: Corporals White, Orin L.; Williams, Walter W.; Woodruff, Donald M.; Wyme, Maurice H.; Private First Class Doane, Edward F.
Sixth Row: Privates First Class Farmer, Carl E.; Fuscaldo, Frank J.; Gayton, Harold T.; Gilbert, Robert C. Jr.; Haidet, Clifford E.
Seventh Row: Privates First Class Harrison, James P.; Margiotta, John, Middleton, John I. Jr.; Oden, James H.; O’Neill, Gilmore.
Eighth Row: Privates First Class Reichart, Ralph R.; Riley, Samuel B.; Sheeran, Francis D.; Siegel, Irving C.; Simpson, Harold E.
Ninth Row: Privates First Class Spetjack, Frank; Stegemann, Gustave E.; Stoddart, James H.; Trickett, Powell N.; Van Doren, Donald J.
Tenth Row: Privates First Class Walters, Paul D.; Wright, Phillip D.; Privates Ash, Richard D.; Bettle, Daniel O.; Blank, Donald C.
[112]
[page break]
440TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
[8 rows of 5 photographs]
[2 rows of 4 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates Bode, Robert H.; Bonom, Milton; Borders, Cecil C.; Cation, Paul C.; Clark, Eugene B.
Second Row: Privates Dissen, Joseph P.; Duvall, Lauren L.; Eggen, Byron R.; Enoch, Milton; Fetzer, William W.
Third Row: Privates Fletcher, Kenneth T.; Goldstein, Kolman; Hornberg, Edward H.; Huffmaster, Howard H.; Huhtala, Ernest E.
Fourth Row: Privates James, William L.; Kaminsky, Victor; Knobloch, Wayne R.; Lagalo, Frank; Latham, Marion C.
Fifth Row: Privates Lester, Harold J.; Levy, Gerson; Liscomb, Nile L.; Lyons, Meade G.; Mann, Fred W.
Sixth Row: Privates Matzen, Arthur J.; Mikus, Anthony C.; Murphy, Raymond K.; Myers, Joseph D.; Packard, Robert R.
Seventh Row: Privates Pelensky, Raymond J.; Prasifka, Reyburn J.; Reeves, James B.; Rogal, Melvin; Rowland, Charles H.
Eighth Row: Privates Rucker, Tolbert A.; Shagrin, Louis; Shedlock, John A.; Spuller, George C.; Ter Haar, LeRoi.
Ninth Row: Privates Thompson, James R.; Thornton, Kenneth F.; Tutt, Donald R.; Wagnon, Felton C.
Tenth Row: Attached Men and All Ratings, Sergeant Sisson, Paul L.; Corporal Sannes, Carl A.; Privates Fabec, Frank L.; Gerik, Alvin R.
[113]
[page break]
MILITARY POLICE
[Photograph]
CHARLES R. CROSS
Major
Commanding
[9 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
321ST SCHOOL SQUADRON
First Row: Corporals Buckley, Marriott; D’Agostino, Joseph L.; Kovalik, Robert A.; Private First Class Bailey, Donald W.
322ND SCHOOL SQUADRON
Sergeants Little, James T.; Martin, Marvin.
Second Row: Sergeant McDermitt, John H.; Corporals Brady, John R.; Hatley, Daniel W.; Privates Gilkey, Robert J.; Wyer, James C.
323RD SCHOOL SQUADRON
Sergeant Matthews, Bernard J.
Third Row: Corporals Berry, Lester R.; Paris, John M.
439TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
Staff Sergeant Epsom, George A.; Sergeants Burke, James A.; Fyke, Mayes B.; Jones, Delbert.
Fourth Row: Sergeant Woody, Oren W.; Corporal Fuller, Charles C.; Privates First Class Eversole, Robert J.; Henson, Delbert L.; Ledford, Robert J.; Private Robinson, James H.
440TH SCHOOL SQUADRON
Fifth Row: Sergeant Mobley, John E.; Private First Class Simon, George V.; Private Marconi, Gene J.
61ST AIR BASE SQUADRON
Staff Sergeants Hanfstaengl, Egon L.; Love, John J.; Miles, John J.
Sixth Row: Staff Sergeants Rooksberry, Robert E.; Wortham, B.C.; Sergeants Badgley, Jack L.; Carfello, Louis; Destefano, Joseph G.; Garriott, George A.
Seventh Row: Sergeants Kelly, Edward J.; Naugle, Melvin, L.; Seidler, Frederick W.; Turner, Ray, I.; Corporals Cerulli, Patsy J.; Korba, John.
Eighth Row: Corporals Napolitano, Patsy J.; Palmer, James A.; Shapiro, Joseph; Sullivan, Lester B.; Woznakiewicz, Leon; Private First Class Blanos, George.
Ninth Row: Privates First Class Greenwood, John R.; Kellen, Joseph W.; Rotunno, George G.; Privates Baer, B.T.; Eakley, George; Kershner, Jack.
Tenth Row: Privates McGuire, George W.; Novotny, Steven G.; Serdziak, Edward L.
77TH MATERIEL SQUADRON
Privates First Class Batten, Robert L.; Rea, John F.X.
[114]
[page break]
[Photograph]
J.W. CLARK
Captain
Commanding
BAND
[1 row of 5 photographs]
[3 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 4 photographs]
(Reading from left to right)
First Row: Master Sergeant Wickersham, R.; Staff Sergeant Karstens, F.H.; Sergeants Enckler, H.G.; Gancar, J.W.; Haislup, G.E.
Second Row: Sergeants Holloway, J.B.; Stynosky, G.; Zoller, R.H.; Corporals Feldman, C.; Lee, H.J.; Lowery, R.
Third Row: Corporals Luth, K.E.; Olney, D.H.; Rawles, F.C.; Silverman, M.; Privates First Class Egan, A.W.; Farrell, J.C.
Fourth Row: Privates First Class Lewis, R.; Lumbrazo, A.J.; Scarci, L.A.; Van Duren, W.; Venton, W. Jr.; Wine, R.C.
Fifth Row: Private First Class Zajac, S.J.; Privates Cosenza, G.; Fletcher, H.M.; Roberts, G.
[115]
[page break]
STATION HOSPITAL
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Staff Sergeants Lenhart, Andrew K.; Lockard, George C. Jr.; Sergeant Spanier, Henry; Technician Fourth Grade Levin, Robert; Technicians Fifth Grade Evans, David A.; Kenney, Edmund R.
Second Row: Privates First Class Houser, Michael J.; Kohl, John E.; Stoffa, John; Privates Butcher, William A.; Friedman, Leonard; Lasala, Vincenzo.
Third Row: Privates Mansfield, Thomas J.; Mills, James P.; Pasternak, Samuel; Schames, Abraham A.; Wright, Carl W.
[2 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
VETERINARY DETACHMENT
STATION HOSPITAL
(Reading from Left to Right)
Sergeant Klingenhagen, Henry; Privates Hampton, William W.; Kafka, Henry W.
[1 row of 3 photographs]
[116]
[page break]
MEDICAL DETACHMENT
[Photograph]
WATSON L. LUTHER, JR.
Second Lieutenant
Commanding
[5 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Master Sergeant Galatas, Joe H.; First Sergeant Church, Jim A.; Staff Sergeants Haddon, Thomas W.; Lewis, Benjamin H.; Lieberman, Barney.
Second Row: Staff Sergeant Scheuermann, James W.; Sergeants Abernathy, Fletcher C.; Causey, Hilton E.; Craddock, Mike; Korngut, Archie.
Third Row: Sergeants Presley, L.A.; Wertz, Joe L.; Technicians Fourth Grade Heil, John E.; Hockenbury, Robert E.; Horine, Herbert R.
Fourth Row: Technicians Fourth Grade Innella, Michael M.; Kilian, John G.; Killeen, John M.; Corporals Hammer, Rudolph G.; Simchina, Michael.
Fifth Row: Technicians Fifth Grade Grieder, Roy F.; Hayduk, Walter F.; Huttmann, Charles F.; Kaplowitz, Leonard J.; Kleinow, William O.
[117]
[page break]
MEDICAL DETACHMENT
[1 row of 4 photographs]
[6 rows of 5 photographs]
[1 row of 3 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates First Class Cooper, Charles F.; Jr.; Davidson, Charles S.; Deitchman, Joseph; Ewald, Elmer W.
Second Row: Privates First Class Gombkoto, Stephen, Jr.; Massey, John E.; Miller, Albert W.; Miller, Ralph W.; O’Connell, John N.
Third Row: Privates First Class Raimondi, Angelo J.; Sadowitz, Albert; Privates Brown, Arthur J.; Cleveland, Winfred G.; Crowley, Charles H.
Fourth Row: Privates Donahue, Lawrence; Flynn, William J.; Geller, Sidney; Grier, Paul H.; Johnson, Willard E.
Fifth Row: Privates Kania, John; Krotchko, Michael G.; Lapidow, Frank H.; Lee, John H.; Miastkowski, Stanley.
Sixth Row: Privates Molloy, William J.; Nelson, H.M.; Nix, Earl V.; Roerden, Emil H.; Roller, Leslie.
Seventh Row: Privates Rubin, David A.; Schmidt, Edward; Schneider, Samuel; Sheehan, Fred E.; Weaver, P.H.
Eighth Row: Privates West, Thomas C.; Wilson, Doyle F.; Worm, Vergil H.
[118]
[page break]
MEDICAL DETACHMENT
COLORED SECTION
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Corporals Briscoe, F.; Hill, I.V.; Private First Class Allen, L.E.; Barnes, D.; Davis, D.E.
Second Row: Privates First Class Graddick, S.; Honeycutt, L.; Johnson, G.; Johnson, T.; Jones, B.J.
Third Row: Privates First Class Jones, R.J.; Robinson, C.C.; Privates Adams, R.; Bonner, F.; Brooks, H.
Fourth Row: Privates Elliot, H.; Gaines, J.; Hodges, A.H.; Jackson, G.; Jewell, J.
Fifth Row: Privates Lacroix, O.J.; Strickland, G.W.; Worth, F., Jr.
[4 rows of 5 photographs]
[1 row of 3 photographs]
[119]
[page break]
907TH QUARTERMASTER COMPANY
[Photograph]
RUSSELL C. BURKHOLDER
First Lieutenant
Commanding
[5 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Master Sergeant Krampitz, Albert J.; Technical Sergeants McCarthy, John A.; Mitchell, James L.; Staff Sergeants Codde, Harry L.; Hurtle, Herman G.; Peterson, Carl E.
Second Row: Staff Sergeant Spann, James L.; Technician Third Grade Thomas, Sidney M.; Sergeants Brown, David W.; Czarkowski, Harry S.; Enger, Arnold J.; Hildebrandt, Arnold L.
Third Row: Sergeants Jockisch, Virgil E.; Lund, O.; Posavac, Martin; Wilson, Philip C.; Technicians Fourth Grade Blackburn, William K.; DeSarro, Edward M.
Fourth Row: Technicians Fourth Grade Goodrum, Roy A.; Henkle, John L.; Werther, Carl A.; Corporals Anderson, Raymond H.; Ferrara, Joseph; Griff, Wilbur L.
Fifth Row: Corporals Warner, William L.; Technicians Fifth Grade Hall, Roy F.; Lane, D.K.; Rhynard, Gerald E.; Salsman, Fred H.; Toomey, Oliver R.
[120]
[page break]
907TH QUARTERMASTER COMPANY
[10 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates First Class Allen, John R.; Atkins, James I.; Atristain, Philip; Axton, Delmar B.; Baxter, Chester W.
Second Row: Privates First Class Benjamin Jack; Black, John S.; Bradley, Donald C.; Cosgrove, Lester J.; Dixon, Osborne C.
Third Row: Privates First Class Gerner, Charles A.; Greene, Anderson B.; Hackett, William A.; Hamrick, John W.; Heischober, Harold.
Fourth Row: Privates First Class Houchin, Roy; Martin, Major G.; Meredith, Eugene Q.; Peeler, Harry J.; Phelps, Shirley E.
Fifth Row: Privates First Class Rose, Ruben F.; Rubensohn, Herbert B.; Ruderman, Arthur; Stock, Louis; Tyler, Melvin N.
Sixth Row: Privates First Class Ursitti, Tony G.; Wood, Otha L.; Privates Allen, Claude R.; Andino, Dominic A.; Baker, Francis M.
Seventh Row: Privates Barnwell, Roy C.; Blailock, Westley; Blume, Lonnie W.; Boone, Fowler; Brown, Chester W.
Eighth Row: Privates Donini, Albert; Ewaniuk, William; Gamage, Joe A.; Garlan, Vincent J.; Graham, Arnold C.
Ninth Row: Privates Harrill, Charles G.; Heffernan, Harris F.; Helms, General W.; Jordan, Ealon E.; Staley, Ralph E.
Tenth Row: Privates Verbetic, Stephen; Williams, Fred E.; Wilson, Edgar M.; Wright, Don C.; Wright, Ralph L.
[121]
[page break]
[Photograph]
JACK H. EVANS
Captain
Commanding
PROVISIONAL RECRUIT DETACHMENT
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Technical Sergeant Holcomb, Robert L.; Sergeants Gibson, William W.; Malisbury, Thos.; Montvidas, Peter J.; Corporal Lako, James E.
Second Row: Sergeant Whitcomb, Peter B.; Corporals Roberts, Gerald N.; Privates First Class Eversole, Edwin A.; Israel, William; Private Seymour, Gerald K.
[2 rows of 5 photographs]
[122]
[page break]
[Photograph]
PAUL J. RENGSDORF
Second Lieutenant
Administrative Officer
COMPANY L
[9 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates Adolphson, John W.; Altomare, Anthony A.; Beam, Lee H.; Billingsley, George N.; Blachman, Abraham; Bowman, Eugene.
Second Row: Privates Bozza, Peter; Brenelich, Raymond F.; Buskirk, Joseph A.; Damiano, Joseph; Dolan, Francis; Donnelly, Joseph.
Third Row: Privates Donnelly, Lawrence M.; Fabrizio, Patrick; Fountain, Herbert F.; Freese, Harry Charles; Furman, John; Gangloff, Richard B.
Fourth Row: Privates Gervasi, Sebastian J.; Harris, John F.; Havelichek, Andrew R.; Hebberd, William H.; Heiser, Francis J.; Henker, Edward.
Fifth Row: Privates Henry, James E. Jr.; Hensler, Regis J.; Hesko, Zygmund; Hess, Robert K.; Higgins, John V.; Horner, David S.
Sixth Row: Privates Howell, Clarence W.; Hughes, William J.; Lovino, Anthony F.; Javor, John J.; Johnson, Hilmer J.; Johnston, Charles F.
Seventh Row: Privates Jones, Arthur C.; Jones, Carrol F.; Just, Lugi T.; Kahler, Gerald P.; Karis, Edward J.; Keenan, Charles D.
Eighth Row: Privates Kelly, Joseph; Kendzior, William J.; Kenny, William T.; Kent, F.F.; Keough, Bernard M.; Keough, James F.
Ninth Row: Privates Klien, Michael; Kloc, Anthony J.; Kochie, Joseph E.; Kozak, Matthew R.; Kozielski, Constantine J.; Koznarskey, Joseph.
Tenth Row: Privates Krol, Stanley B.; Kudrick, John; Lagocki, Frank L.; Lagocki, Henry M.; Lambie, John H.
[123]
[page break]
COMPANY L
[1 row of 4 photographs]
[6 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
[1 row of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 4 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates LaRock, Lloyd H.; Lauffer, Alvin K.; Lees, George E.; Leonard, John.
Second Row: Privates Leonard, Michael; Livelsberger, Clair; Lloyd, Raymond C.; Lopeck, Andrew; Love, Ralph; Lozier, Charles M.
Third Row: Privates Lunning, James J.; McAulley, Charles; McCall, Charles M.; McConkey, Bert L.; McCormack, Wilton M.; McDonald, Joseph R.
Fourth Row: Privates McHugh, Edward T.; Mackanin, Joseph; Marn, Edward J.; Marshak, William L.; Masciantonio, John C.; Mason, John F.
Fifth Row: Privates Matchett, William; Mattern, Floyd Jr.; Matthews, Thomas F.; Mendis, Joseph T.; Mildenberger, Edward A.; Miller, Earl K.
Sixth Row: Privates Miller, John J.; Monson, Harry W.; Murawaski, Frank J.; O’Byrne, Francis J.; O’Leary, George J.; Polino, Peter.
Seventh Row: Privates Priest, Donald O.; Ralph, Samuel O.; Reinhardt, William L. Jr.; Rhodes, Brady L.; Rook, Jack J.; Rubbo, Donald.
Eighth Row: Privates Rubenstein, Herbert; Saitta, Joseph L.; Salome, John; Schuchmann, Arthur A.; Scott, Joseph P.
Ninth Row: Privates Sherry, Sol H.; Simpson, William D.; Singleton, William C.; Skinner, Merton F. Jr.; Smith, James J.; Steeves, Kenneth J.
Tenth Row: Privates Uva, Marcello; Wandell, Leo; Whaley, Robert G.; Zottoli, Joseph T.
[124]
[page break]
COMPANY M
[Photograph]
ARTHUR C. SWALLOW
Second Lieutenant
Commanding
[9 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates Cacossa, Dominick A.; Carle, Ralph G.; Cole, Geo. W.; Comiskey, John J.; Conley, Sherwood Decker; Coons, Martin.
Second Row: Privates Dobrin, Irving; Heaney, John T.; Hogan, John J.; Hughston, Aubrey L.; Hyland, Norman H.; Jablonski, John M.
Third Row: Privates Kaulback, Aubrey C.; Keegan, Wm. H.; Kenny, John F.; Lamb, Fred E.; Lambert, Jas. V.; Latham, Edw. V.
Fourth Row: Privates Oberlander, Alex; O’Brien, Michael W.; Ockenhouse, Maynard T.; O’Connor, Jas. J.; O’Connor, Stephen J.; Olsen, Alfred.
Fifth Row: Privates Olszewski, Norbert J.; Orpesa, Alfonso E.; Osborne, Richard R.; O’Shea, Jas. F.; Oybkhan, David; Panella, Bernard J.
Sixth Row: Privates Panzarella, Frank; Pascale, Vitto A.R.; Pasko, Frank M.; Patrick, Chas. K.; Peacock, Duane J.; Pearson, Harry.
Seventh Row: Privates Peio, Randolph M.; Penna, Anthony J.; Petronecci, Sammy N.; Phelps, Francis W.; Piekniewski, Jos. R.; Pizonowski, Jacob.
Eighth Row: Privates Pooley, Robert T.; Post, Harold R.; Postorino, Patrick E.; Prenner, Garson; Preston, Lee J.; Pritchard, Arthur.
Ninth Row: Privates Pusterla, John F.; Quintana, Salvador A.; Rabinowicz, Markus; Raftrey, Martin J.; Raichelson, Ralph; Rajk, Frank J. Jr.
[125]
[page break]
COMPANY M
[10 rows of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Privates Ranni, John; Rasczyk, Bennie J.; Rasy, Danny H.; Renz, John W.; Repoli, John A.
Second Row: Privates Resch, Arthur C.; Reznick, Jos. F.; Robertson, Harry W.; Roney, Chos. D.; Rosenbaum, Wm.
Third Row: Privates Rosenblatt, Saul; Rosenblum, Harry; Rossell, Thomas D.; Rothermel, John D.; Rothermel, Woodrow H.
Fourth Row: Privates Rudy, Henry; Ruiz, Frank; Ruminski, Frank; Ruseckras, John B.; Rusin, Walter A.
Fifth Row: Privates Russo, Fortuanto R.; Sabella, Jos.; Sammarco, Mario J.; Say, Benton S.; Schaffer, Jerome R.
Sixth Row: Privates Schmidt, Eugene I.; Schneider, Wm. F.; Schoenfield, Max M.; Schofield, Patrick J.; Schott, Wm. J.
Seventh Row: Privates Schrerber, Louis I.; Schuss, Sydney S.; Seaha, John; Secare, Albert P.; Seitzer, Harold M.
Eighth Row: Privates Senikowich, William; Serling, Jacob; Serrano, Geo.; Shappe, Chas. H.; Shavell, Max; Sherry, Jeremiah T.
Ninth Row: Privates Shoemaker, Benjamin W.; Spaeth, Henry; Stasik, Theodore J.; Stenzler, Isidore, Strati, Gaotano V.
Tenth Row: Privates Sudut, Stanley J.; Sullivan, Daniel H.; Swartz, Walter R.; Tinnel, Ben T.; Wells, Emmett.
[126]
[page break]
27TH AVIATION SQUADRON
[Photograph]
KENETH B. CASSIDY
Captain
Commanding
[4 rows of 6 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: First Sergeant Barnes, Eugene; Sergeants Chandler, John R.; Davis, William R.; Snelling, Luther, Wilkerson, Freddie; Wills, Horace A.
Second Row: Corporal Watkins, Cornelious; Privates First Class Brown, Otis D.; Carter, M.C.; Cooper, Ceasar; Lawrence, Robert J.; Mitchell, Thomas.
Third Row: Privates First Class Morris, John E.; Ross, Wesley; Veal, Harold A.; Williams, Van; Privates Adams, William; Clemont, Herbert L.
Fourth Row: Privates Gilreath, John T.; Lawson, Clarence; Morton, Sanford; Shavers, I.W.; Slay, Woodrow; Spearman, Sayle.
[127]
[page break]
823RD QUARTERMASTER COMPANY
[8 rows of 6 photographs]
[1 row of 5 photographs]
(Reading from Left to Right)
First Row: Sergeants Fitzpatrick, R.; McKinney J.; Morris, R.; Corporals Burst, E.; McDermott, W.; Mitchell, H.
Second Row: Corporals Taylor, A.; Winfrey, P.; Privates First Class Anderson S.; Cumberlander, G.; Hamilton, J.; Jones, J.
Third Row: Privates First Class Pate S.; Thompson, M.; Wood, M.; Privates Baker, Ed R.; Buford, J.; Burney, E.
Fourth Row: Privates Caldwell, M.; Carter, M.H.; Davis, E.; Davis, J.C.; Dillard, W.T.; Ellery, L.B.
Fifth Row: Privates Fountain, O.B.; Freeman, Fred; Gooding, B.; Howard, S.; Kearse, J.; Lewis, E.
Sixth Row: Privates Logan, F.; McCollum, R.; McKinnie, W.; Mills, F.; Mitchell, M.; Phillips, W.T.
Seventh Row: Privates Pryor, T.I.; Ray, J.W.; Robbin, W.; Simon, J.; Spicer, G.T.; Smith, L.S.
Eighth Row: Privates Smith, J.; Smith, W.; Spain, J.; Staples, E.T.; Taylor, Alex; Thompson, F.
Ninth Row: Privates Thomas J.; Tyler, S.; Upchurch, J.; Wilson, G.; Young, P.
[128]
PUBLISHED 1942 BY
ARMY AND NAVY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
[page break]
CAPTAIN CHARLES D. BAYLIS, USMC (RET)
Editor-in-Chief and Director of Field Operations
[page break]
[Embossed crest]
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Cochran Field
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A book detailing the activities undertaken at the training airfield of Cochran. It describes the history of the field, the training courses and names the staff and students.
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Army Air Forces
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Georgia
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eng
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MStimpsonMC155249-190922-09
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Pending text-based transcription. Under review
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Angela Gaffney
bombing
Harvard
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/514/11307/BGoodmanLSGoodmanLSv1.1.pdf
95e2e091735c5cb46cad20f313332cb3
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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Goodman, Benny
Lawrence Seymour Goodman
L S Goodman
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Goodman, LS
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Lawrence 'Benny' Goodman (1920 - 2021, 1382530, 123893 Royal Air Force) and a memoir covering his activities from 1939 to 1945. He flew 30 operations as a pilot with 617 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Benny Goodman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
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2016-04-28
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. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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BY BENNY GOODMAN
It was September 1939. A few of us were sitting around the wireless waiting for the Prime Minister to make an announcement. He did so and told us we were now at war with Germany. I was a student, in digs, and a long way from my home in London. I decided to telephone my parents and talk things over with my father. My first instinct was to leave my studies – not a hardship really! – go home and join up. Eventually, my father agreed, much to my mother’s consternation. I discovered later. He had served four years in the 1st World War. There was no doubt in my mind I was going to join up. However, I did not want to join the navy or the army and it was only then I realised I wanted to become a pilot.
I was almost nineteen and had no idea what was entailed, but with the ignorance and cheek of youth I presented myself at the RAF recruiting office and told the officer who interviewed me what I wanted to do. He didn’t say a word, finished filling in the form he had in front of him and told me I would be hearing about my application very soon. Not long afterwards I went for a general medical and when I passed this I was sent to an RAF medical for a more involved air crew medical. Everything went well except when it came to the eye test. My eyesight had never been top class so I went to the back of the queue and learnt the two or three lines each candidate was being asked to read. I passed! After attestation, I went home to await call up. It came a few weeks later and I reported to RAF Cardington, where I was issued with a uniform and all the accoutrements for an AC 2. This is it, I thought. I shall be a pilot in a couple of weeks and will save the world!
Things didn’t quite turn out like that. After about 10 days at Cardington, we were told to pack our kitbags and were marched off to the local railway station. Rumours were rife! And if you listened to everyone, your posting was to anywhere in the world. In fact, we went to RAF Bridgenorth for six weeks square bashing and all that went with it. ‘Bull’ was the order of the day – the camp had four parade grounds) Then I and another chap were posted to RAF Abingdon. When we got there nobody had any idea we were coming and so the Orderly Room Sergeant asked us our trade. We both said ‘U.T. Pilot’ and consequently we were sent the aircrew quarters, which were in fact the married quarters on the station. Abingdon was a straight through course for Whitleys and so, with much justification, we thought we would be on the next course.
However, there was a war on! It was decided that the Whitley course running at the time would be the last one and again, no one knew what to do with us. The next day we were moved from our relatively comfortable billet to a remote part of the airfield. There was a Nissen hut with six beds, no sheets, no pillowcases and a Fairey Battle packing case as a so-called recreation room. The latrines were self-dug, but permanent. We were to be ground gunners!
It was explained to us that this was a temporary move but as such we had to learn, amongst other things, how to strip and re-assemble the C.O.W. gun and the water-cooled Lewis gun. Duties were 4 hours on / 2 hours off in the gun pit. We patrolled the airfield at night and challenged anyone on it for the password of the day. You can imagine the sort of answers we got from aircraft technicians with their bags of tools in the pitch black trying to find the Whitley they were to work on. At dawn every morning we had to march around the perimeter track with our gas masks on in case of a German paratroop invasion from the air.
Our food was brought out to us in hay boxes and so was never very warm! We used to try and sneak in once a week or so to the airmen’s quarters to see if we could get a bath, but if we were caught the airmen billeted there showed no mercy! In our off-duty time, we were sent to the coal dump to load coal bags and to carry out various other domestic duties on the camp. One of these included cleaning out the grate in the Officers’ mess before they came down for breakfast. On many occasions I did this and always had to finish by black-leading the grate and all the surrounds. Some years later I went back to Abingdon as the Adjutant of the Overseas
[page break]
2
Ferry Unit. When I went into the mess, I looked at the grate and the few officers sitting around it in armchairs and thought to myself: “If only you chaps knew how many times I cleaned this thing!”
A posting came through eventually to start pilot training and I was sent to Stratford-upon-Avon, which was a Reception Centre. As I walked into the Orderly Room to report my arrival, a voice shouted “Airman, you’re on a charge”. I looked around and saw no one else -I had the horrible feeling that I was already in trouble, and this was the case. Having spent some months as a ground gunner and living in my uniform it was, to say the least, scruffy, as was the cap. Not very politely I was told I was a disgrace to the service because of the state of my uniform. All the other chaps, of course, were wearing brand new uniforms and I stood out like a sore thumb. I tried to point this out to the Sergeant but he wasn’t interested. Next morning, I appeared before the O.C. unit who was sympathetic but clearly felt he had to back up his Orderly Room Sergeant. Seven days jankers was my reward.
A posting duly came along to Initial Training Wing (I.T.W.) and there we did six weeks of ground school prior to E.F.T.S. Just about everyone passed and I was sent to 17 E.F.T.S. Peterborough for ab initio training on Tiger Moths. The course was about 48-50 hours and to the horror of another chap and myself, we were posted to RAF Woodley for an instructors course. Both of us could just about manage to fly the Tiger Moth and so to be told we were going to be instructors frightened us considerably. Following this, after a couple of weeks at Clyffe Pypard a holding unit, and a spell at a Manchester park, awaiting posting, we were sent to Canada to do a S.F.T.S. on Ansons. Boy! This was living. A twin engine aircraft with retractable undercarriage, even though we had to wind it up! The course included night flying, the first time I had experienced this, and I can truly say that on my so-called first circuit I varied between 600 ft and 1,500 ft AGL and lost site of the airfield completely. I hadn’t got a clue. To my surprise, my instructor didn’t seem at all phased and by the end of the detail I had at least got the circuit and the heights more or less sorted out. What a brave man he was! After another night sortie, I was passed fit to do a solo circuit and I truly believed I was just about to die! However, all went well and I was then sent to Kingston, Ontario, to – believe it or not – instructing on Harvards. This aircraft is still in use to this day.
The thought of flying this monster, let alone instructing on it, made me feel quite sick. Kingston Ontario was an RAF station dedicated to the training of Fleet Air Arm pilots “is everybody mad?” I thought. The other instructors, all of whom had done an operational tour (and one was Fleet Air Arm) readily accepted me – the sprog in every way. The Flight Commander took me up and put me through my paces on the Harvard and pronounced me fit to start instruction. However, he showed me and tested me one lesson at a time, so that I could take up an acting leading naval airman and show him the particular procedure. Nobody else had a clue how inexperienced I was, except the other instructors in the flight who thought it was a great joke. So, I started with one lesson at a time and over a few weeks built up to the whole syllabus. I have to say the Harvard was a wonderful and responsive aircraft to fly and, despite the tales of woe and misery about ground looping, I never saw one instance of it … and that includes me!
By this time I was a Pilot Officer and because there was no room in the Mess I had digs in the town and even bought myself a Chevrolet with a dicky seat. My Canadian driving test consisted of reversing the car about 2 feet, and being told to ‘stop and get out, come into the office’ … and I was presented with my Canadian driving licence. In a short time, I had come from cleaning the grate in the Officers Mess as an AC 2 to a Pilot Officer Instructor, with a car and living in digs! Was I dreaming?
All good things come to an end and I was posted back to the U.K. to prepare to go on ops. We set sail on the Awatea from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and of course nothing ever goes well for long. Twenty-four hours later in the Atlantic, we were torpedoed. Fortunately for us, a US Navy destroyer intercepted the torpedo and took most (90%) of the subsequent explosion and sank, leaving us damaged. We had no rudder and there were several other things wrong with the ship; we went round in circles for some time. Rough repairs were made and we went back to Halifax. We kicked our heels there for a while and then were put on a train journey which lasted for several days, to New York. There we transferred immediately to the Queen Mary. There were huge numbers of American troops and O.C. Troops was an American Officer. He called all the officers together before sailing to tell us that, if we were torpedoed
[page break]
3
We must remember that the officers were last to leave the ship. Bearing in mind our recent experience, this didn’t exactly cheer us up. We did arrive safely in the U.K. and I found myself flying Martinets for a time, carrying out simulated air attacks on Wimpeys and for their air gunners to cine-gun their replies.
At last a posting came through to an O.T.U. at Silverstone. By this time I had already met Tony Hayward, who wore an Observers brevet, and we became good friends. We went to the O.T.U. together and there we picked up our full crew. Crews selected each other in what seemed a very haphazard manner, by talking to those we thought would be suitable, but I can’t remember ever meeting any crew member who was subsequently dissatisfied and wanted to leave his original crew. In the end, everyone was crewed up.
From Silverstone we went to the Heavy Bomber Conversion Unit at Swinderby flying Stirlings, and then to the Lancaster finishing school at Syerston. At the end of my course, the Flight Commander sent for me and my crew said: “What the hell have you done, Benny?” I protested my innocence but everybody laughed. When I entered the Flight Commander’s office I felt sure I had done something terribly wrong because there, facing me, were the Flight Commander, O.C. Flying and two or three other officers. My heart sank into my boots and the only thing I could think of was a ‘court martial’. I felt slightly cheered when the Flight Commander seemed quite friendly as he spoke to me and one or two of the other officers questioned me about my flying and the practise bombing results that we had obtained. I felt further heartened and, knowing the results, couldn’t believe that was what I was being called in about. After a couple more questions, one of the officers said to me: “How would you like to join 617 Squadron?” I truly didn’t believe that I had heard correctly and said: “Excuse me, sir. Did you say 617 Squadron?” He answered: “Yes”. I felt a heavy weight suddenly had been lifted from my shoulders and said that I and my crew would be delighted to do so.’ At that time the only other crew which had been invited to join the squadron had come and had come directly from training was headed by Tony Iveson, and he had been a Battle of Britain pilot. He had been on the Lancaster course immediately before me.
I was told that we had been selected for 617 and to report for duty within 48 hours. When I got back to the crew and told them the news, at first they didn’t believe me. Eventually, I convinced them and we all packed up and got transport to Woodhall Spa.
On arrival and after checking in at the Mess and going through the usual procedures, I reported to the Squadron Adjutant. I waited a few minutes and was ushered into Wing Commander Tait’s office, who was O.C 617 Squadron. We had a chat, or more accurately – he spoke to me and allocated me to a flight. I reported to the Flight Commander Jonny Cockshott. He welcomed me and told me that the crew would have to go on a short training course devised by the squadron and, importantly, to get used to the S.A.B.S. bombsight and to obtain bombing results within the limits prescribed by 617 Squadron. We did this and found ourselves accepted as fully operational on the squadron.
My first trip was with Flight Lieutenant Bob Knights … without my crew but with his. I sat in the dicky seat where the Flight Engineer usually sat. I couldn’t have been luckier in the choice of captain I was to fly with. Not only was Bob an extremely nice chap but he was most helpful as well. To give you an idea of his value, he was a Flight Lieutenant with a D.S.O. and I think you know there aren’t many of those to the pound.
I did a full tour of thirty trips with the Squadron. The first trip as a crew was to Brest and, of course, being a sprog crew things had to happen, didn’t they? Over the sea, I suddenly found the cockpit full of smoke and the wireless operator telling me his radios were on fire. He and the navigator were trying to make sure the fire didn’t spread. Just the sort of confidence booster you need on your first sortie on a new squadron! I opened the D.V. panel and fortunately the combined efforts of the wireless operator and navigator dealt with the fire … we carried on. One thing was certain: none of us could have faced a return to the squadron without completing the trip saying: “We couldn’t do it. We had a fire on board.” How’s that for luck?
Some of the trips we did were quite well known. There was the Tirpitz trip (13 1/4 hours) and a 9 hour 25 minute night trip to Politz-Stettin. That was the first time I could truthfully say that, at 18,000 ft with
[page break]
4
oxygen masks on, I can remember smelling cordite from the flak that was thrown at us. That may sound like a line shoot, but it certainly wasn’t at the time. A further notable op was against the Arnsberg viaduct, when we were selected to drop the 22,000 lb Grand Slam on the viaduct.
We received Grand Slam in March 1945. To carry this a number of modifications were made to the Lancaster – a Lincoln undercarriage was fitted to allow for the increase in weight; mid-upper and front turret were removed, along with the wireless operator’s equipment and the W/Op himself. Other armour plate was taken out and the ammunition load reduced, all to save weight. The bomb doors were removed and replaced by fairings and a chain link strop with electro-mechanical release was fitted to hold Grand Slam in place.
As I recall it I was number three to release a Grand Slam, Jock Calder was the first, and Johnny Cockshott the second. This was in March – yes we are still in March, and Arnsberg Viaduct was the target. On release I remember the aircraft went up vertically about 100 – 200 feet. My flight engineer recalls hearing a loud bang at the same time, as the release slip parted.
In all 617 dropped 41 Grand Slams before the end of the war in Europe. I like to think Grand Slam punched its weight. We were the only squadron to have this bomb.
Another op that had high squitter value was against Hamburg. We had the misfortune to have a hang-up and the bomb dropped a few seconds late, which meant that it didn’t fall on the target but into the residential area beyond the target. We didn’t feel good about this, but there was nothing we could do. We set course for home. About fifteen minutes later my flight engineer nudged me and nodded his head toward what I thought was the instrument panel. I looked but could see nothing wrong, so went on flying. He nudged me even harder and moved his head rather more urgently towards the starboard side. I looked out and to my horror saw the latest German twin engine jet fighter, a Messerschmitt Me262, in formation with us on our starboard wing. I thought I must be dreaming but I knew very well I wasn’t, and thought: “This is it.” It seemed to me that if I tried a 5 Group corkscrew we wouldn’t have a chance against the German aircraft. We had no mid-upper turret and clearly the rear gunner was completely unable to train his guns on him. So, there we were at the mercy of the Luftwaffe. The flight engineer and I looked at each other again and then I looked at the German pilot, but there was no friendly wave from him – so much for fellowship of the air! Suddenly the Me262 disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and I wondered if we had all been smoking opium the night before! It was only some years later when I was talking to Air Commodore John Langston, who at the time was a Flying Officer navigator, that what appeared to be the same aircraft had attacked and shot at John’s aircraft. The German pilot must have just left training school because, although he clearly used all his ammo on John’s aircraft, he hadn’t shot him down. I thought later how fortunate we both were.
Three more incidents out of a number of lucky escapes makes one ask the question. Did Lady Luck really play a part?
On one raid during the bombing run the nose section of the fuselage was hit. Everyone seemed okay, but after landing back at base the bomb aimer discovered that both heels of his flying boots were pitted with shrapnel. An inch or two either way?
On another raid the wireless operator was tuning his radio and leaned a little closer to the set. As he did so, a large projectile or piece of flak entered one side of the fuselage and exited the other. After we landed, the wireless operator sat normally in his seat and we measured the two holes and the position of his head. If he had been sitting in this position at the time of the attack, the projectile/flak would have pierced one side of his head and exited the other. An inch or two either way?
There were three Tirpitz sorties. The first trip involved a direct flight from the U.K. to Yagodnik, Russia, land there, refuel and stay the night. From thereon the next day, the first Tirpitz attack was attempted. This was a hazardous plan as it included flying over Europe both ways and in the end the attack was not successful. However, we unfortunately lost one aircraft.
[page break]
5
For the second and third Tirpitz trips, amongst the modifications, two large fuel tanks were fitted inside the fuselage. Health and safety, eat your heart out! The flight engineers had to master the new fuel system very quickly, and indeed they did. Both these trips were made from an advanced base at Lossiemouth. On both occasions the squadron flew up to Lossiemouth with Tallboys already on board, refuelled and attended final briefing. On the second trip, at midnight, we lined up around the perimeter track, taking off in turn at a green signal from the control tower. The weather was unkind – low cloud and rain – just the job for a night low level trip across the sea! Our turn was approaching and I was having a last look around the cockpit when the flight engineer poked me in the ribs, pointing at the canopy. I looked up and saw a massive pair of main undercarriage wheels heading straight for us. There was nothing I could do as there were aircraft either side of me. We both sat there, like rabbits caught in the headlights, and waited for the inevitable. At the last moment, the wheels cleared our canopy and all was normal again. Just the sort of experience you need before take-off on a foul night!
Later we discovered the errant aircraft was flown by Tony Iveson. He had suffered engine surge on the point of leaving the ground. By a masterful piece of crew co-operation and training he and his flight engineer finally kept the aircraft straight and it just cleared the top of our canopy. But we were all young and I suppose took it in our stride. Now, I’d have the vapours. Lady Luck again.
Due to cloud and an efficient smokescreen, it was not possible to bomb the Tirpitz with any accuracy and we returned to Lossiemouth. However, on the third trip – a replica of the second – 617 Squadron finally sank the Tirpitz.
My last trip was to Berchtesgaden, the Eagle’s Nest, and I understand we were followed by Main Force. We, 617, certainly made a mess of the Waffen SS barracks. This was my last trip with the squadron although we were already made aware of a possible raid, I believe to Denmark. However, a truce was declared before this. After the war, I went into Transport Command but everything seemed so tame after 617 Squadron.
Finally, but certainly not least, I pay tribute to the ground crews. Working out in all weathers, often in wind snow and rain-swept dispersals they were always there to ensure the serviceability of our aircraft. Despite working long hours, they were always there to see us depart, and waited in uncertainty, eager to witness our return… …and woe betide us if we damaged [underlined]their [/underlined] aircraft! For 365 days and nights they made it possible for us to do our job. All of us who flew knew their worth, but why were they never publicly recognised? We would have been wingless wonders without them.
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
Service History of Benny Goodman
Description
An account of the resource
Begins with his decision to cease his studies and join the Royal Air Force. Covers recruitment activities and life during initial training including employment as ground gunner while waiting for flying training. Describes basic training on Tiger Moth at 17 E.F.T.S. followed by Anson and Harvard in Canada. Relates being torpedoed on return voyage home and subsequent return to Halifax, train to New York and return to United Kingdom on the Queen Mary. Tells of flying Martinet as targets for air gunners course, crewing up at O.T.U and subsequent training on Stirling at Heavy Bomber Conversion Unit and eventually Lancaster finishing school. Describes selection to go to 617 Squadron and his arrival there. Mentions that he did 30 operations with the squadron and describes some in detail including first sortie to Brest as well as against Tirpitz, one of which involved landing in Russia. Mentions Grand Slam operations as well as one to Hamburg and another where they were formated on by an Me 262. States that his last trip was to the Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
B Goodman
Format
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Seven page printed document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BGoodmanLSGoodmanLSv1
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--Bedfordshire
England--Shropshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Peterborough
England--Berkshire
England--Woodley (Wokingham)
Canada
Ontario--Kingston
Nova Scotia--Halifax
United States
New York (State)--New York
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
France--Brest
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Russia (Federation)
Russia (Federation)--Arkhangelʹskai︠a︡ oblastʹ
France
New York (State)
Ontario
Nova Scotia
Russia (Federation)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ashley Jacobs
David Bloomfield
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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An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
617 Squadron
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Flying Training School
fuelling
Grand Slam
ground crew
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Martinet
Me 262
military discipline
military living conditions
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Cardington
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Silverstone
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Woodhall Spa
sanitation
Stirling
Tallboy
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17091/PHollisAN17040001.1.jpg
a725fecf0fd02332aa09d89e2bf38db4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17091/PHollisAN17040002.1.jpg
6f3044e3c98bd89a47adabf8456a711d
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
Hollis, Arthur
Arthur Norman Hollis
A N Hollis
Description
An account of the resource
56 items. The collection concerns Arthur Hollis (b. 1922) who joined the RAF in 1940 and after training completed a tour on 50 Squadron before becoming an instructor. At the end of the war he was deployed as part of Tiger Force. Collection contains a biography and memoir, his logbook, correspondence, training records, photographs of people, aircraft and places, his medals and flying jacket. It includes an oral history interview with his son, Richard Hollis.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Hollis and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-07
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
Hollis, AN
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
Pilot in cockpit of a Harvard
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Hollis wearing flying helmet and fur collared flying jacket sitting in the cockpit of a Harvard giving OK sign with his right hand. In the background a line of other Harvard aircraft. On back of photo: 'Photo by Chas C Ebbet, Chief, Photo Section, Embry-Riddle School of Aviation, Miami, FLA'
Creator
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Chas C Ebbets
Format
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One b/w photograph
Type
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Photograph
Identifier
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PHollisAN17040001, PHollisAN17040002
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Florida
Florida--Miami
Florida
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Language
A language of the resource
eng
aircrew
Harvard
pilot
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17092/PHollisAN17040003.1.jpg
9dedb50d30baef057f03024d73e8e5f1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17092/PHollisAN17040004.1.jpg
34e08b81a5a1928ee4cdac53abc890cb
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
Hollis, Arthur
Arthur Norman Hollis
A N Hollis
Description
An account of the resource
56 items. The collection concerns Arthur Hollis (b. 1922) who joined the RAF in 1940 and after training completed a tour on 50 Squadron before becoming an instructor. At the end of the war he was deployed as part of Tiger Force. Collection contains a biography and memoir, his logbook, correspondence, training records, photographs of people, aircraft and places, his medals and flying jacket. It includes an oral history interview with his son, Richard Hollis.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Hollis and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-07
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
Hollis, AN
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
Pilot in cockpit of a Harvard
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Hollis wearing flying helmet, fur collared flying jacket doing up his collar while sitting in a Harvard. On back of photo: 'Photo by Chas C Ebbets, Embry-Riddle School of Aviation, Miami, FLA'
Creator
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Chas C Ebbets
Format
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One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PHollisAN17040003, PHollisAN17040004
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Florida
Florida--Miami
Florida
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Language
A language of the resource
eng
aircrew
Harvard
pilot
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17093/PHollisAN17040005.2.jpg
8b99a6d9a2e190a068179807b92bc1b6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/875/17093/PHollisAN17040006.2.jpg
426b4b716a268dbdf985ad6cb522ae8c
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
Hollis, Arthur
Arthur Norman Hollis
A N Hollis
Description
An account of the resource
56 items. The collection concerns Arthur Hollis (b. 1922) who joined the RAF in 1940 and after training completed a tour on 50 Squadron before becoming an instructor. At the end of the war he was deployed as part of Tiger Force. Collection contains a biography and memoir, his logbook, correspondence, training records, photographs of people, aircraft and places, his medals and flying jacket. It includes an oral history interview with his son, Richard Hollis.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Hollis and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-07
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
Hollis, AN
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
Pilot on wing of Harvard
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Hollis wearing flying helmet, fur collar jacket, flying boots and parachute standing next to cockpit on the wing of a Harvard. Back of photograph: 'Photo by Chas C Ebbets. Chief, Photo Section. Embry-Riddle School of Aviation MIAMI FLA'.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chas C Ebbets
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PHollisAN17040005, PHollisAN17040006
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
United States
Florida
Florida--Miami
Florida
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
aircrew
Harvard
pilot
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/185/3630/ASayerT151202.2.mp3
ba6057852e62c62cbbfc007b82267a39
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
Sayer, Tom
Tom Sayer
T Sayer
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Thomas Sayer DFM (1922 - 2021, 591744 54901 Royal Air Force), two log books, service material, newspaper cuttings and photographs. After training as a pilot in the United States of America, Tom Sayer flew Halifaxes with 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington. He was commissioned in 1944 and became an instructor.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tom Sayer 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
2016-02-17
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. 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
Sayer, T
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: So my name is Chris Brockbank and I’m in Chalfont St Giles with Thomas Sayer DFM and we’re going to talk about his life and times. And today is the 7th of December 2015. So, Tom would you like to start with your earliest recollections please and then take it right through joining the RAF, what you did in the RAF and afterwards.
TS: The first recollections are that on a spring day in about ’28 I was [pause] no ’24. ’24. I was in the front of the house. Farmhouse. My father was busy in the yard because he wanted to get everything ready for the harvest and I was told that I hadn’t to interrupt my father because he was there doing it all by hand. There was no machinery and he just had to take the file and sharpen all the different tools which were necessary. Especially the mower where the thing went from side to side and it was pulled by one horse because we only had one horse. There was another one but it wasn’t trained to do that sort of thing. But anyway, and I was told not to interrupt. My mother said I didn’t had to, didn’t have to interrupt. I had to not to interrupt. And that was what he was doing. I was watching my father doing this and he was sharpening these tools as I said. And I was looking at the birds at the same time and the birds were quite happy to flutter quite close to us because they had nests nearby and we’d been, we were living there and so we were all good friends. One thing you certainly found though was when the birds just disappeared that there was a cat around and that is something which I also learned. That the cat would have the birds if the birds didn’t fly away. And how come the birds could fly like that when we couldn’t fly was a question in my mind. And it seemed strange that they just opened their wings and flapped them and they went up in the air. Now, I was going to ask my father that but of course I had to be quiet because he hadn’t to be interrupted while he was doing this job. As I say, all by hand and if he cut his hand then that would be, then be awkward for carrying on with the job. And that was my first outlook as to why people fly. How can people fly because I hadn’t seen anybody, people fly because they haven’t got the wings that the birdies have? And so, then sometime after, I don’t know if it was the next year I was playing around. I was still not at school and there was a terrific noise and it seemed to be coming up the valley and then all of a sudden there was this machine flying in the air and that was the first time I saw an aeroplane. And I then mentioned this to my father and at different times I mentioned things like that to him. He noticed that there was a, I can’t remember the name of it again but the air force. Each unit gave a showcase to the public once a year and there was one at Catterick and Catterick was just a small aerodrome apparently and dealing with the air force and the army getting together. And he, however, we had — he owned a motorbike and side car. Maximum speed about twenty five miles an hour I think. And we set off and it took us just a little while to get to Catterick and I was amazed of these things and he said they could fly but they weren’t flying. They were just sitting there. And then all of a sudden there was some activity and somebody came along and jumped on to the wing of the aeroplane and then disappeared into the aeroplane and somebody else came along with something in his hand and he started winding and winding and this thing at the front with a roar from an engine started up. The chappie who was on the wing slid down and off and then I think they were moving something from in front of the wheels of the aircraft and then he took away and went around the field, and then it turned around and then it, with a big roar came just right over me flying in the air. That was when I first saw a real aeroplane close up. From then on all I wanted to do was fly an aeroplane. And I read books if I could get hold of them. There weren’t many books in those days but if I could get books I would have a look at the books. I wouldn’t say read but I hadn’t really learned to read. And I was told that I, if I wanted to join the air force you had to pass exams. And if you had to pass exams you had to listen to what the teacher said and so on and so forth. So there was only one teacher at this school for the whole of the school and she was teaching people from five to fourteen and a few of each all divided up and so on and so forth. And I quickly found myself being pushed in to the higher ones of age and I was the youngest one by quite a while in this, in this group and I was catching my sister up as well which she didn’t think much of. So, anyway, I also was told that if I passed an examination by the local authority which had just come in in the 1930s, it was just a common thing where you could, if you passed the exam you got your schooling at the grammar school for free and it depended on how much you succeeded in the exam as to whether you got transport or not and so on and so forth. And so I really went for it and I got the top rate and was able then to go to the grammar school. But to get to the grammar school I had to get to a railway station which was two and a half miles up hill and downhill and then at Aysgarth Station where I’d join the train and then the other people who’d been coming in. The rest of the Dale and they were all coming up and we went up to Askrigg where the Yorebridge Grammar School was. And I, we, I soon found out that you had to work there as well and work quite hard otherwise you were chastised by the headmaster. If he knew that you could learn and you didn’t learn you got in to trouble. But I wanted to learn anyway and I did. I did learn and moved up as I said into another, the next year up so that I was in, I’d already done a year at school before I’d started it if you’d like to put it that way. But myself and another young girl who just happened to be my wife later on in the things and we were great pals and we joined together and we were — had to battle because of the, we having been moved up a year the people who were in the second year didn’t think much of it and she used to, shall I say, hover around me because for protection etcetera. Verbal mainly. Anyway, we both passed our exams and I wanted to join the air force and I had learned, had got some information that if I had the school certificate I could go in as apprentice and so, I went in as an apprentice. And that meant that the young lady was left at school and she was going in. I spent from the beginning, I was still at school at the Christmas and I joined the air force just in the beginning of the next year you see. But she was left in there and then she decided she’d had enough because when the war came on at the 3rd of September 1939 she decided that she didn’t want to go to university because in the first place she didn’t think her family could afford her going there and then she — because a lot of the exams and that were disturbed by the war she decided to come out. And she had an aunt who lived in [pause] not far from Croydon and so she came down here and she got herself a job in London. And she was on that, in that capacity going higher and higher because she was doing quite well until we were married which wasn’t until after the war. I think that was my fault but I thought I’d seen times when people had come back from their marriage and within days they’d gone missing and I thought that must have been terrible for the wife. To be a wife for such a short time and then be in that situation. And so, it got towards the end of the war and we sort of drifted apart a little and it wasn’t ‘til after I’d established myself in a job here in the south, in the south of England that I could make contact with her again and after a few very heart to heart talks we decided to get married. She died ten years ago. And we had two children. They are now retired. That is it as far as that’s concerned. But the air force was my chief thing and I managed to persuade the people. I was, my apprentice, I was in accounts because I was very good with figures but I would rather have been in the mechanic side of it but anyway that was way they had accepted me in to the air force and I worked hard and I got results and I was soon an NCO. Well before I was eighteen I was an NCO in charge of the whole of the stores side of the station and two new squadrons. And so, some people apparently couldn’t believe it but I did it because the chappie who was in charge had come in from the Civvie Street and of course he knew nothing about, not a lot about the accountancy in the air force. And so he sort of relied on me and they were just building up this station with two squadrons and so I started up the whole of the side from the stores side of it. I didn’t do anything with the pay, pay side. And then when I was eighteen I applied to fly. So I started flying. The chappie in charge of the accounts was not at all thrilled by it and I said, ‘Well sir you’ve got people who had the same instruction as me when I came in. there are ex-apprentices in there, in that lot, who are in the pay side so they should be able to do the job.’ I never found out whether it was successful or not. I just joined the air force. It was quite easy for me in the early part of that because I knew all about drill. I knew all about the rules and regulations and so therefore I had quite an easy time. And I did have a little chat with one chappy who started to order me around. I was an NCO and it seemed as though he didn’t like me being an NCO for some reason and so I said to him, I said, ‘Now look. I think that you are probably an LAC with an acting sergeant.’ And so on. And he looked at me and I said, ‘Yes. That’s enough.’ And he never tried any more with me. I just —but I didn’t, I wasn’t interested in doing anything to him because all I wanted to do was go flying. But that’s me. And so anyway. Where did I go flying? Yes, well, I went down to the south coast. I could point to it on a map but it’s just gone and where the initial side of learning to fly was and that was when I had that chat with that chappy. And then we were told we were going abroad to be trained as pilots. One point which has always interested me was when I was having the medical, as they called it, for, to see whether I was fit to fly you had to look and do certain things to see that your brain was coordinating with your hands or your hands were coordinating with your brain. Which was very important of course in flying. And it, anyway, I just lost a little ground there. We —
[Pause]
CB: So your initial flying assessment.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Was on the south coast.
TS: Yes.
CB: And that’s where they were doing those tests.
TS: Yes. Yes.
CB: That’s wasn’t at Torquay was it?
TS: No. I was at Torquay but I don’t think. That is what I can’t remember exactly where that –
CB: It doesn’t matter because we can pick up on it later.
TS: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: But then they decided that you should be trained abroad.
TS: Yes.
CB: And there were lots of places they trained abroad so where did you go?
TS: Yeah. A little point on this test.
CB: Yes.
TS: There was a test there and there was something where you looked with one eye and you had to get it level and all the rest of it and then the other eye and so on and so forth and then the chappie who was in charge of it went and talked to somebody and he said, ‘Well, will you do it again?’ And so I thought to myself aren’t I going to pass this then?’ Then he said — I asked, I said, ‘Why am I being asked to do it again?’ I said, ‘Haven’t I got it?’ He said, ‘Got it?, he said, ‘You’re the best bloody so and so on there.’ He said, ‘That’s why I [unclear] he said, ‘Its ages since we’ve got anybody who could do that.’ And so, I thought oh that’s fair enough. And of course, I’ve still got very good eyesight. I know I need to sometimes just to read but I can almost tell you how many leaves are on that. No. Not there [laughs] the one at the back. I can see if there’s a cow, or a lamb or anything goes in the field right near that tree quite easily yet. The only time I have to is when I need to read something and I’m fiddling around with these things. Now where have we get to?
CB: So, you did the test and they were very impressed.
TS: Yes.
CB: So, then what?
TS: Then we went to go abroad and it might seem as though it’s quite easy. Just get on a boat and go but it wasn’t as easy as that because apparently we were to go to Iceland and pick up another, another ship in Iceland and we were supposed to be going on a certain day and then we didn’t go. And then, this was when we were in Cheshire. North Cheshire. And we had to sail from Liverpool. And we were going to go and then we didn’t go. We were going to go and then we didn’t go. And that was the sort of situation we felt we were in. And so eventually we did go and on the boat where we left Liverpool was such a lovely boat. It smelled of nothing but cows and what cows had left behind. And they, they’d taken a ship which was being used for bringing cattle from Ireland to Scotland and they’d grabbed it and said they would do this and they’d supposedly scrubbed it out and supposedly that was our ship to get us to Iceland because the other ship just disappeared. And so that was going away from a farm and then I got the smell of a farm as I was on the ship.
CB: Fantastic.
TS: The first ship that I’d been on. And there you are. So, Iceland was quite interesting because we had to go on this ship because the other one as I say had been lost somewhere and we were late and apparently this big ship just coming out of Reykjavik harbour was the one we were supposed to be on. But it didn’t stop and pick us up and we were just dropped in Reykjavik and the boat went away and nobody, you know, there was no arrangements been made for us to be there. And so there was a little, I think it’s something to do with the, not radio so much, as to do with atmosphere which was being looked into by a gaggle of air force people and then they were sending the messages back to England but we weren’t really interested in that. But they couldn’t cope with a great big horde of people. I think there were about fifty odd of us there and then they shifted us a bit further up where there was another little air force base. And they could feed us and they could give us sleeping accommodation but no beds or anything. We could, we more or less slept in what we had. Well, after a while it was a little difficult because there was no hot water. The only heat they were using was where they wanted to do their cooking because they didn’t have the fuel to do a whole load of heating. Heating water and such. So, we said well how about, I think it was one of, one of our blokes, anyway we would go to the, one of these pools which are in Iceland and therefore, therefore we could have our baths there and it was quite interesting to some of the locals who happened to be females [laughs] and it was quite, you know, jolly and all the rest of it. You know, it was, there was nothing serious. There was one person in there who was serious and I don’t think she really thought we should be there. And I think she was apparently of German descent or something. Anyway, it didn’t worry me. We just, and we got on to another boat and we went to Canada. And then at Canada we jumped on a train and we thought oh well we’re just going along to Halifax, not, from Halifax to Toronto. We were just going from Halifax to Toronto but we didn’t realise it didn’t take you one day. It took you about three days to get from Halifax to Toronto and then the size of the place. Looking at the maps that I’d used at school and that going from there to there and then you had to go to there to be at the other side of Canada meant Canada was a very big wide place. And then again, when we set out from there we went to Toronto as I said and then when we were at Toronto we were given civvies. So we didn’t really know — ‘What do we want civvies for? None of the others seemed to have civvies.’ So we jumped on the train and we didn’t go out the west. We went south and then we found we were in the United States of America and as we were, as we entered America they warned us to keep away from the windows because there were some people in America who were stoning these trains because they didn’t want to be involved in the war and some of them were of German descent didn’t want us to be fighting the war anyway. But we got, the further south we got the more accompanied we got and the more warmer we got and so on and so forth. And — and we went to Georgia. Georgia was a big place. Now, I need my logbook to give you the exact — DAR Aerotech. That’s it DAR Aerotech. Now where in Georgia? Can’t remember.
CB: It doesn’t matter. We’ll pick up with it later.
TS: And yes, it was a civilian outfit but with American Air Corps instructors. And it got us going on the, as far as the flying concerned in quite a nice atmosphere and with hardly any discipline as, you know, the rigid discipline and we would just fall in and we’d be marched from one place to another but apart from that there was nothing on that side. And the — quite a noisy lot. One or two of them. One gaggle of them was noisy but as the weeks went by the noise seemed to grow less and less and less. So, they were no longer there. But the chappies like — quite a few of us were ex-apprentices and we knew the ropes as far as the air force was concerned and therefore we drift in to flying that matters. Playing silly boys around the table didn’t matter to us at all. And that’s my attitude about it as well now. If you have a job to do the job’s there and you do that regardless. And it, it was quite an eye opener and brain damaging almost that I was having to accommodate a lot more all at once. Different things. Bits and pieces here and there. The locals were ok but we were told we had to be in civvies and we were told that we had to be careful and certain areas were supposedly out of bounds and because of the German people who were American German or German American. And once or twice we’d wander off in to the wilderness as it looked like and there would be a little village of coloured people. And we managed to chat with them. At first, they were very shy of us. They didn’t, you know, they didn’t talk to the white people and the white people didn’t talk to them sort of thing and they were quite amazed that we’d come. They’d heard of England. They’d knew England. Somewhere. You know. It was mystical place to most of them. And it was quite a nice pleasant chat to them on more than one occasion when we just strolled around there in the evening and then went back to base and went to bed and started another day and most of the chappies who had been in the air force before the war went through. Got through all right. Very few of them didn’t. But it was a very strict situation. Not only as far as behaviour was concerned but as far as remembering what you were supposed to be there for and to get on and get, do the job. Then we went to, having passed on the primary we went to another one and this was an intermediate one which was a little further north. When I say a little further north — about a hundred and fifty miles and there we were right in to the US Army Air Corps. Another experience. So that was another step we had to make. And it was really strict but we wanted to learn to fly so we decided that we wanted to fly. Well we got on with it and we were flying the Vultee BT13As. I don’t know whether you’ve come across it. And then they had, of course, on the first place we were on biplanes. Stearmans. And then it was a move in the right direction which I was able to take quite quickly. It had a fixed undercarriage but we did have flaps and we had a two speed prop. I think those were the main changes. They also had both out there and they had the wings and all the rest of it. And then we moved on to the North American AT6A which is the Harvard in the British air force and, well you got all the details of that before. hadn’t you so-? And we passed. We passed out. Those who made it. And back to England.
CB: So how many hours did you accumulate in your flying? In the basic flying and in the intermediate. Roughly.
TS: I think when we’d finished we had about four hundred hours flying.
CB: So, you got your wings at that stage, did you?
TS: Yes.
CB: And who gave you the wings?
TS: Well the wings I got, we got, were American Air Corps wings. And I’ve still got them.
CB: So, there wasn’t an RAF officer presenting RAF wings.
TS: No. No.
CB: Interesting. Right.
TS: It wasn’t until we got back to Canada that we could have the RAF wings.
CB: Because the war, this is pre-Pearl Harbour isn’t it we’re talking about? We’re talking about ‘40 ’41.
TS: When we were at, on the final lot. We went from the station we were then on in [pause] the next state. The next state to the west.
CB: Yes.
TS: Yes. And then we went from there to the main Florida place for the US Army Air Corps and when we got there — we had to fly our own planes from the Station. Take our planes and land them there. We all went in one big formation.
CB: Right.
TS: And landed there. And then we could see all the new planes coming along and I was most interested in that and I started wandering along. Nobody said anything so I wandered further and I saw that the, the very [pause] what they call the touchy plane. The twin-engined with the big engines in the American Army Air Corps.
CB: What the B25 Mitchell? Was it?
TS: No. No it was —
CB: Before that.
TS: No. It was after that.
CB: Oh right.
TS: There was a bigger one with a bigger engine.
CB: Right.
TS: It was difficult to fly on one engine.
CB: A Marauder.
TS: A Marauder. Yes.
CB: Ok. But you flew over there in your Harvards.
TS: Yes. But we didn’t fly in these planes.
CB: No. I know.
TS: But they were there.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And I was going around while other people were doing all sorts of other things.
CB: Right.
TS: I was going around all those planes and looking at them.
CB: It wasn’t Fort Lauderdale was it? In Florida. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We can pick that up later. So, you got there and that’s when you were awarded your wings was it? in Florida.
TS: No. No.
CB: Oh it was in the previous one.
TS: We came back again.
CB: Oh right. Came back again. Right.
TS: We came back again. And we got the American wings and then we got our English wings when we were in Canada.
CB: Right. They just did a straight swap when you got to Canada.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Did they do a parade? To —
TS: I don’t, I don’t know. I can’t remember. I can’t remember.
CB: So, you got back to Canada. Then what?
TS: Then I caught measles.
CB: Oh.
JS: Oh dear.
TS: And that changed my life.
CB: In what way?
TS: Well, all the people I was with —
CB: Oh yeah.
TS: They went back to England. And there was me. I didn’t feel well. I didn’t want to go to the [unclear] and I was apparently staggering around. So they more or less forced me in to see the doc. And I remember going in and him saying, ‘And what’s the matter with you then?’ Something like that. And that’s, two days later I woke up [pause] because I hadn’t gone early enough for it to be sorted out because I wanted to go back to England. So, I lost all my friends and everything. I came back as a lonely man. If you can imagine one airman on a boat with about four hundred other servicemen but none of them airmen. It was quite interesting. I could go anywhere I wanted on the boat. Nobody, nobody queried it because all the rest were the, were the Canadian army and they were quite restricted in their, they had all their different — but I could go anywhere on the boat and that was it. And it was only because I’d come out of hospital. And then when I got to England they couldn’t find my papers or anything because apparently, I was supposed to come on the —they’d been looking for me and there were some papers and there was no body. And they didn’t know that I’d been left in Canada. And you can imagine me trying to explain to these people what was what. It was ages. I just, I think it was about three weeks I was there. I was nobody because I couldn’t prove that I was who I supposed to be.
CB: You had an id card on you presumably.
TS: Well, I can’t remember. I expect I must have had something there.
CB: And your tags.
TS: Yes. But they —
CB: But they thought you were absent without leave.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Now at that stage you’d been a sergeant technically throughout your flying training had you?
TS: No. I was only corporal.
CB: Corporal. Right.
TS: Corporal.
CB: When you get back to Britain what rank are you then?
TS: I am a sergeant.
CB: Exactly. Yeah. When you got your wings.
TS: Yes.
CB: You became a sergeant.
TS: Yes.
CB: Right. Ok. So, you get back to Liverpool.
TS: Well. No.
CB: They try and sort you out.
TS: No. It wasn’t Liverpool.
CB: Ah.
TS: This was —
CB: Up in Scotland was it? Prestwick.
TS: No. No. No. This was at a Yorkshire place. Not York. Harrogate. Harrogate. And I was sort of the only one in. It isn’t as though I had friends or anything. I was just this little one person who wanted to be known but they didn’t have the proper paperwork so I couldn’t. But they did feed me.
CB: Ok. How long did that go on for?
TS: About two or three weeks. I can’t really remember but — I still don’t know where my books are.
CB: No. So here you are in Harrogate which was a sort of holding place —
TS: Yeah.
CB: Before allocating you so now you’re trained to wings standard with a lot of flying. What happened next?
TS: Well I went to an — not an OTU. An advanced flying place where after having flown the AT6A with all the little knobs in it I flew a mighty Oxford [laughs] with a little bit of fans going on.
CB: Yes.
TS: Yes. And you had to be careful with the Oxford because it — if you misbehaved it let you know.
CB: So, you’re on twin engines and you’re only used to singles.
TS: Yes.
CB: So where’s the Advanced Training School?
TS: That was at Upwood. Not Upwood. Upwood.
CB: In Cambridgeshire.
TS: No. No. It wasn’t in Cambridgeshire. You go down the Great North Road as it used to be there. You come to right next to it. I could put my hand straight to it on the map. Anyway, this, we can work that out later and it was Oxfords and when I was being trained on how to fly and all the rest of it and I just happened to say that I’d never flown an aircraft which had constant speed props. I got a bit of a mouthful from the person who was trying to teach me how to fly a twin-engined aircraft ‘cause he thought I wasn’t taking sufficient notice. But anyway, I was alright and I was alright at night as well. That was when we started flying at nights and I think that had I got back with the gaggle instead of having measles I would have gone forward on the fighter pilot side of it but I, it was sort of the — some of us seemed to have no home at Harrogate and we were the ones who were pushed in to there but that didn’t matter. I was flying. That was the main thing. And then I went, of course, on to Blenheims.
CB: Where was that?
TS: That’s Upwood. Blenheims was Upwood. So that brain there had got too far forward hadn’t it?
CB: Yeah. And that’s the OTU.
TS: Yeah. And then just as we were finishing that the Blenheims were withdrawn from the front line and so as we were used to flying low because we did low flying with the Blenheims then we went to 10 OTU detachment flying Whitleys. Then we learned how, I picked up then there would be five with us in the crew. It was three with the Blenheim and then having five crew when we were flying Whitleys. So, a lovely move wasn’t it from playing? So, it meant that one way and another I had flown all sorts of different types of aircraft and I wasn’t unduly worried about it. I just, I could just get in to the planes and do it. It was like later on when we were after ops and I was instructing on Whitleys and then the Whitleys were falling apart so they came with with the Wellingtons and so there was somebody who had been on Wellingtons and he came along to teach me how to fly and I just went in and I just went and I took off and I came in and landed. He said, ‘I can’t learn — I can’t teach any bloody thing at all.’ And that’s just because I could. This brain of mine could just concentrate on, on these things. Well that lever’s there. I didn’t know that a lot of people had a lot of trouble having to remember where all these things were. Once I’d sat down in an aircraft it looked as though I knew where they all were and that’s one reason I think why I survived.
CB: So, you’re on Wellingtons.
TS: Yes. Just for a short time. No. We were still on Whitleys at the OTU.
CB: Right. Ok.
TS: And then we went down to Cornwall where we did the anti-sub patrols.
CB: St Mawgan.
TS: St Eval.
CB: St Eval. Ok. So that’s your Bay of Biscay flying. What was the pattern of flying there?
TS: Well you jumped into the, well you crawled in to the aircraft and as you were taxi-ing you realised that there was an awful lot weight on there because we had so much fuel on board and although I’d flown the plane without being weighed so much it was quite an experience to realise that you just had to concentrate quite a lot more and make sure that the engines were ok. Which you had to do by sound mainly. And that the — you had all your flaps up and wheels up etcetera and so forth and then you could happily go and do anything up to ten hours sitting in a seat. Driving an aeroplane.
CB: Did you have autopilot in the Whitley?
TS: Yes, but I never, I never took to the auto pilot. There was, even on the Halifax I never used it. I used to trim the aircraft so it could fly itself. That’s what I did. Yeah.
CB: So, on the anti-submarine patrols what did you do? What was the pattern of your work? You take off.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Then what?
TS: Then you’d go to the Scilly isles. And from there you would be given a triangular trip which would be anything up to ten hours over the Bay of Biscay. And sometimes you would [pause] over the Bay of Biscay you’d never see another aircraft until you got back again.
CB: Are we in daylight or at night?
TS: On daylight.
CB: Right.
TS: Of course, we didn’t want to see the German aircraft which were looking for us because we would have been just, you know, been hopeless. All we had was the four guns at the back and a pop-up gun at the back and any Junkers 88s or ME110s would have just shot us out of the sky if we were found. So, we, when we were nearest to France we were very very low down on the sea.
CB: How low would you fly consistently?
TS: I can’t really work it out in feet. It’s just [unclear] but you could definitely, you could definitely see the waves and the forming of the waves and all the rest of it.
CB: Are we talking about a thousand feet? Or —
TS: Oh no. No. No.
CB: Five hundred feet. Or lower.
TS: No. No. A Hundred feet.
CB: Right. So, the intensity of concentration was considerable.
TS: Yes. And then if you wanted to relax a little bit you could come up a bit above the shade and relax a bit more. There was — we did have with us another pilot but we knew nothing about him because he, he just arrived when we were going on the plane so we couldn’t even talk to him about anything. He just came in and sat at the co-pilot’s seat there and so I just let him sit there because I wasn’t going to let him fly my aeroplane unless I knew what he could do. And we were supposed to be keeping low over there. And then he’d just get off the plane and disappear. And it seemed to be a different person every time. So, I thought, well, no continuity. If I had to have somebody who I wanted to do a course and all the rest of it then there was some sense to if I had him every time.
CB: Where did they come from? These people.
TS: I don’t know.
CB: Oh. They weren’t your squadron members.
TS: Oh No. No. No. I think —
CB: Were they experienced?
TS: No.
CB: Coastal Command people.
TS: No.
CB: Oh, they weren’t.
TS: They were all sergeant pilots and the way they, you know, I don’t think they knew much about flying. Just, after the first two when I started talking about one or two things he just sat there. They just sat there and I wasn’t sure that they could fly that aeroplane at the height I wanted them to fly it. It wouldn’t be right down low either. And so —
CB: Did you ever let them take over?
TS: No.
CB: Put it up a bit and take over.
TS: No.
CB: Right.
TS: No.
CB: So here you are flying along. What are you doing? A square search. Or how are you operating?
TS: Triangular.
CB: Triangular search. Which is? How does that operate because it’s not continuous over this same area is it?
TS: No. The —
CB: The triangle moves.
TS: We’ll say this is, this is the Bay of Biscay.
CB: Yes.
TS: And there’s France. And there’s Spain.
CB: Yeah.
TS: And here are we. Well you’d sometimes go that way around and come back again or you go that way around. And then you go there, there, there. Come round. And it was all to do with the navigation and that was why I was so pleased with my navigator who I had when I was on Blenheims. And it wasn’t ‘til a few years ago that I realised in the chatter by some of the other people when we had a get together that he had a PhD in mathematics.
CB: Did he really?
TS: Yes.
CB: After the war or before?
TS: Before.
CB: Did he really?
TS: Yeah. When he was flying with us he had a PhD in —
CB: In maths.
TS: In maths.
CB: Was he a bit older than the rest of you?
TS: Yes. He was. Apparently he was a teacher.
CB: What did you call him?
TS: He was teaching maths.
CB: What did you call him?
TS: Well.
CB: Uncle or grandpa?
TS: Well, we called him Bill because his name was Billborough.
CB: Right.
TS: The — I didn’t know either ‘til the end of the war that my bomb aimer who, he said he’d wanted to be a pilot but anyway he had come down from [pause] what’s the place? Cambridge, and he still had some of his university to do when the war was over. And I met him after the war and he was, he was marvellous. You know. He got his degree and all the rest of it. So when the time came when my son had a chance of going we made sure that he got there too.
CB: Good.
TS: And he finished up with a PhD in maths.
CB: Did he really?
TS: Yeah.
CB: Wasn’t that good.
TS: And he’s now retired as I said. And so, its all a question at times when you’re doing certain things. When you do the right thing and then you realise you’d done the right thing because of the information you got afterwards.
CB: Of course.
TS: And he didn’t, in any way, shall I say, push the issue and say I’ve got a PhD or anything like that. He just was there because he needn’t —I think in his position he probably needn’t have gone to the war but he decided that he was going to do that.
CB: So, he was a very good navigator. Bill.
TS: Yes. Oh yes.
CB: So, going back to the flying you’re doing the triangular search and it’s move, you’re varying the triangle. And how on earth do you keep going for ten hours because you can’t leave the plane flying itself?
TS: No.
CB: If you need to go and look at the plumbing.
TS: No. You don’t. You don’t. There was a little gadget there.
CB: A tube.
TS: A tube. Yes. But other than that. No.
CB: What sort of — ten hours is a long time without refreshment so what was the arrangement for eating?
TS: That did come up a little bit and we had a thermos flask with some supposedly coffee in it. And some sandwiches. And we ate well.
CB: Did you?
TS: When we were on the ground. We did really eat well. So there was no question of were we hungry. It was your own fault if you didn’t eat when you could.
CB: Of course. And the sandwiches. Jam? Or were they something more substantial?
TS: Something a little more substantial. Yes.
CB: So, what about the rest of the crew? When you’re flying your triangular search you’re in a Whitley which has got five people in. The navigator’s got his head down. What’s everybody else doing?
TS: Looking to see if he could see what you really didn’t think you ought, you ought to see. We would have had to go — had we seen a U-boat you would have to attack it. Now, if the boat was right out of the water and they had the guns all ready a Whitley would be so slow getting at it that it would be shot out the sky before he could drop his bombs. So you, if you were going to have one you had — just as it was coming up. Or just when it was going along with a little bit at the top. And we never saw anything of that nature and once I was thinking — I needed a little bit, to go up a little bit and pulled up and then there’s land immediately in front of me. I thought — that’s Spain. And the navigator for once had forgotten to tell me to turn. But we were still in — we were in —
CB: International waters. Were you?
TS: Still in international waters. But if I hadn’t just, for some reason it’s, I’ve got that little magic thing somewhere telling me to do some things. If I hadn’t I’d have been flying right over Spain before I realised it. Of course, you couldn’t immediately turn. Especially if you were down low.
CB: No. Sure.
TS: You had to come up a little bit to turn. And so, I’ve always thought that in lots of times in my life there’s been a little angel just helping me along.
CB: So, thinking of your armament. I’ve interviewed somebody who attacked a submarine. So, what was your forward armament first of all?
TS: We’d got a pop up in the front.
CB: What were they?
TS: It was just a little —
CB: Two.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Two 303s.
TS: Yeah.
CB: And so what anti-submarine stores did you carry?
TS: Four.
CB: Depth charges. And how did you, what was the intended attack mode for that?
TS: Well, you go there and you drop them so that your first ones were just before the sub and then you’d have two land where the sub was and the other one was — but you you had to get them a bit earlier than some people did. It’s no good letting them go and then them all being over the top of it.
CB: Because they’re flying forward with you.
TS: Yes. That’s why we didn’t know it but when we were on a bombing at — Whitleys.
CB: Do you want to stop for a mo?
JS: Yeah. Stop for a minute.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
TS: Well it’s alright. Yes. Yes. We’d better stop for a bit.
JS: Stretch your leg for a bit.
CB: Right.
[Recording paused]
TS: Well when we were doing OTU we, as a crew, were seen to be doing more low-flying bombing than anybody else. And we were doing this and we’d go up and we’d do it and we’d go up and we’d do it and by getting the pictures and that we realised how early we had to be dropping these because you were going at the speed even though we weren’t going at a terrific speed you were going at a speed and if you’re not careful the sub is back here and you’re bombing something that isn’t there. And so, we said well is it any different to the, for the depth charge type thing which we would be dropping? Well we didn’t even know that we were going to be on Coastal Command then. I said the bombs we would be dropping then for the practice bombs which we were using. You see. Just the smoke bombs. And they say well as far as we can get to it that has the same flying attitude until it hits the ground but it depends largely on the height you are and the speed you’re doing as to where that thing lands.
CB: So, with depth charges the principal is the same except that they’re not aerodynamic are they?
TS: No. But you are very low so that’s not going to be a big thing. And if you have a string of four you have one before and two more or less hitting it and then the third one on that but you had to get it on the —say that’s the sub there you have to come in but you have to be right over the top of the sub to do it. Well, you can imagine if the sub is fully raised and there’s somebody on the gun already it’s a bit warm before you get there.
CB: Now, in your aircraft did you have a bomb aimer?
TS: Yes.
CB: And he had the responsibility of dropping the depth charges?
TS: No.
CB: Or you did.
TS: I did.
CB: Right. And how did you come to do that because you didn’t have the sight? So he had to call it to you.
TS: No. Well, we’ll say that’s the U-boat there.
CB: Ok.
TS: Well you would be going, coming and if you saw it you might be going at an angle across it and all the rest of it. Well, you would have to drop your bombs so that one of them was, it was, they were depth charges so they weren’t bombs and therefore they had to go more or less —
CB: Sure.
TS: Underneath the plane to blow it up.
CB: Under the submarine. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Underneath the submarine.
CB: They were pre-set before you set off.
TS: Yeah.
CB: On the premise that you were only flying at a hundred feet.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So, who is calling the release time?
TS: I was. We decided, I think, that I would do that. And I would —
CB: You’d pressing the button.
TS: I’d press the button.
CB: He’d call.
TS: And I was pressing the button when we were practicing.
CB: Yes. But who gave the call for the timing of the dropping? So, the bomb aimer is saying, ‘Right. Drop now.’
TS: No.
CB: Is he?
TS: No.
CB: You are.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
TS: Because you were so low that the bomb aimer couldn’t use the bomb aiming thing or anything.
CB: So it was just a Mark One eyeball.
TS: Yeah.
CB: You didn’t have a sight yourself.
TS: No. No
CB: And did you —
TS: But that was because you had the four —
CB: Yeah. The final question on this is did you drop them automatically as a stick or did you have to press each time to drop each one?
TS: No. You dropped and your whole load went.
CB: Right.
TS: That was how we were set anyway. So therefore you’d drop a little early than you thought for the first one to go because there was a tendency to get too close to it.
CB: Yeah.
TS: And you went over the top of it. And that is why we did the low levels.
CB: Ok.
TS: And I have pictures somewhere of the, of us dropping low level.
CB: So, detached to Coastal Command how many ops did you do?
TS: At. Then. I think it was eight. Eight of those ops.
CB: Ok. And then after that what happened?
TS: I went back to bombers. And I went from there to [pause] Stanton. No. Not Stanton Harcourt. The one near York where you went from Whitleys to Halifaxes.
CB: Is that Riccall?
TS: No. It was the other one. There was Riccall was one. It was the other one.
CB: Holme on Spalding Moor.
TS: Yes. No. No. There was another one. Anyway.
CB: Yeah
TS: Yeah. And the chappy. I’m trying to remember.
CB: There was Elvington and Pocklington later.
TS: I’m just a little bit.
CB: Ok. And this was the HCU was it? The Heavy Conversion Unit.
TS: Yes. Heavy Conversion Unit.
CB: Ok.
TS: We went to [pause] in Yorkshire. Not far from York. The Moor.
CB: Ok. I’ll look it up.
TS: There was a big, a big battle fought there during one of the years long before we were born. And —
CB: Ok.
TS: I’m just wondering. You see all the time my brain is thinking where the heck are those things.
CB: Those logbooks. Yeah. So how long were you at the HCU?
TS: Not very long. And it was, I think more of them deciding your capacity early than anything else because you hadn’t to do anything more than just convert from one plane to another.
CB: Yeah. Because you already had experience in operations.
TS: Well, that might be the case but I think everybody had to be at that and if you’re just going from one plane to another well you just go from one plane to another. It’s like going from one car to another isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
TS: As far as I’m concerned anyway. And it [pause] it was interesting to have these. The four engines and you had the engineer and the mid-upper gunner as extra crew. You had to get to know them and they had to know who was boss in the second, looking at it from another angle. And we made quite sure that we got the right people. I was lucky, as I said, in getting my original crew. When we went from three off the Blenheims to five I said to the [pause] you know on to the Whitleys, I said to the observer, as he then was, I said, ‘Well you know more about bomb aiming than I do. You find the best bomber.’ And I said to, you WOp/AG, I said, ‘You know more about the thing. Go and get me a good air gunner,’ and that’s what they did. They were successful because I’m still here. That’s the thing and the same sort of thing was when we went — that was from three to five and then from five to seven it was a similar thing except that I chose the engineer.
CB: Right. Ok.
TS: And I walked up to the gaggle of the engineers and I said, ‘I’m a pilot who’s looking for an engineer. What have you done? What engineering have you done?’ And I was quite blunt about it. So this chappy there was saying, ‘I haven’t passed many exams,’ he said, ‘Because the job was to keep machinery going twenty four hours a day.’
CB: In civilian life.
TS: In civilian life. I thought, well, we’ll have him. Some of the others had just done, more or less, a verbal course. And so when the engineer and I first went into an aircraft the first thing we did was start at the nose and work right to the back and all the bits and pieces and he seemed as though he’d done his learning in the classroom and he never let me down one, one little bit. He was a very good man. Because he had also, he hadn’t come straight from somewhere where he hadn’t been involved in anything much and he had been where he kept, had to keep these machines going for twenty four hours a day in a factory as I said. And I think it makes quite a difference.
CB: Yeah. Ok. So just going back on timings what are we talking about here? You go to the HCU. When would that be?
TS: Oh well actually we didn’t go straight from what we were doing to the HCU. We went on a battle course. That has nothing to do with flying though has it?
CB: No. With the RAF regiment was it?
TS: No. It was — we had somebody in the army who didn’t really want to be on the job. So it was interesting.
CB: So the whole crew goes on the battle course.
TS: Yes.
CB: And they’re all sergeants.
TS: Yes.
CB: And what’s the army man?
TS: He was a sergeant. I think he was a real sergeant as well. He wasn’t just a sergeant. Somebody —
CB: Experienced man was he?
TS: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: So what did you do on the battle course?
TS: Well what the army did. It was an army’s battle course. Live — live ammunition at the end and that was being introduced then more and more I think because if you baled out and you happened to land somewhere over the other side and you weren’t picked up by the enemy you could probably fight with the people who were just making a nuisance of themselves to the Germans or when the — we really went for them then you could help too, as battle course behind their lines. That was the theory of it. I don’t think it would have been very very efficient because [pause] anyway we’re talking here now because we won the war. Or well we officially won the war but –
CB: I interviewed a man who was shot down and had done a battle course and joined the Maquis.
TS: Yes. Yes, well that was the other one. Yes.
CB: Right. Ok. So when is this? What time are we talking about? 1942? Or are we still in ‘41. Where are we?
TS: Well, we are now going to four engines aren’t we?
CB: Yeah. HCU.
TS: HCU. HCU was in the 1943. In the spring.
CB: Ok.
TS: I did my first ops in May. So we weren’t long at HCU. See. So —
CB: So your first ops were with the squadron. So you spend a couple months at HCU.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Would you?
TS: No. I don’t think as such. I don’t think it was as long as that.
CB: Ok.
TS: And the CO of the HCU was somebody you might have heard of. His name was Cheshire.
CB: Yeah.
TS: You’d already got that information.
CB: No. I know about him. Yes.
TS: He was ok. We went on a night trip and the engineer, as some people call them, had difficulty in as much as he had to tell me that according to his instruments there was something wrong with one of the engines. And so I said, ‘Well it doesn’t feel like it,’ I said. It’s all, because I had the engines all in sync. When there was two it was easy.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And you could tell if there was something wrong because even before the instruments would tell you because the engines would let you know. And anyway [pause] I’ve lost it.
CB: Yeah. So the engineer said there’s something wrong with one of the engines.
TS: One of the engines. Yes. And so I shut it down as we were told to do and then the next day we were told to go in front of the CO and he wanted to know why we’d come back early. And so we said we’d done it on what we thought were the instructions and we went through them. And he said [pause] and he said, ‘Well, according to the people on the ground here there’s nothing wrong with that engine.’ And so I turned to the engineer. I said, ‘Well you said this.’ ‘Just a minute. Just a minute.’ The CO said this.
CB: Yeah.
TS: He said, ‘We are here to find out why that happened. We’re not putting the finger at anybody,’ he said, ‘Because we’ve had this happen before where people have come back because they’ve thought there was something wrong with the engine and we were hoping that you might be able to let us know.’ And so I said to the engineer, I said, ‘Well, did you notice anything other than what you just said about the instrument?’ He said, ‘No. I’ve told you everything as I saw it.’ And so he said, ‘Well, thank you very much for calling,’ and he said, ‘This is what we’re here for is to try and find out why these engines are supposedly failing when they’re not.’ And I thought that’s fair enough. He just more or less showed us the door and we went out. And I thought that was fine.
CB: This is an LMF issue. Is it?
TS: Well, no. No.
CB: It’s not. In other words some people were calling engine fault because they didn’t want to go.
TS: No. I know. I know.
CB: But he was, you were relying on your experience and knowledge of the engines and he was relying on the instruments.
TS: Yes. Yes.
CB: So did you crack the code?
TS: Well, we never had anything like it again.
CB: These are radial engines aren’t they? They’re not the Merlins.
TS: No. These were the Merlins.
CB: Oh they were Merlins. Right.
TS: These were Merlins and you see I’d quite a bit of time on Merlins having done the, with the —
CB: Whitley.
TS: Whitleys. Having to listen to them for ten hours at a time over the Bay of Biscay etcetera. Well up to twelve hours we were airborne sometimes.
CB: Amazing.
TS: It makes you wonder how. How you do it. I expect I’d do it again if I had to.
CB: So you didn’t find out what was wrong with the —
TS: No.
CB: Why the –
TS: Why. But I think it was not just on the, on the training side of it. I think for some reason this was happening and whether it was anybody who was interfering with it on the ground or not I didn’t ask the question. But I think that’s probably what it was about. Very difficult things to find out.
CB: Well I did interview a man who had a man, had a ground engineer court martialled for threatening to upset the aircraft on a sortie. So there was an element of this sort of thing clearly.
TS: I hadn’t thought of that at all.
CB: As a bribe. Anyway, sorry, go on.
TS: Anyway, that was that. I thought nothing much more about it until it keeps cropping up about that engine failing. Supposedly failing when it didn’t. And we were learning.
CB: So this is, you’ve just joined 102 Squadron and this is when it’s come up. This isn’t the HCU. This is the squadron.
TS: Yeah. That was HCU.
CB: Oh it was the HCU.
TS: That was the HCU.
CB: Right. So you joined the squadron after the HCU.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Then what?
TS: Well, I had to go as a second pilot with [pause] I had done a second pilot when I was at the OTU. Not the OTU. The HCU.
CB: HCU. Yeah.
TS: And then I did another one when I was, when I joined the squadron. And then I was on my own and then I went flying as expected [pause] and this is when really when I need the book.
CB: Right. So what do you recall as your first operation?
TS: I think it was Essen. Happy Valley.
CB: How did that go?
TS: Well I’m just trying to think whether the Essen one was with the — no. Essen was very early and whether it was when I was going as second pilot or when I was just on my own. I don’t know.
CB: So, going as a second pilot is not a training flight around the country. It is actually an operation.
TS: Yes.
CB: Ok. What other highlights are there that stick in your mind about operations?
TS: Well, I was always of the [pause] aware of a number of aircraft all huddled together.
CB: In the bomber stream.
TS: Yeah. Or before that when people were taking off. We had three stations. Like one, two, three. Anyway. And if, say somebody is a bit slow in being able to get height he’s getting awful near that other station at times and I was very well aware of that. And so as soon as I was pointing as though I was where 10 Squadron was — one of our take off things more or less pointed directly at it. So, as soon as I got nicely airborne I made sure that I turned away and gradually got up and up and up.
CB: This is from Pocklington.
TS: That is from Pocklington. And I always tried to be the first one off. And I was approached once by the, an officer of one of the other flights who said, ‘You came and took off before the wing commander.’ I said, ‘Well I didn’t even know the wing commander was flying. So how the hell was I to do that?’ But I didn’t care. I was doing the op and so was the wing commander as far as I was concerned. And he didn’t take it very kindly. But I don’t know who the hell he was but he didn’t come and talk to me again and I think that’s one of the things where you had to get airborne and you had make sure you had sufficient speed to drag that load higher and higher and get out and if you got off first then you could get on the top of the spiral going up and therefore and you were less likely to hit anything.
CB: So ahead of you is Topcliffe is it?
TS: No. No. 10, 10 Squadron on —
CB: Binbrook.
TS: No. No. No. I had it just a minute ago and then the other one was Elvington.
CB: Yes.
TS: In the clutch. There was Elvington, us and the other one.
CB: Ok. Right. So, you’re climbing out.
TS: Yes.
CB: And making sure you get out of the way.
TS: Yes.
CB: How do you know when to head off?
TS: Well you only take off — you only head off when you’re supposed to be moving off. But if you are waiting for somebody to take off and waiting for somebody else to take off and waiting for somebody else. You’re going to have difficulty in getting off before you’re supposed to be setting course. So, as I say I used to be there and then supposedly been told off by this officer that I shouldn’t have taken off before the flight commander.
CB: You’re a flight sergeant by now are you?
TS: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
TS: I was offered a commission after we’d done about ten ops or something like that and I said, ‘No. We’ve all, we’ve decided. We all had a little chat and we all want to remain NCOs.’ Later on, in my life in the air force I said I would like to take a commission. So, somebody popped up and said well according to the records you refused a commission. And I said, ‘I didn’t refuse a commission as such. I said, I didn’t want to take a commission while we were flying as a crew on 102 Squadron.’ And it looks as though it got the rounds and I eventually got a commission. I was wanting a commission because I was instructing and nearly all of the pilots coming through were commissioned and some of them objected to being instructed by an NCO. I was only a warrant officer mind. But —
CB: So, we’ve talked about getting off and setting off. Tell us the rest of a sortie. So, you’ve all set off at the prescribed time.
TS: Yes.
CB: Which is how it was done because you can’t see the other aircraft can you?
TS: No.
CB: So, you’re off. Now what?
TS: Well we would still be climbing and so having been first off, I was normally up above anybody else from the area and then we would, when we got to the height we wanted and there was the big light on the Lincolnshire coast which you had as a glass which many people saw. But you had that as a guidance and if your navigator was doing his job properly and you were flying the aircraft properly and you flew on the headings that he asked you to fly at the same time and then you changed when he said that then he would know once he got right above that light exactly what the wind was.
CB: Right. So now you’re setting off from the light.
TS: Yeah.
CB: And you’re — what height are you by then?
TS: Well if we were still climbing as far as we could go and they used to say, ‘Well level off at eighteen thousand feet.’ If you got to seventeen thousand feet you were lucky some nights because I knew as soon as I’d lifted off from there that we were, if anything, over laden. I couldn’t prove anything though.
CB: Over laden with bombs or fuel?
TS: Well both together you see.
CB: Right.
TS: Yeah. You had the tanks full of fuel and then you would have different bomb arrangements on different trips.
CB: So, when you were briefing. Going backwards. When you went to your operation briefing you knew, did you, what would be your bomb load and the variety?
TS: Usually yes but you hadn’t always worked it out. There would be a slight difference in the high explosives and incendiaries. And when we went to some of the places in France we were full of incendiaries. I couldn’t quite work that out. And occasionally we were full of incendiaries but it was this, you would climb to eighteen thousand feet was just not on because we would not get to them.
CB: The fuel load was dictated by the target was it?
TS: Yes. Well if it was just Happy Valley it was, you just had all the tanks, all the main tanks full, I think. I don’t know whether there was any less in the tanks because you could get there and get back with having sufficient [pause] sufficient fuel. You would have sufficient fuel to get there and back.
CB: Right. Now fast forward to your trips. Which were the most notable ones would you say? Ops. In your mind.
TS: Well there is only the one that — we’ve mentioned it.
CB: That’s Peenemunde.
TS: Yeah. But we did have some others and I’d have to refer to the book again.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Because I haven’t registered that in my mind to keep.
CB: I see that on your map here. We’re looking at the map with sorties that Tom has put on and two of them show damage to German aircraft. Could you just talk us through that?
TS: Well that one there. We shot it down.
CB: Did the rear gunner do it or the mid-upper or both?
TS: Well we didn’t — at the time we didn’t have a a mid-upper.
CB: Oh right.
TS: Turret.
CB: Right.
TS: That was before we, we only had one lot of guns on the whole aeroplane.
CB: Right. So, you did well to shoot that down.
TS: Yes.
CB: Right.
TS: Well that was, the thing was because of the manoeuvres etcetera. And —
CB: So, what did you shoot down?
TS: I don’t know.
CB: But it was a German aeroplane anyway. Yeah.
TS: Well, that’s as it was recorded. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. This one here.
CB: The further south. Yeah.
TS: The further south is where we were damaged by a fighter. We managed to continue to the [pause] for the rest of the journey.
CB: So, what happened there?
TS: Well, we knew we had by that time got one of these units on the plane which would tell us when there was an enemy aircraft nearby. And we were getting this message and I did some changes of course a little bit and changes of course a little bit and each time it would follow me so it meant that it was a German aircraft looking for me. Looking for us shall I say. Rather than just a casual one of ours getting in to that area.
CB: Yeah.
TS: And so having done that, I think, three times and it was still getting much closer each time because of the beep. You know the beep beep system that was there’s a, so I thought I would just hold it and hold it and hold it until it came very close and then I just whipped over to the one side.
CB: In a corkscrew?
TS: No. No. No. You couldn’t corkscrew in one of those. You might think you were doing it but it was so sluggish when you were up at that height with that weight you had.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
TS: It was minimal sometimes. You had to really decide it. And so, I decided that this one it was coming again. We turned and it followed and I had turned and it followed. I think the book will say exactly how many times. Anyway, and I decided right well I’ll see how far I can go on this and I just sat there. I just sat there and the noise was getting and then it was almost beep all the time you see instead of just getting the beep beeps. Time to go down so I just flung everything over to one side and just as I was doing that he was letting off his things but only sufficiently for it to hit us in the port outer wing. If I hadn’t moved those cannon shells would have been in the half empty petrol containers.
CB: Yeah. The tanks.
TS: Tanks. Petrol tanks. And I wouldn’t be here. No wonder I went bald early.
CB: So, in that circumstance did you break right or left?
TS: No. I didn’t break right. This was the normal things you start and most people start don’t they? It was the opposite way anyway. Yes. In those days. I’m just trying to remember which way it was. I think. Oh, they expected you to go left and I went right. That was it. And it was just a question of luck, I think, in lots of instances where the cannon shells went in to the outer wing instead of them hitting a petrol tank which would have caused it to blow up and that would have been it. It wasn’t ‘til we got out, ‘til I got out the plane and then there was a huddle of all the people looking at the outer wing and the expletives which were being said can’t be repeated at the moment. Still, my luck and, well there was just no aileron at all. The whole of the aileron thing had just disappeared and then of course there was further on was the damage to the wing but we only had torches. It was dark and I didn’t realise that the wing was all so badly — no wonder it was rather difficult to keep on course. And that was, I think, the reason why probably I was awarded the DFM because the —
CB: A good bit of flying. Yeah
TS: Well the next day when I went in to the flight office the squadron leader said that, ‘The wing commander wants to see you.’ And I said, ‘Why sir?’ He said, ‘Well I don’t know.’ He sounded a bit upset about something. ‘The wing commander wants to see you.’ Unfortunately, this chappy had only just replaced the flight commander and so I didn’t know him in any way at all. Just done, he’d just come from, I don’t think he was in the flight before he was made flight commander or anything. And so, anyway this wing commander came charging in and he said, ‘So this is the fella is it? This is the young fella is it?’ and he was going around me like this. I thought what’s he going to do next because he had something in his hand. He said, ‘Take that.’ And he gave, gave me the part of the spar of the wing and he said, ‘You see that?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I didn’t know exactly what he was saying. I was thinking whoo whoo. He said, ‘Well look. That thing shows that a cannon shell went through there. If it had exploded then I wouldn’t be talking to you today because your whole,’ blankety blank, ‘Outer wing would have gone.’ And I’ve still got it. And that was that. Him coming in like that and he wanted to shake me by the hand and all the rest of it. I didn’t know what the hell to do. The wing commander shaking me by the hands or everything. And anyway it was, the aircraft was taken into the hangar and they couldn’t believe it. That I’d flown it back in the state it was in and I’ve still got a very awkward knee. Five hours.
CB: Pushing hard.
TS: Pushing hard on that. But I’m not going to charge them now.
CB: Oh. You’re not.
TS: Not after all this time.
CB: So no aileron. On the port side this is.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Big hole in the wing.
TS: Yeah. And we had to bomb and we came back with a proper picture.
CB: Picture. Brilliant.
TS: [unclear]
CB: So where were you going that day? Where were you bombing?
TS: Ah that’s.
CB: Was it Frankfurt? Was it? Or –
TS: I don’t know. I don’t know. I [pause] Yes, that would be the one. I know it was five hours after being hit.
CB: Oh. Was it?
TS: When I managed to get out of the plane.
CB: So, in that circumstance what’s it do to the flying characteristics of the aircraft? You’ve got more drag on that side. You’ve got less manoeuvrability.
TS: Well you just had, you just, it’s towards the end, the outside you see, which is less. I mean, there was less of it. The main part of the lift is where the engines are where you have that huge, yes, difference but you’ve only got a very narrow wing when you get towards the wingtip and that’s more for control rather than anything else. There was, there nothing left of the aileron, you see. There was just tangled bits. And it was, I think just the thing that I had that other people didn’t have. The feel of the thing would be almost immediate to me and I was already operating my foot before I realised we’d been hit so badly.
CB: Yeah. So, you were hit in the left. On the port side.
TS: Yeah.
CB: You’re turning around to the right and going down. Are you? You’d turn it.
TS: Well. Yes. I was already –
CB: Then you’ve got to recover from that.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So what did you do?
TS: Well I did what I would automatically do and I can’t tell you exactly what it was but then we got back on to course which was the thing. And now what do we do? We’re badly damaged. What shall we do? Should we drop our load and go back? And I thought well, no, that’s not a good idea at all because if you go back you’ll be all on your own going all the way back there and they’d be picking you off with no trouble at all. So, we just plodded on and bombed. And —
CB: So, you’re approaching the target with a damaged aircraft. What do you do?
TS: You just keep on going as though you’re not damaged. As far as possible. And although we were damaged we hadn’t lost a lot of — the aileron part had gone but the rest of the damage was not so severe but a lot of the — it’s a wonderful thing a wing in an aeroplane you see because if you’re up there and you’re flying and you have a little bit missing, well it doesn’t seem to matter quite so much as if you was trying to land or take off.
CB: So, your roll control is on one side only. In this case the right. The starboard side. What effect does it have on your direction ‘cause you’re pushing hard on the rudder so there’s been some –?
TS: Well you have to keep — this pushing on the rudder is not, you can’t get the same effect absolutely but if you put it so that you don’t have to press against the wind as it were then you are getting more efficient. And if you fiddle around and get that system by adjusting the — well it was the aileron this side. I know there’s no aileron there but you had it on the other side as well. And so, I had to, fortunately we were at the height as far as we could get and we lost a little bit of height but we didn’t lose all that much that we were going to be right underneath the whole of the [unclear]
CB: Right.
TS: And you just have to take what you can think of at the time and I seemed to think at the right, of the right things when anything happened over there and the rest of the crew of course were very good most of the time. The, the engineer although he’d never had much to do with aeroplanes he soon proved to be a very good man.
CB: I’m just thinking that here you are with a damaged plane. Normally your attitude is going to be as level as possible. You’ve got a damaged outer port wing. Are you to maintain control raising that so you’re not actually straight and level. You’re straight but not level. Or how do you compensate?
TS: Well I don’t really know but I did it.
CB: And when you’re over the target. Do you — after the target you hold for a bit to get over to take your picture. Are you then turning left against the damaged wing or do you turn right? What did you do?
TS: I can’t remember. It might be in the book but it was just what you’d normally — you see, we as a crew, because I said so, maintained going on after you had dropped your bombs whereas some people they just turned when they dropped their bombs to cut off and go like that where and I tried to explain it to many, well I say many, more than once to some of these people. I said, ‘If you’re all going as a bunch all along together like that and you drop your bombs and then you go along and you come to the turning point and then you’re turning everybody is turning. But if you for some reason want to turn and you’re here and there’s all these there there’s a likelihood that you’ll run into those.’ And they said, ‘Oh no. It wouldn’t.’ But I used to think it terrible that some of them were doing all these things which they shouldn’t do and then bragging about it.
CB: Bragging because of –?
TS: Bragging that they’d, they’d cut off the corner. As soon as they bombed they cut off the corner because if —
CB: To get away.
TS: If you were going towards your target —
CB: Yes.
TS: And then you go on a little bit and then you turn.
CB: Yes.
TS: Yes. Well they, in that then if they would turn immediately and they know you can’t be sure you got to that point properly if you hadn’t already worked it out. And so, I think some of the navigators would have a difficult time with some of the people.
CB: So fast forward now. You’ve dropped the bombs. You’ve had to push hard on the rudder pedal to get back. How do you set up for landing? How did that work?
TS: Well I had done it in this way. I managed to know that I could land it because at ten thousand feet I did a mock landing.
CB: Right.
TS: I went through all the process of seeing whether —
CB: Wheels down and everything.
TS: Yes. But I couldn’t be sure that I was absolutely straight like that but you could tell by the little bit of light you were getting whether it was getting — whether you were going straight or whether you were going differently. And I’d report to the, and it wasn’t the first time I’d come back with a damaged plane, you see and I’d report to the people on the ground and saying that I’d done a landing at eight thousand feet I think it was in one instance. So on and so forth. So that they would know that I could, I thought I could land but of course you couldn’t see really whether — if you were up here you couldn’t see whether you had been pushed on one side or you had lost another side or anything like that but the feel of the plane as I keep on saying to different people is far more important than lots of other things.
CB: So, you’re making your approach. What are you doing about speed compared with normal approach speed?
TS: Well, I’d know from the [pause] what I was doing up there what it felt like
CB: The practice.
TS: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Just the practice up there. And then I’d always add at least ten miles an hour on to that.
CB: Right.
TS: So, you couldn’t see exactly what it was but I was doing that here. I don’t know whether I’ve even mentioned it in the book but –
CB: Right.
TS: That’s what it was.
CB: So, you’re on finals. How do you feel then?
TS: Well, I had so much to do that all I felt was that if I keep on going as I’m going now and now and now when I’m doing some of this. The final movements
CB: Corrections.
TS: Corrections and all the rest of it and I would make sure that I was down to the, getting on towards the speed. The approach speed. Of course I was flying above the approach speed a lot of the time.
CB: Yeah.
TS: When I was doing manoeuvres. So that I had speed there to recover it if it wasn’t right. And I got down to that and then I would be making sure that I was going to get on to the thing and then I would level off because it would be the main runway probably had plenty of runway to do it but if you land it, if you always used to land in the immediate area then if you had to use a bit more land you had it there but for those people who come over and then still have to level out and they’re halfway down the runway before they touch down.
CB: Too high.
TS: They’ve got no leeway.
CB: No. So, you made sure you came right over the fence as it were.
TS: Yes.
CB: As near the end as possible.
TS: Yes.
CB: The beginning of the runway as possible.
TS: Yeah.
CB: So, you got that down ok.
TS: Yeah.
CB: You mentioned you’d had an aircraft damaged before. What was that one? Was that flak or fighter?
TS: I’m not quite sure. We. We had, we had the engine. An engine pack up. And that was much more serious than anything else because it was before the target and we were losing height and we couldn’t do anything else but do it. Drop it.
CB: So, what did you do?
TS: Well —
CB: How many, how far short of the target are you when the engine packs up?
TS: This one was, it was —
CB: Where were you going?
TS: We were going to Happy Valley.
CB: Right.
TS: So, it’s just over the border and we, by turning to the port I could drop the bombs in the Zuider Zee and then I reckoned I could get back if I just was out of the, out of the gaggle.
CB: Yeah.
TS: I thought I could. As far as I can remember that’s where I was thinking I could get back without any trouble much
CB: So which engine was it?
TS: It was the [pause] I think it was the starboard outer.
CB: Right.
TS: And shortly after that I had a different plane. I think that was S for Sugar and after that I had another one and the —
CB: What? Another engine failure?
TS: No. Another plane.
CB: Another plane. Right.
TS: Yeah. And then I did most of my ops when the new Mark 2 series 1A came in. They gave me another aircraft and that was a W and of course it was the finer points which had been added. Just a small amount on the aircraft but it was a big difference to flying.
CB: Was it? What had they changed?
TS: Well, instead of having the turret at the front they did away with that and they just put a covering over. It wasn’t very good in as much as it wasn’t in with the rest of the plane. It seemed to be a sort of a bang. Not a bang. It just didn’t feel right to me.
CB: Because it upset the aerodynamics.
TS: Yes. Yes. But when they brought the series 1A in then they had the new front entirely and it was much better because the, with the Mark 1 or the Mark 2 when they still had the front turret it wasn’t at all. You know there was an awful lot of resistance around that because of the turret. I mean it wasn’t at all streamlined really was it?
CB: No. No. So we’ve talked about incidents there. What about Peenemunde? What was significant about going to Peenemunde?
TS: It was the way the people approached us about it. They said that we had to do the job tonight or else you would go for every night after night after night until you’d done it and going in as we did at eight thousand feet [pause] but you see there was practically no resistance at all. There was a sort of a searchlight but nothing very much at all. And the — I don’t think that they thought, I think the Germans didn’t consider us going there anyway. No defence much.
CB: So, there were layers of bombers. What was above you?
TS: Well no. The thing was that we thought we were all going to go in at the same height.
CB: Right.
TS: But we from 4 Group probably went in at the same height as the rest of 4 Group but some of the others went at probably at a different height to us. I don’t know. It was a question I’ve been wanting to ask but I’ve never got around to finding out what they went and everybody was supposed to be going in at the same. You see we would — 4 Group would be in that time. Four minutes, you see. And we were all supposed to bomb within that four minutes. All 4 Group. And I don’t know. It’s who could I ask? Who could give me the answer?
CB: Were you following Pathfinders? Or straight bombing?
TS: We were following Pathfinders until we got there and then we were supposed to be bombing any of the main buildings because we were mostly high explosives. So we were told that there would be some buildings in a certain area and we had to bomb those and according to the result of our photograph we did what we were told.
CB: Right. Now, you’ve got a picture of the target where there’s a bomber that can be seen below. So what’s that?
TS: That was a twerp who wasn’t obeying orders is all I can say. It’s a Halifax. And what the heck that man was doing flying there against the whole of the flow of the — I don’t know. I don’t know whether he’d get back. It is a Halifax isn’t it?
CB: He’s flying your way, is he?
[pause]
CB: It looks as though he’s in the same direction as you so he could end up with bombs straight through him.
TS: Yes. Yes. Yes. Well we were bombing on the height we were supposed to be bombing and he is below. Yeah.
CB: Quite a long way.
TS: I thought that that photograph was one, somewhere I’ve got one where where was somebody going the opposite direction
CB: Oh, is there really? So, when you get to a target. You’re in a stream. It’s in the dark. How do you know if everybody is on the same track?
TS: Well the only persons who would know whether they were on the wrong track would be those who were on the wrong track.
CB: And they’d be on the wrong track for what reason?
TS: I can’t — I haven’t discussed it with any of them who were on the wrong track. Shall I put it that way.
CB: Ok.
TS: But some of the comments on debriefing.
CB: Such as?
TS: ‘Wizard prang. Wizard prang.’ Yah yah yah. When everybody else is being, sitting at the table and quietly talking and there would another lot sitting and then this fella would come out and every night he’d come back, ‘Wizard prang.’ ‘Wizard prang,’
CB: Same man or different?
TS: Yes.
CB: What was your —
TS: My bomb aimer had a different version of his wizard prang because he found out if they could find out where the bombs had been dropped. So that’s something which I, you know, but it was, whether he knew that he was doing it all wrong or not I don’t know.
CB: What was your last operation?
TS: Well, I think it was on my knee [laughs]
CB: [laughs] So, we’ll go back to the flying operation then.
TS: Yeah. Sorry about that.
CB: That’s alright.
TS: I can’t help it. Anyway, it’s [pause] I don’t know where we are as far as what you want.
CB: Right. So what we’re on is, you’re on ops as 102.
TS: Yeah.
CB: And how many ops did you do in total with 102 Squadron?
TS: Well you see I did those ops over the Bay of Biscay.
CB: With Coastal Command. Yeah.
TS: They counted as a half an op when we were in Bomber Command.
CB: Oh right.
TS: We thought that later. But it was only half. So there was four. It was, we were all on, all the rest were on Halifaxes. There were eight on the Whitleys and then the twenty six on the four engine jobs.
CB: Ok. So, the last four-engined on the Halifax. Where was that to?
TS: I can’t really remember.
CB: Ok.
TS: Without looking it up.
CB: So, you finished with 102 Squadron because you’ve ended —
TS: Yeah.
CB: Your prescribed thirty ops.
TS: Yeah.
CB: What did you do next? First of all, when was it?
TS: It was in October ’43.
CB: Ok.
TS: Early October ’43.
CB: And what did you do after that?
TS: Became an instructor.
CB: With whom?
TS: 81 OTU.
CB: Which was where?
TS: The other side of the Pennines.
CB: What? In Shropshire. So, what was the aircraft?
TS: I went back to Whitleys. But it wasn’t Bomber Command. It was 38 Group. You know what they did?
CB: Yeah. They were the tactical air force ones were they?
TS: 38 Group were the people who –
CB: Maquis.
TS: Towed gliders.
CB: Oh towed gliders. Ok.
TS: And dropped supplies to the Maquis.
CB: Yeah.
TS: We were teaching people how to tow gliders and I’d never flown one before.
CB: How did you feel about that?
TS: I was still just relieved to have completed a tour of ops that I thought well I can beat this one if I can do that and it was alright.
CB: Did you — as a prelude to that did they get you to fly a glider?
TS: Yes.
CB: How did you feel about that?
TS: Bloody awful.
CB: In the co-pilots seat?
TS: I don’t know. Now. Yes. It was with the co-pilot’s.
CB: What was the glider? A horsa.
TS: A horsa.
CB: So how many trips did you do in that?
TS: Only the one.
CB: Just one. That was plenty I should think.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Right. Then you went on to towing.
TS: Well yes, we had to instruct the people. They had to do an OTU as a Bomber Command OTU.
CB: Right. First.
TS: For all the different. First. And then they would do the towing which wasn’t very much really. The worst was towing it at night when there was night towing and it looked as though my name had come out of the book to do this and you just, with a plane and you had a series of pilots, RAF. And a series of pilots, glider pilots coming to a certain place in the aerodrome where you then had an experienced pilot in both places and those who were just learning in the others. At night.
CB: Sounds. How did you feel about that?
TS: Not very good because it so happened that my pupil was pulled out of the hat to be the first one and then I was there doing it all ruddy night until I got so far and then I just — some of the pupils didn’t even, I don’t think they knew how to fly the plane at night without anything else there. They weren’t, they weren’t from, on our flight I know that. And I don’t know how they managed and I didn’t like to interrupt too much but once I was just a little bit and all of a sudden I realised we’re not on course ‘Ahhhhh,’ there were those bloody trees there. And I looked out and I could see the trees. Just the top of the trees just going underneath the aeroplane.
CB: Yeah.
TS: In the little light that we had on the front of the aeroplane. I just relaxed a little bit. Well you couldn’t just lift it. You had a glider on behind. So, it took you ages and ages to get any height anyway but you had a lot of trees there and a lot of trees there but you were supposed to be going down there and he was over here. And so I was too tired to act properly.
CB: Go on.
TS: So, when I came down I said to the, you see it was a coordinated thing. The pilot. The pupils coming to go in this plane and there were the pupils coming to go in the glider and all sorts of things and then you had to, after dropping the glider you had to drop the rope and then you had to come around again and get down and then you had to taxi around and pick another one up. And I came into the pointer. Switched the engine off. I said to the sergeant in charge of the plane to make sure that the plane was ok with the, for the — it was quite a gaggle of all different people busy there and I just walked off. And I was expecting somebody would come and ask me why. And I waited and I waited and I waited and nobody came. But I was never asked to do it again.
CB: So, what did you do next?
TS: Well we were having, still doing the normal OTU but it was this flying at night. Towing gliders at night. Off at night. And when I pointed it out they said, ‘Well really, they didn’t think they wanted to take off at night with the gliders. They only wanted to take off in the day time.’ And yet we were doing this at night.
CB: So were there fatalities flying at night? Glider towing.
TS: I don’t know.
CB: Oh.
TS: I don’t know.
CB: Not in the time you saw.
TS: No.
CB: No.
TS: But I was wondering why we were doing it if the people on the front line said they didn’t intend to do anything like that.
CB: But for D-day of course, they did fly at night.
TS: Yeah. Well but I was very irate and I just left it at that.
CB: You were a warrant officer at this stage.
TS: I think so. Yes.
CB: So, the sergeant’s going to be careful.
TS: I didn’t, didn’t fling it around at all.
CB: No.
TS: But you had to be friendly with the glider pilots. You had to be friendly with the pupils coming along. And you had to gently ease them if they were being a bit stupid because shouting at them would have been no good.
CB: So were you flying with a student pilot on the Whitley at the same time as a student pilot on the glider?
TS: Yes. At night.
CB: So, you’ve got a double whammy potentially.
TS: Yes.
CB: Right. I’ve done glider towing myself and I know how long it takes to get up. Right. So, you continued with the daytime OTU which could be dangerous in itself.
TS: Yes. Well I was, I was the, on the OTU and we were on. I did my share of night flying and all the rest of it and I didn’t mind. I did enquire about going back on ops and I was bluntly told that, well, ‘No. You’re here and you’re going to stay here because we want you here.’ And then later on I decided that, well, I did, when I was flying on ops I did refuse the offer of a commission because we were stated, I respected the, I told you at the beginning we were going to remain NCOs all the time. Well, that seemed as though it followed in my papers somewhere along the line that I had refused a commission when offered. But I managed to overcome that and —
CB: So, when were you commissioned?
TS: During the war.
CB: Yeah.
TS: [laughs] Seriously I can’t give you a right date.
CB: No.
TS: Without looking at it on the —
CB: Yeah. So then did that change things? I mean, you were, you said that you were instructing pilots who were commissioned.
TS: Yes.
CB: And that’s what prompted you to —
TS: Yeah.
CB: Re-apply as it were.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Well to apply. So how did that change things once you were commissioned?
TS: Well, in the main I found that I was commissioned and in quite a few instances I was told I hadn’t been to the right school. To my face.
CB: By the commissioned pilots being instructed.
TS: Yeah.
CB: Right.
TS: But I was, it didn’t worry me too much because I knew I could fly the pants off them all.
CB: How did you put that one down then?
TS: Pardon?
CB: How did you put down that comment?
TS: Well.
CB: Or you just left it?
TS: I just left it. The worst part of my career was after the war ended.
CB: Ok.
TS: Because there was a decided inflow of, of the type I felt I’d, you know, fallen out with. They didn’t accept me as being the right person to be a commissioned officer and they were just narked about it and so I thought I was hoping to make the RAF my thing so I decided no. I’d come out. And another things was I was wanting to get married and I was stupid enough not to ask her to marry me during the war when she really wanted to get married then. We were engaged. But we didn’t marry in the end.
CB: When did you get married? After you came out though.
TS: After we came out. Yes. I got myself a job.
CB: So just going back. You were at the OTU. Was that — did you keep in the OTU until you were demobbed or did you go somewhere else after the OTU?
TS: Well the OTU got more and more interested in the towing side of things and I was still an OTU but it was a different from when we started towing and all the rest of it. And it was a different thing as I say. And it had advanced considerably to what it was and I think it was very good and done properly by the book or if there wasn’t a book by what was recognised. It was a good thing. On one occasion the, there was a Halifax came and landed because I think it had engine failure. Supposed engine failure or something and so then they repaired it but it was in the way so they wanted to move it and they didn’t have the thing they could move it. They didn’t have a tractor that could move it so they said, ‘Oh well Tom used to fly on those. He’d be alright.’ So, I thought, right. I very nearly. No. I didn’t. I was very tempted. I was very tempted. I thought, no. You can’t really do it on your own, you see. So I —
CB: What? You can’t fly the aeroplane on your own.
TS: No. You could.
CB: But it would be dangerous.
TS: It would be dangerous because you couldn’t feed fuel or anything like that you see. You didn’t have the instruments you could check to see if they were all working.
CB: Oh right.
TS: So, to a certain degree you had the instruments but it’s —
CB: So, what did you do?
TS: So I had to collect [pause] the headquarters were sort of here. Around in the —
CB: One side of the airfield.
TS: Yes. Well, no. The hangars and that were there and then there were the station. The CO’s office and one or two bits and pieces there.
CB: Another site.
TS: And they wanted it moved. Wanted this aeroplane moved to over there. So, I was, I was asked if I would do it. I said, ‘Do you want me to pull it?’ And eyes all around. They said, No,’ they said, ‘We would like you to, if you could start two of the engines can you take it.’ I said,’ Yes. Well. You’ve done two engines haven’t you? Why don’t you take it?’ Sort of thing. And they were getting a bit fed up of me being awkward and I was only teasing them really but as we came along then I said right. We might as well have all four engines going so and that and then I turned it partly into the field but with my back right to the flight, not the flight commander’s office but the wing commander’s office. And he had made one or two cracks about people, you know, coming from the ground and being commissioned and all the rest of it so I put the plane right like that and his office was here.
CB: Behind it.
TS: Behind it. And I blasted those engines. I knew he was in the office.
CB: So, he got a lot of noise.
TS: Yes.
CB: And a lot of wind.
TS: Yes. And so somebody said, ‘You know you shouldn’t be doing that.’ Well, if he didn’t want me to do that somebody else should have done it shouldn’t they. It’s just one of those things where I perhaps go just beyond the point I should have stopped at.
CB: So were you a flying officer or a flight lieutenant at this stage?
TS: Oh, I was only a flying officer. But it’s, I don’t see why they couldn’t just jump in to a plane and taxi the damned thing.
CB: They hadn’t got the right certification had they?
TS: Well. Perhaps not. As I say there was no instructor to tell them what to do.
CB: So where? What — are we talking about 1945 still?
TS: Yes.
CB: So, you didn’t come out until ’46. So what were you doing?
TS: Well I was doing this but I was getting more and more frustrated with the attitude of the people there and it got to the stage when it was more important what was going on in the officer’s mess in the evening as to whether you could fly in the night or fly or anything and it was, if there were any targets to be met well they definitely weren’t being met. I wasn’t flying my pupils as much as I would have liked to have flown them and all this sort of thing going on so I thought I’d come out of it. Wasn’t, wasn’t done.
CB: The people who were converting on to glider towing. They had all done a tour had they? That’s why they were commissioned.
TS: The?
CB: Well, you were instructing.
TS: Yeah.
CB: People who already had experience on tours. On heavies. Were they?
TS: No.
CB: Oh.
TS: No.
CB: What were they?
TS: Well —
CB: Or on twins or some kind.
TS: Yes. Yes, they were. Some of them were coming straight through the thing. There were some experienced people and you could, before you’d taken off you realised that it was an experienced person. Even if you hadn’t been told. And it was more than awkward on more than one occasions where I didn’t really want to pass some people but they said they had to be passed if they’d got that far. So, I made a point of making a point of it so that they couldn’t say well you didn’t say.
CB: They could record it.
TS: And so anyway in the, after the war had ended and I thought of applying, I was applying for a permanent commission and there was just no chance at all.
CB: No.
TS: Came out.
CB: So where were you demobbed and when was that?
TS: Where was I demobbed? I don’t know exactly.
CB: Because you had to go and pick you suit up.
TS: Actually, I was driving a car. I’d got an old car and one of the chappies — I was in the same billet as him and he was the NCO in charge of the transport, the ground transport and so he made sure my car was ok. That was about the one thing I got, shall I say. Rather than just being there and having the general things. He said, ‘Of course I can’t do it on site,’ but he had to send off some of the vehicles outside the thing to somebody who was a local man doing repairs and my car went along with that but he didn’t know about it.
CB: He never heard a thing.
TS: That was the only thing I got like that.
CB: So, you left in ‘46. What time of the year?
TS: I can’t really remember that. It was pretty good weather. I can’t really remember.
CB: And you got a job. How quickly did you got a civilian job after you left?
TS: Before my leaving.
CB: Terminal leave.
TS: Terminal leave. Yes. Was up.
CB: Where did you? How did you get the job? And what was it?
TS: Well I came down south here because there was nothing up north really for me. From what I thought. And all I wanted was a job. I mean I was enough, far enough around the bend to go completely around there if I didn’t get a job. And it —I tried. My parents had moved from the Dales in to Darlington. My father had given up farming and was running the the animal auction market at Darlington which was quite a big job. And he wanted me to join with him to do that and I thought he’s still a young man. I wouldn’t be getting anywhere for years. I decided that I didn’t want to stay at home and do that. And I came to — one of my crew was in West London and so I came down and asked him about it and he said, he said, ‘Well all sorts of jobs going,’ he said. It’s what you’re even qualified for. They don’t want pilots here. They want bus drivers.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to drive a bus.’ I knew he was only joking anyway. But in the end I got a job at EMI and it so happened he was working at EMI but he had no control over the things. And he had said to me, ‘Don’t get a job at EMI whatever you do.’ I went around all sorts of places and I have sympathy for anybody who is in a similar situation now. If they want a job and they keep going around different places and then they can’t get it. There was one there he said, ‘There’s one or two jobs going here,’ he said, ‘But the thing is that it’s likely that I’ll be retiring soon,’ he said. ‘And you’d have to wait a bit but if I take you on you can have my job.’ And when I went in to it a bit more I decided, no, I didn’t want it. And then I took a job in EMI and I said, ‘Now look I don’t want to sit behind a table all day long shifting bits of paper. I want something on the move.’ So, I finished up half the time doing something on the table and the next was to keep a department of EMI Records going. Which meant there were several aspects towards the keeping the smooth running going and you had to be sure you got all the bits and pieces coming and going. It wasn’t tremendously, shall we say, a money-making job but it kept me going. I could go on. It’s about time you had a cup of tea isn’t it?
CB: That’s sounds —
JS: My knee’s getting set.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Tom Sayer
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-07
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.
Format
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02:30:30 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASayerT151202
Conforms To
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Pending review
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
United States
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Tom Sayer was accepted in to the Royal Air Force as an apprentice and began training as a pilot as soon as he was old enough. He trained in the United States and on his return he was detached to Coastal Command. He completed eight operations patrolling for submarines before being posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where he completed his tour. His aircraft was badly damaged on one operation but he continued to the target and managed to get the aircraft back.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
10 OTU
102 Squadron
81 OTU
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Distinguished Flying Medal
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Horsa
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Pocklington
RAF St Eval
RAF Upwood
Stearman
submarine
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/514/8746/PGoodmanLS1501.2.jpg
4d6c119b0afafd239cd1395cc73a9296
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/514/8746/AGoodmanLS160407.1.mp3
7215a8a462ca34501fb64632597de4b4
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
Goodman, Benny
Lawrence Seymour Goodman
L S Goodman
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Goodman, LS
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Squadron Leader Lawrence 'Benny' Goodman (1920 - 2021, 1382530, 123893 Royal Air Force) and a memoir covering his activities from 1939 to 1945. He flew 30 operations as a pilot with 617 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Benny Goodman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re in Bracknell talking to Benny Goodman about his experiences in the RAF and today is the 7th of April 2016 and Benny is going to start off with his earliest recollections going through to what he did after the war. So what do you remember first Benny?
LBSG: When the war broke out you mean?
CB: No. When you, your earliest recollections of life.
LBSG: Oh.
CB: In the family.
LBSG: We lived, we’re Londoners from a long way back and I remember I was born in Maida Vale and lived there for the first five or six years of my life and then we moved to Hampstead and we lived there and we were still there when the war broke out.
CB: Keep going.
LBSG: Yes. I was -
CB: So you went to school locally.
LBSG: No.
CB: Right.
LBSG: I was a boarder. I was away at school.
CB: Where were you at school?
LBSG: In Herne Bay.
CB: In Herne Bay.
LBSG: Herne Bay College. Yes.
CB: Right. And if you just keep going on what you -
LBSG: Well, I left, yes, because my father -
CB: So -
LBSG: Had, I’ll keep going, an interest in an electrical engineering factory in Birmingham. It was considered that I should go up there and study at night and work during the day in the factory. I did this and found it fairly hard going doing, doing both things because there was no, very little free time. However, in September 1939 we all listened to a broadcast by the prime minister who told us that we were at war with Germany and so that of course made quite a difference to me. I decided to contact my parents. I was about a hundred miles from London at the time and discuss with my father what I wanted to do. I was only eight/nineteen, eighteen or nineteen at the time. It was agreed that I would go home and I decided I wanted to join the RAF. My father backed me up. My mother was horrified but in the end I went to a recruiting office at, in Brent, North London. It was the nearest RAF one and did all the necessary things to make sure that I would get in, get in to the RAF. Of course I said I wanted to be a pilot. And the officer, it was a flying officer who interviewed me raised his eyebrows. I didn’t really realise what that meant and I noticed he’d put down on the form that he was filling in for me ACH ACH/GD and I thought that meant that I was definitely going to start training as a pilot immediately. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. In due course I went for a general medical and when I passed that I was sent across to the RAF section to have an air crew medical which I passed and then we were, we had to be attested as we were volunteers and so we all had a little ceremony within the medical centre. About twenty of us took the oath of allegiance to the king and the crown and all the rest of it. I was then sent on leave for a little while, a few weeks, and got my call up papers and I thought this is it. I’m going to be a pilot in two weeks. Didn’t quite turn out like that. I went to Cardington, kitted out and we did a bit of marching which wasn’t really on the agenda. We didn’t realise we were there until we were posted and eventually, after about ten days we packed our kit bags and were marched off to a railway station and of course nobody had any idea where we were going but we ended up in Bridgenorth and we, and it was snowy, it was snowing, I beg your pardon and the roads were quite icy but we had to march up the hill from the station at Bridgnorth to Bridgenorth RAF camp and it was quite slippery but we all got to the top and we were all very wet behind the ears there’s no doubt about it. We had a flight sergeant barking at us and we ended up in a hut, about twenty of us, well maybe fifteen in a hut and there we went through six weeks of square bashing of every sort, type and description you could imagine. There was a corporal to every hut and he had a bunk to himself in the hut which was, part of our duty was to sweep his bunk out every day and make the bed and we did that of course. We had to. And we had various other delightful jobs as you can imagine. I can remember spending I think a week in the cookhouse peeling potatoes which didn’t impress me very much with, as you can imagine. However, we eventually got a posting, I and another chap and we were told we would be going to RAF Abingdon and we knew that was a straight through course on Whitleys. By straight through I mean you did ground school, you flew a Tiger Moth, and then an Anson and then a Whitley. So we had every hope that we were going to be on that course. There was no reason to suppose that we wouldn’t be. Things turned out rather differently. Instead of that we were sent to a dugout on the airfield and there was a nissen hut there with six beds in it. No, no sheets, no pillow cases, of course. Just blankets that didn’t smell very good and the latrine, latrines had to be dug out and there we lived for about six months and all thoughts of being pilots, we had become ground gunners. We didn’t know it until, until we had to learn all about ground gunning and how to take to pieces a cow gun, that’s a Coventry ordinance work gun, a Lewis watercool gun and so on and we did that pretty well because we were, we had to do it day and night we would, and the only part I remember, of course we had to name every part we, we’d handled but the only part name I can remember was the rear sear retainer keeper and I cannot tell you why I remember it nor do I really remember where it fitted. However, we were there for about six months and we were both quite fed up with it because it was four hours on and two hours off during the day and at night we had to patrol around the airfield every night and challenge anybody who was walking there. Well, we had to challenge, ask for the password and if we didn’t get the right answer we were supposed to arrest them. However, there was no option, we did have to challenge them because the station duty officer and the warrant officer and the orderly officer all at various times would come around with a couple of NCOs and if we didn’t challenge them we were in trouble and we challenged many more airmen and it was winter and they were trying to find their way in the blackout to a Whitley they were working on with their tool bag in one hand and to have some idiot airman like me challenge them saying, ‘Stop. Who goes there,’ And believe me we used to get some fruity juicy answers. We never got a password from them [laughs]. It would be more, would have been more than our life was worth if we’d really tried to try to stop them. I mean it would have been ridiculous. We could, we could see that. And the fear at the time when I was a ground gunner was that the Germans would invade by air at dawn. So at dawn we had to march around the perimeter track with, we always had, by the way one bullet up the spout. That’s one loaded in the, ready for firing but the safety catch was on and we marched around the perimeter track and for some reason we had to wear oxygen, I beg your pardon, gas masks. I don’t know why because if the Germans were dropping paratroops I can’t believe they were going to drop with gasmasks on. However, that was the order so that was it. Our food was brought out in hay boxes. Breakfast, lunch and a sort of tea, dinner and of course as warm as the hay boxes, hay boxes may have been by the time they got around to us on the other side of the airfield in a dugout it wasn’t very warm. But it is extraordinary, you get used to everything and after about three or four months this other chap and I had given up all hopes of becoming pilots or training and in our off duty by the way, we had a off duty half day and if we were lucky occasionally we’d get a pass in to the, go and walk into the local town, in Abingdon but if you could get past the SPs because you went to go, if you went to go out they had to inspect every inch of you and if they didn’t quite like the way your tie was tied or one button didn’t look properly shined then you were sent back and told to come back again so sometimes you never really got your half day off. I don’t know, we got used to it, it’s extraordinary and because we were very young I don’t think we took, I don’t think we got too, took too much umbridge about it and as, I think I’ve just said this other chap and I had given up any idea of being trained as pilots. We thought here we are and here we are going to stay but one day we were sent for and we wondered what we’d done but we were told we were going on a pilot’s course and we couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t at RAF Abingdon because the Whitley course that we saw was the last one that they, the straight through course was the last one and so we never had any hope of getting on that and we, I was sent to, this chap and I separated unfortunately. We’d become good friends by that time but we were separated and I went to a reception centre at Stratford on Avon. Now remember I’d been a ground gunner for six months and my uniform, to say the least, was tatty because we spent day and night in the, well, at night, walking around but days in the gun pit and sometimes we had, when we were off we, it wasn’t, we couldn’t get undressed, we slept in it. I mean everybody did and of course I looked really tatty and crumpled. There was no doubt about that. I walked in to the orderly room in the reception area at Stratford on Avon and somebody barked, ‘Airman you’re on a charge.’ And I looked around. I want to interrupt.
CB: Right.
LBSG: I want to interrupt.
CB: Oh you do. Right.
[machine pause]
LBSG: Am I? Are you ready? ‘Airman. You’re on a charge,’ and I looked around and there was nobody else, well there were people sitting there and working but and I thought, I think he means me. [laughs] So I got up to the desk and said, ‘Yes sergeant, reporting in.’ He said, ‘You’re on a charge airman’. And I said, well I thought it was me so I, ‘You are a disgrace to the service. Look at you.’ And I probably was because my uniform had been slept in and it was probably a bit muddy. I cleaned it as much as I could but you only had one uniform, two shirts, two pairs of socks and I think two pairs of underpants and that’s all we owned in life and no, certainly no other battle dress or cap and I tried to explain to him what I’d been and why I looked that way and he wasn’t in the least interested. He said, ‘You’re a disgrace to the service. You should have kept yourself in better condition.’ Something like that. In better condition. So I was, the next morning, I was, my feet hadn’t touched the ground there really. The next morning I was marched into the OCs office, he was a flying officer and he read the charge, he said, ‘What about this, Goodman?’ And I said, ‘Well sir what I’ve said is true. I’ve slept in the uniform in gun pits and all the rest of it and we don’t have another uniform to wear and that’s why it looks this way.’ He said, Well I do appreciate it but I’m afraid,’ he had to, obviously had to say this, ‘My sergeant is correct and you look very scruffy,’ and so on and so. I got seven days jankers but I wasn’t offered another uniform or another cap or anything so I still walked about. Anyhow, I was there for not very long fortunately. A week or ten days I think and I was posted to, to ITW at Cambridge. And this was really the beginning of the training for, to be a pilot and we had six weeks of intensive ground school and most of us passed out. One or two chaps failed and I felt jolly sorry for them because they had tried hard but I got through and by this time my friend, I think I’ve said this already, had separated. He’d gone somewhere else. I got through and really I’m afraid that’s what interested me most and I was sent to number 17 AFTS at Peterborough and did about forty eight or fifty hours flying on a Tiger Moth and when it was over I was sent for. I’m afraid I’ve always thought, the first thing that comes into my head, what have I done wrong because as an airmen there’s never any good news. If you are sent for there’s usually something wrong. And the flight commander who was a flight lieutenant said to me, ‘You’ve been posted to RAF Woodley,’ which was the Miles factory, the Miles, where they made the Magister, and all, the Martinet and all the rest of them and, ‘You’re going to be an instructor.’ And I thought I don’t want to be an instructor. I’ve only just learned to fly the Tiger Moth. So I went there and we flew Magisters and they of course had brakes and flaps which I’d never seen before in my life and I was supposed to be training as an instructor. Anyhow, I did my, I really didn’t want to be one but I was there and then when I finished there I was posted to, I was going sorry, I was going to Clyffe Pypard, I think it was, as a holding unit. Ok.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: I went to Clyffe Pypard as a holding unit and from there we were posted to Canada and I was told I was going to, I think it was 33 SFTS at Carberry and I thought I was going to be instructor but I wasn’t. I was going to learn to fly twin engine aircraft. Ansons. And that for me, I’d only flown these very light aircraft and for me that was a real, absolutely really big step up and so I did the Anson course and night flying was included. The first time I’d ever done that and I must say I take my hat off to the instructor who was with me for the first night circuit because I was all over the sky. We weren’t taught instrument flying by the way, before, they, so I was looking at the instruments at night for the first time, the artificial horizon and all the rest of it never having really relied on them in my day training so for the first circuit I was all over the place, I really was, up and down and the chap just sat there. The instructor. He didn’t say a word and I thought this can’t be right but I managed a circuit of some sort and we came in on the approach and he gave me a couple of hints on the approach. Of course although I’d done quite a bit of flying on the Anson by this time in the day to do it first time at night first time you’d ever flown at night was quite different. Anyhow, I made some sort of a landing and he said, ‘Well yes, ok you’ll be on the, you’ll be flying tomorrow. Night. And if you improve a bit you can go solo,’ and the thought of that terrified me [laughs] I thought I’ve hardly had real control of the aircraft all the time and if the chap hadn’t, the instructor hadn’t been sitting next to me I think I might have given up but I knew he was there if I made any mistakes. Anyhow, we did a few circuits and bumps and he said, ‘You can go solo,’ and again the thought terrified me but he, he sent me solo and I think we did, I did one circuit and bump and came in and he said, ‘Ok Goodman. That’s fine. And you’ll be on the roster tomorrow night, on the duty, you’ll be flying tomorrow night,’ and you’ll do whatever else it was and that’s, ‘You’re well forward now on your completed training.’ And we had to do three cross countries as navigator because in those days when Hampdens were still flying and Wellingtons, I think Whitleys had stopped by then but Hampdens certainly were flying and Wellingtons were. The first fifteen trips when you were on an operational squadron was usually, not always, flown as a navigator, by the chap who was a pilot. I suppose they didn’t, in those days, have enough. I don’t know why but anyhow I think that was part of the pre-war influence. I don’t know. There were observers but I’m not sure in those days how fully trained as navigators they were. Please forgive me all you people who wear O’s because they were highly distinguished and my own bomb aimer was an observer and he used to put me in my place [laughs] that is when I got on the squadron, in 617, yeah. So I passed there and then I thought well I am on my way back now surely. Not a bit of it. I was sent to RAF Kingston, Ontario as an instructor but horrifyingly I was going to instruct acting leading naval airmen. Now, I didn’t have a clue about landing on, or jinking after take-off or dive bombing or any of the things they were being trained for so the flight commander was, they were all experienced chaps except me. I’d never been on ops and during the war that was really a black mark whether you could help it or not. If you hadn’t done an operational tour not even the students looked up to you really. However, there it was and we, one of the, we had a fleet air arm chap and one or two other seasoned pilots in the flight and of course the flight commander and he took me up and it was a Harvard by the way. An important point. It was Harvards. Now, I’d never flown an aircraft with a VP prop and a retractable undercarriage. The Anson was the nearest I ever got and we had to wind the undercarriage up so you didn’t wind it up unless you were doing a cross country so it was a whole new world to me and he took me up and he said, ‘Well you’re an instructor and that’s the end of it but you’re going to learn to fly this,’ and after about an hour and a half again he shook me to the core, he said, ‘Ok you can go solo.’ Do this, that and the other and, ‘I’ll be watching you.’ ‘Yes you will.’ And come in and we’ll have a talk. So I took this mighty beast off, this Harvard, which was a mighty beast to me. It was a beautiful aeroplane actually. I loved flying it when I got used to it. It was fully aerobatic which was wonderful and for me it had lots of ergs. Bags of power. And so I went solo and then he took me up a couple of times and said, ‘Right. You don’t know anything about naval training but you know about, you’re an instructor so I will show you you’re, the first lesson you’ll do and then you’ll go up and do it and then the second lesson, and so on.’ And so I progressed through the syllabus and by the time I left there I was teaching them about dive bombing and jinking after take-off. Everything you would get court martialled for in the RAF but of course it was the royal, it was the Fleet Air Arm and this is what they were being taught to do. And I had a thoroughly good time. I was a pilot officer. There was no room for me in the mess so I lived in digs and I bought a car. It was a, with a dickie seat. That is, it was a two seater but it had a flap you could open at the back and two people could sit inside, outside as it were but it was wonderful. I had a car of my own. I was only twenty one. I was living in digs. And I was a flying instructor in the air force. I thought I was dreaming actually. I did. Well I had a thoroughly good time of course there’s no doubt about that when I was doing it and we were then, myself and another few chaps who’d got no operational experience were posted back to the UK to go on ops. So we went back and we went to a holding unit in Bournemouth. Oh by the way on the way back, on my first trip back, twenty four hours out we were torpedoed. Fortunately, an American destroyer took most of the torpedo, it blew up with a lot of lives lost but we got damaged. We were going around in circ, the rudder was done. We had no rudder at all and other damage was done but when they had got it all fixed up we were going around in the Atlantic at that night in circles because there was no steering gear and we all thought he’s going to come back and finish us off, that U-boat but he must have run out of torpedoes. I can think of no other reason for him not sinking us. I really can’t. So we went back to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then we were put on a train which we stayed on for five days. Our food was supplied and it was just the ordinary compartment. When we all wanted to clean our teeth just the ordinary passenger way, we would go and have a pee or whatever, we would go to the lavatory or there was a wash basin so we took it in turns to clean our teeth and wash ourselves but nothing like a shower or anything like that and food was given to us and we went all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia by train to New York. I think it took five days and there we embarked, [paused] I’ve left something out, did I say we were torpedoed?
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And there we embarked on the Queen Mary and we were the only, there weren’t many of us, about a dozen I think, there was a, the OC troops was an American officer, a colonel and all the troops apart from us were Americans and so we were very much in the minority on a British ship and I can remember before we sailed the OC troops called us all together in one of the big halls that the Queen Mary had obviously and there were seats there and all of us, all the officers together and he said, ‘I want you to remember this. You’re officers and if anything happens, if we’re torpedoed you will be the last to leave.’ And the other few RAF chaps and myself looked at each other because we’d just been torpedoed [laughs] and we didn’t think much of that statement frankly but we got back safely and of course we had good food, being American and we were put through quite a rigorous, I remember when we arrived on board, a rigorous American medical. The fact that we’d got our RAF medicals didn’t mean a thing to them. We had a thorough, I don’t know whether it was army, yes American army medical I suppose and they passed us fit. I often wonder what they would have done if they hadn’t passed us fit. We were, by that time we were sailing, I mean, but anyhow they passed us fit and we got back safely to the UK. I hadn’t got, I omitted to say this before, but I hadn’t got any luggage of any sort. I just had my shaving kit and I hadn’t even got my logbooks or anything. They were all in my trunk which presumed were ruined and nobody knows what happened. They didn’t know whether they’d floated out or anything and so when I got there they asked me how many flying hours I’d got. I said well you’ll have to take my word for it but I can remember them roughly and I wrote them down in my new logbook and I went to, when we got back I went to Spitalgate, Grantham for what was called a UK, sorry -
CB: It’s ok.
LBSG: Can you switch off?
CB: Yeah.
[machine paused]
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Ok. So start again.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Or continue. Yeah. So you got back yeah. When you got back.
LBSG: When I got back we were sent eventually to RAF Spitalgate which was Grantham for an acclimatisation course which meant we had to learn to fly without any lights and without any help from anywhere. You couldn’t call up, apart from at night you had a system called darkie and if you really got lost at night then you called up darkie. Switch off.
[machine paused]
LBSG: And -
CB: No. No. No. No. So when you were lost you had to do a call sign and that said?
LBSG: Did I mention night flying or what?
CB: This is night flying isn’t it? Yes.
LBSG: Yes. Could I -
CB: So say it. Go on.
LBSG: Night flying of course was rather different in the UK because there were no lights, no aids. Scattered around the country there were, not very many, a few master beacons. They flashed red symbols, I beg your pardon, Morse code characters and if you were lucky, if you were lost at night, you might see one of these but there weren’t many in the whole country but you had to do this cross country at night in Oxfords with just a ground wireless op in the back in case you got lost. He would try to get a QDM to somewhere. And I always felt very sorry for these wireless men because they weren’t aircrew. They were ground crew and they must have hated it. Anyhow, most of us managed to do, get through this without any trouble and I was sent to, to Market, Market Harborough I think it was, Market Harborough to do a Wellington, Wellington OCU and across to and began my flying on Wellington 1Cs at Saltby which was the, which was the -
CB: The OTU.
LBSG: N. It was part of the [pause] satellite.
CB: Oh yes.
LBSG: Satellite for Market Harborough. Unfortunately I fell ill and I was sent to a hospital, RAF Wroughton, and didn’t get my full flying category back for some time. I lost my crew of course. They went on flying with somebody else and then when I did get a flying category I had to, I couldn’t go straight for training. The powers that be insisted I got some flying in so I was sent to an OTU to fly the Martinet which did dummy air attacks on, rather which did air, dummy air attacks on Wellingtons for the training, to train air gunners, would-be air gunners. I made a mess of that.
CB: That’s ok. That’s fine.
LBSG: To train would-be air gunners.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: In addition to that I did the drogue towing when they had live air to air firing which never made me very comfortable because they were all UT, Under Training that is and not qualified. Whilst there I met an observer who’d also been grounded and we struck up a great friendship and when the time came for us both to get our A1G1, that is the full flying category back we got it together fortunately and we asked if we could be posted together and for some, and it was granted which was quite unusual and then we were sent to, we were sent to an RAF station and pitched in amongst a lot of other air crew and there you walked around and spoke to people and believe it or not that’s how you chose your crew. True. From there we went to -
CB: So this was at the OTU.
LBSG: OTU yes. Did I say I’d been in hospital? I did, I think.
CB: You did.
LBSG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And your OTU was Silverstone.
LBSG: Yes. That’s right. From there we went to OTU at Silverstone and thence to the Lanc Finishing School at Syerston. Syerston or Syston?
CB: Syerston.
LBSG: Syerston yeah. At the end of the course I was sent for by the flight commander and the whole crew said to me, ‘What the hell have you done now, Benny?’ And I said, ‘Well I can think of nothing,’ and they all laughed and said, ‘Oh yeah.’ Of course, they didn’t believe me, of course. Anyhow, I went in and I was horrified when I went in. There was the flight commander, wing commander flying and two or three other officers, squadron leaders and a wing, I think a wing commander and I thought I really am in trouble this time and I couldn’t think of anything I’d done, for a change, that merited this show of high, high class brass as it were. Anyhow, they asked me a few questions and I realised that this had, it couldn’t be to do with something I’d done wrong and then suddenly one said to me, ‘You’ve done pretty well here Goodman and your bombing results are good and your flying’s good.’ I said, ‘Thank you sir.’ He said, ‘How would you like to join 617 squadron?’ And I said, ‘What was that sir?’ [laughs] He said, ‘How would you like to join 617 squadron?’ I said, ‘I would be delighted and I know my crew would be.’ And that’s how we got posted to 617. Shall I go on?
CB: Ahum.
LBSG: When we arrived there of course we, we felt like mice there. All the famous names that had been on the squadron. One or two were still on it and I crept around really like a little mouse. I was frightened to show my face half the time because I thought I’m a sprog crew. I’ve never been on ops. What on earth are they going to think of me? And believe it or not, well not believe it or not I think you will believe it I was made so welcome by everybody that I felt pretty good in the end. Of course we had to do the squadron training. They had the SABS bomb sight which was the only, we were and still are I believe the only squadron that has ever had that sight but if you flew properly and that’s what 617 squadron was all about then you could guarantee if not a direct hit a pretty damn close one. Damn. Is that alright. I said damn. Yeah. Have to be so careful these days.
CB: Don’t worry about it.
LBSG: Yeah. We, we got through the training successfully and I did my first trip as a second dickie or co-pilot with flying officer Bob Knights and I couldn’t have been given a better chap if I’d chosen out of a hundred. To give you the feel of his value Bob was the flight lieutenant but had a DSO awarded and all those who understand that will know the real value of the man.
CB: Absolutely.
LBSG: The flight was to La Pallice. It was a French, a French port and we bombed successfully and came back and then I went to see the wing commander, Wing Commander Tait and he said ok. He’d spoken to Bob Knights obviously and Bob said ok or, ‘ was good enough’ I suppose, I don’t know and he said, ‘Ok. You and your crew will be on the next trip.’ I went back and told and everybody jumped for joy and our next trip in fact was to Brest. The U-boat pens at Brest. And of course being a sprog crew something was bound to happen wasn’t it? And halfway across the sea, on our way the wireless op said, no, I beg your pardon the flight deck filled with smoke and I said to the wireless op, ‘What’s going on at the back?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry skip. The navigator and I are trying to put out the fire.’ [laughs] ‘The radios have caught fire.’ I said, ‘Oh great.’ Remember this was our first trip. I said, ‘Well the one thing we’re not going to do is turn back. This is 617 and there’s no way we’re going to turn back so you’d better get the bloody fire out.’ And I opened my DV panel. That’s the direct vision panel and tried to get the smoke out. Of course fortunately it was daytime but it was all over the, all over the flight deck. I mean, I could just about, I couldn’t see the instruments very well and but I could see out of the side panel, of course it was open and the DV was open so we managed to fly more or less on course until they put the fire out and then we continued on the op. And if anything was going to happen I suppose it would be on a first trip. After that we, apart from enemy action everything went very well, very well on the squadron. We had some, obviously brushes one way and another with the Luftwaffe and certainly with ackack and I always remember we had a wonderful bunch of ground crew and by the way I take my hat off to them. Nobody ever thinks about the ground crew but they were there day and night, winter, summer, pouring with rain, ice, snow or very hot they were always there when we came, before we left and when we came back. Always there to usher, to wave us into our dispersal and to look after us and to find out if there were any, if there were any snags and woe betide us if we’d been damaged by flak because they said, ‘What have you done to our aeroplane? Look at the holes in it.’ or whatever it was and all very good heartedly of course and they were the cream of the, they really were the cream, as far as far as I was concerned. They were the cream. Unsung heroes all of them. I don’t know anybody who got an award and they deserve some mention but as far as I know there’s never been a mention of them and it’s so unjust. Am I taking too -
CB: That’s alright. Just stop there a mo.
LBSG: Am I taking too -
[machine pause] 4019
CB: So with the ground crew you were getting on really well with them.
LBSG: Yeah. Yeah
CB: And they were another part of the family really.
LBSG: Yes. Yes. The ground crew really were another part of our family and I can never understand why there was no tribute paid to them or no mention of them at any time in the huge part they played. Without them we wouldn’t be flying. And that still applies today. We did have one or two hairy trips I suppose on, on the squadron. I can remember so vividly still we deployed after the first abortive trip to sink the Tirpitz from a Russian forward base. We did one from Lossiemouth. We did two from Lossiemouth in fact but on the first one take-off was midnight from Lossiemouth and we were all lined up around the peri track, and people were, the perimeter track and people were taking off in turn and it was nearly our turn and suddenly my, I was looking around the cockpit just finally, everything had been done but you do, probably nervousness I don’t know, will keep you thinking about something. Not nervousness I don’t mean but just to keep you thinking about something and my flight engineer he used to sit by you in the dickie seat for all ops and he’d adjust the throttles or the props or anything you wanted. Synchronise them and of course he followed up on take-off and on landing. He used to, you’d call out the settings and he’d set, just minus four, minus two whatever it was and that’s how you’d come in but he suddenly nudged me, and he was a Scotsman who never used one word if half a word would do so I thought what does he want? He suddenly nudged me and he went like this and I looked up and there was the huge undercarriage of a Lancaster heading straight for us. Straight for us. It wasn’t maybe ten or twenty feet off the ground. Fortunately they cleared us and when we got back of course we found out what had happened and it was Tony Iveson who was taking off before us and he had an engine surge on take-off and so the aircraft swung off the runway and straight towards the parked aircraft which happened to be me facing him and but for the good background training and the alertness and the crew cooperation of his, he and his flight engineer there would have been a disaster but they straightened the aircraft by levelling the propellers above the throttles and then putting them up again and Tony Iveson just cleared the top of our cockpit. Just cleared it. That’s a very good start to a long trip. It was from Lossiemouth, it was pitch dark, it was midnight I think, pouring with rain and we were going low level over the North Sea all the way to the coasting-in point at Norway. What a good start. However, apart from that we all rendezvoused over the rendezvous point over the coast, Norway at daylight just as we were told to and Wing Commander Tait was leading of course and we formed up in to the gaggle and made our way to the Tirpitz and bombed it, or tried to. Unfortunately there was a lot of cloud. They’d put up a smokescreen anyhow but in addition to that there was a lot of cloud so it was an aborted trip. Thirteen and a quarter hours in total and we brought the bombs back. The Tallboys back. So the whole trip was thirteen and a quarter hours and that was the second Tirpitz effort. The third one was a repeat of the second one but the weather was clear and we bombed and I understand that Wing Commander Tait bombed first. His bomb made a direct hit on the Tirpitz.
CB: What could you see from that height?
LBSG: I didn’t see very much because we were following a Target Direction Indicator on the [combing of the] cockpit. It was the bomb aimer who was directing. He didn’t say left or right. He was adjusting his bomb sight and as he did so the target direction indicator came up and one degree looked about that big so he could, he could really show a one degree turn and you’d try it looked so big you would try to do it but you did do it, you’d try and that’s how we we kept within five nautical miles, five miles of our airspeed fifty feet in height and of course with the TDI we had to keep absolutely directly on track and that really I was only part of the team, the pilot. There was the navigator who had to make sure that the bomb aimer had the correct winds and the right temperature and that everything was set and he had the job of making sure when the bomb was to go. The navigator was very important with all the information he had and I was just sitting there like an auto pilot following this TD, Target Direction Indicator. TDI. So really I was the least important of them all. As long as I flew the right course at the right height and the right speed the others were doing the job and there it was, that’s how it was with all 617 squadron ops. With the SABS we did practice for a low level trip but that was a very, we practiced low level at night, five hundred or a thousand feet, on resin lights. They were the very very dim lights on the rear of the, on the, how do we describe it?
[machine pause]
CB: Right we’re just talking about lights.
LBSG: Yes. We did. Can I repeat?
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: We practised a gaggle at night and had to, it was called a formation at night but it was very difficult to fly. We did it on the resin lights which were on the wing root of the aircraft you were trying to formate on. It was very difficult at night with a lot of aeroplanes but we managed to do it. It was all over Lincolnshire and everybody got back safely but it was deemed too dangerous to do again.
CB: In the night.
LBSG: Yes at night. Or operationally at all. I think, I think the feeling was we might have gone at night. The whole thing at night.
CB: I see. Right.
LBSG: But there you are. We never did it and I think everybody was thankful including, I believe, the squadron commander. Of course, it was really dicey. They’re a big aeroplane to throw around at night. A Lancaster. We just tried to formate but not too closely on the resin lights which shone so dimly. But there it is.
CB: You didn’t collide. Nobody had a collision.
LBSG: No. No sir.
CB: No. Ok. So in essence the Tirpitz raids were daylight because it wasn’t practical to do it at night.
LBSG: Well night day. We took off at night.
CB: Yes. But you arrived in daylight.
LBSG: Pardon me. We coasted in about daylight. Yeah. Excuse me.
CB: Ok. So coasting in means crossing the coast.
LBSG: Crossing the coast. Yes. And that was our rendezvous point. I think I said that.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: I hope. If I made any mistakes please tell me.
CB: That’s alright. Yeah.
LBSG: I don’t know, where were we? Do I need to go -
CB: So this was on the second raid.
LBSG: I finished with that.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: And the third raid sank it.
CB: Yes the third raid sank it.
LBSG: Yeah. It was a repeat of the second. There’s no point going through it all again.
CB: No. Ok.
LBSG: Right. Now, what else?
CB: So after that what did you do?
LBSG: I’ll have to get my logbook out to find out.
CB: Ok. But in principal after you’d done the Tirpitz there was nothing else to do there.
LBSG: No.
CB: But you were a precision bombing squadron so -
LBSG: Yes. Yes.
CB: What were you focusing on mainly then?
LBSG: Well we always had a particular target rather than area bombing but there weren’t many terribly specialised targets like the dams or the Tirpitz but we did what we were told to do and, I hope, successfully. We did have a shot at the Mohne, and Eder or Sorpe.
CB: Sorpe.
LBSG: Sorpe dams but with no result. We had Tallboys and they were absolutely not fit for the job. It was just a shot in the dark I think but we never did any damage. Or very appreciable damage.
CB: It was too soft.
LBSG: Yes, I imagine. Yes.
CB: Because it was an earth dam.
LBSG: It wasn’t the right bomb and it was built, I think the dam, the Mohne and the Sorpe were built in different ways, I think. I don’t know.
CB: Well the Sorpe’s an earthwork dam.
LBSG: Yes. Yeah. That’s right. Yes.
CB: So it absorbs -
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: The impact.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Explosion.
LBSG: I don’t know. I can tell you about -
CB: So did you go on to U-boat target pens?
LBSG: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: So was that immediately after that?
LBSG: I’d better get my –
CB: Well we’ll stop for a mo anyway shall we?
LBSG: Yes. Yes.
[machine pause]
LBSG: I think October the 29th
CB: So we’re talking about the Tirpitz now.
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: And the date of your, the third attempt to get it.
LBSG: Second. Second attempt.
CB: Second attempt.
LBSG: I was in hospital for the third one.
CB: Ok. So that was what date?
LBSG: 29th of October 1944.
CB: Right. Ok.
LBSG: 29th. 30th because -
CB: Yeah. Overnight. Yeah.
LBSG: We weren’t we were talking about something else weren’t we?
CB: No. No but it’s just to put that into context.
LBSG: Oh.
CB: Because it can go back.
LBSG: What do you want me to say?
CB: Yes. And so on the first raid you did what was the date of that? On the Tirpitz sortie.
LBSG: Yes. The first raid that I carried out -
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: Was, on the Tirpitz was on October the 29th
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: 1944.
CB: Right. And then the next one. The second one you did.
LBSG: I was in hospital so I didn’t go.
CB: You didn’t do the next one.
LBSG: I didn’t do the next one.
CB: No.
LBSG: Unfortunately.
CB: Right ok. So after the Tirpitz.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Then what did you do?
LBSG: Well it’s what -
CB: What sorties did you, were they, because you were precision bombing all the time -
LBSG: Yes. Well we went, after the Tirpitz we went after various dams. The earth dam.
CB: Oh yeah.
LBSG: At Heimbach.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And then the E&R boat pens at Ijmuiden in Holland and then -
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: It was quite a long night trip in December 1944 to Perlitz which is Stettin.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: To destroy the synthetic oil plant there.
CB: Right.
LBSG: To deny the Germans fuel for their aircraft and tanks and anything else.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: And that was a long trip. It was, it took twelve hours and fifty and thirty five minutes.
CB: There and back.
LBSG: There and back.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: Yes. Sorry. Erase that.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: That was, it took nine hours and twenty five minutes at night.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: It was a night trip.
CB: Ok. And on the long night trips what did you do when you got hungry? Did you take food with you?
LBSG: Well we were supplied with food and coffee but -
CB: What would that be?
LBSG: But I can never remember eating anything.
CB: Oh really.
LBSG: I may have drunk some coffee. I think on the way back from the Tirpitz I did but I don’t think I ate anything at the time because we had, we had something to eat obviously before we left but there was nobody to fly the aircraft if I was going to sit there drinking coffee and having a sandwich. Of course there was one pilot and of course no autopilot.
CB: No.
LBSG: So if I decided to let go of the controls it wouldn’t be a very good idea. There was nobody else to fly it.
CB: And so after -
LBSG: People did of course. They could, you could sup coffee and you could eat a sandwich but I never really, I had coffee I think but never, never took, never had a sandwich I don’t think.
CB: And what height were you normally flying?
LBSG: I can tell, it varied. Up to eighteen thousand feet. We flew anything between twelve or fourteen and eighteen thousand feet.
CB: Are we talking about a mixture of free flowing bombs or only Tallboys?
LBSG: I’m talking about only Tallboys.
CB: Right. Ok. So in that case you needed to be a certain height for them -
LBSG: Yes. That’s right. We did. Yes.
CB: To reach the speed that was needed didn’t you?
LBSG: And we needed to be, have I mentioned it, needed the correct air speed to be flown.
CB: No. So what, so tell us the envelope you were operating.
LBSG: Well I -
CB: So the airspeed -
LBSG: I’m fairly sure, without knowing, because we were just given the bombing heights.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: That we never, we certainly never bombed less than sixteen to eighteen thousand feet.
CB: Right. And -
LBSG: Are we being recorded?
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: Oh.
CB: And what airspeed would you be going, roughly?
LBSG: A hundred and twenty five I suppose. I don’t –
CB: A bit more than that.
LBSG: What with the bomb doors open?
CB: Right. That’s what I’m asking. Yeah. So you approach, what sort of speed would you cruise first of all? On the way out say. Would you -
LBSG: I don’t know.
CB: Set it at a hundred and eighty or -
LBSG: No. Pardon me. A hundred and eighty miles an hour.
CB: Yeah. Or not?
LBSG: I just cannot remember. I’m sorry.
CB: It doesn’t matter. The reason I’m asking the question -
LBSG: That’s rather fast by the sound of it but it wasn’t –
CB: I’m just getting a feel for -
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: What happens in terms of going out there?
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: And then do you change speed when you’re, because you’re doing such precision bombing.
LBSG: Yes, you, well -
CB: Do you have a different speed that is lower, faster or what?
LBSG: Well when the bomb doors are open of course it slows the aircraft.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: But you do have to settle down on a speed and I can’t remember it.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: And we were supposed to be within fifty feet of height and five miles an hour airspeed.
CB: Right.
LBSG: And we all kept to that.
CB: Right.
LBSG: Without no doubt.
CB: So we’re talking about there’s a very -
LBSG: Precision bomb. Precision.
CB: Yes precision is very specific -
LBSG: Absolutely.
CB: On all these things.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: That are worked out in advance are they?
LBSG: Yes. [pause] No. Sorry they’re not worked out in advance. You have to fly within five miles an hour and of course it wasn’t nautical miles then it was miles per hour.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: Of airspeed and within fifty feet of height and the bomb aimer would be given a set of settings by the navigator so that he corrected for temperature and height and wind and so on as much as the navigator could do it all. Obviously -
CB: Right. Yeah.
VT: So you were just told what to -
LBSG: Yes I -
VT: The bomb aimer was telling you wasn’t he?
LBSG: I could have been an auto pilot really.
VT: Yeah. Yeah.
LBSG: And the important people were the bomb aimer and the navigator really.
CB: Yeah but you were actually translating those instructions into a very -
LBSG: Yes I was but yeah.
CB: Specific held, tightly held speed and height.
LBSG: Oh you had to yes.
CB: So there was a skill in that that was greater than normal bombing.
LBSG: Yes but that’s why you were on 617 squadron.
CB: Exactly.
LBSG: Are we being recorded?
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: Oh. Ok.
CB: That’s fine.
LBSG: Yeah. That’s why we were on 617 squadron. All of us.
CB: Yeah. Yeah
LBSG: Once we passed the test if you like.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And of course if you weren’t up to scratch although I didn’t meet anybody who wasn’t but, but you could get kicked off and that would have been terrible for anybody.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: I mean you worked hard to stay, to stay on the squadron.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: There’s no doubt. Nobody wanted to leave it.
CB: No.
LBSG: Nobody.
CB: So how much by this time how much is daylight and how much is at night?
LBSG: At this time a lot more was in daylight although we trained for night bombing and we did, as I say, quite long trips. Nine hours and twenty five minutes to Stettin, Berlitz or, as an example. That’s quite a long trip of mine.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
LBSG: Yes. I don’t know the long –
CB: So what else have you got on your logbook there?
LBSG: Well, of interest on January the 12th 1945. Are we recording?
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
LBSG: We were briefed for a daylight on Bergen. The port.
CB: In Norway.
LBSG: Bergen in Norway yes. The port. And we had an escort of fighters but they had gone down, we were quite high on this occasion, we were, well we were always high, but, and they’d gone down to try and silence the ackack guns. There were an awful lot of them around the port and as they did so a m I think they were outside of a squadron of Focke Wulf 190s which was the latest or a mixture of that and the Messerschmitt but certainly there were a lot of fighters over the target and that was when Tony Iveson got shot up badly and he got a DFC for getting everything home. Although three of his crew baled out they weren’t, there was no communication, they thought, they’d been told to stand by and when they heard nothing else they thought that the thing had been shot up so badly so three of them baled out but you couldn’t blame them but two or three of them remained with Tony and they got the aircraft back. They used ropes to tie things up and it was an extraordinary feat and Tony Iveson put it down, I think it was certainly it was in the Shetlands or around there, one of the islands and he got an immediate DFC and certainly earned it. Certainly earned it. It’s a pity that his flight engineer who did so much towards helping Tony fly it because he couldn’t move the rudders by himself for example, he had to have an oppy sitting down there moving the rudders. The flight engineer. But anyhow there it was. I’m not criticising anybody I mean -
CB: No.
LBSG: It’s as they saw it. Not the crew. That’s how the command saw it.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
LBSG: And all the rest of it. But that was a dicey trip, Bergen. We were lucky to get away. I think we had three shot down altogether.
CB: Did you?
LBSG: Two or three yeah. Yes. Of course our fighters, they must have been Mustangs because Spitfires could never have made it to Bergen in Norway. They must have been Mustangs. And they went away and shot, went down and shot away the ackack and lo and behold these fighters came and really tried to make mincemeat of us. They did. Well obviously they did. We were lucky.
CB: It didn’t sound a very good tactic did it? You should have, they should have left some fighters up top.
LBSG: Well yeah.
CB: Anyway -
LBSG: Yes. I mean we weren’t told, we weren’t told about the fighter -
CB: No.
LBSG: What the fighter tactics were.
CB: After Bergen where did you go?
LBSG: Oh all over the place. Went to [?]
CB: Is that a port?
LBSG: That was the Midget U-boat pens.
CB: Oh yes.
LBSG: They were a great menace. And we did the Bielefeld Viaduct.
CB: Oh yes.
VT: Oh right.
LBSG: And it was the Beilefeld, yes it was the Bielefeld.
CB: We talked about Tallboys but did you also do Grand Slam?
LBSG: Yes, I, yes.
CB: Because that was Bielefield wasn’t it?
LBSG: I did. I dropped a Grand Slam. I was on, I think the second or third on the squadron. Not many were dropped altogether. Only forty one were made and certainly not that amount were dropped I don’t think.
CB: No.
LBSG: But anyhow I dropped a Grand Slam on the Arnsberg Viaduct in March 1945. Now, it was important for the winning of the war that all lines of communication were severed so our targets were viaducts, railway bridges which they are, ordinary bridges, railway lines and so on because that stopped them bringing up troops.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And food and ammunition and all the rest of it. So lines of communication were certainly the target.
CB: So how did that do on that viaduct?
LBSG: Well yes. It -
CB: Brought it down.
LBSG: Yes it brought, but then look what they did with the dams. They had that up and working again in two or three weeks. They were masters at repairing things quickly.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And then we went back and bombed it again but nevertheless they -
CB: It was disruptive.
LBSG: They were a pretty tough adversary. They were. And -
CB: Sure.
LBSG: Able to, they weren’t, they were not stolid. They were versatile in their thinking. If they needed something then that would be done in the order it was needed.
CB: So just for the background of people listening to this -
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: The Grand Slam is a twenty two thousand pound bomb.
LBSG: That’s right.
CB: What modification was there made to the aircraft and did the crew amount change when you did that?
LBSG: Yes. It did. Well it changed when we went to the Tirpitz. We only had five people I think. If you could pass me what I’ve written I could tell you.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: I know it but it would be much easier.
CB: Yeah. But just quickly on the, you had to take, did you lose -
LBSG: Be careful with that.
CB: The mid upper gunner when you were doing -
LBSG: No. No. I’ll have that back. Doing what?
CB: When you took a Grand Slam which member of the crew -
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Did you not take?
LBSG: The Grand Slam. One, two, three. No, we took, we took the, we took the gunners. We didn’t take the wireless op.
CB: Right.
LBSG: For some reason. We took the gunners and we, yes because they’re necessary in daylight but we did anyhow but sometimes we took even fewer. On the Tirpitz we took [pause] sorry about this.
CB: It’s ok. We’re just looking in the -
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: Logbook.
LBSG: Yeah. The Tirpitz. It was a full crew. No. I’m talking nonsense sorry. On the Tirpitz. Where am I? [pause]. Nothing. The Tirpitz. One, two, three there were five crew and not seven.
CB: Right.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: So you would have, we’re talking about Tallboys.
LBSG: Five not including me sorry.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: We left-
CB: So six. Yeah.
LBSG: We left behind the rear gunner. Yeah. Unless, we took one gunner. He may have filled the rear gunner’s position but I can tell you.
CB: Well the wireless operators were often -
LBSG: Hmmn?
CB: The wireless operators were often -
LBSG: Oh we took him.
CB: Wireless and gunner weren’t they?
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: Originally.
LBSG: We took the wireless op because he was, not that it helped much but he was getting winds which weren’t as good as we were getting. I relied, I had a wonderful navigator and I took his word on anything rather than having command winds sent to us by -
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
LBSG: Some Mosquito somewhere.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
LBSG: I was looking for something here. You asked me to check.
CB: Ok. We’re just going to -
LBSG: And I can’t remember it.
CB: Well, we’ll come back to that.
LBSG: Yeah.
VT: Is your logbook as alive today as it was when you wrote it?
LBSG: What?
VT: Your logbook.
LBSG: Yes.
VT: Is it as alive to you today?
LBSG: Yes as I wrote it and when we came back from a trip.
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: Yeah. It’s a bit fragile but you can have a look at it if you want to.
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: The interesting thing I think about the later times is what sort of targets you were talking about and what was the, the Grand Slam was used for a particular reason for a particular target.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: So what was that?
LBSG: Well I dropped mine on the viaduct.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: And that was a particular target but I suppose one Grand Slam certainly did make a mess. There’s no doubt about the targets but I can’t tell you the thinking behind it I’m afraid. I was a squadron pilot.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: I had no, I obeyed orders and took what I was told to take. Nobody discussed the theory of it with me or -
CB: Right. No. Quite.
LBSG: The tactics.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: Or anything else.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: The squadron commander knew but I didn’t.
CB: But the Tallboy was a big bomb in itself of twelve thousand pounds.
LBSG: That was a twelve thousand pound bomb. Yes.
CB: And had huge penetration as well.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And so was and of course the twenty two thousand pound was a huge one. There were only, I think, forty one made and I believe I was certainly the third or fourth on the squadron to drop one.
CB: Right. Well they worked.
LBSG: We dropped them. Hmmn?
CB: Yeah. They worked.
LBSG: Yeah. But a massive thing. And we did have an undercarriage, different undercarriage. I think we had -
CB: To get a greater height.
LBSG: We had, I think it was a Lincoln. I just, that’s what I wanted this for. Have a look.
CB: You were –
LBSG: Oh the Grand Slam. Yes. Just a sec. Yes, if you, are you interested?
CB: Yes.
LBSG: Well for the Grand Slam the Lincoln undercarriage was fitted rather than our own. They’d allowed for the increased weight.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: The mid upper and front turret were removed.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: That’s the gunners or one gunner at least and the wireless operator’s equipment and the wireless operator himself so we had a pretty skeleton crew when we -
CB: Simply because the bomb was so heavy.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: They needed to save -
LBSG: Well -
CB: Weight.
LBSG: Yes. The other thing that came out was the armour plating -
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And that -
CB: Behind you -
LBSG: And the pilot’s union didn’t like that because we had armour plating behind us. However, it was all taken out and the ammunition load was reduced so we couldn’t, yeah, there we are and it was all to save weight. The bomb doors were removed and they were replaced with fairings and a chain link strop with an electromechanical mechanism release was fitted to hold the Grand Slam in place.
CB: Right.
LBSG: And the electric, electromechanical release worked very well. You could hear it. I know it sounds strange but you actually heard it go, in the air, eighteen thousand feet.
CB: Right. So you are at eighteen thousand and you lose that, you drop it.
LBSG: Oh well –
CB: What happens to the aeroplane at that time?
LBSG: I’ll tell you what happened to the aeroplane. Although I was prepared for something the aeroplane just lifted up. That’s right. It lifted up.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: Like a lift. And my flight engineer who was sitting next to me said he heard a loud bang but I didn’t hear that. I think I was occupied wondering what was going to happen to the aeroplane. There was no -
CB: When you -
LBSG: The great thing about the war was these days you’d be on a course for everything but they just did all these modifications and put all these things on and nobody said even about the take-off run because nobody knew so it was all down to us but then we were on 617 squadron and supposed, we were all there because we would be, we had to be able to cope with these things.
CB: So you were stationed where?
LBSG: At Woodhall Spa.
CB: And when you flew with the Grand Slam -
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Did you use the standard runway?
LBSG: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: So what was the difference in the run needed for Grand Slam compared with using a Tallboy?
LBSG: There wasn’t too much difference. It was a longer run, take off run and it was a bit slower on the climb and I think the flight engineer said he saw the wings bend a bit more than they usually do but I don’t know but it was certainly a longer take off run obviously and it was much slower on, well much, it was slower on the climb but once you got going it was, the Lancaster was an absolutely superb aircraft. You could do anything with it. Is this being recorded?
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So what other, so how many, how many raids are we, so operations so far?
LBSG: Oh well. Tirpitz was, I mentioned, I mentioned Bergen haven’t I? That was –
CB: Yes. Then the viaduct.
LBSG: And the viaduct. Yes and the synthetic oil plant I mentioned.
CB: Yes.
LBSG: But I ought to mention -
CB: Did you do -
LBSG: If I can find it in the right place where we were escorted by an ME262 fighter.
CB: Oh were you?
LBSG: Which really put a bit of a jerk into us as you can imagine. I’m just trying to -
CB: Was he being aggressive or just curious?
LBSG: Well I’ll tell you about it. I’ll just find out when it was.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: And I will tell you. [pause] Oh dear. Sorry. Do you mind the pause?
CB: No. I’ll pause it.
[machine pause]
CB: So we’re talking about the 262.
LBSG: Yes. We were briefed for a daylight raid on the docks and installations at Hamburg. The port of Hamburg and we carried out the bombing run and, [pause] let me find the right one.
CB: This is on Hamburg.
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: Yes
LBSG: I’m looking for the one with the 262.
CB: Ah. Well we’ll just pause it again.
LBSG: Yeah.
[machine pause]
CB: Right we’re restarting now.
LBSG: Yes. I hope this is the one. On the 9th of April we were briefed for a daylight on the docks and installations at Hamburg and we did drop our Tallboy. There was a hang up and unfortunately it didn’t hit the target but went into the port area and I think probably some of the housing which we could do nothing about and on that occasion there were jet aircraft sent up to intercept us and we were fortunate we didn’t get intercepted. However, on the way back I was horrified when my, when my flight engineer who was always sitting next to me in the dickie seat nudged me in the ribs and went like this and I looked out and it all looked normal so I shrugged my shoulders and he nudged me harder and went like that to indicate look outside and I looked outside and I was absolutely horrified to see a Messerschmitt 262 in formation with us if you please. Which, to say the least, is a bit unusual. Now, he had cannon that could open fire three or four hundred yards before our tiny 303s even hit the synchronisation point and so we were, I mean we were helpless and he, he was there. He didn’t, there was no friendly wave and we stared at each other and my flight engineer looked at him as well and suddenly he disappeared as quickly as he’d come.
CB: So he was out of ammo.
LBSG: Well hang on.
CB: Ah.
LBSG: When we got back we mentioned it and Tony Langston who was a navigator in the aircraft behind us, he said, ‘Oh it was you was it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, we’d been attacked by the 262 and he opened fire on us and he got nowhere near us and he left us,’ and he said, ‘So it must have been you he formated on to have a look.’ Of course I was all ready to do the 5 group corkscrew and I don’t know what to get away from him but he just sat there and he wasn't, he couldn’t possibly fire at me while he was in good formation with me and it wasn’t much chance of a mid-upper shooting him down. I mean, I don’t think we had a mid-upper then. Just a sec, I think we only had the rear gunner. Can you -
CB: Ok.
LBSG: Wait?
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: Sorry.
[machine pause]
LBSG: We shoot at him.
CB: Right so -
LBSG: Sorry.
CB: Just repeat that. So you didn’t, on this particular time when the 262 came along beside you there was no mid upper turret operating.
LBSG: No. We had, there was no way we could shoot at him. We had one gunner and we’d have shot at ourselves I think if we’d tried. He probably could see that. Well he just sat there and then disappeared.
CB: How long was that for?
LBSG: To me it was about five hours but I think it was about thirty, about a minute, yes. Well I was just waiting for him to start an attack and I was getting all ready to do a 5 group corkscrew and all the other things but I don’t think we’d have stood much chance against him frankly. Anyhow, when we landed you were debriefed by the intelligence officer and I told him this and Tony Langston happened to hear me talking about it. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘He went to you did he?’ I said, ‘Well yes.’ Apparently, he’d attacked Tony Langston’s aircraft. I think it was flown by Flying Officer Joplin, Arthur Joplin and although he’d shot at them he didn’t shoot the aeroplane down which was extraordinary and I only, can only assume he must have been a very young -
VT: Rookie.
LBSG: New pilot who’d gone through a crash course towards the end of the war and really were just firing the guns and of course he didn’t do any damage.
VT: This was quite late on then was it?
LBSG: Yes. I’ve just given you the date.
VT: Yeah.
CB: 9th of April.
LBSG: Yeah. Yeah. And well thank goodness he didn’t do it.
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: I mean, he could have shot us both out of the sky without any trouble.
CB: Thirty millimetre cannon. Yeah.
VT: I suppose given the situation and what was the potential in the situation that you didn’t really have any thoughts about the 262 at that moment.
LBSG: Well -
VT: About its –
LBSG: What I was thinking of, ‘What shall I do?’ Because he was there and while he was on the starboard wing he couldn’t do any damage.
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: But if he peeled off and we could see he was going to attack I would have to try and do a 5 group corkscrew -
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: Which we were told to do. I don’t know what the success rate is.
CB: Ok. Just on that topic.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: Could you just describe what was the 5 group corkscrew?
LBSG: Yes. Certainly.
CB: How it worked. So –
LBSG: Well -
CB: You instigate it.
LBSG: The 5 group corkscrew was -
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: If you were attacked by an enemy aircraft you did something called a 5 group corkscrew. And that was from where you were you’d dive, rolling to the right and then after a few hundred feet you’d dive, continue to dive but roll to the left and then you would climb rolling to the right and you continue climbing and roll to the left. Now that’s a 5 group corkscrew and as you did, from the time you commenced the corkscrew you told the rear gunner what you were doing and you knew what deflection, this is theory, he knew what deflection he should be allowing for on his machine guns. So that was our defence and I don’t, I don’t know, fortunately I don’t know if it would ever work. Other people would have found out but they’d probably been shot down. You’ve got an agile twin jet fighter after you and you’ve got a big four engine.
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: Petrol, I mean fuel, you know.
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: We weren’t jet we were the old fashioned engine.
CB: Piston. Yeah.
LBSG: Hmmn?
CB: Piston.
LBSG: Piston engine. Yeah. Wonderful aeroplane. Wonderful engines. I’ve no criticism there but they were a step, a hundred steps ahead of us with jet engines but we got away with it.
VT: What did you know at that time about the 262?
LBSG: Very little.
VT: Very little. Had you seen them before?
LBSG: Very little. Hmmn?
VT: Had you seen them before?
LBSG: Not in -
VT: No.
LBSG: Not in anger. No.
VT: No.
LBSG: We were attacked by jets over Hamburg and I suppose there must have been 262s amongst them but we were on the bombing run and you –
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: You just, you just had to stay on the bombing. There was no, excuse at all. You wouldn’t last five minutes on the squadron if you didn’t.
CB: We’ve covered a lot of stuff you’ve done.
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: So when did you finish the tour?
LBSG: I can tell you that. Well I waited until the end of the war. I’d already finished the tour. Thirty operations.
CB: When did that happen?
LBSG: Well it was right at the end of the war I think and I opted to stay, to stay on the squadron. Hang on a second please.
[machine pause]
LBSG: I did my last operation on the 25th of April 1945 and that was against Berchtesgaden. The Eagle’s Nest.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: And that was my, but by that time I’d done thirty trips. That was a tour of, tour of ops.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: But I was staying on. I didn’t want to leave the squadron.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: I didn’t know the war was going to end.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: So I‘d opted to stay on the squadron.
CB: Oh right. Which would have been another thirty if the war had continued.
LBSG: Oh no I mean, the war had, the next month, in May the war stopped.
CB: No. No. If the war had continued you would have done -
LBSG: Well -
CB: Thirty. Would you? By signing on for that?
LBSG: Well yes. Yes but on 617 squadron you weren’t time expired after thirty ops.
CB: Ah.
LBSG: On main force you were automatically but you went on on thirty, squadron, to any number of ops. There was no limit on thirty. No limit to thirty. I mean -
CB: No.
VT: So you -
LBSG: On the squadron. We could go on as long as the CO would put up with us and -
VT: So you would have gone on for leave.
LBSG: I would –
VT: And then -
LBSG: Well no I would have gone on if the war hadn’t finished. I would have gone on.
VT: Yes. Yes. So you would have had leave after that thirty.
LBSG: No. I wouldn’t because it was 617. Normally -
VT: You would have just continued on ops.
LBSG: Yes.
VT: Yeah.
LBSG: Normally, on main force, after thirty ops you had, you were rested. You automatically, you were -
CB: Yes.
LBSG: Posted and you became an instructor on something or other.
CB: Right. Ok so how much longer did you continue with 617?
LBSG: Good question that. I will tell you. I should have said. May the 10th ’45.
CB: Right. Two days after the end of the war.
LBSG: Yeah because they posted and I went, well yes I went into what would have, was going to be Transport Command. It wasn’t then of course and I think with another chap we flew the first two sorties that Transport Command ever did I think. What was the beginning. Hang on a sec. I’ll -
CB: So you were posted somewhere quite different then?
LBSG: Oh yeah. Well I was posted to Leconfield.
CB: Right.
LBSG: And then, I mean, oh at Leconfield it was awfully, we had nothing to do at all and so I went to the, there was a Halifax squadron there and I went to the CO of the squadron and asked him if I could be checked out on a Halifax because we were doing nothing all day and my crew, well one or two of the members of the crew I had left came with me and he said yeah and he, you know checked me out on a Halifax and I said, ‘Can I go on flying?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, if you want to,’ and before I knew it I was flying bigwigs around Germany showing them all the -
CB: Cooks tours.
LBSG: Yeah the Cooks tour of Germany. And it suited me, I was doing some flying. So that’s how I came to fly Halifaxes. And of course I’d flown Stirlings at OT, heavy conversion bombing unit and then when the war ended, I’ll see here flew, yes I did a bit of Fairey flying. Where was this? Stirling. Here we are I think. Stirling flying. Yes. I was posted to, oh dear, another I was posted to, what was I doing?
CB: After Leconfield.
LBSG: Oh 31. 51 squadron I think. Yeah. 51 squadron.
CB: Oh right. At Skellingthorpe.
LBSG: Hmmn?
CB: They were at Waddington by then.
LBSG: I’m not sure. I don’t know if they were.
CB: They were Skelly oh.
LBSG: This is what I was talking about. September ‘45.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: And August.
CB: Otherwise Skellingthorpe.
LBSG: August ’45.
CB: Yeah.
LBSG: And I did the, what did we do? We did some, yes another chap and myself, called Saunders I think, we were the first to, what was the beginning of Transport Command. We, we could fly Stirlings so we went, we did a sort of proving flight out to Castel Benito if I remember correctly. Yes. And then did some, I don’t know, must have taken freight or something I don’t know. Anyhow, we went, I did quite a bit of flying on the way out to [Shima?] Maripur in Stirlings.
CB: So 51 squadron was on Stirlings was it?
LBSG: Well it must have been.
CB: Was this 51?
LBSG: Yeah. 51, it must have been. Yeah. And we did all sorts of things on Stirlings. Yes, we, I did quite a few hours afterwards on Stirlings. I’ve just realised that and we carried, believe it or not, twenty four passengers. That was all in the Stirling. Of course there was nowhere to put them except in the middle we were all, have you seen the inside of a Stirling? It’s like a submarine. You’ve got these big wheels. If the engineer wanted to change the fuel tanks he had to go halfway down the fuselage with these massive wheels and well it was just like a submarine really. They built them as submarines. And when you, when you took off, as part of the engineer’s duty as soon as you retracted the undercarriage which was like a bailey bridge, they were really, he had to go and check, there was a meter which showed you the amount of revs and each undercarriage and the twin tail wheel, twin tail wheel they had to be within five revolutions of the set figure given when they were retracted [coughs], excuse me, and if they weren’t then you were supposed to go back and land. What you did was you put it down and brought it up again in the hope, because the last thing you wanted to do you’d gone through all the trouble of getting airborne in a Stirling and then to find the undercarriage rev counter had stopped working so we never never had a boomerang for that. Never. But the tail wheel also had a, but it was extraordinary you had to go and check the rev counters to make sure. It was like a bailey bridge going up and down really. Extraordinary. The Stirling was a nice aeroplane to fly.
CB: Was it?
LBSG: It was and I did quite a bit of flying on it out to India and back with passengers. Shaibah. Lida. Cairo.
CB: This was –
LBSG: Went to Cairo.
VT: when you mention the Cooks tour. I’m just thinking for the tape should you not explain something about that? And also -
CB: Ok so -
VT: Who were the bigwigs.
CB: So what people were these bigwigs that you took on the Cooks tours?
LBSG: Well I think they were generals and admirals and air marshals and other probably highly placed civil servants and of course to see anything they had to stand behind you or look out of what windows there were. After all it was a Halifax. It was a bomber not a sightseeing aeroplane [laughs].
CB: No.
LBSG: But they didn’t mind. They stood there and of course there were all these devastated cities.
CB: So what height were you?
LBSG: It was a horror to see.
CB: Yes. What height were you flying?
LBSG: Oh pretty low for them to see. Well high enough for them to have an overall view but not up, not very high.
CB: No. What sort of height are we talking about?
LBSG: Oh a few thousand feet I think.
CB: Ok.
LBSG: Yeah. We might come down lower to show them a specific thing but it was really, when I think about it horrifying. These huge cities. But it was great going to Cologne because everything was ruined except the cathedral and that was, and I am sure that was by sheer luck. I am sure. Because we were never briefed don’t hit the cathedral and at night I mean [ ?] I think it was sheer luck but anyhow it reflected greatly on the RAFs reputation and we’ve kept it that way. I’m sure you can’t blame, oh.
CB: Yes. That’s right.
LBSG: Oh no. Please.
CB: That’s fine.
LBSG: Oh no.
CB: We can wipe it.
LBSG: Oh yeah that little bit please.
CB: Right, so -
LBSG: Just -
CB: So -
LBSG: Just -
CB: So we were talking about Cooks tours.
LBSG: Yeah.
CB: It’s about people who were -
LBSG: Bigwigs.
CB: Being shown -
LBSG: Yes.
CB: The effect of -
LBSG: Yes. Of the bombing.
CB: Of the bombing.
LBSG: On Germany.
CB: Strategy yeah. So what do you want me to say then?
LBSG: Yeah that’s just to explain. You’ve just said it yeah.
CB: The Cooks tour in the Halifax was for bigwigs and top ranking officers to show them how accurate the bombing had been and how right the RAF strategy was.
CB: Ok. That’s fine. Good.
VT: Wonderful.
CB: So just tell us about the crew then. So you had the same crew all the time did you?
LBSG: Yes. I had the same crew throughout -
CB: On the 617.
LBSG: My operational flying. I think I explained that we picked each other at random but it always seemed to work out. Very rarely did it, did it not work out and I had a splendid crew and they supported me all the way through.
CB: What mixture of nationalities were they?
LBSG: Well at that time they were all British but one was a Welshman. I suppose he didn’t, wouldn’t like me to call him, he’d like me to call him Welsh now but he was he was a rear gunner. The rest, yes, were all British. Were all English. But in those days they were all British.
CB: And the crew themselves at work, rest and play was it?
LBSG: Yes.
CB: So you did everything together.
LBSG: Not everything but we were pretty well bonded together.
CB: So what was the rank range? So you were by then -
LBSG: Flight lieutenant.
CB: What rank? Right.
LBSG: And -
CB: Any other officers -
LBSG: I had -
CB: In the crew?
LBSG: I think I had a flight, I think Tony Hayward, the bomb aimer, I’m not sure if he’d been promoted to flight lieutenant by then. The navigator was a flying officer. Tony Hayward was either a flying officer or flight lieutenant and the rest of the crew were sergeants or flight sergeants and became warrant officers as well.
CB: Yeah. Ok. Thank you. We’re going to stop there and -
LBSG: I’m glad to hear that.
CB: Pick up things later. Isn’t that amazing?
VT: Oh yeah. Terrific. Terrific.
LBSG: What?
CB: So that was really good Benny.
LBSG: Hmmn?
CB: That’s really good.
LBSG: You’re being nice to me there.
VT: No. No. No. No. No.
CB: I’m trying to be because I want to be able to come back. [laughs]
LBSG: Yeah. Certainly. Well I mean -
CB: Oh no. This is really good. I’m serious. Now the point here really is that we are going to read that. We’re rushing off because we’ve laboured you a lot but also -
LBSG: Oh that’s alright.
CB: We need to get back.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: And I’m coming down here again shortly ‘cause I want to go to Crowthorne and a ninety six year old lady whose husband is suffering from dementia -
LBSG: Oh dear.
CB: The last eight years and is now in a home but she was on intelligence at -
LBSG: Was she at -
CB: At Driffield.
LBSG: Oh Driffield, not on, was it -
CB: And, and later, later at Linton on Ouse.
LBSG: Yes.
CB: And she spent three and a half years at Linton on Ouse.
LBSG: But she wasn’t at the, where am I?
VT: Bletchley?
LBSG: Hmmn?
VT: Bletchley.
LBSG: Bletchley Park.
CB: No. No. No. No. She was a WAAF in the -
LBSG: Well there were lots of WAAFs there.
CB: Administration and cook.
LBSG: Yeah. She was a WAAF intelligence officer.
CB: Yeah. Not officer. Just -
LBSG: No WAAF on, yeah.
CB: She was asked -
LBSG: Well she’d have something to say. Things to tell you.
CB: They wanted to commission her twice but she refused because she wanted to be where the -
LBSG: Her mates.
CB: Where the action was. Yes. So thank you very much indeed.
LBSG: Well I’ll probably be -
CB: And –
LBSG: Talking, bored you to death.
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 Benny Goodman. Two
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-07
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGoodmanLS160407
PGoodmanLS1501
Conforms To
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Pending review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
Germany
Description
An account of the resource
Benny Goodman grew up in London and hoped to become a pilot. He volunteered for the Air Force and was originally posted to RAF Abingdon as a ground gunner before beginning his flying training. After qualifying as a pilot in Canada, he became an instructor to Navy pilots. He survived his ship being torpedoed before he finally joined the Queen Mary in New York and returned to England. He flew operations with 617 Squadron and discusses a fire in the cockpit of his Lancaster, narrowly missing and mid-air collision and flying alongside a Me 262.
Format
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01:31:12 audio recording
51 Squadron
617 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
Grand Slam
Halifax
Harvard
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Magister
Me 262
military discipline
military living conditions
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
perimeter track
pilot
RAF Abingdon
RAF Leconfield
RAF Silverstone
RAF Syerston
RAF Woodhall Spa
sanitation
Stirling
submarine
Tallboy
Tiger Moth
Tirpitz
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/535/8770/AWarrenH160325.2.mp3
c0949f59001de6d690534559594a5b34
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
Warren, Harold James
H J Warren
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Warren, HJ
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. Two oral history interviews with Harold James Warren (1921 - 2017, 619608 Royal Air Force) service material, a note book, diary and photographs. He Joined the RAF in 1938, and after training as ground crew but remustered and after training in Canada, became a flight engineer.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Harold Warren and catalogued by Peter Adams.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
2015-10-30
2016-07-12
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
CB: So, my name is Chris Brockbank. Today is the 25th of March 2016 and I’m xxxxx with Harold Warren who was an RAF rigger in the war and before and he’s going to talk to us about his experiences of life and particularly in the RAF. So, Harold what’s the first thing you remember about life.
HW: Yes. I have to jog my memory quite a bit I’m afraid. [laughs] Well, my father was a blacksmith and a farmer as well as my grandfather. They had to go in to farming because they were full time blacksmiths and it affected their [shifts?] so they had to pack it up. But they kept it on part time for themself. [To work on.] And they bought a farm and they kept the blacksmiths going for their own use and I remember that well because when I come home from school had to blow the, keep the fire going in the blacksmiths shop. [Pumping the old fire all day.] Yeah. Yes, they wanted me to take over the farm when I left school but I didn’t want to have any of that. So I thought I’d join the air force and I did as soon as soon as I left school. Yeah. That’s right. That’s it. And er let me see. I have to think a bit.
CB: So where was it you were living then?
HW: Eh?
CB: Where did your parents live?
HW: My parents lived at, they lived at [pause] near [?] Yeah. Near Exeter [?] and all that sort of thing
CB: Right.
HW: So as soon as I was old enough I joined the air force. I was quite young then.
CB: So you joined straight from school.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go to join the RAF?
HW: Debden, I think.
CB: Right
HW: I think it was.
CB: And what happened there?
HW: That’s where I done my basic training. [Foot slogging] and all that sort of thing. And then I went to technical school in the air force and I was, I forget where I was now. Mildenhall I think. Spent quite some time there.
CB: So what did you learn there?
HW: Eh?
CB: What did you learn at Mildenhall?
HW: I was on engines and airframes.
CB: Ahum.
HW: Yeah.
CB: And which year are we talking about now?
HW: Pardon?
CB: Which year are we talking about?
HW: Well, it was just before the war started because I remember they shortened the course so that, you know, you could go on to active service sort of thing. ‘Cause the first day of the war I was in France.
CB: Oh were you?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Right.
HW: 218 squadron. Fairey Battles we had. Which was a waste of time.
CB: Because -
HW: No nothing at all. No armaments of any good. The Germans could do what they liked with us. So anyway we carried on doing that sort of thing and then we got evacuated via Dunkirk.
CB: Did you have to queue to get on to a boat at Dunkirk or did you get straight on to a boat?
HW: Eh?
CB: When you came out from Dunkirk -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you have to queue to get on or did you get straight onto a boat.
HW: Well I queued. A lot of people trying to get on boats and everything. Yeah. We eventually made it and we landed, where did we land? Dover I think. And then I was moved to Bicester doing maintenance there on aircraft. And er let me see -
CB: So Bicester was an Operation Conversion Unit at that time.
HW: Eh?
CB: Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Was an Operation Conversion Unit.
HW: An OTU.
CB: At that time.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Number 13.
HW: 13 OTU.
CB: That’s it. Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So what were you doing there?
HW: Same thing.
CB: Which aircraft?
HW: Engine airframes.
CB: Ok.
HW: Yeah.
CB: On what aeroplane?
HW: Eh?
CB: What was the aeroplane?
HW: Bristol Blenheim’s then. Still had Fairey Battles as well of course. They sent various aircraft into us because we were classed as a maintenance unit and we were supposed to be able to sort everything out. All sorts of aircraft which we had to do then. That was alright. Quite interesting.
CB: What sort of things did you have to sort out? Was it mechanical or battle damage or what was it?
HW: Both. Both, yeah. Both. Yeah.
CB: And er did you stay? How long did you stay at Bicester?
HW: Quite some time I think.
CB: And then up the road -
HW: Eh?
CB: Up the road is Hinton in the Hedges.
HW: Yeah.
CB: You were there as well so how did you divide the time?
HW: I don’t know. We had to [set it out I think?]. Some of the time was at Bicester and some at Hinton and Hinton carried on as an OTU and I forget where I went then.
CB: So what was the accommodation like at Bicester?
HW: Very good, Bicester. Yeah. It was a peacetime place you see.
CB: Right.
HW: It was very, well very good for, what do you expect. You don’t expect [Hilton?] but it was alright. Alright.
CB: So there were barrack blocks.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. They’re still there now.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So what was your working day? What would you do on a working day?
HW: Oh 8 o’clock start usually.
CB: Ahum.
HW: It depends on what work came in to be done. If you had to put extra time in you had to put extra time in. And that was it. You didn’t, you didn’t get much free time. There was always a hell of a lot to do.
CB: Was there? Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And most of the work you were doing was on the air frames or on the engines. Which?
HW: Oh both.
CB: Right.
HW: Both.
CB: So when you had to deal with an engine what was the main task on an engine.
HW: Well it depends on what was wrong with the engine. Sometimes it, it warranted a complete engine change. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes you could do it with the engine still in the aircraft and you could still do it. Such as running repair like a car. Ignition trouble or something like that.
CB: Right.
HW: Carburettor or something like that. Yeah, that was that.
CB: So if you had to take the engine out -
HW: Yeah.
CB: What happened then?
HW: Well we had a replacement engine if possible. Sometimes you couldn’t. Sometimes there was one ready to put straight back in but that would depend on supply and wherever they come from. Sometimes they come from the maker, sometimes they come from a maintenance unit which was over all the engines to start with but depends on supplies really.
CB: And that’s the engine. What about the airframe. What sorts of things did you have to do with airframes?
HW: Well there again sometime it was enemy action damaged flying controls and that sort of thing. You could do that alright when it was all metal fabric. Yeah.
CB: So the aircraft had a basic metal structure covered -
HW: Yeah.
CB: With fabric.
HW: Yeah.
CB: When you put on new fabric what did you have to do to it?
HW: The fabric replacement. We never did fabric work. There was a special ganger does fabric work and there was a special process to do to carry on fabric work so we never did much of that. Well I didn’t. But er it was a, it was an all metal thing. That’s where we came in you see. There was hardly any fabric attached to that. The only fabric attached to that was the control surfaces. The ailerons and the rudder and that sort of thing. Sometimes you could just get a complete unit like an aileron or something and change that completely if you could get hold of the thing. That was usually the trouble. Hadn’t got it. Wasn’t about. So made do as best we could with it.
CB: And what was the covering on the fuselage and the wings?
HW: Ah. Yeah. Some. Well depends on the aircraft. Some were metal covers which is, they were mainly metal come as the aircraft become modern and that sort of thing and we used to get a lot of American aircraft you see, we were equipped with that sort of thing and they were metal covers and you had to patch them if it were broken and you know, could have been a crash damage or gunfire damage. Whatever. You had to do your best you could with it and that was it. Get them in the air again quick as possible.
CB: And when you put on a metal patch.
HW: Yeah.
CB: How did you secure that?
HW: Eh?
CB: How did you secure the patch?
HW: Metal patch.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. They were riveted on. Yeah. They were riveted on. Yeah, you had a riveting gun to put them on and er yeah. That was alright. That was alright.
CB: What about Perspex?
HW: Eh?
CB: How did you deal with the Perspex?
HW: Perspex, yeah. There again Perspex was a difficult job because you had to replace the whole thing. The windscreen and that sort of thing and the gun turrets and that sort of thing. You had to replace the whole thing. There again if you could get it. It was very often you couldn’t. Short supply.
CB: Ahum.
HW: So there we are. Nothing you could do with that.
CB: What were the American, what were the American aeroplanes that were being fixed?
HW: Oh the first of all we had, I forget what we had first. We had um what the hell was it?
CB: They were bombers were they?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Four engine bombers.
CB: Oh, the American ones were four engine bombers -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Were they?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
HW: Yeah. Our four engine ones didn’t come along until after. Well made the same time as the American four engine ones. Yeah.
CB: So how many hangars were set aside for repair? ‘Cause there were four hangars at Bicester.
HW: Bicester had quite a few hangars Yeah. Yeah. It depended what sort of jobs was needed. They got lifting equipment and that sort of thing. You had to have them to lift the engines in and out and all depended what the demand was to do.
CB: So you had busy times and on your time off what did you do?
HW: You never had no time off, poor devil. No. You’d always find something to do.
CB: So where did you meet your wife?
HW: Oh, Hinton I suppose. Or Bicester. Brackley. Somewhere like that.
CB: Was she in the RAF at the time?
HW: No. I was. She wasn’t.
CB: No.
HW: No. She worked in the local hospital. Yeah.
CB: In Banbury or in Bicester?
HW: Brackley.
CB: Oh in Brackley.
HW: Yeah. It was only a small hospital.
CB: Right. What did she do there?
HW: I forget now what she did. She was, um, I think she was a nurse. General sort of nurse. Yeah.
CB: So, how did you manage to see her regularly? Did you cycle over or what did you do?
HW: Well you couldn’t see that regular. There were jobs always come first. Anything else had to wait. Whatever. Yeah.
CB: And how long after you met her did you marry her?
HW: I don’t, not long, I don’t think. Not long, I don’t think.
CB: So we talked about Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: At Hinton, you weren’t, were you repairing aircraft there or was that just the OCU?
HW: Still the same because Hinton came under Bicester. Bicester was a bigger place and it was adapted to that sort of thing. Yeah. Bicester was quite a big place then. It had no runways of course. Level grass which was no good for heavy bombers.
CB: Right.
HW: They used to get stuck and I don’t know what. Caused more damage.
CB: Well they’d sink in.
HW: Eh?
CB: They sank in to the earth -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Would they?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause when they were loaded they were heavy and that was it. Yeah.
CB: So, did they fly them to Hinton instead?
HW: Eh?
CB: Did they send them to Hinton instead?
HW: Well they started building runways at Hinton. I don’t think Bicester never had runways always had Bicester on grass just the same. It was just an OTU you see. They were never loaded, the aircraft. Not heavy enough to sink in so they didn’t use it for that.
CB: Now before you went to Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: You were at St Athan.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What happened there?
HW: Well that was a training school. A technical school. Yeah.
CB: And what did you study particularly?
HW: Engines there. I think it was. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So after Bicester and Hinton you went somewhere completely different.
HW: Yeah. 218 squadron then.
CB: Ahum.
HW: At Boscombe Down.
CB: Oh, right.
HW: And we went to France then, of course.
CB: That’s before the war er the early part of the war.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So that was, that was before Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Right. So you left Bicester.
HW: Left Bicester.
CB: And you went to Canada.
HW: No. That was later than that.
CB: Oh, was it?
HW: Yeah.
CB: So after Bicester where did you go?
HW: Oh various places I think. I can’t remember all of them. We had to have a course on these American engines you see.
CB: Oh right.
HW: I don’t know where we had to go for them. Not America [laughs] worse luck, at the time.
CB: Yeah.
HW: I didn’t go to Canada till after that. A long time after. After I came back from the war well, not quite but nearly. Went to Canada on the Queen Mary.
CB: Did you? Right.
HW: From Scotland.
CB: Right.
HW: Greenock. And we docked in New York ‘cause they hadn’t got anywhere big enough to dock it in Canada so we docked in New York and we had to go from New York up to Saskatchewan, Canada by train. Yeah. That was alright. Very good place Canada. Nice people. Would do anything for you. They were very good. I nearly went back to Canada after the war.
CB: Did you?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. But circumstances didn’t allow it so that was that.
CB: So when you were in Canada, where did they send you in Canada?
HW: Yeah.
CB: You’ve got Saskatchewan and then what?
HW: Moose Jaw.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Moose Jaw and I forget where the other one was.
CB: These, these were the Service Flying Training Schools.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So the ones I’ve got a note of here are Moose Jaw, La Prairie -
HW: Eh?
CB: La Prairie. Did you go there?
HW: Yeah.
CB: And Bagotville.
HW: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. That brings back a memory now. Yeah.
CB: So when you were there what were you doing?
HW: Same work I was doing.
CB: What aircraft?
HW: Same work.
CB: What aircraft were you on?
HW: Um training aircraft. They were American aircraft. Some were single engine some were double engine, twin engine. I forget what sort they were now. They were American built ones I know that.
CB: Including the Harvard.
HW: Yeah. Harvard. Yeah. Harvard. Oh yeah. Harvard. Yeah. A lot of Harvards sent over to this country.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So that’s single and then the PT17 was it? What about twin engine? What planes were they?
HW: Um I forget now what they were.
CB: Ok.
HW: I can’t remember. Yeah. I can’t remember.
CB: So did they have Ansons also out there?
HW: Eh?
CB: Did they have Avro Ansons where you were operating?
HW: I think there was a few but not many. They were used for training you see. I mean they were used for training in this country at the start soon as the war, well before the war, Ansons. They were at Bicester at one time. Ansons. Yeah. And they were at Hinton as well.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So you were out in Canada -
HW: Eh?
CB: You were out in Canada. What were the conditions like?
HW: Very good.
CB: So take us through a day.
HW: Oh well.
CB: In Canada.
HW: Usual day.
CB: Ahum.
HW: Usual day. Yeah.
CB: What was the food like, compared with being in Britain?
HW: Very good. Very good. In fact, I even sent some food home Yeah. There was plenty of food there and I got in touch with a farming family in Canada and it so happened that their son was in the air force and he was at Croughton.
CB: At Croughton.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. But he had an accident in the road, on the road in Canada, er in Croughton and he was invalided home. I met him and you know you got together and they used to take us out for weekends and that sort of thing. They were very good, the Canadian people. Yeah, and I tried to get back. I’d have liked to got back there to a job ‘cause I’d got two or three jobs lined up on the assumption that I could do it. In those days I couldn’t do it. I could do it that was nothing to do with it. It all depended on, you know, family and that sort of thing. My wife’s father was [head of the house] so that knocked that on the head. Yeah. Yes, I would have like to have went to Canada.
CB: What sort of jobs would you have done in Canada?
HW: Pardon?
CB: What sort of jobs would you have done in Canada?
HW: Oh yeah I’d have gone on to agricultural machinery. That sort of thing. Like they had, some of the farmers had an aircraft for getting about it was that big. Yeah. So, I was going to look after that one I think. It was only a twin engine. Two seater and used it for getting from one part of the farm to another. You wouldn’t think it possible would you. Aircraft to get somewhere on the farm [laughs], ‘Oh I’ll catch an aircraft.’ Yeah. And there were combines going around the fields. Well they weren’t fields they were just as far as you could see. Big areas growing grain and about half a dozen combines following one after the other so quite a job. It didn’t come to nothing but I’d have liked that but it didn’t come to anything so that was it.
CB: So when you came back to the UK -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go after returning from Canada?
HW: Back to Bicester again I think.
CB: And were they always training units that you went to?
HW: Eh?
CB: Were they always training units -
HW: Yeah.
CB: That you went to or
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you go to any –
HW: Oh I went to, well of course when I came back, I mean the war was finished more or less so they didn’t need any heavy bombers then. I went back to, to Lancasters for a little while and American heavy bombers. Yeah.
CB: Where were those? Where were those? Where?
HW: East coast somewhere. Forget where it was now. Mildenhall. Might have been Mildenhall. [?]
CB: Did you deal with Stirlings as well?
HW: Pardon?
CB: Were there Stirlings as well as Lancasters?
HW: Lancasters.
CB: Stirlings?
HW: Went on to Sunderlands for a while.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where was that?
HW: We were based in Scotland and we used to patrol the North Atlantic looking for submarines.
CB: Right.
HW: We used to patrol from Newfoundland to Scotland. And a Sunderland would stay in the air for twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours you see so it could do that journey alright. No problem. Yeah. I remember we, because we couldn’t take any prisoners off the U-boats we had to, to call up the navy to. I remember calling up, we sent one, well we forced it to the surface the U-boat and [?] on board and we had a good look around and there was a nice big box of onions. [laughs] Yeah. Germans and German U- boats used to look after, I always wanted to go on U-boats so we collared them.
CB: So how did you get those?
HW: Eh?
CB: How did they get hold of them?
HW: oh no, well they got them when they, rations I suppose.
CB: No. No, what I meant was, the U-boat was forced to the surface.
HW: Yeah.
CB: How did the aeroplane get, the Sunderland, how did it get hold of the onions?
HW: Oh they got them easy enough. We could land alongside and we were the first ones on board, the aircrew, we were the first ones board so we got the first pick. Yeah. Then we had to call up the navy ‘cause we couldn’t take any more people on, on the Sunderland. There wasn’t room.
CB: How long did it take for the navy to come?
HW: Not long. They were, they’d been warned beforehand that, you know, we were on the track of a submarine so we told them where we were, roughly and we read the report to the navy that there’s, we’d forced one up to the surface and then they come along and took the prisoners. Took them. That was it.
CB: You said we -
HW: Ahum.
CB: So, you mean the crew or were you there?
HW: Yeah
CB: Did you get on that flight?
HW: Yeah. Oh yeah.
CB: Why were you on that flight?
HW: It was my job.
CB: Right.
HW: Flight engineer.
CB: Right, on the, so where did you become a flight engineer?
HW: Scotland.
CB: In Scotland.
HW: Greenock.
CB: When you joined the Sunderlands.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So how did that happen? ‘Cause you were previously servicing aircraft on the ground.
HW: Yeah.
CB: How did you then become a flight engineer?
HW: Well there was very little difference in the job. You’re doing the same job.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yet you were flying. Yeah.
CB: How did you do it? Did they ask for volunteers?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Or did they say you must do it?
HW: Sometimes they did. They couldn’t get enough volunteers so they said, ‘You, you and you.’ [laughs] As usual.
CB: Yeah. So a forced volunteer.
HW: Eh?
CB: A compulsory volunteer.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t mind that.
CB: So what did that do for you? So you were converted on to the Sunderland were you?
HW: Yeah.
CB: At Greenock.
HW: Ahum.
CB: Or somewhere else?
HW: Used to go from Greenock, across the north of England and across to North America. Turned around and come back again.
CB: Right.
HW: That was that. All the time we were searching for submarines. Keeping a look out for submarines all the time and the depth charges there if we could and get them one sided.
CB: So as a flight engineer on a Sunderland what were you doing most of the time?
HW: Making sure the engine kept going. Had to check them ‘cause I mean they were they’d done a lot of hours a day you see. That was more than the manufacturers recommended so you had to be very careful with them, look after them, nurse them if you could. Which you couldn’t.
CB: How many times did you have situations where the engine stopped?
HW: Eh?
CB: How many times did the engines stop?
HW: Not very often. Not very often. They were well maintained while they were in operation and while they were on base and they were given good care. I don’t think I ever had one stop.
CB: Now the Sunderland is a big aeroplane. So -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Where was your station -
HW: Yeah.
CB: On the Sunderland?
HW: Oh I had to go from one and keep an eye on the airframe instruments and that sort of thing. The instruments would tell you a lot of stories then of what this one’s doing, that one’s doing, this is not working and that sort of thing. You could check on the fuel and oil and that sort of thing.
CB: How many fuel tanks were there?
HW: I forget now.
CB: But your job was to do what with the fuel?
HW: Just make sure we got, we were refuelled every time we got room for some. I forget how many tanks there were. Quite a lot.
CB: Did you transfer, was it your job to transfer fuel?
HW: No. It wasn’t -
CB: From one tank -
HW: My job, no -
CB: To another?
HW: No.
CB: Or did they not get transferred?
HW: That was to do with the ones who refuelled them. The tankers
CB: But in the air -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you need to change fuel supply from one tank to another?
HW: Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. Not very often. They were, they used to be pretty even consumption so you never had a lot of trouble with that. We had to do a lot of manoeuvring about. That used more fuel so had to be careful. Yeah.
CB: So on take-off and landing what would your job be?
HW: Well it had floats. Didn’t have to worry about the undercarriage or anything like that. So that was that. That was to do with the flying crew. The pilot. Yeah.
CB: Were there one or two pilots on?
HW: Two pilots.
CB: Right.
HW: First and second pilot but sometimes they’d do without the second pilot and that was where the flight engineer come in. Yeah.
CB: And in that circumstance what happened?
HW: Eh?
CB: So when, when there was no second pilot what did the flight engineer do?
HW: Well he had to, well keep an eye on the first pilot and make sure he was doing everything he was supposed to do. And he did, else he wouldn’t be there.
CB: And who controlled the throttles on take-off?
HW: Throttles? Pilot. First pilot. Yeah. And the flaps and everything like that.
CB: Because on the Lancasters and Halifaxes -
HW: Yeah.
CB: The flight engineer operated the throttles. That’s why I asked the question. On take-off.
HW: The pilot used to do the throttle just the same.
CB: Right.
HW: On any four engine job.
CB: So what was the point that made the decision about whether there were two pilots or just one?
HW: I don’t know.
CB: Was it the length of the flight?
HW: Something do with that I should think. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause thirteen hours is a long time for a single pilot.
HW: Certainly is.
CB: But did they do that?
HW: Yes.
CB: They did. But how many crew were there on a Sunderland?
HW: Well there used to be first pilot, sometimes second pilot, flight engineer, navigator and the bomb, gun turrets were manned, front, mid turret and the front turret they were manned all the time.
CB: And the rear turret.
HW: Yeah. Rear turret, mid turret and then the front turret. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And there was a signaller and a bomb aimer.
HW: Radio operator.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Bomb aimer.
CB: Any more?
HW: No. That was about it I think. As far as I can remember.
CB: Right. So how long were you based with that squadron? What was the squadron? What squadron was the Sunderland squadron?
HW: [?] I think.
CB: Right.
HW: I’m not sure about that.
CB: And how long did you stay with them?
HW: Not all that long. Not all that long. That was about it then.
CB: Was that, had the war finished when you left?
HW: Just about. Just about. Yeah.
CB: So did you, when you left the Sunderlands -
HW: Yeah.
CB: What did you do?
HW: Went back to Bicester again.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: And what were you doing then?
HW: Well there weren’t so much to do then.
CB: No.
HW: Not so much aircraft damaged. Not by enemy action. Generally run down.
CB: What, when you became a flight engineer what happened to your rank?
HW: You what?-
CB: What happened to your rank when you became a flight engineer?
HW: I don’t know. Stayed the same I suppose. Got no use for us then anyway then when we’d finished.
CB: No. No. What I meant was that during the previous postings -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Your rank was LAC.
HW: Leading Aircraft that was.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: So as soon as you -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you keep that rank all the time?
HW: Oh Yeah.
CB: What happened when you went on to Sunderlands?
HW: Still a leading Aircraft man.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah. But um, yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
CB: Was it an official or an unofficial arrangement because did you get a, a brevvy?
HW: Yeah.
CB: To show that you were a -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Flight engineer or not?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. You got the cross on your sleeve.
CB: Yeah.
HW: To indicate a leading aircraft man.
CB: Yeah.
HW: [Coughing]
CB: Hang on. I’m going to stop for a minute.
[pause]
HW: You were made up to a sergeant.
CB: Yeah.
HW: When you were flying.
CB: Right.
HW: To prevent, so as you get better treatment supposedly if you were taken prisoner.
CB: Yeah.
HW: That didn’t always work.
CB: Which didn’t work? Getting promotion or -
HW: Eh?
CB: Yeah. But you did get promoted when you became -
HW: Yeah.
CB: When you went on to Sunderlands.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. You automatically made up to sergeant -
CB: Right.
HW: When you were [flying.]
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So as soon as you stopped flying -
HW: Yeah.
CB: Did you remain a sergeant?
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah.
CB: And so you came back as a sergeant to Bicester.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What were you doing? Because you were a sergeant now.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What were you doing in your role at Bicester?
HW: More, more sort of keeping a check on what people were doing and that sort of thing. Testing and that sort of thing. Yeah.
CB: So now from an accommodation point of view you moved to the sergeant’s mess.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: What was that like?
HW: That was, that was alright. I had a house. I was living at Hinton then.
CB: Ah Hinton, right. And where was your wife at this time.
HW: She was at Hinton.
CB: But she wasn’t on the airfield.
HW: No. She was doing her job in the hospital just the same.
CB: What did she do? Live with her parents or did she live in rented accommodation?
HW: Living with her parents all the time.
CB: Where were they?
HW: Hinton.
CB: Oh they were in Hinton.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Right.
HW: And I lived with them.
CB: Right. Rather than in the officer’s er the sergeant’s mess.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. I used to cycle from Hinton to Bicester every day.
CB: Right.
HW: Which wasn’t far really.
CB: No.
HW: No.
CB: So then how, what happened after that?
HW: Then the old demob come along I suppose.
CB: From Bicester.
HW: Aye.
CB: Were you demobbed from Bicester or did you have to go somewhere else?
HW: Oh yeah. You went to er not far from here. Forget where it was now. Wasn’t far from here. I know that.
CB: When you were demobbed what they do? Did they give you clothes or what did they do?
HW: Oh yeah. You had to go civilian suit and all that sort of thing. Get all, everything sorted out and that was that.
CB: So now you’re a civilian.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What did, what did you do then?
HW: Well, two or three of us started a garage. Three of us. No, two of us and me started a garage in Brackley. Yeah.
CB: And how long did you run the garage?
HW: For a while I think um I forget how long. Not all that long I don’t think. But er – [?]
CB: So who were the other two people?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Who started the garage with you?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Who were they?
HW: They come out the air force. One was a flight lieutenant, an engineer. Flight Lieutenant [Capping] and the other was a, a driver. Forget what he did in the air force. Well, he was a driver in the air force.
CB: What was his name?
HW: Jefford. Jefford. J E F F O R D, yeah. Yeah, we started this garage together you see.
CB: In Brackley.
HW: Eh?
CB: In Brackley.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Did you sell new cars as well as old cars or did you not sell any cars?
HW: No. There weren’t many cars around then.
CB: Right.
HW: Had to make new cars out of old ones.
CB: How long did the garage continue to work?
HW: Well, I don’t know. I think I, we’d split up I think for family reasons and one reason or another. I forget now what happened after that.
CB: How well did it operate when you started because you had a flight lieutenant, a sergeant and a driver.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So, we’re now in civilian life. How did the balance of power operate?
HW: Well you had to put that behind you.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
CB: So who was the senior -
HW: And we did.
CB: Right.
HW: We did very well in that respect. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Who was the senior person in the partnership?
HW: Well, I would say the flight lieutenant.
CB: No. No. In practical terms.
HW: Eh?
CB: In civilian life who was the senior person?
HW: Just get on with it it was the obvious thing to do.
CB: Yeah.
HW: And well you never sort of threw your weight about.
CB: No.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Where abouts in Brackley was that?
HW: Out by the old fish shop. Behind the fish shop. On the High Street.
CB: Right.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So was it difficult or was it successful?
HW: Difficult to start with trying to start a business from nothing really. Yeah.
CB: And then did you eventually do something on your own or what did you do?
HW: Yes I think I did. Forget what. Oh yeah, I went looking after agricultural machinery at Twyford Seed. Looking after that. That was a very big plant and we had a lot of tractors and combines and that sort of thing there. Nothing like Canada of course.
CB: And you did that till you retired or what did you do?
HW: Yeah. I think so. Stayed with them for quite some time. Yeah.
CB: Did the garage keep running in the meantime or had that -
HW: No. It folded up.
CB: What caused it to fold up?
HW: I think everybody got fed up I think. Didn’t make money and people were not paying you for the work you’d done and that sort of thing.
CB: Ok. What do you think was the most memorable experience that you had in the RAF?
HW: I had a lot of them. Some I’d rather forget. Well, I suppose Dunkirk. I should think was one of the worst.
CB: In what way?
HW: Well trying to get on board boats and getting shot at by the Germans and bombed and Christ knows what, which was not a very nice thing to happen.
CB: What else?
HW: Hmmn?
CB: What else? What else was memorable, do you think?
HW: Oh [pause] I don’t know. I can’t think of anything else much.
CB: At Dunkirk -
HW: Yes.
CB: Did you all, as a squadron, arrive together?
HW: No. No, we got together after we’d come back and landed in England ‘cause we, we got there on all shapes and sizes of boats you see. I mean you couldn’t get everybody on one boat. You just had to get on the boat that you could and that was it but we got together afterwards of course.
CB: Was everybody there or had some people been killed on the way?
HW: No. As far as I remember everybody survived it.
Other: Can I just collect the cups?
HW: Hello there. Yeah. [pause] thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
CB: So you all got together in the end.
HW: Pardon?
CB: Did you say everybody survived?
HW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. Some were wounded of course.
CB: Were they?
HW: Yeah.
CB: What, some seriously or just -
HW: Eh?
CB: How serious was that?
HW: Under supervision as far as I know. I don’t think anybody was seriously hurt.
CB: You said that some of the memories you’d rather forget.
HW: Yeah.
CB: What else would you rather forget?
HW: [?] I’d rather forget the lot.
CB: Well, it’s been really interesting to talk to you again, Harold.
HW: Yeah.
CB: Thank you very much indeed.
HW: Alright. Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Interview with Harold James Warren. One
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-25
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Sound
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AWarrenH160325
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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.
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
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Interview in which he describes joining the RAF in 1938 and worked as ground crew. After training in Canada, he became a flight engineer and worked on Sunderlands flying from RAF Greenock.
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
Scotland--Greenock
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Saskatchewan
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1938
Format
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00:58:23 audio recording
13 OTU
218 Squadron
aircrew
Battle
Blenheim
fitter airframe
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
Harvard
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bicester
RAF Greenock
RAF Hinton
RAF St Athan
Sunderland
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/581/8850/AHearmonPC160317.1.mp3
357fd317f299351fbd3b3b83ddd33699
Dublin Core
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Title
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Hearmon, Peter Charles
P C Hearmon
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hearmon, PC
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Peter Charles Hearmon (b. 1931, 2507699 Royal Air Force). He served as a pilot with 55, 58 and 61 Squadrons between 1951 - 1971.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2016-03-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and we’re here in Milton Keynes with Peter Charles Hearmon who was a peacetime pilot and navigator and this is a sequel to the RAF’s activities in the war and we’re going to talk about his life from the earliest days and to joining the RAF and his interesting variations. Peter, where do we start?
PH: Well my father was a London fireman and he was stationed at Euston Road Fire Station so I was born in University College Hospital which was in Gower Street just across the road. My earliest recollections are of a flat because in those days firemen lived on the premises and my earliest recollection is a flat at Clerkenwell Road Fire, not Clerkenwell, yeah Clerkenwell Road Fire Station because my father had moved by then and my grandmother Nanty lived with us. And I can remember as a kid of about six or seven, strictly forbidden to but we used to slide down the poles ‘cause that was the way the firemen got to the, to the ground in those days and they, I don’t know if people realise it, it wasn’t a continuous pole. It just went two floors. Well this, otherwise they would pick up such a speed they’d break their bloody legs when they got to the bottom. No it wasn’t a long pole, it was, you know. Anyway, then we, my father left the fire brigade in about 1938 and we moved to a council flat in Lewis Trust in Amhurst Road, Hackney from which we were bombed. And I was evacuated initially in, I should think, before the Second World War started in about the August. I was one of those kids with a gas mask in a brown box with a label saying who I was and I was evacuated to a place called Toller Porcorum which is in Dorset, a small village but we lasted three days. There were three Cockney lads, seven or eight billeted on some poor old dear well into her nineties and we all, well in those days they, they allocated, they just said to one of the local councillors, ‘You’re the allocation officer,’ and they just went around and knocked on doors and said, ‘How many rooms you got?’ ‘I’ve got three rooms.’ ‘Oh you’ve only got one kid. You can have two evacuees.’ It was as simple as that. We lasted three days and we all ran away back home and I was variously evacuated to Exmouth in Devon. I got an eleven plus and that was, we were, I went to Westminster City School which was billeted with Tonbridge High School in Tonbridge. That was during the Battle of Britain and that was a good thing because all, we were being rained on and bombed on and then I was re-evacuated to Devon and then back to, I think eventually back to London during the V1 V2 campaign because there was nowhere is England that was any different by that time. We’re talking about 1944/45. The Germans were raiding ad lib as it were, you know. Indiscriminately. So London was as bad or as good as anywhere so I went back home and the school came back to London, Westminster City and I left in 1947 with a good clutch of O levels especially in languages. French and Latin. Didn’t do German in those days. And due to a friend of my mother’s I got an apprenticeship with a firm called Princeline in the merchant navy and I did three and a half years but decided it wasn’t for me and I left. Couldn’t get a job really because although I was, I was over nineteen I was still national, liable for National Service by then because having been in the merchant navy, the merchant navy was a reserved occupation but because I’d left so I wrote to them and asked to be called up and I was called up for the army and I went to a place called [Inacton?] I forget what it was. Selection centre. The Korean War was on and I went, I went in front of the naval chap who said I could join the navy. They only took twelve National Servicemen a year and I said no thanks. The army chap was, said to me you can join and with your educational qualifications even as a National Serviceman you’ll probably get a commission but then for some reason, I forget why, the air force chap interjected and said, ‘We’re looking for aircrew,’ and he did some dickering with the army chap and that was how I joined the air force. I was literally sort of called up, you know. Went to Padgate and that was a laugh because the, the instructors were all acting corporal, National Servicemen who’d done a six week course or somewhere or the other and given a couple of stripes and in fact our, our hut commander was an acting corporal who was quite frankly illiterate. I used to, used to get one of my guys to read him from the Beano, to read to him from the Beano. You may laugh but it was the God’s honest truth, you know. Anyway, went to Hornchurch selected for pilot, navigator and I think gunner or gunner something like that. And I then accepted and we were offered at that stage the choice of staying as a National Serviceman or becoming what they call a short term engagement where you got regular pay so I opted for short term engagement. Went to nav school at Hullavington and when we first arrived at Hullavington my course were all suspended pilots with wings which rather upset a lot of the staff pilots because we were all officers and they were only sergeants but eventually we were told to take our wings down so we had to take our wings off. So I then qualified as a navigator. Spent five, six months at St Mawgan because there were no vacancies in the Navigation Training Scheme flying Lancasters so I did some Lancaster flying there. And then I went to Lindholme, that’s right, for the air observer’s course on Canberras. Didn’t do any, in those days the pilots and navigators went through Bassingbourn together. The set up or bomb aimer or whatever you like to call them did six weeks at Lindholme and then joined the crew on the squadron which is what I did. That was at Upwood and when I arrived I think we only had about four or five, there was only about four or five aircraft. That was when you had squadron leader COs as well but we slowly but surely got aircraft from Short’s. I think Short’s made some Canberras and I think we ended up with something like eight UE and twelve crews. Sounds about right. I think it’s something like that. We were chased out of Upwood eventually by, no, sorry Wittering, it wasn’t Upwood, it was Wittering. We were at Wittering. We were chased out by the arrival of 148 squadron Valiants and we then went, then went to Upwood which I think by that time we ended up with something like four Canberra squadrons from Scampton or, I think, well it was 61 squadron. 40 squadron. I can’t remember the names of the others. I think there was four ‘cause at one time in the air force I counted there were forty eight Canberra squadrons in the UK, Cyprus and the Far East. I think [I was more or less?] was astounded when I counted. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think there are forty eight squadrons in the air force at all at the minute is there? You see we had Canberras at Upwood, Scampton, Waddington. What’s the one further north? Binbrook. Wyton. All had three or four squadrons. I think I’m talking of the days when there were a squadron leader CO and I was, I was a flight commander as well. I was acting flight commander as a flying officer. [cough] excuse me. Anyway, let me go and get a drink of water. Sorry.
CB: Ok.
PH: Talking.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’re re-starting now to recap slightly and go to the initial training that Peter did and just take us through that.
PH: When I, when I, is it going?
CB: Yeah.
PH: When I was called up in 1951 I went to Padgate where we didn’t do very much at all. I was there for about six weeks. We really got kitted out. That’s where we got our uniforms or up to a point our uniforms. Some of it. Some of it. It was, it was very odd because at times there were groups with wearing their own jacket but air force trousers and air force shirts and air force berets or whatever but anyway after about six weeks at Padgate we went to Hornchurch for aircrew selection which and I was given pilot. I don’t think I was given navigator believe it or not. I think I was given pilot, gunner, engineer. We then went back to Padgate and we awaited and we got, I got posted to Number 3 ITS at Cranwell and that was a six month ab initio course doing square bashing, PT, customs of the service. Mathematics. Physics. We had a lot of National Service teachers in those days of course who had done their, because in those days at eighteen you could either opt to do your National Service straightaway or you could defer it until after you’d been to university. And a lot of these guys had been, had degrees and were just doing their National Service after university so they were in their twenties normally. They only wore hairy battledresses because they weren’t issued even though they were officers they weren’t issued with anything else so that was it. So we did six months at the ITS and I think there was, there was, if I remember there were four ITSs at Cranwell. At Cranwell alone or [as of anywhere?] and there was over a hundred on each. The chop rate was about fifty percent so at the end of the course of the six months there would only be fifty of you left and these, these were pilots, navigators and gunners and then from there you went to your specialist training and I went then to Feltwell and I did my flying training on Prentices, then Harvards. Got my wings, as we said on the time and went to Driffield on, on Meteors. And then from there I went to Chivenor on Vampires which I didn’t get on with and of that course of fourteen because the Korean War ended seven of us were suspended from pilot training.
CB: So when you went doing your training at Driffield. What did you do? It was a two seater Meteor was it?
PH: Two seat. Yeah. The Meteor 7.
CB: And so what was the programme that you had for that?
PH: Well you -
CB: ‘Cause it was the first jet really.
PH: You flew, you flew nearly every day even only for a short time. Say an hour or so if that. A with an instructor and eventually I forget, it will tell you in my logbook you. Eventually went solo and because you went solo that didn’t mean, you still, you still did dual trips for various other things like aerobatics and things like that. And then eventually you did your final trip as a flight commander you were passed out you know as having satisfied. I got a white card at Driffield but then I went to say Chivenor and there were fourteen on my course at Chivenor of which seven were suspended and I was offered the choice. By that time I was a regular of course and I was offered the choice of finishing my National Service, I had about a week or so to do or retraining. By that time I was married. I was married in the previous year so I decided I rather liked the air force so I decided to retrain as a navigator. And so then I went to Hullavington and I had my pilot training. Actually my pilot training stood me in good stead because I finished about second or third on the course you know because a lot of the navigator and pilot training, especially the ground school, they were the same, you know, the meteorology, all that sort of thing was pretty good so I’d already done it. Most of it. But they were, in fact the course I was on at Hullavington were all chop pilots and I think as I mentioned earlier we were, we were forced to take our wings down eventually.
CB: Only temporarily.
PH: Well no we never got them back again because we then had, we then got navigator brevvies and the law of the Royal Air Force was you wear the brevvy of the trade in which you are practicing.
CB: Ok.
PH: Well we, our brevvies were virtually removed permanently. We were told we could no longer wear them. Right. Ok.
CB: Ok. So you did the Hullavington course.
PH: Yes.
CB: And you then got your new brevvy which was –
PH: Correct.
CB: The navigator. So then where did you go?
PH: Went to St Mawgan as the assistant flying adj because there was no vacancies for Canberra training at the time and I was there for six months. Did quite a lot of flying in Lancasters.
[phone ringing]
PH: Which one was that? Or was it –
[Recording paused]
PH: In training.
CB: Right. So –
PH: But because, because I was a navigator and I got on well with the squadron leader flying –
CB: Yeah.
PH: He said, ‘Pete, come and fly with us,’
CB: Yeah.
PH: So off I went. You know.
CB: So we’re talking about using your time at St Mawgan.
PH: Correct.
CB: And you got –
PH: Went to Gibraltar two or three times.
CB: Right. As the navigator on the –
PH: As the nav. Yeah.
CB: On the Lancaster.
PH: On the Lanc. And believe it or not we used to take down in the bomb bay bundles of hay because the AOC there and the brigadier they had a cow because they couldn’t stand Spanish milk. Have you ever tried Spanish milk? Spanish milk is bloody awful.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
PH: Anyway, they had a cow so in the bomb bay of the Lanc which is quite large we used to take bales of hay for the, for the AOC’s cow and bring back things like Christmas trees or potatoes and things like that you know.
CB: Yeah. Any wine?
PH: And wine. Yes. Of course.
CB: Ok. So you had six months of this.
PH: About six months.
CB: Time.
PH: And then I went to Hullavington and did the nav course.
CB: Oh this was before. This, was this after the nav course or before it?
PH: What?
CB: No. This being at St Mawgan was after –
PH: Oh no that was before, that was after getting brevvy, between getting a brevvy.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And actually getting, no it wasn’t the nav course. No. Start again.
CB: Yeah.
PH: I’d already completed my nav course.
CB: Exactly. Yes.
PH: And I had a brevvy.
CB: Yeah.
PH: I went to Hullavington. I went to St Mawgan.
CB: St Mawgan.
PH: On, all of my nav course there was no slots available.
CB: No.
PH: And we all got jobs and went to all sorts of places as, I don’t know –
CB: Just a holding position.
PH: A holding yeah.
CB: Yeah.
PH: A holding post. Some went as MTs. Some went as –
CB: Right.
PH: If you could drive they made you MT officer, you know.
CB: So, so what was the unit that you were supposed to go to after that?
PH: Well it was the flying, it was the, I was, it was the flying wing, just the flying wing.
CB: Ok.
PH: ‘Cause Hullavington at that time was the School of Maritime Reconnaissance.
CB: Right.
PH: MRS. And it was, they used Lancasters prior to, to the chaps training on Shackletons because typical of the air force the MRS was at St Mawgan which is in bloody, you know, Cornwall and the OCU was up in Scotland. So the guys did their course and they had to go all the way up to Scotland to do, to convert to Shackletons. They used, ‘cause of course the Shackletons as you know was a development of the Lancaster.
CB: Sure. Ok so you went back to Hullavington in order to get ready to go on to what aircraft?
PH: No. No. From, from, from St Mawgan I then went to Lindholme.
CB: Right.
PH: Ready to go on to Canberras.
CB: Ok.
PH: And we did the six week bombing course and then I joined 61 squadron direct at Wittering and as I said earlier on the pilot and navigator, plotter he was known as, they called them the plotter in the, in the Canberra and I was the observer. The plotter, they went to Bassingbourn together and the observers joined straight from Lindholme which was the Bomber Command Bombing School. BBBS.
CB: Ok.
PH: So, I didn’t do a conversion as such. Conversion was done on the squadron.
CB: Right. Ok. So, now you’re at Wittering.
PH: Yes.
CB: 61 squadron. So what happened there?
PH: Well we were there for about a year and then they decided to move us to Upwood because of the formation of the first Valiant squadron which was coming to Wittering. 148 squadron. Tubby, Tubby Oakes, something like that was the guy who ran it. It was quite amusing because when we were doing the major exercises, I forget what they were called now, where we used to fly right up to the Iron Curtain and then all turn left as it were. We used to have to take off on the peri tracks because the mock, the invisible Valiants were using the main runway. That’s the honest truth. There were no, we didn’t have any Valiants there but they were, we had to get used to, I mean the peri tracks, if you know Wittering.
CB: I do. Yes.
PH: There was a big runway and there was a big peri track so it was quite funny. I’m trying to think of what they were called. It will be in my logbook somewhere.
CB: Ok. So –
PH: We used to do these operations quite regularly.
CB: So when you were at Wittering you were in Canberras and where are you flying? Are you on your own or do you go out as a formation?
PH: Sorry. Say again.
CB: You’re at Wittering.
PH: Yes.
CB: And you’re now on operations.
PH: Yes.
CB: Effectively. Do you go off as a formation or did you go off as -?
PH: No. No. We’re still using the World War Two tactics. Stream.
CB: Right.
PH: You didn’t, I don’t think I ever done, I can’t ever remember doing formation. Did at Wyton eventually but only as a practice. It was never used operationally.
CB: Right.
PH: The Canberras. The Canberra was a night bomber really and it was, and of course we had Gee.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And GH and you did a minute stream. A minute stream.
CB: Yeah.
PH: We all flew one after the other up to the Iron Curtain and then all turned left you know. It was just to stir, stir up the Warsaw Pact. That was what it was really all about.
CB: Yeah. Quite predictable. Always turning left.
PH: That’s correct. Yes. That’s right.
CB: Ok.
PH: And then we’d probably go to Nordhorn or somewhere like that and do some bombing or whatever.
CB: Yeah. So, in Norway.
PH: No. Nordhorn is in Germany wasn’t it? I think.
CB: Oh was it?
PH: Yeah.
CB: Oh so you were flying that way as well as going up to the –
PH: Well we’d go out direct to the Iron Curtain, turn left.
CB: I see.
PH: Come back via Nordhorn which was -
CB: Yeah. Ok.
PH: In the northern part of Germany.
CB: Ok.
PH: In fact I’m not sure. It’s one of those islands that are off Sylt. Somewhere like that.
CB: Ok. So, yeah. Right. Ok.
PH: This is a long time ago now.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Fifty years ago, you know.
CB: So, when you were bombing what were you dropping?
PH: Twenty five pound bombs.
CB: Ok.
PH: When we, when we were using the bigger ones. The thousand pounders we tended to do that at, in Malta. Filfla. There was a bombing range. There was an island there that was used as a bombing range in Malta.
CB: Right.
PH: For daylight bombing we always used to deploy to, to Luqa for about a month at a time and use the bombing ranges in Libya which of course was not part of the empire but I don’t know, we had some, I forget, we had some interest in it.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And the Americans had some interest in it when they kicked out whatever his name was. I’m trying to think.
CB: Yeah. Well the airfield there was El Adem wasn’t it?
PH: That was one of the airfields. Yes. There was Benghazi. And there was another one the Americans had which had been called King, it was called Idris. That’s right.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Yes.
CB: Ok. So when you went on a sortie how did the sortie run?
PH: Say again.
CB: When you went off on these sorties how did the sorties run? Did you go on a dog leg or directly or how –
PH: Well you were given a timing to time on, TOT, Time On Target and you may have to dog leg if you were a bit early but usually you were late [laughs]. You were urging the, urging the pilot to put a bit more steam on.
CB: Ok.
PH: It was just a, I mean if that was Germany and say that’s the Iron Curtain there was a stream like and when you got there you turned left and went off to various places. Theddlethorpe, Nordhorn or sometimes back to base. That’s interesting. That’s right. We had something called to recover at base. You had something called a Trombone and the idea was to keep secret. You didn’t transmit or anything and they used to, your base would give a time. They would give a time. They would say whatever it was and you in your individual aircraft had a plus. So many minutes for your overhead so they had something called a Trombone and I know from Wittering on several occasions my Trombone ended over Liverpool ‘cause you had to lose thirty minutes or some bloody nonsense you know. This was so that when you landed you were landing in, I don’t think they, you see I don’t think although we were a minute apart in the bombing thing landing was a different ball game. They had to have a gap of about two minutes or three minutes which meant of course that the further back you were in the stream the longer you had to lose. In other words to land.
CB: So when you were actually doing the bombing the space time between aircraft doing the bombing is one minute. Is it –?
PH: Something like that. Yeah.
CB: The same for everybody was it?
PH: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
PH: But then after that as I say because you couldn’t land at minute’s slots at night you see.
CB: Yeah.
PH: During the day possibly. Excuse me [cough]. So you had to, as I say I had this Trombone where you flew down the Trombone to lose whatever minutes.
CB: Lose time.
PH: You had to. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Ok. So how many planes are going up at a time on this sort of thing?
PH: Oh I would have thought, well I was, you know well you say four hundred out?], a couple of hundred at least. Half. Every, every airfield, every Canberra airfield would have to send up about fifty percent of their aircraft.
CB: So –
PH: There would be a lot of aeroplanes in the air at the time.
CB: We’re in the dark as it was the case in the war.
PH: That’s right.
CB: And how were you aware or otherwise of the other planes on the stream?
PH: Never. [laughs] Didn’t see them. I think we flew with lights up to a certain point and then I can’t remember. I’m sure we flew with lights up to a certain point. Then they were switched off. I mean there were, there were mid airs as you can imagine.
CB: Mid-air collisions. Yeah.
PH: Correct.
CB: Fatal.
PH: Well I presume so yeah I mean let’s face it they didn’t advertise it too much as you can imagine.
CB: No. Ok. So you were at Wittering with 61 squadron. How long were you there?
PH: I’m trying to remember. Only about a year I think it was. Then we went to Upwood.
CB: Same squadron.
PH: Same squadron. Yes. I think, that’s right, I’m trying to remember. There was 61 squadron and I’m trying to think, there was, was there another squadron came from, yes there was another squadron came from, from Wittering. I can’t remember its number. There was 35 squadron and 40 squadron which came from somewhere like Scampton or Waddington. Somewhere like that. They ended up with four squadrons at Wittering if I remember right.
CB: Ok. And what about overseas detachments? How often did you do those?
PH: Oh yeah. We used to go to Malta, oh I should think every three months for anything up to, up to a month at a time. Some two weeks to a month doing visual bombing either at Idris, not Idris, I’m trying, Tarhuna, I think was the range in Libya.
CB: In Libya. Ok. And I’m just thinking of the envelope you were operating in. So you take off. What height would you cruise at?
PH: Anything between thirty six and forty thousand feet.
CB: And what speed would you be doing?
PH: Are you talking about airspeed or ground speed? Air speed would be about –
CB: Take air speed.
PH: Four hundred and sixty. Oh no. Not air speed, no. True airspeed about five hundred. I can’t remember. Two hundred and twenty knots. Something like that.
CB: Oh you were quite, quite –
PH: Something like that. Your true airspeed is twice your indicated airspeed.
CB: Ok.
PH: Something like that.
CB: Right.
PH: I don’t remember the figures.
CB: The indicated air speed would be?
PH: Well the indicated air speed would be, well about two hundred and twenty knots you see.
CB: Right.
PH: That was what you saw on your dial with your back –
CB: Yeah.
PH: Because we didn’t have GPI on 61 squadron.
CB: GPS. Right.
PH: GPS.
CB: Ok. So your, the actual speed that you’re going is what? Over –
PH: Four hundred and eighty knots.
CB: Four eighty. Ok.
PH: Something of that order.
CB: And you’re at variable heights. How was the height decided?
PH: Well I can assure you in 1955/56 there wasn’t a fighter in either the allied or the Warsaw Pact that could touch a Canberra flight. We could turn inside them you see.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Of course that really broad wing. I mean if we turned inside a Hunter it fell, it fell out the sky.
CB: Yeah.
PH: So did Sabres.
CB: Sure. So how often did you do fighter affiliation?
PH: Not that often. Not that often. Not true fighter affiliation. We, I can’t, I don’t remember doing any actual fighter affiliation with the RAF. Fleet Air Arm yes. I’m trying to think. Was it HMS Albion? What was the carrier they had in those days?
CB: So this would be in the Mediterranean or in the North Sea.
PH: No. In the Mediterranean. Yes. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
PH: When we were at, they used to ask us to come down five thousand feet –
CB: Ok. Did they?
PH: Because their fighters couldn’t reach us. I think they had Venoms –
CB: Yeah.
PH: Or something on board didn’t they?
CB: Then Sea Hawks. Later they had Sea Hawks.
PH: Oh and Attackers.
CB: Then Attackers. Yeah. So now the bombing run so where would the bombing run start?
PH: I’m not with you.
CB: So you’ve got a target.
PH: Yes.
CB: And you’ve transited to the target.
PH: Yes.
CB: But how would you handle the bombing run? Would you be higher? Lower?
PH: Well that was, that was when you were sort of vulnerable because you had to be, fly straight and level for at least twenty miles before the target.
CB: Right.
PH: So then you had to stay straight and level. In fact we developed a technique, the Canberra squadrons developed a technique called the late bomb door opening because if you opened the bomb doors way back it made it very difficult. It made the aircraft wobble.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
PH: So we I think it was seven seconds before target, before, not target, but before actually dropping the GH bomb.
CB: Yeah.
PH: I mean, don’t forget you’re way back aren’t you?
CB: Yeah.
PH: I mean you’re about thirty miles from the target. I can’t remember the exact distance but you’re well back because of the forward throw of the bomb.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Well it -
PH: It had a different –
CB: Depended on the height and speed as to just how –
PH: Yes, exactly. Yes.
CB: Far you were letting go in advance?
PH: We had, you had a set of, you had a set of figures which were quite amusing. This is a true story. You’ll like a true story. You had a set of figures which you set up on your G set.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And when they [clashed?] the bomb went automatically.
CB: Right.
PH: And we were, we were first in the stream, that’s right, it was when we, Squadron Leader Hartley so it must, we were, it must have been soon after we arrived at Wittering because we were still a a 8UE squadron. Squadron Leader Hartley was the boss who got killed subsequently. Anyway, we arrived back to be greeted and this was on a night exercise and I should think it’s in the book. They used to do them, we used to do them regularly. About at least once a month. Let me have a look and see. See if I can get the name.
CB: So we’re looking in the book now but –
PH: Well I’m trying to see what –
[pause]
CB: Well what we could do Peter is come back to that.
PH: Well yeah anyway.
CB: Because –
PH: There used to be, used to be an exercise, an operation so and so. This is what I was talking about where you flew to the, I’ve lost the thread now. Oh yes we were first in, we were first at Nordhorn and I dropped the bomb. Fifty yards I said. I said, ‘That’s the fifty yards [two hours down?]. We landed. We had this enormous bloody greeting. Station commander. Squadron commander. ‘What did you do Pete?’ ‘Well what did I do?’ ‘Well your bomb dropped two thousand yards short in the woods, set fire to the woods and the whole exercise had to be cancelled’. So I said, ‘Well I don’t understand that.’ And they said, ‘Can we see?’ And what had happened was the nav leader had typed the wrong, one of the digits wrong in my G set. So it wasn’t my fault.
CB: No.
PH: It was the nav leader.
CB: This was before you took off.
PH: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
PH: You had a set of digits.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And those are the ones you put in your GH set?
CB: Yeah.
PH: And he’d, he’d typed them up in a hurry or whatever and he’d got one of the digits wrong and it was two thousand yards out. So I was, I was exonerated and he got his bum kicked.
CB: Yeah.
PH: You can imagine.
CB: Yeah. Sure.
PH: Well the whole exercise had to be cancelled ‘cause we were the first ones through. ‘Cause I mean, I had the, I was the best bomb aimer in Bomber Command at the time.
CB: Right.
PH: Allegedly you know.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
PH: Done on results.
CB: Yeah. Right. So just going back. Here we are on the run in.
PH: Yes.
CB: And –
PH: That’s when you’ve got to fly straight and level.
CB: You’ve got, straight and level. Would you normally be at a higher or lower level than your cruise approach when you actually did the bombing?
PH: Do you know I can’t remember?
CB: Ok.
PH: No. I’ve got an idea that you tended to fly around at the height you were going to bomb at.
CB: Right. So the practicality is we’ve got the pilot and then we have the navigator and –
PH: The plotter. Yes.
CB: Plotter as well so there’s three of you in the aircraft.
PH: Correct.
CB: Who did the bombing?
PH: I did. The, the set up.
CB: Right. Ok.
PH: So you had, the navigator had in front of him, he had his radar screen.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And I had a GH screen up there.
CB: Yeah. So you’re sitting side by side in the back.
PH: Yes. That’s right.
CB: How did you get through to the front?
PH: Well you climbed on the, there was a, only, only fifty percent of the back, I mean all the instruments were there and there was a gap.
CB: Yeah.
PH: You had to go under the, you know you had to –
CB: So you’re crawling down to the –
PH: This was only for visual bombing.
CB: Yeah.
PH: You had to go in to the nose.
CB: That’s what I meant.
PH: For visual bombing. For GH bombing you did it in your seat.
CB: Ok. That’s what I’m trying to get, differentiate here. Sometimes you’d do visual bombing would you?
PH: Correct.
CB: On what circumstance would you do visual bombing?
PH: Well they did a lot during the Suez campaign.
CB: Ok.
PH: When they bombed because it was in, the Gee and GH didn’t reach that far.
CB: No. Right. So you were practising visual bombing.
PH: Correct.
CB: At any time.
PH: From forty eight thousand feet sometimes.
CB: Right. Ok.
PH: Used to have, there was a strike barge at Wainfleet and I think there was another one at Chesil, Chesil beach.
CB: Right. In the south. Yeah.
PH: These were, these were the old invasion barges painted black and yellow and they used those as targets. And there was Theddlethorpe, Nordhorn but some, I think Theddlethorpe and Nordhorn were GH I don’t think they were visual. I can’t remember.
CB: Right.
PH: I think they were straight GH.
CB: So here we are flying along on your final approach to the target.
PH: Yes.
CB: The pilot and you are coordinating the activity.
PH: Completely yes.
CB: Who is actually running the plane at that time?
PH: Oh the pilot. The pilot.
CB: Right he’s still running it.
PH: Yeah.
CB: Who is pressing the –
PH: Unlike some of the American aircraft where the bomb aimer actually had physical control of the aeroplane. The Brits never went for that.
CB: No.
PH: You always used to say to the pilot left a bit, left a bit, steady, steady, steady.
CB: Sure. Yeah. And then you pressed –
PH: You pressed the bomb.
CB: Right.
PH: The pilot had to activate, had a switch to activate the, the –
CB: The release.
PH: The bomb aiming equipment.
CB: Yeah.
PH: But the bomb aimer was the one who opened the –
CB: Oh the bomb aimer equipment. Ok.
PH: Who did that?
CB: Ok. So you physically had to press the button for it to go.
PH: Correct. That’s visual bombing only.
CB: He, right, so on GH how did that happen?
PH: It was all done automatically.
CB: Ok.
PH: When the bomb –
CB: So effectively when the crosses merged.
PH: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: The lines cross.
PH: Yeah.
CB: Then it goes. Right.
PH: Correct.
CB: And it’s been programmed on the ground on the basis of what the wind –
PH: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
CB: Is expected to be. Now what about circumstances where you have to approach at a different height for some reason? Would that happen? So you had a planned height of say forty thousand.
PH: Well I think on the GH side you’d have to throw it away because you you wouldn’t have the necessary coordinates you know. On the visual side we’d [play?] off the cuff.
CB: Right. Ok. So a lot of this is practical stuff in training.
PH: Yes.
CB: So Suez comes along.
PH: Yes.
CB: How did you get involved in that? What? Were you still with 61?
PH: Well I was never involved in the actual bombing of Egypt but I was involved in, I was in, I was at Nicosia and my crew were involved. My son was born and then they, they didn’t send me abroad. Our crew spent, George [Cram?], myself and a chap called oh, I should think Roger Atkinson, we were transiting carrying three, thousand pound bombs from the UK to Cyprus via Luqa.
CB: Right.
PH: It was a bit hairy. We had three thousand pound bombs on board.
CB: Makes a heavy landing does it?
PH: Yeah. Well of course they, I mean they were dropping, it was thousand pounders. The Canberra could carry thousand pounders of course and also nuclear weapons later on but originally the actual iron bombs were the thousand pound.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Which we used to drop, practice dropping on Filfla which is just off Malta. Big island off Malta.
CB: Right. So how many thousand pounders could it carry at one time?
PH: Three.
CB: Ok.
PH: Two and one.
CB: Right. Two side by side. Yeah and one behind or below.
PH: Below.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Below.
CB: Ok. Right. So we’re on 61 squadron and you’re occasionally going on your detachments.
PH: Yes.
CB: Where did you go after Wittering?
PH: Ah well what happened was I was on what was known as an eight and four at the time and when 61 squadron packed up I was, I only had about eighteen months to do in the air force [allegedly?] so I was posted to 58 squadron at, at Wyton as by that time they had, the squadrons had a full time adjutant. And I was posted there as the adjutant with no admin training [allegedly] but I was, but because it was Canberras again I did a lot of flying and I went to Christmas Island during the H bomb tests.
CB: Ok.
PH: It’s all in the book.
CB: Yeah. So the H bomb is what size in relation to the iron bombs of a thousand pound?
PH: I’ve got no idea. Never seen one.
CB: Oh you didn’t see one there.
PH: No.
CB: Ok.
PH: Well Wyton was PR you see.
CB: Right.
PH: It wasn’t, it wasn’t bombers, it was, we had PR7s.
CB: Ok. PR7s. So the photographic reconnaissance Mark 7s.
PH: Yes. That’s right.
CB: So what did, what did what did you do there?
PH: Well I was, my full time job was adjutant.
CB: Ok.
PH: Squadron adjutant. A chap called Colin Fell. Wing Commander Fell.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Nice chap. Ended up as an air commodore. Navigator. One of the, you know at that time one of the few navigator squadron commanders.
CB: Yeah. So how long were you at –?
PH: Eighteen months.
CB: Right. Then what?
PH: Well, I happened because I was the adjutant I always read the DCI, Defence Council Instructions and one came. I was into judo, I was a judo instructor and then and one of these DCI’s came around saying that there was vacancies to learn Japanese so I put my name down and I’m trying to think. [North?] Lewis. [North?] Lewis was the CO and he said, ‘Oh no,’ sort of thing but there was a caveat on the Defence Council Instructions saying that all applications had to be forwarded regardless of whether they were approved or not by the CO so mine was forwarded. I was called to London for an interview. Sat in front of this large group of men and as soon as I walked in and sat down they said, ‘Well of course we’re not, we’re not teaching Japanese.’ So I sort of almost got up to go and they said, ‘Sit down. Would you like to learn Chinese or Russian?’ And I said, ‘What’s the role?’ They said, ‘Well if you learn Chinese you go to Hong Kong for a couple years.’ And I was married at the time so, well I was married. ‘And if you learn Russian you go to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London and as I’d recently bought a house in Edgeware I thought I’ll do that because by then I’d accepted a –
CB: PC.
PH: A permanent commission.
CB: Right.
PH: So I went to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies for a year. That must have been about ‘58/59. I then went and stayed with a family in Paris for ten months. A Russian family. Emigre family. Did the Foreign Office interpreter’s exam and got a, I got a second class pass which is not bad really. I mean very few people get a first class pass. I then went to a place called Butzweilerhof in, in Germany.
CB: Germany.
PH: Cologne. Where for a time I was CO of the intercept, the intercept section.
CB: You were a squadron leader by now.
PH: No. Still a flight sergeant.
CB: Right.
PH: And from there I went back to flying on Victors at Marham, tankers. As navigator.
CB: Ok so –
PH: And then I was short toured deliberately by the, by, despite my, despite my AOC saying that, ‘He’s part of a crew, a five year crew,’ and I was only three years, I was short because of my Russian and I went to a unit called BRIXMIS in Berlin. British Commander in Chief’s Mission to the Group of Soviet Forces and I was an interpreter with the Soviet forces in Germany and met lots of Russian generals. And my boss was a chap called Gerry Dewhurst. Have you ever come across Gerry?
CB: So in practical terms what are you doing at brexmas, BRIXMAS?
PH: Sorry?
CB: What were you doing at BRIXMAS then?
PH: Spying.
CB: Right. So –
PH: In practical terms. We used to tour East Germany.
CB: In cars.
PH: In a car.
CB: Yeah.
PH: With cameras to make sure that they weren’t building up their forces.
CB: This was part of the agreement with the Russians.
PH: Correct. They had SOXMAS.
CB: They watched you and you watched them.
PH: Yeah. They had, they had a similar unit at a place called Bunde.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And the Americans and the French, we all had, I mean I got on very well with the Americans and the French and we used to, we used to you know talk to each other about where we were going to go and make sure we weren’t double you know. We made sure that we didn’t, I mean one stayed out all night sometimes on an airfield and God knows what.
CB: Didn’t [know]
PH: Because, see what happens was the Soviets, the Russians because East Germany was, you know, very delicate, sensitive they always put their new kit there. So, I mean, you know we had army tourers and air force tourers and we got some of the first photographs, good photographs of the MIG, the MIG 21J which was very early on. But I mean it’s surprising Janet, when I was doing the, when I became a volunteer of RAFVR and I was doing the air, air. Well analysing the air side because intelligence you try and pretend you’re the enemy really because you give your, your boss what you think the enemy is going to do so you put yourself in the enemy’s place. At one time the Russians or the East, sorry the Warsaw Pact had twenty eight divisions in East Germany. Twenty eight divisions, the Brits, the Brits had one, the Americans had one, the Germans had about four. Three or four. And the French had one and they had nearly three hundred aeroplanes, three hundred, sorry what am I talking about? Two thousand aeroplanes and I think we had about three hundred or four hundred. I mean when I used to do the briefings for the, for the war, you know, for what was it called? There was a –
CB: The war games.
PH: Wintex. Wintex was the big, they say the generals they’ll be at the, they’ll be at the coast in, they’ll be at the channel coast in four days. That was why you know they had the tactical nuclear weapons.
CB: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
PH: I mean you know that was the truth. There was no good, no good denying it. There was no way. You know.
CB: No. So you were doing that from ‘50/60.
PH: Well I did that from, let’s think. That must have been ‘67. ‘67 to ’70. Something like that.
CB: Ok. Right. Just –
PH: Then I came back to MOD and I was going to be posted to Uxbridge as gash supernumerary but a chap, I’m trying to think of his name in MOD, who I knew very well. He used to, he was a great fixer. He got me posted to the Foreign Liaison Section to finish my time in MOD and because I was a Russian speaker I was given the South American desk [laughs] of course.
CB: Good service logic isn’t it?
PH: Sorry?
CB: Good service logic.
PH: Yeah. Well I mean that was vacant and that was, you know, he got me in and I was quite pleased with it because I still met the Russians and more cocktail parties than you could shake a stick at and I’ll tell you a thing. The poorer the country the more ostentatious their cocktail parties and social events are. Some of these African countries that were starving their ambassadors used to throw these champagne fuelled caviar and Christ knows what, you know.
CB: Amazing. Right.
PH: And by then I was, and I was lucky enough to be asked if I wanted, when was leaving I was to ring a certain telephone number which I did and I got a job and I did another twenty two years with a, an organisation which I think the last letter of its number was five.
CB: I can’t think what on earth you’re talking about. Right [laughs] Right.
PH: Am I allowed to say these days?
CB: Yeah.
PH: At one time we weren’t.
CB: So –
PH: Which I thoroughly enjoyed.
CB: Yeah. The South American desk. In practical terms you were doing something useful but what was it?
PH: Liaising with anybody, any, I mean –
CB: Anybody in South America.
PH: No. No. Anybody, anybody across the board.
CB: Right.
PH: But I did, I remember one occasion that’s right. Yeah mainly South America but I mean you didn’t have to speak, they all spoke English anyway.
CB: Yeah.
PH: But I always remember I had to introduce new attaches to the chief of the air staff and I’m trying to think at the time who it was. [unclear] Oh dear. It will come to me in a moment and I know that the guy, the guy I introduced was Peruvian Air Force. He was lieutenant colonel, no lieutenant [stress] general and they kicked him out because obviously he was probably involved in some sort of coup. Jesus [Gabilondo?]. His name was General Jesus [Gabilondo?] and I remember I introduced him to the, said to the chief of the air staff who sort of almost said, ‘What.’ [laughs]. I said, ‘Sir, this is General Jesus [Gabilondo?].
CB: Yeah.
PH: Nice chap.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Flying Canberras ‘cause we’d sold Canberras to the Peruvians if I remember right.
CB: Absolutely. Yeah.
PH: So we did have something in common. Nice chap.
CB: Just going back –
PH: But that rank. I mean, you know, that incredible rank to be, to be a military attaché really.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Just going back to your Victor times at Marham.
PH: Yes.
CB: So here we have a tanker squadron.
PH: Yes.
CB: So what were, you as the navigator in one of the aircraft there.
PH: Yes.
CB: How did that work? You were linking with [pause] nice picture on the wall.
PH: There I am in the –
CB: What was the typical day? You were up fuelling fighters.
PH: Well we were very very busy because what happened was the Valiant packed up as you know. The Victor was brought in in a hell of rush. In fact what I was initially on 55 squadron which only had the two point tanker.
CB: Right.
PH: They borrowed or stole or whatever it was from refuelling pods from the navy.
CB: Oh.
PH: Which were put on the wings.
CB: Right.
PH: And we did something called Operation Forthright which was flying between the UK and Cyprus to bring back, believe it or not, Lightnings that were stranded all around the Middle East ‘cause with the demise of the Valiant they couldn’t get back because as you know the Lightning, Lightning, the early Lightnings only had a range of about seventy bloody miles. They were terrible. Unless we, the lightning 6s were a bit better but I mean the original Lightnings had to be, they had to be refuelled as soon as they got airborne virtually.
CB: Yeah. Right.
PH: I mean they were designed to go up, shoot down the incoming and come back.
CB: And come back again. Yeah. Right.
PH: But that was Forthright. So we enjoyed that. We were doing a lot of flying. Unusuall. I mean I was doing something like sixty hours a month which is really double what the air force normally. I mean thirty hours used to be the norm wasn’t it really?
CB: So this is in two sections really. There’s the overseas deployment.
PH: Yes.
CB: And there is the UK. So on the UK you’re flying from Marham which is Norfolk.
PH: Yeah.
CB: Where are you flying and what are you doing?
PH: Well what we did mostly and I shall think of the name of it. What did you call it? Between the Wash and Newcastle and we used to refuel. They used to practice refuelling. We used to go around like that for about four hours.
CB: So you’re flying in an oblong shape are you?
PH: Yeah. I have the thing, just one moment
CB: And what are you refuelling? Only Lightnings?
PH: Anything.
CB: Only Lightnings or Americans.
PH: Let me just tell you in a moment. Let me look.
CB: Yeah. Ok. We’re just stopping, stopping just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
PH: For refuel.
CB: So you’re flying an elliptical circuit.
PH: That’s right.
CB: Effectively so that just, how does that work then?
PH: And we called it a Tow line.
CB: You called it tow line. And how did it work?
PH: Well you just, they called you up and said, you know, we, they knew we were there and the Lightnings from Leuchars or wherever. Coltishall. I think there were Lightnings at Coltishall. They knew we were there and for them to practice refuelling.
CB: Right.
PH: And we just, I mean it was quite boring. I mean just went around in this elliptical shape. As I said, tow line.
CB: So as the navigator what was your role in that?
PH: Virtually nothing because the guy doing the refuelling was the co-navigator. Two navigators in the Victor. One was the nav, one, I was the plotter and he was the other guy was the set up.
CB: Right.
PH: A chap called Pete [Hall?] and he was the set op around the radar but he also controlled the refuelling setup. I believe latterly they transferred it to the co-pilot.
CB: Right.
PH: But I mean in those days it was done by the –
CB: The nav radar.
PH: The nav. Nav radar. Nav radar. Yeah.
CB: Yeah ok. So did he have a means of looking backward?
PH: Yes. The telescope.
CB: They’d put a telescope in specifically for that.
PH: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So how did it work? So you’re flying straight and level. What sort of speed would you be flying for the refuelling?
PH: Well depending what you were refuelling. Normally about three hundred knots.
CB: Ok and so you’re straight and level for specifically a period.
PH: We’ll all the time straight and level. Well until you turn, you turn and come –
CB: Yeah.
PH: I mean the leg would take probably fifteen or twenty minutes.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Each –
CB: And what speed are you going?
PH: Well around I think.
CB: Three hundred knots you said.
PH: Yeah. Well no about two hundred and forty air speed.
CB: And, and height?
PH: Anything between thirty two and thirty eight thousand feet depending on the, how bumpy it was.
CB: Yeah.
PH: We would try and find you know the smoothest level we could, we would and then we’d settle down and they’d transmit what height we were at.
CB: ‘Cause in practical terms the air force system was to run a drogue line.
PH: That’s right.
CB: Effectively.
PH: Yeah.
CB: With a –
PH: He had, he had a nozzle.
CB: A nozzle in the back.
PH: And we had a drogue.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And that was it.
CB: Right.
PH: And once and it was, there was a set of rings and things and when it connected it wouldn’t float.
CB: It held it.
PH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
PH: But of course when you withdrew when it withdrew there was always a spurt of fuel came out you know which which could blind the pilot sometimes.
CB: Yeah.
PH: ‘Cause it could go on his windscreen.
CB: Yeah. Well yeah. So the fighter is coming up and getting fuel on.
PH: Correct.
CB: And is trying to negotiate the drogue.
PH: Correct.
CB: And –
PH: You had to fly, you had to fly –
CB: Into it.
PH: Depends where the drogue were. I think on the Lightning it was above them.
CB: His nozzle was above his head.
PH: I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think. What was the other one? We did refuel the odd one.
CB: Phantom.
PH: Phantoms, I think, yeah. Yeah.
CB: Buccaneer.
PH: Buccaneers. That’s the other one. Yes. Yes.
CB: Right.
PH: Buccaneers.
CB: What about the Americans? Did you do any of those?
PH: I personally, I didn’t but I know the squadron did eventually but the Americans had a different system you see.
CB: Yeah.
PH: The Americans –
CB: Theirs is a guided.
PH: They had a drogue operator who fed the drogue on to the –
CB: Yeah.
PH: On to the other aircraft.
CB: It was a long bar wasn’t it?
PH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Well is. Yeah. Ok. Right. And did you refuel other Victors occasionally?
PH: Eventually because as I pointed out originally it was only a two point tanker because they hadn’t, they hadn’t yet got the hoodoo. The hose drum unit.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Known as the hoodoo.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Which eventually was –
CB: In the centre.
PH: Fitted into the bomb bay. Once that was done because the wingspan of a bomber you couldn’t accommodate it on a wing –
CB: No.
PH: Refuelling pod but then oh yeah we did what we called mutual. Victor to Victor.
CB: And you could do two fighters at the same time.
PH: At a time.
CB: Could you?
PH: But only one large aircraft.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
PH: Other Victors we had Victor to Victor and then we had Victors to whatever was available.
CB: Ok. So that’s UK. Then when you went overseas how did that work? You were based in Cyprus or where were you?
PH: Normally in Cyprus yeah. That was, they were called Forthrights if I remember right. Operation Forthright. That was taking Lightnings backward and forwards between because we didn’t have Lightnings based permanently in Cyprus at that time they were always on detachment from the UK squadrons and they would be out there for a couple of months and then changed over.
CB: So would they fly the whole distance non-stop or would they pop into Southern France. In to Orange?
PH: Oh no we tried to take them all away.
CB: You did. Right.
PH: The trouble with the Lightning was as soon as it landed it bloody went u/s.
CB: Oh right. So you’d want to keep it airborne.
PH: So they kept it airborne [laughs] Yeah. I mean they, well it didn’t take, it only took about five or six hours to get to Cyprus from the UK.
CB: Sure. Yeah. Because they’re, they’re transiting quite fast.
PH: Yeah. I, yeah and I enjoyed being a nav because my responsibility was not just looking after the Victor but looking after the Lightnings as well just in case they had some form of malfunction like breaking a probe which did happen. They had to make sure that the refuelling, they had refuelling brackets enroute. I had to make sure the refuelling brackets, if something happened instead of dropping into the sea they could divert somewhere you know.
CB: So the refuelling bracket is a period, a space over the route.
PH: Yes.
CB: Certain areas where you would do it.
PH: These were pre-determined –
CB: Right.
PH: Between, you, you had a special map which had what they called refuelling brackets and that was where –
CB: Right.
PH: You actually did the refuelling.
CB: So were you stationed in Italy sometimes as part of the -?
PH: Say again.
CB: Would you sometimes have your Victor in Italy in order to be able to deal with the brackets.
PH: Personally no. I know that, that, no after I left the squadron because of, what’s his name, Mintov they had to use Sigonella in Italy but, because he, he banned the RAF from Luqa but we always used Luqa.
CB: Right.
PH: What happened was we would have on day one a Victor would go to Luqa.
CB: Yeah.
PH: On its own with a crew and that would be refuelled and everything ready and then on day two the Victor with its two Lightnings would take off from Marham. The Lightnings would join, go via Luqa. You’d call up when you were approaching Luqa. [cough] Excuse me. He would get airborne, take over your slot and you would then go into Luqa.
CB: Right.
PH: And depending on what was going on you might well stay there and do the same thing as he’d done the day before. Refuel. And the next pair through you would take on to Cyprus.
CB: Right.
PH: It was quite complicated. It was quite well thought out.
CB: Ok.
PH: And occasionally if we were going further we’d do a Victor to Victor refuelling at height because like, like the Lightning the Victor used nearly half its fuel getting to height.
CB: Yeah. So how long did it take to get up to height with a full –
PH: What? The Victor? Forty minutes.
CB: Did it?
PH: Lightning did it in three. [Laughs]
CB: Yes. [Laughs] Going to stop there for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: So we’re just re-starting. Are you due to have your lunch shortly?
PH: No. I’m ok.
CB: Ok.
PH: No problem. I’m eating this evening so I shall just –
CB: Right. Ok
PH: Have a cup of soup at lunchtime.
CB: Right. Ok. So one of the interesting things here is that, two things, first of all in the war the pilots who re-mustered to do other things maintained their wings.
PH: Oh I see.
CB: You didn’t.
PH: No. The law, the regulations state –
CB: How did you feel about that?
PH: You wear the brevvy of the job you are doing.
CB: Yeah. So how did you feel about that?
PH: Well as a youngster I was a bit miffed but you know it was a fact of life. You do as you were told.
CB: And once you got in to being a navigator.
PH: I enjoyed it very much. The navigator on Victors was the best job in the air force.
CB: In what way?
PH: On tankers.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Well because you were in control really. I mean the pilots did exactly what you told them. I mean they did anyway but I mean in that particular context I mean, you were, the two navs ran the operation completely.
CB: ‘Cause you’re running a pattern.
PH: Yes.
CB: And you’re also doing a task that is very intricate.
PH: Correct.
CB: Right.
PH: Not like sitting on your backside you know on QRA for God knows how long waiting for the –
CB: Yeah.
PH: We did do a QRA at one time. The Victor tankers because of the way we could stay airborne for quite a long while. There was a phase that the NATO went through where they were simulating that all the, the, shall we say the, let’s get the, war headquarters etcetera had all been wiped out by the Warsaw Pact and by getting a tanker airborne with a senior officer in it he was the, he was the one who could control what was going on and we did that for about a year and that was, that was a type of QRA where you set the aircraft sat at the end of the runway and you were in a caravan in your flying kit ready to get airborne if you were told.
CB: Yeah
PH: We did, we did simulate it once or twice but it never came to anything.
CB: Just to –
PH: The concept was you’d end up with a group captain sort of determining whether or not you were going to obliterate bloody Moscow, you know, quite frankly.
CB: Right. So just to clarify that. QRA is Quick Reaction Alert.
PH: Reaction alert. Yes.
CB: You’ve got a bunch of aircraft at the end of the runway.
PH: Correct.
CB: That can, can –
PH: Get airborne –
CB: Start off.
PH: In three or four minutes. That’s right.
CB: And move quickly.
PH: Correct.
CB: Yeah. Ok. Next bit is the difference between the wartime experience with the family and peacetime is that wartime the families were banned from the airfield and its environment.
PH: Yes.
CB: But in peacetime.
PH: Oh yeah. We lived in quarters.
CB: You had quarters. So what was it like -
PH: Yes.
CB: For the family?
PH: Well enjoyable. I mean we enjoyed living on, on station. Plenty going on. Social life in the officer’s mess you know. Kids went to decent schools.
CB: So, in Germany the children –
PH: My oldest son was at boarding school when we were in Germany.
CB: Where was he at school?
PH: He was at Wymondham College.
CB: Oh yes. Yeah.
PH: But the others were with us because my last son Anthony was born in ‘64. By that time we were back in the UK.
CB: Right.
PH: Semi permanently.
CB: Right. So the others didn’t go away to school.
PH: No. Not really. They stayed with us. ‘Cause in Germany the schooling was quite good. The British education system was quite what they called –
CB: Yeah.
PH: BF, British Forces.
CB: BFPO.
PH: No. Yeah. British Forces education. BFES or something.
CB: Education yeah. Ok and on the airfields what sort of, what were the quarters like?
PH: Cold [laughs]. Cold. At Marham we didn’t have central heating and we, we couldn’t use the dining room ‘cause it faced, faced north east and you know when you’ve got that wind in from Norway or the North Sea all you had was a radiator or something you know. No central heating.
CB: Electric radiator.
PH: Yeah. Something like that.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Yeah.
CB: Right. But the quality of the building and the furniture was ok was it?
PH: As far as we were concerned they were ok, you know.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Oh no. That’s right. Marham. Yeah, that’s right. No. At Marham we had a lounge which had a door directly into the lounge which if you opened it you stepped into the mud in the garden.
CB: Oh.
PH: And I’m told, we were told that it was an architect had made a note for a door instead of a window. It should have been a window but in fact they put a door in there for some unknown reason. I mean who would have a door directly in to the lounge? I mean we had a front door and a back door. I mean they were nice quarters. They were but they were cold. These days of course they’ve all got central heating but in those days there was no such thing.
CB: No. So these are all traditional airfields. Expansion period airfields.
PH: That’s right yeah.
CB: The ones you were based in.
PH: Marham. We weren’t in quarters.
CB: Wittering.
PH: We lived on a caravan sight at Upwood and at Wittering. We had a caravan there.
CB: Oh. Because the quarters were all full were they? The quarters were full?
PH: Yes they [might have been?]. I was fairly junior at the time, you see.
CB: Yeah.
PH: There used to be a waiting list.
CB: Yeah.
PH: But then you got to a frozen list eventually.
CB: Right.
PH: If you were lucky.
CB: And in Germany what were the quarters like there?
PH: Very good. Excellent. Central heating. The lot. My wife said to me after we’d lived in one of those, ‘When you leave the air force Pete I’ll live in a shed but it’ll have to be bloody centrally heated.’ [Laughs] Having been in quarters in the UK which were bloody freezing you know.
CB: So in Germany what was the life like there?
PH: Excellent. Local overseas allowance and all sorts of things you know.
CB: And did you, was everything centred on the airfield or did you tend to get out much?
PH: I wasn’t flying in Germany.
CB: No.
PH: They were both were ground tours.
CB: I was wondering if you got out in to the hinterland much.
PH: I did in, in Berlin. Yeah. I was touring East Germany.
CB: Yeah.
PH: My wife often said our tour in Berlin was, our three year tour was the best ten years of our lives. The social life was incredible.
CB: Yeah.
PH: I mean I was almost a diplomat you see.
CB: Yeah.
PH: Virtually had diplomatic immunity. And I mean you know it was very difficult. The Americans were always throwing enormous parties, you know. My kids loved going to the Americans. They used to have forty gallon bloody drums of ice filled with coca cola and Christ knows what you know. Just helped yourself.
CB: Yeah. Extravagant with everything.
PH: Absolutely.
CB: But very hospitable.
PH: Absolutely. Yes. Very difficult to, to reciprocate.
CB: Yeah. And on a professional front then how did that work?
PH: I’m not with you.
CB: Well from the air force and intelligence point of view how did the working together –
PH: We were told by –
CB: Operate.
PH: RAF Germany that the intelligence we produced was invaluable. I think I said we got the first pictures of the new MIG 21J.
CB: Yeah.
PH: All the new tanks [unclear] yeah.
CB: So in when you went out on these sorties, forays in to East Germany you weren’t staying in airfields there ‘cause they didn’t let, you were driving around all the time were you?
PH: Well no. You camped up with luck. If you get in undetected on the landing side of an airfield.
CB: Right.
PH: Which, of which one had heard there was particular interest.
CB: Right.
PH: ‘Cause what you were after was photography.
CB: Yeah.
PH: And especially if an aircraft had got its gear down and its undercarriage open and then it’s you know the technical boys can tell a lot from that apparently, you know.
CB: Right. Yeah. Good. Ok. I’ll just stop there again thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: So you’re out in East Germany winter and summer so –
PH: Yeah.
CB: What sort of things was that like?
PH: Well go back to square one. What you’ve got to appreciate is that the west did not recognise the east. The Soviets called it the Democratic Republic of East Germany. The west called it the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany and this was the protocol.
CB: Right.
PH: And you know the diplomacy sometimes is childish because I would have to go sometimes to a meeting because we’d been called because of an infringement or something and they’d produce this protocol which said so and so so and so happened in the Democratic Republic of East Germany which I then had to cross out and write Russian Occupied Zone of East Germany and initial it and then they would cross it out [laughs]. But that was, that was the situation. So basically if you got into trouble in East Germany we weren’t allowed to discuss it with the, with the Volkspolizei. We had to call for a Russian officer. And that was the situation.
CB: So were these engineered incidents were they?
PH: Oh yeah. Absolutely yeah they I mean they, they I mean we would take pictures. We used to be, I used to have one and I lost it unfortunately when I moved. A big sign said, what was it -? “Presence of Foreign Liaison Missions Forbidden” in German and in Russian and in English [ unclear] and if you went [?] what we would do, quite often we would take the sign down and throw it in the nearest bloody river. If you wanted to get near to an airfield. Which they had no right to do you see.
CB: Right.
PH: Allegedly. But they’d come and put another one up and then you’d get, you’d get nicked you know by the Russians because you were behind the sign as it were you know and then there would be a protest and that was where I would have to go with my boss because there had been a protest that flight lieutenant, always referred to me you know, Flight Lieutenant Hearmon was caught speeding at such and such a place and I’d have to deny it you know and say no, it wasn’t true you know but quite often it was true but sometimes it wasn’t. It was just fabricated by the Volkspolizei, the East German police. It was quite amusing at times. Yeah.
CB: So you’d camp out.
PH: Oh yeah. I had a little tent and a very good sleeping bag. An army sleeping bag. You know one of those ones that zips up with arms.
CB: Oh right.
PH: You know the sort I mean?
CB: Yeah. Yeah. So it was quite cold sometimes.
PH: Yeah. Oh yeah but you know one slept ok. You’d wake up sometimes with ice all over your bloody face.
CB: So how low would the temperature go?
PH: Minus twenty two. I think that was the lowest one we ever had.
CB: Summertime. What about summertime?
PH: Well that would be ok. It would be hot.
CB: But not too hot.
PH: No. No. You’d do about one, you’d do about two tours a month. That was all because you had to write everything up as well you know and that could take two or three days.
CB: So you’d come back. You’d write things up. How did the debrief go?
PH: Well the debrief was done by you. I mean it was all, it was a question of matching up. You would give a narrative about the photographs etcetera etcetera and then that was all sent. It was looked at by our own ops officers. Usually an army chap and then it would go to, what do you call it? RAFG. Royal Air Force Germany. Second ATAF intelligence. Yeah.
CB: So were you verbally debriefed by your seniors after these trips?
PH: No. Not really. Just asked, ‘How did it go?’ Because you know they might look at your report before it went off but you know they knew what you’d, they trusted you shall we say.
CB: Yeah and you were able to practice your Russian regularly were you?
PH: Yes. Yes.
CB: So you got even more proficient.
PH: I did at one time but don’t forget we’re now talking about twenty, thirty years ago.
CB: Sure. Yeah. So when you eventually retired.
PH: Yes.
CB: What did you do?
PH: I went for an organisation that’s number ends in 5.
CB: Yes.
PH: For twenty odd years.
CB: And after that what did you do?
PH: Retired [laughs]
CB: Ok. To Milton Keynes.
PH: Yes. Well we’d already moved to Milton Keynes while I was still working in MOD. Well we lived in Amersham and we had quite an old house that wasn’t double glazed, wasn’t double skinned and it was quite cold and we couldn’t afford, well the new houses they were building in Amersham at that time I should think that the lounge was about that size, you know. Remember they went through a phase of building houses with rooms that I mean I had four kids. We couldn’t have all get in one room together.
CB: Crazy.
PH: I mean they showed you around and they had undersized beds and undersized wardrobes and Christ knows what in the various rooms because they were, they were tiny. Whereas the house we had in Amersham was, Milton Keynes was very comfortable. I like a decent sized room.
CB: Yeah.
PH: I’m a, I mean this room’s quite pleasant isn’t it, really?
CB: Yeah.
PH: Nice aspect.
CB: This is brilliant. Yeah.
PH: That balcony goes all the way around by the way.
CB: Right. And your children they left school. Then what? Any, any of them go in the forces?
PH: My eldest son went in the army for a while but then he became a policeman. He retired. He retired three years ago as a policeman. He works for an organisation that is on contract to the Home Office escorting undesirables back to their own countries. He’s been, he’s been all over the world. China, Italy, Peru. Oh God. And if you excuse me I’ll tell you. They took this rather, what’s his name, he was a China man who didn’t want to go back so he was being a bloody nuisance and they found, realised afterwards why he didn’t want to go back. He was wanted in China for something or other, being deported, escorted, they had to go via Moscow. They got to Beijing and Pete, he was in handcuffs ‘cause there were two of them with this guy in the middle in handcuffs and they got to, got to Beijing and they were met by a Chinese police lieutenant who spoke English. He’d worked, he’d served in the UK or something and he came out and he said, ‘Mr Hearmon. Yes we’ll take him.’ Pete said to him, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘He’s been a hell of a problem. We’re quite happy to leave you the handcuffs. Here’s the keys.’ ‘No. No. No. No. No.’ And he said something to this chap who went and sat meekly in a corner. And Pete said, ‘What did you say to him?’ He said to him, ‘If you don’t go and sit down and behave yourself I’ll f***ing shoot you,’ and he said, ‘I meant it Mr Hearmon and he knew I meant it.’
CB: How amusing.
PH: ’Cause the Chinese, you know.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
PH: I mean they’d charge, they’d charge the family for the bullet or something.
CB: What did the others do?
PH: Sorry?
CB: What did the other children do?
PH: Oh well my second, well my second daughter is retired. She lives in Lincoln. My other son is also retired. He’s married to a Channel Islander and lives in Jersey. My youngest son is the only one who’s working. He’s not married and he lives in London and he’s, he comes and sees me about once every three weeks. He works for the local council. He’s in to environmental things of some sort.
CB: Right. Right.
PH: But even he’s, I mean he was born in, let’s see, ‘52, ‘56 ‘64 so I mean he’s coming up to his fifties quite soon.
CB: Your eldest son, what did he do when he was in the forces?
PH: Sorry?
CB: Your eldest son. What did he do when he went in the forces what did he do in the army?
PH: I’ve no idea. He was just in the infantry. That was all. He was just a soldier and then when he left he joined the air force, er joined the police and did twenty eight years or something in the police.
CB: Right.
PH: And he wasn’t an officer. He was just a soldier of some sort.
CB: We’ve had a really interesting discussion. Thank you very much indeed.
PH: Good.
CB: And we’ll stop it there.
PH: Good.
[Recording paused]
CB: When you were at Driffield.
PH: When I was at Driffield.
CB: Yeah.
PH: We had an instructor there called Flight Sergeant [Chalky]. This is God’s honest truth. Flight Sergeant [Chalky] double DSO DFC. Been a wing commander during the war and a friend of mine said he was, he was at the, he was the adjutant. He was in the air force. He was a National Serviceman but he became a navigator eventually as a regular but he went out. At the time he was in the secretarial branch and he was the adjutant of the reselection unit in MOD and when people, they were recruiting people back into the air force and they offered him the lowest thing they could get away with you know and this guy apparently had gone to, had gone to MOD and they said come back but we can only make you a flight sergeant. He accepted and Dave Kinsey said he should never have done because what he should have done was, ‘You must be joking.’ Gone away. A fortnight letter he’d have got a letter saying we’ve changed our mind you can come back as a flight lieutenant.
CB: Yeah.
PH: But he said yes. He was obviously desperate to get back and he was a, and he, the sad thing was he was killed as a result of a mid-air collision at Driffield at the time.
CB: Was he?
PH: Yes. And he’d gone through the war as a DSO double, wing commander double DSO. And we had DFCs and other things you know.
CB: Yeah. Pilot.
PH: Pilot yeah. Oh yeah. No. He was an instructor.
CB: I think one of the sad situations I don’t know what you’d call it the number of people who actually who were killed after the war in accidents.
PH: Well don’t forget when I joined the air force in ‘51 still there was an awful lot of ex-wartime guys still around you know with double, double medal ribbon you know. DFCs and God knows what. I mean when I was at Marham the wing commander flying there Mike Hunt, that’s right, yeah I think he was a DSO DFC you know. He’d been, he ended up as station commander at Leuchar I think at one time.
CB: Amazing.
PH: I can remember as I say at Marham there were certainly, no at , sorry there were certainly guys, Tubby Oates who took over the, I think it was Tubby Oakes, a name like that, took over 148 squadron as a wing commander. He was ex-wartime you know. Well decorated. DSOs and God knows what.
CB: Right. I think that covers a lot. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Peter Charles Hearmon
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-17
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHearmonPC1600317
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
Second generation
Format
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01:17:26 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in London and evacuated for part of the war. For National Service, he was taken on by the Air Force for a short time engagement and subsequently accepted a permanent commission.
After RAF Padgate, Peter was selected as pilot/gunner/engineer at RAF Hornchurch. He was posted to Number 4 Initial Training School at RAF Cranwell and then went to RAF Feltwell. He trained on Prentices and Harvards and became a pilot. RAF Driffield followed and Meteors. Afterwards at RAF Chivenor, Peter flew Vampires, which he did not particularly like.
Peter re-trained and received his navigator brevet at RAF Hullavington. He took a holding post at RAF St Mawgan, the Maritime Reconnaissance School. He trained at RAF Lindholme, Bomber Command Bombing School, on Canberras before joining 61 Squadron at RAF Wittering. He was at RAF Wittering for a year before they went to RAF Upwood.
Peter describes his overseas detachments, and outlines and contrasts visual bombing and Gee-H bombing.
For the last 18 months, he was posted to 58 Squadron at RAF Wyton as adjutant. He flew the PR.7 variant of the Canberra for photographic reconnaissance.
Peter then learnt Russian and passed the Foreign Office interpreters’ exam. He went back to fly Victors at RAF Marham as a navigator. Peter talks of Operation Forthright, flying between the UK and Cyprus bringing back Lightnings. In the UK, they practised refuelling.
Peter subsequently went to the British Commanders-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Berlin. He took photographs in East Germany, particularly of airfields. He then went to the Ministry of Defence South American desk and worked for the Security Services before retirement.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Devon
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Norfolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Cheshire
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany
Russia (Federation)
Cyprus
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
61 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
fuelling
Gee
Harvard
Meteor
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
perimeter track
pilot
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Chivenor
RAF Cranwell
RAF Driffield
RAF Feltwell
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Hullavington
RAF Lindholme
RAF Marham
RAF Padgate
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Upwood
RAF Wittering
RAF Wyton
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/620/8889/PPaineGH1616.2.jpg
c7fb40cc6f0bfbe3e8dfa9843065b6cb
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/620/8889/APaineGH160726.1.mp3
924472391843693055dda8d9ecb5466d
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
Paine, Geoff
Geoffrey Hugh Paine
G H Paine
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Paine, GH
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Geoffrey Paine (1925 - 2019, 1894345, Royal Air Force) documents and photographs. He flew as a pilot with 100 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Geoffrey Paine and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-20
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 it’s the 26th July 2012 and I’m speaking with Mr & Mrs Paine, Geoffrey Paine the pilot and we’re in Croxley Green and we’re going to talk about the life and times of Geoff in the RAF and other activities. So, what are your earliest recollections of life Geoff?
GP: My earliest recollections of life? Oh, when I was a small boy do you mean? [Laughs] I lived at Gerrards Cross which is just down the road from here so I’m a, almost lived here all my life, yes always have, telephone [telephone ringing] always have done to be frank. [Telephone ringing]
CB: I’ll stop it just for a moment.
PP: I’ll go and get it.
CB: It gets.
PP: That was timed wasn’t it?
CB: I was going to say, yeah.
GP: That’s better, yes.
CB: Yes.
GP: So in Gerrards Cross I went to school first of all at —
PP: Not leaving a message, so can’t be important.
GP: I went to school first at High Wycombe Royal Grammar School and then I went down to Cornwall and went to Falmouth Grammar School, and of course when I was there the war was on and I volunteered for the RAF, I was in the ATC, Air Training Corps, down there I was one, actually joined the Air Training Corps when it was probably first formed quite early on and I volunteered for royal air force and as soon as I was eighteen I was whipped into it. [Laughs] No trouble at all. And then now where did I go first? Oh my goodness me I went to London first and then I was sent down, we had about, when I signed up in London, we had about three or four days in London and then I went to Aberystwyth, and we were billeted on, in hotels on the sea front at Aberystwyth and we used to have our lessons in the University Aber, Aberystwyth and our drill on the sea front of course, there was a great lovely big sea front there you could drill on, hard standing and then I volunteered of course for the RAF and my first recollections really I went to grading school, didn’t I, I think, I think perhaps it was grading school, No 6, yes, of course I went to an ITW first an initial training wing and then I, was on 20th September, at Aberystwyth, it was a nice place to be, billeted in the Belle Vue hotel, little hotel we were all in hotels there, we did all our drill on the sea front and we used their swimming pool, we had to go up to the swimming pool on a very cold morning, and the first time we went there we were all non-swimmers, we had to climb to the top diving board and jump in, and we were fished out with long poles, and there was one chap couldn’t do it, ground staff, [laughs] he wasn’t allowed to join aircrew, amazing. I felt sorry for him because he was very, completely gobsmacked he was. It took a bit to jump in because they’re quite high the top boards, and they had this great big long pole, and you grabbed hold of it and they pulled you in and you soon learnt to swim, I mean within a couple of days you were swimming the length of the pool so it was a good way to start, I think.
CB: Yes.
GP: A good way to start that. That was Aberystwyth, gosh, what did I do then?
PP: Well you’ve got it all written down old man, use your notes, use your notes!
CB: I’m just going to stop it a moment.
PP: Yes, go on.
GP: Elementary Flying Training School, Ansty, I went first, I did my first solo at six and a quarter hours, which was quite early I think ‘cause me instructor was leaping about, he’d beaten everybody else getting me in the air [Laughs]. Then I went to ITW at Cambridge just for a short time this was, they moved you about just to fill up time. Then I went to 100 Sqn, RAF Waltham, and there I packed thousands of blooming incendiary bombs. They were going on big raids then from Waltham and it was a continuous packing of incendiary bombs, thousands they, the whole place, must have put Germany on fire I think. Then what happened then? Bomb damage repairs Hornchurch, [?] where did I get to? Heaton Park, 18th of July ’44 and then Hornchurch, bomb damage repairs, and then Kew, bomb damage repairs, and then Hendon, again bomb damage repairs, and then I was put on a boat, the ‘Andes’ to go to Cape Town and from Cape Town you go on that beautiful train all the way up to Bulewao, I think it took three days, two days and a night I think and we went to RAF Guinea Fowl to start our elementary flying training on Cornells and then from there I went to RAF Ternhill to fly on Harlands, and then I think it was getting a bit near the end of the war. Twenty-five, five, forty-five, oh my giddy aunt yes.
CB: OK, we’ll stop again a mo’. Could you just explain the bomb damage repair you were doing, so what was the scene?
GP: Well we, there were about I think twenty, twenty-five of us, and we had a chiefie, you know an RAF sergeant.
CB: Flight sergeant, um.
GP: Nice old chap, and a lorry and when a bomb had dropped and blew all the tiles of roofs, blew the windows in we were piled off, given a place to go and there we had all the necessary stuff to, yellow calico stuff, to nail to the window to keep the wind out because all the glass had gone, we put stuff on the roofs, if there were tiles we put tiles, if not we put tarpaulins on the roofs just to make the place habitable, habitable after the bombing, that’s what happened then.
CB: So some of this was in East London?
GP: Yes it was, it was in East and West, and West London too, yes.
CB: And what about Hendon, that’s an airfield, so?
GP: Yes.
CB: What happened there?
GP: I went to Hendon just for a few days. They’d had a, a doodlebug had landed in the evening when they were all having showers and things right onto an accommodation block.
CB: An RAF billet block?
GP: And we had to clear the site which meant clearing human remains as well, it wasn’t very nice at all. It meant shovelling bricks, shovelling it on a lorry and off it all went, that was it. A complete barrack block got a direct hit, unbelievable really they picked that one building out on the station.
CB: Amazing. And what with the human remains this was a sensitive thing but what did you do with them?
GP: Well, you find yourself a hand with a bit of the, bit of the —
CB: The bone, yes.
GP: A bit of bone sticking out, you didn’t know whose it was.
CB: No.
GP: You just put it in a pile, no way of finding out at all.
CB: So what did they then do with those?
GP: I think they were buried somewhere ‘cause they didn’t know whose they were. They knew who’d died in the blocks obviously but the remains you couldn’t really match them up, impossible. Didn’t find any heads or anything, mostly arms and legs and bits and pieces like that. Not very pleasant but it was as if you were in another place, it didn’t mean much because there was no body with it, just an arm or a leg, wasn’t very nice at all. Oh gosh what did I do after that?
CB: So going on from there you were on the ‘Andes’ yes?
GP: Yes.
CB: Which route did that take and how long?
GP: Oh, it was lovely we called in on the way, it was a posh boat the ‘Andes’, a cruise ship and we called into, what’s it called half way down?
CB: You didn’t go via Canada?
GP: No, we didn’t, no. [unclear]
CB: You went in the west coast of Africa did you?
GP: Of Africa, I’m trying to think.
CB: OK, and who were the people being transported, were they only air force or?
GP: Only air force yeah, I’m trying to pick it up on here. All here, near Gwelo. Yes, that’s right. It was back a bit, arrived at Cape Town.
CB: Yeah.
GP: We went on this nice boat to Cape Town on 1st March.
CB: 1945?
GP: Then we were heading for Southern Rhodesia.
CB: Yes.
GP: I think it took two and a half days to get to Rhodesia.
CB: OK.
GP: Two days and a night. Each carriage had bunks to sleep six so we arrived in Bulewao on 4th March and spent twelve days there to become acclimatised, being so high up above sea level I think it was, I think it was about six or seven thousand feet above sea level.
CB: How did they acclimatise you?
GP: Well just a matter of —
CB: Exercise or?
GP: Matter of doing a few marches, they used to take us out and drop us out on the bush and we had to find our way back and you had to be very careful because if you didn’t pull your socks up or your trousers down you got ticks sticking in your knees all over the place because they used to be on the undergrowth and they’d burrow into your skin.
CB: Yes.
GP: And —.
CB: How did you get them out?
GP: With a cigarette if you had a cigarette, you’d put a bit of heat behind them and they reversed their way out, that was better than doing it any other way otherwise they left the beak in there didn’t they you see? So you got a cigarette behind them and they soon came in reverse [laughs]. Yeah, oh gosh.
CB: And how did the flying go when you were there, you were flying Cornells?
GP: Cornells, well the weather of course, every day was like this, beautiful weather, beautiful weather, lovely flying, and it was, the airfield was out, well out in the countryside and we did a lot of low level flying. We used to beat up the native villages, I can see them all now cowering underneath their little shelters. They lived in thatched roof, you know rough little places, we were pretty horrible to them really. [Laughs]. We used them as a target, we didn’t hit anybody but we used to go in very low and —
CB: Yeah.
GP: And then what else, I think, the war finished and we were shuffled off down to Cape Town and we were there for several weeks, we had a wild time because we climbed all the, well I climbed all the mountains. As you know Cape Town goes all the way round, I climbed all the mountains there, I used to live on the mountain. We’d go to Muizenberg and we’d learned to surf, lovely surf at Muizenberg and the people there were ex-pats who’d moved out there before the war and they were very nice, if they saw you coming down the mountainside they’d call you in and you’d have coffee and cakes and goodness knows what, they looked after you which was jolly nice. We were there for some time before they shipped us home again you see, it was really like a nice holiday really.
CB: What was the ship like that you returned on?
GP: A bit rougher than the one we went out on, we went on the ‘Andes’, came back on the ‘Reina del Pacifico’, which was a bit of, I think the ball had blew up in Belfast when we came back, it was a real old tramp steamer, [chuckles] packed with RAF people coming home.
CB: So we’re talking about May 1945?
GP: May ’45 yes.
CB: And you then went where?
GP: I went to, can you find it below, yes this is it here, yes. I went to RAF Ternhill, on the 25th May we went to Ternhill.
CB: What did you do there?
GP: I’m trying to think, um.
CB: That would be where you the advanced training. [Dialogue confused with interviewer].
GP: Flying Harvards. Yes I was flying Harvards there. I went solo in three hours forty minutes which was quite good and received my pilot wings and along came VJ day, got my pilot wings there and then a victory in Japan day and the second world war —
CB: Yeah.
GP: All flying training ceased.
CB: OK.
GP: We all returned to Cape Town to await our boat home to England, four wonderful weeks in Cape Town climbing the mountains.
CB: So that’s what you did earlier?
GP: Yeah.
CB: So if I just interrupt you again?
GP: Yes.
CB: We come to the end of the war but in the war you were in the Air Training Corps but you were also in the Observer Corps were you?
GP: Yes, no.
CB: That was later?
GP: That was later.
CB: OK, so we’ll come to that in a minute.
GP: Yes.
CB: OK I’m just going to stop for a moment. We’re just doing a correction here, because it’s not Ternhill in England, it’s RAF Thornhill, before coming back. Let me just.
GP: Yes, we went down to —
CB: So after Guinea Fowl then where did you go?
GP: We went down to Thornhill.
CB: Right.
GP: Another RAF training school, No22 Flying training School at Thornhill, and on, along came VJ Day, that was on Harvards, but along came VJ Day and all flying ceased and we were just enjoying ourselves, put on a train and sent back to Cape Town. And when we got to Cape Town there was no boat. We saw the boat going out, we missed the boat, and so we had about four or five weeks in Cape Town to do what we wanted so we climbed the mountains, I did, I climbed up the mountains went all along the back behind Cape Town [Colossal?] and then down over, it was interesting, coming down Oloch[?] you had to get down on to the main road if you wanted to get back to where camp was and there were all these people who, ex-pats who’d built lovely houses there, obviously moneyed people, and they used to welcome us with open arms, ‘Do come in’, used to open a little gate and they’d give you cakes and tea, coffee and drinks if you wanted it. We had rather a nice time, four or five weeks there, before we came back on the boat to come home. And we got on this tramp steamer I called it, ‘Reina del Pacifico’ it was a rough old boat, a lot of people on it, very much overloaded, I’ve got pictures of it here we have, we kept. We stopped at Mafeking going down through, that was interesting coming down to South Africa and —
CB: On the train?
GP: Yes, I got off the train there ‘cause the train was there for a while. They were changing engines so I said to the driver ‘How long are they going to be?’ he said ‘Half hour, three quarters of an hour’ so I went down to have a look at Mafeking and there, there’s Rhodes.
CB: Statue?
GP: Cecil Rhodes statue. Which was quite interesting.
CB: Yes, yes.
GP: And this was when we spent time down to Cape Town and I spent my time climbing mountains there.
CB: So on this boat then, ‘cause you’re going back on the boat.
GP: Yes, back on the boat.
CB: What was that like?
GP: Yeah.
CB: What was that like?
GP: A bit overcrowded.
CB: Um.
GP: But we came out of Cape Town and then we came up the coast and we called in at St Helena which was interesting because Napoleon had been banished there.
CB: Yes.
GP: And the people came out, and I remember buying my mother a tea cosy made out of local raffia or something. [Laughs]. Had quite a good time really. Now what else happened, what happened after that, oh gosh?
CB: So then where did you dock when you got back?
GP: Liverpool.
CB: Um. And where did they send you when you returned?
GP: Trying to think, Liverpool.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo’ hang on.
PP: Dad.
CB: Right so you’ve landed at Liverpool then what?
GP: Yes, we went to, went down to West Kirby in October ’45. I don’t think we did very much there at all, we were just swanning around, didn’t know what to do with us and then they sent us to Stansted. Stansted was an airfield that had closed and we were put in the hangars and lorry loads of equipment from closing airfields came in and what we did we built little bivouac’s underneath some of this equipment and hid there, nobody knew we were there, otherwise we were given a job. So, we were there for about four or five weeks, hiding away [laughter] otherwise you would, they just gave you something to keep you out of mischief I suppose really. And then 28th November ‘45 I went to number, Bircham Newton, No27 FSTS Bircham Newton, and then I went to Little Rissington, 6FS, solo flying training school at Little Rissington on the 18th January ’46, then I went to Ternhill where I got my wings on 3rd September ’46, quite a long process wasn’t it?.
CB: What were you flying then?
GP: Harvards. That was in Harvards.
CB: So all three of those you were flying Harvards were you?
GP: Harvards yeah.
CB: Right.
GP: [Indistinct]. Kirton-in-Lindsay, oh I flew everything then, doesn’t go on there. I flew Oxfords, Hansons.
CB: So how did you convert to twin engine?
GP: No problem at all.
CB: Yeah, but where?
GP: Gosh, where’s my logbook, where’s my logbook?
CB: OK, we’ll look at it in a moment.
GP: I can see in my logbook —
CB: But you had a good time with these other ones, flying single?
GP: Oh yes, excellent time.
CB: Yeah OK, we’ll stop there for a moment. So, from Kirton-in-Lindsay which is in Lincolnshire you went down to Oakington?
GP: Oakington yes.
CB: And what did you do there?
GP: Oakington? I think I did a little bit of local flying.
CB: On what?
GP: What was that in? Gosh, um, has it got it there Pete?
CB: But what was happening at Oakington which is in Cambridgeshire?
GP: Yes it was a flying training school and um —
CB: For? ‘Cause you went on to Yorks there?
GP: Yes, I went onto Yorks there. Gosh it’s difficult to think of it all now.
CB: OK.
GP: How it all pieced together now.
CB: OK, well never mind. So you went onto Yorks?
GP: Yeah.
CB: And what position were you flying there?
GP: Second pilot on Yorks.
CB: But you’d never been converted to twin-engine or four-engine?
GP: No, no, I just sat in the right-hand seat and enjoyed myself.
CB: Yes. And what did the captain get you to do as the second pilot?
GP: Well, keep an eye open, [laughs], I used to go back, I used to leave my seat and go back in the back and fill in the logs ‘cause you always had this great big log to fill in. I used to keep the logs in the aircraft and then when I finished that I’d sit back next to the pilot again.
CB: Yeah.
GP: But it was a bit of a swansong really.
CB: And the pilot what was his experience before being on Yorks?
GP: Well, he’d had been on Lancasters.
CB: Had he?
GP: Yeah.
CB: And a Lancaster only had one pilot so he was quite happy?
GP: Flt Lt Horry, ‘Horrible Horry’ they called him.
CB: Did they?
GP: And he flew the last York into the museum.
CB: At Hendon?
GP: At Hendon, yes. Horry, I got on well with him, they used to call him ‘Horrible Horry’ but he wasn’t, quite a nice chap, I had a very easy time.
CB: And where did you go in the Yorks?
GP: Oh, we went route flying. You flew across alongside the Andes, the um, —
CB: So you went down through France?
GP: Yeah, through France, and then you turned left along the Mediterranean and you called in at various places.
CB: Would you stop at Orange?
GP: I stopped at several places there.
CB: In France?
GP: And what amused me at the RAF stations there in North Africa, we still had German prisoners of war, and the German prisoners of war would be given a big stick to keep the natives from coming in and robbing the things on the station, that was his job, yes, he had a big pole and that would keep the natives out, and he used it too [laughs]. ‘Cause they’d come, they’d pinch anything, they’d pinch anything. Oh dear, yeah.
CB: So your re-fuelling stops would be how long?
GP: Oh, sometimes we’d have a night, sometimes we wouldn’t have a re-fuelling on the gain, and we’d get as far as India, go up to Karachi and we used to land at Suez down the bottom there, and I used to love it there ‘cause you could hire a boat there and go sailing on the big lakes down the bottom there, and I used to go up to Karachi, we used to fly up to Karachi.
CB: Did you fly via Aiden?
GP: No, I don’t think I went to.
CB: So you went to Iraq did you, through Habbanya?
GP: Yeah, yeah Habbanya. Cor, it’s all a bit of mist at the moment.
CB: That’s OK and this was doing what?
GP: I was second pilot.
CB: Yeah, but what was the ‘plane doing?
GP: Yorks. Carrying freight.
CB: Freight.
GP: Freight, yeah we didn’t carry, well we carried a few, odd people who wanted to fly back, in fact we brought my brother back from, on one occasion, from Cairo, he came back in the aircraft with us.
CB: And what, what, you delivered freight to Karachi?
GP: Yes.
CB: What did you bring back?
GP: Freight came back as well. I can’t tell you what came back I suppose they were packing up the stations, and the important stuff we would fly back home. Then they moved us from, God where we flying from then?
CB: ‘Cause we’re talking now about the time of partition aren’t we?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Between Pakistan and India?
GP: It’s all in the distant past now for me.
CB: We’ll stop there a mo’. So, this delivery system you were operating was from RAF Lyneham?
GP: Yes.
CB: In Wiltshire.
GP: That’s right.
CB: In the aircraft could you just describe what was the crew? This is a transport version of the Lancaster so what did it carry in crew terms?
GP: We had a first pilot, we had me second pilot, and I was sitting in the right hand seat really as a lookout in a way, and we had a wireless operator and a navigator, that’s all we had and we’d fly down, call in at various places in North Africa.
CB: But you had an engineer?
GP: Flight engineer.
CB: Yes, flight engineer.
GP: We’d stop at various places in North Africa and unload freight, or load freight, a lot of freight came home because they were closing the stations when we came back, they were loaded with all sorts of stuff, stations, getting rid of it, getting it home.
CB: What sort of accommodation did you get on the route? So your first stop is Castel Benito?
GP: Well I’m thinking about Malta, ‘cause we went into Malta, I went into Malta.
CB: Yeah.
GP: I had nice accommodation there, very, very hot and humid in Malta, I didn’t like it at all when I was there, very humid, terrible. In fact one day I spent the whole day sitting on the edge of the shower it was so blimin’ humid, it was awful. On other occasions Malta was very nice, we just happened to get the weather that’s all. I did nothing but act as second pilot really.
CB: In North Africa, were you in tents or were they proper buildings?
GP: Oh I’m trying to think, trying to think. No, we were in proper buildings, we were in proper buildings, hard to place it now.
CB: Um.
GP: Yes, we were in proper buildings there, I don’t remember being in tents at all, I don’t remember being in tents.
CB: And how busy was the route? And you’re the lookout how often did you see?
GP: Well it was pretty busy because really because there was a lot of freight coming back. Some, little bit going out, but a lot of freight coming back from closing stations and so forth, so we used to have a lot of freight on-board. I would be up with the pilot and then once we got airborne I’d go down the back and fill in the log, we had a great big log to fill in, what we’d got on board and everything else, I used to do, keep the log. Then come back home, it’s all misty parts [laughs] —
CB: Yeah, yeah. So after flying in Yorks without training on twin or multi-engine.
GP: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go after that?
GP: Oh crikey.
CB: Did you go for twin-engine training?
GP: Where’s my logbook?
CB: So you went to Valley?
GP: RAF Valley.
CB: In North Wales?
GP: Yeah North Wales, that’s right it was very nice there.
CB: So what did you do there?
GP: [Laughs] Skive most of the time on the beach. [Laughter] because we had um —
CB: This was September ’46?
GP: The airfield was quite near the beach.
CB: ’47?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GP: Yeah, was nice there. Cor gosh, it’s a job to remember it was a long way back.
CB: But the flying training was twin-engine training was it?
GP: Twin-engine training.
CB: In Oxfords?
GP: In Oxfords and Ansons yeah.
CB: So how did that go?
GP: And Ansons yeah.
CB: How did that go?
GP: It went very well really ‘cause there were a bunch of us, there’s a photograph of us in there I think, all pilots and navigators. Or is it in this one?
CB: Well, we’ll have a look in a minute. And the point of the question is you’d had experience on multi-engine?
GP: Yes.
CB: So I wonder how well that prepared you for twin-engine training?
GP: Fine, ‘cause I went onto Wellingtons.
CB: From?
GP: Middleton St George.
CB: Oh right.
GP: And flying UT navigators, they were all UT navs, I used to end up with sometimes one, sometimes two or three navigators in the back, and a wireless operator. Used to fly every day or every night.
CB: And then you went to Swinderby?
GP: RAF Swinderby.
CB: 201 AFS?
GP: Yes.
CB: So were you instructing there or what were you doing?
GP: What was I doing in Swinderby?
CB: ‘Cause you were on Wellingtons?
GP: Yes.
CB: And you were on familiarisation for a while, but what was the purpose of that?
GP: I did a bit of flying there. Can I have a look at —
CB: Yes, we’ll stop there for a minute. So, you went to Swinderby to the advanced flying school for Wellingtons?
GP: Yes.
CB: Then you went to RAF Topcliffe, which is clearly a nav school and you’re flying on Ansons?
GP: Yes.
CB: So.
GP: I was learning to be a staff pilot then.
CB: Right.
GP: So I could fly anything, Ansons, Oxfords, Wellingtons.
CB: Yes. OK.
GP: Used to mix it up.
CB: Right. So, um, at Topcliffe you were doing what?
GP: Topcliffe?
CB: So this is the No1 Air Navigation School and you’re flying on Ansons so.
GP: I think I was a staff pilot.
CB: You were a staff pilot OK.
GP: Yes.
CB: So you’re flying in an Anson, who else is in the Anson?
GP: Um, wireless operator.
CB: Um.
GP: And probably a training navigator to train, [unclear].
CB: Yeah.
GP: They were UT navigators.
CB: Right.
GP: So they used a couple, they used UT navigators, sometimes two UT navigators and one staff navigator.
CB: OK, who was the instructor?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, and were you being trained at the same time?
GP: No, I was just flying.
CB: Right, OK, right. So from there you then went onto Wellingtons again?
GP: Wellingtons.
CB: And this time you were at Middleton St George.
GP: Middleton St George, yeah I spent most of my time there then.
CB: So talk us through that, what was that, what were you doing there?
GP: Flying UT navigators all over the place, every day, every night.
CB: Right.
GP: I was a staff pilot there so.
CB: OK.
GP: I had my own wireless operator.
CB: Um.
GP: Forget what he was called now. He’s there somewhere.
CB: But the practicality of it is that that kept you busy for quite some time?
GP: Oh yes it did, until I finished I think.
CB: OK. So, when you, you were the captain of the aircraft, except when you had to be checked out occasionally?
GP: Yes that’s right.
CB: So that takes you to the end of your flying training by which time you’d done eleven hundred hours?
GP: Yes.
CB: So your biggest, where was your biggest hour accumulation, flying hours?
GP: Probably flying out to India.
CB: And on these Wellingtons you put in a few hours?
GP: No that was on, not Lancasters, on —
CB: On the Anson, on the Wellington?
PP: Yorks?
GP: No, Yorks.
CB: Yorks to India. Yeah, no, no, but this.
GP: Second pilot of Yorks.
CB: But at the end you were doing the training of navigators?
GP: I was training, UT navigators, in the back. Usually a staff navigator and UT navigator.
CB: Yeah, at Middleton, OK. ‘Cause you started there at six hundred and eighty four hours, and you finished up with eleven hundred hours.
GP: Yeah.
CB: That was pretty good going.
GP: There was a lot of flying see.
CB: And how did you feel about flying like that?
GP: No problem I loved it, I did, I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it.
CB: And the navigators were telling you where to go so sometimes it wasn’t right.
GP: Which course to go on. I dozed off one night, I’d been on nights, I dozed off and got a tap on the shoulder, ‘Excuse me sir’.
CB: And to what extent could you fly on auto-pilot, or was it just trimmed for stability?
GP: Oh you could, almost entirely, almost entirely you could fix it.
CB: But you did have auto-pilot?
GP: We had auto-pilot, yeah.
CB: Yeah. How reliable was that?
GP: Very reliable, yeah, very reliable.
CB: So this is how you could catch up on your sleep?
GP: We kept an eye on things, you just sat there, you were just a passenger on the aircraft. Aircraft flew itself really.
CB: Yes. And where were the sorties, because Middleton St George is on the north east, close to the coast, did you fly?
GP: Well we used to come right down over the country, down to the, down to Cornwall and the Isle of Wight and up, up again up the east side, yeah we did all sorts of trips.
CB: By then we’re talking about peace time, so everything’s illuminated so to what extent could you check where you were without the navigator helping you?
GP: Well you could ‘cause you, as a pilot, you kept a check on where you were. You knew what course you were flying, or you knew the main places you could identify on the route and it was normally anti-clockwise, you’d go down across Wales and then across to the east coast then up, nearly always that way round.
CB: Right.
GP: For some reason or another, I don’t know why.
CB: So that was No2 Air Navigation School at Middleton St George?
GP: No2 Air Nav yes.
CB: So you come to the end of your time?
GP: Yes.
CB: What rank are you then?
GP: Pilot three.
CB: Right. As what rank?
GP: Well it’s equivalent to a sergeant pilot really.
CB: Right.
GP: But um.
CB: What had they done to the ranks?
GP: I was a pilot four, that was equivalent to a corporal ‘cause they changed it all you see.
CB: Right.
GP: And when the SWO found out I was still in the sergeants, I’d been in the sergeants mess, but because they changed the ranks he said ‘You can’t come in here now, you’re only a corporal’ but I went to the airmans mess and had a far better time in there I can tell you.
CB: At what stage was that?
GP: God only knows.
CB: Was that close to your leaving the RAF or many years?
GP: Yes a couple of years I think.
CB: Yeah.
GP: Yes, you can see from my logbook.
CB: OK. So, you’ve come to the end of your RAF term, how many years had you signed on for?
GP: Three years and four years reserve I think it was.
CB: Right. So, you came out of the RAF in ’49.
GP: Yes.
CB: What did you then do?
GP: Farming, [laughs], took a farm. Then what did I do then? I went in the Observer Corps didn’t I?
EP: ’61 you went in the Observers.
GP: Royal Observer Corps.
CB: OK, what prompted that?
GP: I became a commander in the Royal Observer Corps and —
EP: You went full time ’66.
GP: What was that darling?
EP: You went full time in ’66.
GP: Yes I went full time in ’66 yes.
CB: Fine. And how long did that last?
Unknown: [Indistinct]
GP: Three years was it?
EP: No until you retired.
GP: Until I retired yeah, yeah.
CB: Aged what?
EP: Sixty.
GP: Sixty, when I was sixty.
CB: And while you were in the Observer Corps what was your task?
GP: What was?
CB: What was your task? What were you doing?
GP: Pilot.
CB: No excuse me, I’ll stop it.
GP: Oh sorry, Observer.
CB: So as part of the history here —
GP: Yes.
CB: How did you come to meet your wife Evelyn?
GP: Well —
CB: And when did you marry?
GP: I met Phillip, her brother, first and we had motorbikes, and he took me home.
CB: What was he doing?
GP: He was um, he was in the RAF still, and I was in the RAF, but he took me home, and I met Evelyn then, and oh gosh, it’s a long story isn’t it?
CB: Go on.
EP: That was in ’45.
GP: ’45. 1945.
EP: When you came back from Rhodesia.
GP: I’d come back all sunburnt from Rhodesia, yeah. [Laughter]. Yeah that right, and we got, we just clicked didn’t we, we just got on so well. I think, never had any arguments.
CB: Well there you are.
GP: And her family were very nice to me, your father was very nice to me. He was a funny old chap her father but he was very nice to me indeed, in fact he gave you away, came up the aisle with you to me.
CB: Lovely. And he was a farmer was he?
GP: Oh no.
CB: Oh no, what did he do?
GP: Well I don’t know, [laughs], practically nothing I think. He’d um —
CB: So when did you marry?
EP: ’48.
GP: 1948. Twenty sixth of August, was it? 26th? 1948. Yeah, and he gave her away.
CB: OK.
GP: Doesn’t sound right somehow does it, how can he give you away?
CB: Well I’ve just done it twice.
GP: Yes.
CB: It relieves the financial pressure you might think.
GP: That’s right, that’s right.
CB: Doesn’t work that way at all.
GP: We’ve always got on, never had any upsets as far as I can remember.
EP: Show you the letter.
CB: I’m just stopping a moment. Now here we have a letter from the Queen which ‘gives her great pleasure to send you her best wishes on your sixty-fifth wedding anniversary on twenty-sixty August 2013’.
GP: We’ve got, we’ve got two haven’t we from the Queen? The other one’s hanging up there behind the lamp.
CB: Yes. That’s really nice.
GP: We’ve met the Queen.
CB: Yes.
GP: She’s very nice.
CB: You went down to Buckingham Palace did you?
GP: Yeah.
CB: Was there a garden party?
GP: Garden party.
CB: How did that go?
GP: We went to the garden party. At one occasion my nephew drove us there and the car conked out going down Whitehall [laughs] and we walked into Buckingham Palace. [Laughter].
EP: But we met her at Bentley Priory, that’s where you met her ‘cause we went to [?]
GP: Oh yes, I was in charge at Bentley Priory so I had to meet her didn’t I?
CB: Right. So now what we need to do if we may is talk if we may about your time in the Observer Corps.
GP: Yeah.
CB: So how did you come to join the Observer Corps and where?
EP: Because we were farming.
GP: Yeah, we were farming —
CB: Where?
GP: In Cornwall.
CB: Down in Cornwall, yeah.
GP: Who did I meet?
EP: You met, you went haymaking at next door neighbour.
GP: Next what?
EP: You went next door neighbour, helping with the harvest.
GP: Yes.
EP: And a ‘plane flew over and you went over to have a look didn’t you?
GP: That’s right yeah, ‘Are you interested in aircraft?’, I said ‘Yes, I was a pilot’.
CB: Yeah, and how did the conversation go after that.
EP: He said he had a post on his farm didn’t he?
GP: Yes that’s right he did. Who was that? That was um —
EP: Stevens.
GP: Stevens yes. Yes, he said ‘I’ve got a post on my farm’ that’s right. Um, he had these underground posts every, every four and a half, or five miles.
CB: Right. OK.
GP: They’re still there most of them.
CB: Yeah, hang on. So, this chap’s farm was where you started was it?
GP: That’s right down in —
CB: Where was that?
GP: Down in Cornwall, Pelynt in Cornwall.
CB: OK.
GP: And there was an underground post there. Um a bunker.
CB: Right.
GP: And we had a crew of ten.
CB: Right.
GP: So we’d man it with three at a time so you had a succession of people manning the post.
CB: So what did this compromise, the underground?
GP: The underground, you had a bomb power indicator, you had a battle assembly pipe outside which would record the over pressure of a bomb if it dropped and you would record it on a dial, BPI. BPI - bomb power indicator.
CB: Right.
GP: And then outside you had a pin hole camera, 360 degree camera with a cover on it and you had to load up sensitive papers in that, take it up, put it on its stand outside. If a bomb went off then it would record the height, the size of the weapon and the angle from the post, so you knew exactly, you know you could pass all this information onto your headquarters which were down Truro and they could plot it all on a big map and knew exactly what was going on. It was quite clever really.
CB: So this was with a landline reporting?
GP: Yeah. Landline.
CB: On a landline?
GP: We had radio back up but mostly landline, but um —
CB: So this is Observer Corps, so people were out observing how did that work?
GP: Royal Observer Corps, and they’re from down underground. You had a bomb power indicator underground so if a bomb went off immediately you had, the bomb power indicator would show you how many pounds pressure there was.
CB: Yes, right.
GP: How big a bomb was, and then you waited about three minutes and you went up the ladder, got outside, lifted the lid of the ground zero indicator which was a pinhole camera.
CB: Right.
GP: With four pin holes.
CB: OK.
GP: And you’d lift the lid off, took out the papers to come downstairs and then sent the readings through to headquarters and they could plot that bomb and you had several posts call the same bomb and you’d get several angles they knew exactly where the bomb was, if it went, if you had one.
CB: So what sort of bomb was this supposed to be?
GP: Well a —
CB: A nuclear weapon or an ordinary bomb?
GP: A nuclear weapon probably yeah.
CB: But the Observer Corps itself during the war.
GP: Yeah. The eyes and ears of the RAF.
CB: Were doing something different was it? Was that doing something different?
GP: Eyes and ears of the RAF.
CB: Yes. They would be working above ground during the war.
CB: Right.
GP: Spotting aircraft, saying where they were going and what they were doing, and then we went to the nuclear phase where they built all these bunkers, they’re still there ‘cause they’re solid concrete underground, most of them are still there.
CB: Right.
GP: One or two of them have been excavated but most of the are still there, if anybody’s got the keys they can go down them.
CB: So what distance are they apart?
GP: It’ll be eight miles.
CB: Right, and where are they in the country?
GP: Eight to ten miles. [?]all over the country.
CB: Right.
GP: Everywhere. There was one at Pelynt, where was the nearest one to Pelynt?
EP: I’ve no idea.
GP: Oh, um, trying to think now. They were about every eight, between eight and ten miles apart.
CB: So you were doing this part-time to begin with were you?
GP: Um.
EP: Yes.
GP: Yes I was to begin with.
CB: At what point did you change to full-time?
GP: God.
EP: ’66.
GP: ’66 was it?
EP: Yes.
GP: Yeah, she would know [laughs]. 1966 – full time. Yes I became an observer commander so I had quite a responsibility, then I got posted to Preston, Lancashire but I still kept my home here.
CB: Yeah.
GP: Came home on Friday nights, and went back on the two minutes past seven in the morning to get into the office before anything started happening, yeah.
CB: So at Preston you’re now a senior man, what were you doing there?
GP: Preston, well we had, I had a headquarters there, quite a big headquarters, longer than this garden with offices all the way up with staff, ‘cause you had a local area, had a whole area. There was an area Commandant who was a spare time who didn’t really do very much except have a rank but he didn’t do anything, I was the, I was the one that did the work at Preston.
CB: How long did that last?
GP: ‘Til I retired didn’t it?
EP: Five years.
GP: Five years.
CB: Yes. And from Preston where did you go?
GP: Home.
CB: No.
GP: I was sixty then.
CB: Oh you were sixty. So how does the Bentley Priory part fit into this?
GP: Oh, Bentley Priory.
CB: I’m just going to stop a moment. So, from Preston you came to Bentley Priory?
GP: Yes, I did.
CB: Before you retired, what did you do there?
GP: Well I was in, oh what was I, I was in an office there, and I’m trying to think what I did there, cor dear.
CB: The Queen?
GP: Queen’s visit, we had a Queen’s visit to Bentley Priory.
CB: What did you do about that?
GP: We have observers from the whole of the country down there, bought them all down by train and we had a big garden party at Bentley Priory and I remember I went round one way with the Duke and somebody else went round the other way with the Queen, ‘cause we criss-crossed just to introduce to one or two extra people, special people on the way round, that sort of thing, Bentley Priory.
CB: And what was the significance of the event.
GP: [Exhalation of breath].
EP: Wasn’t it the closing down of ROC was it?
GP: I think it was.
PP: Anniversary?
GP: I don’t know, yes I think it probably was that we were anticipating being closed down, the ROC, and we had just this royal garden party and we invited the Queen.
CB: Yes.
GP: And the Duke.
CB: Right.
GP: The Queen, the garden party was split in two places with the, if you know Bentley Priory out the back is a fountain. One half was that side and we were the other side. So the Queen went round one side and we took the Duke round the other and he was hilarious [laughter], he really was the old Duke of Edinburgh, but we got a lot of fun, a lot of fun with him [laughs].
CB: Well he had a lot of background with the military.
GP: Yeah, yeah, he did.
CB: OK. Thank you. Now in the Observer Corps the people needed to be trained?
GP: Yes.
CB: And what did you do on an annual basis?
GP: On an annual basis we would have a big camp at an RAF station that was being closed.
CB: Right.
GP: And um we’d have a week, I think it was a week there, and observers come from all over England to do training there, which was quite good, but I used to go as a full-time staff and help do the training. It was quite good fun really.
CB: What was the training that they had?
GP: Aircraft recognition, mostly aircraft recognition, God, it’s hard to think.
CB: ‘Cause we’re talking about the Cold War time aren’t we?
GP: Yeah, we are.
CB: And um, so aircraft flying very high that’s no good, but so what were they looking for?
GP: They were still looking for aircraft, I’m trying to think.
CB: No more.
GP: Trying to think. There was still low level flying as well, you know it wasn’t all high level. Um, gosh.
CB: Because as well as recording the data.
GP: Yeah.
CB: About nuclear blasts they had to have training for that presumably?
GP: Yeah, we, trying to think about it now. Yes, we used to have exercises which were all planned, co-ordinated so that a post which was perhaps ten miles away would have a reading and a time, and a post which was ten miles away would have details of the same blast but different timing and different angles, you know the whole thing was co-ordinated as if the real attack had come, nuclear attack had come. Massive, massive, awful, awful to contemplate really, but the whole thing was planned nationally so that all the posts, all the stuff fed in would have co-ordinated properly you know? Quite a big job really. Quite a job, a lot of planning went into it.
CB: And where was this information fed to?
GP: Fighter Command, Fighter Command mostly I ‘spose, yeah, and local defence. Surprising we had scientific officers at each group headquarters, they would work out the fall-out, the radioactivity levels and so forth as if a bomb had really dropped and so we had scientific officers there, they weren’t in the Corps but they were scientists recruited to do that job. Great big screens, two big screens. Long range board and another big screen, and you’d plot on the back and the scientific officers would read the front but you’d plot on the back.
CB: Like fighter screens, and where were these regional headquarters located?
GP: God, all over the place. Oxford, big one at Oxford.
CB: On airfields or separate?
GP: No, separate from airfields.
CB: Right.
GP: One at Oxford, there was one here at.
EP: Watford had one.
GP: Here at Watford, the bunker is still there at Watford, and it belongs now to the vets doesn’t it? They use it down below ‘cause I went down it one night, I used to, when I was down at Horsham I used to come home and I used to go and check on the headquarters here at um —
CB: At Watford?
GP: Yeah. And I went in one night, a bit on leave, I came and couldn’t understand a light was on. So, I went in to put the light out and I could hear noises, der, der, der, der and I thought hello, I said ‘Somebody’s here’ so I walked on and there was a bloke there and what he was doing, he was preparing training material for his crew using all the tape and everything you see. So, I crept down there and I didn’t let him hear me coming and I walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. I’ve never seen a bloke jump so high in my life [laughter]. He didn’t think anybody could get in you see, because he had the key. He was using it, he shouldn’t have been using it really, using it to prepare all his training stuff for his crew. That was very funny and I was able to creep right up to him and tap him on the shoulder, I’ve never seen a bloke jump so high in my life. Frightened him to death [laughs], yeah, and that’s still there, that building. If you went to see the vet she’d probably let you in, if you said you’d — gosh when you think the money that was spent on it all.
CB: Yeah. Well this also linked in with the RSG’s didn’t it, the Regional Seats of Government?
GP: Yes, yes it did, that’s right the RSG’s. Yes, it was an interesting time really, in another few years it will all be forgotten nobody will know what it was all about will they?
CB: We’ll have to do research into that as well.
GP: [Laughs].
CB: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Geoff Paine
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-26
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APaineGH160726
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
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff Paine attended High Wycombe Royal Grammar School and Falmouth Grammar School, joined Air Training Corps and volunteered for the Royal Air Force at eighteen. Upon competition of initial training he was posted at RAF Waltham (100 Squadron) then at RAF Hornchurch, RAF Heaton Park and RAF Hendon. He served in a bomb damage repair unit, and reminisces a V-1 weapon exploding onto an accommodation block at RAF Hendon. Geoff continued his training in Africa (Cape Town, Bulawayo, Thornhill) flying Cornells and Harvards. He qualified as a pilot near the end of the war but after august 1945 flying activities ceased. Back in Great Britain he was stationed at RAF West Kirby, Stansted, RAF Bircham Newton, RAF Little Rissington, RAF Ternhill, RAF Oakington, RAF Lyneham, RAF Valley, RAF Swinderby, RAF Topcliffe where he flew Yorks, Oxfords, Ansons and Wellingtons until he was demobilised in 1949. He subsequently went into farming and joined the Royal Observer Corps first part-time, and eventually progressing into full time role of observer commander retiring at sixty in 1966. Discusses Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit, Cold war bomb testing and observation roles.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales--Anglesey
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Zimbabwe--Bulawayo
South Africa--Cape Town
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cheshire
England--Essex
England--Gloucestershire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Manchester
England--Norfolk
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
South Africa--Mahikeng
South Africa
England--Lancashire
England--Bishop's Stortford
Format
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00:54:12 audio recording
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
100 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Cornell
demobilisation
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
Flying Training School
Harvard
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Oxford
pilot
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
RAF Ansty
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Grimsby
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Hendon
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Lyneham
RAF Oakington
RAF Swinderby
RAF Ternhill
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Valley
recruitment
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/631/8901/PQuineJW1603.2.jpg
d8bf456c899eddf94849e34a0fb71c7b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/631/8901/AQuineJW160805.2.mp3
150ac30c9c6d3baa4f6bacf9b4d9923b
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
Quine, John Wakeford
J W Quine
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Quine, JW
Description
An account of the resource
Seven Items. Collection concerns Pilot officer John Wakeford Quine (b. 1923, 1576065, 185297 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 170 and 582 Squadrons. The collection consists of his logbook, official documents, a course photograph and an oral history interview. also includes a sub-collection of a photograph album of his time training in the United States as well as some target photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Quine and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945
1946
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 Friday the 5th of August 2016. I’m in Lickey with John Quine who was a pilot and he’s going to tell us all about his life and times particularly in the RAF. So what are your earliest recollections of life, John?
JQ: Well my very earliest recollection in life is living in Wales in Penarth. My father was a civil servant and he was working in Cardiff, if I remember rightly and my grandparents were living in Penarth where [pause] where my grandfather had a printing company which was in Tiger Bay. It was only a small company but apparently quite successful. In those days I remember seeing the odd aircraft go across the sky and everybody looked at it because there weren’t many there and they were little bigger than the average light aircraft of these days. Usually with two wings but sometimes one would say, ‘Look, there’s a monoplane.’ And then I remember seeing an airship on a couple of times. It would either be the R100 or the 101, I can’t remember now. Or it could have been both. And they looked absolutely huge in the sky. They weren’t, obviously but seeing a lump like that in the sky was most unusual. At an early age my father interested me in the Schneider Trophy. I missed the first one but the second one I got sort of got interested, and I listened to the commentary on the radio where of course history tells us that we, we won and on the third year we won again and we had won the first one so that gave us the Schneider Trophy permanently and the Schneider Trophy being a race for seaplanes which we won it was a sort of a basis for the Spitfire when Mitchell came to design it. So at that early age I was interested in flying and I used to have model planes which I used to fly around in my hand making the appropriate noises and whatnot as a kid of about five and later on I went on to the extremely technical one of a rubber band being used as a propellant. So that’s how my interest in planes started. And so it went on. I was, remained interested in planes. I used to see Alan Cobham and his air circus. By now we’d moved to Lickey near Birmingham and Alan Cobham used to come once a year to the aerodrome which was at the Austin motor works. The aerodrome now has gone and so has the Austin motor works for that matter but I used to be able to see them doing all the stunts from the house where we lived at the time. I did, on one occasion, go and actually view the circus on, on the aerodrome itself but I didn’t have a flight because in those days it was, if I remember rightly, five shillings for a quick trip and five shillings was quite a lot of money in those days. I well remember one trick which, wing walking and this really was wing walking because they got an aeroplane, something like a Tiger Moth, might have been a Tiger Moth and the chap got out of the seat that he was in, two in the aircraft of course, he got out of the seat and walked around the outside of the aircraft, got on to the wing and walked up and down a bit and waved to the crowd and then he got underneath the underneath wing and sat on the axle that held the landing wheels and they landed the aircraft with him sitting there and I think an extremely dangerous thing to do and certainly wouldn’t be allowed today. So later on when the war started I did a short period in the, in the Home Guard and then I volunteered for, to join the air force. Having decided to volunteer I was walking down a road in Nottingham, my father now having been moved to Nottingham because of the war and I went in and saw the recruiting sergeant and he said, ‘Well what do you want to do in the air force?’ And I said, ‘Well, I think I’d like to be a mechanic.’ I had thought at that time that it, when I came out of the air force it could be useful. Never dreaming that we might of course, lose the war at the time but he said well you, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t, now I’m overrunning the story a bit. Yeah. I said, ‘Right. Well I’ll go away and think about it. I’ll come back next week,’ which I did. During the week I thought well if I’m going into the air force I might as well be a pilot. So I went back and I said, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to be a pilot.’ And the recruiting sergeant said, ‘You wouldn’t be any good as a pilot.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘You didn’t have a secondary school education.’ Secondary schools in those days were, you know almost equal to a grammar school and I said, ‘Well, what makes you think I haven’t had a secondary school education?’ He said, ‘Well have you.’ And I said, ‘Yes. I have. I went to Bromsgrove County High School.’ So he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘. Well, alright, well I’ll put you forward.’ So I didn’t hear anything for three weeks or so as far as I remember and then I was called again and I had to go for an RAF interview and a test which I found extremely easy at the time and went away again and the next thing I knew was I had my discharge papers so I queried this why I’d been discharged when I hadn’t even been in and they said, ‘You’re in a reserved occupation,’ which was quite ridiculous because it wasn’t so very long since I left school but I was working at the Brush Electrical Company in Loughborough and so, anyway they didn’t have any objection to my going. Probably, probably glad I did [laughs] So in the end the matter was resolved and I was taken back into the air force with a different number and so I got in. Now, the sequel to that story is that after I’d been in the air force and got trained and had pilot’s wings and was an officer I was walking down the same road in Nottingham and I thought, I wonder if that recruiting sergeant is still in the recruiting office so I went in and he was. So he still being a sergeant and me an officer he of course jumped to his feet and saluted and I kept him going for about five minutes and then, then I told him and we both had a laugh together.
[machine paused]
CB: Ok.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: Right.
JQ: So having joined the RAF I went to St Johns Wood and the first place I went to was Lord’s Cricket Ground where we had an FFI and I’ve, I’ve had many a laugh with people telling them that I, I’ve been in the famous long room in the pavilion with my trousers down and they say, ‘How on earth did you manage that?’ But that was the reason. Then I went to ITW at Scarborough for a bit. I was quite amazed at the fact that there was quite a few people there that couldn’t swim because that was one of the things that happened there that if you couldn’t swim they taught you to swim there in the local baths and then from there we went out to Carlisle for ten hours attitude training on Tiger Moths and the instructor made a big mistake with me because after I’d been flying for about five hours he said, ‘Oh you’re quite a natural. If you go on like this, in another couple of hours you’ll solo.’ And we weren’t really required to solo there. It was just an attitude test. Well of course having told me that of course I went right off but I did actually solo after nine hours and so that was quite, quite a boost for me and then after a short time in Manchester at Heaton Park we were sent off to Canada in the Andes ship that had been a cruise liner which had been taken over as a troop ship and when we got to Canada we went to Moncton. It was Christmas Day I remember. We got there. We didn’t actually have our Christmas dinner and whatnot until a fortnight later. But then they had us all in a hangar and separated us out and about ninety percent of the people went to Canada but some of us were sent to America. To various places in America but we went to Oklahoma. When we got there they kitted us out with American uniforms which was a sort of summery uniform because it was quite hot at the time but we were, we had our own hats which we wore and our own insignia on the arm but apart from that it was more or less like a summer dress, and we were there for about six months doing ordinary, learning to fly and aerobatics and all that sort of thing and it was on one of these flights that was in a Harvard at the time which was the more advanced trainer that we used and I met, I had, I made a pal of a chap who lived in Redditch which wasn’t very from where I lived at home and we went on a cross country. We were sent on a cross country and we got lost or partly lost. Anyway, we weren’t quite sure where we were and I spotted this town so I thought, and there was a railway there and I thought I wonder if they’ve got the station name written up so I thought I’d go down and have a look and I went down. They hadn’t got the name on the station but they had got it written around a water tower so we knew exactly where we were then. Now the sequel to that story is that when the war had finished with Germany we were sent out to do what we called Cooks Tours over the, over the Germany, over Germany and we took ground crew with us and showed them what they had helped to do and coming back on, from one of these things on a very hot day and flying at about two hundred feet which we were allowed to do everybody was, it was, it was a bit boring and we were, and I think the bomb aimer was getting a bit bored with his life so he, and so was, so was the navigator and so the navigator said, ‘Would you mind skip if I come out and have a look around?’ And I said, ‘No you can’t do that because we shan’t know where we are if you,’ And the bomb aimer said, ‘Well, I’ll map read.’ So I said, ‘Alright then. Well the navigator can come out.’ So he came out and we flew happily along for about another half hour and it was all quiet and so forth apart from the noise of the engines of course and I said to, ‘Where are we Jimmy?’ Jimmy being the bomb aimer. No reply. And so I asked him again. Still no reply. So I said to the engineer, ‘Have a look down and see what’s happened to Jimmy,’ and Jimmy was fast asleep. So we then didn’t know where we were so I thought, right. So I saw this town. I thought I wonder whether they’ve got the name written around a water tower and they had so we were able to use that. So that was fine.
[pause]
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo.
[machine paused]
CB: So when you were in the States were they military or civilian instructors?
JQ: Oh civilians.
CB: Ok. What sort of people?
JQ: Young, youngish chaps. Quite good flyers they were but some of the seniors were, you know, sort, sort of bosses over them but none of them were that old.
CB: And they hadn’t been called up for the American military and were flying training you.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: And still civilians.
JQ: Yeah. I don’t know how old they were.
CB: Well that’s ok.
JQ: Yeah. Just let me find myself again.
CB: Ok. The intriguing thing here John is that you’re being trained in America by civilians with the war having started and you’re not being trained in Canada so how did they treat you and what were the conditions like?
JQ: Well, we were, we were extremely surprised actually because if you take the food for instance. Here we were coming from a very strictly rationed country to one who although they said they were rationed was not really rationed by our standards at all and the bread was white for a start. Our bread was anything but white and there was plenty of this and plenty of that and the natives were extremely friendly, you did find the odd one but what used to annoy us although I can’t think now why it did annoy us but they used to call us limeys, the people that annoyed us. But we called them yanks so, you know, tit for tat really but most people didn’t call us limeys and they were extremely friendly, extremely hospitable and the girls were very hospitable and I remember on the first night we were a bit staggered because we’d hardly arrived and we were invited to, to a roller skating party which was quite something really. Fortunately, I could roller skate so I wasn’t too bad at that and many of the students, us that is, formed relationships with the girls that lasted for years. Sometimes some married them but I’m not sure how many but certainly there were, friendships were made and I couldn’t praise them too highly really. People would say, ‘How did you find them?’ And I’ve always said they were absolutely magnificent to us. They couldn’t have been better, Hospitable to the point of being over generous.
CB: How many of you were there on each course?
JQ: Oh now that’s difficult. I would have guessed at about fifty but I am guessing now and from memory so -
CB: And so you were in American uniform but with British insignia.
JQ: That’s right.
CB: And you had a structure with some, there was an officer, an RAF officer running it was there or what?
JQ: Yes the RAF officer was the chief of the whole lot. The CO and the ground instructors were RAF and British but the flying was done because we were at the Spartan School of Aeronautics in America and other schools were similar and I presumed that they were instructors who were instructing at the school before we arrived. Of course nobody else was there of course at the time other than RAF people except a sprinkling and I do mean a sprinkling of about six, something like that, of Americans. One of the things that did slightly annoy us, not too much really but the Americans went through exactly the same training as we did and they were awarded with the American flying badge and the RAF flying badge and we were not awarded the American flying badge. We just got the RAF one and we expected to get them both but we didn’t get them. I think on one of the things that I’ve got they do say that certain courses did get them both but whether that’s true or they just said it I don’t, I’ve no idea.
CB: So how many hours would you have done when you finished there after six months, to get your wings?
JQ: Now that’s, I shall have to have notice of that.
CB: Yeah. Well it doesn’t matter. So you’ve got your wings -
JQ: Yeah.
CB: And then -
JQ: Well we got our wings. Well in getting those wings we, at one point we’d done advanced training and we were halfway through that and they split us in to two then. They assessed people as being fighter pilots or bomber pilots and fighter pilots went on to air to ground gunnery and the bomber pilots did something else. I’m not sure what they did but presumably bombing but I’m not sure. I was put on the fighter pilots lot.
CB: Oh.
JQ: But when I got back to England they didn’t want any fighter pilots so I automatically went on to bombers.
CB: Right.
JQ: We had an aside on this one is that we had, we did have reunions after the war and I went on one and it involved us doing an internal flight. We went into Dallas, flew into Dallas from Britain and then from there we’d got to go fly to Tulsa. I think I’m right and from there we got a ground thing to Oklahoma. I think that’s the way it worked. Anyway, you had to do this internal flight, wherever it was and I noticed while we were waiting to board the aircraft, a civilian aircraft, I noticed the pilot go around the back of the desk and disappear and I thought, I wondered why has he gone around there? So I sort of wandered around while we were waiting for boarding and he was there coming out of a little sort of cubby hole thing and I said, ‘What are you doing around here?’ And he said, ‘Oh I’m just checking up on the weather,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a computer in here, comes out on the weather,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I’m doing it here actually,’ he said, ‘We get it out on the aircraft anyway but,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d just have a look.’ I said, ‘Well you’d better do a good landing when you get,’ and he said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘You’ve got forty five pilots in the back.’ And he said, ‘We haven’t have we?’ He said, ‘I’ll give it to the second pilot. He lands it better than I do’ [laughs] So off we went and during the course of the flight he wandered back and he was saying hello and whatnot and, and when we’d landed and it was quite a reasonable landing he was there waiting and he saw me and he said, ‘Well? What did you think of the landing?’ And I said, ‘Nine out of ten.’ [laughs]. So anyway he laughed too. So that was that.
CB: Yeah. When. when you were in the States doing your training to what extent was the, how rigorous was the training? They examined you, tested you all the way did they?
JQ: All the way through.
CB: Or did you lose quite a few people because they didn’t pass.
JQ: Didn’t lose many people, no. And of course while up to that point sixteen people had been killed.
CB: Of the fifty or -
JQ: No. I mean -
CB: No. In general.
JQ: Since the thing started.
CB: Oh right. Ok.
JQ: And certainly one of my friends doing this air to ground gunnery had not pulled up early enough and had tipped his wing on the target which was a fairly a big target, half the size of this room and landed, well not landed but crashed about two fields away and of course he didn’t do himself any good so he disappeared. I don’t think he died or anything like that but so people, people left for one reason or another. Either they, very few fortunately got killed. Some, some just couldn’t complete the course because they were injured or their health wasn’t good or they had to stay there in hospital and whatnot and wait until they got better and then complete the course and presumably did something else so -
CB: I ask the question because over a course of training, period of training for RAF pilots there’s a continuous chop going on and I just wondered how the chop rate was there.
JQ: No. Well I would have said it was quite good actually.
CB: And then when you’d finished the training did they run a party for you or what did they do?
JQ: I remember the party very painfully actually.
CB: Oh. She was as nice as that was she?
JQ: Well we had, they told us they were going to give us this party at the end. Either they told us or we assumed it from somebody else who had it for us and we knew we were going to get one. In the, in the restaurant, what do they call it? What do they call the PA.
CB: The PX.
JQ: And so what we decided to do was to pay every week while we were training. We put in so many dollars. I can’t remember how much it was now each and then that would give us a free night. The night came and it was due to start say at 8 o’clock. I don’t remember quite now but all I’d got to do was walk from my billet, across about a hundred yards to the restaurant, PA or whatever and there I was so at five to eight I went across and there was a lot of blokes there and one bloke came up and said, ‘Hello John what are you having?’ That was only, I mean he wasn’t paying anyway but you know I said, ‘Oh I’ll have a beer, yes.’ Well he brought me this beer back and he said, ‘Cheers.’ ‘Cheers.’ And it was neat Scotch he’d got in this thing.
CB: Jeez.
JQ: I’d got, it wasn’t half a pint but it was I didn’t query it because we were in America not England. I’d have queried it if it was a beer in England because you should be up the top you see but it was three quarters of a glass, half a pint glass of this thing and it was neat Scotch so I thought well I’ll stick on this. I gently got a way through this. It was in, blokes were coming in and so forth and so I finished this thing and we still hadn’t started dinner so I don’t want to drink a pint of beer on the top of this half a pint, I don’t think they had pint glasses, I can’t remember now so I thought I’d have another of these so I had another of these Scotches. Big one. And we settled down to the dinner which, if I remember rightly was very nice and I finished this thing and all around me blokes were getting tight, you know, really really tight and I thought I’m blinking well doing well here on this Scotch. I’d better have another. So I had another. And I was still alright when I finished it and I thought, I don’t know how I managed this you see. So I thought well that’s over, finished, so I went outside you see and well the cold air hit me so I thought I’d better get off to bed so I started to walk this hundred yards to my bed and I got as far as the flagpole in the middle of this lawn where they ran up the RAF flag ceremoniously at 7 o’clock every morning. And I thought, oh I do feel tight. So I sat down and I don’t remember another thing until I woke up at half past five in the morning with the dew on me and I thought blimey I’d better get out of here or I’m going to be in trouble if they come to ceremoniously put [pause] so I staggered, I staggered to my bed, got into bed and of course I’d got to get up about an hour later or something like that and I felt like death for about three days, you know. So I won’t do that again. I don’t know how I managed it to be quite honest.
CB: So what was the accommodation like? Were you in individual -
JQ: Well the accom -
CB: Rooms or dormitories?
JQ: Well the set up was a, was a hotel. It had been a hotel. It was a chain. A bit, a bit like Premier Inn or something like that and they’d got a chain all around America of these things and they’d taken one of these over as the administrative building and it had got a fair amount of land around it or they’d, either that or they’d cornered it and they’d built these wooden huts you see which wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary ‘cause of course, particularly in Oklahoma a lot of their, or most of their houses are wooden anyway and they were very comfortable and of course being in the RAF the lino was polished, sort of thing, by us and all the beds were all tidy and done up officially when not being slept in and all this sort of thing and it was all very nice. When we went back on the thing, the, I forget what had happened to the administrative building. It wasn’t RAF. Whether it had gone back to being a hotel I don’t know but they let us go into the huts that we were in which had been taken over by Wrangler’s Jeans and they looked a right shambles. They really did. Absolute dump. And so that was it but while we were there it was very good.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: I was a bit bothered about the fact that they’d built some, for the junior people, you know, the new intake they, I think they were stepping it up or something but they’d built another set of dormitories in wood and they also put some loos with them and the loos were just a series of WC’s about a yard apart all the way down. No, no shielding around them -
CB: No.
JQ: At all. I didn’t, I thought I couldn’t do that but fortunately I didn’t have to use those because I was a senior by that time.
CB: So what rank were you under training?
JQ: Under training I was an AC2 and as soon as we got our wings they made us sergeants and then from then on it was up to them how you got on and what you did and all that sort of thing.
CB: So you got your wings. You’re a sergeant. What happened to come back? How did you come back?
JQ: We came back on the Queen Mary, no Queen Elizabeth the first which I think was made to carry about three thousand. It was a cruise ship but it hadn’t been finished. It had been started before the war and it, and it was a ship which would go but it hadn’t got, the cabins were all inside but that was about it you know. Well, as a troop ship you don’t need all the comforts and what not so in a room which was supposed to be for two there would be six blokes and they could only sleep in it one night and the next night they’d have to sleep wherever and somebody else moved in and then the next night you were back in it and so you alternated but I mean the crossing was only about four days anyway so, but they’d got, on a ship that was supposed to take three thousand they’d got about ten thousand on it and it went at full speed and zigzagged all the way and if you didn’t lie down on the floor, if it wasn’t your turn to be in bed, in a bunk if you didn’t lie down on the floor somewhere by about half past six, at night you didn’t lie down because there were so many bodies all over the corridors and what not it was just practically impossible to find enough room to lie down so everybody was sort of certainly sitting down and marking their space very early on in the time. Nobody shaved, or very few people shaved. You couldn’t in actual fact have a decent shave because they didn’t, didn’t, if you turned a the tap on sea water came out which, which is alright for having a swill around but if you try and make a lather with, in salt water you’re struggling. You just don’t get one. So a lot of people thought blow it, you know, they just four days and just began to look -
JB: Stubby.
JQ: More unkempt every day.
CB: Where did that go in to?
JQ: That went in to, it went in to, Greenock.
CB: And from there where did you go?
JQ: From there we went to Heaton Park in, in Manchester. And from there, after we were at Heaton Park for a while, [pause] No I’m telling you wrong I’m sorry. We went in to Harrogate. Yes. That’s where we went. We went into Harrogate and then we were allocated places from there. I went to Oxford. To, up a little field and I mean a field at a place called Windrush.
CB: I know it.
JQ: And there we learned to fly on Oxfords.
CB: That’s at Witney.
JQ: Pardon?
CB: Windrush is at Witney.
JQ: Is it?
[Pause].
JQ: And -
[pause]
CB: So this was for your twin engine training.
JQ: That’s right and I remember going off, they sent us, they sent us off on a cross country. A solo cross country it was and I started off on this solo cross country and I ran into cloud which didn’t bother me because we could fly on instruments but unfortunately I came out of this cloud after I was supposed to have turned because I thought I would and I did come out but I couldn’t find myself and we got a system going, Darkie. I don’t know whether you’ve come across that.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: It was an emergency system and I thought well I’ll call up Darkie. So I said, ‘Hello Darkie. Hello Darkie.’ And the nearest aerodrome was supposed to reply. This is whoever. And then you knew where you were. Well one did reply and Snitterfield it was I was supposed to get to. I was now supposed to have landed at Snitterfield and so I said, ‘Hello Darkie. Hello Darkie. And they came back, they said, ‘Hello Darkie. This is Snitterfield.’ And I thought well I must be here and I was looking around and I thought well I can’t see Snitterfield here. You’d see an aerodrome. It was right underneath me. That’s why I couldn’t see it. [laughs]. Anyway I eventually spotted that and landed there and that was fine. And then another time I was doing something in this Oxford and I was flying low, minding my own business as it were and I smelled roast beef. At least I thought it was roast beef and it didn’t strike me for a bit and then I thought what am I doing smelling roast beef up here? So I thought what is it and I looked down and the batteries are there in an Oxford.
CB: Right next to you.
JQ: And it was sort of boiling over, this battery so I got, got down a bit sharpish after that but anyway it was alright. From there I was sent to Peplow which is, is up near Wellington in Shropshire and there we flew Wellingtons which I thought was quite a nice aircraft actually because of course by that time it was getting a but outdated and I think it was there that they put us all in a room and said pick yourself a crew.
CB: So this was an OTU.
JQ: Now, wait a minute.
CB: Based where did you say?
JQ: Yeah. Yes. Peplow. A place called Peplow.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
JQ: And put us all in this room and I finished up without a crew. Couldn’t make up my mind or they couldn’t make up, because everybody was supposed to have a go, you know. So they said, ‘You’ll have to wait ‘til next week.’ Anyway, I didn’t wait for next week ‘cause they got in touch with me in in the afternoon. I think we did the thing in the morning and they got in touch with me would I report somewhere which I did and oh by this time I was a flight sergeant and I reported and they said, ‘One of the pilots has gone missing,’ not missing, ‘sick. So we’re not holding the crew up,’ he said, ‘We’ve got two pilots and one crew so what we’re going to do is we’re going to let you meet the crew and the crew’s going to pick the pilot.’ So we met them and they picked me which was a bit fortunate for them because while we were still there the other pilot, the one that wasn’t picked, got a crew and he was flying this Wellington around still doing his training with the crew and the wing fell off and they all got killed. The initial finding was that it was pilot error but they did actually prove in the end that it wasn’t. That apparently, so I was told at that time, that the wing on a Wellington is only held on by two, albeit heavy bolts, one of which had rusted through or something [pause] and, and that that brings me to another tale of the same thing because a ground crew member when we were on ops, after we’d finished on operations, a ground crew member told me that one of the faults with the Lancaster was that they tended to get cracks in the main spar right near the fuselage and what what they used to do to cure it was to drop a piece of channel over the top of the main spar underneath the outer skin and pop rivet it on and put the main skin on and that was it and he said, ‘If you’d known that’s what we were doing you would never have flown it.’ I don’t think that’s quite right because we wouldn’t have had any, any say in the matter but how true that is I don’t know but that’s what a ground crew member told me.
CB: So you finished your OTU.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: With the crew who picked you.
JQ: That’s right.
CB: And how, where did you go after that?
JQ: Went to Lindholme.
CB: Right.
JQ: Which is now a prison I think up at Yorkshire and then we -
CB: And what happened at Lindholme? What was that?
JQ: Well Lindholme was four engines. Getting on to four, training on to four engines.
CB: So you got extra crew members there. Was this the HCU?
JQ: Yeah.
CB: Heavy Conversion Unit.
JQ: Yes. I think that’s what it was called. I just got one, one crew member there, the engineer.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: I can’t. I flew a Halifax but I can’t remember whether it was, yeah, it must have been before we went on to the Wellingtons. I had some time on a Halifax and I remember learning all about the complicated fuel system on a Halifax because you’ve got to be careful because if you do it in the wrong order it can cut petrol off to all engines.
CB: Right.
JQ: But I’ve [pause] and I went on to Lancasters. Now I hadn’t got an engineer at the time and I was flying a Lancaster around without an engineer.
CB: At the HCU.
JQ: Yeah, but it wasn’t long before they gave me one and he was, he was an ex lorry driver. Nice chap. Anyway, he, he turned out to be a first class engineer in actual fact but at this time the, if you’re putting the flaps down on a Lancaster the lever is just there and you -
CB: On your right side.
JQ: Yes and you push, you push it down and wait for the flaps indicator to go around to whatever flaps you want and then you pull it back up again to the right position, to the sort of neutral position but its hydraulically done and if it, if it doesn’t work the trick is you push it down and if nothing works so you pull it up and push it down again and nine times out of ten it works ok. So we were practicing circuits and bumps with the engineer and I called for fifteen degrees of flap on the downwind legs so he gives me fifteen degrees of flap having slowed the aircraft so that it would take it. Now I’ve then got to slow the aircraft down a bit more so I can put thirty degrees of flap on and I’m now coming in on the final approach so I call for thirty degrees of flap and he pushes it down and nothing happens so he obviously does the right thing he pulls it back up again but he didn’t push it down again so, what fifteen degrees of flap or whatever how much he’s got down comes up rather smartly and we went down extremely smartly because we’d slowed down, half stalling really. So I rammed the, all the throttles wide open and we missed a tree by about a foot and everybody swore like the clappers and the engineer never did it again [laughs].
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there a mo.
[machine paused]
CB: So on the question of the engineer and the use of flaps and throttles who would normally run the flaps?
JQ: Normally the engineer would do the flaps.
CB: On your command.
JQ: On my command.
CB: Right.
JQ: That’s right and as I said before he made a mistake the first time but -
CB: Yeah.
JQ: He never made it again.
CB: No.
JQ: On, with regard to the throttles he followed me up. I always did the throttles.
CB: On take-off.
JQ: On take-off.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: In every way but he was there just in case something happened, I took my hand off for some reason or whatever, his hand was always there so that he could just push, push them up. He also looked after the petrol of course and switched all the tanks and so forth and after an initial period of time I trusted him enough to not even tell him to do it. He just did it. And there was a point where that came extremely useful because getting back to the war and why we were there and so forth we were hit by anti-aircraft fire on occasion and I never noticed to be quite honest because I was still on the bombing run and on a bombing you’ve got to fly extremely accurately straight and level and keeping the height and the speed and the attitude of the aircraft absolutely [thing?] There’s only way of doing that particularly at night is on instruments, so you’d be there on instruments trying to be as accurate as you can and the engineer er the bomb aimer would be saying, ‘Left. Left. Right. Right,’ and so forth and you’d be following his instructions and so I was doing that when the upper mid, mid-upper gunner said, ‘Skip, we’re on fire,’ and I looked and the port tank was on fire and going quite, quite well but it hadn’t exploded.
CB: Which tank is this? Is this number one on the in board?
JQ: I don’t, no it’s -
CB: Close to the fuselage
JQ: It was, I can’t remember. I think it was between the two engines I thought.
CB: Right.
JQ: Anyway. I can’t remember to be exact. Anyway, I was still on the bombing run because I thought well we’ve got to finish this bombing run so keeping a quick eye on that or trying to and doing the bombing run at the same time. I was trying to decide what to do and I thought well the thing to do is we’ve probably got to bale out but I was determined to finish this bombing run because we were so near so I said, ‘Prepare to abandon the aircraft,’ but I still continued the bombing run and the bomb aimer still continued to give me instruction and then when we’d finished, when he said, ‘Bombs gone,’ we’d still got to carry on that little bit longer for the photograph you see and by this time I’d come to the conclusion that if we were going to bale out, over the target was not a good idea, because apart from the fact that you’d be getting into a whole lot of anti- aircraft fire because the Germans weren’t aiming at any particular aircraft they were just pumping as much stuff up there as they could possibly get and so and if you managed to avoid all that the natives below wouldn’t be very pleased to see you and indeed they had been known to be extremely annoyed. So I thought well we’ve got a short dog leg to do which is going to take us about five minutes I wonder if we could, we shall have to risk it so as soon as, soon as the time was up I’d turned and it was then I said, ‘Prepare to abandon ship,’ which they all did. Before we got to the end of the thing, the end of this dog leg the fire went out, much to everybody’s amazement including me and we, I’d then got another problem. Have we got enough petrol to get back? Now, quite by chance, the engineer hadn’t got much petrol in that tank which is why it went out but how much was in it we’ll never know because, I’ll tell you in a minute. So I said, ‘Well have we got enough petrol to get home?’ And he sort of calculated up what we’d got in the other tanks and so forth. Fortunately it was a Ruhr thing so it was a short trip. He said, ‘If we’re careful we’ve got enough to get home.’ So he was able to give me an assurance so we were careful and we had to come back at a slow rate and you know, not too use much petrol and that sort of thing. When we got back we found, oh, on the way back the mid-upper gunner said, ‘Skip, I can’t move my turret.’ So I said, ‘Oh. Do you know the reason?’ He said, ‘No. I’ve no idea.’ He said, ‘Could I come down then?’ You know, because he was a bit cold up there and it was a bit warmer in the cockpit and I said, ‘No, you can’t. You stop up there and keep a good lookout,’ So he stopped up there. Anyway, when we got back and down and safe we found that the jettison tube which, I don’t know whether you know, a bit about that diameter and if you want to jettison petrol you pull a lever or push a button, or pull a lever I think it was and this thing drops down and all the petrol goes whoosh down and what had happened was that where we were hit it it had set the thing on fire but at the same time it had dropped this petrol jettison tank down and all the petrol went down very quickly out of the aircraft and what was burning but quite fiercely, instead of exploding it was sort of burning and there wasn’t a lot of it so it didn’t last more than about five minutes or something like that. Well the sequel to that is that it must have been about forty, forty five years later my rear gunner had a sixty fifth birthday party, a surprise party given to him by his wife and she invited all the crew and we all went up and of course he was very surprised and we all got chatting and what not and it was then that he told us this tale. He said, oh no I’m over running the thing, I’m sorry. I’ll go back again. When I’d said, ‘Prepare to abandon ship.’
CB: Yeah.
JQ: He opened his doors, got his parachute out of the thing and clipped it on himself or got it ready to clip on himself, I don’t know whether he’d got room, yes he did. And he sat there waiting for the instruction to bail out in which case he would have probably turned this thing and gone out backwards.
CB: Rolled out backwards. Yeah.
JQ: Now, me in the front there when everything had, when the fire had gone out and I decided that we weren’t going to abandon ship after all I I gave the order not to abandon ship you see and I called everybody in turn and said, ‘Are you alright?’ And one by one they answered and said, ‘yes,’ they are but I didn’t get any reply from the rear gunner so I sent the engineer back to see if he was alright and after a minute or two he came back and he said. ‘Oh, he’s alright. He’s ok,’ he said. I said, ‘Well why didn’t he reply?’ And he said, ‘Well when he got his parachute pack out,’ he said, ‘He inadvertently pulled his plug out of his thing.’ He said, ‘he never got the message not to abandon ship,’ you see. So at this party forty five years later he told, he said he was sitting there waiting for the abandon ship thing and it never came so he thought we’d all gone and he was in there on his own and he was there for ages. Well until the engineer went back. What a thing for a chap to sit in there thinking he’s flying in an aircraft which is flying on its own which of course it could well have been.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JQ: And I think that’s absolutely amazing.
[pause]
CB: Right. So we’ve got to the stage earlier where the engineer pulled up, didn’t use the flaps right.
JQ: Right.
CB: And we’re getting to the end of being at the HCU and then we went on to the operational flight.
JQ: Yeah. That of course was -
CB: That you were talking about.
JQ: That of course was an operational flight.
CB: Exactly. Yeah. But we haven’t finished the earlier bit which was when you were at the HCU. So how did you finish at the HCU?
JQ: Well the thing I remember about that is that, also was that I was at the HCU I’d fixed to get married and they sent a message through saying would I attend a commissioning interview, on my wedding day. Not that they knew it was my wedding day.
CB: Right.
JQ: So I thought I can’t put my wedding off you see so I went to the CO and said would it be possible for me to, thing, and he said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You can,’ he said. ‘But,’ he said, ‘The chances are you won’t get a commission if you don’t.’ And so I thought, ‘Well I won’t then,’ you see. Anyway, my crew, crew persuaded me that that wasn’t a very good idea so I requested another interview with the CO and he gave me one and he said, ‘Well Quine,’ he said, ‘It’s not my decision,’ he said, ‘It comes from group this has.’ And there was a sergeant in the room at the time and the sergeant said, ‘What’s the problem sir?’ So he told him. He said, ‘Would you excuse me a moment,’ and off he went and he came back again and he said, ‘It’s alright sir. I’ve fixed it quite good.’ He said, ‘If he could get there for 2 o’clock in the afternoon instead of 9 o’clock in the morning it’ll be ok.’ And I thought the CO couldn’t do it and that sergeant had done it. Well it appeared that the sergeant worked in the office and he was in touch with with his counterpart at group and he got through and this chap had said it would be alright, you know.
CB: So what time was the wedding?
JQ: Well the wedding was supposed to be at some reasonable sort of time but you know 9 o’clock in the morning there’s no reasonable time you can get married about 6 o’clock in the morning or something like so I would have had to have cancelled it but what I did do was to got married at half past nine in the morning and then I’d got to get from here, well not this house, but, you know, a similar one.
CB: Lickey.
JQ: Lickey. Well it wasn’t Lickey actually. It was a place called [Linkbery?]
CB: Oh yes I know.
JQ: Where we’d gone to live by that time. No. It wasn’t. No. I beg your pardon it was here. It was here, Lickey. And I had to get, get there without any public transport or cars. Well public transport but certainly no cars so I managed to get myself on a train. It must have been about 11 o’clock or something like that ‘cause I got married. Had a quick wedding breakfast. Got on a train, went, that’s right it was a train. I went into Birmingham, and then I had to change trains in Birmingham and get up to Derby, Burton on Trent, get off at Burton on Trent and there was a taxi outside. There weren’t many taxis but I went up to this taxi and I can remember I said, ‘Could you take me to Eckington Hall?’ I remember the name of the place. It had been taken over by the RAF and I said to him, ‘Could you take me to Eckington Hall?’ He said, ‘I’m engaged.’ So I said, ‘I’ve just been married.’ And he said, ‘Oh. Well I’ll take you then.’ [laughs] Not only that. He not only took me but he also took my wife and we were going on honeymoon. You couldn’t go out of the country of course, you couldn’t even go to the seaside in those days. Not within ten miles of the coast so we had to go to Shrewsbury and so when we got to Eckington Hall in this taxi I went up to the guardroom at the, which was at a lodge at the front of this big hall and saw the thing in the guardroom and the chap said, I said I’ve got my wife outside. We just got married. Could she come in as well? He said, ‘Oh no you can’t bring her in.’ You see. So I had to say, ‘You’ll have to stop out here,’ you see, so leaving a rather a large case and what not with my wife I said, ‘Well which way do I go?’ and they said, ‘It’s that nissen hut over there,’ ‘cause they’d put some huts in the thing. So leaving my wife there I went and it’s now about 2 o’clock in the afternoon or something like that and I went to this nissen hut and I opened the door to find myself immediately in the interview room with an interview going on and a sergeant rushed over and he said, ‘You must be Quine.’ And I said, ‘Yes I am.’ He said, ‘Go around the other side.’ So I went around the other side and the place was full of people.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: All waiting for commissioning interviews so somebody I knew there, and I said, ‘How, how long is it?’ They said, ‘Well we’ve been here since 9 o’clock this morning,’ And I said, ‘Well what’s the order?’ And they said, ‘Well, you know, did they take your name on the way in?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well that’s it. You have to wait for it.’ He said, ‘You’re in the back of the queue.’ I thought, blimey, what’s my wife going to do out there? So there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So took my hat off and sat down talking to these chaps and I hadn’t been there two or three minutes and they shouted out, ‘Quine.’ And so I got up and they said, ‘Your hat. Put your hat on,’ you see [laughs] so put my hat on. I went in and they knew all about it and they said, ‘You got married.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well we hope you have a nice honeymoon and good luck,’ and so forth and off I went to find my wife and she’d been standing outside there and of course all the guards were looking at her all the time so she thought she couldn’t stop. So she wandered off down the road and got herself in the telephone box and she was sitting on her case in the telephone box.
CB: Now which date was this?
JQ: Pardon?
CB: What date was this?
JQ: It was September the 28th 1944.
CB: Right. So when did you know that you’d got your commission?
JQ: It wasn’t long. It wasn’t long. It was quite quick actually because I was still at Lindholme and I knew I’d got it and they gave me some leave, a few days leave so I could go and get myself kitted out and I came to Birmingham. I got kitted, kitted out in a shop that knew all about what they were doing and they’d done it so many times before.
CB: So you’ve got married, you got the interview, you went on honeymoon to, where did you say?
JQ: We went to -
CB: Shrewsbury.
JQ: Well it was near Shrewsbury.
CB: Right.
JQ: It wasn’t in Shrewsbury.
CB: Ok.
JQ: I can’t remember now.
CB: Ok. So you’re at the HCU at that stage at Lindholme.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: When did you finish there and where did you go?
JQ: I think I went straight from there to the, to Hemswell I think. I can’t remember now.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Yeah.
[machine paused]
JQ: So you’re finished at Eckington Hall. What did you do then? You’ve got your wife there waiting for you.
CB: Yeah. So we’d got to go on honeymoon from there.
JQ: Yeah. So we’d got to go back to Birmingham and then catch a train to Shrewsbury so we got back to Birmingham along with three friends that I knew that, who had also been at the interview and we were standing on the station at Snow Hill and my wife decided that, you know, it was men’s talk and what not so she’d gone and sat in the train that was there and one of the other chaps, a chap with red hair so we called him Ginger quite obviously, he’d gone to keep my wife company and have a chat to her and so forth when the train started moving with Ginger and my wife in the thing and me on the platform so there was quite a scramble to change over but we managed it.
CB: Crikey. Where did you meet your wife?
JQ: I used to go to school with her at Bromsgrove High School and we went on the same school bus and in the end we were married for sixty three years.
CB: Brilliant.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: Fantastic.
JQ: She died in 2006.
CB: Right.
JQ: So -
CB: Ok.
[machine paused]
CB: So you left the, at the HCU. You had Lancasters, you had Halifax to begin with. Then what happened?
JQ: We went on, got converted onto Lancasters.
CB: Right. And so you left there and went to which -
JQ: We left there on the29th of the 11th
CB: Yeah.
JQ: ’46. No.
CB: ‘45. ‘44
JQ: ’44.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And -
CB: And went, went to your squadron.
JQ: I went to the squadron on December the 2nd.
CB: Yeah. Which was -
JQ: 1944.
CB: Which squadron?
JQ: 170.
CB: Right. At -
JQ: Hemswell.
CB: At Hemswell. Ok.
JQ: And then I went on my first operation on December the 4th
CB: Yes.
JQ: But it was only me that went on that. My crew didn’t. They just, they had the thing of sending you as second pilot for your first time to give you the idea.
CB: Where did you go?
JQ: Karlsruhe.
[pause]
CB: So then you picked up your crew for the next ones. What was the next raid?
JQ: The next one was Koblenz. December the 22nd
CB: Ok. What were the most notable ops? Do you remember?
JQ: Well I remember, well obviously we went on fire was the one -
CB: Yeah.
JQ: I remember most.
CB: When was that [pause] ‘cause that was caused by flak.
JQ: That was caused by flak. Yeah.
[pause]
CB: I’ll stop for a mo. while you look.
[machine pause]
CB: So one of your notable events was when you got hit. So what was that?
JQ: That was on Feb -
CB: And when was that?
JQ: That was on February the 3rd 1945.
CB: Ok. What happened there?
JQ: Well we were flying at Bottrop. There was intense searchlight activity with a heavy and light barrage and predicted flak and we were hit by flak and the port wing caught fire.
CB: And how did you know that you’d been hit?
JQ: Well the mid-upper gunner spotted it and -
CB: So if you’re hit in the fuel tank what normally happens?
JQ: Well it normally explodes.
CB: Right. What did the crew do?
JQ: The mid-upper gunner spotted it because I was flying on instruments at the time, on the bombing run and I had to make up my mind what to do and I decided to finish the bombing run which was only a short time afterwards and then decide whether to abandon the aircraft or what to do and I decided that baling out over the target with all that flak and everything else wasn’t a very good idea and so I decided we’d do a short dog leg which we had to do and then bale out so I warned the crew to get ready to bale out but the short dog leg, which was going to take about five minutes, after a couple of minutes the fire went out. For what reason we didn’t know at the time and our biggest problem was would we have enough fuel to get back again. We did in actual fact find out that when we got back to the aircraft, to the aerodrome at home that the discharge tube from the tank for quickly discharging petrol had been hit, it had set what petrol there was in the tank, not a lot fortunately, on fire and the rest had gone straight out of the dumping, discharge tube and, which had then wound itself around the mid-upper turret stopping it from movement.
CB: Blimey. Yes. So the gunner was lucky not to be dowsed in fuel.
JQ: Well he was. Yes. Yes.
CB: Oh he was dowsed in fuel.
JQ: No he wasn’t. He was lucky.
CB: He was lucky yeah. In the circumstance of a tank being ruptured what would the flight engineer normally do?
JQ: Well there wasn’t a lot he could do. There was a, there was a lever to pull which, if I remember rightly, it was nitrogen which would go in and dowse the flames but I can’t remember where it was now but that was, that was the procedure but it all happened so quickly and what with everything going on one -
CB: Sure.
JQ: One wonders.
CB: I’m just wondering whether they would, the flight engineer would normally try to pump fuel out.
JQ: No. he wouldn’t do.
CB: Or was that a dangerous thing to do?
JQ: Well he wouldn’t do it fast enough. I mean fuel normally ignited, explodes doesn’t it? I mean why it didn’t explode, my own theory is that it was so fast coming out of this discharge tube because it was about a foot in diameter this thing.
CB: Oh.
JQ: And so it would really go out and what was left was just burning plus the fact that there was a fair airstream coming over the top of the wing which would keep it from sort of flaming upwards. It was all flaming backwards. It was flaming quite a lot but, enough to be quite frightening.
CB: What speed would you be flying -
JQ: Oh we’d be doing -
CB: On your run in to the bombing?
JQ: We’d be doing roughly two hundred and twenty five miles an hour, er knots, knots or miles and hour I can’t remember now.
CB: Did the gauges read in knots, or miles an hour?
JQ: Do you know I can’t remember?
CB: It doesn’t matter. I’m just curious.
JQ: I pretty sure it’s knots but -
CB: Yeah.
JQ: I wouldn’t put my shirt on it now to be honest although I’ve got a thing here which, cruising speed two hundred and ten.
CB: Right.
JQ: Miles per hour that is.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: A hundred and ninety knots.
JQ: And on today’s thing you’d think this was low but the service ceiling of a Lancaster is twenty four thousand five hundred and I took one up to twenty four thousand on one occasion and it was getting extremely slow to get any higher and you know you, you couldn’t get any -
CB: Staggering.
JQ: Headway at all really.
CB: What, what height were you on that day you had the flak fire?
JQ: No. I haven’t -
CB: Would your engines be running at normal cruise all the same all the time then? It didn’t, the fire didn’t affect the engine, either of the engines on that side.
JQ: No. No it didn’t. No. I did actually, when we got back into safer areas I did actually slow the aircraft right down. At night, it’s a bit, it all seems to be a bit hairy sort of doing odd manoeuvres at night but I thought I thought I’d better do it and I warned the crew I was going to do it and I slowed right down to almost a stall. In fact it was beginning to judder and I thought well that’s alright. So -
CB: So your stall clean, that’s with the flaps up, would be what? Roughly. A hundred and forty. A hundred and thirty miles an hour.
JQ: Something like that. I’m just wondering if I’ve got it here. Some people could remember these things straight off and I’m blowed if I can.
CB: Anyway -
JQ: Maximum speed is two hundred and eighty seven at fifteen thousand feet.
CB: For the Lancaster yeah.
JQ: For the Lancaster.
CB: So the other part of your tour you did how many, how many ops did you do in total in that tour with 170?
[machine pause]
CB: So with 170 squadron then how many ops did you do for, it wasn’t a tour but before you moved? You did how many ops? You did eight did you?
JQ: Eight.
CB: Right. Then why did you only do eight?
JQ: Because we moved. We volunteered for, a notice came up they wanted volunteers for, the thing, now there’s a little story about that because we decided that we’d have a go at this.
CB: At what? Volunteering for what?
JQ: Volunteered for -
CB: For Pathfinder.
JQ: Pathfinders.
CB: Right.
JQ: Yeah. And this was something from our point of view I suppose was a little bit new in actual fact because most Pathfinders were Mosquitos but they decided, I don’t know whether they decided then or it just happened to come up but anyway they had this thing and on the 170 squadron we had A crews and B crews and A crews were judged by the practice bombing that we did as to how accurate they were. We had to do, if I remember rightly, drop smoke bombs, we only dropped smoke bombs for practice within about ten yards of the target and it, it might have been a bit more than that but I’m not quite sure and we got, dropped ten within that thing. Well we were a B crew so we decided to try and prove we were an A crew so we did actually, and they said well you know prove to us that we, you can do it so we went up in Lancaster and we went down to the bombing range near Southampton to do this and if I remember rightly it was from about fifteen thousand feet we were dropping eleven pound smoke bombs. The first one we dropped alright as far as I remember. The next one coming up and of course I’m trying to fly very accurately and the bomb aimer says, ‘Overshoot.’ So we overshot and went around again and do a sort of circuit you see and sometimes we dropped them and sometimes we overshot and in the end we dropped them all and the bomb aimer said, ‘I think we’ve done it.’ So in exuberance of the fact that I’d been flying very accurately and you know really trying hard with this thing I decided that I’d [?] like this knowing exactly what would happen of course by pushing the control columns but I was a bit too exuberant about it so the rear gunner had the ride of his life and the navigator lost a pair of compasses down the side of the aircraft never to be found again. So anyway we had a good laugh about that.
CB: So you put the nose down. How long did you run it with the nose down?
JQ: Oh only just down and then back again.
CB: Oh right.
JQ: But of course the tail comes up you see.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: The nose goes down, the bomb aimer was wondering, I should think, where he was going.
CB: Bumped his nose. Yeah.
JQ: Anyway, that was alright. We had a good laugh about it. I said, ‘I’m sorry blokes I didn’t mean to do it quite that hard,’ you know. They said, ‘Oh that’s alright.’ That’s when I learned the navigator had lost his compasses or his dividers or whatever they were so we go back to the squadron and and land and the pilot is usually the last one out because you know, the rear gunners usually get out pretty smartly and then the wireless operator. The navigator has got to put his maps away in his bag and he’s got to get himself out and then the pilot’s got to see that the controls are locked and the petrol’s switched off and all this and the engineer might beat him by a short head sort of thing and so I’m just switched everything off and seen everything’s alright and walking down this thing and I could hear this row going on. I said, ‘What’s the row about?’ You see. And I looked and I thought I know what the row’s about. It was this high tech bit of equipment that we’d got in the back of the Lancaster namely an elsan toilet. You see, I wasn’t to know that the elastic band over the top had broken so of course as we, as I’d pushed the stick forward all the contents had come out of this toilet and of course it’s blue. I could see. I mean it’s not a thing you can wipe down just like that because the inside of a military aircraft is full of struts and wires and all sorts of things.
CB: Christ.
JQ: And this, this flight sergeant was going on to my crew despite of the fact that two of them were officers and going on about, ‘bloody mess’ so I thought that’s a bit much. I shall have to apologise so I get to the top of the steps and he’s down there and I said, ‘I’m sorry chiefy,’ I said, ‘It’s, it’s my fault. I was a bit too enthusiastic.’ ‘That’s alright sir. We’ll soon get it cleaned up.’ [laughs] So that was a tale.
CB: Brilliant. What, who were the other officers, what, in the aircraft?
JQ: Well there was Mike Seaton who was navigator. And I’ll tell you a tale about him in a minute and then there was Alf Thompson, rear gunner. Eddie Howell, mid-upper gunner.
CB: All officers.
JQ: Oh no. Beg your pardon. You only wanted officers didn’t you? No.
CB: I want to know all the others but -
JQ: Yeah. Well they were -
CB: I’m just curious about the officers.
JQ: Yeah. Well the navigator was an officer.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Jimmy Green, I haven’t told you. He was an officer.
CB: This is the bomb aimer was he?
JQ: He was the bomb aimer. And then there was Jack Bassington. He wasn’t an officer. How many have you got?
CB: Wait a minute. Yeah. Sorry. So Jimmy Green. Mike Seaton, Ralph Thompson was the rear gunner.
JQ: No. Alf.
CB: Alf Thompson. Sorry. Ok, who was the mid-upper?
JQ: No. No. He was the rear -
CB: Yeah, but who was the mid-upper?
JQ: Eddie Howell. How many have you got?
CB: Wireless operator?
JQ: Jack Bressington. Bressington.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And me. That should be seven.
[pause]
CB: Engineer?
JQ: Engineer.
[machine paused]
CB: Just ask you the question. So John just going back to the time the plane’s on fire the mid-upper tells you that the plane’s on fire. What’s your immediate reaction? How do you feel about that?
JQ: Well it’s difficult to, difficult to say really. If you’re one of these people who can make an instant reaction and it happens to be the right reaction then that’s what you must do but the average person it takes a second or two to sink in and I was doing a job on a bombing run and so I knew that I’d got to do something and the thing I was doing was the nearest thing to do. Having done that I was able to think that getting out of a plane over a target in an area full of anti-aircraft fire with a lot of hostile natives below wasn’t a very good idea. The chances of, of the petrol tank blowing up were diminished slightly, I realised quite quickly because if it was going to blow up it would have been blown up before then and so I thought with a bit of luck I could get to the end of a dogleg which was going to take me about five minutes and then bale out and that was my intention and fortunately the fire went out for whatever reason. We didn’t know at the time but we found out when we got back what had happened.
CB: So you said already you slowed the aircraft down but when you landed, how did you feel?
JQ: Relieved [laughs] yes because I was relieved because it was a fact that we, the fire went out was a relief to start with but we were then faced by the fact that we might not have enough petrol to get back so we might still have to bale out at some stage but at least we might be able to get to somewhere where it was a little bit more friendly then there. So when I slowed the aircraft down and let it almost stall and put the wheels down and I got the indication that they were down and then pulled them back up again of course then I was more relieved at that but we still couldn’t be quite sure whether the aircraft wheels would stay locked down when we got there so I tried to put it down as gently as I could but we were quite relieved to get back.
CB: So your concern there was whether the hydraulics had been damaged. Was it?
JQ: Yes it was. Or anything, any other reason.
CB: Yeah. So what I’m thinking is you taxi to dispersal.
JQ: I wasn’t bothered about taxi.
CB: Then what do you do?
JQ: Yeah. I think we, I don’t think we whooped with joy or anything like that you know I think we just sort of accepted it as being jolly good fortune and next stop the -
CB: The fry up.
JQ: The coffee. Coffee.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Coffee and rum.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And the interrogation as to what had happened.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And, and then eventually to get to bed because we were usually pretty tired by that time.
CB: But you were a bit more tired with that one.
JQ: Yeah.
[machine paused]
JQ: To the dispersal that you know we’d be, we’d be briefed in the briefing room as to what we’d got to do, where we were going and get all our maps, or the navigator would get all his maps together and you’d put all your kit on and you’d get in the wagon and they had to take you out to dispersal and dump you there and you wouldn’t get in the aircraft because you were going to be in there long enough so you’d stop outside the aircraft and chat or do whatever and the CO used to come around, always came around and said, ‘Good luck everybody,’ and then off he’d go again in his car and you’d laugh and joke and whatnot and I’ve often wondered why we did it and everybody did it you know. And I think, thinking back, I think it was bravado. You know. We all, we all knew why we were going and we all knew the chances that we, but nobody said it and I think you just joked. The Americans used to play baseball or something or other.
CB: Antidote to the stress.
JQ: Yeah. I think so. I think that’s what it must have been.
CB: So you’ve got, you’ve got out of the wagon. You’ve peed against the rear wheel. You -
JQ: No. I never did that.
CB: Oh. You didn’t. Right.
JQ: No. Some of them did.
CB: But when you, as soon as, the joking is outside, but as soon as you get in the aircraft.
JQ: No. There wasn’t any joking there.
CB: Right [pause]. How did the crew get on?
JQ: Oh fine. We never had any, any bother about anything. Yes. We were ok.
[machine pause]
JQ: Bomb aimer had been in the air force a little bit longer so he tended to be the one that knew about things. We didn’t get on with him to start with and tried to get rid of him but the CO wasn’t having it. I think if we’d pressed him really hard I think he would have done it.
CB: Was it because -
JQ: Because you were supposed to be able to do it.
CB: Was it his second tour?
JQ: No. No. No. I think he’d been on the ground. He was always a bit, could never quite understand him really. A bit of a line shoot you know. But you know having got over the initial thing we all understood him and you know, he used to joke about the fact, because we had batwomen you know and he always used to say, ‘No batwoman has ever, ever beaten me to the door,’ sort of thing and things like that he used to say. Nobody believed him of course.
CB: This is because you had a mixed crew in terms of rank so you had officers and he was one and you had NCOs so -
JQ: There was one, one on somewhere. I think it was one of the heavy conversion units we were on, he was a wing commander and he used to make his crew line up and salute him as they got in.
CB: And he was serious.
JQ: Oh yes. He was dead serious.
CB: And he was the squadron commander was he?
JQ: No. No. He was just one of us really but his rank was wing commander. Quite how he got there, he was probably re-mustered from some other thing.
CB: Just on that topic did you ever get people who came on an ad hoc basis from OTUs? So they would just come to a station because there was always a shortage of somebody sometime and would just fly with a crew. Did you get any of those?
JQ: Never had that.
CB: In term, we’ve talked about a number of aspects but in terms of your gunners you have a mid-upper and a tail gunner.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: To what extent -
JQ: And of course the bomb aimer had guns up front.
CB: And a bomb aimer at the front. So how often did they, did you get attacked and fire the guns?
JQ: Well never is the answer to that. They did fire the guns but not in anger only to, you know see where we were going and we had to do something to fire at something for some reason or other in the sea. I can’t remember quite why it was now but we never, and I’ve often wondered why we never got attacked and I have a feeling that it may be you read these stories about blokes going on the raids, I’ve read one or two actually and they seem to choose their own height. They might, might attack the target at the right height but in between they’ve gone down low or whatnot. They always used to give us a height to fly and I always flew it and the reason I always flew it is was that I reckoned the higher you go the less petrol you used because the air’s thinner so you don’t need quite so much so that’s what I did. I did what I was told really.
CB: What heights would they be?
JQ: Well it varied. I mean, it, I think the lowest in anger would be about fifteen thousand and the highest would be about twenty and of course the Germans knew this and that’s why they put their thing, they had a box and, but I think what some people must have done is to say right, ‘We’ve done that, dropped the bombs, right, stick the nose down and get home boys,’ you see and you can get that bit faster sticking their nose down and what not. Well you’d use more petrol doing it that way but you’d obviously have enough to get back but you know if you, if you were in trouble then perhaps you’d might miss that bit that you’ve got. But look at it from a fighter’s point of view. Chap’s there in a fighter and he’s churning around at night and there’s one nice and down low where he is and other than that he’s got to climb up to twenty thousand feet or something or other and do up there so he thinks I’ll stop down here and probably gets the pickings down there which wasn’t not the reason I stopped up there in actual fact. I stopped up there because that’s what they said so that’s what I did so -
CB: And when you’re in the bomber stream you need to be on some pre-agreed level don’t you?
JQ: Yes but I’ve read quite a few stories about people who didn’t and of course there must be a lot who didn’t or don’t admit it or didn’t admit it at the time and but I mean I had one time, is that on?
CB: Ahum.
JQ: One time we were told to get together, I can’t remember, rendezvous, that’s the word I was trying to think of, rendezvous at fifteen thousand feet above our airfield along with a lot of others and so we started off and we’d got I think three quarters of an hour, or an hour or something like that to do it and it took us more than that to get to fifteen thousand feet by which time everybody else had gone and it, I mean it was a night raid but it started off in daylight and I knew the reason that we, everybody else had gone was because we weren’t getting the power and I was looking around for a reason. Checked everything through. Checked everything I could think of. I couldn’t find the reason and they said, we did actually set course at the time we should have done but we set course at a lower level. We were still climbing, trying to get to this fifteen thousand feet. By the time we get, we got to the coast the darkness was closing in and we could see the Dutch coast and we could see flak coming up like mad there so we knew that that’s where the bomber stream was and we were on our own and so I thought we were in for it when we, you know, they’ll get us good and proper but anyway so on we went straight through Holland. Nothing. Every now and again on the way we could see these, this flak coming up and every time we got to somewhere near there, nothing. And then we get near the target, near it, it’s going to take us another quarter of an hour or so to get there but I could see over there at about two o’clock to my thing was this beautiful sight, it was amazing really and I thought what on earth is that? And I very quickly realised it was our raid going on and you got the fires that had been lit with the bombing, you’d got Window, do you know what I mean by Window?
CB: Absolutely. Yes.
JQ: Yeah. Trickling down, well you couldn’t actually see the Window but you could see the sparkles coming down. You could see the searchlights going up in to a cone over the top. You could see the markers green and red and what not there and the anti-aircraft fire and it was really was a beautiful sight and it took me a second or two to realise what the devil it was because I knew we’d got to go there, there and bomb on the way back. So I thought blimey. They were really going to be waiting for us when we get there so we did that, we came and we turned around and we were on the run in now. So this time I thought right I’m going to get out of here as quickly as we can so I put the throttles right up, and we went in and we did the bombing run, we went out, not a searchlight came up. Nothing. No ackack fire. Nothing. And it was only on the way out as one searchlight popped up and it wasn’t terribly near us and we got back and we never had a blind thing really and we were all on our own.
CB: Amazing. What height did you manage to achieve in the end?
JQ: Oh I think we, I think we -
CB: It doesn’t matter but I was just curious.
JQ: I can’t remember now. I’ll just see if I can spot it.
CB: Because in practical terms if you were low on power it would be pretty difficult loaded to get high wouldn’t it?
JQ: Yeah. Oh that wasn’t the reason. No, I found, we found out the reason afterwards when we got back because I went around the next morning and said to the mechanics, ‘What did you find?’ And it was stuck in hot air and there was a lever, hot and cold air and I checked that but the answer I got was when they loaded the bombs they, they’d bent a control rod. Now, why a control rod for hot air should go through a bomb bay I’ve no idea but that’s the answer I got so. But I did check, check that. That was the first thing I checked because I -
[pause]
CB: Well let’s pick up that up a bit later. Can we move to when you became a Pathfinder? So you moved from 170 because you did your practice bombing.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: You were so elated with that you put the nose down and –
JQ: Yes.
CB: The elsan -
JQ: Yeah.
CB: Decided to -
JQ: Yeah.
CB: Fly.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: But presumably you were re-graded on that.
JQ: We were. Yes. We were.
CB: So -
JQ: They made us an A crew.
CB: That made you an A crew so what happened then?
JQ: So then they posted us to -
CB: So 582 squadron.
JQ: 582 squadron.
CB: Little Staughton
JQ: Little Staughton. That’s right.
CB: Now this was a demanding experience was it?
JQ: Well they, yes, they didn’t put us straight onto ops because they don’t operate quite the same. They don’t operate the Lancasters quite the same either. They fly them a little bit faster and various other things I can’t quite remember them all now but it wasn’t that much different but they had their own way of doing things. We were expected to, if I remember rightly, we were expected to get to the target plus or minus. I can’t think whether it was a minute or four minutes plus or minus but whereas main force they give you each hour and you started off when you should get there at the time and when you arrived you bombed but you, with Pathfinders you started in good time and then the navigator worked out, he kept working out the eta and if you wanted to lose some time then he’d say, ‘Lose a couple of minutes Skip,’ you see, so I’d turn forty five degrees to the, to the route for two minutes. I’d turn ninety degrees back for two minutes and that puts you back on where you were but two minutes later and then you kept doing that and doing that and you could actually get there more or less smack on time doing that but of course it means that you’re there longer and then what you do then is you have, you have to drop Window which protects the people behind you. It doesn’t do anything for you. It just accentuates the view of you because they can see a line of Win, on the radar they could see a line of Window coming from you but nothing in front so they know that’s you. So we had a special radio which we switched on just before we got anywhere near the target and that sort of blurred everything in front so it gave us the protection that we were giving everybody behind. Having done that we’d go in and if you were new to the, to the Pathfinders you would go in as a supporter. They wouldn’t let you drop a flare or a marker or anything like that but you would go in with those blokes who were going to do that and the fact you were dropping Window and using your radio and all that sort of thing you were supporting them in that, in that respect. You would then, having supported them in that way you then did a circuit around, came back into the bomber stream again and came up to the target again.
CB: In the bomber stream.
JQ: In the bomber stream. And then drop bombs or whatever they’d put in, in the bomb bay. I always thought that was the most dangerous time to be quite honest because it was like doing a u-turn on the M1 at night, you know, without any lights because you didn’t know whether there was some of your own bombers.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Would come and wipe you up you know. I mean I know they worked it all out so that you should all be separated but it doesn’t work like that you know.
CB: No.
JQ: Anyway we never did come to any harm. And then after you’ve done some of those then then they started giving you flares and markers to drop.
CB: How many sorties, ops, would you have to do before qualifying for that? Normally.
JQ: I, I think it was five.
CB: Ok.
JQ: No. No. Wait a minute. It could have been more than that.
CB: So after five you would then join the others straight in.
JQ: Straight in. Yeah.
CB: With flares.
JQ: Except the master, master bomber of course. He was floating around all the time.
CB: Right. So the master bomber would be there and then he would be, what height would he be at?
JQ: Oh he would go -
CB: Watching what was going on?
JQ: Anywhere. Usually quite low.
CB: Oh was he?
JQ: Yeah. And usually in a Mosquito.
CB: Ah.
JQ: In fact I would think probably always in a Mosquito.
CB: And would the master bomber be a pilot or would he be a navigator in a Mosquito?
JQ: Do you know I don’t know? We had, you see, on our squadron, on our thing at Little Staughton we had 582 which was Lancasters and 109 which was Mosquitos and it used to annoy us because we’d go in and we’d take off say at half past six and they’d take off about half past seven. We’d be back about twelve or whatever. They’d be back at ten.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And in bed.
CB: Yeah. Really narking, yeah.
JQ: Yes.
CB: And they’d eaten all the fry up.
JQ: They didn’t do that.
CB: They didn’t get a fry up because it was before midnight.
JQ: What was the question you were asking?
CB: The question was how many ops you had to do before you qualified to go in on the main operation?
JQ: I’m not sure that there was, there was a particular time but -
CB: Because they monitored your progress did they, in the early stages, more than they would otherwise.
JQ: I don’t know.
[pause]
CB: We’re just looking at the logbook.
[pause]
CB: Let’s pick that up, that one up later John.
JQ: Yes. Ok.
CB: So how many, you joined the Pathfinders? They said after, say five that you would then go in on the main operations. So these were all at night were they?
JQ: Yeah. Yeah they were mainly.
CB: And a wide variety of -
JQ: No. No they weren’t, they weren’t all at night. There was the odd one or two as the war went on.
CB: Yes. And then so you did eight ops with 170. How many ops did you do with 582? That was more wasn’t it?
JQ: Yes it was.
CB: But while you’re looking that up when you joined 170 you had the first op was as second pilot.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: With Pathfinders did they do the same thing?
JQ: No. Straight in.
CB: Right. So when your Pathfinder activity came to an end, why was that?
JQ: The war finished.
CB: Right.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: And how did you feel at that point because it wasn’t the end of a complete tour of thirty ops was it?
JQ: No. It wasn’t. No.
CB: So did you feel short changed or what did you feel?
JQ: Glad the war was over. No. Didn’t worry too much really but, no. You’d got other things to think about and you’d come through. No. Sort of mixed feelings I suppose really. We were glad the war was won.
CB: Were there any major raids you went on as a Pathfinder?
JQ: Well it depends what you call a major raid.
CB: Well -
JQ: And I don’t know which one we could -
CB: On the really large cities. Berlin.
JQ: Oh I didn’t go to Berlin.
CB: Right.
JQ: The reason for that was they did actually try it before we joined Pathfinders and it wasn’t a success because they lost a lot of planes doing it because the fighters, their fighters were so much faster than the thing and you got all that time to get to Berlin.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And back again.
CB: No.
JQ: And Berlin was really Mosquitoes all the time.
CB: Right.
JQ: Towards the end when I -
CB: For Pathfinding.
JQ: Well for anything really.
CB: Right.
JQ: I think they did the odd one or two to Birmingham but er to Berlin but I went to the major cities. Hanover. I think that, when we were on our own, was Hanover.
CB: And the Ruhr.
JQ: Ruhr all the time because that’s near, that was near that was an easy one.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: I think the longest one I ever went on was a nine hour trip but I can’t remember where that was too. Somewhere in the north of Italy somewhere.
CB: Ah right. So it was Turin was it? The raids in Italy.
JQ: If I could spot it I would know.
CB: In the Lancaster you could fly over the Alps could you? Or did you have to fly around them?
JQ: I don’t think, I don’t think we flew anything direct. We usually went around things you know because if you were direct they knew you were coming.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Yeah. I’ve got one there. Seven and a half. That was Dessau, wherever that is. [pause] Mannheim. [pause] Essen of course [pause] Bremen. Dahlen. Hanover [?] Lutzendorf, wherever that is.
[pause]
CB: Oh a bit of variety. So now the war is finished. It’s the 8th of May 1945. What happened to the squadron and your flying?
JQ: Now wait a minute. Did you say the 8th of May 1945?
CB: The Europe, the war in Europe is finished.
[long pause]
JQ: Yes. That’s right. Well -
[long pause]
JQ: On the 4th of April we did an op to Lutzendorf.
CB: And you did some raids, some ops after that for the month because May, we’re talking about 8th of May and what you did after that?
JQ: Well on May the 3rd
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Much to our surprise because the war hadn’t finished they said, ‘You’re going food dropping.’
CB: Oh yes. Right. So you did Operation Manna in Holland.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
JQ: Nobody’d done it. Certainly not to our knowledge anyway. Two hundred feet. Which is low.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: To drop food at Rotterdam.
CB: Is this over the city or in the countryside?
JQ: In the countryside. Well near enough Rotterdam you know and -
CB: Is that in the bomb bay or was it chucking it out of the door?
JQ: No. No. What they, they sprung it on us really. We’d. I think the negotiations had begun before that but we didn’t know anything about it and we were still in in a bombing mode.
CB: Right.
JQ: You know, and we were still practicing for it as we always did and they said, ‘Right, you’re food dropping at two hundred feet and the Germans have promised not to fire.’ And we thought a likely story. So we set off on this thing. What they did was they had done a few tests and they’d found that it wasn’t really a practical proposition to sort of take a load of parachutes and have it dropping down by parachute. What they’d do would stick it in paper bags like a concrete bag that you’d have concrete powder in and stick stuff like powdered egg and grain and that sort of stuff you know. Flour and, in this bag and drop it from two hundred feet. Well of course the bag burst immediately so then they had a bright idea and they thought what if we put another paper bag around it what would happen and it didn’t. I presume if it went on top of a pole or something it would do.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JQ: You know. So then they got something like a football net behind a goal and they attached that to the bomb hooks or some of the bomb hooks in the bomb bay and then that gave something they could put all these bags in and then and we were able to close the bomb doors and then from then on it’s a bombing raid.
CB: Right.
JQ: You see, so it was done exactly the same. It was marked.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And from two hundred feet so we went over and did this and I was careful to put my altimeter, to put pressure on my altimeter highly correctly and off we went. When we got there, obviously being daylight, we could see all the aircraft and I was here and there was two or three aircraft in front of me, you know, only about a hundred yards away. There was one there and one there, one there, one there but slightly higher than me and I remember looking at my altimeter and thinking well they’re a bit high. I’m at two hundred feet. But of course your instruments vary a bit you know so I didn’t bother because I thought well I’m within twenty five, thirty feet of two hundred feet or they’re too high. One or the other you know. We’d come up to, up to the point and they released their bags. Well I had a hundred weight bags of this, that and the other flying past me like, you know I thought, God, you know I thought if one of those hits us we’re in for trouble.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JQ: You know there was nothing I could do about it.
CB: Yeah. You had to pull it back did you?
JQ: No. I didn’t. I just, we just kept going. I thought well even if I’d pulled back I couldn’t have missed one.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JQ: So anyway it all went down and it was, the Germans didn’t fire and it was highly interesting to see what the Dutch had done because there were Union Jacks all over the place.
CB: Oh were there?
JQ: Where they got them I’ve no idea. You’d see kids in a school, what looked like a school playground and on the ground in the playground there’d be this flat on the floor and they were all waving like the clappers and all out in the, a right reception they gave us.
CB: Yeah. Fantastic.
JQ: But all the time we wondered whether the Germans would fire but they didn’t so so that was that and I think there were one or two. We only did one but there were one or two like that.
CB: So you only had one sortie. You didn’t have to fly at low level to get there did you? You just had to let down -
JQ: Yeah.
CB: At the last minute.
JQ: If I remember rightly. Yes. In fact I’m sure that’s right. My common sense tells me that. Not my memory.
CB: Yeah. And for the drop you don’t want too much speed so what did you haul back to?
JQ: I can’t remember.
CB: But you did, you did throttle back.
JQ: A thousand probably because I mean we were so used to flying up, up high.
CB: No. I didn’t mean that I meant the speed. So you don’t want to be going at two hundred miles an hour dropping bags do you? You -
JQ: Oh yeah we did.
CB: Did you pull it back?
JQ: Yeah. We did.
CB: And just keep it at -
JQ: No we well -
CB: A hundred and fifty or something.
JQ: No. I didn’t pull it back.
CB: Right.
JQ: In fact we got, I don’t remember any instructions to pull it back. I don’t think it would make any difference anyway.
CB: I was thinking about the impact.
JQ: Well, they got from two hundred feet anyway so -
CB: Yeah.
JQ: It would have slowed a bit by then wouldn’t they?
CB: Yeah.
JQ: It seemed to work anyway.
CB: So after that the war ends.
JQ: After that we got sent, I got sent to Dunkeswell.
CB: Oh yes.
JQ: Which is in Devon.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: And, oh I did do some, on May 15th I fetched some prisoners of war back from Juvincourt. Then I got sent to Dunkeswell.
CB: How many times, how many trips did you do? That was Operation Exodus wasn’t it? Bringing back POWs.
JQ: Yes it was. I’d forgotten that. Yes.
CB: How many trips of that did you do?
JQ: Only one.
CB: That was from Holland. Was it from Holland?
JQ: No. Well, Juvincourt. I can’t remember where Juvincourt is.
CB: Belgium.
JQ: Either France or Belgium I think.
CB: So you did one of those. So you went to Dunkeswell. What happened there?
JQ: Well we were supposed to be transferring on to Lincolns for the Japanese war.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: But it never happened. I did a bit of test flying there of Lancasters where I flew the Lancaster completely on my own. Usually with a couple of ground engineers or even one ground engineer because -
CB: What were you testing then?
JQ: The pilots had reported faults with -
CB: Ah.
JQ: With the thing and -
CB: Yeah.
JQ: It was either before they’d been put right or after or both, you know. I remember taking off in one thing and I checked all around outside and as soon, as soon as I took off one of the wings dropped so I immediately corrected it and I found instead of being like that, straight and level, I was flying like that and it worked perfectly well. The only thing about it was that I couldn’t get any farther that way I’d really got to go this way and go all the way around and -
CB: What did that turn out to be?
JQ: Well –
CB: A spanner left in the plane?
JQ: No. A trimming tab on the aileron.
CB: Right.
JQ: Was bent up too much or down too much. I can’t remember which way now. Something quite simple really but I mean you know unless you knew quite what, what you were doing.
CB: Right.
JQ: And if you panicked and tried turning even faster you might get yourself into trouble. I realised you couldn’t get that way anymore so I went this way.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: But of course when you’re coming in to land it doesn’t help you know you’re coming in to land -
CB: Of course.
JQ: Like this. Well if I want to go that way I’m going to use my rudders or something.
CB: I’ve had an elevator trimmer go myself and run out of stick movement.
JQ: Yes.
CB: When you don’t know what it is it’s disconcerting.
JQ: Yes.
CB: So after Dunkeswell then what? Did you have to, how long did you stay in the RAF before you were demobbed.
JQ: No longer than I could help after that, you know. Having made -
CB: Right. Was that the end of flying? Dunkeswell.
JQ: Decided that was it. That wasn’t the end of flying for me but -
CB: No. No. But in the RAF.
JQ: In the RAF.
CB: When was your last sortie with the RAF?
[long pause, turning pages]
JQ: It appears to be January the 18th 1946.
CB: Ok.
JQ: And I was actually, what happened then, after that, I was taken off flying. I got sent back to my old Little Staughton.
CB: Oh.
JQ: Which rather surprised me and I had an even, even bigger surprise when I got there because when I’d left it it was a thriving bomber station and when I came back there were about no more than a dozen people in the sergeant’s mess and about three of us in the officer’s mess and two of them had been there quite a while and wanted to go on leave and so one of them said, ‘Well, here’s the key to the bar. You’re in charge. Goodbye.’ [laughs]. So although I never had the title I was virtually CO. Only for a short time. Only about a fortnight, something like that and then, then I was demobbed.
CB: From Little Staughton.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: What did you do after that? Because you’d done engineering before you joined the RAF. So what did you do when you left the RAF?
JQ: Well I thought I didn’t want to go back to the job I was in because I’d started wrong anyway because I went into the drawing office and although I did alright in it and understood what I was doing I’d really started wrong because to go in to a drawing office you really ought to start on the floor, not in the drawing office, on the floor doing engineering stuff and I realised that that was the way I ought to have done it so I thought, no, I didn’t want to go back there. So I cast around for a bit and the Ministry of Labour, as it was in those days, wanted, they ran, ran a course. They realised there were a lot of people in the services, particularly officers who had gone in at a young age as I had and hadn’t got any experience of business. So they thought well if we give them some experience of business perhaps we can slot them in to the employment lot and they’ll know what they’re doing you see and they’ll have caught up a bit so I thought well that’s a good idea so I applied. They didn’t take everybody but I applied and they accepted me and I went down to Worcester and it was a three week course if I remember rightly. They taught us, well, quite a lot of stuff. Accountancy. You know, a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of the other and quite good. And then if you wanted to you could apply then for a speciality course which was another three weeks and that you could be put out with a firm and they could teach you about what went on at their firm and if they liked you or wanted you and what not they could take you on and possibly would take you on. So I thought I’ll have a go at that so I had a go at that and went through all that and, and then said, ‘I’d like to,’ oh apart from the people who you were with for the speciality, no wait a minute, yes, apart from the people you were with on the speciality course the ministry, if they didn’t want you the Ministry of Labour would find you a thing. And the chap, chaps that I was with didn’t, didn’t want me so I applied to the Ministry of Labour for them to find me. So they said, ‘Oh yes. We’ll find you somewhere.’ Nothing happened. And then I queried it a bit and they sent me to someplace that, you know, I thought blimey if I come here I’m really going down you know. You know. Real Dickensian stuff you know.
CB: Oh. Sweatshop.
JQ: So I thought well this is a right thing so I said, I had a bright idea and I went around and I said, ‘Can you give me a pile of your leaflets?’ And they said, ‘What do you want a pile of leaflets for?’ And I said, ‘I’ll find my own.’ Well they thought that was a jolly good idea. Saved them a lot of bother you see. So they gave me a pile of these leaflets and I went around to people I thought might be likely and asked to see somebody and most of the time they didn’t because they didn’t, you know didn’t know what I was about so I’d leave a leaflet and what not and one of them turned up. It was in printing and my grandfather as I told you was in printing.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: So I I went there and I did quite well.
CB: Locally.
JQ: I did, I went into the office, I didn’t go to the actual printing. I went into the office and I took up, doing a night course on costing which I did. Printers had a costing system so I did that and the people who were running this who were the British Master Printers Federation they, when I’d finished they said, ‘Well we’re short of a teacher in Birmingham. You wouldn’t like to do it would you?’ Because I’d, it was three certificates you got and I’d got all three so I said yes. So I taught that for three years until I got tired of it. And then one day I called on, oh I got on to the sales side of that, for that thing then and they gave me a car, a small car and then I called on a customer one day and it was a woman customer and she said, ‘My managing director wants to know if you know anybody that’s interested in a job in printing.’ So I said, ‘Well I’m in printing.’ She said. ‘Yes. That’s why I said it.’ So I said, ‘Who is it?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know he hasn’t told me.’ So I applied for it and got it and it was for a big printing company Sir Joseph Causton.
CB: Oh right.
JQ: And so I applied for that and I got that and the rest is history. I did, did quite well and they gave me a car, and then a bigger car, and a bigger car and then I thought well I’m driving a lot around in this car I could fly around. So I said, I said to the sales director, ‘What about it?’ He said, ‘Good idea. Yeah. Why not.’ So I did that a bit and then, and I’d got my own aeroplane by then.
CB: Oh had you?
JQ: So I thought well if I did use it for business they paid the expenses. I thought well they might as well own it why don’t I sell it to them? So I sold it to them the aeroplane.
CB: Oh did you?
JQ: And used it on the proviso I could use it for private means if necessary provided I paid the costs so they agreed to that and then we were taken over and I ran into trouble then because we were, we got in to a sort of recession and they said, ‘Well we’ll have to cut the aeroplane down,’ So I bought it back off them and used it privately and in the end I found that I wasn’t using it as much as I was paying. It was costing me in those days three thousand pounds a year if I never moved it out of the hangar.
CB: Really. Crikey.
JQ: So if I moved it out the hangar but I did quite a lot of things like I found that flying for business was a lot more demanding than flying for the RAF apart, you know, in the war of course.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: Because the RAF I mean they’re sensible. I mean I can remember being up in the, being up in my aircraft over Norfolk way on one occasion flying on business and I looked down and there was all these highly specialised aircraft and I can’t think what they were now.
CB: RAF ones.
JQ: RAF ones. Lightnings.
CB: Oh yes.
JQ: I don’t mean the old Lightning that they had.
CB: Right.
JQ: I mean the new ones.
CB: P1 yeah.
JQ: And they were all on the ground. I was up in the blinking air tossing around like mad and things like that you know and I found that you had to be, you had to be a lot more smart as well because in the RAF you got things like defrosting and that sort of thing and you can’t afford to buy that sort of thing in the light aircraft. Apart from the weight. So in the end I found that I wasn’t using it as much as I’d think so I thought I’d better give it up so I did. And in a sense, in a sense I’m still a pilot because although I haven’t got a licence -
CB: Yeah.
JQ: You know in all this post that comes through your door, all these catalogues I get, I get it all the time or when it comes to the door I pile it here and I pile it there.
CB: Nice one. Nice one. Nicely said. So when did you retire eventually from the printing world?
JQ: I think I was about oh I did, I have left a bit out which I forgot for a minute because I went, this Sir Joseph Causton and the aeroplane whatnot I retired from Sir Joseph Causton, buying my car off them as I, as I went, at a cheap rate.
CB: Right.
JQ: And I hadn’t been retired that long and a chap rang me and he said, ‘John,’ he said, ‘I’ve got somebody who wants me as, as a salesman,’ he said, ‘But I don’t want it. I wondered if you’d like to start up again,’ you see. So I thought I’d investigate this. So I did and I thought I don’t want to be employed any more. I’ve had my time but anyway I went to see them. They were in [pause] what’s that new town down south? Down your way.
CB: What, Milton Keynes.
JQ: Milton Keynes. They were in Milton Keynes or near it. Yeah. It was Milton Keynes. I went down and I said, ‘Well,’ you know, ‘I am interested but I don’t really want to be employed by you. I’ll employ myself and you can pay me a –
CB: They could pay you a fee.
JQ: A fee for it.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: So that’s what I did for some years and did alright at that too. So that’s it really.
CB: When did you eventually -
JQ: So I must have been about –
CB: Retire?
[pause]
JQ: Seventy, seventy, seventy two. Something like that.
CB: I’ve just got two extra questions that you prompted me with earlier.
JQ: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: One was to do with baked bean tins.
JQ: Baked bean tins. Yes. Yes. We had a thing apart from the elsan toilet that we’d got in the back like every other Lancaster.
CB: In the Lancaster. Yes.
JQ: We didn’t actually use it to be quite honest. But then we never had the same Lancaster anyway. You could get one or the other or whatnot. But, but people did use it but we we had that the engineer organised this. He always used to have a baked bean tin and where he got them from or why we could get baked beans during the war I’ve no idea, but this used to be passed around. You know, anyone who wanted a pee you didn’t have to get up. He’d come along with the baked bean tin you see but of course it gets full so he had to, and so if possible it was kept until we were over the target and then tipped down the window chute.
CB: Just as a bonus for the target. Yeah.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: And the other was the cracked -
JQ: Oh well that was, that was -
CB: Bomb.
JQ: After the war while everything was still going but even though the war had finished, you know, this was at Little Staughton and we still did, you know, practicing because we, I mean the war with Japan was still going and we were sort of getting ready for that but you know everybody was still flying and that sort of thing but not in anger and the CO called me to see him one day so I went and saw him and he said, ‘Quine,’ he said, ‘We have a bomb in our bomb dump which has got a crack in it,’ he said, ‘And when the,’ he said, ‘It’s got a crack in it and the explosive is seeping out through the crack and crystallising,’ he said, ‘And when it gets into a crystallised state it gets a bit unstable and the bomb’s liable to go off,’ he said, ‘And we’d rather not a bomb go off in our bomb dump if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘So what we’re going to do is we’re doing to load it into a Lancaster and ask you to fly it and drop it in the sea in the appropriate place,’ because there was an appropriate place for everybody to drop stuff if they had to so you know wondering why he’d picked on me for this job you know so I went around and I think it was something like a Sunday morning and there wasn’t a fat lot going on, I went around to see the crew half of whom were still in bed cause they didn’t want to do much on a Sunday and they they were highly delighted to get out of bed for this thing you see. So for some reason or other which I can’t remember I had to go up to the guardroom so I went up to the guardroom and the military policeman there who everybody loves as you know said, ‘Morning sir. Lovely morning.’ So I said, ‘Yes it is a nice morning.’ He said, ‘Nice night, nice day for a flight. Are you going for a flight sir?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am as a matter of fact.’ ‘I’d love to come with you.’ So without telling him why we were going I said, ‘Yes certainly. You can come with me if you want to.’ And he said, ‘Well I shall have to ask my superior.’ I said, ‘Well go and ask him then.’ So he disappeared in the back and he came back about a minute later and he said, ‘Yes that’s alright. He said I can come.’ I said, ‘Right 2 o’clock at dispersal.’ I told him where. So off we go and just before two the bomb’s been duly loaded. We could see that because the bomb doors were still open. You didn’t close them until, until you were about to taxi off. I didn’t tell him why and he didn’t ask why either or where we were going. I told the crew not to tell him and we took off and as soon as we’d taken off we told him and he went white. And so we flew out and dropped it without any trouble at all really. Quite gently we did it, I flew it out ‘cause I didn’t -
CB: I bet. ‘Cause none of you wanted to join your maker did you?
JQ: And of course I hadn’t inspected it and in any case I wouldn’t have known what sort of state it was in by looking at it, not being an expert on these things. So anyway, we dropped it and of course then he got his own back.
CB: Oh.
JQ: ‘Cause he’s a hero now you see. So, I mean, ‘I’ve been in an aircraft with a wonky bomb,’ you see.
CB: Amazing. Final question really and that is after the war a lot of people, air crew were sent on tours of Germany they called the Cooks Tours.
JQ: Cooks Tours.
CB: Did you do any Cooks Tours?
JQ: Yes. Did those.
CB: So who were the people who went? What was a Cook’s Tour and who went on it?
JQ: We flew out to the Ruhr as a rule. In fact it might have been all the time to the Krupp’s works at Essen which was a right sight. You should have seen it. It was a tangled mass. We really clobbered it. No doubt about that. And we were cleared to fly at two hundred feet and we’d get there and usually what I did was do steep turns around it because when you do a steep turn you can look down and got a really good view of it and most people seemed to enjoy that and having done that we just came back again.
CB: Yeah. But who were the people you took?
JQ: Now, the people we took were in the main were ground crew and they enjoyed it but we ran out of ordinary ground crew. I don’t know how many I did. I didn’t do that many but I did do some so we took some WAAFs. They decided they’d let the WAAFs come. We didn’t organise it so they were provided with sick bags and we did exactly the same as we always did. We went around, steep turns, around, out comes the sick bags whoo [laughs] and then we came back again and I think, I think if I remember rightly I think I think it was one of those, this business I’ve told you of the bomb aimer going to sleep when he was supposed to be map reading I think that was why we were at -
CB: Right.
JQ: Two hundred feet.
CB: Did you, how many did you take at a time and how did they actually get the experience of looking?
JQ: I think they enjoyed it and they all -
CB: But how many would you take at a time?
JQ: Oh it wouldn’t be, it wasn’t many. Four or five. And they’d be up, standing beside me and I’ve got a feeling some of them went down.
CB: And behind you. Yeah.
JQ: You’d get two at the side I think, to watch. To watch. I think you might get two in the bomb aimer’s position. I can’t remember exactly but I know we had some at the side and I think that’s where the others must have gone but we never had more than four or five.
CB: And they just sat on the floor.
JQ: Oh they sat on the floor on the way to and from.
CB: But your full crew was there was it?
JQ: Oh yeah.
CB: Yeah.
JQ: We had a full crew.
CB: Right. Ok. What was the most memorable part of your career in the RAF?
JQ: Blimey what a question [pause]. I can’t tell you. It’s all pretty memorable actually.
CB: Well you’ve done really well. So, John Quine thank you.
[machine paused]
JQ: The war. They didn’t look out we just -
JB: You just packed them in did you?
CB: How many could you carry in a -
JQ: They just sat on the floor in the back.
JB: Yeah.
JQ: And we gave them blankets.
JB: Right.
JQ: Which we took with us. I think it was about thirty or something like that.
JB: Really.
JQ: Because we hadn’t got, we hadn’t got any bombs on of course.
JB: No. No.
JQ: That’s why we were able to take a weight like that but I think, I don’t think they were in much comfort.
JB: No.
CB: But they just wanted to get back.
JQ: Yeah.
JB: So why were they special that they got -
JQ: Oh we never found out why.
JB: No.
JQ: Never heard.
CB: No. If you take the Buckingham, the airfields at Westcott and Oakley received fifty seven thousand POWs.
JQ: That’s amazing isn’t it?
CB: Yeah. In that operation.
JQ: Yeah.
CB: Operation Exodus.
JQ: Yes. I remember the name Exodus.
CB: Yeah. Normally a Lancaster could take twenty five but that was really pushing it.
JQ: Well it could have been twenty five. It could have been. I said thirty but, you know I’m guessing a bit but I thought of something just now that I hadn’t told you. What question did you ask John?
JB: How many prisoners of war could you get -
JQ: Oh that’s right, you did.
JB: In a Lancaster.
JQ: Yeah. Now, I can’t just think. If I think in the next few moments I’ll -
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with John Wakeford Quine
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-08-05
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AQuineJW160805, PQuineJW1603
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Pending revision of OH transcription
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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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02:48:07 audio recording
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
John volunteered for the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He went to Lord’s cricket ground, followed by the Initial Training Wing at Scarborough. He spent 10 hours on Tiger Moths in Carlisle. After a short time at RAF Heaton Park in Manchester, John went to Moncton in Canada, subsequently training for six months in various places in America. He returned to RAF Harrogate, followed by RAF Windrush where John learnt to fly on Oxfords. At RAF Peplow, he flew Wellingtons and was picked by a crew to be their pilot. RAF Lindholme followed, where John spent some time on Halifaxes, Wellingtons, and then Lancasters.
John had his commissioning interview on the same day as his wedding and joined 170 Squadron at RAF Hemswell in December 1944 where he carried out eight operations. He describes one of the eight operations to Bottrop when they were hit by anti-aircraft fire but managed to return safely.
John volunteered for the Pathfinders and was posted to 582 Squadron at RAF Little Staughton, flying Lancasters. He explains how they initially acted in a supporter role before progressing to dropping flares and markers.
John took part in Operation Manna in Rotterdam and fetched some prisoners of war from Juvincourt in France. He then went to RAF Dunkeswell where he test flew some Lancasters before returning to RAF Little Staughton from where he was demobbed. He describes the Cook’s tours he did for groundcrew and WAAFs.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Devon
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Manchester
England--Scarborough
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Canada
United States
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Bottrop
Netherlands
Netherlands--Rotterdam
170 Squadron
582 Squadron
anti-aircraft fire
bomb dump
bombing
Cook’s tour
coping mechanism
crewing up
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
love and romance
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Dunkeswell
RAF Harrogate
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Peplow
sanitation
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/932/11290/PLongmateMS1601.2.jpg
0417378173cfc02a7d22050c960c569d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/932/11290/ALongmateMS161019.1.mp3
d889ed2d888d5147c9cae51f6ffd27bf
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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Longmate, Margaret Sinclair
M S Longmate
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Margaret Sinclair Longmate (b. 1925, 2150950, Royal Air Force). She served in Flying Training Command.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-19
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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Longmate, MS
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CJ: So, this is Chris Johnson and I’m interviewing Margaret Longmate today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at Margaret’s house in Sandwich and it’s Wednesday the 19th of October 2016. So, thank you for talking to us today Margaret. Could we start the interview perhaps by you explaining your background? Where and when you were born and your family background?
ML: Well, I was born in Edinburgh on the 30th of March 1925. Just very much an Edinburgh girl. I was at school, Girl Guides, Youth Club at St George’s West Church with a marvellous minister there, Dr Black. And, and then after school into the WAAF when I was eighteen. And a large chunk of time, well in the WAAF ‘til 1947. My only connection with the Air Force before that had been my uncle, my mother’s brother, who had been in the Flying Corps, and I believe he had made his age to be older than it was. He was sixteen when he went in, I believe. But anyway, when I was young I used to think that he was quite a hero, Uncle John. But he was in the First War, and he also spent a long time with 603 Squadron in the Second War. But he was a flight sergeant, a chiefy armourer. Anyway, that was the only connection with the RAF when I was a child. And I’m trying very hard to think about things in Edinburgh. I played hockey for the school, and I played for the school FP hockey team. And I always had a love of hockey which went on until I was about fifty when it became golf was [laughs] But I don’t know what else you wanted to know about Edinburgh.
CJ: Well, perhaps you could tell us what you were doing at the start of the war and how that affected you and how later on in the war you, you came to join the WAAFs.
ML: My, my cousin Elma, my mother’s sister’s girl, she was in the WAAF. Joined as an electrician and my, her brother Lawrence volunteered for aircrew. He was, he was very bright career ahead of him as an architect. In fact, he won a scholarship to go and study architecture in Italy for a year. But of course came the war. He volunteered for aircrew and that, that he went in to the, he went into the RAF. And of course now I remember as a schoolgirl I’d been, I’ve got masses of cuttings and I’ve got the names of all the crews in 603 Squadron. The City of Edinburgh Squadron. I’ve still got the books with all the bits about these crews and pilots. And I’ve kept it right up to date to when some of the Memorial Services not very long ago. But I was very interested in them and of course once Lawrence had gone into the RAF. And as a Guide I had two lovely friends who were in the Scouts. One of them went into the RAF and became a bomber pilot, and his brother was a Fleet Air Arm pilot. Sadly both of them went in 1944. One died in a German prisoner of war camp. The bomber one did, and the other one was Fleet Air Arm. He died at an accident or something the same year. So poor Mrs Anderson lost both her sons in the one year. But they were great friends too. I also had a friend of our family called Wilson and oh, family gatherings in those days we all did our own thing. My little sister sang. I always had to recite something by Robert Louis Stevenson, and my cousin Lawrence was a good pianist. A good classical pianist. But he was always being pulled up when he was practicing. His mother would suddenly shout upstairs because there he was playing eight to the bar on the piano. Boogie woogie had just come in so, but he was a very good classical pianist too as well as going to become an architect. So these were all people involved in the Air Force so everything was, everything was interesting. Well, you couldn’t help but be. What they had weeks. I can remember. I can remember a Lancaster bomber being out on Bruntsfield Links, and it was Wings for Victory or something week and everybody was allowed to look at it. And I can remember thinking this huge great plane. But these things struck me but then as I say I went into the WAAF. When it came to eighteen everybody was being called up. Several people had been put on the land and then to munitions and I thought if I’m being called up I would rather go in the RAF because everybody else in the family’s there. So, that’s more or less why I went as a WAAF, and went to Wilmslow in Cheshire. I had never been out of Scotland in my life before then, and things were very limited because you couldn’t, you couldn’t get north of Perth. The whole of the Highlands was shut off to the general public. So I longed to get up to the Hebrides and Skye and these areas that I’d read about in books. But it was many years later before I got up there, in 1948. So, that gave me a hankering to seeing the Highlands again. And so I went to Wilmslow in Cheshire. And it was, well it was an education as I say. I had never been outside Edinburgh. Outside Scotland. And we were a real cross section of, of WAAF from all over the country, and we had this six weeks together. And I met good friends there too. And two of them — one of them went on the same course as me to, to become a wireless mechanic and they were, we were sent to London, to Woolwich. Civilian billets. On the day I arrived in London and went across London in a lorry and then was sent out to this billet. And the family there had an Anderson shelter in the garden and the day I arrived was the first Doodlebug raid. And we used to be in this shelter night after night. It was at Plumstead, and I think the, the family, they were so afraid for their children I think they, they left the house so we had to go to another billet at Eltham. And the week after we went to Eltham our billet was blown up by a Doodlebug, so it was, it was, I don’t know, meant to be. But I used to walk from the top of the Eltham Way right down to the foot of it to get a bus into Woolwich to go to the Woolwich Technical College where we were doing our course. And it was right outside the door of Woolwich Arsenal. And of course, it was the hottest year. One of the hottest years they’d ever had. I wore full WAAF gear. It was trousers and a jacket and a gas mask and a huge bag of books and a tin hat and a collar and tie, and I walked the whole length of Rochester Way they called it down to the bus stop. And I’d never experienced heat like it. I always remember how hot it was. The other thing was that right outside between the Arsenal door and the college was a fruit market and it was usually plums I think and the WAAFs used to go out at lunchtime and buy fruit and we used our tin hats as baskets. We had the plums in our hats. Well, one day the siren went, something went when we were out in the market and a Doodlebug came right down behind the door of Woolwich Arsenal. And I’ve still got a bit of Woolwich Arsenal roof that fell on top of me. And we all dived under the stalls, and when we went back in we were severely admonished by a WAAF officer because we had not had our tin hats on. But they were all full of plums. So that, that was at Woolwich. And also at Woolwich I used to travel up into London. I’ve mentioned this before in some record. I went to what they called the Queensbury Club and they had a concert. It was broadcast on the BBC at night. I think it was Alvar Lidell. But the forces got in free and it was lovely. You sat at little tables. You felt civilised. It wasn’t billets or anything. And they were all different ones coming over from America. Stars at that time. And Bing Crosby was there singing with Anne Shelton. And they come out and said, ‘Before we start this broadcast don’t react to something Bing is going to sing,’ and he said, ‘Because remember this broadcast will be heard all over Europe. There will be other ears listening to this.’ And of course he, he did sing, “I Didn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night.” And of course it was the worst Doodlebug raid of — and he said afterwards it would have given the Germans an idea how bad the raid was if we all sort of maybe roared with laughter or something. But I was impressed with Bing Crosby. He was marvellous. He just came out. He didn’t have a mic. He sat on the edge of the stage and just sang, and his voice was marvellous. I always think ever since then Frank Sinatra didn’t even compare with him [laughs] So, that’s why I like Bing Crosby. Anyway, the raids became so heavy they moved the WAAF out of London to Yatesbury and it was a matter of weeks really there while they decided where on earth to put us for the next bit of the course. But there was a concert at Yatesbury and it was Humphrey Lyttleton and his band, and it was a real jazz concert. And it was on a Sunday. Well, it shows the difference. I phoned home and I said, ‘Mum I’m going to a concert,’ and it was Sunday. And that’s not a thing I used to do back in Edinburgh on a Sunday. But I told them about it because everybody else was going. But that was a huge people, it was a huge camp with all sorts of people in transition really at Yatesbury. Yatesbury to Bolton. In civilian billets there. And that’s when I realised just how bad it was for civilians. I knew it was in Edinburgh with rations. My mum with the ration books and things, but at Bolton it was so cold and so wet and they couldn’t heat the house. The only fire was in the kitchen, and everybody sat around that fire. And there were three WAAFs. One from Yorkshire. Another one from outside Edinburgh and myself. And there was this, a widow and her daughter lived in the house. And you couldn’t, to wash anything, your underwear, you couldn’t get anything dry. There was no means of drying things. I’ve also recorded this before I think. And we had thick lisle stockings. If you washed them you just had to go to the college classes with wet stockings on. And, and at night we used to put our greatcoats and everything we could think of on top of the bed as well because it was so cold. There was no heat in the bedrooms. And if you got a photograph from home if you put it on the wall it had curled up by the morning. I was so cold and wet and these people had to put up with that all the time, with the ration of coal and their food ration. She was very good with the way she looked after us. Was a very strict, real Lancashire lady and but she was, she was very good. They accepted all the WAAFs, and Hazel the other WAAF from Yorkshire, Knaresborough, she was made welcome. But it was very difficult to billet the Londoners. They were, they didn’t want anybody from London. Scots went right away. Yorkshire, yes they were acceptable, but London no, and it was very, very hard for them to billet a Londoner. I don’t know. Anyway, they were, in those days very anti Londoners. But after that spate at Bolton we got to a certain stage when they put us on again to Bishopbriggs in Glasgow. Bishopbriggs was on the outskirts of Glasgow but we were in RAF huts there. But what was so interesting there were the, the airmen who were all Jamaican. All from, from white Irish ancestry with red hair to absolutely what they called hill boys, and they had all volunteered as aircrew. And by the time they came over they weren’t needing the aircrew so much and they put them on wireless mechanic courses, the same as us you see. And I saw then how much the ordinary aircraftmen there resented them and yet they were, they were wonderful. There were lawyers amongst them and others that their people owned a lot of land in Jamaica. They’d all just volunteered to do something for Britain. It was the attitude they were treated in this country. I felt very strongly about it. Even instinctively one of them must have been of Scottish ancestry because his name was Crichton. And I remember getting in touch, writing through to my mum and saying about I could bring him home for a week and mum wasn’t very sure when I said Jamaican. She immediately thought, ‘You shouldn’t be going out with a Jamaican.’ And I said, ‘But mum, he’s not black. He’s not quite white but he’s not — but anyway,’ I said, ‘But he’s a very cultured man.’ But they couldn’t accept that so much in this country, but they all volunteered and came and they were bitterly disappointed about not [pause] they’d volunteered as aircrew. All of them. That was a point I’d forgotten. And then I went from Bishops, Bishopbriggs. I went to Cranwell for the rest of the course. I was at, I was at Cranwell. Cranwell at VE day because there was an all ranks dance. All the dances were all ranks and they were marvellous dances at Cranwell. And they always had a good orchestra, and it was always Glen Miller music they were playing. And they just had the first few bars of, “In the Mood,” and there was a hundred people up on the floor dancing. It was, it was wonderful at Cranwell. And I can remember it was, there was a heatwave there too. Yes. Anyway, I passed out at Cranwell. I got my sparks at Cranwell and became a wireless mechanic, and they posted me from Cranwell to Errol in Perthshire. And they were all Fleet Air Arm pilots. They were all Canadians. And that was — they were charming people. That was the first time I really learned or tried to learn to jive because they all jived, and that was at Errol. And I was only a matter of weeks at Errol when I was posted to Ternhill. And I was there, there quite a while at Ternhill in Shropshire and that’s when I started in the way I liked. I used to, I was out on B Flight most of the time. I was their wireless mechanic. And when the instructors took their planes up beforehand for an air check or a night flying check I would be checking the radio. So I got to know them well and and they were ever so kind. They used to let me land. They were Harvards. We always — and they let me land the Harvard. I always remember landing at ninety miles an hour but, and I used to enjoy going up. I was also wireless mech for Test Flight. There was a Flight Lieutenant Martin there. He was a test pilot and of course he took the planes up after a main plane change or something major. None of the aircrew would go up with him after a main plane change [laughs] Anyway, I would go up with him. So, I would go up and he had a warrant officer on the flight with him who also tested and, and we’d go up and have a dogfight in the clouds with the Harvards, and that was thrilling. I used to enjoy that too. But all these instructors that I went up with on, on night flight training tests, I got them to sign how many hours I’d done. So, I got several hours of landing Harvards. And I’ve got the list of all the, all the pilots that I had. So, that that was very much what I remembered at Ternhill. Also at Ternhill it was my twenty first birthday and with another two WAAFs I cycled, it was about fourteen miles to a place called Calverhall. A lady had a little country tea room and we went there and we had poached egg on toast. We had real eggs, and that was my twenty first birthday celebration because only the aircrew got eggs. We had dried eggs of course, but the fact of finding fresh eggs. So I think that meant more to me than a great big cake that they have nowadays and thousands of pounds worth of party. The three of us just cycled there and had poached egg on toast. That was my twenty first birthday celebration at Ternhill. And then they moved the whole of the 5P AFU they called it from Ternhill to Kirton in Lindsey in Lincolnshire. And there I had a lot of, well at that time, ’46 ’47 a lot of sport. I played a lot of hockey, and there was a Highlander from Islay. Yes. Jock, another wireless mech man. He played shinty of course coming from the Highlands, and they used to have mixed hockey matches. And one day he tackled the ball a la shinty. In hockey you don’t raise it above your shoulders in those days but he swung it right back and caught me between the eyes and I ended up in sick bay. I got knocked out. And my husband to be, my fiancé had been three and a half years in the Far East of course, out in the Cocos Islands and Ceylon, came back on leave and I met him with a black eye as a result of hockey. So, that was, that was Jock MacAuley from the Highlands who did that, but we always played in mixed hockey together. But they had a very good PE sergeant at, at Kirton and he encouraged the hockey and the running and we had a very good — I’ve got the shield still. Our group athletics. We had a little team of four, and we had all the big teams. Scampton. I’m trying to think of all the other ones in Lincolnshire. Had huge big teams of maybe thirty or twenty. And we went, I really honestly can’t remember where it was, whether it was held at Scampton. But we went, our little team we went there and stayed the night and we all went for a little walk round the villages outside. It was nice to see. And all these other big teams were out training. Anyway, the next day when it was the actual group athletics, to cut a long story short our little team of four won. I, I was good on hurdles and running and the four of us were good with the relay. Lynn was excellent on the, the half mile, and the other two did things like throwing the hockey ball and obstacle races and nippy races. They were, we were excellent and all these great big teams from the other camps. So, Lynn and I were picked to go down to Uxbridge again for the Flying Training Command Athletic Team. They had the finals at Uxbridge, and that was, I think early in ‘47. And we ran in that and I can remember running in the relay and I was the last man of our team, and it was such an exciting race. Lynn was always first off. She was an excellent runner. And I kept saying, ‘Don’t drop that baton.’ Anyway, we won our relay and that as a result of that we won the Flying Training Command and they came out with this great big cup and somebody poured champagne in it. And that was the first time in my life I’d tasted champagne. So, that was a very happy memory too. And, of course that’s the memory of going down to Uxbridge for hockey trials for the WAAF team and running with the Flying Training Command Athletic Team. I don’t think I’ve said about that ending up in Piccadilly, at Lyons. Well, we went there for supper on the way back before, before we went back to Kirton Lindsey. And you stayed overnight at the Salvation Army and got the train in the morning. Coming out of Lyons Corner House after our supper, it was winter and of course I had my great coat on and I was buttoning it up and my hat under my arm and just as I came out of the door an RAF military policeman put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Corporal, you’re improperly dressed.’ And it didn’t dawn on me that I hadn’t put my hat on yet. And it was most embarrassing. When I got back to camp I was called before the WAAF officer who asked, ‘What on earth were you doing? I have a report here that you were improperly dressed in Piccadilly after 10 o’clock at night. What were you doing?’ So, I explained and then I was most irate really and I said, ‘Well, it wasn’t, couldn’t possibly have been after 10 o’clock at night because we all had to be signed in at the Salvation Army Hostel by ten, so my signature’s there.’ So, I got off on a technicality. But if I hadn’t remembered that, the Salvation Army, that would have been on my WAAF record which sounded dreadful. And it was because I didn’t have my hat on. So, that was discipline in those days. So that, that was more or less that. And as, as I say we used to go to all the demob parties at the First and Last, which was the pub on the way up from the station to Kirton. Everybody stopped there halfway. Well, if you’d been sitting all the way from London on a kitbag and you were carrying a kit bag up that hill it was very — so people stopped there. So a lot of people have memories of the First and Last. A few, some years ago anyway when, when the landlord was retiring he very kindly gave me this big print that was hanging on the wall there as a memento. So, I’ve still got it hanging here. I had lots of, lots of fun there with all the demob parties where Morag the other wireless mech and I at Kirton used to drink a small glass of cider to last the whole evening while everybody else was getting a bit too merry [laughs] But it was nice to say goodbye to them all then. And that was more or less it. I was demobbed in ’47. My husband didn’t get demobbed ‘til forty — they were kept back out east and of course they were all very bitter about it as you know, they almost mutinied. Lord Mountbatten came out to speak to them and they were all turning their back on him, taking their hats off, doing everything to be put on a charge. He was telling them. They had been out there so long and people who had gone into the RAF with them had been home, demobbed and got jobs. Several of them got jobs in teaching and things like that. They got back and they were still at Wyton and still not demobbed. So they were very, very bitter about it all. These people that had been in Ceylon and the Cocos Islands. They felt very neglected and far from home. And Mountbatten was saying what grand men they were and he was booed. They thought they were going to have a riot on their hands. So, you don’t hear so much of that side. But they were, they were just stuck out there. They’d forgotten about them. But they used to fly. He was a radar mech but their planes flew over Burma and dropped leaflets [laughs] and he used to go with them and heave the leaflets out. But I don’t know. They were out there and they got all these horrible malaria, sprue, all these tropical diseases and they weren’t well. And a lot of them were very unhappy about the fact that the others who had joined with them were demobbed and in jobs back in Britain because they were in the European area. And of course the VE day was one thing but it was VE day. The Japanese war went on a little bit longer. So, that’s what kept them out there. Anyway, that’s all I can think of in that line. And I’ve always kept in touch. I kept in touch with Kirton in Lindsey, with this map group at Kirton Lindsey were very good. They did a lot of research. They’re the ones who told me eventually about the Bomber Command Memorial going up and when I wrote to them about my cousin Lawrence who had been [pause] he had done his initial training in this country. I’ve got all his letters that he wrote me because we were very close in the family, like brother and sister almost, and he always teased me about going into the forces. He was saying, ‘They want real he-men in the forces, not women.’ Joking letters. I’ve still have his fun letters, but he, he loved flying and his first initial training he remembered writing and saying he had flown down the Wye Valley, wasn’t it? What’s the gorge in the Wye? And looking down and thinking how beautiful it was. It was really beautiful from the air. And then I’ve got letters from Canada where he did his further training. And the descriptions there of the heat and the flying and of course by then I think they were in — well I’m trying to remember now. It wasn’t. He started off in a Tiger Moth in this country and then eventually graduated to all the different planes and then eventually to Harvards as everybody does. But America wasn’t in the war then but they went on tour. They got a weeks’ leave and they hitched all the way around America. They got, they got, they were made very welcome and they thoroughly enjoyed it. It was like a geography lesson the letter I got back about that. But he had an exciting time there. And then of course when he came back here they were put, I think to Waddington. The initial one and then sent to Scampton, and Scampton of course had, was having, I don’t know runways laid or something like that and so they moved the squadron over to Dunholme Lodge. And the farm there was made a, and I think it was I’ve got all the history of Dunholme. I’ve got everything about Dunholme Lodge. The farmer there [pause] it’s another long story but anyway Lawrence flew from Dunholme Lodge. And it was his twenty first birthday and he never came back. He flew out to bomb Krefeld in the Ruhr and they never know what happened. It’s no, it was never known. His name’s on the Memorial at Runnymede. And then I heard about the Memorial, the Bomber Command Memorial going up at Canwick. And I got, I was invited to that through being a relation of Lawrence’s and the Andersons and the other. Wilson who used to be at our Christmas parties. He was another one who did three tours of ops and on his very last tour disappeared over the Alps at Italy. He was a navigator so he went too. He was another one I used to remember. So I used to write about a lot of them. So, that was my connection with Bomber Command, but I was in Flying Trainer Command, and of course my husband was in Coastal Command. So, after the Canwick one I heard about Dunholme Lodge. David Gibson whose mother and father were very, belonged to this map group, he’s been one who’s done a lot of research for that and he’s, was very good. Sent me a lot of information which I had about my cousin. But still it was good of him. And he took me down. It took a long time to get up there here, from here, changing trains. It was quite a journey. But anyway he took me out to Dunholme Lodge and I met Mr and Mrs Wicks whose farm it is and it was their father’s farm then and they’re lovely people. And, and the, when I met them I heard, I got a letter later to say that the ’44 Squadron which was the squadron Lawrence was in was having a Memorial Service. They come down and have it on the airfield, what was the airfield, about every two years and would I like to go? So I said, ‘Yes please’, and I got this lovely letter from the farmer and his wife saying would I like to come and stay the weekend with them in their beautiful farmhouse. And they made such a fuss of me. I had a wonderful time. They were lovely people. And this little Memorial is down the end of the farm. I’ve got photographs of it and they’d got little plaques on it with, there are a few, they’d put this little Memorial there. And so I thought well my sister and I thought that we would contribute to have a plaque put on for Lawrence and the crew. And so they got that done just before this Memorial Service. So, I went to see that actually dedicated. So, that was very, very moving but oh I was, I’ve never met such kindly folk. Aye. It was. Anyway, so that wasn’t so very long ago now. About a year ago, but anyway at that time I wasn’t too well and they didn’t realise it but I wasn’t but it was like a holiday. Just being there and made an absolute fuss of. And also they opened the garden of that farm to the National Garden Scheme once a year. They open it, and it was the day, the weekend they were opening for, the day after it was open to the public. And the weather was beautiful. And I went down the night before in the evening after everything had happened and gone. Down to this little Memorial that they’ve got, in the sunset and it was all very moving. And it’s, it’s amazing who’s done it. They’ve got their own VC, 44 Squadron of course. He’s there with his crew on, on that Memorial too. So that was a very moving day and a very lovely memory. I was so glad that at least Lawrence’s name is on that and remembered. I know it’s, I’ve got a photograph of it on, it’s on the little plaque. It’s on the big memorial at Canwick. And but I was so glad I’d been to both but the little one on the farm is special in our family anyway. My sister was very pleased because she couldn’t get down. She’s, she’s permanently in a wheelchair and trouble with her knees and things so I had to write reports to her about it. But that’s more or less up to date [laughs]
CJ: So you were demobbed in 1947.
ML: ’47.
CJ: And your husband.
ML: Was demobbed the beginning of ’48. And we were married in June 1948. And of course his family came from Chiswick. His father and he were members of Kew Cricket Club actually, before they went into the [pause] but so I moved down to live in Chiswick, Gunnersbury Park area really. And our, my daughter Margaret Ann, my elder daughter was born in 1951. Oh I [pause] apart from doing all that I did a lot of Scottish country dancing at Fetter Lane with the Caledonian Society, and of course I joined St Columba’s Church at Knightsbridge. I’m still a member. I must be one of the oldest. I’ve been there since 1948 and I went up every year. Every year for the communion services. And it’s been a real, I don’t know, a haven for me. St Columba’s up in Knightsbridge over the years. And my, both the girls were christened there. Rosemary was born in ’58. She was seven years after Margaret Ann, and she was christened in the London Scottish Chapel which is in St Columba’s and Margaret Ann was, well she thought the world of the minister there. He was another one who was a padre. Decorated. Dropped with the troops and dropped with them and she was very inspired with him. But anyway, she became confirmed at St Columba’s and as I say Rosemary was christened in the London Scottish Chapel. St Columba’s was bombed during the Blitz and was burned to the ground, and they raised the money to build it up again. And we used to go to the Jehangir Hall in the Imperial Institute. Services there, and then they built the lower part, the hall. The underneath bit of the new St Columba’s and the Queen who was the queen mother it was, the Queen Elizabeth then came and she laid the foundation stone and as it built up as I say seven years later. Margaret Ann always said, ‘It’s not fair. Rosemary was christened in the London Scottish Chapel,’ she said, ‘And I was christened in the church house around in Cadogan Square.’ They hadn’t got the church built by then. But very happy memories of St Columba’s and they’ve been very thoughtful with me over these last months. They’ve been up to see me and I took them up to St Bart’s here which is a lovely little pilgrim’s chapel. I go there because it’s nice and quiet and rather peaceful and a little simple service, rather like a Scottish service. And they’ve been over the years. They’ve been very kind too.
CJ: And do you keep in touch with any of your former comrades?
ML: I don’t think there’s any of them alive now.
CJ: No.
ML: I seem to be the only. I seem to be the only one that [pause] especially as I say the WAAF. I think they’re all gone. But I joined the WAAF Association and I joined the Thanet group and they were all lovely ones. I’ve got masses of photographs of things we’ve done with them. But I think there’s one of them I know is still alive which I’m due to phone. She’s in a home in Canterbury, I think. But all the others have either gone over the years or gone to, there was two of them there who were in about 1939. They were wonderful. Kay, who ran the group, she was very good person but they laid up their colours and they’re in the church in, in Ramsgate. And after that just a few who were about used to meet sometimes over in Margate and have some lunch. But that sort of came down to about [pause] came down to about two or three and then of course I was very involved with golf, and it was always a Wednesday and Wednesday was the golf day. So these are the ones I had known but most of the people as I say it’s a matter of anno domini. The years go and I’ve got happy memories of lovely folk but there’s not a lot left.
CJ: Well, thank you very much indeed for talking to us today Margaret.
ML: Yes. I jumped about a bit, but I can’t remember it all in order.
CJ: That’s not a problem. We’ve got it all recorded. Thank you very much indeed.
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 Margaret Sinclair Longmate
Creator
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Chris Johnson
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
2016-10-19
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALongmateMS161019, PLongmatemS1601
Format
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00:42:44 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Longmate from Edinburgh came from a family with long links to the RAF. Her uncle had been in the Flying Corps in the First World War and various other friends and family joined the service during the Second World War. Therefore, it seemed obvious that when it came time Margaret would join the Women's Auxilliary Air Force. She began her training as a wireless mechanic and her first day in London she experienced a V-1 attack. For her twenty first birthday Margaret and three friends had the ultimate celebration feast of poached eggs on toast which made a welcome change from the dried eggs that were otherwise on offer. The cousin to whom she was very close was with Bomber Command. He was killed on his twenty first birthday.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Chris Johnson
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
entertainment
ground personnel
Harvard
memorial
RAF Cranwell
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Kirton in Lindsey
RAF Ternhill
sport
V-1
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/798/11748/PDelfosseJEC1701.2.jpg
2a4cb2bd8f4dd531c845c84cf02fa039
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/798/11748/AVanDammeJEC170727.1.mp3
7b94523499101f7c3528e0df6b491158
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
Delfosse, Jack
John Edward Charles Delfosse
J E C Delfosse
John Edward Charles Van Damme
J E C Van Damme
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Jack Delfosse (1924 - 2020, 3032135 Royal Air Force) and two photographs. He flew operations as a pilot.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jack Delfosse and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Delfosse, JEC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CJ: This is Chris Johnson and I’m interviewing John Edward Charles Delfosse today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at a residential home in Hythe, Kent and it’s Thursday 27th of July 2017. Also present at the interview is John’s daughter, Cara. Well, thanks very much for agreeing to talk to us today. So could we start please perhaps by you telling us where and when you were born and what the family background was?
JD: The family background. My father was a lieutenant in the Belgian Army on the left of the canal at Yser. The Germans were on one side and the Belgians held it right down to Nieuwpoort. And then the Germans had smashed Ypres so badly, you know all the, they had Vickers machine guns which kept them. They just chucked the bodies in to the river. All covered with the blood all over. And the Belgians had to take over the whole of the line. The whole load. Look after their you know, father had Vickers machine guns. And then when the Second World War started, he said, ‘I don’t want you to be involved in any military action like that. I want you to get a Reserved Occupation.’ So, I said, ‘Fair enough.’ We went down to Paddington Moor Hospital and Dr Moran who was afterwards the physician who used to accompany Churchill every visit. Flew, he flew all over the world with Dr Moran. I became a medical student. I got halfway through the course and then they gave me the leg of a girl to dissect. It was stuffed and it was kept so bad I said ‘God, I can’t stick this. I’m not going to.’ And I walked out. I finished medical stuff. I walked straight onto the tube down to Euston House, to the basement where RAF recruiting was taking place. There were ten other chaps there and we got through all the tests. Eye tests, colour blindness.
Other: Dad.
JD: Teeth, ears, all the rest of it.
Other: Where were you brought up?
JD: Hmmn?
Other: Where were brought up?
JD: Highgate School.
Other: Ok. So —
JD: And a prep school first where they got us prepared for entry into Highgate.
Other: And where were you born?
JD: In Crouch End, in South East err North East London.
Other: Ok.
JD: Crouch End.
Other: And where were mum and dad from? Your mum and dad.
JD: They were both born in Ghent.
Other: Belgium.
JD: In Belgium. But that was long before the First World War.
Other: Yeah. We’re just talking about you. What happened when you were growing up? So, when you were growing up where did you used to go?
JD: I went to Highgate School, and I got passed out.
Other: You used to go to Belgium a lot didn’t you?
JD: Oh yes. We —
Other: For holidays.
JD: Every holiday. We had a villa in Le Zoute, right up against the Dutch border. We spent every single holiday there. Now, what else?
Other: And your mum. What happened with grandad and grandma? They, they ended up coming to England, didn’t they? From Belgium.
JD: Yeah. Well, my father said, ‘I’ve seen so much here and the Germans will be back again. You just wait. We’re going to sell and live in England.’ So we set up. We had a house in Folkestone and lived there for quite a time until the Second World War. And then the Second World War he said, ‘I don’t want you to join any military force’, and I was a med student as I told you, but then I couldn’t stick it and I went down to Euston House, in the basement and volunteered. Passed all the tests. And there were, in the end there was a board of four senior officers, well decorated. Two in front and two on the side. And they said, ‘Why do you want to fly?’ I said, ‘I’ve already learned to fly with my grandfather’s Stinson Reliant.’ And he said, ‘Where did you go to school?’ I said, ‘Highgate, just up the hill from here.’ And one of them stood up and said, ‘He’s alright. He’s an old Cholmeleian.’ And that was it. I was in.
CJ: So, so you chose the RAF because you could already fly.
JD: Yeah. And they said we haven’t got enough training schools available. Go back to your local aerodrome in [unclear] . We’ll give you a badge with RAF VR on it and the teachers locally teach all the kids their navigation, Morse code, marching. An RAF bloke taught the marching. And I was there for about, oh about a year and then the brown letter arrived, “Report to Viceroy Court”, and I reported early in the morning. I had the number 27 bus going near our house which went straight past there. Very good. In the basement of Viceroy Court there was a big dip down where they had a car park. It was all benches so, breakfast cooking. Went down there and they gave us a meal straight away, and I sat opposite Richard Attenborough. The actor who’d been in, “Brighton Rock,” you know, and I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I’m volunteering.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re a bit short aren’t you?’ But he ended up at Manby as a, trained as a rear gunner until the Air Ministry realised that he had this acting ability and they made propaganda films with him to show, you know what happens if a member of a member of the crew is a coward and lets the rest down and things like that. And this was up at Heaton Park. We had to stand with capes, ground capes on us. It was pouring with rain. They sprayed water on us to indicate the rain because it’s always raining up there. Got soaked to the skin. And there we are.
CJ: So that was your initial training. And then —
JD: Initial training. And then at Heaton Park as I say was a step up, you know. They had various hut assortments. I was [pause] I put, was put in a hut. One side we had us RAF VR blokes and the others were University Air Squadron blokes and they thought they were a bit, bit upper class even though I’d been to university myself. Anyway, I refused to, I got the cigarette ash thing in the tea in the morning every time a draft came up because I wouldn’t cross the Atlantic with the submarines. And eventually there was, on the [pause] the corporal noticed on my docs that I’d been a medical student. He said, ‘So, you’re good at carving with a knife.’ He said, ‘Report up to the master butcher.’ A tiny room at the top. Big boxes, wide boxes, square boxes — lambs’ liver from New Zealand, and he said, ‘Carve those up before lunch.’ Gave me big boots and an apron and all the rest of it. And I did and they took them off me and they went to the WAAFs who did the cooking.
CJ: Sorry. Could you just explain the, why you were putting cigarette ash in your tea?
JD: Yeah. Well, that was to get off from, get the heart attack, the heart beating. It appears to be like a heart attack but of course it isn’t. To get me off the draft, you know. I didn’t want to cross a submarine. They’d had to, they used pre-war liners and they used to put the Italian and German prisoners right at the bottom. The aircrew on the top. Training air crew on the top and they’d lost one or two of those and they’d all gone down. So, naturally I wasn’t very keen. So that’s what it is.
CJ: So how did the training continue then after you’d finished carving up the meat?
JD: Well, I got that down to the hut and joined my unit. And they said they wanted volunteers for a new type of training. Air Ministry training type C. So, I and my best friend Ginger Brookes, a bright red-haired fellow, we went and volunteered together, and they put us on a train to Anstey, Northampton, and we were stuck in a hut there. The university one side and us the other side. And lower down there the three Free French Air Force pilots who had already trained as pilots, but they had to go for some training to learn English commands and things like that. I could speak French and I got on very well with them. Anyhow, we, we’d taken part our air bus err aircrew bus to a little short field by the side of a road near a farm and if you got through in four hours, went solo within four hours you were naturally a pilot, you know, you passed as pilot. And we only had one bloke who didn’t. He landed on top of another Tiger Moth and he was chucked out straight away [laughs]. Later I heard he was a Commissioner for Refugees and he was with the United Nations. He was a Danish bloke. And then we went up to Church Lawford, and when we arrived we could see these fifteen Harvards, you know, camouflaged and yellow underneath. And they gave us wonderful training up there. The first instructor I had was a chap called Duck. A very pale fellow. Unfortunately, every time that other people saw him in my aircraft they would go, ‘Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack’, and he applied for a transfer and we got another one. A chap who had been a Warrant Officer in the Battle of Britain, and he was really nice. Really good. And he, he one day there was clamp on and he said, ‘Jump in the back and I’ll fly from the front.’ And he took off and we climbed in the mist and tight turns, circled around up like that. He counted the numbers of seconds the runway was on went straight back down and lo and behold the runway was right in front of us. Came down in one piece. Fantastic. He was the best instructor I ever had. Warrant Officer. And then after that we got our wings. Air Marshal Inglis, and he said, as he pinned the wings on you he said, ‘Congratulations. You’ve saved us so much money. What do you want to apply to go on to later on? I said, ‘Well, I want to be an airline pilot after the war.’ So he said, ‘Alright. We’ll put you on bombers. There were two of us [unclear] and we passed out and I went to 21 OTU at Moreton in the Marsh which is along, it’s called the Fosse Way. Delfosse [laughs] we got to, they were using old Wellingtons that had been in the desert and if you landed heavily all the sand came up in your eyes [laughs] all the time. Well, one day one of these Wimpies it came in and I could, I could see the roads from Moreton in the Marsh to Chipping Campden, and they had a graveyard there, all the white crosses [unclear] time, and the engine coughed. And I got it down safely and I reported this to the engine bloke. And he said, ‘Impossible,’ he said, ‘I checked it personally.’ I said, ‘Well, it happened, I can assure you.’ And that afternoon we did ground training and another crew took over, and the crew who took over were a Cranwell trained bloke. And when they came back in the evening we could hear them going over and suddenly there was an enormous bang and crash and it burst in to flames at the back of Chipping Campden, and I thought, ‘my God, that’s a stroke of luck’. You know. Sheer luck again. And after that went on to the Lancaster training place near Rutland. You know, up on the hill there was a Conversion Unit. And I was on 619 Squadron. We were trained as a back-up to 617. And we did all the training with 617 including getting the leaves and branches in the air intakes, you know. Hitting the target of water over Derwent Water and climbing up quickly from the hills. And then they did their job, and we were very sad for them of course. They did the job even though they lost the, about twenty eight men in the process. Then they, we did the Eder Dam. Guy Gibson. He led them through this. There was a church on the hill and a very difficult approach. But the bloke who did it had to try thirteen times and he eventually hit the dam and broke it. But the trouble was the water flowed down a long, an enormous volume of water went down and there was a Russian prisoner of war camp there and they were all, ten thousand of them they couldn’t get out, they were drowned, just like that. What a waste of life. And we were very sad for them. Afterwards they, the London and the south coast were being bombarded by the V-1s and V-2 rockets and me and another chap who knew the French coast pretty well. We could speak French. We volunteered to go and see if we could destroy them. And we, the Resistance would send the coordinates and it might be in a farmyard building or if one place was in rogue village with canvas over the top. And we managed to knock out most of them. The other bloke he and I eventually got the whole lot knocked out. And then the Germans ended up on the coast in Holland, pushed further back by the Canadians and the Air Force, and they started bombarding the Antwerp docks. In the process they had these unstable rockets. Very short range. And they must have hit Antwerp itself and lots of blokes were killed in Antwerp. People anyway. Men, women and children. So that was inevitable of course. And then after that, after the war that’s when I went on Silver City’s.
CJ: So do you remember, just coming back to the wartime do you remember how many operations you flew?
JD: Oh, it must have been about twenty. Twenty five. Something like that. And —
CJ: And apart from the Eder Dam are there any of the operations that particularly stand out? Any difficult ones or —
JD: No. We were very lucky you know. We got, you could always see. There was a ramp for the V-1s. And you could see that because they had four round pitch with forty millimetre Oerlikon guns, but they didn’t open up until it was apparent that you had actually found it. And when you flew along the line there was a better chance of hitting if you fly up the line then across it. They found that when they got to the Falklands and that only got the one bomb on the runway. So, we knocked all those out. And after the war I went to Silver City Airways really.
CJ: So, could you tell us about Silver City? Where you were flying from and what the aircraft were?
JD: Yeah.
CJ: And where you were going?
JD: It was the Bristol freighters that they’d used in Australia to get cows frozen in the farms direct. Stuck in these freighters. Take them down to Sydney. Put them on the ships to bring to, feed the people in England, you know, during the war. And then the Silver City realised after the war there was a lot, a lot of money to be had flying these film stars and various famous people like Peter Townsend, Margaret’s boyfriend. I actually went around the corner and nearly knocked him over [laughs] And anyway in the back of the aircraft you know there were all these cigarettes, boxes full of cigarettes. It was the flight attendants’ duty to sell as many cigarettes as possible. And one day the flight attendant was crawling over these cars. There was a racing green Bentley and he looked down and he thought what I wouldn’t give for that racing green Bentley, and the seat next door had a cushion, a bit of white sticking out. He pulled it out. Hundreds of hundred pound banknotes. They were — a hundred pound banknotes were rare things in those days. And he set up a garage in, in — what’s the town now? Not [unclear] but the one next door. I can’t remember the name of it. The garage is still there. Absolutely amazing.
CJ: So, the aircraft were carrying passengers and cars.
JD: Oh yeah. Passengers and cars. And one of the tricks was as you — there were special crew who unloaded the cars. They’d unload them and would deliberately bang them so the exhaust dropped off. I used to go in a café there and I’d pick up two bottles of [unclear] cheap red wine, bring it back and eventually I built up a wonderful collection of wine at home.
Other: What about times, dad when you were in the RAF. You know, when you used to fly low with, to say hello to some of your girlfriends or — [pause] remember?
JD: Oh, yeah. We used to. When I was on the training with the Harvards we’d fly down the canals you know, before Wittering. And the land falls away. It’s full of canals. And we would fly low and chuck this, we’d come up a bank and the Land Girls there would chuck toilet paper at them. Just to let us know that we’d been there. They got a lot of free toilet paper those girls.
CJ: And on, sorry just coming back to the raids that you, where you were bombing the V-1 launch ramps.
JD: Yeah.
CJ: I take it this would be low level with just a small number of aircraft was it?
JD: Yeah. I think one aircraft at a time used to do that and if you spotted the glint of the thing you made sure that you climbed up. That’s when they opened up on you. But luckily we just got a few holes in it. And we saw the bombs actually explode all the way up the ramp to destroy it.
CJ: And was there ever any fighter activity around the ramps?
JD: No.
CJ: Or were they not expecting you because it was a single aircraft.
JD: No. They’d lost so many fighters by that time that they hadn’t got that many left. Mind you there’s a few very good examples of FW 190s and 190s restored. My son found them in a museum in Southern Germany. Masses of German aircraft in there. Completely restored.
CJ: Ok. So you were working with Silver City. So you were flying as a pilot then.
JD: I was a pilot.
CJ: Yeah.
JD: And the chap next door on one trip we had Carolyn was in a carry cot on my assistant’s knee. She was in a carry cot. A little tiny baby. And then that was because I’d flown for Silver City before and I had a complimentary free pass, you know, to do that.
CJ: And where were you flying from and to?
JD: Oh, Silver City’s were flying from Lydd. A metallised runway. And we used to do one, two trips to Le Touquet. The third trip was to Ostend err to Calais and then the fourth trip was to Ostend but we had to climb up because there was anti-aircraft. Belgian anti-aircraft gun training area. And you went right up and then you had to come right down, land at Ostend and many of the people in the cars they were warned not to drive on the left. But of course they forgot and they drove on the left. And the next time you come around you’d find dozens of cars wrecked completely. Head on collisions. Brought back again. Oh dear.
CJ: And so when, when did you leave Silver City?
JD: I left Silver City oh after about, they moved to, to Southend Airport with the larger DC4s that could, they could lift them up and put about twenty cars in. And that was when I left Silver City’s. I wasn’t — it was too far to drive.
Other: One very important thing. What about who did you marry?
JD: Oh, I married a girl in the Westminster place where all the film stars married. There’s a photograph of her. Me in a lovely suit. And —
Other: How did you meet her?
JD: She worked at my parents’ pet shop.
Other: In Folkestone.
JD: And I’d broken my —I was in the drawing office at De Havilland. We were designing the Comet. I was electrical port inspector where two parts were clashing together. And I was, I’d broken my arm and I was up in the, my attic room and this girl came up with a cup of tea, and I thought oh she’s a nice looking girl, you know. When it was healed I got my car out and we went all over the place in the car, and then we got married in this place where the film stars are. But her, her, my father wouldn’t come to it because he knew she was a bit of a flirty type. And the wedding reception was held in Castle Hill Avenue, paid for by the mother. And I had a big caravan then and I knew she loved cats and we used to, I drove her to the zoo at Bekesbourne and we looked at all these tigers and leopards and panthers and things like that. Great time we had, and —
Other: How long were you married for dad?
JD: Hmmn?
Other: How long were you married for?
JD: Leonie?
Other: To Leonie. Yeah.
JD: Well, we had two girls first and then she suddenly disappeared. Where she was. Where she went to. We found out later that she met an IRA man who knew she had money from her grandmother. Her grandmother was a wealthy woman, and presumably she’s still in — what’s the name of the town in Ireland? Main town in Ireland.
Other: Belfast.
JD: She’s in — hmmn?
Other: Belfast or Dublin.
JD: Dublin. That’s right. She’s either running a dress shop or she’s lying at the bottom of the River Liffey because they pinched all her money, that’s all they were after.
Other: You’ve got a son. So you had three children.
JD: Yeah. Later on.
Other: How old were they when she left?
JD: When she left you were, you were still very young. Still very young.
Other: David was three.
JD: Yeah.
Other: I was four and Pat was seven.
JD: Patricia was the oldest. You were second and David was very very young. I knew I had a house which was on where they had been the last V-2 to land in Folkestone had hit, and there was a school right across the road. So in the morning I gave them a good breakfast. Then went across to school. Had lunch at school. In the evening came back. Good supper. Bath and all the rest of it.
Other: So you brought up three kids by yourself.
JD: Oh yeah.
Other: That’s fine.
JD: Bathed them and then put them to bed. And repeated the process day after day.
CJ: And you said you’d been working as a draughtsman for De Havilland on the Comet. So what work were you doing after that that brought you to Folkestone?
JD: Well, when the Comets crashed it didn’t appear to be any good staying locally there, so I came back to Folkestone and settled down with my parents in a, in a second floor flat. You know the road that goes to the motorway now. That was a gravel road and then there was the golf course on the right, and we lived there. The chap who lived above us with his Scottish wife was an estate agent in Hythe. He died and I’d meet her you know, the Scottish lady, in the town. We were great friends. Had meals together and things like that. You know, took her out to lunch. There’s a model of the Lancasters on the window ledge there.
CJ: And after the war did you manage to keep in touch with any of your old crew members?
JD: Yeah. I was going, I went up to London for an interview for a job and on the way back had to wait in the train so I went in to the cafeteria. And I was sitting at, on my table and across the other side suddenly there’s Stan Lewis, my rear gunner, sitting there. And I’d saved his life in the, in the training over Bristol Channel. You know, they, we used to go over the Bristol Channel and wave the aircraft backward and forward and he always used to shoot the drogue down with depressing ease. And one day we were over the Bristol Channel and he didn’t reply, so I sent one of the other chaps back to see. He was blue in the face so I dived immediately straight down below ten thousand. Got some air in him and he told his wife, ‘That’s the man who saved my life. I wouldn’t be here now today if it hadn’t been for him.’ Great, great amusement.
CJ: So did you have crew reunions or squadron reunions?
JD: No. Never been. Never been to one. Never been to one.
CJ: And how do you feel about how Bomber Command were treated after the war?
JD: Well, there was a RAFA Association bloke in Deal and I went to see him. I said, ‘What would have happened if I had been killed during the war?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s just too bad. You wouldn’t have got anything. No pension. No nothing.’ That’s when I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and left the RAFA and never went back. And then later on I drove buses for East Kent Road Car Company. You know, double deckers. All sorts of buses. Electric controlled drive single deckers.
Other: So he could look after the kids.
JD: Ones with [unclear] there from Scotland and had a great time and eventually ended up on National Express. Went to, used to take a trip to Catterick where the Americans used to come over to do the tour of Europe. And as they got out when I took them back they put the hat on the doorstep and they used to fill it up with dollars. And I got that three or four times. I had a hell of a lot of dollars then and converted them into English money of course. And that’s when Cazzie got me a flat because I was living in a motor caravan, but then I got glaucoma in this eye and I realised I couldn’t —
Other: The time he went around Europe.
JD: And I met a German lady doctor at a place in Spain, and she said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going to Morocco.’ And she said, ‘Oh I’d love to go there.’ And she had a little terrier dog. When we got to [pause] I forget where it was. The town where you booked the tickets for the trip over to Morocco. She went in front of me.
Other: In Spain.
JD: When I drove in there was a blonde girl talking to her, and I said, ‘Who was that?’ And she said, ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘She said she and her husband had all their money stolen. Have you got some money to give us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t let her look in her handbag did you?’, because this husband and wife are doing that trick all over Germany and Spain.’ And she said, ‘Yes. She saw right into my purse.’ You know. So I said, ‘My God.’ Anyway, we went to look for a place to park up for the night where the dog could walk on the beach, and as we walked on the beach I kept looking back to make sure the caravan was there and when we got back I got in my caravan and sure enough there must have been somebody in this row of houses had seen it and they got into her caravan somehow and they pinched all our money, keys, house number everything. Passport, the lot. I said, ‘Well, I’ve got my Visa card and I’ll escort you all the way back to Perpignan in France’, and when we got there she got her money back but she said, ‘You can’t go back to Spain now. It’s the water. Wet season. All the rivers will be flooded.’ She said, ‘Lake Constance and Bodensee is just as nice. Come back home with me.’ So I went back and lived in this enormous house she had and I had my set of rooms one side and she had her set the other side, and funnily enough my oldest daughter is a water diviner and she found that the dividing line between the rooms was the water, water running underneath the house. Quite a big surprise. Anyway —
CJ: You had some adventures since the war.
JD: Oh yeah. We went all over Europe.
Other: [unclear] split up with a split screen for your camper van.
JD: Because my son had met this Turkish girl at the English School of Languages in Kosovo I believe, or something and he’d fallen in love with her. [unclear] her name was. She was a nice looking girl. Brought her up to me. They got married but the father wouldn’t come over because he’d trained at Heidelberg in Germany and he didn’t feel happy in England. And the mother paid for the reception. Lovely reception.
Other: How long were you travelling for around Europe?
JD: Oh, quite a few years.
Other: How long do you think? Twenty years?
JD: No. No. No.
Other: Fifteen? Ten years?
JD: Five years or so. Went everywhere. All over Spain. Portugal. All the way down to Hungary when the trouble at Sarajevo was on, and great fun.
Other: You’ve always been an adventurer.
JD: But the mother loved cats, so I took her once to the zoo at Bekesbourne and we saw the tigers and the black panthers and the other cats, and had a great time. She was the sort of woman I’d have married myself if she wasn’t already married.
Other: She was something.
JD: Great fun.
CJ: Well, thanks very much for talking to us today. That was great.
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 Jack Delfosse
Creator
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Chris Johnson
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-27
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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
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AVanDammeJEC170727, PDelfosseJEC1701
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00:37:09 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Description
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Jack was born in London and went to Highgate School where he learnt navigation, Morse code and marching. On leaving he became a medical student but left half way through the course. He then joined the Royal Air Force and initially trained on Harvards in Northampton. After gaining his pilot qualification, he flew Wellingtons before joining 619 Squadron with Lancaster bombers. Jack had carried out about 20 to 25 operations, including an attack bombing V-1 launch ramps. After the war Jack went to Silver City working as a pilot for a while. He moved to Folkestone and met his wife at his parents’ shop, they eventually married and had three children. She left Jack when the children were still young and he brought them up.
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Great Britain
England--Northampton
England--Northamptonshire
England--Kent
England--Folkestone
United States
Belgium
Contributor
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Julie Williams
21 OTU
619 Squadron
bombing
crash
Harvard
Lancaster
love and romance
Operational Training Unit
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1186/18578/SWatsonC188489v1-1.2.pdf
41dce93a36a706458878ffce711dc143
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1186/18578/SWatsonC188489v1-2.1.pdf
78bceef44f30c4e1a4f2d533cd690cd9
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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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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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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.
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Watson, C
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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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
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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 )
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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
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SECOND HONEYMOON SEPT ‘43
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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]
[photograph]
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
48A
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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]
48B
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[photograph] AT RICHMOND SECOND HONEYMOON
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48B
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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]
[photograph]
[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
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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]
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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
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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]
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[curriculum vitae page 1]
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[curriculum vitae page 2]
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[autographed photograph of Lancaster bomber]
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[history of Jack Railton and Emma Sharpe]
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[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]
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[history of George Henry Watson]
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[history of Jack Railton and family]
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[history of Jack Railton and family continued]
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[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
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192 typewritten sheets and photographs
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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SWatsonC188489v1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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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
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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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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
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1671/30465/BCameronDCameronDv1.1.pdf
b0bff7f94bf1612f872c86b64efb811e
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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Cameron, Don
D Cameron
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2020-08-20
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
Cameron, D
Description
An account of the resource
90 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Don Cameron (173516, Royal Air Force) a pilot who flew Lancaster on 115 Squadron. Collection contains his log books, a memoir, a aircrew categorisation card and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Neil Cameron and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[Illustration showing Lancaster Bomber with following text superimposed]
World War II & Flying Memoirs
by Donald Cameron
[handwritten] To Neil & Diane
With love from Dad
Don Cameron
June 6, 2000 [/handwritten]
[page break]
[italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics]
[Photo of man in RAF uniform]
[bold] How did I get to be in Scotland and England for 15 years? [/bold]
Most of you will have heard this story already, but just in case, here it is again.
In 1937, my sister, Miriam arranged to spend her summer holidays with a visit to Scotland. I went with Mum and Dad to see her off at Union Station. I don’t think the train was out of sight, when Dad said, “Let’s go off to Scotland too”.
I told them that I could not really go, because I had promised to go to a boys’ camp at a farm just north of Klienburg, as nature study leader. This camp was got going by one of my brothers Ken’s friends, Al Richardson. The boys were mostly from Dufferin St. Baptist Church. We had cycled up there quite often in the spring to get things all set up. Of course Ken could not go either, because he was already working.
Well my parents quickly arranged for Mrs Mascall to be our housekeeper while they were away and Mum and Dad took off for their holiday in Scotland.
1938 was the year of the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow Scotland and I was hoping that somehow I get to see it. We had friends, Dr. Ernie and Bella Pallet. We knew them as Uncle Ernie was a government veterinarian. He suggested that I should work my way to Scotland on a cattle boat. I went for that in a big way, so he
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[page break]
[italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics]
arranged the whole thing. I was to start my trip at the stock yards at St. Clair and Keele Street, where I was to get aboard the caboose of the cattle train. Actually I first had to climb up into the shunting engine, while they were hooking up the train, great fun for a sixteen year old. Then I climbed down and changed into the caboose. This part of my journey cost $2.00. There were three of us in the caboose, me and an old Glasgow man, as well as the regular guard. It was quite a ride. Canadian Pacific had started their express freight trains, which was something new at that time. I was surprised to see a spanking new passenger engine on the front of our train. I was able to sit up top and look out over the train and all around as we took off along the CP line across the city just north of Dupont St. very close to home, then out through Agincourt on the line that still comes through Whitby. As night came on I was given a mattress to sleep on and it was on top of what looked like a storage chest, with a flat top. Everything was just dandy until the engineer decided to slam on the brakes. This was no stop like on a passenger train. I went sliding, mattress and all right off the bed place and hit the front of the caboose. The guard had a good laugh. So did I, once I realised that nothing was wrong. This happened just near Trenton.
Next day, I had to arrange about signing on as part of the crew of the cattle boat. Apparently I was the youngest of the lot. They decided that that I should be pantry boy and that did not please me at al. I had hoped to be looking after the cattle. Strangely, the cattle were breeding stock. Usually, I thought, Canada imported breeding cattle from Europe, but apparently it worked both ways.
One of my duties was to take the brass ventilators off the officers’ cabin doors, polish them, and put them back on. I had them all set up in the pantry, perched myself on a high stool and started to clean them up. Well, the captain came by and started yelling at me. I hadn’t a clue was [sic] he was saying, although I found out later that he came from Port Gordon in Banffshire where my mother was from. Anyway, I got fired as pantry boy and was put with the other cattlemen. I was happy about that. We had a real nice smooth trip across the Atlantic. It was like a mill pond. A big Basking Shark seemed to follow us all the way. I had never seen one of them before.
There were all sorts of surprises; we were not strictly a cattle boat; we had other cargo as well. I remember watching as they loaded all sorts of stuff. I remember that there were crates marked Singer Sewing Machines. As we sailed up the Clyde, I was surprised to see the big Singer Sewing Machine factory on the banks of the Clyde.
We docked at Princess Dock in Glasgow, right in the centre of the city. We were told to wait board until Customs and Immigration came aboard to clear us. Well I sat for a good half hour and then decided that nobody seemed anxious to see me. So off I went. I had an address to go to and started off on a tram. I was meeting Emily Gault, one of the women who made our house their meeting place. These women were in Toronto in domestic Service. Emily worked in Rosedale.
We got together alright and I made some visits to the Empire Exhibition. Then Emily was to take me north to
3
[page break]
[italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics]
visit her family in Thurso, right up in the very north of Scotland. I remember that I had a hard time realising that it could possibly be 11 p.m. and still be quite light.
[blank space - missing photo?]
My big memory from his visit was my first flight in an aircraft. The lane was a DeHaviland bi-plane with a crew of one, the pilot. The door to the cockpit was left open and I wondered how this guy could fly this plane and take pictures of the WWI battleships that had been scuttles in Scapa Flow back in those old days.
After that I went to visit all my relatives in Buckie and Aberchirder. Finally I settled in Aberdeen with Aunt Miriam and Uncle John. I had a great summer holiday.
My father had asked me to look at a course with the North of Scotland College of Agriculture. We intended to go into a horticulture business together, once I graduated from my training. I really did not want to train in Scotland and told him that I would much prefer to go to Niagara College for my training. The result was that I suddenly realised that I was due to report in Glasgow for my return trip to Canada, but had never gone to see the college in Aberdeen. Their head office was in an old Victorian building at 41 ½ Union Street on the 5th floor. The elevator was an old fashioned wire covered affair, which did not impress me at all. I took a look at the big mahogany door with frosted glass and gold lettering and decided this was not for me. Before I had turned to come away a woman came up behind me. She said, “You want the North of Scotland College of Agriculture? This way.” She seemed to almost push me through the door. I know she did not actually, but anyhow I was in.
Well they did have a good course. One of my spur of the moment decisions made me sign up for the course. So there I was a guest of my aunt and uncle which my Dad had arranged if I should decide to stay. Before I could start my course, they required a year’s experience working in horticulture. If I wanted, I could work without pay, in their experimental gardens at Craibstone. I started almost immediately.
As Craibstone was about 5 miles from where I lived in Aberdeen, I soon got permission to buy a bicycle.
I well remember the day war was declared. On Sunday, September 3rd, 1939 I came out from morning
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Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs
worship service to find that special editions of the Press and Journal were being sold on the street corners. Britain had declared war on Germany after they refused to withdraw from Poland. We had been reading about their Blitzkreig tactics throughout their take over of so many countries in Europe. I thought, “They will sink this little island!”
By this time I had finished my year at Craibstone. I started the course and I did finish my first year. Of course by this time Britain was at war with Germany. The government wanted to increase food production as much as possible. I was asked if I would postpone my training until after the war. I told them that I felt sure the answer would be, “Yes”, but as I was here at my father’s expense, it would have to be his answer. His reply to my cable agreed. The college then employed me at Craibstone as one of their gardeners
Britain had conscription, so one by one the workers were absorbed into the armed forces. I gradually took over different jobs. The last one I took over was to operate their big Dennis power mower. The lawns were to be cut with light and dark stripes and very straight. Mowing one direction I would make a light stripe. Going back the opposite direction it showed up as dark. The job was to keep all lines straight. Mr. Cox, their head gardener wondered whether I could manage this task. I was willing to try. He watched as I did a few lines and decided that I could do the job just fine. I must admit that they did look good.
My age group came along for conscription. I reported, showing my passport to show them my age. They told me that I was not a resident, just a visitor and could not be conscripted. I was amazed and asked if anything could stop me from volunteering. No, I could certainly do that. I made my way to the RAF recruiting office and volunteered for the RAFVR (Volunteer Reserve).
Eventually I was asked to report at Lord’s Cricket Grounds in London. We were in a holding centre until we could finally be sent to an ITW (Initial Training Wing). They were really pushing pilot trainees through at this time and all ITW’s were going at capacity. I was sent instead, to a bomber airfield, Hemswell in Lincolnshire, where the education officer did his best to teach us what we had to know. I did manage to pass, although more than half of our course did not make it. They were sent to a regular ITW.
After finishing my ITW course at Hemswell in Lincolnshire, I was eventually posted to a holding centre in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. This seemed to be a place where trainees were kept until somewhere would be available to start them on their flying training. In all I was there for 16 weeks. It was a case of being present for morning parade, where a roll call ensured that you were present. This was followed by a march along the promenade, for no better reason than there was nothing else to do with us. It did not take long for a few of us to find that being in the tail end of this parade, we could easily vanish down a side street and be lost. There was a convenient Lyon’s café, that had delicious crumpets and marmalade. The local YMCA, I think it was, had a good billiard table. I became pretty good with billiards and snooker during this period. I did get a task to do in the post office in the hotel. Apart from sorting out the mail for inmates like myself, we also collected the old newspapers for
5
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Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs
disposal. I started doing the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle, which developed my liking for good crosswords. We did get really fed up down in Brighton. A posting to Rhodesia came up, so I volunteered to goo there for my flying training. After getting various inoculations for all sorts of diseases, I got a week’s embarkation leave. Then I was told that since I came from overseas, I could not be sent overseas for my training. Apparently they had lost one or two who had just vanished once they were away from Britain.
Eventually I did get a posting to an elementary flying training school at Booker, near Marlow in Buckinghamshire. I was happy at last to be flying, but it had taken until March 23rd, 1942 to get to this stage. I thoroughly enjoyed flying. Apart from my actual training there are events that I will never forget.
Early in my training my instructor was flying us to an auxiliary field. I decided that my harness was not tight enough. I pulled the release and began to pull them tighter when I noticed that the horizon was beginning to slowly go around. He was doing a slow roll. I had no time to even attempt to do up any of my harness. All I could do was to brace myself on the sides of my cockpit and hold myself from dropping out as the ground went slowly pas as I looked down at it. When I told him what had happened he had a good laugh.
Again, early in my flying, it might have been my first flight (but I’m not sure about that), my instructor, an ex-fighter pilot got together with a Boston fighter bomber. The two of them decided to have a mock dog fight. It was great fun, but my poor stomach. It was not accustomed yet to this kind of thing. I sat, holding my stomach, but enjoying the whole thing.
My first experience at night flying was quite something. We took off into the inky blackness of the blackout. The idea was to fly a square pattern to the left after getting up to 1000 ft. Then as we turned to complete the square, we should find that we were approaching the landing strip again ready for descending to make a landing. It was a scary feeling, to think that we were actually doing this with no navigation aids at all. However after several circuits it gradually became just the thing to do.
I was in real trouble on Easter weekend. The day before the weekend I was flying solo doing circuits and landings. I came in to land, right in front of the commanding officer’s office. There was a gusty sort of wind and I had trouble getting the plane to land. Right away I remembered the important instructions. With any difficulty in landing, give the engine full power and go round again for anther[sic] circuit. I opened up the throttle and got the shock of my life. My port wing just dropped and hit the ground and the poor old Tiger Moth flipped right over, nose to the ground, leaving me hanging upside down in my harness. I quickly released my harness and dropped onto the ground. Then I remembered – turn off the ignition switch. I crawled back under the plane and did so. I was to report to the commanding officer right after Easter weekend.
I went into London for the weekend, and spent the time with my brother, Ken. He was stationed at RCAF
6
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Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs
headquarters in London at Canada House. Unfortunately I forgot the the[sic] last train from Marlebone Station left 5 minutes earlier on Sunday nights. I just missed it. In fact I saw it pulling out of the station. We went to Ken’s place overnight, and I got up and made my way to the station, but the train I got was not the first one in the morning. I was on the mat for not being back to base by 11:59 hrs. I had to see the Commanding Officer about that. Well it turned out that he gave me 7 days jankers for that. Then I had to wait to see him about my upside down landing. I was really down in the dumps, thinking I would probably fail as a pilot. What a surprise when he sent a message out that he did not want to see me about this, as he had watched my attempted landing and said I had done everything right. What a relief. I didn’t mind my 7 days of picking up litter etc. after that.
After 41 hrs. 5 min. of flying training at Booker there was another change of policy. There would be no more flying training in Britain. All training would be overseas.
All pilot trainees were to have a flying test after 8 hours flying to judge whether they should continue as pilot trainees or switch to some other aircrew training. I was told that I was to be sent to the U.S.A. for my training. We got the impression that they were sending the better flyers to the “General Arnold” scheme. I don’t think I was any better than most, but my 8 hour test was done after 41 hours flying.
Primary Training, Lakeland Florida. PT 17.(Stearman)
I finished flying at Booker EFTS on May 10th, 1942. We were sent overseas in the old ‘Leticia’ which had been converted into a troop transport. We soon found ourselves in Moncton, New Brunswick, awaiting posting to get flying once again. I somehow found that we would be two or three weeks, so applied for leave to visit Mum and Dad in Toronto. I got it! It was great to see them again and to visit with lots of people that I knew. Then it was back to Moncton where we found a good swimming hole beside a railway line, not far from our base.
Finally we boarded the troop train, which was to take us to somewhere in the southern States. One of our stops turned out to be in the Union Station in Toronto. It looked as though we would be there for a while, so I phoned home and told Mum which platform we were stuck on. She came down and was able to meet a good few of my friends who were training with me. I think she was able to spend about an hour talking to us all.
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Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs
Fourth row, fourth from right:
[photograph]
Course 43B
Lodwick School of Aeronautics[?] 1942.
8
[page break]
Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs
worship service to find that special editions of the Press and Journal were being sold on the street corners. Britain had declared war on Germany after they refused to withdraw from Poland. We had been reading about their Blitzkreig tactics throughout their take over of so many countries in Europe. I thought, “They will sink this little island!”
By this time I had finished my year at Craibstone. I started the course and I did finish my first year. Of course by this time Britain was at war with Germany. The government wanted to increase food production as much as possible. I was asked if I would postpone my training until after the war. I told them that I felt sure the answer would be, “Yes”, but as I was here at my father’s expense, it would have to be his answer. His reply to my cable agreed. The college then employed me at Craibstone as one of their gardeners
Britain had conscription, so one by one the workers were absorbed into the armed forces. I gradually took over different jobs. The last one I took over was to operate their big Dennis power mower. The lawns were to be cut with light and dark stripes and very straight. Mowing one direction I would make a light stripe. Going back the opposite direction it showed up as dark. The job was to keep all lines straight. Mr. Cox, their head gardener wondered whether I could manage this task. I was willing to try. He watched as I did a few lines and decided that I could do the job just fine. I must admit that they did look good.
My age group came along for conscription. I reported, showing my passport to show them my age. They told me that I was not a resident, just a visitor and could not be conscripted. I was amazed and asked if anything could stop me from volunteering. No, I could certainly do that. I made my way to the RAF recruiting office and volunteered for the RAFVR (Volunteer Reserve).
Eventually I was asked to report at Lord’s Cricket Grounds in London. We were in a holding centre until we could finally be sent to an ITW (Initial Training Wing). They were really pushing pilot trainees through at this time and all ITW’s were going at capacity. I was sent instead, to a bomber airfield, Hemswell in Lincolnshire, where the education officer did his best to teach us what we had to know. I did manage to pass, although more than half of our course did not make it. They were sent to a regular ITW.
After finishing my ITW course at Hemswell in Lincolnshire, I was eventually posted to a holding centre in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. This seemed to be a place where trainees were kept until somewhere would be available to start them on their flying training. In all I was there for 16 weeks. It was a case of being present for morning parade, where a roll call ensured that you were present. This was followed by a march along the promenade, for no better reason than there was nothing else to do with us. It did not take long for a few of us to find that being in the tail end of this parade, we could easily vanish down a side street and be lost. There was a convenient Lyon’s café, that had delicious crumpets and marmalade. The local YMCA, I think it was, had a good billiard table. I became pretty good with billiards and snooker during this period. I did get a task to do in the post office in the hotel. Apart from sorting out the mail for inmates like myself, we also collected the old newspapers for
5
[page break]
Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs
disposal. I started doing the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle, which developed my liking for good crosswords. We did get really fed up down in Brighton. A posting to Rhodesia came up, so I volunteered to goo there for my flying training. After getting various inoculations for all sorts of diseases, I got a week’s embarkation leave. Then I was told that since I came from overseas, I could not be sent overseas for my training. Apparently they had lost one or two who had just vanished once they were away from Britain.
Eventually I did get a posting to an elementary flying training school at Booker, near Marlow in Buckinghamshire. I was happy at last to be flying, but it had taken until March 23rd, 1942 to get to this stage. I thoroughly enjoyed flying. Apart from my actual training there are events that I will never forget.
Early in my training my instructor was flying us to an auxiliary field. I decided that my harness was not tight enough. I pulled the release and began to pull them tighter when I noticed that the horizon was beginning to slowly go around. He was doing a slow roll. I had no time to even attempt to do up any of my harness. All I could do was to brace myself on the sides of my cockpit and hold myself from dropping out as the ground went slowly pas as I looked down at it. When I told him what had happened he had a good laugh.
Again, early in my flying, it might have been my first flight (but I’m not sure about that), my instructor, an ex-fighter pilot got together with a Boston fighter bomber. The two of them decided to have a mock dog fight. It was great fun, but my poor stomach. It was not accustomed yet to this kind of thing. I sat, holding my stomach, but enjoying the whole thing.
My first experience at night flying was quite something. We took off into the inky blackness of the blackout. The idea was to fly a square pattern to the left after getting up to 1000 ft. Then as we turned to complete the square, we should find that we were approaching the landing strip again ready for descending to make a landing. It was a scary feeling, to think that we were actually doing this with no navigation aids at all. However after several circuits it gradually became just the thing to do.
I was in real trouble on Easter weekend. The day before the weekend I was flying solo doing circuits and landings. I came in to land, right in front of the commanding officer’s office. There was a gusty sort of wind and I had trouble getting the plane to land. Right away I remembered the important instructions. With any difficulty in landing, give the engine full power and go round again for anther[sic] circuit. I opened up the throttle and got the shock of my life. My port wing just dropped and hit the ground and the poor old Tiger Moth flipped right over, nose to the ground, leaving me hanging upside down in my harness. I quickly released my harness and dropped onto the ground. Then I remembered – turn off the ignition switch. I crawled back under the plane and did so. I was to report to the commanding officer right after Easter weekend.
I went into London for the weekend, and spent the time with my brother, Ken. He was stationed at RCAF
6
[page break]
Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs
headquarters in London at Canada House. Unfortunately I forgot the the[sic] last train from Marlebone Station left 5 minutes earlier on Sunday nights. I just missed it. In fact I saw it pulling out of the station. We went to Ken’s place overnight, and I got up and made my way to the station, but the train I got was not the first one in the morning. I was on the mat for not being back to base by 11:59 hrs. I had to see the Commanding Officer about that. Well it turned out that he gave me 7 days jankers for that. Then I had to wait to see him about my upside down landing. I was really down in the dumps, thinking I would probably fail as a pilot. What a surprise when he sent a message out that he did not want to see me about this, as he had watched my attempted landing and said I had done everything right. What a relief. I didn’t mind my 7 days of picking up litter etc. after that.
After 41 hrs. 5 min. of flying training at Booker there was another change of policy. There would be no more flying training in Britain. All training would be overseas.
All pilot trainees were to have a flying test after 8 hours flying to judge whether they should continue as pilot trainees or switch to some other aircrew training. I was told that I was to be sent to the U.S.A. for my training. We got the impression that they were sending the better flyers to the “General Arnold” scheme. I don’t think I was any better than most, but my 8 hour test was done after 41 hours flying.
Primary Training, Lakeland Florida. PT 17.(Stearman)
I finished flying at Booker EFTS on May 10th, 1942. We were sent overseas in the old ‘Leticia’ which had been converted into a troop transport. We soon found ourselves in Moncton, New Brunswick, awaiting posting to get flying once again. I somehow found that we would be two or three weeks, so applied for leave to visit Mum and Dad in Toronto. I got it! It was great to see them again and to visit with lots of people that I knew. Then it was back to Moncton where we found a good swimming hole beside a railway line, not far from our base.
Finally we boarded the troop train, which was to take us to somewhere in the southern States. One of our stops turned out to be in the Union Station in Toronto. It looked as though we would be there for a while, so I phoned home and told Mum which platform we were stuck on. She came down and was able to meet a good few of my friends who were training with me. I think she was able to spend about an hour talking to us all.
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Fourth row, fourth from right:
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Course 43B
Lodwick School of Aeronautics[?] 1942.
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[italics] Donald Cameron: World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics]
While flying Oxfords, I was sent to Docking in Norfolk to practice the use of radio beam approach. Off to one side of the beam the radio signal was the letter ‘A’ in Morse code. On the other side it was ’N’. When the dot?dash merged with the dash/dot, they made a constant continuous signal and that was right on the beam.
My flying at Windrush was completed on July 20th, 1943. I was given a 72 hour pass, before reporting to No. 26 OTU (Operational Training Unit) at RAF Station Wing. On the train heading up to Aberdeen, a fellow asked what I was doing on this leave. I told him that I only had a three day pass and had no idea whether I was going to my wedding or not. I soon found out. Mary and I were married on July 24, 1943. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday too. It was in the middle of the Aberdeen Trades Week holiday and there were no facilities open for the reception. We had 14 at the reception in Mary’s Aunt’s tenement flat, next door to where Mary lived. My Aunt Barbara happened to be in Aberdeen that weekend. I insisted that she come to the wedding. She said she was ‘Black Affronted’ she had nothing to wear. I insisted that she come in whatever she was wearing. We, of course, had nowhere to go for even a brief honeymoon, but another friend, Jean, got on the telephone to another friend, Jeanie.
Jeanie had the hotel in Huntly. The phone call was hilarious. It started something like this, “Is that you Jeanie? Well this is Jean. There’s this couple just newly married. They just have this weekend. Could you put them up?” When we got to Huntly, (incidentally, my Aunt Barbara travelled with us on her way back to Buckie) we found that Jeanie had cleared out the Bridal Suite for us. (Short but sweet, the honeymoon).
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Operational Training Unit
Strangely enough, I was a day late in reporting to No. 26 Operational Training Unit, and even more strangely, nothing was ever said about it. Here, at RAF Station Wing, (Little Horwood) I was crewed up and we flew Wellingtons Mk. 3’s and 10’s. Our flying began on August 16th 1943. We worked up to our special exercise, dropping leaflets on Rouen in France. I have included this with my operational flying in detail.
During some of my night flying, I had a new experience. While taking off one night one of my tyres burst. I did manage to get the plane off the ground, but called up to let control know about it. My flight commander came on the
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radio and told me to just circle until all night flying was completed. My crew were of differing opinions as to which tyre was gone. I felt that it was the port main wheel. My bomb aimer was sure it was the starboard wheel. I decided to go with my own decision, because I was flying the plane, and it certainly felt like the port wheel. After many tedious hours of circling the airfield I got instructions to land. My flight commander spoke to me, giving me very detailed instructions as to what to do. I was to land using the starboard wheel to land on. I was to try to keep my port wheel off the runway as long as possible. I could expect the plane to veer off the runway as once the port wheel came down. I had to repeat everything back to him. Then he wished me a good landing, and said that he would be right behind me on his motor bike when I landed. Well I got it down on the starboard wheel, but as soon as we lost all lift the port wheel came down we veered into inky blackness. When we finally came to a stop, he was right there. I was calling each of the crew to make sure they were OK. He yelled to me to get out in case of a fire. Luckily there was no fire, but I did find the end of my port propellor imbedded about six inches behind my head. Nobody was hurt!
It was while we were here that Mary sent me a telegram telling me that grandmother had died. She did not specify that it had been her grandmother, so I figured I might get some time off. I went in to the commanding officer with the telegram and he gave me a 72 hour pass. I could leave in the morning after finishing all my night flying that night. By the time I arrived in Aberdeen, I had fallen asleep in the train. Mary had come to the station, but no Don. The cleaners came in, because the train had to leave again, so luckily they wakened me and I arrived at 31 Justice Street not very long after Mary and her uncle.
That crew of mine was split up after my navigator, Hugh Maher (pronounced Marr) RCAF, was invalided out of the air force and sent home to Montreal.
I was posted to No. 17 OTU at Silverstone, to take over a headless crew. Neither they nor I were very happy about this, but we soon got to know each other. They had not completed their OTU training, so I flew with them until they had all completed their various exercises.
We advanced from OTU first to 1651 Conversion Unit at RAF Station, Wratting Common, where we all had to get familiar with flying the Short Stirling. We flew the Stirling Mks. 1 and 3. I did not like the Stirling. This took us to January 5th, 1944.
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So much for the Stirling; we were off to 1678 C.F. Waterbeach where we were introduced to the Lancaster Mk.2. My first flip in the Lancaster was familiarisation with F/O Coles. Again we had a burst tyre. F/O Coles made a beautiful landing at Newmarket Race Course. On January 25th, 1944 we were sent to 115 Squadron at Witchford, near Ely. I was now a flight sergeant.
October 4th, 1943: Special Exercise
This was my first flight over enemy occupied Europe. I wondered how I would react. Fortunately I was O.K.
On this night there was a raid by 406 aircraft on Frankfurt, with a diversionary 66 Lancasters bombing Ludwigshafen. There were 12 Mosquitoes went to Knapsack power-station, 1 mosquito to Aachen, 5 Stirlings did mine laying in the River Gironde, 8 O.T.U. sorties. There were no losses on the Ludwigshave [sic] raid. On the Frankfurt raid there were 10 RAF aircraft lost, 5 Halifaxes, 3 Lancasters, 2 Stirlings. One of 3 American B17’s was lost. I was one of the 8 O.T.U. sorties. We were not aware of these other activities.
At this time I was doing my operational training, flying Wellingtons, at RAF Station, Wing. We were to go on a special exercise, our first time over enemy territory. We were to fly to Rouen in France, then up wind, a distance predetermined by the winds at the time. Then we were to drop our leaflets which would float down to Rouen to inform the French people a bit of what the Allies were doing 2.
It was a funny feeling to be flying over enemy controlled territory for the first time. Our route was planned for us, but unlike later bombing raids there was no exact timing. We were to fly south to the Needles (Isle of Wight), then across to Fecampe on the French coast, south to Rouen, and then west, almost to Le Havre, where we were to drop our leaflets. Then we were to turn north east to Fecampe once again, then home via the Isle of Wight.
The weather was fully overcast, but the clouds were quite low. We climbed into bright sunlight and headed for the needles. I had a rough idea of how long this should take us and was soon asking my navigator, Hugh Maher (pronounced Marr) if we were nearing our turning point. “No, not yet,” came the reply. It seemed to me that we must have passed the
2 I have included a copy of this leaflet in these memoirs (see page 16).
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needles when I asked again. He had not yet fixed our turning point. Eventually I said to Hugh that by now, I was sure that we must be right across the English Channel and over the Cherbourg Peninsula, and asked what his air plot told him. He told me that he had not maintained his air plot, because this aircraft was fitted with GEE. He had been unable to get a fix with GEE.
Great! Now I felt certain that we were lost somewhere over France. After establishing that there was no way he could work out any reckoning of where we were, I had to resort to radio. The Wireless Operator called for a fix – no reply. I asked him to try again with a priority. This he did. Yes, we were over the Cherbourg Peninsula of Normandy. I then told Hugh that we would fly north east from this fix. He was to use only dead reckoning navigation, no GEE. When we reached our intended crossing route of the Channel, he would guide us to Fecampe, Rouen, up wind to dropping point, back to Fecampe and so on. This we did. How ever after leaving the French coast, Hugh decided to get himself a fix using GEE radar. He was really worried. He came on the intercom telling me that he had just got a fix with GEE. We were not over the English Channel, but were over the North Sea.
A fix with GEE is a definite thing. I began to doubt Hugh’s ability with his dead reckoning navigation. To reach base we should fly roughly west south west. He gave me the course to fly. Eventually he told me that we should be crossing the cost. It was pitch black but there was no sign of a coastline even though the clouds were no longer below us. I told Hugh that we were certainly not crossing a coastline, but he assured me that he had been doing an air plot, dead reckoning since the Fix. Well I said that we should get an answer on the R.T. That was my job, so I called. No answer, I called using the distress call, “May Day”. No reply.
At this point I asked the Wireless Operator to ask for a fix using a priority. No reply. We were fairly low on fuel by this time so I said, “Same again with S.O.S.” Back came an immediate fix. We were over Brittany, in France.
To get home I had to turn almost 180 degrees. Then I gave my crew the serious news. One wing was completely empty of fuel. Both engines were using the almost empty port wing tanks. We still had a 60 gallon tank full, not much to fly very far. When the engines stopped we would pull the cross feed to use both engines on this 60 gallon tank. If they stopped after that was gone we would bale out.
Once again we were over 10/10 cloud, and as things turned out, this helped up. The airfield at Christchurch, near Bournemouth was having problems with their lighting. My bomb aimer was the first to see clouds off to starboard with lights going on and off, lightening them up.
We headed straight for them and I called up to get permission to land, asking what the cloud clearance was. I also told them I was very short of fuel. They told me that I had 800ft clearance under the cloud and told me to land. As we broke through the cloud, incidentally now using the last 60 gallon tank, I found right in front of me a beautiful runway lit with green lights at the beginning, white along the
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sides and red towards the far end. I did not care what airfield Command station, Hurn. Later in my career I was based at this field with B.O.A.C.
Poor Hugh! Once back at OUT, the navigation boys did a thorough review of his night’s efforts. They credited him with successfully flying to the target area and to the dropping point. It was the GEE fix that was the big error. The chain of stations were designed for the east coast of Britain. They were useless off the south coast, where we were flying. Previously he had suffered a severe bash on his head, coming out of a crew bus with his equipment. The rear slanted doors had slammed on his head. Later, while flying with another crew doing practice bombing with smoke bombs, they apparently had a very heavy landing, which set off one smoke bomb they had not dropped. He was standing in the astro-dome and figured the quickest way out of what seemed to be a burning aircraft was to bash his way through the Perspex dome.
They found that he no longer had the ability to navigate. He was invalided out of the RCAF and sent home to Montreal. My entire crew was split up. I was sent to R.A.F. Station Silverstone, where I took over a crew which had no pilot.
January 30th, 1944
This is the night I first went on a bombing raid. I did not pilot the aircraft. The pilot was F/Lt. Hallet. He was a Newfie and really wonder how he ever qualified as a pilot. When we crossed the enemy coast on the way home, he this was, I just landed. It turned out to be a Coastal asked me whether I would like to fly right back to base, which of course I gladly did. As we came in to make our landing, he asked me what the green light was, just before the runway. “There has always been a red light there before.” The light, of course was the glide path indicator. If you were high it shone amber. If you were too low it shone red. Right on the correct glide path it shone green. I explained to him what it indicated. On his next bombing trip, he actually hit the top of one of the Drem light poles on the way in.
However he was terrific as an operational pilot, and I picked up some valuable tips from him. He pointed out the slight difference between our Pathfinder markers at the target and the decoy markers dropped by the Germans. He also showed me a Lancaster going down in flames and the German oil bomb which simulated this. We called them Scarecrows. Since the end of the war, we found that the Germans had no such things as these scarecrow bombs. They had, however a type of gun and gun sight which fired up from below on an angle. They called it in German, “Slant Music.” Maybe this is what we saw.
Before the briefing, we knew it was to be a long tripfull load of fuel. However, it was still a shock to walk into the briefing room. There was a big map of Europe with a red tape running from our base at Witchford, across the North Sea, over Denmark and the Baltic Sea. Then there was a 90 degree turn south to Berlin. The homeward trip was right across Germany, south of Brunswick and Hanover, north of the Ruhr, across Holland and back to our base. I really believed that this was to be the last day of my life here on
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earth. Yet there was no thought of not going. After all, this is what all my training had been for. In fact this was some final training for me before I took my crew with me. It proved to be an excellent training trip. I did not know any of this crew I was flying with, but they did a very good job. F/Lt. Halley made a point of showing me various things, some of which I have mentioned. At interrogation after the trip they did a good job of giving an accurate account of what happened. I felt ready now to tackle such a sortie on my own. However on 115 Squadron new pilots always did two trips as second pilot. My next trip would be on February 15th, 1944.
This raid was made up of 534 aircraft. There were 440 Lancasters, 82 Halifaxes and 12 Mosquitoes. 33 aircraft were lost, 32 Lancasters and 1 Halifax or 6.2% of the force.
February 15th, 1944
This was my second sortie as a second pilot. This time I flew with a crew, every one of which had the DFM (Distinguished Flying Medal). The pilot was an excellent flyer, but in my estimation, not a good captain of his crew. I honestly believe they probably got their DFM’s in their fabulous interrogations, or de-briefings. I was really amazed at what I heard.
Fortunately it was a quiet trip, as far as contact with enemy fighters or flak were concerned. Again, the target was Berlin and we flew a very similar route to the one on January 30th. All the way along there was very little silence between crew members. One would talk to another and so on. My crew were never like that, even on local flights. On the ground we were just a great bunch of guys, but once inside the aircraft they were a real good crew.
There was a very unfortunate occurrence. After we had turned south from the Baltic and were flying towards Berlin, the intercom system broke down. There is a system of light signals for the bomb aimer to let the pilot know how to approach the target, to replace the, “right right” or “left” verbal instructions. Instead, the bomb aimer shouted his instructions from his position down by the bomb sight. The pilot couldn’t hear properly what he had shouted, turned the plane fairly quickly. The bomb aimer presumed they were being attacked by a night-fighter and jettisoned all our bomb load. There was quite a mix up until they set off for home, with bomb doors closed. As I recall, the intercom did come on again, so things settled down more or less.
In my judgement, our load of bombs were dropped well east of Berlin. Of course we were not told of other activities that night, but I did see a raid in progress in Frankfurt-on-Oder. I think our load was somewhere between these two targets.
Back at base we were ushered in for interrogation. According to that crew we had been attacked while running up to the target. The bomb aimer had taken an opportunity as we levelled off to drop our bombs, he claimed, pretty close to the markers etc. etc. I could not believe my ears. Mind you, from my point of view, I could not have had two second pilot trips with better teaching. The first on January 30th showed me how; this one showed me how not to. From now on I would be skipper of my own crew.
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There were 891 aircraft on this rain, 561 Lancasters, 314 Halifaxes and 16 Mosquitoes [sic]. The records show that on this night, apart from this raid, 23 Mosquitoes [sic] attacked 5 Night-fighter airfields in Holland, 43 Stirlings and 4 Pathfinder Halifaxes carried out mine laying in Keil Bay. Also 24 Lancasters made a diversionary raid on Frankfurt-on-Oder.
Total sorties this night were 1070. 45 aircraft were lost, (4.2%).
February 24th, 1944 - February 25th, 1944
On the 24th, I flew with my own crew for the first time. We bombed the ball bearing factory at Schweinfurt. Then, on the 25th, we bombed Augsburg. On the Schweinfurt raid there were 734 aircraft involved, 554 Lancasters, 169 Halifaxes and 11 Mosquitos. This was the first Bomber Command raid on this target. On the previous day 266 American B17’s had raided this target. Bomber command introduced a new tactic on this night. 392 aircraft and 342 aircraft separated by a two hour interval. The first wave of bombers lost 22 aircraft, 5.6% of the force. The second wave lost only 11 aircraft, 3.2% of the force. Total losses were 33 aircraft, 26 Lancasers [sic], 7 Halifaxes - 4.5% of the force. These sorties were very similar and the same thing happened to us on both trips. It was a weird sort of route and seemed to last forever. Actually it was 7 hrs 45 min on the 24th and 7 hrs 15 min on the 25th. On both occasions we were routed over France and almost to Munich, before turning north to our targets. Many of our bomber stream wandered over Switzerland in error, The Swiss, true to their neutral position, fired anti-aircraft flak, apparently well away from any planes, but giving no excuse for the Nazis to say they were favouring the Allies. We ourselves did not track over Switzerland.
Our problem was with the searchlights around Munich. Both nights they got me coned in what were obviously radar controlled lights. One lit up on me and immediately the manually controlled lights swung right onto me as well. So there I was, very new to this job and feeling very naked; on view to the whole of Nazi Germany. To say I was scared would be putting it extremely mildly.
I immediately threw the Lancaster into a violent, “Corkscrew” manoeuvre. This is what was drilled into us once we started flying bombers. Mind you, I had never actually done it before, and luckily for me, we were taking part in a second raid that night, on Schweinfurt. What I managed to do was to keep the fires of Schweinfurt somewhere in front of me as I threw that aircraft down to port and up changing to starboard and so on. It seemed like hours that I was in those searchlights. Luckily the smoke from the target area blacked out some of the searchlights, and by this time the radar-controlled lights would be trained on some other unlucky aircraft.
Ever since those two sorties I have had a strong aversion to searchlights of any kind, even those used in advertising.
Another incident happened on the Augsburg sortie. Before we were caught in the serachlights, I noticed out of the side of my vision that, “Taffy” Jones had his arm up in
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the air. What made me look round, I’ll never know, but we were very fortunate that I did. Taffy was obviously the only one who saw a Messerschmitt 110 attacking us from above and starboard. He was apparently speechless with fear, which is not really surprising, but could have killed the lot of us. As I looked round to see what Taffy was doing, I realised what was happening and gave the stick a quick shove forward. With the Lancaster II, with Bristol Hercules engines you can cut all engines by doing this. I must have dropped a few hundred feet, but we saw all the cannon fire pass overhead. I spoke to Taffy after we got back to base. I asked him to try to poke me, or something if he couldn’t speak.
On the Augsburg trip someone had timed our searchlight ordeal. We were coned in searchlights for 10 minutes.
Taffy was a very good and very thorough flight engineer. Once we were back at base, my thoughts were to get through our interrogation, then our bacon and eggs and off to bed. Taffy, of course had to give a full report which included dial readings of quite a few dials. He always was last one off the plane. I was always trying to egg him on. Once I had finished our tour, my ground crew, “Chiefy”, told me that they estimated we would last only about three or four sorties. They thought I was always arguing with my flight engineer.
Mind you, I felt that we could not possibly get through any of our sorties, even before we got airborne!
March 24th, 1944
We set off on March 22nd for a sortie to Frankfurt, but had to return to base shortly after take off because of the failure of our port inner engine.
On March 24th, our next sortie was back to Berlin for me and first time for my crew. As it turns out this was the last major bombing raid on Berlin. 811 aircraft took part in this raid, 577 Lancasters, 216 Halifaxes, and 18 Mosquitos. 72 aircraft were lost, 44 Lancasters and 28 Halifaxes - 8.9% of the force.
In spite of strong winds which were not forecast, we had no difficulty in reaching our target. Our route home was the one I had followed during two previous trips to Berlin. This was south of Brunswick and Hanover. Jog around the north end of the Ruhr, etc. If we had followed the route given me by my navigator, Rex Townsend, we would have flown right across the Ruhr with all its flak. Fortunately, many ahead of us made this mistake, and it was strictly because of a serious error in the forecast winds. At any rate, using the Ruhr searchlights for guidance, we successfully negotiated our way.
After that things began to go wrong. First of all our oxygen supply ceased to function. I maintained our height until we crossed the coast and were over the North Sea. This was very likely the cause of our troubles; 20,000 ft is far too high without oxygen.
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Once over the sea, we came down to under 10,000 ft so that we would not suffer any effects of lack of oxygen. Another unforeseen thing happened. Low cloud had formed over all of East Anglia We must have passed fairly close to our base, judging from the talk we heard on the RT. However my navigator was not able to get us to Witchford, in fact, according to his findings we were still a good distance from Witchford. On we flew, my RT signals were getting fainter. When Rex told me we were approaching base, I realised we were nowhere near and were getting a bit low on fuel. Fog was forming on the ground. As it turned out we were very close to Ludford Magna in Lincolnshire. They were equipped with FIDO, the fog dispersal system of gasoline fires along both sides of the runway. I called up and received permission to land. It was nice to get down onto the ground that night.
If this trip of ours to Berlin sounds a bit tame you should watch the video, “Night Bombers.” This is about a sortie to Berlin just a week or so before this. You would get some idea of what all our bombing trips were like.
How I Became a Commissioned Officer
Sometime between April 14th and April 18th, 1944 I no longer was F/S (flight sergeant) but became P/O (Pilot Officer). This is a crazy, almost unbelievable story.
Up until this time on 115 Squadron I was a flight sergeant. My crew were all sergeants. We all used the Sergeants’ Mess. We all lived in one Nissen Hut. This was a very good way to live.
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Our flight commander, Squadron Leader, George Mackie wanted all his pilots to be Commissioned Officers. I was well aware of this, but was quite happy living together with my crew, so did nothing about it. George Mackie was a typical air force guy, complete with a big handle-bar moustache. Incidentally, he was from Aberdeen. His family owned Mackies Dairy in Aberdeen.
I got pretty good at avoiding this little business of applying for a commission. However, one morning I made my way to the flight office. Very unusual, the office was empty, except for Mackie. As soon as I went in he said to me. “Ah Cameron, just the man I wanted to see. Take a seat at my desk.”
I could see the forms all laid out for me to complete.
Mackie went over to a filing cabinet, took out his revolver, put in a full six rounds and pointing it towards me said, “Now fill in those forms.”
He was laughing and so was I by this time. I told him that he could very well be court martialed [sic] for threatening me with his revolver.
Who would they believe with such a story, you or me?’ Well I pretty well had to fill in the forms for him. This is how I advanced from an NCO to a Pilot Officer.
One strange thing about my flight commander, he was not a pilot. He was doing his third tour as a Bomb Aimer. The pilot of his crew never got beyond the rank of Flight Sergeant. They were lost on a trip to LeMans on May 19th, 1944 after he finished his 25 sorties.
Apparently, our crew were the only ones who reported seeing a Lancaster going down in flames on that trip.
Mackie must have had access to all the interrogations. He told me that I was the only one reporting this. As you can imagine, he was very upset. He asked me whether there was a chance of any survivors. I had to tell him that if they were in that plane, none of them could possibly survive. It just blew up.
I was sent on 7 days leave at this time, so that I could purchase my new uniform. A friend of mine, who was in the RCAF, P/O Don McKechnie said that I should not travel in a NCO’s uniform, now that I was a P/O.
Mary and I had our photograph taken during this leave. We have it on the wall in our front room. A careful look would show you that the pilot wings are actually RCAF and not RAF.
May 9th, 1944
This was a very short trip, just across the Strait of Dover to Cap Griz New. We carried deep penetration bombs. Our instructions were to bring back the bombs if we could not identify the target. Our target this time was one of the rocket launching sites for the V2 rocket which could not be avoided until they exploded in London.
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We found the whole area was covered with 10/10ths. cloud, so we returned with our full load of bombs. Of course, we were still far too heavy to land. Our instruction were to jettison some of our fuel load, so this is what we proceeded to do. We emptied two tanks, one in each wing. One tank emptied just fine, but the other one emptied into the wing. The fuel ran into the bomb bay. The fumes from this fuel filled the whole aircraft. I didn’t realise that these fumes were affecting the crew, except the rear gunner, who was sealed from things in his gun turret.
It was not until I started to make my final approach that I began to realise that these fumes had made me a bit drunk. I certainly did not fancy landing without my full capacity to know what I was doing. Don’t ask me why, but I had not brought along my goggles. In any case I had to stick my head out my side window to clear my head. Mind you I had to more or less close them to just a slit because of the speed. Never mind, we made a good landing with our full load of bombs. I made sure that I had my goggles with me after that
These are a few other incidents that happened to us during our Bombing tour. Here are one or two incidents during some sorties.
Dusseldorf: April 22nd, 1944
597 aircraft took part in this raid. There were 323 Lancasters, 254 Halifaxes, 19 Mosquitos.
On each night bombing raid, one or two squadrons were given the task of being a support to the Pathfinder squadrons, who mark the target for the main force. We still had to try our best to bomb the target aiming point, but this was not our main function. We had two jobs. One was to give the Pathfinders a bit more cover. The other was to toss out lots and lots of, “Window.”
Window was strips of foil, the length of which were designed to appear on radar as aircraft. I believe the first time it was used was on a raid to Hamburg. It succeeded, making the German radar showing millions of aircraft. This provided cover for the main force coming behind us, but not for us. We had to try and bomb the aiming point, either by the markers, if available, or by our own recognition of the target. There was no problem; the Pathfinder Force were doing a good job.
This was entirely different from bombing with the main force. We were accustomed to a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, but this time it was not a barrage, they were aiming at individual aircraft, and that included us. This was much more scary; this was much more close generally than we were used to.
Duisburg: May 22nd, 1944
510 Lancasters and 22 Mosquitos carried out the first large raid on this target for a year. 29 Lancasters were lost, 5.5% of the force.
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Most of this trip was like any other trip, but two things stick out in my mind.
The first was as we approached the target. There were Lancasters circling everywhere, and cloud seemed to cover the whole target. They were obviously having trouble in finding the target. I instructed my Bomb Aimer, Attwood, that we would open the bomb doors as we ran up on the centre of the brightly lit clouds. If the worst came to the worst he should let them go as near to the centre of the searchlights as possible. Actually, this strategy worked in our favour. I soon found out the reason for all the circling. As we approached the centre of the lit up clouds, there was a big hole right down to ground level, and there, right on our path were the target markers. We were able to get an aiming point on our photograph. I was glad that we did not have to circle and try again.
Coming out of the target area, we had one of our many narrow escapes, and so did a German night fighter, who was heading into the target area to see what he could do. If he had been even six inches (15 cm) lower, or we had been that much higher, I am sure that we would have scraped each other and probably both planes would have been badly disabled and would have crashed. As he whizzed over us we felt the bump of the change of air pressure. That was the closest I ever got to a Junkers 88.
Cologne: April 20th, 1944
357 Lancasters and 22 Mosquitos took part in this attack. 4 Lancasters were lost.
After our Berlin Raid on March 24th, there was a change in the role of Bomber Command. Although Harris was still our commanding officer, he now came under General Dwight Eisenhower. This meant that the emphasis was no longer that of knocking out German industry, but was more designed to help with the coming, “Second Front.”
We had trips to Ville Neuve St. George on April 9th, and Laon on April 10th. We had some flak damage on this trip. Then it was Rouen on April 18th.
These were mostly railway marshalling yards, making railway transport more difficult for the Germans.
However, on April 20th, it was back to industry in Cologne. The Lancaster we were flying had one bad failing. It was very slow in climbing. All planes had various quirks, but I did not like this one.
Our route to Cologne took us to a point due south of Cologne, then we turned north to the target, climbing from 18 to 20 thousand feet. I knew that our aircraft would have no hope of making this climb and keep on time, so I instructed Rex Townsend, my navigator, to make our time at the turning point one minute ahead of the scheduled time. Unfortunately we arrived there one minute late.
I could not possibly climb to height without falling behind the bomber stream. I maintained our speed, but we could not gain much height at all.
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We went ahead and dropped our bombs on target and were immediately hit, I presumed, by flak. Two fires developed, one in the port wing outboard of the engines. The second one was in the starboard inner engine nacelle.
I gave the order, “Prepare to Abandon the Aircraft.” Then several things happened. My indicator light came on which tells me my wheels are down and locked. (I knew they were still up). Another light told me that I had the wrong supercharger gear on for landing. (Good, at 18 thousand feet I was not landing) Through my mind flashed the briefing we had before take off. The winds over the target are from 270 degrees. If we all bailed out, we would float right back into Cologne in our parachutes. I made a spur of the moment decision to blow up with the aircraft along with all my crew. We had it drilled into us that the maximum time we would have was 2 minutes, before the plane would blow up. Even today, I wonder how I could decide to kill all 7 of us. I guess it was the thought of floating back into Cologne in our parachutes.
Taffy Jones, my flight engineer, had clipped on his parachute in preparation for bailing out. He had the presence of mind to drag my one out from behind my seat and was holding it up for me to put on. You see, I was one of many pilots who did not have a pilot’s parachute. Instead, I had the same harness as all of my crew. This was clipped onto the chest when being used. Of course there was no room for me to wear mine, while I was flying the aircraft. I said to Taffy, “Just put it down there,” pointing to the floor beside my seat. Taffy told me, when we eventually landed, that when I said that, he was no longer afraid.” If he only knew!
Well the fires soon seemed to be dying down and both went out together. A pencil through the covers on my warning lights gave us darkness in the flight deck once again. However what would happen when I landed was anybody’s guess. Would my wheels lock down. I decided to head for our emergency landing field at Woodbridge. This had a runway three times wider than our normal airfields and it was much longer as well. It was also lit up like a Christmas tree. Two bright searchlights pointing up and converging welcomed aircraft that were in trouble. We could see these as we left the enemy coast. We were given permission to land. I instructed all my crew to take up crash positions as I made the approach, which they did. My wheels and flaps seemed to functioning normally, but we could not be sure. Then thankfully we made a perfectly normal landing. What a great relief!
Next morning my ground crew were flown in to examine the aircraft – C-Cameron. I never used the call sign C-Charlie. One of my ground crew decided to get up onto the wing. Hoe thought he saw something wrong from the ground. We watched as he reached down through a hole in the wing. He pulled out a live British incendiary bomb from one of our fuel tanks. We had not been hit by flak, but by incendiaries from a plane above us.
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D Day: June 5th/6th, 1944.
The Normandy Coastal Batteries
This day 1012 aircraft took part in raids on the costal batteries at Fontenay, Houlgate, La Pernelle, Longues, Maisy, Merville, Mont Fleury, Pointe-du-Hoe, Ouisterham and St-Martin-de-Varreville. 946 aircraft carried out their bombing tasks. Three aircraft were lost, 2 Halifaxes on the Mont Fleury raid, and 1 Lancaster on the Longues raid. Only two of the targets – La Pernelle and Ouisterham were free of cloud; all other bombing was based on Oboe marking. At least 5000 tons of bombs were dropped, the greatest tonnage in one night so far in the war.
Our target was the coastal batteries at Ouisterham. Although we took off in darkness this trip turned out to be our first daylight bombing. We did not use any different tactics which turned out to be a little bit scary. As we flew towards the target it began to get closer to daylight, I remember another plane from 115 Squadron came alongside me and we continued in a sort of loose formation towards the target. Others about us were doing the same, so that when we reached the target and tried to fly over the markers, we would have all collided. I was fortunate that I was able to drop my bombs on target, but there was no way that I could say my photograph would show this. As soon as the bombs were dropped, I climbed above the crowd to avoid collision with other planes.
I was due to go on leave on June 6th, but because of this trip, all leave had been cancelled. Mary and I had arranged to meet at Kings Cross Station in London, but instead I was on my way back across the Channel and into bed at Witchford. Fortunately I found someone trustworthy to waken me if leave was on again. As soon as he woke me, I was off to London. I was not too worried about Mary, as she knew where we had arranged to stay.
Instead, when Mary arrived at Kings Cross, she saw hundreds of service people but no Don. Somehow she saw this woman in air force officer uniform, but with a different cap to the WAAF of the RAF. She spoke to her and asked whether she were Miriam my sister. Of course she said yes, and that she was there to try to meet Mary. I had not been in touch with Miriam, but of course she knew of our arrangement to meet at Kings Cross. They spent most of the day together. Miriam took her to her office with the RCAF, and introduced her to some of the people she worked with.
Mary and I had a very happy week together. We stayed with Mrs. Clark who had a house in the Elephant and Castle area. We had a lucky escape with this leave. The night when I put Mary on the train for Aberdeen, while I made my way back to Witchford, the room we had slept in was demolished by a German bomb. I think it was one of their Doodle Bugs, the ones you could hear approaching and hoped would pass you before its engine stopped. Our room was upstairs. Fortunately Mrs. Clark lived one level below street level, but level with the back garden. She was not hurt, but had to be taken to a decontamination centre to get all the oil cleaned off. This was another of our narrow escapes during WW2.
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After D Day
June 14th, 1944. Le Havre. There were 221 Lancasters and 13 Mosquitos taking part in this raid. It was in two waves, one in daylight and the other later in the evening in darkness. We were in the second wave. The objectives were the fast German motor-torpedo boats (E-boats) and other light naval forces which were threatening Allied shipping off the Normandy beaches only 30 miles away. Both waves were escorted by Spitfires. 1230 tons of bombs were dropped including 22 Lancasters from 617 Squadron, each loaded with a 12000-lb. Tallboy bomb. The E-boat threat to the invasion beaches from this port was almost completely removed by this raid.
I reported no problems on this raid, but next morning, Chiefy Williams asked me what had happened. One of the propeller nacelles was bashed in, with the paint from a British bomb on the bashed part, another lucky escape that we were not even aware of at the time.
Including this raid on Le Havre, after D Day we did seven night bombing trips, mostly to railway marshalling yards. We also took part in 4 daylight raids, the last one on July 10th, completed our tour of operations. The final six or seven, although quite short trips were very worrying. We all felt that we could not possibly make it to the end of our 30 trips with 115 Squadron and the end of our tour of operations.
No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School.
RAF Station – Feltwell, etc.
After completing my bombing tour at Witchford I was sent to Feltwell. This was not far east of Ely. I was to be an instructor at this school. Crews came here after finishing their operational training, to get enough experience flying Lancasters before going to a bomber Squadron. I had to get experience in handling a Lancaster from a right hand seat, usually occupied by the flight engineer. They extended the connection of the wheel across from the regular control, for the instructor to use. The seat normally was fastened to the pilot’s seat and was clipped onto the right hand side of the aircraft when being used by a flight engineer. It was far from being comfortable. My complete training for this consisted of one afternoon, lasting 1 hour, 5 minutes. Now, I was an instructor.
Now that I was no longer flying with a bomber squadron, I found a room in a farmhouse about 5 miles from Feltwell in Methwold. This village consisted of 1 street, with 6 pubs. Our room had one 15 watt bulb for light. The floor slanted down from each side to a sort of trough along the middle. Mary came down from Aberdeen to stay with me. I told her that when I was finishing my flying for a day, I would fly over this house, and rev. up my engines, so that she would know I would be home shortly. This worked just fine until I once did an air test with another of the instructors. “Oh that’s where you live.” Mary never knew when I would be finishing. All my friends would rev their engines over the house.
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Mary, from about 500 miles north, could not understand the old man who owned the house. I, from 3000 miles away had to translate. The Norfolk dialect was really different to most English accents. His daughter and her husband kept house for him. They farmed a piece of land not attached to this property. The old man would sell her eggs from his chickens, as well as apples. In turn she would sell him any produce from their land. This was a new kind of family for us to experience. When we went on leave, to Aberdeen the old man would give Mary some apples. “Don’t tell Annie that I have given you these.” Annie had to buy her’s from him. What a way to live.
Some of the old Lancasters we flew at Fetwell were in very bad shape. Feltwell was not a paved airfield. We had to land on a grass landing strip. I had taken one crew to a bomber airfield for some experience. We were recalled because some fog was beginning to form at Feltwell. I took over the controls and flew back to base. They had lit some fire flares alongside the landing strip, but I had no difficulty in making my approach and landing. As I tried to turn the plane to starboard into where I was being guided, I could get no power from my port outer engine. I shouted to my guide to look at my port outer, as I could not get any power from it. He shone his light and yelled back that there was no engine there. It had dropped off as we landed. Years later I visited the aeronautical museum in Ottawa, with David, Patricia, Graeme and Heather. David and I were up looking into the cockpit of a Lancaster on exhibit there. Mary spoke to a man who was sitting on a bench looking at this Lancaster exhibit. Mary asked him if he had flown Lancasters. He said that no he had never flown, but he had worked as ground crew on them. He said that he had worked at No. 3 Lancaster Finishing School all the time it was in operation. I asked whether he had been there when the pilot of a plane that had just landed, asked the person directing the plane to shine a light on the port outer engine as he could get no power, and he said there was no engine there at all. He said yes, in fact he was the fellow who told me that there was no engine. What a small world. He belonged to an air force club in Oshawa and was very keen that I should join as well when he found that I lived in Scarborough. These clubs usually turn out to be just a drinking club, so I never did go near it.
After January 23rd, 1945, I was transferred to RAF Station Lindholme, near Doncaster in Yorkshire. This was a training station for Lancasters. We flew with crews who had not yet flown heavy bombers. They had a much more involved course of training.
I made a point of never looking at the students’ log books. I judged their flying ability from what they did for me. That was until I had one student, a flight lieutenant whom I thought was a danger to his crew. I looked in his log book and found that in his flying career he had never had less than, ‘Above Average’ in his records. I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me, so I asked the flight commander to take him up. He failed this man after a single trip and thanked me for letting him take him for a test.
On April 4th, 1945 I was sent on a flying instructors course at F.I.S. (Flying Instructors School) at Lulsgate Bottom, near Bristol, flying Airspeed Oxfords, where I did about 20 hours flying. This consisted of flying with only one
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engine, steep turns, really low flying, stalls, flapless landings, and forced landings (no power) – something called precautionary landings.
This turned out to be really great fun. I felt that this is how we should have been taught to fly Oxfords when I first started flying twin-engined planes. After this I became a category “C” instructor. While I was here, Miriam, my sister came from London to visit. We were able to take a tour through Cheddar Gorge and the cave. It was very interesting. The course lasted until May 4th, 1945, so of course Glen was born while I there. I was given 7 days leave to visit Mary and Glen in the Osborne Nursing Home in Aberdeen. They had to stay in the nursing home quite a long time because Mary developed a fever. They called it Milk Fever. She could not feed her baby, so he had to be brought up on National Dried Milk.
While on my way north I heard the announcement over the loud speakers at Crewe Station, that the war in Europe was finished.
Then it was more instructing at Lindholme for a short time. During this short time, I took some air cadets up for a trip in an Oxford.
I was still flying Lancasters as an instructor. However there was one interesting break. On July 6th, 1945 I took some passengers on what they termed a Cook’s Tour. The war in Europe had come to an end. My passengers were all service personnel from Lindholme. I took them across the North Sea to the Rhur in Germany, and we flew down over the Rhur to see what Bomber Command had done to German Industry there. In comparison, you would say that London, with it’s blitzes had hardly been scratched. It was absolute devastation.
On July 17th, 1945 I was sent to Bomber Command Instructors School at Finningly in Yorkshire. This is here I was paired with John Cooksey. Frankly, this is where I really learned how to fly a Lancaster. This even included how to land a Lancaster with no engines. Mind you, for safety’s sake the engines were left just idling, so that if I goofed we could soon have power. The instructor did the first no power landing and then asked me to try it. I came in with more speed than usual, thinking I was avoiding a stall. But when I leveled[sic] off for a landing I could not hold it down. It just ballooned up and I could do nothing about it. All he said was, “Do you know what you did wrong?” I of course said that I had approached too fast. He told me to try once more, and this time I had no problem.
John Cooksey and I got along together just fine. Neither one of us were really interested in becoming instructors. So I would put him through each exercise and he would do the same for me. If we did them OK and we did, we would spend the rest of the time exploring the countryside and coast around there. We were both upgraded to category “B” instructors. This is the highest anyone could be graded at this B.C.I.S.
I went back to Lindholme until I was sent to RAF Station, Snaith. This was a B.A.T. flight, where I was introduced to making a beam approach. The beam is a radio beam. On the beam we could hear a constant signal. If we
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were off to one side we heard the morse code for “A” on the other side it was the letter “N”. One was dot - dash. The other was dash - dot, so that when they came together you heard a constant sound. This was done with Oxfords and Link Trainers.
1332 HCU (Heavy Conversion Unit)
RAF Station Dishforth
In February 1946, I was posted to Dishforth, where I flew the Avro York. This was just until I was familiar with handling this aircraft.
Transport Command. 246 Squadron. Holmsley South.
On March 9th, they sent me to 246 Squadron at Holmsley South. I was now a F/Lt. (Flight Lieutenant) in Transport Command, with my new crew. For the first time in my flying career, I had eco-pilot, and a really good navigator. They made sure that I was familiar with such
[photograph]
My Transport Command Crew at Cairo (jack Easton, Geof Sames, Gordon Megson, Me, Johnie Ottewell) April 26th, 1946
things as 3 engine landings and overshoots, flawless landings, ground controlled approach. This also included a GEE let down for bad weather approach. Then finally on April 15th, I started my first overseas trip. My route was from base to Castel Benito in North Africa and on to Almaza at Cairo.
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Incidentally, my entire cargo was Sunday newspapers As we stopped at Castle Benito the ground crew were keen to get a copy of some. I told them not to meddle, but said I was off to see about my flight on to Cairo. They were pretty good; the cargo did not appear to be tampered with, but I am sure we had a few less papers. We staged at Cairo for two days, picking up the next plane to come from Britain. From there we flew to Shaibah at Basra. Then a long hop to Mauripur at Kirachi [sic]. Then another two day in Kirachi [sic]. Our next hop was supposed to be to Palam at Delhi, but we were asked to land at Jodhpur. This was my first experience of using a runway which was just a black strip of thick oil. Well I made quite a good approach to land right at the beginning of this strip, because it did not look to be very long. As I arrived over the
[photograph]
Almaza, Cairo June, 1946
hot black strip ready for a three point landing - the aircraft started to float upward with the very hot air rising from the runway. I was determined to get the plane down so I just waited until we stopped floating
up, then gave her lots of power as we started to fall. Hey, we made a nice safe landing after all, even if it was not too smooth. I was glad I had quite a bit of flying experience by this time.
On the way home from Delhi, we made the same stops, except for Jodhpur, but when flying on the final stretch across the Mediterranean, we had to call up the station at Istres in the south of France for permission to carry on, depending on the weather in England. We were asked to land, so we had an extra day on our trip.
My next trip was the same route, but straight from Kirachi [sic] to Delhi, no stop at Jodhpur. Again we were asked to stop at Istres on the way home.
No. 242 Squadron, Oakington
The next trip, we carried passengers, service personnel of course. This involved first flying from our base to Lyneham, which was an international base, complete with customs officers. We had seats fitted. They did not look too comfortable to me. We carried troops who were being sent to relieve some who were coming back to Britain. This trip was only to Cairo. On our return journey we were bringing one stretcher case, complete with a woman medical officer. The man had a brain tumour. One officer, a Naval Captain, which is a fairly high rank, did not turn up on time. Well I refused to hold up the trip for him, telling the staff that he could pick up
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his luggage at Lyneham. I felt that getting my stretcher case to hospital in Britain was more important. There were a few fighter pilots among my passengers too. When we landed at Castle Benito, the plane just rolled smoothly along the runway with no kind of any bump. This was a rare thing for an Avro York. They could not be landed without a bump of some sort. My air quarter master (Steward) bragged to these fighter guys that I did this all the time. I reminded him that I still had to land them at Lyneham. By this time I was sure that Istres always asked us to land no matter what the British weather conditions before leaving Castle Benito. Sure enough, they asked us to land. However I told them that I was carrying an urgent Stretcher case and wanted to get him to a hospital as soon as possible. They did not hesitate to allow me to proceed. I realised that I had made one goof. The troops were all wearing tropical dress and wanted to change, but did not wish to embarrass the woman medical officer. I brought her up front with me and had told her that she could hear the various info. I received as we flew. When I pushed for not landing at Istres, she told me not to fly on if the weather was bad. The invalid was not that urgent. I had to tell her that there would be layers of cloud when we got there and maybe a bit of drizzle, but nothing to make it a dangerous landing. Actually we didn’t even have the drizzle, but did I ever bounce in on my landing.
Then I was sent with another crew to get some route experience for a trip to Singapore. F/Lt. Audis was the pilot. Well, after we left Basra and were flying down the Persian Gulf, I went back to have a rest. I don’t think I was really asleep, but suddenly I became aware that something was wrong. Even though the aircraft was cruising OK, I went up front and asked what the trouble was. Well the port outer engine was not functioning, something wrong with the supercharger. The pilot had decided to fly lower, so that he could see more closely things at ground level. However at the bottom of the gulf, we would have to climb to over ten thousand feet to get over some hills, before flying along to Kirachi [sic] over the sea. He got permission to land at Sharjah, where we would wait until a replacement engine could be flown to us. We were there from August 19th. to September 1st. Strangely enough a friend from my days on bombers flew the engine to us in a DC3 (Dakota).
Apart from one more flight along with another pilot, just doing an air test, that was my last flight with the RAF. I had flown total of 1201 hrs 50 min.
My flying with British Overseas Airways Corporation
While at Aldermaston, back at school, in training for my various licences, I flew once with Captain Green on an air test in a Viking aircraft , just for 1 Hr 20 min. This was strictly off the record and is not included in my log book. I also went up for an air test in a Dakota with Capt. Levy. This lasted !hr. 30mn. As we approached for a landing he suggested that I try the landing. I didn’t even know the speed to make the approach at. He told me the speed and said to go ahead. I would find that it would pretty well land itself. So I did land it and with a nice smooth landing.
I had to do some flying in the York again, which included landing fully loaded. I was sent on a cross country
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flight with another First Officer, F/O Clink. However I was to be in charge. We had all sorts of different personnel on board. They came and asked if I was ready for dinner. As I was in charge, I was to them Captain. Well you have no idea of the fancy treatment I was given. Of course the stewards were also in training and were being watched. I have never been so handsomely treated to a meal before or since.
When I was fully qualified I was sent to Turn, near Bournemouth.
My first trip as First Officer started on November 23rd, 1947. Captain Phillips was in charge. We flew to London. On the 24th our route was first to Bordeaux and then to Castel Benito, then on to Lydda. This was a staging Post for the crew. The plane flew on with a different crew. On November 28th we took over a different plane on to Basra and Kirachi [sic]. On November 30th we were off again, this time with a Cast. Maltin. We flew to Dharan at Delhi. When we took off from Delhi, as we were gaining speed for take off, Capt. Maltin suddenly shut the throttles right down and exclaimed, “Holy cow!” This surprised me to hear him say a thing like this, but when I looked to see the problem, there was a cow strolling slowly across the runway. I laughed and said to him, “I have never heard that expression used correctly before.” Captain Maltin flew us as far as Lydda on the way home. We found ourselves as supernumerary crew. In other words there were two crews, but only one plane, so we flew on in the same plane, but with a different crew. That saved us a day, as we stayed with the plane right through to Castle Benito, but were delayed a day, I think by a sandstorm before returning to base.
The next flight started on December 24th, 1947. We had two children by this time, so Christmas arrived a wee bit early, but, neither Glen or Patricia were aware of that.
The name of the plane was Macduff. G-AGOF. We flew to London late on the 24th. Our take off was on the 25th. None of us in the crew were happy about this. Neither were most of the passengers. Captain Kelly came aboard and looked around at the long faces, and asked the steward if we had Christmas Crackers on board. We did, so he asked that a cracker be given to every passenger and every crew member. There was a tiny decorated tree just at the entrance, which on the York was mid-way up the passenger cabin. When we all had our crackers Captain Kelly said, “Now all of you pull your crackers and put on the paper hat.” That broke the ice and we had a great trip after that. We made landings at Bordeaux for lunch (Christmas Dinner), then on to Castel Benito and Cairo.
Both passengers and crew had an overnight stop in Cairo. Then in early morning we flew down to Khartoum. A lovely breakfast was waiting for us in Khartoum.
As we flew south from Khartoum, Captain Kelly asked me to go back into the passengers to point out any wild game. He purposely flew fairly low and I pointed out large animals like giraffe and elephant and such like. Two little girls, about nine or ten years old, latched onto me at this time. They had a great time as I showed them quite a few animals on the ground.
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As for me, I was very interested in not only seeing all this wild game, but also we flew low over the Murchison Falls on this branch of the Nile River.
We arrived in Nairobi on December 27th and were treated once again to another Christmas Dinner. I am afraid the two little girls ended up sitting on my knees, one on each knee. This was hardly airline etiquette, but by this time passengers and crew were just like one huge family. When we finally returned to base, we received no less than 5 letters, commending the crew for a great trip. Most were being sent out from England on a scheme to grow ground nuts (peanuts), which turned out to be a complete flop in the end. None were very happy about going.
After Nairobi we flew past Kilimanjaro, quite a nice sight to Mombasa, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Then we headed south over Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. This was our final destination and my first crossing of the equator. There were no celebrations on board.
Our return trip was still in the Macduff as far as Cairo. Then we staged, flying on December 31st in a York called Marston, G-AGSO. Between Cairo and Tunisia Captain Kelly gathered the whole crew up front. The radio was tuned to the BBC in London, and as the new year came in we had a bit of a celebration. We were unable to land in London because of fog and were diverted to our base at Hurn. Here was still a lot of cloud below us, but I suddenly spotted our base and gave Cpt. Kelly a nudge. He was determined to land at base, but the passengers must have wondered what was happening. To say the least it was not a normal approach, although to us up front it was certainly not dangerous. So we came to the end of one of my most enjoyable trips.
On January 22nd 1948, I did the same route again with Captain Bennett. Then my final trip was to India once again with Captain Buxton. This time we went one more stop after Delhi, to Calcutta.
I am not sure which of these trips this incident happened, but on one of our stopovers in Cairo, we arranged with a local man to take us from the Bentley Hotel (I think that was the name) to the Pyramids and Sphinx, with a tour up inside the Great Pyramid. We would pay him for the entire trip. We settled on a price. Everything went very well. I opted to ride an Arabian horse instead of one of their moth-eaten camels. All went very well including the climb up inside the pyramid, until nearly down inside. Then this guide decided he would like a bit more money. If we wouldn’t give him this he would leave us in the dark. He had been lighting our way with magnesium strips. Needless to say the poor guy was completely surrounded by us, and told he had better not try any tricks like that. I think he thought we would take the magnesium and leave him behind, but anyway we got out okay.
By this time, my left eye had really started to go blind. I realised that I could not renew my licence and so resigned from BOAC.
My total flying time, including air force and civilian was 1455 hrs 55min.
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[medals and other insignia photographed on a black background]
[top] [RAF wings]
[1st row L to R] [1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; 1939-45 Defence Medal; 1939-45 War Medal]
[2nd row] [Bomber Command Tribute 1939 – 1945]
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Campaign Stars, Clasps and Medals
instituted in recognition of service
in the war of 1939 – 45
[list of awards]
[award certificate for those who served in Bomber Command 1939 – 45]
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[italics] Donald Cameron World War II and Flying Memoirs [/italics]
[bold] Footnote to My Flying [/bold]
Mary and I were at our trailer up near Norland, when we received a phone call from our daughter, Patricia. She asked us what we would be doing on August 19th 2000. I looked at our calendar and told her that we had tickets for the theatre in Lindsay. We were going with some friends.
Well we were told to cancel these arrangements. Our three children had combined to give me a trip up in the Lancaster at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton. They had joined to purchase membership in this museum for me ($75). As well, they paid $1000 for a flight of about 45 minutes in the Lancaster. It was a real thrill to be back in a Lancaster once again.
[colour photo of man and woman in front of a stationary Lancaster]
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[photograph of Donald Cameron wearing his war medals]
[article from the ‘News Advertiser’ dated 3rd September 2000, including photograph of Donald Cameron in front of a Lancaster aircraft]
High times for veteran flyer
Second World War pilot revisits his glory days
By Jane McDonald staff writer
When Don Cameron headed towards a certain aircraft on a sunny Saturday, Aug. 19, it was as though 55 years suddenly melted away.
“He strutted over that tarmac like a 20 years old,” says Pat Boocock of Ajax, the 53-year-old daughter of Mr Cameron who, with her two brothers arranged for her father to fly once again in a famous Second World War Lancaster. Mr Cameron wasn’t quite 20 years old when he joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. Originally from Toronto, he’d gone to Scotland in 1938 to study at an agricultural college. After war broke out the following year, he tried to join the air force when he reached the age of conscription.
“They told me, ‘No, you’re not a resident’” recalls the almost 79-year-old Whitby man. He joined anyway as a volunteer and headed for the southern United States to train as a pilot. And although he qualified as a fighter pilot, by the time he got back to England, he was posted to 115 Squadron, part of the RAF’s No. 3 Group Witchford. This meant flying multi-engine aircraft like the Wellington and Stirling. But his favourite by far was the Lancaster. Mr Cameron remembers, with the help of his log book, his first operational trip to Berlin when he piloted a Lancaster, the heavy four-engine bomber, many of which were built at Victory Aircraft, the Canadian Crown corporation at Malton, Ont.
[photograph with caption “Don Cameron still hadn’t come back to earth after flying in a Lancaster bomber, the same plane he flew as a pilot with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He went up on Aug. 19.]
“I flew five different (Lancaster) planes,” says Mr. Cameron of his time on operational missions. “Then somebody would take one up (when he was off duty) and not come back.” He had his own close calls like a particularly ‘nasty trip’ he made to Cologne, the city in northern Germany on the Rhine River, when his plane had two fires burning as he struggled to get his crew back to England.
“Cologne was the scariest,” he admits. It turned out to be British incendiaries that landed on us. We were coming out of Cologne and I gave orders to prepare to abandon the aircraft. Then the whole (pre-flight) briefing came back to me … I realized then that it would be better to blow up there than bail out and drift back into Cologne. That decision saved our lives.” Another time, after landing successfully on a grassy strip, Flight Lieutenant Cameron asked a ground crew member to shine his light on the port outer engine which he thought might have something wrong with it. “There is no engine,” answered the man.
But the plane he went up in Aug. 19 had all four engines. Lovingly refurbished by a dedicated group of volunteers, the pride of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Mount Hope Airport in Hamilton is the only airworthy Lancaster in Canada.
“I just heard about it on the radio three or four years ago,” says Mrs. Boocock. “I tucked it away in my mind but when my father started having heart problems, I thought we’d better do it soon.” She contacted the museum and was told her father could go up in its Lancaster for a ‘donation’. She and her two brothers came up with $1,000, which she says will be their father’s “birthday and Christmas” gift.
Mr. Cameron says he found the flight to be “quite similar” in many respects. “The only thing missing was the piece of armour plating that used to be behind my (the pilot’s) head,” he adds of the 45 minute flight that took him over Niagara Falls. And although it was “bumpy”, there was no need to worry about anti-aircraft flak hitting this Lancaster. One night in 1944, his plane came back from a sortie with 47 holes in it and he lost an eye after the war as a result.
“I really haven’t come down to earth yet,” says the happy and grateful family man. “It’s something I just never expected.”
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
World War II & Flying Memoirs
Description
An account of the resource
Writes of travelling to Scotland before start of the war and then joining the RAF Volunteer Reserve. Continues with account of training in England before going to Lakeland Florida for primary flying training, Cochran field for basic and advanced training on Harvard at Napier Field, Dothan Alabama. Continues training on return to United Kingdom at RAF Windrush flying Oxford. After getting married continues training at RAF Wing on Wellington and then on to RAF Silverstone and Wratting Common on Stirling followed by Waterbeach for Lancaster. Continues with account of first operation over Germany while still training at Wing on 4 Oct 1943. He then went to 115 Squadron at RAF Whitchford. He continues with accounts of first operation on 115 Squadron flowed by detailed accounts of operations in February and March 1944. Mentions that he was commissioned and then describes further operations to Germany and in support of D-Day operations and afterwards. Concludes with description of activities as an instructor at RAF Feltwell.
Creator
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D Cameron
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Sussex
England--Brighton
England--Buckinghamshire
England--High Wycombe
United States
Florida--Lakeland
Georgia--Macon
Alabama--Dothan
England--Gloucestershire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Suffolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Duisburg
France
France--Normandy
England--Norfolk
France--Le Havre
Florida
Alabama
Georgia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-03-23
1942-05-10
1942-08-11
1943-05-21
1944-01-05
1944-01-25
1943-10-04
1944-01-30
1944-02-15
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-04-14
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
Format
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Thirty-eight page printed document with b/w and colour photographs
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BCameronDCameronDv1
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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
115 Squadron
1651 HCU
1678 HCU
17 OTU
26 OTU
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
Cook’s tour
crash
Flying Training School
Gee
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 2
love and romance
Me 110
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
promotion
RAF Dishforth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Silverstone
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Windrush
RAF Wing
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
searchlight
Stearman
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Window
York
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1767/31030/PHarrisonRW2103.2.jpg
68ba54b381a50cb1b3a6a5dddfe026ed
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1767/31030/AHarrisonRW210227.2.mp3
f89cbb8d1f788819921f73e1430e9eeb
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
Harrison, Reginald Wilfred
R W Harrison
Harrison, Reg
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Reg Harrison (b. 1922, R155986, J25826 Royal Canadian Air Force) and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 431 Squadron and was known as 'Crash' Harrison because he survived four crashes during training and operations.
The collection was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2021-02-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Harrison, RW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RH: I’m ready for take-off then.
DE: Yeah. I’ll do a very quick introduction and then, then we’ll start properly. So this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive with Flight Lieutenant Reg Harrison. My name is, is Dan Ellin. This is recorded over Zoom. Mr, Mr Harrison is in Saskatoon, Canada and it is Saturday the 27th of February 2021. It’s 10.30am in Saskatoon Canada and it’s 4.30pm in Lincoln in the UK. So, Reg, thank you very very much for agreeing to do this interview with, with me this morning.
RH: My pleasure and my honour to do it.
DE: Thank you. So, right from the very very start could you tell me a little bit about your early life and how you came to volunteer for the Royal Canadian Air Force please?
RH: Yes. Well, I was born on a farm and we farmed near [unclear] Saskatchewan. Do you know where Regina, Saskatchewan is? Ok. Well, it’s, it’s towards central Saskatchewan and we were about probably a hundred miles away in the east of, of Regina. And when I did my Service flying at Yorkton we were flying Cessnas then but they started the station with Harvards. So the Harvards, we were only about seventy miles from the airport so the Harvards were always flying over. We didn’t have a tractor or a car so I was sitting behind six horses and as soon as the Harvards came over and doing their aerobatics I stopped the horses. Horses are pretty smart. It didn’t take them very long. As soon as they heard a plane they automatically stopped. So cut it short we didn’t get as much farm work done as we should because I sometimes sat there for about twenty minutes before I started them up again. So when I got embarkation leave, some of the neighbours came over to bid me farewell and I heard my dad say, ‘Well, we don’t like to see him go but I have an idea we’re going to get more farm work done.’ So, to make a long story short I only had my grade ten and I, I took my grade nine and ten by correspondence because we didn’t have a High School. I don’t know what you’d call it in England, I forget but, I had to go to Public School. I went to Public School at Lorlie from grade one to grade eight. Took correspondence course from the Department of Education to do my nine and ten. And then they said, ‘Well, in order to be a pilot you had to have your grade twelve.’ And in 1941 the Royal Air Force were getting short of pilots, so the powers that be decided well there’s a possible pool of, of pilots that only have their grade ten, maybe partial grade eleven, partial twelve. If we set up what they call Educational School, Pre-Enlistment Schools they called them, and if they passed a medical and a physical then they could enrol in this Pre-Enlistment School. So they set that up in 1941 and in the Fall of, after harvest was finished, I went to Regina to the Recruiting Centre and I had my medical. I only weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds so I was pretty skinny then but rather wiry I guess. I managed to pass the medical, and they also gave me an aptitude test. Coming from the farm I didn’t know very much about the big wide world, but maybe the aptitude test might have been easy because I managed to pass that. And then that school started at the end of October and lasted until the end of April. If you successfully completed that course then you got credit for your grade twelve, last two credits. And then you were sent to what they called a manning depot and that’s where all pilots, navigators, well they weren’t navigators then we were just called, we were just called airmen. AC2s and you stayed there for several weeks. You learned to march and you got all your inoculations and all that sort of thing. And then if you wanted to train as a pilot then they had what they called a Ground School where you took meteorology, physics, preliminary navigation, and so on. And they had that in Regina and that lasted for ten weeks. And then after you’d done that the pilots then were sent to Elementary Flying Schools, and in Saskatchewan at that time they were using Tiger Moths, Gypsy Tigers. You later switched over to Cornells but they used Tigers. So, about the time they were, they were starting those in the Fall it was, most of the fellas that I knew would get posted to Regina Elementary. But in 1942 they had a very large crop in Saskatchewan so my dad contacted the authorities and asked them if, they, I could come home for six weeks to help with the harvest. Which I did. And then when I got back to the station they said, ‘Well, there’s no room at the Regina Elementary so we’re going to send you to Virden.’ To Virden, Manitoba. So I then went to, I went to Virden. I started there in, in late October, and I finished that course just about the end of December. Went home for Christmas and then, but before that when I’d finished the elementary they asked me where I wanted to go for my service flying which I was surprised. I thought well they would tell me where I might go. And I said, ‘Well, what choice do they have?’ They said, ‘You can go to Dauphin, Manitoba, go to Brandon, Manitoba or you can go to Yorkton. I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think I’d like to go to Yorkton.’ He said, ‘Why do you want to go to Yorkton?’ I didn’t tell him it was close to the farm. I said, ‘Well, if we happen to get a forty eight hour pass the bus connections or train connections would be easier for me to get home.’ So they said, ‘Ok. We’ll give you the warrant and you can go to Yorkton.’ So when I got to Yorkton I was very surprised to find that the fellas that had gone to the Elementary School in Regina, I figured they’d be halfway through their course but they hadn’t even started because in 19 — in that winter of ’42 there was a lot of blizzards and snowstorms, and the flying was set back. And my friend Buddy who I’d met at the, at the Pre-Enlistment School he was also there and that course had just started. It was about a week into the course and they thought well I could catch up so I joined that course. And that course lasted, it was started in January and we got our wings the last week in April. And we get, everybody gets ten days embarkation leave. I went home for ten days, and then I caught the train at [unclear] Saskatchewan and so I have pictures for you. I’ll send those to you, and they show me standing at the station. Then I had to change trains in Melville. What we called the Trans-Continental. That would be similar to your train that would go from Kings Cross to Edinburgh, and it would only stop at the main stops. I think that one from Kings Cross if I remember correctly it had about seven or eight stops. I know it used to, it used to stop at Doncaster and it would stop at York and it would stop at Newcastle on Tyne and so on.
DE: Yeah. The distances are totally different aren’t they?
RH: So that particular, what they called the Trans-Continental it would leave Vancouver and it would take seven days to get to Halifax. So that gives you an idea.
DE: Yes.
RH: How large Canada is. So I got, changed trains and got on that train at Melville and then it took about almost four days to get to Ottawa. Then when it got to Ottawa my friend Buddy, he boarded the train. Then it took us another three days to get to Halifax. And then I think we were in Halifax about, possibly three weeks. But we didn’t go over in a convoy. The convoys took about almost a month. Well over, maybe a hundred, a hundred and thirty ships in a convoy and under normal circumstances the U-boats were sinking at least twenty five to thirty ships. And they told us that we were going to go on the Louis Pasteur. That was a French liner that had been converted to carrying troops and we said, ‘Oh well, how about, we’re going alone. How about the U-boats? They said, ‘You don’t have to worry about the U-boats because this Louis Pasteur can go faster than U-boats,’ which it turned out to be so. It took us four and a half days to cross the Atlantic. Then we landed in Liverpool on July the 1st 1943.
DE: Can we, can we just go back a little bit? Could you tell me what, what was it like the first time you flew? And what it was like going solo for the first time?
RH: That’s, that’s an interesting question, Dan because when I was ninety three years old one of the CBC reporters had met me at an Air Show and unbeknownst to me she arranged, she arranged for me to go for a flight in a Tiger Moth. And one of the fellas near Saskatoon he had a runway right beside his house. It was on an acreage. And he also owned about five planes and I went back in a Tiger Moth when I was ninety three years old. And it was, in a way it was a, in some ways it was a strange feeling but otherwise it brought back a lot of memories for me. But he said to me, ‘When did you solo?’ I said, ‘I’ve no idea but,’ I said, ‘I’ve brought my logbook. Let’s have a look.’ And it turned out that I soloed on Remembrance Day in 1942. And I probably, I think the average would be about eight to nine hours, or ten hours before they sent you solo and I look at my logbook and I think I had, I had about nine and a half hours when I went solo. But I really liked flying and actually when I was about twelve or thirteen years old I had a flight. It was in the wintertime and I had a flight in a small aircraft. In our Public School they had a furnace that needed some repair so the chap from the furnace company came, rented a plane and came out and landed in a field near Lorlie. And then while the furnace was being repaired he came over into town and, and wanted to know if anybody wanted to go for a ride. It cost five dollars and I asked my dad. I said, ‘Dad, could you loan me five dollars?’ He said, ‘Why do you want five dollars for?’ I said, ‘Well, I can go for a ride in a plane.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t have any five dollars,’ he said, ‘I might not even have enough to buy these groceries,’ he said. But the storekeeper overheard the conversation and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I understand that you’re a little bit of a trapper and you’ve been catching —’ what we called weasels and so on, and he said, ‘Do you have any?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, ‘I’m going to get ready to shift them to Melville.’ He said, ‘What do you think you can get for them?’ I said, ‘Well, I hope to get maybe seven or eight dollars.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll loan you five dollars on the understanding that when you sell those pelts,’ he said, ‘You’ll pay me back.’ So that’s, that was my first flight when I was twelve years old.
DE: Fantastic.
RH: And it was cold too because it was an open cockpit. I remember that [laughs]
DE: Yeah.
RH: So then, of course as you well know Dan when you get to, when you get to Liverpool or wherever you land in England everybody goes to Bournemouth. All the, all the, all the aircrew go to Bournemouth. And we discovered there that there were a lot of beautiful hotels and that’s where the, I guess you would call the rich people went there for their holidays but they, they made sure that all their pictures and all their expensive furniture was removed from the hotels. But I remember Buddy and I, we stayed at what they called the Royal Bath Hotel and we were there for probably maybe three or four weeks, and then the pilots had to go to an Advanced Flying School to take what they called a BAT School, Beam Approach Training. One thing I should mention is that when we were flying in Canada, night flying, all the towns were lit up. Aircraft had navigation lights on. When we got to England I can vividly recall that train ride from Liverpool to Bournemouth. It was at night. I knew we were going through towns and you couldn’t see a light. Everything was blacked out. And then we discovered that night flying you couldn’t have any navigation lights on. So in addition to the blackouts and no navigation lights we also discovered that the weather in England wasn’t as conducive for flying as it was in Saskatchewan because we had lots of sunny days. In the Midlands when you were flying we had, I suppose you’d call it quite a bit of haze because there was a lot of manufacturing done in Birmingham and Sheffield and those things. So flying was much more difficult. I think that’s why they started the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Furthermore, there wasn’t enough room left in England for, for all their training.
DE: And also, you know there’s, there’s not the Luftwaffe to worry about either if you —
RH: Pardon?
DE: There’s not the Luftwaffe to worry about either if you’re training in Canada.
RH: Oh no. No. I think that was, I think that British Commonwealth Air Training Plan really contributed a great deal to the success of the war.
DE: So did you go on to multi-engine aircraft in Canada?
RH: Yeah. When we went to Yorkton they’d switched over from Harvards to what they called 172 Cessna Cranes. They were twin engines because then they didn’t need fighter pilots like they did in the Battle of Britain. They were short of bomber pilots. So they switched a lot of the service stations over from Harvards to Cessnas, and Canada leased a lot of aircraft from the United States. And those were flown back again after the war.
DE: Ok. Yeah.
RH: So when we got to, Buddy and I went to Church Lawford in Warwickshire. I think it’s, if I remember correctly it’s not that far from Stratford on Avon.
DE: No. It won’t be. No.
RH: I had an aunt that married my Uncle Harold and she came from, from Warwickshire, near Stratford On Avon. But that, that course it was of course beam approach training, and I often wondered when we were at Yorkton why pilots had to take Morse Code. I thought well the wireless operator would have to do Morse Code. Why did the pilot have to know Morse Code? Well, I soon found out why that was required because then you had to use, you had to use the beam, the Morse Code to get lined up with the beam. And that of course was used when the, if you had to land in the fog when the ‘dromes were equipped with FIDO. And for our very first trip, this was much later, our very first trip in a Lancaster where we did have to land on FIDO but I’ll tell you about that later because that was over a year ago and I’d really forgotten what the damned signals were. So when we were at, when we were at Church Lawford [pause] every time Buddy would, Buddy was engaged to, to his High School sweetheart Jean Woods, and he wrote to her on a regular basis and every time he’d write to her, he called me Harry, I guess short for Harrison, called Harry, ‘Well, Harry you’d better put a footnote on this letter to Jean.’ Of course my usual reply was, ‘Well, I don’t know Jean and I don’t know what to say.’ And he would always say, ‘Well, you never know. Some day you might meet her.’ And the last day we were there I have a picture, I’m going to send you a picture of Buddy and I. And we had a little Welsh gal that looked after us. Polished our shoes and all that, so we thought we were really in, in royalty when we had that kind of treatment. That didn’t last very long after we left that station. And he said, ‘Well, I’m writing another letter to Jean.’ I have a picture of him licking the stamp to put on the letter. He said, ‘You’d better put another footnote on this,’ he said, ‘Because when we get back to Bournemouth,’ he said, ‘We’re going to get posted to OTUs,’ he said, ‘And we might not end up at the same one.’ So I used to say, ‘Well, I’ve told you before Buddy I don’t really know what to say.’ He said, ‘Well, just put something on this. You never know. You might meet her.’ So, when we got back to Bournemouth I think we were only there about two weeks when we got posted and I went to Ossington. That was number 82. I think if I remember correctly it was near, it was near Sherwood Forest and we were going to start flying there and then. They had a course that wasn’t finished so they had a satellite drome called Gamston so we, we did our flying from Gamston. But I found that the Wellingtons, they were, as you know they were geodetic construction and they were very sturdy aircraft. Well-constructed. And I found them I guess an easy way to say it was somewhat heavy on the controls but they were, I wouldn’t say they were easy to fly but they were quite a little bit more, certainly more effort than the, than the Cessnas and the Oxfords that we were flying and I found them particularly hard to fly on one engine. But I managed to get through that course and looking there, I looked to see what my rating was and I got, I got above average so I guess I didn’t do too badly. In fact, I got that, I’m not bragging but I got that in most of the training that I did. And that, that course lasted, I, it was a fairly long course. I think it lasted about three and a half months, and then we got posted to a Conversion Unit and we went to, we went to Dishforth which later as you know became, became part of 6 Group. And that’s where 431 Squadron and 44 Squadron were, were stationed. And it was all, all it was part, it was two of the fifteen squadrons that made up 6 Group and that was, that was a Canadian group.
DE: Yeah.
RH: They’d been advocating for some time to have their own, to have their own, their own group.
DE: So —
RH: And —
DE: When —
RH: That was —
DE: Sorry. Sorry.
RH: Ok
DE: I was going to —
RH: Go ahead.
DE: I was just going to ask when did you crew up?
RH: Pardon?
DE: When did you form, when did you form a crew?
RH: Oh, now that, I’m glad you asked that question because that’s very interesting the way they did it. They put us all in a big hangar. An equal number of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers and we weren’t in the hangar very long and this tall chap came over to me and he said, he introduced himself, he said, ‘I’m Hal Philips,’ he said, ‘I came from Vancouver,’ he said. And I introduced myself. He said, ‘You got on the train at Melville didn’t you?’ I said, ‘Really,’ I said, ‘How did you know that?’ He said, ‘Well, my wife and I got married on my embarkation leave and she said, ‘Well, I guess we’ll have, the honeymoon’s going to last seven days,’ she said, ‘Because it’s going to take seven days to go from Vancouver to Halifax.’ So, that’s how I got my navigator. And I said, ‘Well, Hal, we’d better look around for a bomb aimer.’ So we looked around and we saw a chap sitting down smoking a cigarette and we went over to him and we introduced ourselves and he said, ‘Well, I’m Gordon Dumville,’ he said, ‘I come from Saskatchewan. From Rocanville.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I know where that is. In south east Saskatchewan.’ I said, ‘Do you come from a farm?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Are you crewed up yet?’ He said, ‘No. I guess nobody wants me.’ I said, ‘Well, would you like to fly with us?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to fly with somebody. I might as well fly with you.’ So then we said, ‘Well, we’ll need a, we’ll need a wireless operator.’ So we looked around and we see somebody with, with a w/op badge on so, or a wing I should say so we introduced ourselves. He said, ‘I’m Bob Hooker,’ he said, ‘I come from Big River.’ That’s kind of interesting because where my youngest daughter lives now we go right through Big River and she, they live on a lake front property about eight kilometres from Big River so that brings back memories. So then we said, ‘Well, we need, we need a rear gunner.’ So then we saw some gunners in a group and one chap seemed to be by himself so we introduced ourselves. And he said, ‘Well I’m, I’m Kenny Taylor,’ he said, ‘I come from, from a farm near Mayerthorpe, Alberta.’ So it turned out that he was the youngest in the crew and I was next to, I was next to Kenny as far as age goes and my navigator was probably, he already had a degree in agriculture. He was probably seven or eight years older than I was and my, and Bob Hooker was also about the same age. And so that’s how we crewed up.
DE: Ok.
RH: And then —
DE: I was just going to say when did, when did you get your flight engineer because he’d have been RAF rather than Royal Canadian Air Force, wouldn’t he?
RH: We got, we got our flight engineer when we went to conversion.
DE: I’m sorry, I’m —
RH: We did, yeah we had a five man crew on Wellingtons and we didn’t need an engineer.
DE: I’m jumping ahead. Sorry.
RH: So, yeah, so we got the engineer then when we went to the Conversion Unit and the Conversion Unit didn’t last more than about three weeks. And I, excuse me I’ve got to have a drink of water.
DE: Cheers.
[pause]
RH: And they, they gave us an instructor who had just finished a tour, and I, I could tell that he wasn’t too enthusiastic about being an instructor. And so he did the first couple of circuits I guess and then he told me to take over. We were flying Halifax 5s with inline engines and I understand they used to have a lot of glycol leaks, Merlin inline engines. And on my first landing I didn’t do a very good job. I couldn’t keep it straight. So he stopped the aircraft and he said, ‘If you bloody well want to kill yourself,’ he said, ‘You bloody well go ahead,’ he said, ‘You’re not going to kill me.’ So we taxied the aircraft, told me to taxi the aircraft up to the flight. We did that and he got out the aircraft and left me there. And then a flight commander came out and he got in the aircraft and did a circuit. Told me to, no actually he told me, he told me to do a circuit and we were coming in to land, the aircraft was moving around I guess too much on the runway, he said, ‘Take your damned feet off the rudders.’ You don’t, he said, ‘You don’t need very much rudder control on these aircraft.’ He said, ‘Try another landing.’ So we did another landing and I suppose the reason I kept my feet on because I wasn’t very tall. I was about five foot six and he said, ‘I think you need a cushion or something behind you so you can reach that. But remember you don’t need much rudder,’ he said, ‘On these aircraft.’ And that was the problem that I had. So after we got that solved then as I say, that course only lasted about, about three or four weeks. And then while we were there it was interesting. They said, ‘Well, if you finish this course without killing yourselves,’ that was not too encouraging [laughs] They said, ‘Just hope you don’t get posted to Croft.’ We said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Well, Croft throughout Bomber Command is known as the jinx station. Everything that happens always happens at Croft.’ Well, I often think back and after I’d been there, finished my tour with my four crashes I guess I added to their reputation. [Laughs] So, when we, when we got to, to Croft I think we were only there about, well we got there on the 12th. I remember that. We got there on the 12th of March and on the 15th of March there were five crews arrived that day. They’d had a few losses. Five new crews. And they had told me what crew I was going to fly with and one of the pilots that had come to the station the same day he came to me and he said, ‘Well, I know pilot —’ so and so, he said, ‘Would you mind switching places with me?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter to me, I said, ‘I really don’t know any of the, any of the crews.’ So he said, ‘Well.’ I said, ‘You go and speak to the flight commander and see if he ok’s it.’ So he did. And so I ended up going with a Flying Officer [Feldman] and his crew and I discovered that he came from Quebec City and was a very good hockey player and he played with what they called the Quebec Aces. And the, the —
Other: Sorry. I’m just plugging this in. Sorry, Dan.
DE: Ok.
Other: Don’t want to lose power halfway through.
DE: Oh right. You’re just plugging in the power cord. Ok. Thank you.
RH: So, so the target that night was Amiens and we were, we were bombing the large transport, I guess you’d call it a transportation centre. The Germans were bringing up a lot of supplies in preparation I suppose for the, for the allied landings. And there wasn’t a jump seat there so I stood up about halfway and he said, ‘Well, you’d better go and sit down on the step,’ which I did. It was a sort of a routine trip. There wasn’t very much flak or much searchlights there and when we, when we were coming in to land, excuse me [pause] coming in to land he told me, I was standing beside him, I wanted to watch him land, he said, ‘Go back to the crash position.’ Well, I didn’t go. I stood back about three or four steps so he couldn’t see me because I wanted to see him land. And unbeknownst to the crew they had a five hundred pound bomb left in the bomb bay and when the aircraft touched down the bomb didn’t drop off. The runways were a bit, they weren’t very level there so the aircraft always bounced a bit. We got just about to the end of the runway and then the bomb dropped off even though the bomb switch was off. The bomb was still live. We never heard the bomb go off but it woke everybody up on the station and I suppose from the concussion, the bomb literally blew the plane apart. There wasn’t anything left from the wings. The fuselage was gone, the rudders were gone and it was like a movie scene. I, I suppose I was knocked out momentarily because in a Halifax you’re about twenty six feet off the ground. So I don’t know what my trajectory was but I expect that the bottom of the aircraft blew out when the bomb went off and it killed the two gunners instantly. And the rest of us, I suppose literally blew us out of the aircraft because I found myself lying on the ground and I remember opening my eyes and I thought I could see stars. And then I thought, my first thought was jeez, I must be in heaven. There was no sound. And then all of a sudden I started to get wet and, I, my first thought was oh I must be bleeding to death. Well, it wasn’t. What had happened, when the bomb exploded all the gas lines were punctured or fractured, and then the hundred octane gas was flowing towards the exhaust. They were still pretty hot from the flight and then they all burst into flames and then there was a big wall of fire. And I picked myself up, I was still sort of dazed. It was dark but it was getting lighter as the fire rose, and I started to run. This is a bit fresh, I don’t know whether I should tell it or not but I tripped, and I tripped over, someone’s head had been decapitated and there was no helmet on and he had a mop of, I remember he had a mop of beautiful curly hair. I kept on running and I saw someone else running and heard someone else yell, ‘Help.’ And the pilot was almost out of the, the cockpit was left, one wing was fully intact. Another wing was only partly there, but the pilot was almost out but he had those, the old type flying boots on where they, they were fleece lined with the zipper all the way up. That’s when they, later on they changed those into more of a boot with a zipper on. Then if you bailed out because when they were baling out the fire, when they baled out when the parachute opened they were losing one or both flying boots so they made a new type of flying boot. So this chap that was, I didn’t know the crew, the chap was running. He called me and so we, we both tugged on the pilot and pulled him, pulled him away from the aircraft. That part wasn’t burning. It was just the rear part of the wings and that that were burning. And then of course, I guess it was the oxygen bottles started to explode and the verey cartridges and there were a lot of explosions around. And then, then I think I think the ambulance arrived then and took us to the hospital. And then nobody seemed to be injured but I had a sore arm and so they said, ‘Well you’d better, you’d better go on.’ They told me it was a bad scrape. So I went to my aunt and uncle’s in Hull. They lived in Hull, and I was there about the third day and my uncle who had been in the, survived the First World War he, one day he was home for lunch and he said, ‘Let me have a look at that arm.’ So he looked at it and he said, ‘By Jove, I don’t like the look of that,’ he said. There’s an anti-aircraft battery. As you probably well know, Dan, next to London Hull was one of the most bombed cities in Britain. All the east I remember from history that there was a lot of, a lot of lot of shipping done from Hull, and all that was left there were just concrete. All the docks and everything were gone but there was just enough room for the trawlers to come in. They used to go out at night and do their fishing and come in with their catch in the morning. But there was still an anti-aircraft battery in the outskirts of Hull so I got on the bus and went out there. It was called Sutton. I went out there and I saw the medical officer. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You’ve got phosphorous burns,’ he said, ‘How did you get those?’ So I told him about the bomb explosion. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Those bombs,’ he said, ‘There’s lots of phosphorous in those,’ he said, ‘That’s where you got your burn,’ he said, ‘That needs to be looked at right away.’ And he said, ‘I’m a little short of bandages,’ he said. I suppose they had, quite a few people were killed in Hull. So he, he said, ‘I’m going to put a fish dressing on your, on your arm.’ And he wrapped it up in newspaper, tied it up and he said, ‘You’d better get — where are you stationed?’ I told him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’d better get back on the train as soon as possible and get back to the station.’ So I went back to my aunt and uncle’s and got the clothes that I’d taken there, and went to the train and then of course I had to take the train from there. I had to change in York to get back to Croft. Then Darlington. Then up to Croft to the station. Of course in those trains you know you’ve got six people in the compartment and three on each side looking at one another, and pretty soon people started looking around and sniffing. They could see I wasn’t carrying anything. They thought they could smell fish so I had to, I had to explain to them where the fish smell was coming from. [laughs]
DE: Oh dear.
RH: I don’t really know what the fish dressing did but apparently as the doctor said that was the best thing to do. So to make a long story short I saw the medical officer and he said, ‘Well, where do you want to go for treatment?’ Well, they might as well have asked the [unclear] because I didn’t have a clue where I should go. So he said, ‘Well, I’d better send you to Basingstoke.’ Of course that was a big, I remember my dad saying that was a big hospital in the First World War. And at that time they had a lot of casualties. Especially tank casualties from Italy. And when I got there I was so embarrassed because I was walking around and I saw fellas bandaged there with, you know some of them were blind, and some of them had their arms grafted to their face and I just felt so. They kept me there for a week. They just didn’t have enough time to deal with me. They did, dressed my arm and then they finally sent me to East Grinstead. And then I was there for, I had pinch grafts done on my arm. Dr Tilley. He was a Canadian doctor. He was the one that, that did my, my pinch. He did a pinch graft. They tried a flap graft first but that didn’t work so then they did pinch grafts. Took pinches from my, from my upper thigh and then grafted it on. So I was there for probably nine weeks and then I went back to the station.
DE: What had happened to the, your crew during the nine, ten weeks that you were —
RH: That [laughs] that’s interesting. When, when I got back to the station I thought oh well they’d have found another pilot. I’ll have to, I’ll have to get another crew. Well, I guess it turned out they didn’t know how long I was going to be away and the crew were still there. I don’t know what they did for the time I was away but they were there waiting for me. So I think, I think we did maybe one or two cross countries to get climatised I guess again, and well actually that would have been my, several weeks, almost two months before I’d flown or since I’d flown. And then we did, we did eleven trips without any, I wouldn’t say without any difficulty but some of them were, what the word for exciting is. I don’t know whether that’s the right word or not but they were all very different. And on the way out to, on our thirteenth trip on the way out to the aircraft, the lorry used to take us out, if I remember correctly I think the lorries were large enough to take two crews which would be fourteen airmen. And my rear gunner, Kenny Taylor, the youngest in the crew he was very quiet and I said, ‘What’s the matter, Kenny? Don’t you feel good?’ He said, ‘Well, skipper. Physically,’ he said, ‘I feel ok,’ he said, ‘But do you know what trip this is?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s twelve, er thirteen. Why?’ ‘Gosh,’ he said, ‘I sure don’t like, I don’t like thirteen,’ he said, ‘Can we call it 12a?’ I said, ‘Kenny, if it’ll make you feel better then it won’t be thirteen. It’ll be 12a.’ I don’t know whether Kenny had a premonition or just what, but when we got the green light to take off I got at least three quarters of the way down the runway and the port inner engine suddenly stopped and I had about eighty, it was just prior to lift off. About eighty to eighty five miles an hour, and the engine stopped suddenly and the aircraft veered off the runway. Then it’s pitch dark. It had been, we’d been, the flight had been delayed at least a couple of times and then when we took off it had quit raining but it was dark and I didn’t know if I throttled back if, I was the fourth aircraft off out of nineteen or twenty. The other aircraft, I knew they were slowly inching their way to the take-off point on the perimeter track. I couldn’t see them. I didn’t know if I could get stopped. I knew if I didn’t get stopped and crashed in to one what a horrible site that would be. So I pushed the throttles through the gate and when I did that I had more than full power on the two port engines and suddenly the aircraft, I did gain a bit of altitude. The, the right wing went down and then the aircraft started to shudder and I still had enough control. I remember straightening the aircraft out. I yelled at the crew to brace for impact. My bomb aimer was standing beside me. The last thing I remember is telling them to brace themselves and I don’t remember anything else. But I got over those aircraft and just off the edge of the drome there was a farmhouse and a barn and there was a stone wall around, around the house. The barn was attached to the house which was quite common in England. And we crashed into that wall and then when we, we were probably I don’t know how fast we were going. Maybe eighty, ninety miles an hour. My bomb aimer went forward into the instrument panel and I don’t know how I ended up with the cockpit split open. I don’t know how I got out but they found me lying on the wing. I was knocked out. My wireless operator and mid-upper gunner apparently pulled me off the, off the wing. And the navigator and the rest of the crew apparently were wandering around, around the aerodrome. And I was still unconscious but the bomb aimer, he was still conscious, and there were, he had a serious head injury and they were going to take us to a hospital. I think it was Northallerton. They couldn’t do anything at the, at the base hospital. So I, I woke up on the way to the hospital and I knew, I’m pretty sure that Gordon was still, was still alive then because they operated on him. I think it was Northallerton. But he didn’t, he didn’t survive the operation. But then I ended up with a broken nose and probably twenty or thirty stiches in my face and a badly bruised thigh so I was in the hospital for probably about ten days. [pause] So then they when I got out the hospital they had got another bomb aimer to take Gordon’s, take Gordon’s place, and we continued our operations. And on the seventeenth trip it was, we went to Brest, and I remember when we were going out to the aircraft I remember my wireless operator saying to, to my two gunners. He said, ‘Well, we’re, we’re going to Brest,’ he said. They told us at briefing it was, expect to encounter a lot of flak because the, Brest and Hamburg were where the German U-boats were being serviced, and he said we could expect a lot of flak and probably a few night fighters. He said, ‘I hope we get back from this trip ok.’ I think it was Kenny or Maurice said, ‘Well, why?’ He said, ‘Well, we’re going on leave. We’re going on leave tomorrow,’ he said, ‘So, I hope to get back.’ And I, whether which one was it? ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Well, the skipper, the skipper will get us back ok.’ So I never gave it another, I never gave it another thought. But then when, I suppose, I’m not sure just where we were, whether we were halfway back to England then we ran into this heavy rain. And as we got closer to the, to Croft, the wireless operator had told me, or I asked him, I said, ‘Have we got any diversions?’ And he hesitated and he said, ‘No.’ And then the second time he called up he asked about the weather. ‘Got any more?’ I said, ‘No.’ Then he said, ‘Well, aircraft from 3 and 4 were being diverted.’ I said, ‘Well, better, better listen.’ So he called up three or four times, and I kept asking if he’d had a diversion. He said, ‘No,’ he didn’t have any. But I don’t know how he, how he missed the diversion but when we got back to base it was still pouring rain and it was heavy cloud and I think there was only one. Only one person on duty in the control tower and he said to me, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You can land,’ he said, ‘But I’ll put on all the lights that we can,’ he said, ‘And come down to about eight hundred feet and see if you can, see if you can see any lights.’ Which I did but I couldn’t see any. And he then said, ‘Well, climb. Climb to thirty five hundred feet and stand by for further instructions.’ Well, they always say that you can’t fly by the seat of your pants, and I’d been flying for at least two hours in this heavy rain and thick cloud and I decided, well I’m pretty sure we’re going to, we haven’t got much fuel left. We’ll probably have to bale out although I never said anything to the crew. And he said, ‘Climb to thirty five hundred feet.’ So I remember it was easier to turn to port to do a slow turn than it would be to starboard. So I did a slow climbing turn with just enough RPMs on to gain some height and I suppose I was getting calls from the control tower, and while I was doing this slow climbing turn I must have been unconsciously pulling back slightly on the control column because all of a sudden the navigator yelled at me, he said, ‘Skipper, what’s happening?’ Just as he said that all of the navigation equipment ended up in the cockpit and then the aircraft started to shudder and I knew instantly what had happened. That the aircraft was almost on its back because the cloud was thick and I had no sensation in that position. I shoved the throttles forward. At the same time I pushed the stick forward. I still have that feeling of the aircraft shuddering but I caught it in time and then I got it into a dive and I pulled as hard as I could and finally got, got out of the dive. And apparently the chap in the control tower had been calling and he went outside and he could hear the aircraft so I don’t know how close we came to slamming into the ground. But then I said to myself well to heck with this I’m not climbing to thirty five hundred feet, I’m climbing to five thousand feet and I did. I kept the throttles at full force and the perspiration was pouring off me, and I climbed to five thousand feet and in the meantime he was calling up wanting to know where I was. Well, in that kind of weather I’m sure we didn’t know exactly where we were and he finally said, ‘Well, the only drome open is Silloth on the west coast.’ And I asked the navigator, I said, ‘How far is that? It sounds like it’s a long way.’ I think it was just on the very west coast. Right on the, I suppose it would be on the Irish Sea. I’m not sure. But I know it was an OTU because they were, they started flying Hudsons there, and I know they had a lot of, they had a lot of crashes there. But anyway we didn’t have very much fuel left and I said to the crew then, I said, ‘Well, it looks like we’re going to have to leave this aircraft. We’re going to have to bale out.’ So I said, ‘We’ve gone through the bale out procedure.’ I said, ‘When you leave your position,’ I said, ‘Let me know because,’ I said, ‘I’m going to be the last one to bale out.’ So [pause] they, they did. They all let me know when they were, when they were gone and then it was my turn to go. And you’re probably aware that the pilots had the opportunity of wearing a chest type chute or a seat type chute and as soon as I found that out I thought gosh that doesn’t sound very good. My chute’s down in the nose and the bomb aimer’s job is to give me my chest type chute if we have to bale out. What if the bomb aimer gets injured, we get attacked by a night fighter or we get hit with flak how am I going to get my parachute? So I used to carry my parachute. It weighed about almost thirty pounds I think with all that silk that was packed in there. I used to carry it in. I remember getting over the main spar. It was a bit difficult but I carried it in and it fit really well into the, into the cockpit seat. And then after I got in there I would strap it on, and then I’d put my waist, my Mae West on top of that. I did that every time. But when it was my turn to bale out which I’d never tried doing before because when we got back from a trip we just undid the parachute and I carried it out. So I moved across the cockpit and then I got hold of a rung with my right hand. Then when I figured I was clear of all the levers I let myself go. There’s three levers come at forty five degree angle and the last lever came up between my leg and my parachute harness. And I’d already let go of the rung and then I found myself dangling there and when I, before I baled out I put in the automatic pilot and I trimmed it so it was slightly nose down because I knew that it was a sparsely populated area but I didn’t know how far the, the aircraft was going to go. So I thrashed around and I thought egods, I survived the, survived the trip from there but now I’m going to go down with this aircraft. And I don’t know how long I thrashed around but finally I heard, I heard a crack and the lever broke. I suppose with my weight and the weight of the parachute the lever broke. I remember falling. There were three steps to the escape hatch and I remember falling down three steps and I remember hitting my elbow and I actually rolled out of the aircraft and I saw the, I saw the, I remember seeing the rudder of the aircraft and then I started to roll over and I found my rip cord. I gave it a yank. Of course nothing happens when you first pull it. And then this chute opened with a real jerk and I swung to the right, came back and I hit the ground. So I really, I really have no sensation of falling in a parachute. I’ve asked skydivers at air shows, ‘How close do you think I was to the ground?’ They said, Well, you were probably less than a thousand feet. Might have been about eight hundred feet when your parachute opened,’ because I remember hitting the ground really hard. But by this time the rain had stopped but it was real foggy and I remember sitting on, sitting on my parachute and I thought well at least I’m alive. And then I wasn’t sitting there for very long and it was real still and I heard a whistle. And as you know, we had a whistle on our battle dress that we had to use in case we were ditching at night. And I heard this whistle. So then I dropped my whistle and I blew back. And then I heard someone. Someone shouting, ‘Where are you?’ And I said, ‘I’m over here.’ Somebody said, ‘Where’s here?’ [laughs] I remember that so distinctly. And finally after calling back and forth my mid-upper gunner Maurice Content, he came from Montreal, he had a bit of a French accent but he was a really great guy. He was probably about seven or eight years older than I was but he said, ‘Skipper, thank God we’re alive.’ I said, ‘Yes. Thank goodness we are.’ I said, ‘I wonder how the rest of the crew made out.’ Then we heard another whistle. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Somebody else is alive.’ So then after more blowing whistles, and some more talking, here our rear gunner Kenny shows up. So at least there’s three of us alive. And so I remember we, I don’t know which one of them said, ‘Well, we’ve got an escape kit that we’re supposed to use if we bale out over enemy territory. Let’s open it and see what’s in it.’ [laughs] So we all opened our, our escape kits and of course there was some chocolate in there and there was a compass in there and a little map. Some I think had a little package of dressings and so on. I remember we ate our chocolate and then I remember Kenny saying to me, ‘Well, skipper. What are we going to do now?’ I said, ‘Well, I guess we’re going to have to start to —’ by this time then the fog had sort of started lifting and it would be, I think we baled out about, hit the ground probably about 4 o’clock in the morning and this would be about, well we sat there for a long time and finally the fog started to lift. It’d be about, somewhere about nine and nine thirty and then I said, ‘Well, we might as well go back in an northeast direction,’ because that’s where we came from. So we started to walk. And as you probably know we were in what they called the Fells district, and some of them call them high hills. Some actually call them small mountains but they seemed like mountains by the time we walked up one, they were and the grass and heather was at least up to our knees and we had the new type flying boots on. They’re fleece lined and they come up to just about your knees and then they actually made like a shoe, and then if you bale out over enemy territory then you can rip that top off and then you’ve got a boot. And but we didn’t do that. We walked and then about eleven or, ten or 11 o’clock the sun came out and it was, it turned out to be a really hot day which you, you get very few of those in England unless it’s, unless it’s in southern England you’d have more of them but not in, not in that part of the country. But anyway we walked all day. All we saw were sheep. We never saw any habitation. We didn’t see any buildings and we were getting tired and hungry and about 7 o’clock in the evening Kenny, my rear gunner, he said, ‘Skipper, I think I can see a building.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You must be hallucinating, Kenny,’ I said. ‘There’s no buildings around here.’ ‘Skipper,’ he said, ‘I’m sure there’s a building there.’ I said, ‘Ok. Let’s go and see if there is one.’ So we started walking. He told me where he could see it. Maybe his eyesight was sharper than mine but we kept walking. Sure enough there was a building there. As we got closer and there were lots of sheep around and it turned out that it was a shepherd and his wife. That that was their summer home and they had got probably hundreds of sheep. When we got there we saw at least three or four sheep dogs. And then what we thought was the hired man but it turned out later, I found out later that it was their son, and their name was Blenkinsopp. I could understand his wife but I could not understand [laughs] I could not understand and he actually when he saw us coming I guess whether he thought we were German airmen but he had, he had this pitchfork over his shoulder. I remember his wife, I could understand her, saying, ‘No,’ she said, ‘They’re Canadians.’ So they had this, this hut was stone wall but there was a, I don’t know whether it was a dirt floor or what it was. It seemed like a dirt floor but it was kind of solid. And then I remember looking up and they had bacon and hams hanging in a beam across there. I remember seeing chickens running around there and then we could smell bread. She’d just baked bread and she said in her accent, ‘I suppose you lads are hungry.’ We said, ‘Well, yes we are.’ So she made us some, cooked us some bacon and eggs, and she had some biscuits for us and I think she made us tea. And then the shepherd which we thought was a hired man, later it turned out to be his son he spoke to them and they had a horse and a cart and I saw him take off on this with this horse and cart. Just the son. And seemed a long time but about midnight an RAF van showed up and we got in the van and it took us to the Penrith. And when we got to the, it was the hospital and when we got there here the rest of the crew were there.
DE: Jolly good.
RG: And I, I have no idea how they, how they got there but they were all there. And the navigator apparently had, he had of all the sparsely populated area he’d landed on, he’d landed right on a stone wall. I don’t know whether it was part of Hadrian’s Wall or what it was but he’d landed on it. He landed on a wall and he had two fractures in his, in his upper vertebrae but he could still walk but that showed up after. And another one had a badly sprained ankle. But they were all alive. And then I guess they’d notified the, notified the station and later on during the day a Lancaster showed up and transported us back to Croft. But when I got my records from the War Records Branch in Ottawa I got this, that was after what they called the Access To Information Act. When it expired I think it was twenty five years after it expired, then you could request documentation. So I remember writing to the War Records Branch in Ottawa to get copies of my war records and I got an envelope and I’ve measured it. It’s twenty two inches long and it’s fourteen inches wide and over an inch thick. So when I looked, looked through that there were thirty five, they had two Boards of Enquiry. One in to the, in to why the bomb exploded even though the bomb switch was off and then of course was a large investigation over the crash on take-off because the very first thing they did was send the engine to the factory. And apparently when they took the engine apart there was no fuel in the fuel lines to the engine. So their conclusion was that the engine failed due to fuel starvation. Whether there was an air lock or what but that was their determination and, and then the, what else [pause] I’ve lost my train.
DE: It doesn’t matter. I just, so did you and your crew all get the little caterpillar badge for, for using your parachutes?
RH: Pardon?
DE: Did you get the little tiny caterpillar badge from the Irvin Parachute Company for, the little pin?
RH: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. Got that. Yeah.
DE: And do you know what happened to your aircraft after? After you managed to bale out.
[pause]
RH: That’s, that’s another story. In 1984 I went to, I went five times to Guinea Pig reunion at East Grinstead. Apparently, the English, they met every year. The Guinea Pigs that were remaining. Well, I say England. Britain now let’s say because they came from Wales and Scotland. And the Canadians, they formed their wing, because there were about seventy five Canadians that were treated there and I think there were enough Australians also to form a wing. But they were mostly British. They’d be a few maybe Poles or French and so on. But all together I think there were close to eight hundred treated at the, at the Burns Centre at East Grinstead and then we all became a member of the Guinea Pig Club. And that’s, that’s how it got its name. The plastic surgeon he was a New Zealander.
DE: McIndoe.
RH: Pardon?
DE: McIndoe.
RH: Yeah. That’s right. McIndoe. One morning he was going his rounds and they were, they had this Englishman in the bathtub in the saline bath because they’d discovered that the Battle of Britain ones that had baled out and landed in the Channel or the North Sea, that their burns were, that they healed quicker so it must be the salt water. So that’s how they treated them at East Grinstead. The first thing they did was put them in a saline bath. So the story goes that McIndoe poked his head around the door and said, ‘Good morning,’ and the Englishman in the bathtub, he said, ‘You know, sir,’ he said, ‘We’re just a bunch of bloody guinea pigs.’ And Sir Archibald McIndoe said, ‘Oh,’ he said ‘that’s interesting,’ he said, ‘We should form a club and call it the Guinea Pig Club.’ And that’s how it got its name. Because I think they’ve done a documentary on that.
DE: There’s books written and all sorts. Yeah. So, you were going to —
RH: Because I —
KA: Tell him about, he asked about when they found your plane.
RH: Oh yeah. That. Yeah.
KA: Right. Tell him about that.
RH: Yeah. I’m going to tell him about that. So, so in ’84 when I went to the, when I went to the reunion in East Grinstead there was a lady there from Carlisle and her brother, their name was Hutchinson. He was one of the very badly burned airmen and I think they were having a tea and she said to me, where, wanted to know where I came from and she wondered what station I was from and I told her then about the bale out. And she said, ‘Oh, well that’s, that’s not so far from Carlisle,’ she said, ‘Tell me the whole story,’ she said, ‘And I’m going to write it up and put it in the local paper.’ So she did that and then there was a business man there by the name of Peter [Connan] and he got interested in that story and took my address and wrote to me and said, ‘Well, the next time you come to England to visit your relatives,’ he said, ‘Come to Carlisle,’ he said, ‘And I’ll take you out to the crash site.’ He said, ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I’ve written two books now,’ he said, ‘And I’m on the third one.’ He said, ‘I’m researching aircraft that crashed within a hundred miles of Carlisle.’ But he said, ‘I have details of your crash and,’ he said, ‘I know where the aircraft is —’ For I don’t know how long it was but the RAF, the area where the plane crashed I think it was an earl that owned all the land and he wouldn’t let anyone near the aircraft unless they were from the, from the RAF. And so he took me as close as possible to where the, where the aircraft had had crashed. And he belonged to a Rotary Club and took me to one of their luncheons. And then about four years ago I got a letter from a fella by the name of Philip Smith who lived in Newcastle on Tyne and he said, “My friend and I,” he said, “We’re doing research on aircraft that crashed in the general area where —” he said, “I was born.” He said, “I came across your crash,” he said, “In my research,” He said, “Your plane crashed about forty miles from where I lived but —" he said, “I’ve moved now to Newcastle on Tyne,” he said, but he said, “I’ve been out to the, I’ve been out to crash site and,” he said, “There isn’t anything left,” he said, “As far as the plane goes. The scavengers they’ve taken everything.” Because I guess the earl sold [pause] I forget his name now. He sold the property. But he came to Canada to train and he was a Spitfire pilot. And I can’t, I can’t just, at the moment I can’t remember his name but he was an earl. And, so Philip Smith, he sent me pictures and he gave me the name of the, he’d been visiting the farmer and his wife and their, and at the moment I can’t think of the exact name of the town where they are but they’ve taken over. They’ve taken over the area or the farm where the aircraft crashed and it was in a boggy area and apparently it went almost straight down and the engines apparently are still in the bog. But of course there isn’t anything left now of the plane but the farmer’s wife, it’s not agricultural land, the grass is almost two feet high and they have cattle and sheep because it’s so hilly and there’s no, there’s no agricultural crops grown. And the farmer’s wife’s name is Edith, her husband’s name was Geoff Wilkinson and she went out in their quad. She said, ‘Philip has been out several times,’ she said, ‘So I decided one day I’m going to get on the quad and I’m going to go out and see what I can see,’ because all there is left is a crater but it’s covered over now with grass. But they took pictures of it and showed me exactly where the aircraft was and she said, ‘When I got there,’ she said, ‘I stuck my hand down rabbit holes,’ she said, ‘And I ended up with about thirteen or fourteen pieces,’ she said. ‘So I put them in a sack. I took them home and I laid them out on the kitchen table,’ she said, ‘And I took a picture of them,’ she said, ‘And I’m, I thought you might like to see them.’ [laughs] So, I’ve, I’ve got a picture there so I’m going to write to you and I’m going to send you one of those pictures.
DE: Oh smashing. Thank you.
RH: Because it’s interesting to see and then when on one of the visits that Philip Smith made out there he found, he found an article that there were numbers on it and he wanted to know if I knew where it came from. And I could see there were white numbers but there was a lot of mud and things caked on it. So I cleaned it up and I got out my pilot’s handbook and I looked. It looked like it might have been something to do with the fuel gauge so I looked at the engineer’s panel and I found that this, this, it was actually the shape of a, it was flat but it was indicating how much fuel was in a particular fuel tank because I got it cleaned up enough I could see all the white numbers and they corresponded with the numbers that when I, you know when they had them all numbered in the, in the Halifax handbook. I showed the engineer’s panel so I was able to write back to Philip and tell him that I’d been able to able to, able to identify it and I still have that. I’ve got it taped on there. So then when we got, when we got back to, when we got back to the, we got back to the, from, from the bale out about five days after that they told us that the powers that be thought that the crew should go to London, to the Central Medical Board to be examined. And of course when we got there we saw psychologists and psychiatrists and they were all wing commanders, I think. Coming from the farm I wasn’t that well versed with psychologists. I didn’t really know they existed. But we had some really interesting questions posed to us and I answered them the best I could. So to make a long story short we were there three days. When we got back to the station they called me there. The squadron commander called me in and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We got the results from your visit to the Medical Board.’ And he said that, ‘We’ve got good news and bad news for you,’ he said, ‘The good news,’ he said, ‘You and your rear gunner are still considered fit to fly but the rest of the crew they’re not fit to continue flying. So we’ve decided that even though they’ve only done seventeen trips we’ll give them credit for a tour. They’re entitled to the ops wing but then they’ll go back to Canada. But if you and your rear gunner want to join them you can also get credit for your tour.’ So, I gave Kenny the news. As I say he was the youngster in the crew and Kenny said, ‘Well, skipper. If the rest of the, if the rest of the fellas on the squadron know that we’re fit to fly and we don’t continue flying they’ll think we’re cowards.’ And I said, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ I said, ‘That would never do, Kenny.’ And at the time they were converting the squadron to Canadian built Lancasters, so the squadron commander, Wing Commander Mitchell, he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘If you and your rear gunner want to continue flying,’ he said, ‘We’ll give you a couple of hours flying with the Lancaster,’ he said, ‘And we can, no problem getting you a new crew,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a lot of orphan crew members around here.’ He said, ‘They’ve lost their crew. They were either in hospital or something, but they’re trying to finish their tour and they’re having a difficult time to get another flight.’ So he said, ‘We’ll soon get you a new crew.’ So my navigator had a very good friend named Abby Edwards. He came from near Toronto and he was a dentist. He was probably about my navigator’s age. He came to me and he said, well, at the time my nickname was Crash and he said, ‘Crash,’ he said, ‘I’ve got about six or seven trips left,’ he said, ‘Can I finish my tour with you?’ I said, ‘Abby, you know what my record is,’ I said, ‘You might never finish your tour if you fly with me.’ [laughs] He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I know your record,’ he said. He said, ‘Your crashes you were in,’ he said, ‘They weren’t your fault,’ he said, ’So, I’d like to finish my tour with you.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s fine.’ So he became my navigator and then they made up a crew for us. [pause] And then I still had Squadron Leader [Frankie Gulliver] for my flight commander and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Go and sit in that brand new Lancaster,’ he said, ‘And familiarise yourself with the, with all the controls,’ he said, ‘Not much different,’ he said, ‘From the Halifax,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘Sit there for a couple of hours,’ he said, ‘And then,’ he said, ‘We’ll do a couple of circuits and bumps.’ So I get, I can’t remember how long I sat there but I finally went back and I told him, I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think I’ve got a good idea where everything is.’ He said, ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘Get your crew,’ he said, ‘And we’ll do a couple of circuits.’ So I expected he would get in to the seat and fly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘You get in there,’ he said, ‘And you fly.’ He said, ‘I’ll just go with you for one circuit.’ So, I got in and I was really surprised at the way the Lancaster handled. It was, I just can’t describe it but it was so smooth on the controls and I made a reasonably good landing and he said, ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘Take your new crew,’ he said, ‘And go out to do some air to sea firing,’ he said, ‘And do a short cross country,’ he said, ‘And then you can come back,’ which we did. Then two days later we went on our first op.
DE: Ok. So you’ve, you’ve flown a couple of different Marks of Halifaxes and now you’re flying Lancasters. There’s, there’s lots of people —
RH: Yeah.
DE: That argue, you know which they liked best and which was best. What’s, what’s your opinion?
RH: Oh, the Lancaster was, it was, for me it was much smoother and easier to fly. But I also, I’ve read many books where it said those that had to bale out over enemy territory that more people found the Halifax easier to bale out of than the Lancaster. Just the way it was designed I guess.
DE: Yeah.
RH: Same as, same as the Mosquito but apparently it was very difficult to escape from too.
DE: But you, as a pilot you liked the Lancaster.
RH: I liked the Lancaster. But I will say this about [pause] like I flew the, I flew the Halifax with the Merlin inline engines and I did my tour with the, with the radial engines. With the Hercules radial engines. They were very powerful but they discovered that you know they were very hard on fuel, so you couldn’t carry as many bombs. Well, you could carry probably twenty three hundred gallons of petrol if your tanks were full but they used, they used a lot of fuel on take-off. So we didn’t have any difficulty over the target on the first trip but when we were getting, I’m not too sure how far we’d be from there but the wireless operator said, ‘Well, we’ve been diverted to Tuddenham and it’s equipped with FIDO.’ Oh my God, I thought, my first trip in a Lancaster and now I’ve got to land on FIDO. Well, number one, when I was sitting in the aircraft I never looked to see where the little box was to turn it on so that I could get the Morse Code signals.
DE: Oh, for the —
RH: To get myself lined up with the runway.
DE: For the BAT. The beam approach.
RH: Yeah. The beam approach training. And then when I finally found the box to turn it on I turned it on and then it had been over a year since I’d taken a course and I could not remember the signals. The signals to port were different than the starboard and they always told us, ‘If you get into an emergency don’t panic. If you panic you won’t think of anything.’ Well, I don’t know how long I sat, well sitting there, I was in the ruddy, somewhere within the circuit and I finally [pause] it came to me. I knew that one side was dit dit dit. The other was da da da. And I finally got, I remember crossing the beam twice in my circling I guess the aerodrome and then I finally got the signals figured out and got myself lined up with the runway and then of course you’re still in fog and I get down to seven hundred feet, a thousand feet, nine hundred feet and I thought egods where is that? Where is that runway? And about eight hundred feet you break through the fog because they’ve got this hundred octane fuel forced through these pipes eh with holes in and blazing away. There’s two walls of fire and I thought egods I’d better keep this damned aircraft between these walls of fire because I glanced out to my port side and I saw a Halifax blazing away. Now, to make a long story short I got the aircraft down and taxied over to where they were dozens of aircraft there. I don’t know how, you know how many were there but there were certainly a lot of aircraft. I think they had, if I remember correctly they only had about three stations equipped with FIDO. But this was Tuddenham. It was a large drome, equipped at Tuddenham and we stayed there. And then about 10 o’clock I think, the fog had cleared and then we, then we headed back home. I think it was two days later we went to, we went to Duisburg which had been bombed several times. And when we were on the bombing run, just started the bombing run we got hit with flak and it hit the port, the port inner engine but, there was a small fire but the engineer was able to extinguish the blaze but almost at the instant the mid-upper gunner yelled at me. He said, ‘Skipper, there’s a Halifax shooting at us. What’ll I do?’ ‘Are you sure?’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I can see the bugger.’ I said, ‘Well, shoot back at him then.’ And you know, I don’t know whether it was, it seemed like it was almost hailing, you could almost hear the bullets hitting the aircraft and then the firing stopped. And then we found out later that their guns had jammed but when they got back it was their first trip. We discovered that when they got back to the station they claimed they’d shot down an unidentified four engine German night fighter. Well, [laughs] as you know the Germans didn’t even have four engine bombers. I think they had Dorniers and Heinkels as their twin engines. I don’t recall them ever having a four engine bomber. But that’s what we turned out to be.
DE: Oh dear.
RH: An unidentified four engine German night fighter. So we got the bombs dropped and went to close the bomb doors and they didn’t close all the way. And of course I didn’t, I had no idea why they didn’t close. Then when we got into the circuit went to put down the, put down fifteen degrees of flaps, and then went to put down the undercarriage and we’d only got one wheel. And I remember flying the Halifax that there was, there was an air bottle there charged up to I think about twelve hundred pounds pressure to use that and the engineer knew where, where it was. Tried that. Couldn’t get the wheel down and then he said, ‘Skipper,’ he said, he said, ‘There’s a crank here somewhere,’ he said, ‘Maybe we can crank it down.’ I said, ‘Well, try cranking it then.’ Well, he couldn’t. Couldn’t get the wheel down. So I told the control tower. I said, ‘I’ve only got one wheel.’ And they said, ‘Stand by.’ And finally they came back and they said, ‘Well, you can’t land here on one wheel,’ they said, ‘The runway’s not long enough. We don’t know what’s going to happen to the aircraft after you land so —’ They said, ‘You’ll have to go to a crash drome.’ So, they said, ‘Stand-by.’ You know. They finally came back on and said, ‘You’ll have to go to Carnaby.’ Well, that was on the, you probably know where that is, that’s on the east coast and actually not that far from Hull where my relatives lived and we had enough fuel to get there. And when I was in the circuit I said to control tower, ‘Have you got any instructions how I can land this brand new Lancaster on one wheel?’ And there was silence. Came back and said, I forget what they called the, referred to me, not as skipper but I forget the word they used, ‘You’re the first one that’s tried landing on one wheel. We’ve had lots of belly landings,’ they said, ‘But we haven’t had one landing on one wheel.’ But they said, ‘We know that you’re going to ground loop so we’ve got three flare paths. We’ve got one with like,’ they were all hooded, of course. ‘We’ve got one to the right with red lights. We’ve got one in the centre with amber. And then we’ve got one at the port side with, with green.’ So they said, ‘We’re going to put you in the centre. We’re going to put you in the centre flare path.’ And this was right close to the North Sea and as I turned in one of the engines started to sputter so I knew that we were getting a bit short of fuel. So I came in probably a little bit higher and a little bit faster than normal but as soon as I touched down I suppose the weight from the aircraft was too much for the one oleo leg and it snapped off. And then the aircraft started to spin. I don’t really know how many, I don’t know how many times it actually did but we went right across the green flare path and we ended up, we ended up on the, on the grass. I’ve got several pictures there. It shows the Lancaster sitting on the grass. So this was still dark and when we went out, when it was daylight we went out to look at the aircraft and what had happened when they, when the Halifax started shooting at us all their bullets hit the hydraulic lines. It punctured the hydraulics and we slowly lost all the hydraulic fluid. But if they had been about three or four feet higher it would have killed the navigator, the wireless operator, they would probably have killed me, the rear gunner. Maybe the, maybe the mid-upper might have survived. But if they had been that much higher. So that’s how close it, how close it came. So, then we, we went to the, I don’t know how we got to the station in Hull but I said to the crew, I said, ‘I’ve got a cousin that works in an office not, not very far from the station,’ I said, ‘We’ve got, we’ve got an hour and a half to wait for the train to York and then we’ve got to change trains in York.’ I said, ‘I’m going to slip over to see if my cousin’s working.’ So I went to the office and there was a young lady there. She said, ‘Can I help you?’ And of course I’m in my flying gear. She said, ‘Can I help you, sir?’ And I said, ‘Yes. I’d like to speak to my cousin.’ ‘And who may that be?’ I said, ‘Mary Graham.’ ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll call Mary.’ So I still see my Cousin Mary and her eyes were that big and she said, ‘Oh, my God,’ she said, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve crashed again.’ [laughs]
DE: It must have been, it must have been quite good for you having family in Hull. So I guess you could go see them when you were on leave and things like that.
RH: Oh yeah because my dad never did get, like after he survived the First World War. He came out to Canada in 1912. Went back when they needed engineers and got married in 1917. Got I think about three or four days leave, and he never did get back. He lost, he actually lost two brothers in that war. Strange because they named me after both of them. Reg. Reg and Wilfred. And then when, when we [pause] had my little visit with Mary of course she went home and told her folks what had happened. And when we got, got to the station and got on the train and changed at, changed at York and then got back to the station. Then I think it was the next day Wing Commander Mitchell by this time, Group Captain Turnbull, he’d been transferred back to 6 Group Headquarters and I’m not sure if it was Northallerton or Harrogate, it was either one of those where 6 Group was located but he was transferred back to 6 Group Headquarters and Wing Commander Mitchell was put in charge of both squadrons. He was the station commander then in charge of all, and they brought in another wing commander from the RAF to take his, take over his place. And then Wing Commander Mitchell called me in to his office and he said, ‘Well, Crash,’ he said, ‘You’ve cheated the Grim Reaper four times,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling,’ he said, ‘That you’re not going to be lucky the fifth time,’ he said. ‘So we’re going to screen you,’ he said, ‘And you won’t be doing any more operations. But,’ he said, ‘If you like flying the Lancaster,’ he said, ‘They’re establishing a new special duty squadron over in Middleton St George,’ he said. ‘Not sure what you’ll be doing but,’ he said, ‘They’ll be making trips to France which is now clear of the Germans,’ he said. ‘So if you want to join that squadron,’ he said, ‘They have lots of room for you.’ So he said, ‘You can think about it for a few days.’ I thought about It, and I thought well I won’t be doing any more ops but I said. ‘Maybe my luck will run out,’ I said, ‘Even though I’m not on ops,’ I said, ‘Maybe something else will happen to me because,’ I said, ‘I seem to be jinxed.’ [laughs] So, I decided. Oh, I said, ‘Maybe I’d better get screened.’ So that was, that was the end of my flying career.
DE: So how many ops had you done at that point?
RH: Pardon me?
DE: How many ops had you done at that point?
RH: Nineteen.
DE: Nineteen. Ok. Thank you. Are you ok to carry on or would you like a wee break for a, for a little bit?
RH: No. I’m fine. I’ll have another drink of gin [laughs]
DE: Oh, you’re lucky [laughs] I’m on water.
RH: Yeah. I think I am too.
DE: Ok [laughs]
KA: Have you shown them the book?
RH: Eh?
KA: Have you shown the book?
RH: Oh. Can you see this book?
DE: I can see it says, “Flight.” If you lift it a bit higher. Ok.
RH: Ok. So that book that just came out recently and it was written by Deana Driver, and she once said there’s been, actually I should go back. She, she and her husband ran, she and her husband ran a printing business. Can you hear me?
DE: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
RH: And so she had [pause] I guess I have to go back to the Canadian Snowbirds. You’ve probably heard of them. Canada’s air demonstration team.
DE: We have the Red Arrows.
RH: Did you?
DE: Yeah. The RAF display team are called the Red Arrows. They’re stationed, well they practice over my house.
RH: Oh yeah.
DE: So yeah. Yeah.
RH: But anyway when they were formed they reactivated 431 Squadron. So then I’ve had a connection with them ever since and been to their station at Moose Jaw. That’s where they’re training NATO pilots. But then when, when the Governor General visited Saskatchewan in 2018 for her training as an astronaut she took some of her flying at Moose Jaw flying Harvards. So the Snowbirds said, well and she wanted to visit the station. They said, ‘Well, we’ll put on, we’ll put on a special show for you.’ And unbeknownst to me the fella in Saskatoon that had organised, he’d organised numerous air shows and there’s another photographer there. He had interviewed numerous veterans and done videos and they’d arranged, they’d arranged with the, with the Snowbird commander to make me an Honorary Snowbird. So after the air show I thought well we’ll be going back to Saskatoon. They said, ‘No. We’ve got a, you’d better stick around for a while because we’ve got something else to do.’ So then I saw people gathering around and people with cameras and much to my surprise the Governor General was there and the commanding officer and then they had a beautiful plaque and the Commanding Officer, Colonel French presented me with this plaque and made me an Honorary Snowbird. So I have a picture taken with the Governor General on my right and I’m in the centre and the Snowbird commander’s there and I’m standing right beside the Governor General and I thought, gee I wonder if I should put my arm around her [laughs] I suddenly thought well better not do that I said, because Prince Philip, he has to walk six blocks behind the Queen and the Governor General is representing the Queen. I said, you’d better, you’d better not do that [laughs] After they’d presented me she said, she had a bit of an accent and she said, ‘Oh, they tell me you used to fly the Lancasters.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘What were they like to fly?’ I said, ‘They were a lovely aircraft to fly.’ I said, ‘Your excellency, if you go to Trenton,’ I said, ‘There is one Lancaster that can fly and one in England,’ I said, ‘If you go to Trenton I’m sure they’ll let you fly the Lancaster.’ ‘Do you think so?’ [laughs] I said, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m sure they’d let you fly it.’ So I’ve often thought it was a good thing I didn’t try and put my arm around her. So where were we now? I got sidetracked.
DE: Yeah. You had just been screened so I guess it’s —
RH: Oh yeah.
DE: It’s, it’s from there and the voyage home I suppose.
RH: So then, well then of course I stayed around the station for a while. I went back to my aunt and uncle’s to, [pause] to say goodbye to them, and then went to Warrington. That’s where they all went to turn in their gear and so on. And when we, I was only there for one day and then it came [pause] oh I guess what you’d call a storm but anyway the weather turned really cold and all the pipes froze. They had hundreds of people there, and you had to return all your gear. And then they said, ‘Well, it’s going, everything is shut down because all the pipes are frozen. We can’t get anything done so where ever you came from you might as well go back.’ So I went back to Hull for another three or four days and said a second goodbye to my aunt and uncle. Then went back to Warrington. We had to turn in our helmets and flying boots, and I thought well I’m not going to turn everything in. If we didn’t turn in we had to pay for them. So I thought, well I survived four plane crashes I’m taking something home with me. So I took my flying boots. They said, ‘Where are your flying boots?’ Well I said, ‘I forgot.’ I said, ‘I left them with my aunt. I left with my aunt and uncle.’ They said, ‘Well, you’ll have to pay for them.’ So, ‘Ok. I’ll pay for them.’ And I often wish I’d kept my darned helmet, you know. Because when, over the years I’ve gone to numerous schools and so on and I often wish that, I used to take my flying boots to show them and that but I often wish I’d taken my helmet. But I didn’t. Then to make a long story short I, you remember my Buddy saying, ‘Well, you might meet Jean?’ Well, when we got to, when we got back to Canada I think it took us about another four, four and a half days but I got seasick. I never did going over but I got seasick. In the Irish Sea there was a bad storm and I was so sick. It’s the strangest feeling. I just wished the ruddy ship would sink I got so sick. Even though I’d survived the war. That’s how sick I felt. And I think we got, probably got tossed around. I don’t know how long. I was sick for about two days. Anyway, we got back to Canada. We landed at Lachine, Quebec and I wired my folks in Melville and told them at the farm, told them when I would, possibly when I would get there but I would let them know when I arrived at Melville because I’d decided I wasn’t stop at Ottawa because I didn’t know what I was going to say to Jean. I got cold feet. I’d never had to do such a thing so I figured she’d be upset and I phoned. I phoned, it was a Saturday afternoon and Jean wasn’t at home. Her sister Angela answered the phone. She said, ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Jean’s not here,’ she said, ‘But when will you be arriving in Ottawa?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, Angela,’ I said, ‘But I’ve wired my folks and I won’t have time to stop.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Jean’s going to be disappointed because she wants to talk to you about Buddy.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘But I won’t be able to stop.’ So I hung up the phone and it wasn’t long before a little voice said to me, ‘You know that’s pretty darned selfish of you. Your good friend, Buddy, he never even gets to the squadron and he’s killed in his last trip at Conversion Unit. The least you can do is go and see Jean.’ I wrestled around with it for at least an hour more and then I said, yeah, I guess I’d better go. So I phoned. I phoned back and Jean was home then and she answered the phone. She said, ‘Well, my sister told me that you weren’t going to be able to stop.’ And I said, ‘Well, I changed my mind, Jean,’ I said, I said, ‘I’m going, I am going to call.’ She said. When will you be arriving?’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s hundreds of airmen here and they us told it will be several days before they get everybody sorted out. All the trains.’ I said, ‘I’ll let you know when we’re going to arrive.’ I think it was three or four days before, before they got it sorted out and of course we had several stops before we got to Ottawa. We stopped at Montreal and other places. And then when we got to Ottawa this was a large station full of airmen getting greeted by families and so on and I’m sitting on my kit bag and my uncle had given me a nice leather case to bring my flying boots back. So I looked across and I saw two women and it looked like they were looking at a picture. I thought gosh, that might be Jean and her sister so I got my kitbag. It was heavy. Dragged it over there. And it was cold. It was the 28th of January ’45. And when I got closer I said, ‘Are you ladies looking for someone?’ They said, ‘Yeah. We’re looking for Flight Lieutenant Harrison.’ Oh, I said, ‘I’m a flight lieutenant. My name’s Harrison. Maybe you’re looking for me.’ So that’s how, that’s how I met Buddy’s Jean. And you know I often thought that he was always so emphatic when he’d say, ‘You never know. Some day you might meet her.’ And I often thought that then maybe he had a premonition that he wasn’t going to make it, eh? So anyway I was going to stay two days and I stayed four. Went back for holiday for ten days and that in ’45 and then the same in ’46. And December the 23rd ’46 we got married. And then my —
DE: Wonderful.
RH: My girls often say to me, ‘You know dad, if you hadn’t listened to that little voice we wouldn’t be here, would we?’ [laughs] I said, ‘No.’
DE: Yeah.
RH: But it’s a strange thing you know when, when I think about it and I should say too you know when I got back to the farm everything was quiet. It was like living in a different world and I, I thought then you know why didn’t I stay another year or so over there and join that special duties squadron because I understand that they were flying a lot of the prisoners of war back. Making trips and I’d often wished, but then I’d think well maybe I did the right thing because even though I wouldn’t be facing the enemy something else might have happened because my flying career was jinxed [laughs] But what really has bugged me and all through these years, my navigator and I were recommended for a DFC. And I know that because after the raid on Sterkrade when Croft lost eight aircraft on that raid, it was we were bombing a synthetic oil refinery and unbeknownst to, unbeknownst to the authorities the Germans had opened a night fighter ‘drome about thirty miles from Sterkrade. And we were attacked that night just after we left the target. We were attacked by a Messerschmitt 109 and my mid-upper gunner got credit for shooting him down. I think he was either inexperienced or I was just coming out of the corkscrew manoeuvre and my rear gunner saw him coming in. He missed us on his first run. He was coming in the second time and the rear gunner yelled at the mid-upper and told him where he was. The mid-upper gunner got a real good shot at him and that plane immediately went into a steep dive so he must have hit the pilot with his first burst. And then after the loss of those aircraft and they also, 431 also lost five aircraft on one night on raids to Hamburg. And they called me in and Frankie Goldman said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’re going to be a deputy flight commander,’ and I said, ‘Frankie,’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about office work, I said. I came from the farm,’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a clue what to do as a deputy flight commander.’ He said, ‘You’ll learn on the job just like I did.’ So I was about, I think I was only on the job about four or five days. One afternoon the phone rang about 2.30 and I was in A Flight, and I didn’t give my name, I remember saying, ‘A Flight.’ The other end of the line was, ‘This is Flight Lieutenant Nicholls. I’m the adjutant at Middleton St George and I’ve got recommendations on my desk for gongs for Flight Lieutenant Harrison and Flying Officer Philips.’ He said, ‘I’ve got all the information I need on Harrison,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘Before I send them up the line for a final approval,’ he said, ‘I need more information on Philips.’ I said, ‘Flight Lieutenant Nichols, this is Harrison speaking.’ I said, ‘The wing commander’s in his office. I’ll transfer your call.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘By all means do so.’ I transferred the call to the wing commander. That night in the mess Al was writing home to his new wife and I might have been dropping a line to my folks at the farm, or I’m not sure. Looking at the pilot’s, I always had my pilot’s handbook with me and that night I said to Al, ‘Oh, it looks like we’re going to get a gong.’ He said, ‘How do you know?’ I told him about the phone call. Well, to make a long story short after the, after the crew were screened and just before, I think it was after the first trip on the Lancasters I looked on the Daily Routine Orders and there were three airmen that got the DFC and one was my navigator Al Philips. And I had an idea right away why my name wasn’t there. Because after the bale out the group captain called me in. The flight commander said, ‘The old man wants to see you.’ So I went to see the group captain. He said, I saluted him, he said, ‘Sit down. I’ve got something for you to read.’ So he had an endorsement in my logbook. Said at the top “Carelessness.” The gist of it was that my navigator also had one in his book and the wireless op. “This pilot in conjunction with the navigator knew that aircraft from 6 Group were being diverted and should have known that he had, that he’d be able to land at Croft.” So he said, ‘I’m placing this in his logbook,’ he said ‘Due to carelessness.’ Well, if I had ever known that any aircraft from 6 Group were being diverted I would, I would never have gone.
DE: No. Of course not.
RH: You know. So I, that’s why I never received my DFC. But anyway —
DE: So you were, you were, you were talking about this time when you were attacked by night fighters. Did any of the aircraft you flew did you also have the, the mid-under gunner?
RH: No. They never did. And you know what I never realised. I think I don’t think the authorities knew for quite some time that the German radar, you know they had the two types. They had the type where they, and mostly the women operating these three radar stations and they used to zero in on individual aircraft. They would relay that information to a night fighter, tell them where the aircraft was and then he was to let them know when he could see the aircraft and then he would get underneath. They had cannons on those night fighters as well as machine guns. They would get underneath the aircraft and he would aim the cannon at the gas tanks. Yeah. And if they were on the way to the target he didn’t get too close because he didn’t know what, what the bomb load was. And they had a, I understand they had a special tip on their cartridge and when it hit the gas tank the whole aircraft would be a mass of flames. Because quite often you’d see a big orange ball in the sky and that meant that it had been attacked and hit by a night fighter. They were probably, some of them were probably incinerated. But then the other method they had what they called the lone wolf. Right. So they would just, they would know where the bomber, they would be directed to the bomber stream and then they would just be on their own then. Then when they spotted a bomber then they would, you know come in for the attack. [pause] But I think, I think the closest estimate that I have I think there were close to the figure of all the bombers that were lost about eighty percent of them were shot down by night fighters rather than flak. And have you ever, have you read the book called “The Red Line,” the raid on Hamburg?
DE: I’ve read —
RH: No. Nuremberg.
DE: I’ve read several books. Yeah. Yeah.
RH: Have you read that one?
DE: I’m thinking, I think it’s one of the ones behind me.
RH: Oh, it’s an interesting one. That’s the night they lost ninety five bombers over, and then lost eight in England. And the wind changed a hundred and eighty degrees and they overshot the target. Did hardly any damage to the target they got so lost. And at the very bottom of that book it said the most costly and bloodiest raid of the war.
DE: No. No. It was. But you were, you were on operations in ’44 weren’t you?
RH: Yes.
DE: So after that. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. That was before when they, yeah.
DE: So did you do a mixture of targets? Because I suppose some of those were in support of the Normandy campaign and in France as well as in Germany.
RH: Yeah, we did.
DE: You said you did —
RH: We did quite a few of them in France, you know. Before, before D-Day, and after D-Day. We were on the Falaise Gap one too. Where they bombed short. Oh God, I can remember everything was timed right down to the minute and that’s when the Marauders had been in early in the morning and, and they’d, they’d, but they bombed things in a quarry and then, then the Canadians and the Poles moved into the quarry and then there was still a lot of smoke and that in there, and they had inexperienced crews on that raid. And I could, I can still see that Halifax. It was a Halifax setting up to meet and open the bomb doors and I said to the navigator, ‘How much farther have we got to go?’ And he said, ‘We’ve got about almost three minutes. We’ve got at least two and a half minutes. Why?’ I said, ‘Well, there’s a Halifax right up on my port,’ I said, ‘I can see all the bombs. I can see all the numbers on the bombs,’ I said, ‘And he’d got its bomb doors open.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’re not there yet,’ he said. I said, ‘Well, they’re —’ and I said, ‘I’m going to pull away from this because he was almost over my wings.’ And shortly after that the bomb, he let the bomb load go and then when that happened and we were bombing on yellow TIs that day and they sent a Lysander up firing off yellow cartridges to stop the bombing. I think it ended up with, it was either nine or thirteen bombers dropped their bombs short. Killed quite a few Canadians and Poles. And then when we got back to the station there was a message. All pilots, navigators and bomb aimers report immediately to the briefing room. And then of course they, they developed the pictures and we could tell quite easily the ones that had bombed short. But they should never ever have sent because the only escape route there was for the Germans to the east because the Americans were there to the west and then the Canadians and the British and the only escape route that the Germans had was the east. And I, it was a sultry day and a hot day and I remember looking out and there were, there were actually horses and that there. I suppose they were short of fuel that were pulling maybe some of their guns and that. But there were lorries and tanks. The whole countryside was littered with vehicles and trucks and tanks and streams of soldiers on the, on this escape route to the east. I’ll never forget that raid. So, that’s a few of the highlights of my, of my flying which I must say, Dan was entirely different than sitting behind six horses on the farm. And you know when I, there’s many a time when I look back and wonder how I ever, how I ever did it. Eh? Because when on the farm I knew very little about the big wide world. And then when you got over there every day was different. You learned something every day. It was just almost as if you were picked up and dropped on another planet or something. Life was so different.
DE: So did it change you?
RH: I think that it, I think it changed me in many ways. I think during that, for well the eight months I took the pre-enlistment course, I think during those four and a half years I think, I know I learned more about life in many aspects than I would have at any other time in my life. And I think what bothered me more than anything and I never realised it at the time that all the fellas that I trained with at all the different stations and different stops they made, Ground Schools and Flying Schools never thought that just over half of those fellas never came home because the loss rate in Bomber Command was fifty five percent. Somewhere between fifty five and fifty six percent. And I know for a fact, that for a fact because I had a picture taken just the day after we got our wings and there are four of us in there and I’m the only one that came back. There were thirty, thirty two I think got their wings that day and seventeen never came home. So that’s what it averaged out to. And you know, I often think when on Remembrance Days the thought occurred to me that for most people Remembrance Day was just a day in their life, eh. But for families that lost loved ones they had many Remembrance Days throughout the course of the year when the loved one that they lost had a birthday.
DE: Yeah.
RH: Or Christmas, or Easter or other occasions. And most people, you know they, they just have no idea. I’ve always said that there’s no glory in war. War is hell. More so for civilians than really the military. The military at least have, they have some opportunity to shoot back or that, but the civilians don’t and when you think of the millions that died in the Second World War. It was the First World War too. But I heard so many horror stories from my dad about the First World War that I was never going to join the Army and I didn’t like the water so [laughs] I think the only, the only place left for me is go in in the air.
DE: Yeah. There’s so many people like you, I think have said the same thing, ‘I don’t want to be in the trenches like the, like the infantry.’ And yeah. One chap said, ‘I can’t swim so I’ll join the air force.’
RH: That’s exactly how I felt [laughs]
DE: Yeah.
RH: Yeah. I think about the First World War. I never realised until reading the Legion Magazine probably a few months ago the number of horses and mules that were lost in that war, eh? Something like two hundred and seventy thousand. I often wonder how they ever fed them. But I also never realised that Canada sent several shiploads of horses over there, and those ships wouldn’t be really fitted for transporting horses and I understand they sent veterinarians with them but a lot of the horses were dead before they got there.
DE: Yeah. And some would have been, some would have gone down because they would have been torpedoed as well so —
RH: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
RH: Yeah.
DE: So, just, you know really quickly what, what did you do after you got married? You didn’t work on the farm then.
RH: Well, that’s interesting because I hadn’t, like I didn’t, I really didn’t like farming. I had allergies and working harvest time, and the grain dust and that it used to bother me and I never really, to be truthful I never really wanted to farm. So when, after I’d been home I got discharged in April. I think April the 14th ‘45. I had to go to Winnipeg. Get discharged. Then when I got back I thought well I’ll go to the university. Maybe I’ll take a course in agriculture. So I went. I saw the, I had an appointment with the Dean of Agriculture and he said, ‘Well, Harrison,’ he said, ‘We’ve got over two hundred, most of them ex-Air Force and some Army,’ he said. ‘They’re all going to graduate,’ he said, ‘And I don’t know. I’m sure there’s not enough jobs for them,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what they’re going to do,’ he said. ‘You told me that you had an application in for the Public Service and you could have an opportunity to go to work for the Veterans Land Administration which would be settling veterans on farms. So —’ he said, ‘If I were you I think you should take that job,’ he said, ‘Because I’m sure that all these fellas that are going to graduate from agriculture there’s not going to be enough jobs for them so —’ I took his advice, started to work for the Veterans Land Administration. Not only did they settle veterans on farms they also built houses for them and then if you didn’t want to farm or didn’t want to build a house they also had what they called Re-establishment Credit. You got seven dollars a day for every day you served in Canada and fifteen dollars a day for every day you were overseas, and then you could use that for buying furniture and so on. So that’s how I used mine. But I think the Federal, the Canadian Government, I think they had one of the best, one of the best programmes for veterans that came home from war. So that, then I worked then for the veterans. I worked from November ’45 in Regina until, when I got back from, from marrying Jean they called me in the office. They said, ‘Well, we’ve got good news for you. Oh,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a, have I got a promotion?’ ‘No. We’re going to transfer you to Saskatoon. To the District Office. You’ll have the same, get the same salary as here.’ So I started working in Saskatoon in January ’47 and retired in 1984. So I probably worked for the Veteran Land Administration for thirty eight and a half years. I started near the bottom of the ladder when I was one of the younger ones and kept my eyes and ears open. And a lot of them had university degrees but I worked my way up the ladder and when I retired my job was Regional Director for the Far Western Provinces so I often thought well I probably just as well there as if I’d gone to university.
DE: Yeah. Probably did.
RH: So, I just, I think those, for the times that I spent in the Air Force I think in many ways the times they were the most exciting. Sometimes the most interesting and I have to admit sometimes they were a bit scary. So I have, I guess you could say I had mixed feelings about the war but overall for me they were favourable because I was just, it was just luck I guess that I survived some of those plane crashes because they weren’t normal.
DE: No. No. Quite.
RH: Plane crashes.
DE: Yeah. Your nickname was well deserved I think.
RH: Yeah.
DE: So, we’ve been talking. Well, you’ve been talking and I’ve been listening for well over two hours so I’m quite happy to end there. Just there’s, there’s a couple of other questions that I always ask before I end an interview and, you know the first one is there any other story that you have in mind that you can think of that you’d like to tell before we, before we wind this up?
RH: I just wanted to ask you when, when Kevin goes back to my place when he has time and takes pictures like when you walk into my place I have a hallway. I’ve got lots of pictures of, of aeroplanes and so on, but in 1944 the Canadian press went around to all the Canadian bomber stations and they took pictures. You may have seen them but they, they were, oh here’s a book. They took pictures of, of all the squadrons and there you can see them. You can see them all standing on the top of the Halifax. And —
DE: Yeah.
RH: So that shows how much, how strong those things were built, eh?
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
RH: Because now when you get on an airliner the first thing they see is, ‘Don’t step here.’ [laughs]
DE: Yes. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. So, so what, what I plan to do is I’m going to, I’m going to get your address from, get Kevin to give me your address and then I’m going to, I’m going to send you a copy of this. This article was written by a, by a Mr Gray and I met him at a, at a Allied Air Force reunion in Toronto in September 1990 and he was a retired High School teacher, also a former RCAF pilot and he had a, there was another teacher there too, a High School teacher who also a pilot. So when they had a going away luncheon on the Sunday he noticed my Caterpillar and my Guinea Pig Badge. He wanted to know how I got those and I told him the rest of my story and he said, ‘Did you ever write a book?’ I said, ‘No. I never considered myself a writer.’ And apparently he, he liked to write and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Would you mind if I wrote up your story?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I’ve got all my documentations. Copies of all my records.’ I said, ‘They came in an envelope,’ I said. I measured it. It was twenty two inches long. It was fourteen inches wide and well over an inch thick.
DE: Yeah.
RH: So I said —
DE: Well, I would —
RH: I said, ‘Thirty pages,’ I said. ‘Thirty five pages in the, in the Board of Enquiry into the crash on take-off,’ I said, so —
DE: Yeah. Well, I mean anything you could send like that would be absolutely wonderful and I’ll have a chat with Kevin about how we can get copies of photographs and things.
RH: Yeah. So what I, what I’ll do when I, when I go back to the offices, go back to the offices, there’s the endorsement. So I’ll send you a copy of that.
DE: That would be fantastic. I think we’ll stop the recording but we’ll keep chatting for a little bit longer.
RH: Ok. Yeah. I’ll get one of those books too and send it to you. As they say, ta ta. Ta ta for now, love [laughs]
KA: We’re done.
RH: We’re done.
KA: Good job, Reg. Holy smokes man. You talked for a long time.
RH: Too long, eh?
Other: Ok. Here. I’ll stop 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 Reg Harrison
Interview with Reginald Wilfred Harrison
Creator
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Dan Ellin
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
2021-02-27
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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02:21:35 Audio Recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisonRW210227, PHarrisonRW2103
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
England--Northumberland
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Warwickshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Hull
Manitoba--Virden
Ontario--Ottawa
Saskatchewan--Regina
Saskatchewan--Yorkton
Ontario
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942-11-11
1943-04
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Harrison grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan and enjoyed watching aircraft when they flew over. He had his first flight as a youngster when he was lent five dollars by a shopkeeper. He volunteered for aircrew as soon as he was of age and began his training as a pilot. He had four crashes which earned him the nickname, Crash. The first incident took place while he was on his second dickie trip and the aircraft crashed. He and another member of the crew then heard the pilot shouting for help and returned to get him out of the aircraft. Reg sustained burns and was treated at East Grinstead Hospital. On their thirteenth trip his rear gunner was worried and suggested they call this trip 12A rather than thirteen. They crashed on take-off. On another occasion he and the crew had to bale out over England. Again, on another occasion while on an operation they came under fire from a Halifax who had mistaken them for a German aircraft. They just managed to get the stricken aircraft back and crashed at RAF Carnaby.
When he had leave, Reg would often go and visit his family who lived near Hull. He completed nineteen operations before he was screened, as his Wing Commander felt that he had been lucky too many times and might not be so lucky the next time. Reg has always been mindful of the loss rate in Bomber Command. He has a photograph taken a day after he got his wings. Of the four airmen in the picture he was the only one who returned home.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Steph Jackson
431 Squadron
434 Squadron
6 Group
aircrew
bombing
Caterpillar Club
crash
crewing up
FIDO
Guinea Pig Club
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
love and romance
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Carnaby
RAF Croft
RAF Dishforth
RAF Gamston
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/237/3381/PCooperJ1602.1.jpg
6f8734ad672efbc8cddbda087ea8bff8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/237/3381/ACooperJ160727.2.mp3
edac21553fa5ecd239dc7b655036871d
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
Cooper, John
John Cooper
J Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with John Cooper (b. 1924, 1827988 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
2016-07-27
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Cooper, J
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM.This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is David Meanwell the interviewee is John Cooper. The interview is taking place at Mr Coopers home in Sandhurst in Berkshire on the twenty seventh of July 2016. Now John perhaps you could tell me a little about where you were born and your early life.
JC. Alright well, I was born at Sheringham and I lived there for ten years and then we moved to Aylsham just half way between Sheringham and Norfolk and when I left the Grammar School at North Walsham I went into the bank for about a year and eh by that time eh the war was on and I went up to Norwich and volunteered for Aircrew and they put me eh down as under training, PNB which is Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer and eh I think about nine months later I eh think it was I was, I was called, I went into the Air Force in October 1943. I did my eh Initial Training Wing at Aberystwyth and I then went to eh Cliffe Pypard to do my grading school and if I can remember rightly I was one out of eight I think it was out of the fifty who were told we were going for Pilot training. Eh a lot of the eh others went as Bomb Aimers because with the bigger aeroplanes coming in there was quite a demand for them. I had to wait quite a long time before anything turned up, I was at Heaton Park at Manchester, the Aircrew Reception Centre for roughly nine months, waiting around to go to the next stage of training but eventually to my delight I went up to Greenock where we went on the Queen Mary and off we went to eh New York. From New York we then went on a train up to New Brunswick in Canada and eh to be kitted out because we found we were going to a flying school at Miami, we thought marvellous. Miami nice warm sunshine, lots of girls marvellous, but it was Miami, Oklahoma right in the middle of America as far from the sea as you could possibly get in any direction and eh anyway we spent about four days on the train going to Miami and eh that was to Number Three British Flying Training School. It was so hot, it really was but it was really nice. Our course, our school had eh PT19 Cornells as a primary trainer, all the others had eh Steermans but our school had, had PT19s. We did about seventy or eighty hours on those and then eh we started on the Harvard and eh almost near the end of the Harvard course the eh the Atom Bombs had been dropped on Japan and suddenly without warning the school closed. We had about ten hours to go I think to eh, we done some of the flying tests, we had done some of the wings exams. We were about an ace from graduating and the Americans said, “what a pity that we got to stop, couldn’t we just carry on those few extra days?” but no we couldn’t. So we were very downhearted about that and eventually we went back to New York by train, had about a weeks leave there and came home on the Aquitania back to the UK. We landed at Southampton and we went up to Morecambe which was a holding unit and nobody really seemed to know what to do with us and eh [unreadable] we were sent to and eh that was a hive of activity with thousands of redundant aircrew and us as well and cadets who hadn’t graduated. We had to wait around there for weeks and weeks and weeks and we were given the choice of signing on for three years in the Air Force and finishing our training if we wanted to do that or probably waiting for a couple of years for our demob number to come up. So I opted to stay in the Air Force and went to Church Lawford eventually and eh joined a course half way through because we had already done a couple of hundred hours flying you see, and eh so we graduated from there. Having done that we still had to wait around for the next op, because at that time with all the redundancies and this that and the other the Air Force wasn’t sure what to do with all those people. But eventually I went to Finningley to eh a Wellington School and did a course on the, on the Wellington. And eh by this time it was nineteen eh, oh I can’t remember oh about nineteen forty seven I suppose. From there I went to Lindholme to eh the OCU Lancaster OCU and eh and trained on the Lancaster which was lovely getting my hands on, it really was. Having done that I was eh posted to 101 Squadron at Binbrook, they didn’t have the Lancaster they got rid of theirs and they got the Lincoln which of course was the bigger version as you probably know. The engines were bigger, the wing span was about twenty foot bigger altogether a bigger aeroplane but it was much the same inside. And then so I, I started out I was a Sergeant Pilot then and eh. The crewing up at Lindholme, just going back a bit, the way of doing it, we were just shoved in a room with assorted eh categories and told to sort yourself out into a Crew. Which eventually we did and eh, and eh Binbrook here we come “I will just stop for a minute.” I joined 101 Squadron at Binbrook in nineteen forty eight incredibly over five years since I first joined the Air Force. About four and a half years since I joined ACRC. No fault of mine then eh, but we operated just as it had been during the war going round Europe, lots of practise bombing, we used to go to Helgoland to drop my bombs and eh and cross countries. Sort of things we did, I remember one day we, we did a long cross country over, into the North Atlantic and we decided to make Rockall our target, you know that tiny little island in the middle of nowhere and we got there. It is the tip of a volcano I think and eh I flew around the thing and I couldn’t believe it my Navigator didn’t even come out and have a look at it. I just couldn’t understand that, it’s strange really. But eh we went to Egypt in October of eh, of eh that year to Shallufa for a months training. During that visit I was one of a pair that flew down to Khartoum for a couple of nights, so I dropped my first four thousand pound Cookie part of a ten thousand pound bomb load on the range which I think woke the whole city up really. Coming back again I, I, we landed at Castleton Heath there the same as we had done going out to there and I had to land at Isteris near Marseilles with and engine snag and I was there for about four days before coming back to Lyneham. I happen to, to the customs as we were going back to Binbrook on November the Fifth fireworks night. So I took the liberty of going back to Binbrook at fairly low level watching all the fireworks on the way up. In November the Squadron was given a new task on top of everything else, the Bomber Command Meteorological Flight it meant all out aircraft had to have special instruments fitted plus an additional crew member, a Met Observer, he was usually a retrained a redundant Pilot and we eh had about twelve special routes around the British Isles, mainly over the Atlantic, South West approaches to gather met data to be transmitted to the, to the Air Ministry. I did the first one the Squadron was called on to do, it meant being called at Oh five hundred hours and me getting in touch. I was still a Sergeant Pilot and I had to contact One Group to be briefed on the days route and then with the Navigator and Met Observer getting everything organised for a take off at eight o clock on the dot we made a game of that, on the dot. The first one was out over the Atlantic, heights varied from a hundred feet to eighteen thousand feet, doing box climbs and descents. The second one I did on the eighth of December nineteen forty eight was a bit more interesting. As usual eight o clock take off from Binbrook but just off Hartland Point the port engine, port inner engine which meant a return to base at Binbrook. I was a bit cross when I was told I would have to take the reserve aircraft, instead of the relief crew who of course hadn’t been briefed but orders are orders as they say, so of we went and eh and we spent about thirteen hours in the air that day. At least the whole crew and I got a special commendation for that from the AOC of Number One Group. Em they were called Pamper those eh, those weather flights, I, I flew twenty one of them all together by the time we had them. They made life interesting in a way because they were often flown through really lousey weather regardless having got airbourne at eight o clock having, without having any idea where you might finish up on the day and eh and sometimes we were the only aircraft in the Air Force airborne as far as we could make out, apart from the other met flight place, in Northern Ireland, what do you call it, I forget what it is called now eh. On my fifteenth Pamper there was a special for the next day because eh a couple of the Squadrons were going out to Egypt for some sort of exercise. We had to go into the Bay of Biscay to check up on, on the weather and eh we had a lightning strike climbing up through the innocuous little cloud. There was a great big bang which blew an enormous hole in one wing tip and also blew the radios including the intercom and the Wireless Op was transmitting directly to the Air Ministry at the time. I suppose he is lucky not to have been hurt when the trailing aerial blew. When we wound it in there was only about twelve feet out of two hundred and fifty feet of it left. Anyway eh I diverted into Bordeaux it was a bit of an excuse to go into France you know and we went in I went in there, not on the radio two hours later and so I taxied in. [Pause] Right well eh I think I said I had passed it all to the UK. Apparently a general alert had been put out because of the abrupt stoppage of the message due to the lightning strike. We were able to get the aircraft fixed overnight. There were half a dozen French Navy Lancasters there and they had common equipment with us even one of two [unreadable] radio crystals. I eh paid Heligoland for night position nineteen fortynine[unreadable] to drop maybe five hundred pound bombs plus incendiary clusters and we also started doing quite a bit of formation flying that mid summer. I used to fly in the number three position that’s on the left hand side of the Leader. To [unreadable] Newcastle, the daily express joke, Gatwick, the AOCs departure, Birmingham, Battle of Britain fly past and eh that was the day we did a low level beat up of twenty one airfields that day, that was really hard, hard work. Really tight over the airfield and open up a little bit, just have a slight rest and get in tight again. I got a lovely photograph that I can show you over Odiham that day. My Brother saw it on the Aldershot News and then he wrote to them and they sent that for a couple of coppers which was really nice. A week later something quite nasty happened. I was one of about thirty Lincolns approaching Newark Power Station on a, on a night exercise when two of them in front of me collided and eh they sort of burst into flames and crashed with no survivors at all and I and several others switched on our navigation lights and suddenly the sky was ablaze with lights. They all switched off, I think it probably felt safer in the dark I, I had the job of taking some camera men around to take some air to ground photographs the next day of the crash site, not very nice. Eh in December nineteen forty nine the World was changing. Our aircraft used for Pamper flights were fitted with lots of filters on the nose and on the fourth of December I was called to do a series of special Pampers. The aircraft were fitted with two four hundred gallon tanks in the bomb bay giving a total fuel capacity of four thousand four hundred gallons. My brief was to fly as far North as possible before turning back, nobody told me why at the time. I found out much later it was thought that the Russians had exploded an Atomic Bomb and that was the reason for the filters. So much for my family prospects. [laugh]. That Sunday morning again at eight o clock I roared across the hangers and domestic site at very low level just to wake everybody up as we flew away and off we went. The target was Jan Mayen Island the one above the Arctic Circle. The fuel was measured carefully on the way North to ensure that there would always be enough to get back to base. We saw Jan Mayen below us visually and on the H2S Radar so the plotted winds must have been ok and could be used on the way home. Also there was enough fuel in the aircraft, there was a good reserve of margin. It was decided to route via the Faroes on the way back, it was marginally further, they would provide a good check point. About one hours from starting south what appeared to be a coast line showed on the H2S on the starboard side which I thought was rather odd. Then after about an other hour what looked like heavy clouds from a distance began to look like mountains which indeed they were. They were certainly not the Faroes because I had seen them on earlier Pampers and we realised later on that the coastline had been the edge of the Greenland Ice Cap. Using Consul help to navigate was not good because due to an oxygen lack I was down to about ten thousand feed and the Wop could not raise any stations as we were in some sort of a radio mush. I thought it was Iceland and tried calling Reykyavick on 121.5 the Emergency Frequency but to no avail. I told the Navigator that I was turning onto a South Easterly heading, if it was Iceland we would be heading roughly towards Scotland, if not then who knows. Roughly one hour later we crossed a coastland from land to sea, which suggested Iceland. By this time the two bomb bay tanks had long been used up. My Flight Engineer was monitoring the fuel and getting the revs down as far as he dared to maximise our range and the airspeed lowered by about thirty knots. At last the Wop managed to contact Number One Group, told them of our plight and they arranged for the Royal Naval Air Station at Lossiemouth to open up especially for us. That is if we could reach them because it was a Sunday as I had previously said. We crossed into North West Scotland on a lovely clear night by then but we were all freezing cold having sat in temperatures of around minus forty degrees, minus forty centigrade is not the same as minus forty Fahrenheit so that was about seventy two degrees of frost at least. I did manage to land at Lossiemouth after two attempts in a heavy snow shower and fourteen hours in the air. When the aircraft was checked the next day before refuelling, the form seven hundred the aircraft log, said no measurable fuel in the aircraft. Back at Binbrook the next day the Wingco flying Hamish Mahaddie talked to me about it and the Nav section went into a big hudle and came to the conclusion that we must have run into a Jetstream which in those days nobody heard very much of. Anyway five days later I did another one and turned round at the Faroes because eh we didn’t have to go so far. I diverted into Middleton St George on that. On the sixteenth another one returned from fifty seven north having jettisoned six hundred gallons of fuel. The final twenty first Pamper to the Faroes and back on the twentieth of December. I certainly had my share of cold weather operations and the forth of December nineteen forty nine as certainly a day for me to remember ever more. Anyway I went from a freezing December to a red hot February nineteen fifty I spent that month again in Shallufa, Egypt staging both there and back by Castle Benetto, did a lot of fighter affil and air to air gunnery. Some air to ground gunnery, very low level and dropped some five hundred pound bombs on the target we had at Habbaniya, Iraq and back to the UK. It was the same old routine apart from a lot of formation flying fly past at Woodford, Number One Group Headquarters over Bawtry. The Kings birthday flypast over Buckingham Palace on the eighth of June. My very last time flying a Lincoln in the leading vic of sixty aircraft over Farnborough for the RAF display on the seventh of July. All together I flew eight hundred and eighty hours on Lancs and Lincolns but eh I was pleased to finish on a high note. Mind you not only was it was announced in the London Gazette that I had been awarded the Air Force Medal but I was also on my way to the OCTU at Kirton Lindsey so eh, and I was commissioned on my twenty first birthday which caused a lot of who, ha when filling in forms, “you put the same date, have you done it right?”[laugh]. I had applied to go to the Central Flying School on an Instructors course but after OCTU I was posted to Marham to the B29 they called them the Washington in the RAF but two weeks into the intensive Ground School came a big dilemma for me. The chance to go to CFS came up and I was given twenty four hours to decide. I plumped for CFS I was posted to Oakington in Cambridgeshire about twenty hours refresher flying on the Harvard and started on the CFS course at Little Rissington on the twenty eighth of December although the snow was thick on the ground. A really intensive course especially the class room theory and once or twice I thought have I done the right thing having given up the B29 for this. I flew about ninety hours just learning to be an Instructor, quite a lot of that time with a fellow student practicing the patter. There were thirty of us on the course I was pleased to finish with five others, I think it was five with a B1 category. The rest passed out with a B2 and I was posted to 3 FTS in Norfolk and eh so I went up there in a lovely old white SS Jaguar with another guy who was posted there. I left my motor bike at, at, at Rissie at CFS and went back for it later. It was quite nice to be back in our home county again but it turned out I did do the right thing because a young WAAF Officer turned up in the Mess one day and mine were two of many eyes that followed her round the room. Em We got married actually on the eighteenth of March nineteen fifty three and we lived in a caravan near Methwold our satellite airfield, there were no married quarters for newly weds. And eh the flying was quite intense, there were four students at the beginning of each course and before going solo on the Harvard each student has to do four periods of stalling and spinning apart from general handling and circuits and bumps which meant for me at least forty, four forty five minutes sorties each day for the first two or three weeks. But eh this gradually changed, the students went solo, you know sort of fifty fifty and eh that went on for about five months I suppose. Formation flying, instrument flying, aerobatics, low flying, gunnery, night flying, you name it we did it. And em after five months it all started again with a new course and eh there was occasionally the odd diversion. RAF Lakenheath eh was only five miles from Feltwell. I once, I remember when the eh large American eh B36s were there. I had the chance to low down, low run down the runway out of a GCA approach and eh and have a really good look at them really.
DM. Did you have any frightening moments with your students, did they ever put the wind up you?
JC. I suppose one or two things but you never really thought anything of it really, yes. With a student you had to let them correct their mistakes if they possibly could. It’s no good grabbing it and doing, sometimes if they were having a job getting out of the spin or something like that you had to stick it as long as you could, telling them or encouraging them to get out of the, but you had to watch it like a hawk. It was really interesting I really enjoyed that, yeah. I used to take my wife sometimes in the Harvard she was, she was in the WAAF of course. In formation flying she used to sometimes come along in. in the back, yeah. I did, what? about eleven hundred hours in the couple of years I was at Feltwell. Em eight hundred and eighty of them amazing same figure as the earlier one isn’t it, but it is right, eight hundred and eighty of instructional hours and I was upgraded to an A2 Category. Towards the end of my time there I didn’t have eh so many students of my own, I often had to do a lot of check rides on them. Often we were washing them out and I didn’t like having to do that very much. You know it, it’s I know it sounds daft but it is a bit upsetting in a way to, to see these lads suddenly to be told they are scrubbed. Anyway in August nineteen fifty three I was posted to eh Number 6 FTS eh at Tern Hill in Shropshire to start the very first course on the, the eh Piston Provost which was of course our new side by side trainer. Eh, before collecting our new aeroplanes from the Percival Factory at Luton which was a grass airfield in those days. I spent the first month on the Harvard helping to acclimatise newly graduated Pilots from Canada which is the English way of operating in particular coping with our weather. I should have heeded my own words because one day four of us were taken by Harvard to Luton to collect our brand new Provosts. We were all quite experienced, there was quite a bit of flying between us. A cold front was coming down the Country which we had to fly through going back to Tern Hill. All four aircraft were non radio, ‘cause they didn’t have the right crystals but we all wanted to get back so we set off in a loose gaggle and then we the rain and boy oh boy was it heavy. Everything sort of disappeared, the ground, the other aeroplanes you know. Nobody could talk to us, we were non radio and so I found the A5 I think it was, it may have been the A6 below me showing up, quite low really. I stuck over the road, at least there were no tall masts or whatever over the middle of the road and about, I don’t know, twenty minutes later we flew out of the, out of the rain and you could see for thousands of miles. A beautiful, I looked round for the other guys and we jiggle around one or two sort of in different positions from what we had been in. Anyway we all, all got back to Tern Hill and when we got on the ground we all looked at each other and thought “silly beggars,” you know. But there was nothing, all married you know and it was one of those silly things I thought “fools really” but em, but em. There used to be an article in the Aeroplane called I learned about flying from that and eh. It may have been in Flight magazine I can’t remember and that episode would have been my contribution really. Anyway doing my time at Tern Hill I managed to get a month at 12 FTS Weston [unreadable] to fly the Meteor for about fourteen hours which was quite nice and eh going in that up to about sort of forty thousand feet and that was quite a different world really, it was great fun. Then em I volunteered for something, they wanted a Flight Commander at 61 Group Con Flight at Kenley. You had to be a Flight Lieutenant, an A2 Instructor, a front rating examiner and I filled the bill on all three counts and there was I only got about six months left before joining the RAF, before leaving the RAF. I applied and was accepted. The Flight had three Ansons two Oxfords, three Austers, six Chipmunks and the Anson 12s, mainly for flying ATC Cadets around and the Anson 19 was for the AOC to be ferried around in. The Austers were for instrument checks on young Army Officers for the fairly new Army Air Corps in these days of course.The Chipmunks were for the use of mainly Senior Officers at Air Ministry to keep their currency to do Instrument Ratings with me. I was able to fly all over the country including one trip to Balne near Cologne in Germany in the Anson. My first instrument rating test technically was on Air Vice Marshall Mclvoy he practised on the Anson for a week, did a good test and eh, not like some of the Air Ministry Bods who just want to come and have a little go. And eh But eh all things, all good things come to an end I left the RAF in nineteen fifty five to start a new career having flown roughly three thousand hours. “I’m taking a lot from this of course but cutting a lot out.” Right I became an Air Traffic Control Officer in eh nineteen fifty six with a lengthy course at the Air Training College at Hurn Airport. I served initially at Croydon and then at Black Bush and eh, well in those days all, all your ATCOs Civil Air ATCOs were all Pilots or eh Navigators and sort of working with kindred spirits which was quite nice. After a year I was posted to the Southern Air Traffic Centre on the North Side of Heathrow and after a three year gap I got airbourne again in the jump seat of a Viscount to Copenhagen and to also one in Paris. I did a Radar course at Hurn, I em also got a Cockpit flight in a DC6 from Blackbush and a chance to fly the Decca Navigator from Croydon and also on their Ambassador from Heathrow on a Decca Demo flight. I spent another twenty five years as an ATCO at eh Southern Centre at Heathrow and later at West Drayton and during that time I flew in the cockpit of many different types of airliner. Different airlines all over Europe and the Middle East visiting other Air Traffic agencies including a cockpit ride in a Trans World 747 to eh, to Long Island, New York to the Air Traffic Centre there which was nice. I also had a supersonic flight in Concorde as it was being worked by the RAF up to fifty five thousand feet and Mach 2.2 over the North Sea and down to land on the inaugural Edinburgh Shuttle, super Shuttle and I just had to pay a normal fare for that, fifty five pounds I think it was. [laugh]. Another rather special flight in nineteen seventy seven I was in a Sandringham Flying Boat from Calshot and the Captain of that with reputed forty thousand flying hours, was named Blair, he was the husband em of the film actress Maureen O’Hara. He was later killed in one of his own aeroplanes, a Goose crash landed in the sea and had an engine failure. I can’t remember when it was, but all of the passengers survived that and he was killed yeah a bit unfortunate. But anyway in nineteen sixty two when the trial of the air experience flights were performed by the RAF I applied to join but it was far too late because most of the Auxiliary Air Force guys had switched over when that was closed down. 6 AEF at White Waltham had a waiting list of fifty odd people and I was told that my only real chance to fly was as supernumary pilot if I was commissioned in the RAF VR Training Branch. So I joined the local Air Training Corp at Camberley as a Civilian Instructor and after about two years a vacancy arose and I was commissioned as a Flying Officer in the eh the VR Training Branch. That was amusing I had to be interviewed by the eh girl out of the Camberley Council to see if I was a suitable chap to be commissioned in the VR having been commissioned, so I thought that was rather amusing having been commissioned. Anyway em the day after my commission came through In fact the next day I was knocking on the door of 6 AEF COs Office again and I was accepted and began flying in a Chipmunk usually two hour sorties with four cadets and I had the best of both worlds of course, a job I liked and eh being able to fly the cadets at weekends and CCF cadets on weekdays more or less. Little did I know, did I put that I would be flying them around till nineteen eighty nine, nineteen eighty nine. I usually did an Eastern and Summer Camp at various RAF Stations and often managed to get my hands on various other types usually jets and some helicopters. My very first supersonic flight before Concord was in a two seat Hunter T7 and at Brawdy one of my ex students from Feltwell was CO of the Hawk Squadron so that was really good for me. 6 AEF moved to Abingdon in September nineteen seventy three, I did a Summer Camp at Odiham in the summer of nineteen seventy four and running it was an old chum of mine from my course at Miami Oklahoma he was a Squadron Leader then he was the boss of No 2 AEF at Hamble and he suggested I would move, I would like to move there em, despite it being a much longer journey I, I did so after another camp at West Raynham where, where incidentally I flew in a Canberra in a low level exercise over the North Sea, we just missed eh a Luftwaffe Phantom [laugh] after about a fortnight at Hamble I was made deputy Flight Commander which meant I was paid as a Flight Lieutenant which was good em. We used to go and fly the cadets at Herne, Goodwood, Lea on Sollent, Benbridge and Sandown on the Isle of Wight and it was just nice. Er one day just after take off at Shoreham the engine blew up just as I was crossing the beach at eight hundred feet. I done the fastest one hundred and eighty turn in history and managed to force land at Shoreham at eh, at eh Shoreham and one of the pots had eh blown completely. In early December nineteen eighty the AEF moved to Hurn so it was now a hundred and sixty mile round trip from home eh but eh that was really good and I stayed at Hurn well until I, I finished with the RAF. I eh most of my Summer Camps over the years were at Coltishall close to where I used to live in Aylesham. On two or three occasions young Squadron Pilots came up to me at various places saying “ are you John Cooper? I remember you, I flew with you when I was a cadet” which was quite nice to be remembered like that, yeah. And eh, eh I remember one day em at St Mawgan in Cornwall, I used to camp in nineteen eighty five, I happened to mention on the third trip of the four I was going t do, I would be flying my five thousandth cadet and eh after landing on the third trip I was told by AirTraffic to taxi in and switch of because the Station Commander wanted to see me. I thought “goodness what have I been up to” Anyway the Airman who marshalled me in was wearing huge, six foot five rubber gloves, you remember Kenny Everett the kind he used to wear, marshalling me in wearing those and I thought “that is a bit odd” As I climbed out of the aeroplane, the Chipmunk, the Group Captain and a few others walked over smiling with a tray and a bottle of champagne and some glasses to celebrate the occasion [laugh]. I was sorry I could not fly again that day because of the drinking and eh in nineteen eighty six we done a Summer Camp with the AEF at Wildenrath in Germany, I bumped into eh this friend of mine Norman Geery who I trained with in America who had been this Flight Commander and he was, he was, he had retired from the AEF he was working as a Staff Officer, so eh. I, I flew over seven thousand cadets so eh in one hundred and ten different Chipmunks you know, that’s quite a lot really isn’t it? And I, I did about three thousand seven hundred hours in the Chipmunk and not too bad for a eh spare time. The one with my name stencilled on the side, eh WK630 I did one hundred and fifty hours in that one aeroplane and it is based up a little airfield in Norfolk again about five or six miles from where I used to live. I’ve met, I’ve met the owner in fact I met them a couple of months ago as well or the new owners, Shuttleworth when they had the seventieth anniversary of the Chipmunk. So eh who knows I might get a ride in that. I had visited my old Flying School in Miami, Oklahoma in nineteen eighty two we had a reunion there, the first one which was quite nice and eh we also had on in ninety seven, nineteen eighty seven and Frances came to me to that one so that was eh. I met my old Instructor on that one and he was living in Tulsa in Oklahoma. And eh so Frances and I went to see him and he said I was the first of his he had ever met since, since the end of the war yeah, so he was quite an old boy by then but that was very nice, yeah. I’ve kept my flying license going for quite a long time now after that, I had a share in a Cessna 172 at Black Bush and used to take the family occasionally and this that and the other and eh, I done what, six thousand nine hundred hours roughly in all sorts of different what about forty five different types but eh it’s slowed down now. My license has expired now but I had a real of on eh, on the I don’t know, this might be of interest, on the twenty ninth of June two thousand and three I was with a friend of mine in his Chipmunk on a three day rally organised by the Moth Club. There was a Tiger Moth taking part and I met the owner, told him his very same one that I had first flown at Grayingham School on the 14th of April nineteen forty four. He gave me a flight in his aeroplane on the 14th of April two thousand and four exactly sixty years to the very day that I first flew it. Now if you go forward ten years and again on the 14th of April two thousand fourteen exactly seventy days to the very day I first flew it, I flew it again. That’s a bit unusual isn’t it? Yeah, yeah and he said, he said well I haven’t booked in for the next ten, we will start with five[laugh] I shall be a bit creaky by then, yeah. So really that’s my, my.
DM. When did you, going right back to the beginning, why did you decide to join the Air Force as opposed to going into another branch of the Forces?
JC. Never entered my head, never entered my head well you see I didn’t really mention this, when the eh Air Training Corps started in nineteen forty one a flight of it was formed in Aylesham near where I lived and the CO was the local Headmaster and eh I was one of the founder members and eh I used to keep a log of all the aeroplanes I seen flying over the top of it and eh. I’ve got here there were Spitfires, Hurricanes, Aerocobras, Typhoons there were twin engined Whirlwinds which were quite rare and the Bombers going out in the darkness, Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys at that stage and the Blenheims at Alton airfield about three miles away. When we, when we got our uniforms you see, I, I was made the first NCO of the Flight with the lofty rank of Corporal and eh one, one Sunday I cycled to Alton Airfield two miles away with a friend of mine also in the ATC, somehow we talked ourselves, talked ourselves into a flight, into a flight in a Lockheed Hudson for thirty five minutes you see. That was the first of March nineteen forty two. And from there on nothing else seemed to matter, every Sunday practically I used to cycle to various airfields to cadge flights. On May forty two on the third, tenth, seventeenth and thirty first I had flights in the Bostons’ of 88 Squadron at Athellridge, Athellridge after the war became home to the Mathews Turkey Organisation [Laugh] em. I flew mostly in the rear gun position in the Boston. One day I was in the nose doing about two hundred and sixty knots across the airfield about fifty feet, really exciting. So it went on like that until nineteen forty two in Bostons in June, July, August I flew in them. I had a flight in a Beaufighter at Alton and I had to stand by a door just behind the Pilot.Summer camp at Coltishall an Oxford, a Domini and a real one off the gun turret of a Boulton Paul Defiant which eh that was a really good one. Eh, the Bostons disappeared from Athellridge So I turned my attention to Matlass a little grass airfield, satellite of Coltishall about seven miles from Aylesham, in those days security seemed almost non existent, just rolled up in our uniforms to go flying. I did practically every weekend in Miles Magisters to do aerobatics and in a Hawk [unreadable] to do drogue towing for Spitfires mostly also in Lysanders also towing for Spitfires as things were. Whirlwinds, the Beaufighter and then the Bostons turned up again at Alton two miles from home. It was game on again and eh when they disappeared 21 Squadron Venturas turned up and eh they were. Incidentally when the Bostons were there I was on the Airfield on the day of Operation Oyster that was the famous raid on eh on the Phillips works at Eindhoven. I was standing on the airfield watching the Wingco flying there with Pele Fry coming in, belly land his Boston on the grass, great holes in it and that eh. And then when the em, oh, by now it was obvious the war had been going on for some time, I went to the recruiting centre in Norwich and put my name down for Aircrew which I think I mentioned at the beginning of this thing. I was asked if I would like to join as a Wop or Airgunner then I could get into the aeroplane, Air Force more quickly and then I could remuster. But I said no “I really want to be a Pilot” so that was em, that was em nine months deferred service, started before I was actually called up. In the meantime I still went, used to go flying in a Mitchell in February, March at Folsham Airfield and I also flew in a Lancaster MK 11 there the one with the radial engines which was a bit different. Eh and when the Venturas’ turned up at 21 at eh Alton I flew with them practically every Sunday in nineteen forty three, formation flying, fighter afill, practise bombing. So based at quite a famous building Brickley Hall it was a National Trust place, that was where the, that was where the Officers, Officers Mess there it was really quite grand for them, but the grounds are still open. My Mother often used to walk to Brickley it was only a mile and a half from home. One Sunday she say a Ventura go whizzing across the lake and eh she said, I remember her saying “I could read the letters on the side” I said “ what were they” She said “I can’t remember I think they were such and such” I said “they were because I was in it” [laugh] Yes I had one, not near, I wasn’t in it be eh 21 Squadron had one or two Mitchells for conversion purposes, I had a flight with the Flight Commander doing a liaison thing with the Home Guard. I was going to fly in another one all day, walking out and the same Flight Commander changed his mind saying as a new crew I could go on a later trip. And I am jolly glad he did say that because, I watched the aeroplane taxi out and take of but it was only just airborne and went through the far hedge and hit a Ventura on the other side on dispersal and never got above a hundred feet and about a mile away it crashed and there was only one survivor from that. So I am very glad he, he stopped me going on that. So my long deferred service ended on the eight of November nineteen forty three when I was called up and went to Lords Cricket Ground with thousands of others and eh. I am saying all this part [laugh] Yeah [pause] I was at ACRC for longer than the usual months indoctrination to get in the RAF. Of course in the rush to get down the stairs one day from the top of a block of flats we were in in St Johns Wood I was knocked over and got Concussion and woke up in the Sick Quarters of Abbey Lodge in Regents Park. I was recoursed but eventually went to eventually went to No 6 ITW in Aberystwyth in, in nineteen forty four. Em the usual pretty tough course because of terrible weather the eh winter time we were pretty soaked all the time. There was one soaking I really hated, one day we marched up the hill to the University swimming baths where we were dressed in full RAF flying kit, including boots, helmet, may west, parachute had to climb up to the top board and eh jump in the water and eh somehow clamber into a dinghy yeah. But I didn’t like that.
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PCooperJ1602
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Interview with John Cooper
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01:01:45 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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David Meanwell
Date
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2016-07-27
Description
An account of the resource
Mr Cooper joined the Royal Air Force in October 1943 and trained in the United States. The war in Europe was over by the time he returned to England. He remained in the Royal Air Force until he retired as a Flight Commander and became an Air Traffic Control Officer.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
Canada
United States
England--Lincolnshire
Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean--Rockall Bank
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1943
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Hugh Donnelly
101 Squadron
3 BFTS
aircrew
British Flying Training School Program
Cornell
Harvard
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
pilot
RAF Binbrook
RAF Feltwell
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Methwold
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/797/10779/ADeanJEH170913.1.mp3
6f47adb3b5809113563fa431fe9e92f6
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Title
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Dean, John Eric Hatherly
J E H Dean
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Dean DFC (1922, 173978 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 77 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-13
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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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Dean, JEH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is John Dean. The interview is taking place in Mr Dean’s home in Westerham in Kent on the 13th of September 2017. Ok, John if you could perhaps tell me where and when you were born and a bit about your early life.
JD: Yeah. Well, I was born at Edmonton in North London in 1922 which means that I’m ninety four. Ninety five next birthday. And I grew up mainly in London but my family moved out when I was about twelve and we went to, to live in Middlesex. And I remember on the morning of the 15th of August 1940 standing outside the house where I lived with my parents and watching a German aircraft which I think was an FW190 being pursued by a Spitfire. This was in, coming from North London and the FW190 had smoke coming out of its engines and obviously the Spitfire had [coughs] had shot it down. It was pursuing it until it crashed. And from that moment on I decided I wanted to be a Spitfire pilot. And as I was just over eighteen I was able to go to the RAF recruiting office in London and I joined up. I joined up on the 1st of November 1940 when I was eighteen years and four days, four days, five days old. So that was my introduction to the Air Force. Unfortunately, I didn’t achieve my ambition of becoming a Spitfire pilot because although I did elementary and basic flying training on, on Tiger Moths and later on Harvards I met my Waterloo on Harvards because I developed this annoying habit of landing the aircraft about thirty feet above the runway. So [laughs] they took me off Harvards and sent me to a navigation school in, in Canada in fact which was quite interesting and I did my training there and came back, and I was, ultimately found myself in Bomber Command with 77 Squadron.
DM: When, when you went to Canada you went by ship I assume.
JD: Yes. Sure.
DM: Was that sort of eventful or was it an easy, an easy trip?
JD: Well, only eventful to the extent that it was very uncomfortable because we went out in a very small Dutch vessel called the Volendam. And it was only about, I don’t know twenty five thousand tonnes or so. A very small ship and there were masses of us crowded in this small ship. And for most it took fourteen days to cross the Atlantic, and most of the time we were in a violent storm and the number of people who were sick on each other. I can remember it, you know with some horror really. But on the way back we came back on the Queen Mary which was then a troop ship and that did the trip in three and a half days so that wasn’t too bad. Yes.
DM: Whereabouts in Canada did you train?
JD: Well, we went eventually, initially to a place called Saskatchewan. Swift Current in Saskatchewan and we went by train from Halifax and that took, as far as I can recall it took about four days to get to, to Swift Current which was then a tiny hamlet but today I gather its quite a rather large township. And there I did some flying training on, on Harvards, and as I say my training came to an end and I then went back. Was transferred to a place called Chatham in New Brunswick to do my navigation training.
DM: So you came back to the UK. Trained as a navigator. So, I suppose the next thing, was it crewing up that happened next?
JD: Yeah. We went to [pause] it was either 1652 or 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit at, it was either Marston Moor or Lisset. I can’t remember precisely and there I got crewed up with an Australian pilot called [Gallant Lee] and he had already acquired all the other crew members and it was, it was the flight engineer who approached me asking me if I was looking for crew. So I said yes and that’s how, you know I met my crew. And as soon as that happened of course we were posted off to, to 77 Squadron and we did half our tour with Bill [Gallant Lee] at Elvington.
DM: What type of aircraft were you flying?
JD: Halifaxes. We started off in the early Halifaxes with inline engines. The Merlins. And of course they were very much underpowered. Anyway, we did half the tour with Bill [Gallant Lee] the Australian and then he was grounded with sinus trouble. So, we were then transferred back to I think it was 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit which was then Marston Moor to find another pilot which we did. And he was a South African. A flight lieutenant called Smiler Welch. And he was called Smiler because he was never seen to smile. Typical RAF humour, you know. So we got back to the squadron with Smiler Welch, and he immediately became a flight commander which meant that we didn’t operate very often. Perhaps once every two or three weeks rather than every other night. So it meant that we took about six months to complete our tour. So all in all we were on the squadron for a year to complete a tour. Which was much longer than most people of course. Anyway, we, we were successful in completing our tour of thirty three ops which included six mine laying trips, which as you probably know was each mine laying trip was counted as a half. And then that took us up to July or, yeah July or August 1944 and at the end of my tour I was transferred back to Marston Moor as an instructor. And that lasted for about six months until about December 1944, or January of forty, no. It must have been a bit later because we were posted. Oh, incidentally yes I acquired a new crew at Marston Moor and at the end of the six months training we were posted to India. And we were all packed up ready to go when the war ended fortunately. So we didn’t go to India. So I stayed on. I forgot to mention at the end of my training my crew and I were transferred to Transport Command and we stayed on in Transport Command until I left the RAF in 1947.
DM: So we go back to I suppose really you could say that your operation, your thirty flights or more because you did some mine laying flights was sort of split into two halves with two different pilots.
JD: Yeah.
DM: As you said the chap who had the problem with his sinuses and then the South African. Were they both similar in their outlook or —
JD: Completely different.
DM: Right.
JD: Yeah. Bill [Gallant Lee], he took a violent dislike to me when we met [laughs] He used to refer to me as, ‘That bloody pommie,’ you know [laughs] And anyway eventually we settled our differences and got on extremely well. And I liked Bill. He was a very straight talking Australian as most, most Australians are and he died, oh it must be about ten or fifteen years ago and I was very sorry to hear that. Yeah. Completely different to Welch. He was a very, what’s the word I’m looking for? He never said very much and —
DM: Taciturn, I suppose.
JD: Gave the impression he was terribly unhappy with life generally, you know. And whereas my flight engineer, unfortunately he died two years ago he kept in touch very closely with Bill [Gallant Lee] in Australia and actually visited him. With Smiler Welch he, at the end of the war he disappeared from our orbit and we never heard from him again. And I don’t know whether he’s still alive or not. I did try to find out some years ago by writing to somebody in South Africa. There’s an organisation which is connected to the RAF but they had never heard of him. Anyway, so that was Welch. A completely different cup of tea.
DM: Have you any particular memories from operations? Any close calls? Any sort of particular horrors, or —
JD: During our tour?
DM: Yes.
JD: Well, yes I mean it is extraordinary. I’ve always, I still think this, I thought it for some time. I think it’s extraordinary how in the midst of such horror going on with aircraft being shot down and being, catching fire and so on we virtually sailed through our thirty three ops with hardly a scratch. I did think there were a number of people who experienced the same thing, but there were one or two incidents where we came very close to meeting our doom as it were. One was a case where we were bombed by another aircraft and this was on a daylight raid. Not a daylight raid. A night raid to a place called Lens which was a big, big marshalling yard in France and it was so important that the Pathfinders had lit up the place with their flares so when we got there it was just like daylight and there were about three hundred and fifty aircraft converging on this place, Lens. And as we were doing our bombing run the flight engineer, Derek who was standing up next to the pilot and on the Halifax there was an astrodome immediately above where the engineer worked. He looked up and he said, he said, ‘There’s an aircraft right above us.’ And then there was a pause of a few seconds and he said, ‘There’s a bomb coming down.’ And a few seconds later it hit the aircraft and came in to the Halifax. Well, we were a bit, well to say a bit scary was probably an understatement but we just waited for this damned thing to explode but it didn’t. And then after about a minute or so the pilot said to the engineer, ‘Derek, go back and see what it is.’ And he undid his, his intercom and went back and then a few seconds later he came back on and said, he said, ‘I’ve got the bomb. It’s a twelve pound oil bomb.’ And by that time the, the aircraft that that had dropped it had moved off but Derek knew sufficiently enough, enough about aircraft to identify it as being a Stirling. And then there was a debate in the aircraft I remember. Half the crew wanted to take the damned thing back, the bomb. And the other half wanted to get rid of it.
DM: Which half were you with?
JD: What?
DM: Which side were you on?
JD: I wanted to keep it actually [laughs] and then the pilot intervened and said, ‘Enough of this bloody nonsense. Get rid of it.’ And so Derek got rid of it. So that was a very close call because I gather that there were untold instances of aircraft being bombed but nobody lived to tell the story. But we were probably very lucky. And then we had one or two encounters with, with night fighters which was a bit scary and on one occasion we were very severely hit by an anti-aircraft shell which completely disabled all our electrics. It didn’t interfere with the flying ability of the aircraft strangely enough. The engines kept working. But it meant that when we got back to UK we had no means of communicating with the ground and at the same time we, I was operating a navigational aid called Gee. You’ve probably heard of it. And that didn’t work, and it was still very dark when we got back to the UK and none of us had a bloody clue as to what, where we were. So we were stooging around UK looking for somewhere to land and then we saw this runway lit up and so we just went, went in and landed and of course we were unable to tell the people who we were so they started firing at us with, [laughs] well, I suppose it must have been some sort of cannon or something. Fortunately, they were very bad shots. Anyway, we landed and we couldn’t open the hatch to get out because this anti-aircraft shell had damaged the door so they had to, the people, the people on the ground had to go off and get a long piece of wood and smash the door in. So, and then we found out that we’d landed at a, what was it called? [pause] What was the name of the training unit before an HCU?
DM: Oh.
JD: It’s something like an Initial Training Unit or something.
DM: Yes. Yes.
JD: Anyway, it was, it was Silverstone which later became, you know the motor racing place, and they were training crews for Bomber Command using Wellingtons. So that, you know what was a nice ending to the story too. Again, what could have been quite a nasty ending because we were lucky to find an aircraft. I think we had about ten minutes petrol left when we landed. Yeah. So one or two quite narrow escapes, but from which we, we emerged successfully as it were.
DM: Was that the only time you got lost or did you have other — ?
JD: No [laughs] To my everlasting and undying shame we got completely lost on my first operation which was to Mannheim. And Mannheim is, let me see, it is, it is northwest of Berlin and it is situated between Berlin and the north coast of Germany. Up near [pause] I can’t, it’s, it’s sort of in the Lubeck, Lubeck area, where the coast is. And the route planners took us up north of, of the northern coast over the North Sea so that to give the impression to the Germans we were heading for Berlin, and then about fifty miles short of Lubeck we had to turn a sharp right and approach Mannheim from the north. Well, somehow and I don’t know how it was I turned right about twenty miles west of Lubeck instead of fifty. No. The other way around. Sorry. We turned right which is what we should have done so that it took us down to the west of Mannheim, and I remember the flight engineer saying after we’d flown, after we’d turned right for about an hour or so the flight engineer saying, he said, ‘It’s very strange,’ he said, There’s a big, big fire on our, on our port side.’ He said, ‘I wonder what that is.’ So I had a look at my chart and then I realised I’d made a gigantic error. So I said to, it was still Bill [Gallant Lee] then, I said, ‘Bill, I’m dreadfully sorry. I’ve made a complete cockup,’ I said, ‘We’ve turned too early.’ And I said, ‘Mannheim is on our left.’ And he said, ‘Ok.’ So he turned the aircraft to the left and we, instead of approaching Mannheim from the north we were on the west side of Mannheim and we were meeting aircraft coming out of Mannheim having dropped their bombs. So, again it was rather a perilous thing to do but we did it. We went back and dropped our bombs on Mannheim and managed to get through. So when I can, you know I think it was an example of the guardian angels looking after us really. But when I got back we had to, I had to discuss, you know the trip with the squadron navigation officer which was the usual thing and he looked at me and he said, ‘John, you are bloody lucky aren’t you to be here?’ And he was right actually. But that was the only time I got lost I think.
DM: When you were training navigators after your, you know, when you went to the HCU to be trainer was that mainly ground based or was there a lot of flying?
JD: On the contrary, no. We, most of the time we spent in the air. This was at Chatham, in New Brunswick. Most of the time we were flying Ansons and you know, the training at Brunswick I do recall was very exhaustive, and we were trained by Canadian instructors and they were very, very good and passionate about the job they were doing, you know. And we spent, I can’t remember exactly I’d have to refer to my logbook, but we spent a great number of flying hours in Ansons training and one of the things we did was to take, we did quite a lot of training on aerial photography. And somewhere in the house here I’ve got quite a lot of photos of, taken from Ansons. A very slow, sort of noisy aircraft but very interesting.
DM: When you were a trainer so, because you did some training between your tours I think, didn’t you?
JD: Yeah. Well, I was with [pause] I did my, yeah I was an instructor at I think it was 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit and of course there we flew again. I think it was Wellingtons. I can’t remember. But my job was to, again mainly in the air. I did very little instructing on the ground. I used to go up with trainee navigators as part of their training to observe what they were doing and to correct them if I thought they were doing anything wrong. So I did quite a lot flying there.
DM: Where were you based when you were doing that?
JD: I think that was Marston Moor. I should have got my logbook with me but I think that that would tell me. But I think it was Marston Moor. Quite near York. A celebrated historical place, of course.
DM: Indeed.
JD: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. So, I assume that included night exercises as well as daytime flying.
JD: Sorry, the —
DM: Night exercises as well as daytime when you were assessing the navigators.
JD: Oh yes. Sure.
DM: Was that, did you feel safe? Or —
JD: Well, yes because [pause] did I feel safe? Well, I suppose I did [laughs] Yes. I mean we were using, we were using Gee and whereas Gee was jammed over, over Europe, in Britain it wasn’t of course and it was an excellent navigation aid that I recall. So we were never lost at all. So I felt you know completely confident that we’d get back all right.
DM: So then you were supposedly going to go to India but as you say that didn’t happen because the war ended. And then, but you were in Transport Command.
JD: Yes. We were. After the war we were transferred from Elvington in Yorkshire to a place called Stradishall in, in Suffolk and that was about twenty five miles south of Bury St Edmunds. And Stradishall Aerodrome was a peacetime RAF base so that all the buildings were pre-war RAF buildings, including the officers mess because by that time I’d been commissioned. And whereas previously in, at Elvington we had to bunk down in in Nissen huts at Stradishall we had posh buildings and rooms to ourselves you know. So that was quite a step up in the social world as it were. Yeah. And the aerodrome of course was right next to Stradishall village. A tiny village. About two or three hundred people and it was there, of course I met my wife and got married.
DM: So, she was a local girl was she?
JD: Yeah. She was the wife of the local vicar so, and I met her in a pub dare it be said. Yeah. So, that was Stradishall and we operated out of Stradishall flying a variety of aircraft including the York which was the model, the civilian version of the Lancaster. And the York was the first aircraft where we were allowed to smoke. In Halifaxes and I understand Lancasters and certainly Wellingtons it was absolutely taboo to smoke in aircraft. Unlike the Americans where they used to issue out cigars if you wanted them I gather. But in the York I don’t know why but we were allowed to smoke. Most of us did smoke then of course so that we did. But we used [pause] yes. Smoke. Sorry, Yorks and Stirlings, and the Stirlings were found to be not very stable aircraft, and there were a number of crashes both her in the UK and also enroute. And the route to India took us via Libya. That was the first stop. I remember that it took us ten hours from our base in Stradishall to get to the first bit. The first landing stage in Libya. So we were pretty worn out then, and then after we’d spent a night there and then the next stage was Cairo West which as the name indicates is west of Cairo and that only took about, about eight hours. Seven or eight hours. And then we went from Cairo West to Habbaniya or Habbaniya I’m not quite sure which is the right pronunciation, in Iraq which was an RAF base. A peacetime base. And we landed there for refuelling and then after a few hours we took off, and then we went through to Karachi which was the end of my journey. Although on one occasion we went down to Madras so the whole of that trip was of course very interesting. And I remember on one occasion we were going in to Habbaniya or Habbaniya in Iraq and there was some natives on the ground who started, who had rifles and they started firing at us. So the pilot said to ground control, he said, ‘What the hell’s happening?’ And the controller said, ‘Well, go around and disappear for a minute because we’ve got a little tribal war going on.’ And apparently in that area one tribe used to fight with another sort of every other Wednesday, you know, and that sort of thing. And when we appeared we were another choice target and fortunately they were very bad shots. Anyway, that was quite exciting.
DM: What sort of things were you carrying?
JD: Well, mainly war material but it was all boxed up so we didn’t, we didn’t know what it contained. We assumed it was things like guns and other stuff which, which couldn’t be left in India. And occasionally half a dozen people but not very many because the aircraft wasn’t really converted to carry passengers. It was mainly boxes and we never knew quite was in them. It could have been bombs I suppose but they never told us. Also we were able to, I remember on one occasion we were allowed to bring, I think it was one item which we brought locally in Karachi and most of the, most of my crew bought carpets so there were quite a large proportion of the air craft was taken up with carpets. Anyway, we got those through. Yes. Happy days.
DM: Did you used to fly things out to India or was it an empty aircraft?
JD: Sorry? No. As far as I recall we flew out empty. I can’t remember [pause] Yeah. I don’t think we took anything out. It was, we were just meant to bring things back. Quite why they used aircraft to do this I never found out because it would have been a damned sight cheaper to use, you know ships. I suspect that those boxes contained, you know what we would refer to as secret material of some kind but they never told us. Never told me anyway. I suppose the pilot knew. And in those days of course when you’re young you tend to accept things without question don’t you?
DM: That’s true.
JD: Which we did.
DM: So you were doing that for about two years.
JD: Yeah. Again, I’d have to refer to my logbook. Yeah. Actually, I’ve got the chronological times a bit wrong. I was transferred from Elvington, the squadron to Marston Moor as an instructor in July 1944 and that went on until December 19 — 1944. January. And then in January 1945 I’d forgotten to mention I was transferred from Marston Moor to [pause] to Stradishall. That’s right. I’m sorry. I think I said that I went from Elvington to Stradishall. That’s not the case. I went from Marston Moor to Stradishall where we were formed up as 51 Squadron and it was 51 Squadron who did all the flying to India. So, I hope you can make —
DM: Yeah.
JD: Sense of all that. And so we flew from India from, from [unclear] flew to India from Stradishall from about January 1945 to July ‘47. Just over two years.
DM: Did you volunteer for that or did you not have any choice?
JD: We were just told, you know.
DM: Right.
JD: There was no question of —
DM: Yeah. Yeah.
JD: Yeah. Well, they had to. I mean, now that it is all over of course one realises that Bomber Command HQ had to find somewhere to put all its aircrew, surviving aircrew you know so that they could become gainfully employed. And I suppose Transport Command was the obvious choice really. I mean I don’t know how many other members of 77 Squadron ended up in Transport Command. All that I know is that we were told to go there. We went.
DM: Could you have stayed on longer if you’d wanted to?
JD: Yes. I could and in fact that was my intention. I wanted to stay on in the RAF but my wife, well we got married fairly, fairly soon after we met really. Oh yes. It was at Stradishall on 51 Squadron after I’d got married there that we, I was posted, we were posted to India. And when I said, told my wife about this she said, ‘Do you really want to go?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And she said, ‘Well, I don’t want you to go either. What about coming out of the RAF?’ So, that was why I left really.
DM: Right. What did you do when you came out?
JD: Well, I spent some time trying to find out what I wanted to do and eventually came up with the, with the answer that I wanted to be a surveyor. And at that time the Royal Institution of Charted Surveyors which I wanted to become a member of had arranged training courses at various places and I applied for one and I got a training place. And this was at [pause] somewhere near Reading I think it was. I can’t remember. And that training lasted for about six months to give us a basic, a basic idea what a surveyor did and then the rest of the time in order to qualify I got a job at Ipswich where my wife was living and did home study to qualify. And that took me about three years and then eventually I sat their exams and did qualify and I became an Associate Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. But I then did, having qualified it sounds strange to say this but I found it very difficult to get a job, a paid job and this was because so many people had decided to travel this route because of this, the availability of this training. And the only job I could find was in Manchester and I went home and told my wife. She said, ‘I’m not going to Manchester.’ I said, ‘Well, what will we do?’ She said, ‘Well, we must find something else to do.’ And then I spoke to a colleague of mine who’d, he wasn’t . He didn’t train as a surveyor. He’d done something else. And he said, ‘Why don’t you write to — ’ he said, ‘I do know that they need surveyors abroad. Why don’t you write to the Colonial Office and ask them if they’ve got any vacancies?’ Which I did, and they wrote back. Well, I went up for an interview and they wrote back six weeks later and said, “Dear Mr Dean, we can offer you, thank you for coming for an interview. We can offer you a post in Hong Kong.” And I really wanted to go but my wife wasn’t very keen so I wrote back and said, “Well, thank you very much. Do you have anything a bit sort of a bit nearer? Say, like Africa?’ And they wrote back strangely enough and said yes and they offered me another job in Northern Rhodesia. So that’s where I went and I spent fifteen years there. Not as a surveyor. I went out, they said to me that the only job available at the time was as an administrator. So I went out as a, what was called a district officer and spent, you know fifteen years there. And that was quite good fun. Africa of course was, well I don’t know about today of course. It’s a bit, it’s a bit sort of full of guns and dictators but in our time of course it was very peaceful and the conditions of work were very good. We used to do a tour of three years and get six months leave and that sort of thing. Ostensibly, the six months leave was because of the unhealthy living conditions but where we were in Northern Rhodesia we found it extremely healthy but fortunately the authorities hadn’t caught up with that.
[telephone ringing – interview paused]
DM: So you came back, I suppose. Back to the UK.
JD: Yeah. Came back to the UK and I got a job as a, with a national training organisation where eventually I became a personnel manager and that, that lasted until about fifteen years when the training organisation I was with closed down. And so for the second. Oh yes. I was with, I was in Northern Rhodesia until it became independent. It became Zambia and I stayed on. It became, Northern Rhodesia became independent in October 1964 and I stayed on for a couple of years until, until ’64. Yeah. Until ‘66 ’67. And then I decided that it was time to retire and come back because there really wasn’t much future in Zambia for white civil servants quite naturally. So I came back and I managed to find a job as I say with this training organisation where I became personnel manager and that lasted for fifteen years until the organisation closed down. And then I became, I was very lucky because I was out of work for about two or three months which I found extremely boring. Then I don’t know quite how it happened but I managed to find a job as, as bursar to a school in Kent and that lasted until well past retiring age. So, again I was very lucky.
DM: Did you keep in touch with people from the Air Force?
JD: Yes. Well, I kept in touch with, I’d already said the pilot, by that time of course Bill [Gallant Lee] our first pilot had died and Smiler Welch, the second guy, pilot had just disappeared. But I kept in close touch with Derek Compton, my flight engineer and we used to meet up occasionally. He lived down in Dorset at Christchurch and he died about two years ago. I also met up with my wireless operator who lived in Liverpool and I did a trip up there to meet him. I got along with him extremely well. And I also met, I also met the rear gunner. Butch Sutton. He was called Butch because he was the son of a butcher you know. RAF term. The bomb aimer I didn’t keep in touch with because he lived in Scotland and the rear gunner [Kitch May] sorry, the mid-upper gunner [Kitch May] lived in Cornwall. But I used to, we used to correspond [Kitch May] and so for a few years anyway I kept in touch with most of the crew but towards the end it was because they, you know how it is you stop writing and stuff like that. But with Derek Compton my flight engineer I stayed with him several times and unfortunately the poor chap died about two years ago. So yes I did keep in touch and also 77 Squadron formed a Squadron Association which I joined and we formed, when I say we members in the south of England formed a sub-branch because the main meeting was up in Yorkshire I believe. Anyway, there were about a dozen or so of us in the south who formed this sub-branch and we used to meet every May at [pause] I’m afraid my memory isn’t very good these days, a town down [pause] I can’t remember where it is. The town begins with M but it doesn’t matter the name of the place. We used to meet at the White Horse in this town starting with M and there were about a dozen or so of us and we used to meet sometimes with our wives or girlfriends, whatever and chat and have lunch you know. And I used to meet Derek Compton my engineer there. He was there on every occasion. And I used to pick up another navigator from 77 Squadron who was badly shot up over [pause] again my memory lets me down. It’s a big, a big port in France. In Brittany. Beginning with B I think it is.
DM: [unclear]
JD: Can you remember it? You can’t. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But the poor chap got badly shot up and virtually lost an eye so he was grounded and he lived at [pause] oh dear. Again, my memory for places. He lived at [pause] well about thirty miles from here towards Guildford. Near Guildford. He lived near Guildford and I used to get there and because, because of his eye he couldn’t drive and he, he had a very nice Mercedes car. And when we first met he said to me, ‘Will you drive me to the reunion?’ I said, ‘Of course I will,’ I said, ‘But there’s one condition.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘You let me drive your Mercedes.’ And he said yes. So once a year I got the opportunity of driving this magnificent car down to wherever it was. And the poor chap he developed dementia and eventually was admitted to a home. You know, a nursing home and died there about three years ago. But he and I, we knew each other from, from the squadron and we got on extremely well. And he, he ended up as a director of operations with British Airways so he had done very well. But I remember one of his drawbacks was on the way down, driving in this car of his he kept on saying to me, ‘Now, do you know where you are, Dean?’ you know [laughs] And I used to tell him, I used to say, ‘For God’s sake, shut up otherwise we shall get lost.’ But we had a good relationship and I’m sorry, I was very sorry he died, you know. Yeah. Those were most of the people who went, who attended these, these May meetings. Of course, it got to a point where it was difficult for them to drive or get to to the meetings. So we abandoned it or it was abandoned about two years ago. And it was started I remember that the whole this, this sub-branch was started by a man called Varley, who was another navigator who I knew and he unfortunately he died to. So I’m beginning to think I’m about the only one left from 77 Squadron. There must be others. Talking about the survivors I was interested to find out quite recently how many Bomber Command aircrew are left alive today. And I’ve always thought it was about between three and four thousand and I tried to get in touch with the Bomber Command Association of which I used to be a member but I gather that’s been completely disbanded now because there are so few members. And then on the internet, I use the internet quite, quite a lot on Facebook I came across this Bomber Command history forum and in the forum was somebody there call Dee mentioned the IBCC. You probably know about this lady, Dee.
DM: I’ve heard.
JD: You know about her. Well, she in fact put me in touch with the IBCC or reminded me because I’d been in touch before and I posted this question on Facebook and she came back and said she’d spoken to somebody at IBCC and they thought it was just over two thousand. But nobody really knows because no records have been kept have they?
DM: No. No.
JD: So, it’s all guesswork really but I think two or three, between two or three thousand is right. I mean immediately after the war there was something like a hundred and twenty thousand left. But the war, that’s what we are talking about? Getting on for seventy years ago now, aren’t we? So, there can’t be many left.
DM: No. Do, do —
JD: Yeah.
DM: Do you remember your time with Bomber Command with fondness or —
JD: With —?
DM: With fondness or —
JD: Yes. Well, it’s, no I don’t know about fondness. Yeah. I mean let’s be, let’s be honest it was a pretty scary time. Although as an individual I never felt that I was, I was going to get killed. I always thought that I was going to survive and I think this may have been due to the fact that when one is young, I was twenty or so you never think anything is going to happen to you. Well, obviously I was always optimistic. But I must confess that before each trip when we were sitting outside the aircraft waiting to get in and start the engines and they’d always happen for about a half an hour it then suddenly dawned on you what you are doing, you know. And then I do remember getting a bit apprehensive then. But once in the aircraft as the navigator I was busy from, you know the first, from the first minute as it were until the end of the trip. And that meant that one I was occupied and didn’t have time to think about you know being attacked. And it now, you know it’s occurred to me since that the other members of the crew sitting there staring out into the darkness they must have been petrified I should think most of the time but they obviously never mentioned it. Yes. I mean, I think probably a navigator in Bomber Command probably had the best job really because he was occupied as I say all the time and mark you one thing I missed was, was looking out of the aircraft and seeing what was happening all around us. Although, I did go up and I’d see. I used to get permission from the pilot to go up and stand by him when we were going in to the bombing run watching things happen and I think I wasn’t frightened at all. I was absolutely fascinated with what was going on, you know. And then of course you could see other aircraft all around you all being lit up and so on. So, yes it was something that one would never see again. Oh yes. I recall we did one trip early on in our tour. I think it was our second or third operation to Milan and that was quite an interesting trip because first of all it took almost nine and a half hours which was a hell of a long time. Secondly, the route took us over the Alps and we were flying on a bright moonlight night and it lit up the Alps dramatically and we were about I suppose the Alps go up to about fourteen or fifteen thousand feet and we were at sixteen so there wasn’t much between us you know because sixteen was about the maximum height, I think for a Halifax. Perhaps seventeen after a bit of a struggle. Anyway, we had a dramatic view. Fantastic view of the Alps both going and coming and then after we crossed the Alps we could see Milan in the distance because Milan is quite near the Alps, lit up and we could see searchlights waving. And then the nearer we got the searchlights stopped and when we got there we could also see anti-aircraft bursts in the sky and when we got there they completely stopped. So there were no searchlights and no anti-aircraft fire when we got there and I gather this was quite common that the Italians manning these things on the ground decided they’d leave, you know if we were there [laughs] Which was nice for us. So that was quite, I think we were meant to bomb some factories near, near the main railway station in Milan. And I gather according to the Bomber Command Diaries, you know that big fat book that the raid was very successful and we hit the factories. But that was quite an interesting trip. But on one I think on that same trip [pause] it was the same trip the pilot of a Stirling aircraft won the VC that night and it came, I’ve got a story upstairs about him. His name was Aaron, I think it was Aaron Smith. I’m not sure. But on the way, on the way down just before they got to Milan they were fired at by another Stirling aircraft and to this day nobody knows quite why the other Stirling aircraft did this because nobody owned up to it but it was presumed that the other Stirling aircraft just missed, he identified the other, you know the Stirling wrongly and took it to be an enemy aircraft. Anyway, he fired at this guy’s aircraft and he got badly badly injured and could no longer fly the aircraft. So the crew took him back and laid him down in the back of the aircraft and I think it was the [pause] I can’t remember whether it was either the flight engineer or the navigator took — no. It was the flight engineer. That’s right. He took over flying the aircraft because he had some instruction and they decided to abandon the bombing. So they released the bombs and they fell somewhere else. And then they decided that it would be dangerous to try and go back over the Alps to the UK and they decided to head for Sicily which was about I don’t know, I suppose and hundred and fifty miles south of where they thought they were. And then, oh yes the other thing was that the damage included putting out the radio. So they had no communication with the ground so they couldn’t find out where to land in Sicily. But eventually the wireless operator he managed to get some communication going with an aerodrome called Bone in North Africa. In Libya. And it was the only Allied air base in Libya at the time. Anyway, I don’t know how the wireless operator did it but he managed to speak to Bone and Bone said, ‘You must abandon the idea of trying to land in Sicily because there’s an invasion taking place and there’s a lot of fighting and we can’t advise you where to land.’ He said, they said, ‘You must try and head for Bone,’ and so they altered course and did that and eventually got there and this guy Aaron somebody, the pilot, he decided to get back in to the pilot’s seat to fly the aircraft and eventually he landed this aircraft despite the fact he was badly injured and he died nine hours later. And he got a VC for that. So that was quite an unfortunate dramatic ending for him. For the crew.
DM: Did you ever visit subsequently any of the cities that you bombed?
JD: Did I ever —?
DM: Visit any of the cities that you bombed?
JD: Only Berlin. Yeah. I went to Berlin about five years or six years ago and of course the area which was bombed of course have you been to Berlin?
DM: No.
JD: No. The area that was bombed has been rebuilt but it’s instead of, it’s been rebuilt with mainly glass buildings. Very modern. So you get no, you get no sense of an area that was completely obliterated and it’s a, you know an interesting city but I think that they built they rebuilt most of it in glass or so. A mistake really because in other parts of Europe where cities have been rebuilt they’ve rebuilt particularly in France they’ve rebuilt them in the style they were originally. An example of that was Caen where Caen was effectively demolished by Montgomery in order to get his troops on the move as it were. At great cost to civilians living there. But after the war they rebuilt Caen as it was and to go there you’d never think a bomb had been dropped anywhere near. But that didn’t happen in Berlin unfortunately. There we are. Yeah. I can’t remember. No. I’ve not been to, oh yes I’ve been to Milan. Ah yes. Of course, I’ve been to Milan. Great place Milan. And we actually went to the, yes we flew to Milan. We were going to go to a place called Genoa in Italy. Or Genoa. I don’t know how you pronounce it. Genoa. And we flew to Milan and got on a train at Milan. So we actually went to Milan Station but there was obviously no evidence of the bombing so, but I’m impressed with Italian railways. Very cheap and very fast. Unlike the UK of course. So yes but I mean no in terms of visiting immediately after the war and this took place from Elvington we were instructed to do what were they called?
DM: Oh, are these the Cook’s Tours?
JD: Sorry.
DM: Cook’s Tours.
JD: That’s it.
DM: Yes.
JD: And we did two of these. We took, we took a number of people. I didn’t know who they were, I presumed they were VIPs of some kind over, we flew over the Ruhr and we flew over Essen and Mannheim and one or two other places very low. About we couldn’t have been more than about two or three hundred feet perhaps. No. A thousand. I don’t know. I can’t remember. But low enough to see the damage very effectively. So we did that and yeah, I think we were all taken aback by the immense amount of the damage which we’d caused and subsequently I didn’t realise then but in later years I realised that Bomber Command it did what it had to do and it was probably very necessary that we did what we had to do but what we had to do was quite barbaric. But I think that, I think we, I don’t think there was ever a question of whether we should have done it. I think we should have done it. What should have happened was for war to be avoided, I think. I’ve become very anti-war. I think a lot of people who took part in the war have. But yeah, I mean, I think I mean in London of course people suffered to a certain extent.
DM: Yeah. When you said that you grew up in Edmonton and Middlesex.
JD: Sorry?
DM: You said you grew up in sort of Edmonton and Middlesex.
JD: Yeah. I was out of London when the bombing took place but —
DM: Were your family still there or —
JD: No. No. None of my family live there now. No.
DM: Were they there during the war though?
JD: Oh, indeed. Sure. Yeah.
DM: So they all came through the bombing of London.
JD: They survived you know.
DM: Yeah.
JD: Because they weren’t in, they weren’t in central London. They were out in the suburbs. Wood Green which is a suburb and I don’t think, I don’t think any bombs were dropped there at all. No. It’s [pause] yes the I suppose you know since the war there’s been an enormous amount of literature hasn’t there and books written about Bomber Command. And I think that [pause] Well, I think that what we did played an enormous part in, in the defeat of Nazi Germany. I mean had that Bomber Command not done what it did then presumably all the German troops that were used for anti-aircraft purposes and I gather it totalled something like two million presumably those troops could have been released to fight elsewhere. Presumably against, on the Eastern Front against Russian and that might have made all the difference really. I don’t know. So, although I think what we did was, was not very nice I think it was completely and utterly necessary to get rid of this terrible scourge in Europe. And at the time of course when I was on the squadron I hadn’t really read very much about what was going on Germany. I don’t think many people had at that, at that stage because there wasn’t much news coming out of Germany in the nineteen, the late 1930s and early 40s. And as a young man I wasn’t as interested then as I am now in what happened in the past. So we were largely unaware of what was happening in Europe. But I remember having a feeling, you know then on the squadron that what we were doing was necessary. That we had to defeat these so and sos in Germany without really knowing about them. About all the horrors that were going on. But with that I don’t know we never spoke. Something we never discussed. I never remember discussing this with any of my colleagues. I think we were too busy thinking about other things like, you know going out to the pub or whatever or something like that you know.
DM: Yes.
JD: Very good.
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 John Eric Hatherly Dean
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-13
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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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ADeanJEH170913, PDeanJEH1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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01:03:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
North Africa
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Mannheim
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Milan
Saskatchewan--Swift Current
Saskatchewan
Description
An account of the resource
John Dean’s childhood memory of watching a Spitfire and a German aircraft having a dogfight in the sky above him spurred him to want to become a Spitfire pilot. He didn’t achieve his aim of becoming a Spitfire pilot and instead became a navigator. On one operation the Flight Engineer noticed the Lancaster immediately above them and then saw the bomb fall from it and in to their own aircraft from where the crew argued what to do with it. On his first operation he realised to his horror that he had turned the aircraft too early and they were far off target but they managed to rectify their mistake and complete the operation.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-08-15
1944-12
1945-01
1652 HCU
51 Squadron
77 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
Fw 190
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
navigator
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Stradishall
Spitfire
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
York