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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/617/8886/PPackmanDE1601.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/617/8886/APackmanDE161130.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Packman, Doug
Douglas Ernest Packman
D E Packman
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Packman, DE
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Doug Packman (1925, 1866208 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a fight engineer with 630, 57 and 44 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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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CJ: This is Chris Johnson and I’m interviewing Doug Packman today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s digital archive. We’re at Doug’s home in Tankerton in Kent, and it is Wednesday the 30th of November 2016. Thank you, Doug, for agreeing to talk to me today, and also present in the house is Barbara Masters, a friend of Doug’s. So, Doug, perhaps you could tell me first of all please your date and place of birth and your family background?
DP: Yes Chris. My date of birth was January the 10th 1925. My parents Lucy and Ernest Packman had their one and only child, that of course was me. If my parents could have shown me the beautiful night sky due south at nine fifty-five pm, we would have observed the most wonderful sight. I refer to the Orion [emphasis] nebula. The first star to pass by this, in this constellation was Rigel. Standing at approximately 30, 25’ due south, approximately 188 magnetic. I of course, just newly born, would know nothing [emphasis] of this. My only interest would have been in the warm arms of my loving mother. We, that is mum, dad and I, lived with my grandparents at Coxett Farm, Hansletts Lane, near Ospringe, Faversham. I will give you its actual [laughs] location [emphasis]. North 51 18’, east 000, 51.116’. I very often pass by this lovely old farmhouse on my way to church at Stalisfield. I look on this as my place of birth and where my life and adventures began. When a few months old, my parents decided I must be christened. One fine Saturday, Sunday [emphasis] afternoon, my mother, grandmother and an aunt were all prepared for the short journey to the church of St Peter and St Paul at Ospringe. They looked around for my dad and found him clearing, cleaning his motorcycle [emphasis]. ‘Come on Ernest’ said my mother, ‘have you not yet thought of another name to give our lad besides Ernest?’ ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘call him Douglas.’ ‘Why Douglas?’ asked mum and grandma. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is the best motorcycle I have ever had’ [CJ laughs] ‘so why not?’ I was so grateful in later years to my old dad, but I am very glad he did not own a Rudge, B.S.A. or Matchless at that time [CJ laughing]. My parents and I very often laughed about this. We move. Some two years after my birth in nineteen, in 1927, we moved to St Marys in the Isle of Grain. I always remembered it as remote and desolate, but I suppose it did have a certain beauty. And I must say during my childhood, my father taught me to ride horses at an early age, for I have loved horses all my life. He also taught me how to handle guns and shoot in a responsible manner. When I was ten [emphasis] I could drive a car around the farm, also help repair stationary engines. I have a photo of me driving a Standard Fordson tractor at the age of thirteen [CJ laughs]. World War Two. As we all know, World War Two started in 1939. When I was fourteen I worked as a boy messenger for the GPO, both at Ashford and Chatham, and by the time I was fifteen my parents had both decided that I should work at home on the farm. I was just over fifteen when I decided to join the LDV, or home guard. I will be honest, this was not, certainly [emphasis] for patriotic reasons. I wanted a stout pair of boots for farm work [CJ laughs] so what better than British Army boots? On my sixteenth birthday, I was, I was given my first driving licence. I, it covered all groups, so now I could drive a five ton Bedford lorry, and just about everything else. I might add I have never passed a driving test [CJ laughs], it was not needed in wartime. I led a busy life. I studied for two evenings a week under the guidance of Oscar George, our rector. He was a brilliant man, he had patience with me and I soaked up all [emphasis] that he gave me to do, maths, science, history etcetera. I owe him a great deal, for without his guidance I would never have passed my aircrew exams. Long distance running was also taken up, along with boxing and unarmed combat. Being in the Home Guard meant guard duty at times. Looking back, I suppose I was very lucky for as you might know, there was a complete blackout during that time. The sky could be observed without the distraction of streetlights etcetera. I think it might have got me interested on the beauty of the night sky, and it’s always been there for me. Those times, times can never come back. When I reached my seventeenth birthday, I went into the recruiting office above Burtons’ buildings at Chatham and asked to join RAF aircrew. A few weeks later I went to Cardington and passed my medical A1 and two or three days of examinations. I knew I might have difficulties for I was a farm boy and in a reserved occupation, however after almost a year I finally wore them down. I suppose they got fed up with me, and at eighteen walked into Lords cricket ground and so started what was for me the great adventure of my life.
Watching the stars again. I suppose it was around August 1944 that we visited some part of northern Germany. I remember we delivered our presents and, there being rather a lot of flak, Alec told me to put on climbing power. I adjusted my engines to twenty-eight thousand, two-thousand eight-hundred and fifty rpm and boost pressure to +9lbs/sq. in. We entered dense cloud and about ten minutes later, emerged from this dense cloud at about ten thousand feet. The effect was truly amazing for the night sky was just brilliant [emphasis]. It was a moon and just about every star at its best. I can only describe it as like entering from a complete darkness into a brilliant theatre full of light. It has forever stuck in my mind. I well remember Claude, our navigator, coming out of his small office behind me and pointing at the Plough and Pole Star. I have, if I’d had my planisphere with me at that time I could have told the time by the star Dubhe or the Plough, pointing to the star. It was all so [emphasis] exciting. It was the wrong time of the year to see Orion in the northern hemisphere, but many years later, after Pegs and I got married, I purchased a 4½” Newtonian reflector telescope, so that we could both enjoy many evenings of watching that beautiful night sky. But of course, one could not enjoy the full beauty, for there are so many lights from our towns and cities throughout the world and it does [emphasis] affect the viewing. But I will ask the reader not to be put off. Sometimes maybe around January the 10th next year, if you are fed up of watching the box, and some silly parlour game, get up [emphasis], go to your south aspect door and just look up [emphasis] and with a bit of luck you will be rewarded with the Orion Nebula. You can always [emphasis] make the excuse that you are putting the empty milk bottles or the cat out [CJ laughs]. God bless you all.
CJ: Well thank you Doug, that was great. Could you perhaps tell me now – you said you’d been to the recruiting office and joined up and that you went through the medical, so perhaps you could tell us about your time during training and going up to joining an operational squadron?
DP: Yes. I, I was very anxious to join up, simply because we just wanted to give Hitler a bloody nose [emphasis] [CJ laughs], and, er, I, I arrived at Lords cricket ground on the, sometime in March 1943, and there I met up with a wonderful fellow who I would like to tell you about. His name is John Mannion, and John was one of those who did not [emphasis] come back. So I would like to say, to tell you about him now. Is it there? [Pause whilst shuffling paper.] I first met John at Lords cricket ground one sunny morning in March 1943. ‘Good morning, my name’s John Mannion, what’s yours?’ ‘Doug,’ I replied, and we shook hands heartily. We attended lectures and training sessions at St John’s Wood, Torquay and St. Athan’s engineering school in Wales, until the Christmas of that year when we passed our final examination and emerged as sergeant flight engineers to fly in the mighty Lancaster. John was posted to No. 1 Group. I was sent to 5 Group Bomber Command. We would sometimes meet up in Lincoln, go to dances, chase the girls, for we were young [emphasis] and the world was our oyster. No two young men enjoyed life more. Full of enthusiasm, we went to war in order to give, as I say, Hitler a bloody nose. By June 27th, 1944, I had completed about eight operations when I had one of my letters to John returned to me. John had been killed on the 25th of June 1944, somewhere over Europe, whilst flying a Lancaster with 576 Squadron. John was never to reach his twentieth birthday. My first wife Alice Ida and I went to RAF Bomber Command War Memorial at Runnymede to see his name carved in stone. It all seems like a dream now, but I shall always remember the great adventures we had in that short time together. I shed a tear. Who knows, John and I might meet up again when I depart this life, then we can resume our chatter and thoughts. Rest in peace John.
CJ: Aw that’s lovely.
DP: That is my dedication to all of those, and John, who died and never made it back.
CJ: Mhm. Thank you. So could you tell me please, which was your first squadron and how many operations you did, and the sort of operations you were doing?
DP: Yes Chris, I did thirty-four operations in total, and that was on 630 Squadron at East Kirkby in Lincolnshire. There was another squadron there, 57 Squadron was out sister squadron. Erm, we took, I suppose, about five to six months to complete that tour of operations and then we were rested and went to, I went to the Lancaster finishing school at Syerston as an instructor. I served at Syerston and flew many operations training people and then my pilot and I, the late flight lieutenant John Chatterton DFC we returned to 630 Squadron again as squadron engineers. Squadron instructors [emphasis] rather. And the war ended in Europe. We were all destined to go to Japan, or fight the Japanese, but the bombing of Hiroshima settled all of that and our squadron was disbanded [emphasis] and then John and I were transferred to 57 again as squadron instructors, and we took the place of Mike Beetham and Ernest Scott who was his flight engineer. Incidentally, Mike Beetham became Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Michael Beetham and he died two years ago. But then we moved from East Kirkby to Mildenhall in Suffolk where we joined John’s old squadron, 44 Squadron, and from there we flew operations out to Italy bringing back prisoners of war, so that was, that was it.
CJ: So when did you actually leave the RAF?
DP: Er, I left the RAF in around about March 1946 and then I was told to go to the Adjutant and said ‘go home and if you can get a job I will secure your release under Class B.’ I didn’t know much about what Class B was but I was looking forward to going home and getting married, but under Class B I was restricted to farm work until 1953/54, which wasn’t a very good move [laughs].
CJ: And looking back on your operational missions, were there any that you remember for the right or wrong reasons, when you, you thought you’d done a particularly good job or you had any close shaves?
DP: Well there was one close shave I had, and I think this piece of the aeroplane peller, propeller – [paper shuffling] I’ll show you – it might be of interest. It was at Revigny and it was on the 18th or 19th of July I think. I’m not sure I’ll have to check about that. Anyway, that night we went to Revigny and it had been bombed [emphasis] four times previously and I think [emphasis] we all thought it was an easy run for we went in, there was very little flak, we dropped our bombs and then there was just setting course for home when all hell let loose. Er, the mid upper gunner screamed out that the plane was alight [emphasis]. There was holes that appeared all over the place and I rushed back to see if I could be of assistance but he was enveloped, or rather that part of the aircraft was enveloped in fire, sizzed my eyebrows a bit and I reported to Alec, our pilot, that she was well [emphasis] alight. He then gave us instructions to bale out, and by the time I got back the navigator and bomb aimer had taken the escape hatch out of the bomb aimers compartment and we had a routine of getting out. I went, was going to be first, the bomb aimer, navigator, pilot, wireless operator would follow, the other two if they were lucky would get out the back, the two gunners. I, I’d dropped through the hatch as I thought, but the aircraft was in a spin and I was promptly, promptly dumped back [emphasis] in it again [laughs]. And there was no escape, all three of us were penned in that small area. I obviously was not on the intercom but the navigator or bomb aimer was still in contact, and Alec said ‘get him back up here to help me pull her, see if we can save her.’ I got up those two steps with their assistance – it was like climbing a mountain [CJ laughs]. So I got hold of the control column with Alec and we tugged and tugged [emphasis], and eventually she came up, but I remember seeing the top of Alec’s head, because I was laying on top of the canopy looking down onto him, or up at him, whichever the case may have been, and the next moment I was on the floor by his side. Alec got the aircraft under control, but he said afterwards that he looked at the speedometer and we must have touched four-hundred miles an hour in that dive, and it was pretty horrendous [emphasis]. Anyway, we got back, how we got back we never knew, but we got back and we were only ten minutes behind time, so it was – we were very [emphasis] lucky. But as we got out of the aircraft at East Kirkby I picked up a bit of the propeller which had hit my right leg and that’s it there. I’ve kept it ever since. I must say, as we got out the aircraft there was really no need to go to the rear door, we could have all walked out the side of it. It was just shattered [emphasis]. No tail planes, very little of the fuselage and yet we all [emphasis] got out of there, we were all [emphasis] extremely quiet, and there was not much laughter. But we went on operations the following night. But the aircraft I thought at the time was a write-off, but afterwards I found out that it had been patched [emphasis] up and it got lost I think on Stuttgart a few months later. But that was quite a hairy situation.
CJ: So the piece of propeller that you showed me – that was from your own aircraft?
DP: Yes, it came from starboard inner propeller. I feathered the engine, I had to stop the engine afterwards but we came back on three and, the Lancaster being the brilliant aircraft that it was came back no trouble whatsoever. So that was it.
CJ: Wow. And did you have any other missions that were memorable for good –
DP: Well –
CJ: Or not so good reasons?
DP: Well, at St Nazaire, the submarine pens at St Nazaire springs to mind. The Pathfinders had gone in and marked the target. It was brilliant [emphasis]. The sky – I was able to write [emphasis] my log and my engineer’s log without any assistance, just from the reflection of the, of the searchlights, it was enough, and as we were going in, we could see that they’d – that Alec our pilot said, ‘there’ll be fighters, so when we get straight and level over the target that will be the danger point.’ He instructed me to get in the front turret, so I stood in the front turret with Walter, the bomb aimer with his head between my feet, sighting up the target, and Alec gave the two gunners and myself instructions – ‘do not [emphasis] shoot unless you know that they’re coming for us.’ I think that was good, but all of a sudden I saw a dot [emphasis] in, on the horizon, and it quickly got – as it got closer I could see that it was a Focke-Wulf 190, and it was coming straight [emphasis] at us, point blank. And at the last moment it veered off over our port wing. It was so close that with the lights from the searchlights, I could see the shape of the pilot and also the oil streaks under its belly showed up. And I never want to see a Focke-Wulf or any other aeroplane quite that close again. It was a narrow, narrow day. And just recently, I’ve read in the “Daily Telegraph” obituary column of a German colonel, a friend of Hermann Goering, who ran the Wild Boar Squadron, so called, and he gave instructions to his men that if they ran out of ammunition and they couldn’t bring them down, just ram [emphasis] them. All I can say, I think that man was very kind. He either lost his nerve and we lived another day, so that was it. But that was very, very hairy that one. But apart from that we had the usual. Sometimes it was not easy, but we always [emphasis] lived to see another day, yes. But there we are. I think we were very, very lucky and out of thirty-four operations, there was no-one [emphasis] suffered at all. We weren’t hit, so God was with us [laughs] and, you know, it was marvellous. I would like to add this, that when we used to go to, down to take off from East Kirkby, each night or sometimes in the day, we would stand at the end of the runway ready for the green light and I would open up the engines, taking over from Alec, to give it full power and when I’d got full power on I’d always say, or murmur to myself a silent prayer. And that was to, to ask God to look after my parents and Jean my girlfriend and above all, would he let me see the sun rise in the east in the morning. And I used to say that every day, and I must say that it was good because my parents lived to a ripe old age and Jean, and I, are now almost ninety-two years of age. So, thank you God [both laugh].
CJ: Hmm. And did you go on to marry Jean later?
DP: Er, no. I married Alice Ida, partner and, in 1946, and we had eleven years of marriage and then, one Christmas she was, she went to hospital and she was diagnosed with leukaemia and they told me she’d got eleven, no, eight months to live, and she did indeed die on 8th of August 1958. So that was indeed hard, and er, it was hard in many ways because I lived in a very nice council house, an agriculture council house, but she died on the Saturday and on the Monday the rent collector informed me that, having no children, I would be required to vacate the house in a fortnight. So, I lost my wife [emphasis], my house and my job all in that fortnight, which wasn’t good.
CJ: And what did you go on to do after that? Did you carry on farming?
DP: Well I, I stopped on the farm, and I started keeping a few sheep and pigs myself, and I did that for a little while but I, I became ill and I was told to go on sea cruise and I did something that I never thought I’d do. I signed on the P&O liner Himalaya, and she was about to do a world cruise. And so I went away for six months, and in that time I saw Australia, New Zealand, the States, Canada, er Japan, New Zealand, and we did forty-four thousand miles, and I came back and Peggy, Patricia Penfold, who I’d known for many years, and although she was twelve years older than me she, we were in love and we married on that, when I came back. And we had forty-one [emphasis] years of lovely marriage. She died Christmas 2000, and that was it.
CJ: And you said that you were lucky that you and your crew survived the war. Were you able to keep in touch with them and attend reunions?
DP: Well yes [emphasis], I was able to keep in touch with my last pilot John Chatterton, he was a farmer in Lincolnshire, and also my pilot Alec Swain, he was a big industrialist in Manchester, and we kept in contact right up until Alec died [emphasis] and I was able to meet also the bomb aimer and the wireless operator, and Walter is still alive now and he lives in Kettering, and he’s indeed full, full, no he’s one year older than me, so he’s ninety-three. But it’s, so he’s the only one left now, yes.
CJ: And how, how did you feel that Bomber Command were treated after the war?
DP: Well I, I think it was a bit rough. We got criticised and I think it was quite unnecessary because at that [emphasis] time I think we were the only – it was the only defence we’d got was the Air Force flying, but we got shouted at and abused for Dresden and all that sort of thing. But I always thought that, you know, the Germans were bombing Coventry and the docks of London and all [emphasis] these other places, and I thought it was a bit unjustified. But yes, I suppose we didn’t get a medal, a campaign medal, but I’ve never been, I’ve never been, never been very interested in medals anyway so it doesn’t make much difference to me. I met, I never had any brothers or sisters, but being in an RAF aircrew, in a Lancaster, member of a Lancaster crew I had six wonderful brothers, and that [emphasis] to me was worth every, every operation I did. They were lovely men, marvellous people.
CJ: And have you been inside a Lancaster since you left the RAF?
DP: Yes [emphasis]. I was lucky enough to – when I was seventy years of age, John Chatterton my pilot had a son, Mike Chatterton, and he was flying the Lancaster at Coningsby and they were doing a flight from Coningsby to Wittering and he said that I could join them, and so we, we all assembled at Coningsby, John Chatterton, Dennis Ringham our gunner, Bill Draycott the bomb aimer and myself [emphasis], and we all took off with an escort of two fighters for Wittering [emphasis]. But the big surprise that Mike spread, sprung on us was that at briefing he said to the two pilots of the fighters, ‘when we leave Wittering, I will be handing over the controls to Doug Packman, and so give him a bit of airspace please.’ I was dumbfounded [emphasis], I thought he must have been speaking of somebody else but no, it was me, and it was [emphasis], I was so [emphasis] – I was over [emphasis] the moon. Anyway, true to his word, when we left Wittering, he allowed me to take over controls because it was dual control in that Lancaster, and I must have had a smile like the cat’s got the cream [emphasis], [CJ laughs], ‘cause as we flew on I thought of all the operations, I thought of my other crews and the boys, and I was really [emphasis] very happy, and after a few minutes Mike took over to do a beautiful landing back at East Kirkby. And a few years, a couple or three years later he allowed me to start up at the J-Jane at, which is at East Kirkby, it belongs to the Panton brothers, and I was able to start that up and, without any instructions, so indeed, I had my lessons learnt during the RAF had not left me, and that was it. So I’ve been very happy.
CJ: Well thank you very much for talking to us today Doug, that was excellent –
DP: Well it’s –
CJ: Thank you very much indeed.
DP: Okay Chris, thank you [emphasis] very much.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
CJ: Doug, could you just explain please how you came to have this bit of propeller with you?
DP: Yes. The, as the, this explosion, this terrific [emphasis] explosion came, I found out later it was from the Schrage Musik from possibly a JU88 had fired straight up, and they used to aim at the mid-section, which was the petrol tanks, and in this case what they did explode was the ammunition drums, and everything. That’s what caused the, the fire. But the propeller I – the starboard engine which I had to feather because it was running rough, had made a hole the size I would imagine from memory, much [emphasis] larger than that, it was about, ooh it was about a six inch square hole, this small piece had made, and it had been – it hit my leg as it came in but my well cushioned flying boot and thick socks, it didn’t hurt me at all I just felt [emphasis] it, and there it was, laying beside this hole. And looking at it, one can tell that it is [emphasis] propeller, or bits of a propeller because there was holes literally everywhere [emphasis]. Not large holes, the one, this one I’ve described was probably the biggest, but that’s it. And I’ve shown it to many people and they all say, you know, that’s it, the starboard propeller.
CJ: And the JU88 that attacked you, that was, that had special armament?
DP: Yes, they had upward facing guns which they could – that was one of the weak parts of a Lancaster, they didn’t have a downward firing gun or no way of observing, and they could come up underneath [emphasis] you, slightly come up underneath you, and then the pilot of the JU88, he could focus his guns right underneath you and it’s well known and documented that they used to aim for the mid-section, i.e. to get the fuel tanks really and, of course, the ammunition. And this is just what it did, but very [emphasis] lucky for us, it was just the ammunition drums that exploded and I suppose the incendiary bullets on that would have caused, you know, caused all this fire. And in fact, in that area it was just devastated [emphasis]. We didn’t stop to look at it, we just wanted to get out of it when we landed. But it was just naked framework if you understand.
CJ: Okay, thank you for clarifying that Doug.
DP: Yes.
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 Doug Packman
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
2016-11-30
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APackmanDE161130
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.
Format
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00:38:48 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
France
France--Revigny-sur-Ornain
France--Saint-Nazaire
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
1946-03
Contributor
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Chris Johnson
Sally Coulter
Description
An account of the resource
Doug grew up in Kent. He joined the Royal Air Force at 18, as a flight engineer for 630 Squadron at RAF East Kirkby in 5 Group Bomber Command, flying Lancasters. He carried out 34 operations, followed by time as an instructor at RAF Syerston, returning to 630 Squadron. He describes two hairy situations over France with their ammunition tanks being hit by an upward-firing Schräge Musik from a Ju-88 over Revigny, and a very close encounter with a Fw 190 at Saint-Nazaire. They survived both situations. A move to 44 Squadron followed and he flew operations to Italy, bringing back prisoners of war. He left the RAF in March 1946. Doug describes his love of the night sky.
44 Squadron
57 Squadron
630 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
civil defence
faith
flight engineer
Fw 190
Home Guard
Ju 88
Lancaster
memorial
Operation Dodge (1945)
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Syerston
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/600/8869/PLongTCA1601.1.jpg
8d538e3525b5aa182d76ec1adb446db6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/600/8869/ALongTCA160611.2.mp3
21e2de34cf1fb97c9dc25e4cdec626f4
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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Long, Thomas Charles Arthur
T C A Long
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Long, TCA
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Arthur Long (1920 - 2016, 1578331 Royal Air Force) and seven photographs, including several with his future wife, Joyce. He flew operations as a navigator with 75 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
2016-06-11
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
GB: This interview is being recorded for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Gill Barnes and the interviewee is Arthur Long. The interview is taking place at Mr Long’s home in Leicester on the 11th of June 2016. Also present is Mrs Joyce Long and my husband Andrew Barnes. Arthur, I’m really looking forward to hearing about your life and experience in the RAF. Starting at the beginning where were you born?
AL: You don’t want to go back just before that ‘cause — oh wait a minute. Before that I was in the Home Guard at Quorn.
GB: Yes. Whereabouts in England were you born though?
AL: Quorn.
GB: In Quorn. That’s right. You were telling me. Yes.
AL: Quorn. Yes. I was in the Quorn Home Guard.
GB: Right.
AL: Before that but that was while I was working at the Brush at Loughborough designing buses, tramcars.
GB: Were you an engineer?
AL: I was a draughtsman.
GB: Right.
AL: Designing body work of buses and tramcars for Blackpool, Leicester and people, places like that.
GB: That’s right.
AL: London too.
GB: And where did you go to college to learn that?
AL: Loughborough College. I didn’t go daytime.
GB: Right.
AL: I went night school to Loughborough College.
GB: Right.
AL: Passed my National Certificate.
JL: Higher.
AB: Higher National Certificate.
AL: That was when I was working at the Brush and I was on a reserved occupation.
GB: Right. And about what time was that? What year roughly?
AL: ’41.
JL: 1940.
AL: Sorry?
JL: 1940.
AL: Around about 1940.
GB: 1940.
JL: ’39/38.
GB: Ok.
AL: Yes.
GB: And did you go to school in Leicester?
AL: I beg your pardon?
GB: Did you go to school in Leicester?
AL: Yes. It was just an ordinary school. No. In Quorn.
GB: In Quorn.
AL: In Quorn.
GB: Yes.
AL: But I did night school in Loughborough College.
GB: Right.
AL: And took my National Certificate there.
GB: Yes.
AL: I was in the middle of the Advanced National Certificate when I volunteered ‘cause I volunteered you see.
GB: Yes.
AL: That being an reserved occupation — that my friends were all in the army or were serving. Been called. So I thought something had to be done about this man Hitler. He was running rife.
GB: Yes.
AL: And my friends in Quorn, a lot of my friends in Quorn.
GB: And what —
AL: And that was at the time I met up with Joyce.
GB: Right. Where we —
JL: ’41.
AL: We were both in the same choir at the same church.
GB: Oh gosh.
AL: And in the Youth Club too at Loughborough, at Loughborough Baxter Gate Church.
GB: Right.
AL: About that all about that same time.
GB: Yes.
AL: The 1940s.
GB: And what drew you to join the RAF as opposed to the other services?
AL: Well you had to. To get out of a reserved occupation. I wanted to join the RAF but you couldn’t get out of a reserved occupation unless you joined the RAF and so and crew. RAF as a crew member. So I was put on the reserves. I got a reserve badge as a volunteer reserve and I had to go to Birmingham to get a medical and then I was put on the reserve for about six months. They didn’t take you straight away. Anyway, that is when they, I was finally called up to ACRC. Lord’s Cricket Ground, London.
GB: Yes.
AL: And that was, this photograph is of, at St John’s Wood just outside Lord’s Cricket Ground. You know it.
GB: I know it.
AL: We used to eat at the Zoo [laughs] and we used to go, used to march from St John’s Wood to the Zoo cafeteria and the apes would start howling and we helped them along. The boys did of course. We were woken up very early at St John’s Wood by bashing dustbin lids to waken everybody up. It was still dark. We had a lantern at the front and marched down to there for breakfast at Lords, at er the Zoo. So that was my first experience.
GB: And what did you learn there? What were they, what was the training?
AL: Oh no training. Purely, purely medicals and things like that.
GB: Oh right.
AL: Aircrew. ACRC is Aircraft Recruitment Centre. It’s just a recruitment centre.
AB: Yeah.
AL: Now I was sent on to Newquay then. ITW at Newquay and Newquay we were there that’s where we started our training in navigation, astrology, [pause] communication.
GB: Yeah.
AL: By Aldiss lamp and —
GB: Did you choose to become a navigator?
AL: No. Now there’s a story behind that. Quite a story. We get to that because I was sent on from there er trying to remember exactly where we went but I did most of my training in Canada. Went over on the Queen Elizabeth on its own. Not a convoy. It zigzagged across the Atlantic and one day we found ourselves getting quite warm and had gone quite south to miss the U-boats.
AB: Gosh.
AL: And we finally finished up at Halifax way up north and got the, got the train down. Got our first orange, taste of oranges. [Laughs]. We had that for some time. And went down to Moncton which was another holding station. Very cold there but the people were nice at Moncton. If you went to a church in Moncton you got invited to their families. Well, wherever we went, if you went to a church you were invited to a family. Of course we finished up at Quebec. I was invited there as well. But when Churchill was there at Quebec with Stalin and various at Chateau Frontenac in Quebec and we, that takes me into the start of our training because we went on a bombing and gunnery course as an observer not as a navigator. They started and this became strengthened as you will find later on. I went to, I forget, I’ve got the names of the places down here but, there was, [pause] I don’t know what it was called.
GB: Why did they send you to Canada to train?
AL: I’m trying to think of the names of the places I was at in Canada. There was that. Oh. Oh it was at. Oh. Oh that was Monkton that was so it was after that. Air Observer. RC. Royal Canadian Air Force. Number 8 Air Observer’s Course. Oh that was until, now that was Quebec.
GB: Right.
AL: Where I got my observer badge which was sent in by a Princess Julianna of the Netherlands. Now Princess Juliana became Queen.
GB: Yes.
AL: And that was because there was quite a lot of Dutchmen on that course that I was taking. That was training in navigation. Everything, everything to do with being an observer and as an observer you had to be, it was a Coastal Command thing. Anyway, it was Princess Julianna of the Netherlands who presented me with my brevet and we —
GB: Were there many English people being trained in Canada?
AL: Yes. Oh yes. In Quebec. Yes. They were English people and they were very nice. Very helpful. We were supposed to be reviewed by Winston Churchill himself but he couldn’t get away so he sent his daughter Sarah Churchill. So she reviewed us which was a bit of a let-down.
GB: Where did you do your officer training?
AL: I beg your pardon?
GB: Where did you do your officer training? To become a pilot officer.
AL: I became a pilot, now that’s a [laughs] that comes a bit later because —
GB: Right.
AL: The RAF, after my operations which I’ve got yet to talk about, after the operations I was seconded to BOAC, British Overseas Airways Corporation to start it up. Nobody had heard of BOAC. They thought I was in the French Navy when I wore their uniform. It was dark blue. So, anyway, I went with BOAC for twelve months and while I was training at Ossington air force, Ossington Training School for a first class navigator’s certificate the RAF’s certificate wasn’t enough for BOAC. I had to train for first class navigator’s certificate which difference being mainly concentration on —
JL: Stars.
AL: On the stars.
AB: Astronomy.
AL: Astrology.
AB: That’s it.
AL: Being using a sextant and everything and astrology. I know I had to, with, with BOAC I think one of the earliest days out our computer went. Not computer, compass. My compass went. I had to correct it, our course by taking sextant shots of the sun.
AB: Yes.
AL: To get us back on course.
AB: Ok.
That was when we were flying down the Gold Coast. I think we had to cross Africa but that was during BOAC. That was after.
GB: Yeah.
AL: I was in the air force. So, after the air force I came back on the Mauritania. Going out on the Elizabeth we were in cabins but in the Mauritania coming back we were in the hold in hammocks and that again was a long journey zigzagging back to England. Dropped us at Liverpool. Now, when we landed at, when we were over in America er in Canada I did a hitch hike down to America and back and I bought Joyce a ring.
GB: Oh.
AL: I, to be sure, make it safe I hung it around my neck. I’m glad I did because the other things that I brought as gifts back, I brought them back to Liverpool and the stevedores — and Liverpool, doesn’t hold any good memories for me — Liverpool, the stevedores broke my knapsack open and stole the gifts that I’d brought but they couldn’t steal that ring because I’d got it around my neck. Anyway, we landed. Again, another bad mark for Liverpool was we, it was Christmas and we were due to go Christmas leave and they said, ‘Oh we’re going to make you navigators.’ We said, ‘No. You can’t. We passed out as observers.’ ‘Well we won’t let you go on leave unless you put up your navigator badge you see. So what could we do? We [un-? ] the observer’s badge, put on the navigator badge. Got our leave put the observers badge back on again and went home. [laughs] Got our leave. Anyway, that —
GB: Was there any more training?
AL: A bad, bad mark for Liverpool.
GB: Absolutely. Was there any more training after that, Arthur?
AL: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. We had to go to Halfpenny Green.
JL: Lincolnshire.
AL: For training to jump with a parachute. You jumped off a high platform so that was that sort of thing. Now when we were at Moncton in, in Canada we tried to build up an unofficial navigation course but they were more interested in doing [calls?] like helping at the infirmary and if you had to go to a hospital that had medics on Moncton Centre. You had to walk way up in the freezing weather [laughs]. Anyway, it was quite an experience. Twenty five degrees below I think it was. Very cold.
GB: How long —
AL: I was on duty at Moncton once and you had a brazier. You could always put your hand in it it was so cold. Anyway, that was at Moncton. And I’ve jumped on a bit. I was at a bombing and gunnery school at another place which I’ve forgotten the name of. No. I can’t remember. My memory goes. It’s so bad.
AL: That’s —
GB: But then we went on to Wing which was where we crewed up. At Wing. And there I think we did our first flight over over Germany or somewhere. It could have been Poland. I forget where but we dropped leaflets. Leaflets for —
AB: Propaganda.
AL: Yes. What do you call it? One was in Polish and one was in German I think.
GB: Oh right. Yeah.
AL: I don’t whether —
JL: Propaganda.
GB: Absolutely.
JL: Propaganda leaflets. Never mind.
GB: So that was your first experience of flying on a mission.
AL: That was, that was first crewed up experience.
GB: Yes. How did you come to —
AL: Harry. Harry Tweed.
GB: Ok.
AL: He was Henry Tweed really but we all knew him as Harry.
GB: Right. How did you come to join 75 Squadron?
AL: Well that was, that was that was part of, that’s when we were at Wing.
GB: Right.
AL: We were at Wing then. Of course when you crew up you are given a choice of postings. And so we talked it over among, among ourselves and the only one that we could think of was at Mepal which was our rear gunner’s, tail-end-Charlie’s, his home was near Mepal.
GB: Yeah.
AL: And that was, that was 75 Squadron at Mepal.
GB: It was. Yes.
AL: It’s been in the news lately I think.
GB: Yes.
AL: They found a skull there in a quarry there I think or something.
GB: 75 flew a number of aeroplanes. They started, well they had a phase of flying Wellingtons and then they went on Lancasters.
AL: That’s right. Well we went straight on to Lancasters.
GB: Right.
AL: So I was in A Squadron. We’ve got that photograph of B, we’ve got a big photograph of B Squadron but we didn’t seem to get one of A Squadron. So I wasn’t on that.
GB: And who was in your crew?
AL: Did what?
GB: Who was in your crew?
AL: Well there was Harry Tweed was the pilot. Benjy was the mid upper gunner. Benjamin. We called him Benjy.
GB: Yes.
AL: They’re in there I think.
GB: Yes.
AL: Complete with names. There was, I sat at, you know how it is to get into a Lancaster. Well, laden with sextant and maps you had to, you got into the aircraft alright but then you had to climb up, clamber over the D spar. You more or less fell over the D spar. It’s about this high you got over. Next to the pilot.
AB: Right.
AL: There’s a pilot, there’s an engineer, all the names is down there and I forget them.
GB: That’s fine.
AL: They’re all written down in there.
GB: Yes.
AL: And then there was the tail-end-Charlie was, his father was a farmer and we used to go to his house and they used to lay on dances and things. They were very very good. So we used to, I had a motorbike then and they had a car. The rest of the crew had a car. They would go off in the car and I would follow up with the motorbike or whatever. [They would away?]. That was very helpful.
GB: Ultimately 75 Squadron went on to become a New Zealand Squadron. Were there any —
AL: Well I thought it was always a New Zealand Squadron.
GB: Oh right. Ok. So were they, were you, were there any New Zealanders in your –?
AL: And the reason why it was a New Zealand Squadron. We joined it, 75, we had one New Zealander in the crew.
GB: Right.
AL: That was the bomb aimer. Alan John.
GB: Right.
AL: The bomb aimer. And he was Shorty. We used to call him Shorty and he didn’t like that [laughs]. Anyway, he liked to think he was good but he wasn’t that good.
GB: So what year are we now? You’ve got your crew. You’re flying Lancasters. Roughly what year was that?
AL: Forty. Oh my logbook’s upstairs. It’s down in there.
GB: Ok.
AL: It’s in my logbook but that was, when I when I was at Ossington at training for, it was, Dunkirk. No it couldn’t have been. No. No. No. No. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Dunkirk. [Pause]. My, my could you get my logbook from upstairs? You know where it is. Dunkirk is when we had the end of our, my flying on ops. Or was it the beginning? No. It could have been the beginning. It could have been the beginning of my ops and that’s when we were bombing gun sights in France near Calais to help the evacuation. I’ll be able to give you a better date when Joyce gets my book. But I’m pretty sure that was one of, one of my earlier operational flights. Yeah. Here we are. Here. Do you see? It won’t take long. You had to enter it in your logbook. You had to enter all your operational flights in red. So here we are. Daylight operation at Calais on the September the 15th ‘44. That was, yes ‘44 was daylight operation. Calais gun emplacements. Again. Gun emplacements.
GB: So that was, that would have been after the landings. D-day landings.
AL: No.
GB: Before.
AL: Evacuation this is.
GB: Oh right.
AL: Dunkirk. Not D-Day.
GB: No.
AL: D-day happened, I think, while I was at BOAC. No. This was, this was the evacuation of our troops from France and from which I’ve just received a Legion d’Honneures medal for that and that’s in the front. I got, I only got that recently. I’ve, I have rung the Association, the RAF Association to ask them how you display it but they haven’t replied. I don’t know which order you put it relative to your other medals ‘cause I’ve got a row of other medals as well but —
GB: So you and Harry Tweed are flying Lancaster bombers.
AL: Yeah.
GB: Where were your missions taking you?
AL: All over the Ruhr mainly. Well that one was France but and it was, it was our first flights actually but then we went on from daylight [Coln/Kohlen?] Stuttgart, Essen [Weskapau?] Cologne Duisburg [pause] Daylights. Sollingen. Sollingen, Koblenz, Dortmund. Daylight at Cologne. Oh. That’s where we got shot at quite a lot. Got holes [laughs]. [unclear?] and interestingly during that period we had to do, at home we had to do a fighter affiliation flight when they developed the radar and we were two of the aircraft in the Squadron were fitted with the radar. Ours was one of them and you had radar and you had the other radio beam navigation. That was where it was quite different to BOAC because BOAC was mainly stars. You didn’t have the radar etcetera which were only lease-lend Dakotas that we flew in.
GB: Yes.
AL: With BOAC.
GB: Harry, I can see there are so —
AL: Ahem.
GB: Sorry Arthur I can see there are so many missions there.
AL: Pardon?
GB: There were a lot of missions and sorties.
AL: Oh well we were hard pressed. Flying every, yes we did it very quickly. Between our first mission was in September 20th 1944 and my last one was —
JL: January.
AL: December.
JL: ’45.
AL: 29th also in ‘44.
GB: Oh right.
AL: So I remember we were on the thousand bomber raids. Do you remember there was a particular raid called the thousand bomber raid? We were part of that and —
GB: Were you going up almost every night?
AL: Went, went twice one night. Off twice. Very very pressurised. Very pressurised.
GB: Mainly from where?
AL: Mainly night time but some daytime.
GB: And mainly from which base?
AL: From Mepal.
GB: Mepal. All Mepal.
AL: All my operations were from Mepal.
GB: Right. And did you have any scary moments? Any difficult times?
AL: Oh yeah. Well most of them were.
GB: Yes. Silly question I’m sorry.
AL: As I say once we counted the holes in the aircraft from flak.
AL: Flak.
GB: But one, one difficult time in particular was nothing to do with the Germans. We went on, over and as you can see it was turning cold in late winter and we’d been over, I don’t know where it was, we’d been over somewhere. Harry was a very good pilot. He held it steady all the way through. It didn’t matter what was happening around. I I happened to look, be able to look out. I couldn’t look out often because I had to plan for the next leg and out but on one occasion I looked out ahead. Saw one of our people I knew, aeroplane shot down. Exploded in the air. Shot down. But on this particular occasion we were coming back home and we suddenly discovered one of the bombs had frozen in its hooks. It hadn’t gone and it was rolling around. I think it couldn’t have been a very big bomb. It was rolling around in our —
JL: Hold.
AB: Bomb bay. Yeah.
AL: Undercarriage
AB: Undercarriage. Yeah.
AL: In our, oh my memory goes on words.
JL: Hold.
AL: Anyway, if you’re relying on my memory you’re not on a very good thing. My memory’s not very good. Not now. Anyway, we managed to jettison it over the English Channel. So, hopefully, it was, when Harry gave the command to jettison, open the flaps, open the flaps, that’s it. Bomb doors. Open the bomb doors sorry. You don’t open the flaps, you just up and down. Opened the bomb doors I’m pretty sure he’d make sure it was fairly clear down below when he did but that was a scary time. [laughs]
GB: Were you more afraid of flak or the Luftwaffe?
AL: Pardon?
GB: Were you more afraid of flak or the Luftwaffe?
AL: Oh loads of flak. Always. Every time. You had to fly through it. And if, if you were above if you didn’t maintain the height they’d told you you’d got to do. If you went above to get out of it you were put on a court martial. Yeah. So you had to stay in that line and Harry did. He, he’d got a nerve of steel and he went straight through. He was very good. Very good you see. And none of our crew. Alan John, the bomb aimer is still alive I think. The others aren’t and he’s in New Zealand. I’ve been over there to New Zealand since. We’ve been twice actually. I’ve got relations over there too.
GB: Did you see any Messerschmitts 109s?
AL: Well I’m sure the gunners did. I didn’t see much.
GB: No.
AL: I had my head down in front of the D spar. Head down. Keep, keeping ahead of the aircraft. I always had to be ahead, ahead of the aircraft so I had my head well and truly down. I could feel it. I could hear it. But you could hear our gunners saying, ‘Over there.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Harry, there’s a fighter over there,’ or something like that but we had our helmets on and we could hear it. I could hear it going, all going on. Even when the flak hit the plane you could hear it but never, I couldn’t see very much.
GB: How did you know when they had dropped the string of bombs?
AL: I I gave Harry the next course and as soon as he said, ‘Bombs gone,’ Harry was off on the next course. I think I wrote it down if I remember right. I plotted it for the next course back.
GB: Did you try to fly over the sea as much as you could to get home?
AL: Over the sea?
GB: Yes.
AL: Oh no. Straight across the English channel.
GB: Right.
AL: No. The most time we spent crossing over the sea was a different occasion because on a different occasion we laid mines in the Baltic and we had to go out at sea level over over Norway and Sweden. That direction. And they used to fire. I don’t know what happened but we were way up by the time we got there but right across the sea we were at sea level and we went into the Baltic and this is where we used radar. Towns came up as blobs and I, the bomb aimer was supposed to navigate me by the screen where these blobs were but he didn’t. I had to do it myself. And the other thing I had to do was aim for a headland in the Baltic on a certain course. Give Harry a certain course after we’d taken a fix as to where we were. After a certain course head for a headland and then I had to tell him every so many seconds or, yeah, seconds to drop a mine and at the same time I had to take a photograph of the screen to, so that when I got back they knew.
AB: A record.
AL: Exactly where they were dropped. So I had to do all this. It was, it was pressurised I can tell you. You were always ahead of the aircraft. You had to be ahead of the aircraft. You had to tell them what to do at what time and which heading.
GB: Everything depended on you.
AL: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Very much so. And take this photograph at the same time. Click with the camera.
GB: Did you —
AL: I never found out. I could never, the trouble was getting back to base they never showed you what your efforts were and I never did find out but I only concluded that when they recommended me for BOAC that I must have did ok because they must have [recorded?] and that was when they gave me my, I was at Ossington training for my First Class Navigation Certificate when I received my commission.
GB: Right.
AL: Notification.
GB: Yes.
AL: It wasn’t until after I was in BOAC that I got the [laughs]. I was then called a navigation officer by BOAC. I’d been that since I’d passed out.
GB: Yes. What was the social life like at Mepal?
AL: Well only when we went to the rear gunner’s home. There was no social life otherwise. I remember sleeping in barrack er in Nissen huts but social life I can’t remember.
GB: When you were waiting to fly were you all in one hut or one place?
AL: No. No. You had to go to, [pause] you had to go up into the airfield and you were briefed. That was the only time when you came together. The crew were more or less together but with other people you were briefed and then that was fairly short. And the same when you got back. You were debriefed. When you got back from an operation you were debriefed. Yes. I can’t —
GB: Did you, did you meet up with your crew socially apart from –?
AL: After, after the war.
GB: Yes. Right.
AL: Yes. Post war. One of them got married. Oh Harry got married I think, to a Welsh lady, Harry did and they came over to that. We got together. Mostly most of the crew got together. I don’t think the upper gunner. He seemed to be a loner for some reason after the war. During the war he wasn’t a loner because he used to hang around with the rest of the crew but I know I did dance but if they went to a dance I used to stay at the rear gunner’s home. He’d got, they’d got children so I used to entertain the kids. The kids.
GB: So —
AL: But they’re all, they’ve all passed on.
GB: Did you always fly in the same planes or did your plane change –?
AL: No. We finished up in C for Charlie.
GB: Right.
AL: But I think they had a different plane now and again but it was always A Squadron. But I can’t, I can’t remember what other. It’s got the name of the aircraft in my logbook here.
He was a Flight Sergeant Tweed then. I think he became a, he got his commission and went on. Lancaster 3 AAJ. That was the first flight. Lancaster C DKE. That’s an F. It may an E. No, it’s an F I think. I flew in different aircraft but C we finished quite a few. C for Charlie. I do remember that. CCC. I went on B there. It must have been B. But that was B. The photograph is B Squadron.
GB: Was it cold in the plane?
AL: Yes. But we wore goon suits as they called them. Goon suits. Silk gloves. Yes. Well, well protected. Excuse me. We were well protected. Yes, it was cold and it was noisy. That’s, that’s a product of the noisy plane both in RAF and BOAC because BOAC were Dakotas. Lease lend Dakotas and they were noisy too.
GB: So —
AL: Nothing like flying today.
GB: No. So in 1944 you’d been flying on Lancasters.
AL: Yeah.
GB: And then how did the link happen to BOAC?
AL: How did what?
GB: What made you join BOAC?
AL: Oh [laughs] well they came. After that tour, the last tour, they called me into the flight office and said, ‘We’ve got a posting. Would you, would you like it?’ I said, ‘What is it?’ And they said, ‘Well it’s a, it’s for a private airline trying to bring back to life again.’ It was British Airways before I think. Or something.
AB: BEA wasn’t it?
AL: But it was BOAC by the time I joined. British Overseas Aircraft and they had a, so, well I said, ‘I’ve never heard of them but I’ll try it.’ [laughs] So they said. ‘No. You’ll have to go on a course to get a First Class Navigators Certificate.’ I thought, ‘Ok.’ I was on that for a short time. It’s all on there. All my BOAC flights as well.
GB: What? You were flying Dakotas. Where did you go? Was it commercial?
AL: Cairo a lot. West Coast of Africa down to Accra. Down to Lagos. Used to swap planes at Accra or Lagos and then fly across Africa to, to, what’s in North Africa. North Africa and Sudan. And then, I know I’ve been in locust plagues and things when we got there. And we even got a basket, a laundry basket upstairs which I brought back from on the way to Cairo. But then on, [pause] I was twenty years doing that and towards the end of that year I was down in Cairo and the day before we were getting married on June the 22nd which is coming up. The day before we were getting married I was down in Malta and got stuck there because with Dakotas we didn’t have pressurised aircraft so you couldn’t get over the Alps back home and I was wondering whether I was going to get back in time but we did. The weather lifted and I got back home the day before.
JL: I know you did.
GB: And that was 1945.
JL: Six.
GB: Oh ‘46
AL: Yeah. I brought back bananas and things and oranges for our wedding which they’d never had. Yeah so —
GB: The first civil aircraft to land at Sweden.
AL: I was demobbed after that.
GB: He didn’t mention that.
AL: It was after that that I was demobbed. After we were married I did one flight didn’t I?
JL: Yeah.
AL: One flight from Bristol. I flew. I had to stay, with BOAC I had to stay at home in Quorn and they would send a telegram saying please report for duty. So I had to go down the day before. I had, I had to rent a room in Bristol. I hadn’t permanently near Clifton Bridge and I had to go back there and they go to Bristol airfield and where there was a plane which took us. The plane. A Dakota I think, I think it was which took us down to Bournemouth. We picked up our passengers at Bournemouth. Now one of the flights I went on, you’ve probably never heard of this but there was a Lancastrian built. It was a Lancaster with only twelve seats. It was a VIP plane. A VIP Lancaster with portholes down the sides and I had to navigate that from, from Bournemouth to Karachi and we only had one stop. Tel Aviv. We, every other flight we did we had to keep putting down to get fuel. Refuel, with Dakotas but with this Lancastrian it did Tel Aviv and then Karachi. Quite, quite a long and the same coming back so it was quite a long quite a long flight.
GB: When you —
AL: And it never flew again. I don’t think. The Lancastrian.
GB: When you were flying the Dakotas were you mainly flying passengers or cargo or both?
AL: Passengers.
GB: Passengers.
AL: Always passengers. Any cargo, not much cargo. We got cargo, a bit of cargo coming back with a few bits and pieces the crew had picked up on the way back.
JL: What about your first trip to Sweden. When you went you were the first civilian airline to land at Sweden at Ahlberg.
GB: You flew to Sweden.
JL: Oh you say it.
GB: You flew to Sweden I believe with BOAC.
AL: Yes. Yes. I did. Yeah. With BOAC. A flight to Sweden. I’ve got a picture in there of the plane. It had to land at Aalborg with a forced landing.
GB: Oh right.
AL: And Aalborg in Denmark and we were the first civil plane to land in Denmark after the war.
GB: Wow.
AL: But it was the forced landing. We had to. So we stayed in Aalborg for two or three days. For a few days while waiting for a part to be flown from England.
GB: When you were demobbed did you want to stay in flying or navigating?
AL: Well BOAC asked me. I said, ‘Well I’ve got a profession to go back to because I’m a road transport designer.’ And I finished up designing motor cars at Rootes. Rootes [Humber] Hllman, Sunbeam-Talbot and finished up with Peugeot. I’m still, they’re still, I’ve a Peugeot pension [laughs]. Anyway, no they asked me would I stay on and I said well I’ve a profession to go to and I’m fed up with living out of a suitcase. So I said, ‘I want to get my feet back down on the ground,’ and so came back to Longwall Green.
JL: Bristol.
AL: Coachworks designing luxury buses and tradesmen’s vehicles that you know, that went around carrying goods around.
GB: Yes. So you lived in —
AL: That was all [timber?] work but then I came, I got fed up with the manager at that place eventually. The chap at the top was very nice but the manager he had a foul mouth and I couldn’t put up with him so I said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I told him, ‘I’m leaving,’ and I came back to Leicester to build aluminium built, with, what’s the name?
JL: Castles.
AL: Castles. Castles. Yes. They, they did display vehicles. They did display vehicles. Fire engines I designed, which I designed for them. Again I wasn’t really too happy there and I got worried about Rootes. They were on a better pay than I was at Rootes Group for and I was there for many years.
GB: Gosh.
AL: Well until I retired.
GB: Yes.
AL: It wasn’t Rootes. They sold that to the Chrysler.
GB: That’s right.
AL: I was with Chrysler.
GB: Yes.
AL: Designing for them. I went over to America. Did take a big full size layout of one of the cars that we, that we draughted, put on to draught. The models took [points off ?] big clay models and gave it to us. We drafted it and then I took this big roll, big as a car and took it over to Detroit and then they sold out to Peugeot Citroen and I finished up at Peugeot Citroen. That’s where, I retired in France.
GB: Oh. Did you live in France at all?
AL: For a year. Yes. I used to fly back home. When I say I lived there. Not, not really but I I was —
GB: You worked.
AL: In France for a year and Joyce came over for my retirement party at St Germaine.
GB: Lovely. Good. So, when, Arthur when you think back to flying those Lancaster, flying in those Lancasters do you have any particular highlight memories? Any really difficult missions?
AL: Well only the one with the, (pause) I took it in my stride really. I didn’t, as I say I had my head most of the time.
GB: Yes.
AL: But the time that we’d got the bomb rolling around underneath. That was a nasty nasty moment but I was trying to think. At Mepal I think I knew a family or two in Mepal. We used to go out but mainly to the one, mainly, which was a little way away mainly with the rear gunner’s home.
GB: Yes.
AL: Yeah.
GB: And 75 Squadron then had the New Zealand connection. And that, did that continue?
AL: It’s always. That’s how I always knew it.
GB: Yes.
AL: I always knew it as 75NZ.
GB: Right.
AL: I never knew at as no other.
GB: Yes.
AL: It was always 75NZ.
GB: Yes. And were you proud to be a member of that Squadron?
JL: I don’t think you thought about it.
AL: Well as much as I was proud to be of the RAF.
GB: Yeah. Yeah.
AL: As a whole. [Laughs]
GB: Yes.
AL: Yes. But as I say —
JL: Just got on with it.
GB: Yeah.
AL: The only thing that I was sad about was seeing the crew that I knew fairly well shot down in front of us over one, one of the targets and I forget which target it was.
GB: Yeah.
AL: But I remember it being shot down and they didn’t return. Like a lot of the others didn’t.
GB: Yes. Well thank you very much for that Arthur.
AL: But if if —
JL: Kettle on. I’m sure you could do with a cup of tea.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Thomas Charles Arthur Long
Creator
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Gill Barnes
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-11
Format
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00:57:08 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALongTCA160611
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
Royal Canadian Air Force
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas Charles Arthur Long was born in Quorn, England. He was in the Home Guard and worked at Brush as a draughtsman, also gaining a Higher National Certificate from Loughborough College. He decided to join the RAF being that the only way to get out a reserved occupation. He was on the reserve for months and eventually sent to Aircraft Recruitment Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground / St John’s Wood. He was then post on to Newquay Initial Training Wing, followed by training in Canada in Halifax and Moncton. Recollects Winston Churchill at the First Quebec Conference, and provides details of training on a bombing and gunnery course as a Royal Canadian Air Force observer. Badge was presented by Princess Julianna of the Netherlands since many Dutchmen where on the course, and Sarah Churchill also attended the ceremony. Upon returning to Great Britain, he retrained as navigator at RAF Halfpenny Green, Lincolnshire and crewed up with 75 Squadron at RAF Mepal on Lancasters. He went on operations over Germany dropping propaganda leaflets, bombing Calais gun emplacements, Kohlen, Stuttgart, Essen, Cologne, Duisburg, Solingen, Koblenz and Dortmund. Discusses social life and keeping in touch with the crew post war, mine laying, anti-aircraft damage, jettisoning stuck bomb over the English Channel, flying conditions and military ethos. After the last tour, he was offered the chance of being a navigator in the BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation, flying to various locations in Europe, Africa and Middle East including a VIP Lancastrian trip. He got married, demobilised in 1946, and went to work a motor cars designers with Rootes, Castles, Hillman, Sunbeam-Talbot, Peugeot and Chrysler
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
Canada
Nova Scotia
New Brunswick
Nova Scotia--Halifax
New Brunswick--Moncton
Germany
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Germany--Köhlen
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Essen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Solingen
Germany--Koblenz
Germany--Dortmund
England--Newquay
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1942
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
75 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing and Gunnery School
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
civil defence
crewing up
demobilisation
Home Guard
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancastrian
military ethos
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
observer
propaganda
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Mepal
recruitment
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/583/8852/PHolmesGH1604.2.jpg
134f273cd93e015a7d789b8e877b159b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/583/8852/AHolmesGH161016.1.mp3
cc225552ec17450d62364d1a1b362db0
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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Holmes, George
George Henry Holmes
G H Holmes
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Holmes, GH
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer George Holmes (b. 1922, 1579658, 187788 Royal Air Force) his log book, records of operation, newspaper cuttings and photographs of personnel. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 9, 50 and 83 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by George Holmes and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-21
2017-01-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AH: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Anna Hoyles. The interviewee is Mr George Henry Holmes. The interview is taking place at Mr Holmes’ home [deleted] Lincolnshire on the 16th of October 2016.
GH: Yes. I had some very lucky escapes. We had, we were going to [pause] I’ve written it down. I’ve got a terrible memory.
[pause]
GH: Stuttgart in Germany. And of course they originated in France thinking possibly that there wouldn’t be many, many night fighters there but we got caught and we got shot and it took off the bomb bay doors. They fractured the starboard wheel, ruptured the main spar and left us with cannon shells stuck in the fuel tanks which is actually really instantaneous. And we did a belly landing when we got back and I was one of the first out and running. Somebody said, ‘Are you frightened?’ I said, ‘Have you seen a Lanc go up in flames?’ And the bloke said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well. Well, when you do you’ll run faster than I do.’ And actually they took these cannon shells away by the, if you handled the armament, whatever and emptied them they found out that the cannon shells actually had been filled with sand instead of explosives. Otherwise we would have gone up in one. And that was once. And another night someone on a circuit when we were coming, of course I was at Skellingthorpe at the time and there were about five or six airfields all around. And we had a bump and nearly got tipped over by the windstream of another aircraft. And when we landed there was about five foot off the end of the pit, of the end of the aeroplane gone. That was, I think we could call a very near miss. And all through my career they used to say you’ve got to get it right. The good crews survive and the bad crews don’t. But when you’re dealing with an aeroplane that’s attacking you at about between five and six hundred mile an hour you don’t have time to work out all the superlatives. You just learn how to, well you have to try to get him in to four hundred yards for the ammo to be, do any damage whatsoever. And these would wait about a thousand yards and pump these things in to you, you know. But, yes we lost a lot of young men at the time. Look back sometimes and I think how the hell did we get through it?
AH: How did you come to join the RAF?
GH: Mixed feelings. I was living in Kettering at the time and I would be about six years of age. I’d only just joined school which was a joining age in those days of about six years I think and I saw the R100 or the R101 in the sky. A most amazing sight. And of course everybody was reading Biggles books so I wanted to be a Biggles man. And my father wouldn’t sign any papers for me so when I was eighteen I went down and joined the RAF as an air gunner. But there were so many enlisting at the time it was over twelve months I think before I was called. And they wanted me to be a pilot or navigator. I said, ‘No. I want to be an air gunner W/Op.’ Anyway, I finished up there. They made me a wireless operator / air gunner. Well, up to going into the air force I’d hoped to be a semi-professional musician because I played the violin from seven years of age to when I went in the air force, eighteen. And I played the violin, trumpet and a mandolin. And the man who was teaching me he used to make instruments and he was going to teach me how to make them. And, you know when I went in the air force I was in the air force for just over five years. I couldn’t get back to the standard that I was in and work for a living at the same time because you’ve got to put about two to three hours a day in you know, to it. So I abandoned the musical stuff. And actually I was at an old miner’s school. A corrugated tin hut thing and when we moved to Leicester and I was a top boy at the school. The teaching, they taught us in that stinking little old tin hut was beyond their, what they were teaching us in there. They told me I couldn’t do joined up writing. We’d got to go back to scroll, you know. But I went to a school that was attached to the College of Art and Technology and I was studying textiles and hosiery. And I earned a very good living through the entire working life producing socks, stockings, knee socks and things like that. Of course you got paid in on production in those days. You didn’t get a standing wage. The more you made the more you got paid. And you were allowed ten needles per week and if you broke more than that you had to pay for them. Six pence each I think they were then. The unions would go bloody mad now wouldn’t they? [laughs] I had a very good education really. I was very fortunate. I was almost fluent in French. The French master said, ‘I can’t understand you, Holmes. You’re the worst pupil I’ve ever had. You’re always talking, take no notice, I can’t understand how you’ve got top of the class in French.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s simple. You gave us a half an hour’s homework and I always got an hour. So I worked harder than anybody else.’ [laughs] But I had a very good — my parents were not wealthy. My dad was a manager of a, the management of a grocery shop. You know these, what they were before the war. Several strains of food, food retailers and I really thought I was going to be a semi-professional musician. But I abandoned that scheme altogether and I got my sleeves rolled up and got stuck in this hosiery thing. ‘Til the war of course and then I couldn’t get, I couldn’t wait to get in the air force. And I finished up as a wireless operator / air gunner due to the fact, I always presumed, I don’t know whether it’s true or not but the fact that I had learned music, got some dashes and all like that. Morse code came easy and I was a very good operator. But apart from that I had a very happy marriage. I’ve got one son. He’s sixty seven now. And a he’s a fourth [unclear] at Judo. But life is a wonderful thing. Not to be wasted. And when you look at the war and see the number of thousands of young people who were wasted in the war. And the building and the costs. At the end of the day you have to sit around a table and talk it over from the first day. Save a lot of trouble and strife. But of course in those days Bomber Command was the thing.
AH: So you wanted to join Bomber Command?
GH: Oh yes. But then when you say wanted to join Bomber Command I’d always worked shifts. Night shifts and three shifts and things. I thought if I go in to the air force I’d be alright. And what did they do? They stuck me on Bomber Command. It was night work. But it wasn’t altogether good so as you look in the book you’ll see I did quite a number of daylight operations.
AH: Where did you train?
GH: Pardon?
AH: Where did you train? Where did you do your training?
GH: Where did I do my training? It was wonderful really. I I went to Blackpool first of all. That was the Number 10 RS something it was called. Signals Reserve or something. And they were all radio personnel in the air force up there. And we had a bloke called corporal [pause] I forget his name now. Corporal. Used to take us to the arm drill and foot drill. And his stage name was Max Wall. Can you imagine a man like Max Wall teaching you? Amazing. And then I went down to Yatesbury for a radio course. And I was posted then to Manby in the ground wireless op ‘til they could fit me into an air gunner’s course. Well, Manby in those days was number 1 AS. Air Armaments School and they taught bomb aimers and air gunners. We kept going to see the groupie and saying, ‘Get us on the course for air gunners.’ ‘No. You have to wait until you come through officially.’ When it did come through we was at a place called Evanton. About forty mile north of Inverness. First time I’d been to Scotland. In June it was. And it was a wonderful summer. And it was the first time I’d seen the shaggy Highland cattle. And I was taken by Scotland ever after that. Then after that, the gunnery course, I was sent to Market Harborough which is now a prison. And I used to push off home every night. After being there about three weeks the CO said, ‘We’re getting rid of you. You’re never here.’ It used to take me an hour to get home from Market Harborough on the local bus through all these villages. Little villages. And I was posted to Silverstone. And at Silverstone if you went in and out by railway you could get a train called the Master Cutler which was a high speed train from Sheffield to London and back. It used to do that in forty five minutes. That was quicker than being in [laughs] And I got crewed up there then and joined the [unclear] so to speak but I suppose if you were young men you had to be in something. You had no objection. I mean, no one wanted you to be a conscientious objector or anything. There we were. I joined Bomber Command and I was very lucky because I got with some good crews and I must admit I was commissioned towards the end of the war as a wireless op and I got operational strain and one thing or another. I was a bit of a drunkard. The only way of overcoming some of the strenuous [pause] I mean the beer we were drinking in those days I think was 1.2 percent alcohol. The water you washed the glasses in was stronger than the beer.
AH: So did you drink mainly beer? Or did you drink other stuff?
GH: No. No. The doc said, our doc on the squadron, ‘Go out and get pissed. It’ll do you good. Don’t go on spirits.’ And I was based around here. Around Louth. One way or another. It’s so that when my wife and I decided to come and live here it was after I’d retired. It was a home away from home really.
AH: Where were you first based? Where were you based first?
GH: Where was —?
AH: Where were you first based? Which was your first base? Where were you sent first?
GH: Oh. At a place called Bardney. Just outside Louth. And we got there. The place was, looked vacant and we got out the transport and looked around and looked in the ditches and it was full of bodies. We said, ‘What are you doing down there?’ They said, ‘Bugger off, there’s a fire in the bomb dump.’ So we said, ‘Oh, we’ll leave you to it then.’ But anyway a guy put it out. And then we went from that place. I did six ops there. And then we went to Skellingthorpe where the pilot was made up to a squadron leader. And we were only allowed two or three operations a month due to the losses of experienced crews. And by the time we’d done twenty trips together he, the pilot and the navigator went over to Pathfinders as the rest of the crew did. And the, the crew got sort of crewed up but the wireless, he didn’t want a wireless. He brought one with him, the pilot. So I was a spare bod and I went with an Aussie crew. His name was Cassidy and he’d got it painted on the side of a Lancaster. “Hop Along Cassidy’s Flying Circus.’ And I finished up at the one near Boston. What is it?
AH: Coningsby?
GH: Pardon?
AH: Coningsby?
GH: Coningsby. Yes. Yes.
AH: What squadron were you in first?
GH: 9. And then I went on to 50 at Skellingthorpe and then I went on to 83 at Coningsby.
AH: And what planes?
GH: Lancs. Well, after the war, if you look in the book look I went on a tour to South America. They sent three what were called Lancaster Mark 21s I think. But in actual fact they renamed them to Lincolns. It was a bigger aircraft that the Lancaster. Especially built for the war against the Japanese. And we went right down the west coast of Africa and then across over the Atlantic to Brazil and then right down to Santiago. Flew over the second highest mountain in the world I think it is. Aconcagua. But by then I’d decided I would take a course, this course on radiography, radio operating and get on to the public airlines. And I’d met my lady who I married and I found out that to be on public airlines you were away for home for anything from six weeks to three months. I thought well that’s not right. So I docked that and as I say I stayed in the hosiery trade. Yeah. Had quite a varied existence one way or another.
AH: What did you do in South America?
GH: Demonstrated the aircraft. I think they’d got that many four engine aircraft they didn’t know what to do with them and they were trying to flog them to anybody who’d buy them. God knows where all the aeroplanes went to. They just suddenly disappeared.
AH: And what was it like there?
GH: Pardon?
AH: And what was it like? Were they interested?
GH: Interesting.
AH: Were they interested in the aircraft?
GH: Oh very much so. Yes. Yes. Whilst we were there there was an earthquake in Peru and they wished us to send someone who would take some supplies over to Peru for the earthquake. And the air force said they couldn’t be allowed to do that because although we’d get to Peru and land they hadn’t got an air force runway long enough to take off so we’d be stuck. But yeah. Funny thing was we all decided when we were going to Brazil we would get together and learn Spanish. And when we got to Brazil they didn’t speak Spanish. They spoke Portuguese [laughs]
AH: How long were you out there for?
GH: Oh not very long. I should think, well if you look in the book it’ll tell you how long. About four weeks I think. We did one leg of the journey per day. And —
AH: And when were you demobbed?
GH: When? I think it was June of 1945.
AH: And how long were you in 9 Squadron?
GH: Pardon?
AH: How long were you in 9 Squadron?
GH: Only a few weeks. Not very long.
AH: What was it like?
GH: Quite an eye opener really. Mainly we were supporting the invasion. In fact that was the first time I’d ever seen the white cliffs of Dover coming back from France on D-Day. As I say all the boats going over.
AH: How did that feel?
GH: Have I —?
AH: How did that feel?
GH: Satisfied I would think would be the only expression. That we were doing something. And of course that’s another point. I mean I don’t know whether you’ve watched it on telly but they give you films of the actual landings in France and they chuck the blokes out into the water that was about six foot deep. They were drowned. Never got to France at all. Instead of waiting for the tide to go out. Some damned idiots in this military attitude.
AH: What did you think of Bomber Command?
GH: Well organised. To a certain extent they were very well organised. Many actual Bomber Command crews packed up before they’d completed a tour of course because it was a great strain. I remember doing a daylight on, I think it was at one of the flying bomb sites when they were launching flying bombs. And of course Bomber Command never flew in the way the Yanks did. They had three people from leading in and everybody was sort of doing what they called a gaggle at the back. And we were close up behind this three Bomber Command [pause] well, leaders I suppose and I looked up and saw an aircraft above was opening his bomb doors. I thought it’s going to drop on him shortly. Anyway he did. He dropped them and then it just floated down. Hit the aircraft on the right hand side, the starboard, knocked his wing off and he spun over and tipped the wing of the other who went that way and he tipped the wing of the other and went that way. And there were bodies without parachutes floating around and everything. And it was Cheshire who was controlling the raid. Called the raid off because he said the chaps didn’t stand a chance if we bombed it. So we flew back to the North Sea and dumped the bombs and went home. But the things like that they were happening every day. You know, I mean I’m afraid you accepted it.
AH: Do you remember where you were going on that raid?
GH: Not completely. No. Because there were one or two launch sites for flying bombs. I mean at one time as far as I know they were, they were launching something like ten thousand pound. Ten thousand flying bombs in a matter of a month or whatever, you know. I mean they were really showering the south of England with them. And —
AH: And how did you feel when you saw the bombs coming?
GH: I hope to God it misses me. To be truthful. But it was a sight, you know. Their only, these aircraft which they hit and damaged were only about a hundred, hundred and fifty yards in front of us. A matter of three seconds or something isn’t it? The speed we were flying at it could have been us. But many of the young lads who joined up when I joined up never finished. They were killed. A great deal of loss of human youngsters. Many of them technicians and people we missed after the war finished because of their experiences. And if you take that you promise me I will get it back?
AH: Yeah.
GH: Because I applied for the Aircrew Europe Star which was allotted to everybody who did two or more operations before D-Day which I did and I was told I didn’t, I hadn’t done enough. So when they issued the Bomber Command medal at the end of the war they said I couldn’t have that either because I’d got the 1939-45 Star or something. I don’t know. I thought well that’s great. I did twenty one ops and I never got a bomber medal. It’s unbelievable some fairy in Whitehall who was domineering the life span of the one doing the work. But the main thing I need at the present moment is some backup somewhere to get, I mean I mentioned to you earlier how much it cost. I was only getting two hundred and ninety pound a month. That’s about seventy pound a week towards the cost of being here and it was costing [pause] what was it? Well, a monthly, the monthly cost here is three thousand and forty one which is quite expensive. I think it’s a very good. I get my monies worth. But I think the company, the government or whoever, the Department of Works and Pension allow me something to help me pay for it and they want [coughs] they just knocked off the pension credit. I’m about two and a half thousand pound a month worse off when I got a pay rise of two pounds and fifteen pence [pause] In other words hard luck isn’t it? You know I mean I’m not the sort of person who is laid back and you handed something but I’ve worked all, all my own life. What I’ve got I’ve chased the work of one kind or another. Whether it was in the air force or out. And I’m disgusted actually to think the money that gets wasted.
AH: Could I just ask you a few more questions about the war?
GH: Yes.
AH: What did you think of the way Bomber Harris was treated?
GH: Disgustingly. As I said earlier he was blamed for bombing the population whereas the targets were selected by the War Committee. And the two leaders of that were Lord Portal and Winston Churchill. Bomber Harris was behind his crews all the way. Next question.
AH: Where did you go after 9 Squadron?
GH: With 50 Squadron at Skellingthorpe. That was, it was so far to the sergeant’s mess from where we were displayed in Nissen huts we used to go into Lincoln for breakfast [laughs]
AH: What sort of squadron was it?
GH: What 83? Er 50?
AH: 50.
GH: Very very compatible actually. The man who was my pilot took his place as flight commander was Metham. He finished up deputy leader of some bomber group. Was it Metham? He’s a well-known, established leader of the Royal Air Force.
AH: Was that a Pathfinder squadron?
GH: No. No. They only had two Pathfinder squadrons. They were both at Coningsby. 83 and 97.
AH: Were you in them at all?
GH: I was on 83. I did, I think nine trips with 83 Squadron. They said that it was easy on Pathfinders of course. You, if you’re first flare leaders putting the flares down you went over and laid your flares and shot off home but they didn’t tell you when you started laying your flares you had to put it in automatic pilot and you couldn’t drift. So by the time you got to the end of laying the flares the Germans had got all the information of what you were doing [pause]
GH: And I have the greatest admiration of the German people and Germany itself. Moreso than any other European country. I have a great ideal, great ideals of them. They’re a wonderful people. We should never have gone to war against them. Well, should we?
AH: What do you think we should have done?
GH: Pardon?
AH: What could, what could Britain have done instead?
GH: Shot Adolf Hitler. It was a dictator. A man who believes beyond his experience. I think, well what’s happening in the world today? I mean we’re now fighting the, oh ethnic crowds that we were fighting in the days of Christ. For two thousand years we’ve been fighting. Still doing it and we’ll lose in the end. Of course people say they mean good. If you read the Koran as far as I remember the first rule is thou shalt now kill. And I think the fourth one is thou shalt kill all non-believers. So it leaves you in a sticky mess. And they’re gaining popularity all the while.
AH: When did you read the Koran?
GH: I haven’t read the Koran. I’ve read extracts from it. I’m quite interested in reading other people’s religions and of course in actual fact I believe in the bible which says when you die it’s ashes to ashes and dust to dust. I don’t think there’s a heaven up there. I don’t think there’s anything like that. I think it’s just, you’re just dead meat. Unfortunately. And many many people leave their readings, writings and paintings to be perused over and you get the benefit of their experience.
AH: Have you written anything?
GH: Written anything? Only rude things on the wall [laughs]. No. I wish I could have written things. I was too busy with music. As I said I went to a school where we had possibly an hour to two hours homework every night of various kinds and I didn’t really get out amongst other young fellas of my age because I was doing one to two hours music training as well. Now, the school I went to had started a school orchestra. Violin, banjo and drums. And I loved music. But as I say when I went in the air force I didn’t take a violin with me and I should have done I suppose. After being in five years my fingers were all stiffened up with, didn’t work. So I abandoned it straightaway and got on with earning a living
[knocking on door]
GH: Come in.
Other: Sorry to disturb you.
AH: I’ll just put this on pause.
[recording paused]
GH: They don’t look like reading my writing for a start. But there’s a cutting in there I think I mentioned it earlier on from Stalin who stated he wanted the Bomber Command to burn Dresden because they were using it to refuel the battlefield. And it wasn’t so because after the war I were working with some of the replacement Polish people and they said they’d been in Dresden and there were no army facilities there at all. There was no reason for them to bomb it.
[pause]
GH: And I have a younger sister who’s ninety in October. Laurie. So we’re quite a long lived family aren’t we?
AH: How old are you?
GH: Ninety four. Feel a hundred and four [laughs] some mornings. Yes.
AH: You’ve got a picture here of Squadron Leader Munro.
GH: Yes. He wanted to crew up with us. He’s just recently died you know. A New Zealander. That was when I was at gunnery school at Scotland.
AH: Which one’s you?
GH: How dare you say that [laughs] I haven’t changed that much at all surely. I’m the shortest one. Yes. And that’s my favourite photograph of myself.
AH: That’s nice.
[pause]
GH: Yes. It’s a wonderful world and I’ve met some wonderful people and I’ve had some wonderful friends and relatives. It’s been enjoyment. Mixing the good with the bad makes you appreciate it all the more. We came out of there as you go in.
AH: You talked about the strain of it. What was the worst strain?
GH: Being with Bomber Command? Well, naturally the, the operations themselves. They were well organised, I don’t mean like that but I mean they always taught us the best crews will get through. Did I mention to you before luck has a lot to do with it? And I mean a matter of seconds in some cases. I never flew as an air gunner though. I was in the Home Guard before I went in the air force. In Leicester. Well a little village outside Leicester called Narborough. And they used to send me out on a railway bridge defending the bridge at night time with a bayonet fastened to a broomstick with string. I don’t know what you were supposed to do with it. I had a few thoughts. But by the time I went into the air force I was fully trained and I’d got a Canadian Ross rifle that was in a cloth bag with about two inches of grease all around it. And I cleaned it up and the stock of it was beautiful. Lovely gun. And one of the chaps, he was a sergeant. I think he must have been a sniper. He said, ‘I’ll teach you how to fire a gun George.’ Because,’ he said, ‘Let’s face it. Who’s the last person that knows when you’re going to pull the trigger?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Well you don’t pull the trigger. You squeeze your hand. And you don’t jolt it.’ And I could hit an eight hundred target, a bull at eight hundred yards. Which is quite good shooting I think. But I never did fly as a air gunner. I flew once as a tail gunner. And the tail one was like that. You knew all I got it I knew I wouldn’t have that for long.
AH: Did you get bombed yourself?
GH: Pardon?
AH: Did you get bombed yourself? In Leicester.
GH: Well, Leicester got bombed while I lived there. But we lived on the outskirts. And of course like most targets they usually go for the city centre first where all the main multiples are. And I was, I was quite happy in the Home Guard because we got very very good training. Initially it was useless. For the first two years. But when they got organised they got organised. And I sit and watch “Dad’s Army,” you know. And I I don’t know who picked the cast but it’s amazing to think [laughs] they look like real people [laughs] Anything else?
AH: Did you meet your wife during the war?
GH: No. I met her after the war. One of the boys who’s died in the last two years from Leicester was in training with me all the way through and he finished up at Coningsby on 97 Squadron and I finished up on 83. And his wife and my wife or future wife or his future wife, they used to go dancing Saturday nights together. And I met this girl one night in the RAF club. And I can’t understand that, I can’t explain the feeling but she was wonderful. And I said, ‘Can I see you again?’ And she said, ‘Well, I can’t see you for two weeks because I’m going up to Lincolnshire. To a town that you’ve never heard of.’ Well, I’d done all my training and everything here so I said, ‘Well, try me then.’ She said, ‘Louth.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve got news for you. I can’t go to Louth again [laughs] They’d shoot me.’ And she was always dying her hair. I think after the first two months I knew her she must have had about six or seven changes of colour. She was lovely though.
AH: What was her name?
GH: Barbara. And when we first got married we had to live in the front room of my mum and dad’s house until we could get somewhere. Everyone does I suppose. And her uncle was a butcher and he used to do all the joints of meat for Leicester. And this friend of his, a friend of his or someone in the trade he dealt with was the housing minister for Leicester. And in those days you couldn’t get housed if you hadn’t got a wood licence. You had to have a timber licence. And he mentioned to this gent that I was having trouble with my wife’s breathing because my mother and father had a dog and she was allergic to dog hair. And he said to this young gent, ‘He’s just come out the air force and he definitely wants a house but, and his wife is allergic to dog hairs and has to get out, you know of home and have his own place.’ And the fellow twiddled it a little bit and got me a timber licence and away we went. We bought a semi for nineteen hundred quid. And then after a while we bought, we bought a complete des res like, you know what do you call it? A house on its own at, in Oadby near to Leicester at the back of the racecourse and you got a full view of the racecourse. And I used to say to people, ‘I’ve got a nice place. There’s about four furlongs of grass at the back and they came and cut it, you know regularly,’ [laughs] But as I say we had this problem with this hooligan who was threatening her so that’s how we moved to Louth. But I mean moving to Louth was like going next door to the pair of us because we’d both been here so many times.
AH: Did you like Louth?
GH: I think it’s very nice. And I think once you get into Louth the people will do anything but they’re a little offish at the start. But it’s a lovely little town. I was born in Mansfield. In the Sherwood Forest. But I did like Louth there. Very much.
AH: What was your home like there?
GH: Where?
AH: In Mansfield.
GH: Well, I was brought up with my grandparents. I wasn’t brought up with my mother and father. They couldn’t get anywhere to live in, although my sister had been born. They wouldn’t accept anyone with two children so they farmed me off with my grandparents. My grandmother Holmes, when I was six or seven or eight years of age taught me how to sew and darn and knit.
AH: Did you have use of that later?
GH: Yes. Because I went into the hosiery trade and it was the machines that knit things make exactly the same loop as you do a knitting pin. And of course as I say I, I had a quite a few jobs. The job I had at Byfords. The other chap working next to me who was in his forties hadn’t been taken to the army. Hadn’t been called up. With a wife and two children. He always used to go down smoking in the toilets about once every hour and I used to run his machines as well as mine. And one day, you used to put your earnings under the table where they kept all the yarns and everything. He had a sneaky look and he found out I was earning more than him. So he went to the manager and he said he didn’t see any reason why someone’s underage that were in machinery should be earning more than he did. So they said, ‘Oh alright, we’ll give you two of his machines. They had me in the office and they said, ‘You’ve been bragging.’ I said, ‘What about?’ They said, ‘What you earn.’ I said, ‘I daren’t tell my father what earn. He’d go mad.’ I was earning as much or twice as much as my dad. And they said, ‘Well, we’re going to take two of your machines off you and you’ll run them for him.’ So I said, ‘I have an idea now. You can stick them up your arse.’ And they gave him the bloody lot. I got sacked for insolence. I got another job. I was never out of work. I got training that was necessary and I could go anywhere. I worked at Byfords. They sacked me three times after that incident and a very good job. The only snag is when I went into it before the war you were using cotton and well, wool and the machines were covered in like a white powder from the cotton in the wool, you know. And after the war when they started using synthetic fibres I think the synthetic fibres were so small you swallowed them. And I have a difficulty with breathing actually which is due to that I think. But nobody would say so because you then would jump then and say I want paid for being. I don’t think, I don’t think there’s more than one or two hosiery factories left in Leicester and it used to be the main city for hosiery. But that was all, that was all shift work. Night work and not very conducive for family life. I used to go to work because I mean you were busy. It didn’t bother you but my wife was stuck at home on her own you know and I didn’t realise until after I’d lost her that that’s what the problem was really. Basically. But we had a good life together. Yeah.
AH: Was your father or your grandfather in the First World War?
GH: Both my father and my wife’s father were in the First World War. My wife’s father was stationed at Louth here. In the Leicester, what did they call it? It was a mountain brigade. And he was only a little bloke. Smaller than me. And he looked like, well you just couldn’t imagine him sat on a horse.
AH: What he was called?
GH: Pardon?
AH: What he was called?
GH: His surname? Evans. Evans. Good Evans. I went to Edmonton for my gunnery course and we had a group captain called Group Captain Evans Evans and he got awarded the French medal. The Croix de Guerre. And he said, ‘Although I flew in World War One I’ve not flown in World War Two and I don’t think I deserved it. So I shall get a crew together and fly.’ So I went to my CO and I said, ‘Look, old Evans Evans is getting a crew together.’ We had a chance to get in because at that time I was a spare. And he said, ‘No, I don’t think so. My wireless op is covering that because he’s one behind everyone else in the crew and we all want to finish together.’ And off they went and they were shot down by the Americans before they got to the war. Before they got to the war line they were shot down by the Americans. And the only one that got out was the rear gunner. So that was another lucky escape. Just how the penny drops isn’t it? Am I boring you? Say so if I am. Anyway [pause] I am suffering really from the breathing quite badly.
AH: Shall we finish?
GH: Pardon?
AH: Do you want us to finish?
GH: Yes.
AH: Thank you very much.
GH: Quite all right. If it’s been of any —
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 George Holmes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anna Hoyles
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-16
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHolmesGH161016
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.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Brazil
Chile
Germany
Great Britain
Peru
Chile--Santiago
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Stuttgart
Temporal Coverage
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1945
1946
Description
An account of the resource
George was born in Mansfield and was bought up by his Grandparents until he was seven when he moved back to his parents in Leicester where his Father ran a coffee shop. He was a semi-professional musician playing violin, trumpet and mandolin. He studied hosiery at college and worked in hosiery production his entire working life. He joined the Home Guard in Narborough, and recalls how he defended the railway bridge at night time with a bayonet fastened to a broom stick with string. After volunteering for the Air Force he was sent to Blackpool for training. The corporal who taught him foot drill went on to be the comedian Max Wall. He was then sent to RAF Yatesbury for his radio course, and then forwarded to the Air Armourers school. After completing the course, he was posted to RAF Evanton for a gunner’s course. His next posting was to RAF Market Harborough, but was only there for three weeks before he was sent to RAF Silverstone for crewing up. His first station was RAF Bardney with 9 Squadron for a few weeks. He remembers that when they arrived at Bardney it was deserted and they found everyone lying on the floor in the kitchen as the bomb dump was on fire. The crew were then posted to RAF Skellingthorpe in 50 Squadron and they completed 20 operations. George recalls a daylight operation on a V-1 site, and he witnessed the Lancaster that was above them blown up and seeing the bodies of the crew falling past their aircraft. The crew were then split up when the pilot and navigator joined the Pathfinders and he became a spare bod. He eventually joined an Australian crew in 83 Squadron at RAF Coningsby and completed a further nine operations. His pilot was called Cassidy and the nose art on the Lancaster was “Hop along Cassidy’s Flying Circus.” After the war he took part in a tour of South America and discusses an earthquake in Peru. He discusses his religious beliefs and how the war, Bomber Command, and Arthur Harris have been remembered. He met his wife Barbara after the war at a dance in the RAF club and they had one son.
Format
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01:08:02 audio recording
50 Squadron
83 Squadron
9 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bomb dump
bomb struck
bombing
civil defence
crewing up
faith
forced landing
Home Guard
Lancaster
mid-air collision
nose art
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Bardney
RAF Coningsby
RAF Evanton
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/549/8812/AKirkDJB151130.1.mp3
c049e4214c8ef271b87110e8d887eb23
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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Kirk, Dennis
Dennis John Bonser Kirk
D J B Kirk
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kirk, DJB
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dennis Kirk. He served in a reserved occupation but also in the Home Guard and as an air raid warden. On 5 March 1943, Lancaster ED549 crashed attempting to land at RAF Langar. Denis Kirk was first on the scene and helped the only survivor.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-15
2015-06-10
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
DE: So this is an interview with Dennis Kirk for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. My name is Dan Ellin, we are in Plungar and it is the 30th of November 2015, and also in the room are –
ET: Ernest Twells from Barkestone-le-Vale who’s a friend of Dennis Kirk.
DE: Thank you.
AT: Anne Twells, also from Barkston.
JK: Joan Kirk, Dennis’s wife.
DE: Thank you very much. Dennis could you tell me a little bit about your early life and where you grew up?
DK: I was born at Barkston in 1920, 25th of April and went to Barkston school ‘til I was, ‘til, ‘til I left and came to Plungar in twenty – we came to live in Plungar in twenty nine. But in those it was a lovely village and everybody joined in and you played your games and you know, really, really nice living there. And a few very nice school teachers at the time, a Mrs Gulliver, a Miss Whittaker and a Miss Thorpe, they were the teachers in those days. Then we came to Plungar, but you see, then when we got to Plungar we had to walk everyday from Plungar to Barkston school to get there eight o’clock in the morning [laughs] and sometimes we came home for dinner and sometimes we stayed there full, full time. And then, then where we came, when I became eleven, you were moved to Battersby school. I was at Battersby school ‘til, ‘til I was fourteen, then left school and stayed to work on the farm.
DE: Mhm.
DK: Which I didn’t, I didn’t want to be farmer [laughs] I wanted to be a joiner [emphasis] or, or a joiner or a blacksmith you see –
JK: What?
DK: In those days your parents said what you were going to do –
DE: Mhm.
DK: Not like [laughs] it is today. So I had a good life, and of course I stayed, stayed on the farm and, and helped for a long time, and then when the war came we, it became very busy, and – so when they want someone to join the Home Guard, or join the Home Guard or the fire watch and this night in nineteen forty, forty –
JK: Three [emphasis].
DK: Forty –
JK: Three.
DK: Forty-three was it? Yep in 1943, we just been round the village to check if there was any lights on, Tom Moles and myself, and on our way back we heard this aircraft coming, and suddenly it went dead and we thought it had crashed on the railway line below the village. So we went down to see what had happened and getting onto the rail track we bumped into this young man, and I said to him ‘are there any bombs on the plane?’ He said ‘no we’ve dropped all the bombs.’ And then we got him off the railway line, which is next to the canal, and we took him to Grange farm where Mr and Mrs Bell lived, and they’d been in the seventies and he took care of him. I don’t know how long for but we went down to see where the plane had crashed. We found it – wasn’t on the railway line it was just below [emphasis] the railway line, and never seen anything like it before. And there was three, three thrown out at the front, there was a Barbados man in the centre and there was another two each side, and then we walked to the rear end and the rear gunner, he was dead inside the, in his turret, but we never saw the other couple. So we started moving away then then the fire engine came, but it, they had a look and said [unclear] ‘cause nothing they could do, and without, the ground [unclear] aircrew, well ground staff from Langar Airfield, it was only about half a mile away.
DE: Mhm.
DK: So, so we left it and went back to our Home Guard hut ‘til – now you see, when you did Home Guard in the winter time, you signed on at seven ‘til half past five in the morning, but in the summer time you weren’t on ‘til ten to half past five [laughs] in the morning, and we finished half an hour – but that was it, nothing more was heard of it and then it would be about, what was it, sixty years ago –
JK: Sixty years ago.
DK: Did you say? Pardon?
JK: Mm. Pardon?
DK: Sixty years after when he found it –
JK: Well yes, yeah –
DK: Bolton [emphasis].
JK: It would be, hmm.
DK: And they said that John Bolton found this part, kept it in his garden shed, and then someone said ‘see Dennis’ and he said ‘what would it be’ and we found it was a piece of metal from a bomber [emphasis]. Then I contacted Jim Chamberlain who had associations with Bomber Command and he sorted that booklet out [emphasis].
DE: Mhm.
DK: But other than that I – it was a shock to see three people lying dead there you see, something you’d never seen before [laughs].
ET: Didn’t you say though they looked as though they were asleep Dennis?
DK: Pardon?
ET: You said they looked as though they were asleep.
DK: They were lying there -
ET: When?
DK: They were lying just like this here, so much apart, I can see, can see, see ‘em to this day, I can see the Barbados man in the centre now but –
DK: Yeah. But, you see but all, from then on, every book which was produced said the plane burned out.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But there wasn’t a spark at all. You could just hear the engines flip, cooling off there, but that was it so. But then my wife contacted Alan [?] didn’t he, and she said they were diverted to Scampton [emphasis] where it wasn’t safe to land, then they sent them to Normanton, Bottesford, but they came round here -
DE: Mhm.
DK: Some years ago –
JK: It was misty at the time –
DE: I see.
JK: And that’s why they were diverted.
DE: Hmm.
JK: [Unclear] aircraft, airfield.
DK: And some years ago I bumped into a chappy from Harby who’s father’s on the, their look out post you see, and they saw this plane go down he said he did two circles then went down but he wasn’t in the right direction to for Langar Airfield. But it, well [unclear] it could have been on Langar Airfield, but he was going straight down instead of to airfield that was the sad [emphasis] part about it, yeah.
DE: I see so it was, so they were close but –
DK: Yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: Mm.
JK: And with it not burning out [emphasis] we think that they had just run out of fuel –
DK: They’d been, burning –
JK: Because they’d been diverted to two or three airfields before they arrived here.
DK: See where the three lads are buried in Bennington – report there said ‘it had burned out’ –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But we said ‘no,’ there wasn’t a spark you see, no – it had just gone, yeah.
DE: So was it, was the aircraft all pretty much all there then?
DK: All [emphasis] there, I suppose the undercarriage would still be up would it Ernest?
ET: He might have actually put it down –
DK:‘Cause it seemed level you see.
DE: Mm.
DK: The thing was, where the railway head was, it was here, the rear to it was almost – so how [emphasis] they’d missed the rail track I do not [emphasis] know.
DE: Mm. Is the railway on an embankment there then?
DK: It’s, it’s still there –
DE: Mm.
DK: It was, it was a fair [unclear]. In my days all the hedgerows on the railway were cut, nicely trimmed so, you couldn’t of got through the hedge so I often wondered how, how he landed on the, on the, on the rail track –
DE: Mm.
DK: When he was thrown out the plane, he was a mid upper. What was he, a mid upper?
JK: Was he – I can’t remember. It’s in the book.
ET: Didn’t you also say Dennis –
DK: So if he was thrown out there, but you see the rail track would be as high as this bungalow [emphasis] so.
DE: Mm.
DK: No one seems to answer that – how he was thrown [emphasis] out.
DE: Quite, yeah.
JK: [Unclear].
DK: But the thing was, when we met, when we met his son, who came from, doctor from [unclear], he never talked about his air mates, you see.
DE: Mm.
DK: We been round the council –
JK: The thing was though –
DK: After he’d left the Grange Farm with the Bell, Bell family, he was staying at Normanton I think then they took him to Wrawkby [?] –
JK: Wrawkby –
DK: Where they took most of the crashed people –
DE: I see.
DK: That’s all I know about it [laughs].
JK: But you didn’t know at the time that he was injured because –
DK: No.
JK: He walked onto the Bell’s with you didn’t he?
DE: Mm.
JK: But the son [emphasis] said that he obviously had quite a severe head [emphasis] injury.
ET: Mm.
DK: So whether he’d been through a –
JK: But it wasn’t an obvious [emphasis] –
DE: Right.
JK: To Dennis on the railway line.
ET: The actual railway line now is disused, it’s when BT [?] came and shut them down [JK laughs] but when Dennis say at the time it was a good job it was three in the morning because it could probably have been hit by a train, you don’t know –
DE: Mm. Do you think it’s – do you think the three men were [emphasis] thrown out or do you think it’s, he, he dragged [emphasis] them out of the aircraft?
DK: No, he, he was nowhere near them you see. No, no, they must have been thrown. But they were, they were laying so neatly, one here, one there, yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: And there’s any – I don’t suppose there’s anyone left on at Langar who remembers it because [laughs] there’s not many around like me.
DE: Mm, quite.
DK: No, no –
ET: Dan did say, if he, if he dragged them out and then he thought if he went on the railway line he’d, he’d actually end up somewhere.
DE: I, I don’t know.
ET: You don’t know do you?
DK: No it’s a, it’s a – at the time of the crash it was a grass field, but now the farmer’s planted trees now but, I could take you – when, when Tom Moles and myself walked up there, I can see the fence which we got over to get into the field and saw these, these men there.
DE and ET: Mm.
JK: But the mystery is how that man got on the railway line isn’t it?
DK: Yes that’s what, that’s what [laughs].
JK: The survivor, how he got onto it.
DE: Mm.
DK: Could he have been thrown out?
DE: Who knows? Who knows? No.
DK: No. But they certainly wouldn’t have got through the hedgerow, see in those days railway hedges were neat and tidy, and weren’t, where the bridge is, there’s no bridge now you see, and he wouldn’t have got it up, up the bridge because the bridge was over the railway as well.
DE and ET: Mm.
DK: But no it –
DE: And then what happened to the aircraft then?
DK: Well we never went back you see, we were farmers weren’t we, had to work. They must have moved it away the following day. There’s a lad in our, who’s, who rarely got, didn’t go on the computer [unclear], but he – my wife catered for it but it, and his family, put in – for thirty years, and then, then one day I was doing the garden, doing the garden, and he came up the drive, I was just inside the garden there doing it, and he said ‘you’re bloody selfish, you want all the limelight.’ I said ‘what?’ to him. In fact his [unclear] started shouting to me again, said ‘you’re bloody selfish, you want all the limelight.’ He said, he said ‘you never went anywhere near that crash.’
DE: Oh [JK laughs].
DK: So, so I mean, he’s my age, he’s been a pal all my life but it really grieved me for thinking that –
DE and TE: Mm.
DK: I’d seen enough of the [laughs]. So we haven’t had anything else to do with one another since.
DE: Oh dear.
DK: But no [laughs].
JK: Well he went down to the crash later [emphasis] didn’t he?
DK: Yeah, yeah. You see after we got the laddy off the railway line which is just down here you see, we walked down this, and across the field, and that’s when we went to see – but as soon as the RAF lot were down we thought it wasn’t our business to be – we were in Home Guard uniform but we moved away so as there no hassle you see.
DE: Oh I see, yeah.
DK: But the two must have been – but I’ve often thought to myself [laughs] I’d ought to have gone and touched one of those men to see if he was still –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But at that mo – you’re so taken aback with something like that [laughs] hmm.
DE: Mm.
DK: But no, I’m pleased they did a memorial to them and, hmm.
DE: And the memorial, there was nothing until sixty years afterward so –
DK: Pardon?
DE: There was nothing until sixty years afterwards, quite recently –
DK: No, no, no. No one ever mentioned it you see. There were planes crashing all around, no one ever mentioned it, the crash at Plungar, but –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But tell you, there’s crashes all the way around here.
DE: Can you tell me a bit about some of the other crashes then?
DK: Pardon?
DE: Can you tell me about some of the other crashes?
DK: Well. The, the first crash I came across was in, in, at the top of the Wood Hill at Barkston, what, a plane from Syerston crashed through there, and then, then later on there was another one crashed at Belvoir. And by all accounts the one at Belvoir – if this is true, all accounts – the only survivor he got a – but he could hear a clock striking at Belvoir Castle, and he crawled to Belvoir Castle [DE makes noise of disbelief]. And then the nanny there cared for him and got him into the Grantham Hospital.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But the one at Brampton [?], I mean you read that one, that’s what happened at Brampton you see, then there was one crashed in Heaton [?]. I don’t know where it was from but there’s a laddy in the village who saw the crash when it had happened and then there was one crashed at Barnston, the church is here it crashed in the field below [laughs], but the one which blew up, on the Saturday night they were taking off to bomb somewhere, and I was, I was cutting the lawn at the farm there, and all of a sudden whoosh, and smoke went out every chimney and the lot blew up. And then nothing more ‘til I read it in a book after it.
DE: Mhm.
DK: Hmm. Then that’s that one lady [unclear], you’ve read about [unclear], and that’s about it [laughs]. ‘Cause yeah, they were crashing all around [emphasis].
ET: Hmm.
DK: ‘Cause after, after, after we’d opened the war memorial that day, the corporal came from Melton didn’t he? When they came and had a cup of tea here where they, with the lady.
JK: Which was that? I don’t know – there was so many people [JK and DK laugh].
DK: And he was involved in a Wellington in Melton Mowbray at the time, but there’s perhaps more details in some of these places – sort it out really.
DE: Mm.
DK: Yeah.
DE: Mm [DK laughs]. The, the one that exploded on takeoff –
DK: Yeah.
DE: How close was that to houses?
JK: Very near.
DK: Well my first wife – and the runway was almost, you know where you come behind the point – it wasn’t far away.
DE: About fifteen hundred yards or something like that.
DK: Yeah. And she said at the time, it blew all the windows out.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And fired the petrol out of the plane, fired the hedgerow, but it didn’t do any damage, only the windows, yeah, mm.
DE: I see.
DK: Mm. But we loved to see those [unclear] you see them taking off because [laughs]. Yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: Mm. So it’s any good to you, what I’ve told you [laughs].
DE: No [emphasis] it’s wonderful stuff, yeah.
ET: [Unclear].
DE: Erm, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about what it was like in the village during the war?
DK: Well [laughs] people just carried on doing their jobs and only that night when we were bombed very heavily, but, but no one was injured [emphasis] –
DE: Mhm.
DK: It just, they’d just dropped all their bombs all around [emphasis] they’d just – what did it say on that book?
JK: Oh we, we read the ‘Bletchley Park’ book, and apparently they knew this plane was coming over to bomb Derby from the information at Bletchley, and they diverted it from Derby, they were able to divert the route from Derby to Nottingham. And then they must have had another diversion to bring it back. And they bombed, they put some bombs, dropped some bombs on Nottingham, and then they – I don’t know how they did it. I mean the Bletchley Park –
DK: Just going for a wee [laughs].
JK: They were code breaking, it was quite beyond me in the book [laughs] but they, they diverted eventually from Nottingham and they just dropped the bombs over Plungar [emphasis], and one or two other villages –
DE: Mhm.
JK: On the way back. But it was interesting in the ‘Bletchley Park’ book because it said they knew [emphasis] they were coming to Derby and they shot twenty odd planes down before they reached the country – well, just off the coast, crossing the coast.
DE: I see.
JK: Have you read that book?
DE: I haven’t no.
JK: It’s worth reading.
DE: Okay, I’ll put it on my list.
JK: Yes, do [emphasis]. I was fascinated by it. I didn’t understand the computer business about it [laughs] in it, but the stories. And – this is nothing to do with Plungar but, it said that they knew [emphasis] they were going to bomb Coventry, and they didn’t know what to do, but Churchill said ‘it will have to go ahead, because if the Germans, if they know that they’ve been diverted or it’s been stopped, they’ll know we’ve cracked the Enig – er, cracked the code’ –
DE: Mm.
JK: That will put the end to the Enigma code.
DE: I see, yes. I have heard that, yes.
JK: Mm.
DE: And you were at university in Leicester at the time?
JK: Yes, yes.
DE: What was that like?
JK: Well it was just like a normal little town, they didn’t get that much bombing at all [laughs]. I mean I lived in Leeds [emphasis], but we got very little – I think we had one big raid in Leeds and that was it. I was ill at the time because I was in bed and we were watching it through the bedroom window [laughs].
DE: You didn’t feel the need to go to a shelter then?
JK: No, we didn’t realise it was so near [DE laughs]. We could see all the flashes and hear the noise but – I was in a suburb of Leeds so we didn’t get bombed in the suburb. They were the other side of the river. But it was the doctor that came in the morning to say that the south of the river had been bombed, and I think they’d had a bomb at the hospital too. Leeds General Infirmary.
DE: What did your parents say to you?
JK: Go on?
DE: What did your mum and dad say to you?
JK: I don’t think they said –
DE: No.
JK: In the war, you accepted [emphasis] things –
DE: Hmm.
JK: It was most peculiar really.
DE: Mm.
JK: I mean it was happening so many times and to so many places –
DE: Mhm.
JK: You just accepted what had happened.
DE: Ooh what’s that?
DK: Incendiary bombs.
DE: That’s what I thought it was, yeah [DK laughs].
ET: Don’t put it on the fire [JK, DK and AT laugh].
DK: Oh no, we put one on the fire, and it used to [unclear] we used to throw them on the fire. That’s gone off you see. When they dropped, you see, the striker was in there, and that was sealed off with insulation tape, and that came. And they just used to burn away [laughs].
DE: Mhm.
DK: I’ve had two or three at one time with the fins on still.
DE: Wow.
DK: But all around they kept [laughs]. Are you wanting it?
DE: Oh I don’t know.
DK: You can have it if you like [DE and DK laugh].
DE: Thank you very much. For the tape, I’ve been given a used incendiary bomb, wonderful.
DK: Have you seen one of those Ernest?
ET: Well, I’m worried about Dan having it in his boot and then we’ll see on the news later on that –
DE: Yes [all laugh].
ET: Can I take a picture?
AT: [Unclear].
ET: Do you want to hold it Dennis, with Dan?
DK: Pardon?
ET: Do you want to hold it with Dan?
DE: He wants to take a photograph.
AT [?]: It’s like a Christmas cracker [laughs].
DE: I’ll just pause the tape for a second.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
DE: Start the tape. So where did you find an incendiary bomb Dennis?
DK: In the field.
DE: Uh huh.
DK: See we had two time bombs dug out on the farm –
DE: Mhm.
DK: And [laughs] I remember the last one being dug out. It dropped down, and I was collecting the cows to milk them, and they wouldn’t let me move the cows because this bit of disturbance [laughs]. And this – during the war, the road from Plungar to Barkston was blocked, the road from Stallone to Plungar was blocked, the road from [unclear] was only open road for about a week or more, you see ‘cause there was bombs everywhere [emphasis]. Yeah, mm. Bombs had gone off [laughs] but on the Barkston Lane where you go to where Ernest lives, there was five council houses there, and that had to be brought out ‘cause there was a time bomb dropped in the field opposite where they were. They dropped a time bomb there and two in our field, yeah, mm.
DE: So did someone diffuse those or did they just wait for them to go off?
DK: No they diffused them all, yeah.
DE: Mm.
DK: They don’t [unclear] long time, yeah. Mm. They brought the soldier down from Yorkshire light infantry, they lived in the old school room while they guarded the road ways.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And, at night my mother used to take these soldiers on guard, either some sandwiches or something, to eat.
DE: I see.
DK: We were grateful for what they did, yeah. Mm.
DE: You were, you were saying earlier that you weren’t really short of food here.
DK: Oh no, no. We’d have been better off as we are today if we’d had the same amount of rations [DK and DE laugh]. [Unclear] no, everybody was helpful [emphasis], you see, helped one another same with the probably [unclear] in the garden, everybody shared things. There was never any –
JK: Mm.
DK: Were they? No. And with us having a farm you see there was plenty of milk anybody wanted milk.
DE: Mhm.
DK: I know we were rationed but really not being a – we didn’t know there was a war on in a way [laughs]. Mm, mm.
DE: But it must have been fairly hard work for you if you were keeping watch at night and then working on the farm in the day?
DK: [Laughs] well you got used to it.
JK: Yes, you were at watch at night and when you came off you went and milked – did a five o’clock milking didn’t you [laughs].
DK: Oh yes, that’s what had happened, go and round the cows up and milk the cows. This chappy who was with me, Tom Moles, he was a pal of mine, he was on one of the little engines on the iron horse like up at Belvoir there, he’d all of that but, yeah [laughs] had a good time.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And during the war you see, you met up with so many lovely people – Air Force men and Army lads and you even got the Yanks [emphasis] down here at times.
DE: Did you?
DK: Yeah [laughs]. One night – I must tell you this, one night the Yanks came down here –
JK: [Unclear].
DK: And they came into the pub and had a lot of ale, and then they got the horse out and was riding the horse [laughs] around the village in the morning [DK and DE laugh].
ET: And what about the Land Army?
DK: Pardon?
ET: The Land Girls?
DK: About land – well they associated with the air men, you know. They really enjoyed, they were very pally with them at the, at the Plough at Stallone.
ET: Mhm.
DK: But during the war, you helped out with a Land Girl they did a wonderful job which had never been – well they’ve got a medal now, but for what they did and the type of work they did on the farm, it’d be a dirty job, threshing machines and digging and going to – it wasn’t the best life but they stood up to it well, yeah.
DE: Mhm. And where were they from, the Land Girls?
DK: Well there was one from where [laughs] near where Ernest – I’ll show you a photograph [laughs]. I’ll put some eggs [?] on and [unclear] –
JK: Oh –
DE: I’ll just pause the tape again.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
DE: So you’ve got a – the tape’s started again and you’ve got a newspaper article.
JK: These are made of sawdust –
DE: It’s so nice to be remembered. And these are all Land Girls are they?
DK: Yeah [laughs].
JK: Well it’s alright there, yes.
ET: One of these?
JK: Yes.
DE: So where did the Land Girls live?
DK: In the old Wretch [?] at Stallone –
JK: [Unclear].
ET: It will.
DE: And did you, did you have anything to do with them then?
DK: I fancied them [DK, AT and JK laugh]. I have to tell Ernest – what have you got there?
JK: But you fancied ginger haired ones –
ET: I’ve heard, I’ve heard the ginger haired ones –
DE: Oh right, I see.
DK: Just a second.
DE: But were they more interested in fliers and aircrew then were there?
DK: Oh no they were very [unclear] – that was Bottesford Air Field at the time [papers shuffle]. That was when they drilled for oil in the village –
DE: Mhm.
DK:For ten years. That was a Lancaster which crashed in the Trent near Newark.
DE: Oh, I see. [Papers shuffle] did you ever want to volunteer and serve in one of the armed forces?
DK: I would have liked the opportunity, but you see, you were stuck with the farm with the workers gone.
JK: You weren’t allowed to, were you?
ET: No.
DK: Where’s she gone [papers shuffle].
DE: So the, the station just down the road –
DK: There’s a station at Red Mile.
DE: Mm.
DK: There’s one at Stallone. But they never put a station near to the village, that was the sad thing, quite a way away, hmm. I don’t know where that photograph’s gone.
DE: Did they open during the war, or were they –
DK: Yes, yes, no they, that was one I fancied.
DE: Oh.
DK: But, but she was ginger headed but it didn’t suit my [unclear, laughs].
DE: So that was Amy Tapplin.
DK: She came from Kimberly, Nottingham [laughs]. And they were, they – and that’s after the golden year [unclear].
DE: Oh I see.
DK: I don’t know if you’ll want any of these.
DE: I might take a photo of that page later on I think.
DK: Pardon?
DE: I might take a photo of that page later on if that’s okay.
DK: Yeah.
DE: So the stations that were opened, were they on farmland before, what was farmland before the war?
DK: Yeah, yeah, the stations –
ET: I think Dennis might think you meant railway stations –
DE: No I mean, oh sorry, I mean the RAF stations, the bases.
DK: The Langar one –
DE: Langar.
DK: There was a lot of parachuting from there, and some private planes go. But the Normanton one is quite an industrial station it is, yes.
DE: Now it is, yeah.
DK: Mm.
DE: Before the war was it farmland?
DK: Langar, at Langar before was farmland. But down here, there’s a hundred acre round here –
JK: Round here.
DK: That belonged to the Duke of Rutland, it was air field in the First World War.
DE: Oh I see, wow.
DK: I don’t know of sort of planes it was, but it was made as an airbase – because you can pick maps [unclear] little book there, and it tells you where the air fields were in the First World War, yeah.
DE: Mm. What did the farmers think to losing all the land?
DK: Well [laughs] I think they were compensated well, you see. You see the one at Langar there, think it belonged to two or three farmers, but one man bought it off since then and he’s just passed away, yeah. But it was a wonderful thing to take the land, yeah. But to help the losses [?] out, war out, yeah.
DE: Right. So there wasn’t any resentment, they thought it was a good way of making a few quid then?
DK: Pardon?
DE: It was a good way of making some money was it then, selling your land [AT, JK and ET laugh].
DK: Yes, but the worse thing actually – you were ruled by the War Ag Executive Committee during the war.
DE: Mhm.
DK: And they came round these, to tell you what to do and what not to do. Well they didn’t know a lot about what they were talking about [laughs], they offended a lot of old farmers [laughs].
DE: Because they were telling them what crops to –
JK: Mm.
DK: Mm. With us they said ‘grow potatoes’ Well no way could you grow potatoes ‘cause it was too heavy clay [emphasis] land.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But they wouldn’t listen to you, you just did what they told you [laughs]. Oh dear.
DE: But you were okay because you were a dairy, dairy farmer?
DK: We, we got everything, we got dairy cows and chickens and sheep and fat peas [?] and we worked with horses in those, it wasn’t tractors at that time.
DE: Mm.
JK: You bred –
DK: Pardon?
JK: You bred shire horses didn’t you?
DK: Yeah, mm, mm. We’ve been around since about the 1790s [laughs].
DE: Yeah. Erm, so that’s what it was like working on a farm. What was it like being in the, in the Home Guard?
DK: Well you did a parade every Sunday morning, but we did, we had to do a keep fit in the village [unclear] whether it meant much I don’t know. But in – where the property is built now, we dug a big trench, used to dive into the trench and climb up the [laughs] –
DE: Mhm.
DK: But whether it meant anything I don’t know [laughs].
JK: Dad’s Army [laughs].
DK: But no, we had to have these lessons, and we [phone rings].
JK: Oh.
DK: I was going to say –
JK: Oh it might be the dress makers –
DK: We were taught how to shoot with a Lewis gun, and we had a Stanley gun as well.
DE: Oh really?
DK: Terrible [laughs]. We went to an old disused iron ore pit with a Stanley you see, and this laddy, he – and it wasn’t ejecting the rounds, it kept [laughs].
DE: Wow.
DK: I think the people telling you what to do didn’t know much about it themselves.
ET: Mm.
DK: It was good fun though, yeah.
DE: And was it a mixture of people from the village of all ages –
DK: Yeah, all who wanted to join. Some never joined you see, but no, some of them, my father did with his friend, some were elderly people, but the young was right down to my age, at that age, we were pleased to do something for it.
DE: Mm.
DK: But for the first twelve months, where the canal’s down here, and then the railway – and we were on the railway bridge for twelve, without any cover at all from clocking on at night in the morning. And then we managed to get an old chicken hut and that’s where the Home Guard were [laughs].
DE: Right. And that was your duty, was fire watch basically was it?
DK: Yes, yes. It went around you see, yeah.
DE: Yeah.
DK: No, no I had a good life and I’m still here [laughs].
DE: Indeed, yeah. So what, what happened at the end of the war? What did you do after the war?
DK: Still farming, yeah. But after the war ended, they came round in nineteen, 1953 –
JK: It was my German friend Giezla [?] from Grantham, so I said I’d ring him back [laughs].
DK: Looking for oil.
DE: Mm.
JK: She comes on and she talks and talks and talks for half an hour [laughs].
DK: And then they came to the farm and they drilled at Barkston before the war, the Texans, they drilled at Barkston,
JK: She never stops talking.
DK: They didn’t find any oil, so they came to the farm, and they said to my father want to drill in the stack yard, that was near to the – he said ‘you can go anywhere else other than in the stack yard, and they moved a field up from the stack yard and they found oil straight away at three thousand feet down.
DE: Crikey.
DK: And then we had one there, we had one, two, three, four – we had had five pumps going, but the thing, we didn’t get any for the oil you see –
DE: So how did they –
DK: It belonged to BP and the government.
DE: Mhm.
DK: You were just compensated for the road way to the, where the oil pumps were, and, and they help you out in some way but you didn’t get any for the oil they took, they were very good. I was talking to a chappy, I was talking to a chap who lives in, he’s in Mansfield now but he was a rear gunner in the Lancaster, and he was shot, he crashed somewhere in the East Coast, and he was in hospital for six month, and then he got out and he got a job with a, with a [unclear] electric board, but about two years ago he got a phone call from someone, and it was the pilot [emphasis] off the plane, they were the only two, both thought they were dead –
DE: Oh I see.
DK: They were still alive. He, I’d got a little poem somewhere what he gave me about a rear gunner, I can’t find it, I’d like to find it sometime. But it was a lovely poem, this old chappy put together [laughs] mm.
DE: Mhm.
DK: No it was – everybody were content, they weren’t moaning [emphasis] during the war.
DE: Mm. So how do you feel about the, the crash site, you know, being remembered after so many years, ‘cause I mean it was forgotten about wasn’t it?
DK: Yeah, yeah, could be – no ‘til, what, until this chappy found this bit of metal – I was in the garden one day and he came by and he said, John Bowman [?], he said ‘you know something about the aircraft which crashed do you?’ and so I said ‘yes,’ and then he brought this piece of metal, it’s about this length –
DE: About three foot.
JK: [Unclear] yes.
DK: Mm. And then we contacted Tim Chamberlain, who he had connections with Bomber Command all the time, he does a wonderful job, he’d put two or three talks on at a time, he soon found out that the three are buried in Bennington Churchyard. The three, three that were killed here –
DE: Yes.
DK: And then there are three others Bennington Churchyard.
DE: So how do you know Tim Chamberlain is it, who wrote –
DK: Pardon?
DE: How do you know Tim?
JK: We didn’t really did we?
DK: No not really [laughs] –
JK: He must have heard about this and came to see us.
DK: Mm.
JK: He did the memorial, there’s a memorial at Langar Air Field –
DE: Mhm.
JK: And he was responsible for that, doing that.
DE: I see.
JK: Mm.
DK: No he did a lot. And when it happened, this is between us, when Tim planned all that the village didn’t want – we were gonna have a thousand people [emphasis] here you seen, but the, our locals –
JK: They wanted to keep it –
DK: Who run the village wanted to keep it quiet [emphasis].
DE: Oh I see.
ET: Mm. I remember that yeah, mm.
DE: But there’s, there’s now a stone there isn’t there?
DK: Pardon?
DE: There’s now a stone, a stone, a memorial there?
JK: A memorial.
DK: It’s a lovely one, all the –
JK: Actually [emphasis] –
DK: All the village people contributed to this here. It’s a lovely stone isn’t it dear?
JK: I don’t know whether you can get it still, but a Barbadian came up from London and recorded the whole service [emphasis] and the flypast –
DE: I see.
JK: And he put it on Youtube.
DE: I’ll have a look.
JK: And it’s under Plungar –
DK: Lancaster –
JK: Lancaster memorial, on Youtube.
DK: It’s worth listening to, to see me ringing them out [laughs].
JK: Have you seen it?
ET: I’ve seen it, I’ve forgot all about it Joan.
JK: Is it still there?
ET: Yeah, it will be.
JK: Do they delete them after so long?
DE: No it’ll still be there probably we’ll have a look.
JK: It’s about an hour and five minutes.
DK: And then we had the Lancaster and two Spitfires fly over you see.
DE: And this was two or three years ago?
JK: This was on the day that – is, is the date in that book?
DK: Is it on, on that book there wasn’t it?
JK: It’s September nineteen, two thousand, oh I can’t remember. It must be three years ago.
DE: 2012 I think.
JK: Yeah, three years ago, it was September. But he, he filmed it from the rear of the church and unfortunately, you know, it’s only a tiny church and they were all these heads [laughs] in front of him so some of it you can’t see. But the opera singer sang –
DE: Mhm.
JK: A, a song he’d composed himself, so you get all that.
DE: I see.
JK: And then Dennis rang the bells afterwards and you see him in the belfry ringing the bells.
ET: And how did you ring the bells Dennis?
DK: Pardon?
ET: How did you ring the bell?
DK: Ding dong [laughs].
JK: There were two of them.
DK: But the thing was – we were, my son and I were in the belfry there, and then there was a laddy there who’s father, in this book [pause].
ET: When I saw you Dennis you were using your foot.
JK: Yes I think he –
ET: Like that.
JK: I think he rings two bells you see.
DE: Oh right.
JK: Hand and foot [laughs].
DK: This chappy was prisoner of war you see.
DE: Mhm.
DK: He was shot down, and his son came to sit with us. This lad, he went to see the prisoner of war camp that his father was in, but [laughs] in front of me – there was two rows of seats there, there was this chappy and he’s moving his bloody head the whole time [laughs].
JK: [Laughs] you see his head moving in front of the camera [DK laughing].
DE: Oh I’ll have a look at the video.
JK: I mean it was such a tiny church that it was cramped.
DK: No, it was a lovely service, and the thing was, what was the man who took the service, he’s on there.
JK: Er Robin, Robin –
DK: It was a, was a –
JK: He was an air vice marshal.
DK: To do with the Air Force, you know.
DE: Mm.
JK: He’s a retired air vice marshal, he lives in Southwell. He sings in the choir in Southwell Minster.
DK: No it was a really [emphasis] lovely day, and I remember, we stood on the lawn here and saw the Lancaster fly over and the two spit – we were very lucky.
DE: Mhm.
JK: They did four circuits round the village.
DE: Oh smashing.
ET: It was amazing.
JK: It was lovely.
DK: Then, then was it last year sometime? My nephew who lives on the farm – his son in law works at Coningsby [emphasis].
DE: Mhm.
DK: On the plane there. And we had a day there didn’t we [laughs].
JK: Yes he got, he got permission to take us to Coningsby and we saw them repairing or doing some maintenance on the Lancaster.
DE: Yes, yes.
DK: During the war, better just tell you, during the war, they decided to take us to Melton Air Field to have a ride round in a Dakota [emphasis]. And they loaded us all up on the Dakota and then the mist came –
JK: Mist came down [laughs].
DK: So I never had a ride [laughs] so I’ve never been in a plane [laughs].
DE: Oh dear.
ET: Oh Dennis.
DE: Who was it that was trying to arrange that for you then?
DK: Pardon?
DE: Who was it that was trying to arrange that for you?
DK: The Home Guard like to get us onto the air field – it was only a small air field at Melton – but there was about lads from this village and then [unclear, laughs].
DE: Right.
DK: We got lined up and sitting down laughs]. That was the wonderful thing so when we went to Coningsby we saw the old Dakota there.
DE: Mm.
DK: It’s a wonderful plane isn’t it, the Dakota.
DE: Yes [emphasis], [DK laughing].
DK: So we’d better go and see the site had we?
DE: I think we’d better had, yeah.
DK: If you want – you want to go, do you?
DE: Yes please, yeah if it’s well, it’s not raining is it? No.
JK: I don’t think it is.
DK: We’re not bad, we’re not bad to get out here, but you and Ernest –
JK: Well you can get out, it’s not very far from the road is it?
DK: Can walk and see the memorial, but we’re not – we can take you to the plane crash and show you where it crashed then.
DE: Mhm.
DK: Is that alright?
ET: That’s fine.
DK: Have you got a good vehicle?
DE: Erm, yes.
JK: The road to where it crashed can get a bit bumpy, isn’t it?
DK: Yes [laughs].
DE: That would be great, yeah. So you’ve always, always sort of followed, I’ve noticed with your book of clippings, you’ve always followed the history of the RAF.
DK: Yes [laughs]. Anything else going. I was looking today, when Belvoir sold all the property in 1921, I’ll let you have a page you can see what they all made then [emphasis] [laughs].
DE: Oh yes.
DK: So I don’t know what’s going to happen, they’ll perhaps go on the skip when I’m gone [laughs].
DE: Oh dear, no, no.
ET: Oh Dennis no, no.
DK: Unless Ernest wants them.
ET: You must put on them ‘do not throw away.’ [JK laughs].
DK: Pardon?
ET: Put on them ‘do not throw away,’ ‘retain’ [DK laughs] or send them to an archive somewhere.
DK: Yeah, they’re not interested in old things –
DE: No sometimes, yeah, you do get that unfortunately [DK laughs].
JK: We remember too much Dennis don’t we?
DK: Pardon?
JK: We remember too much of the past [DK and JK laugh].
DK: Now when they talk about things, the price she says [unclear] years ago [laughs].
JK: Prices, prices get Dennis. ‘That cost so and so,’ I said ‘Dennis you don’t live in this world.’
DK: I’ll not be [?] –
DE: Mm. It is –
JK: ‘You can’t buy that it’s a waste of money,’ well it’s either that or nothing.
DE: Oh dear.
DK: I’ve had two hearing aids [?]. I’ve had two lots, I’ve had the national health one and then I’ve had the, what are they?
JK: Specsavers.
DK: So now I can hear a bit more ‘cause she can’t hear what I’m saying [laughs] or I can’t hear what Joan’s –
DE: Right.
JK: No you can’t hear what I say. I can hear what you [emphasis] say because you shout [JK and DK laugh]. Deaf people do shout, don’t they?
DE: They do.
DK: No you see, I’m not [unclear]. But people don’t realise – and it was a lovely life years ago you see, everyone helped one another and you lived with your – didn’t sit your parents in an old home to end their days, you looked after your parents didn’t you in those days? And you lived well and fed well and [laughs], mm.
JK: Well you did on the farm.
DK: Pardon?
JK: You did feed [emphasis] well on the farm.
DK: No, I’d have liked to be a wheelwright and join or a butcher you see.
DE: Mhm.
DK: But you see, I was saying in my day they had the say –
JK: Your parents told you what to do –
DE: Mm.
DK: So what do you think, ‘why do you think we’ve got the farm?’ Because, we worked from scratch to get the farm you see [laughs].
JK: And you owned [emphasis] it.
DK: There’s a tree up there, and you go up there – it was planted in 1852 with my relations.
DE: Really?
DK: It’s an old chestnut tree, yeah. Right at the top there [laughs].
DE: That’s smashing.
DK: And I’ve got some books, Ernest is going to take them to the archive. The, when he was an auctioneer in Valier [?] in 1852 [laughs].
DE: They would be interested in that yeah, definitely. Well thank you very much, I think I shall –
DK: Well [unclear] you [laughs].
JK: Yes.
DE: I shall press stop on there, unless there’s anything else that you can think of that you’d like to tell me [pause].
DK: No I tell the people a lot about the, this, this was gardens [emphasis] years ago – well it belonged, well the church, it was supposed to belong to the church, but it belonged to his lordship up at Belvoir.
DE: Mhm.
DK: They were very good landlord, different to what we’ve got, we’ve got now [laughs].
JK: When I bought the plot it was glebe [emphasis] land, it belonged to the church. And then a man in the village was doing research up at Belvoir for the old duke –
DE: Mhm.
JK: Last, the previous duke. And he found that this land belonged to Belvoir in 1792, and it was called Hive [?] Close. And, but nobody can find out how the church acquired it [laughs]. So whether it still really was the duke’s and he missed out on the sale – not that he got a lot for it, he didn’t ‘cause it sold just before prices went up, but –
DK: Shall we get off Ernest.
JK: Got no idea [emphasis].
DE: Yep –
DK: Get your gear on and I’ll get mine.
DE: I’ll press stop on there, thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Dennis Kirk. Two
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
2015-11-30
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AKirkDJB151130
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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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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Format
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00:45:06 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Dennis Kirk was born in Barkston 1920, and lived on a farm near Plungar. Recalls when the war started and the War Executive Committee told farmers what to produce; talks about the Land Army. Being in a reserved occupation, he joined the Home Guard with military training; while on duty he responded to a crashed aircraft accident dealing with casualties before the Royal Air Force arrived at the scene. Dennis dealt with unexploded ordinance carrying out defusing. He also talks about civilian life in wartime, land use for airfields with compensation for the land owners, and BP post war drilling for oil, reunions, and the RAF Langar memorial.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Plungar
England--Nottinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
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1943
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Carolyn Emery
bomb disposal
bombing
civil defence
crash
final resting place
home front
Home Guard
incendiary device
memorial
RAF Langar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/549/8811/AKirkDJB150610.2.mp3
b456a190eebd5766875b7ddfcfe95964
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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Kirk, Dennis
Dennis John Bonser Kirk
D J B Kirk
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Kirk, DJB
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dennis Kirk. He served in a reserved occupation but also in the Home Guard and as an air raid warden. On 5 March 1943, Lancaster ED549 crashed attempting to land at RAF Langar. Denis Kirk was first on the scene and helped the only survivor.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-15
2015-06-10
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
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CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command centre, the interviewer is Clare Bennett, the interviewee is Mr Dennis Kirk. The interview is taking place at Mr Kirk’s home at Plungar, Nottinghamshire, on the tenth of June twenty fifteen. Right Dennis, so whereabouts were you born?
DK: I was born at Barkestone, in the next village, and my brother and my sister, and my father and my mother lived at Harby Farm, Barkestone
CB: What date was that?
DK: That was er, we lived there ‘till nineteen twenty-nine, then we moved to [unclear] Plungar in nineteen twenty-nine.
CB: So, you were born, in?
DK: April the twenty fifth nineteen twenty [laughs].
CB: And, do you remember much of your early life?
DK: Well, I, I had a good life, you know, in, in the village. Everybody played games and that, and the school was at Barkestone you see, but then, when we moved to Plungar in nineteen twenty-nine, we had to walk to Barkestone school every day then, in the morning and then back in the afternoon [laughs]. I played all sorts of games, but er, it was a nice little school it was, yeh.
CB: Was your family in farming then?
DK: Yep, yeh, well the family started farming in about seventeen ninety [laughs] but, I didn’t want to be a farmer, I wanted to be a wheelwright or a butcher, but you did what your parents told you in those days [laughs], you didn’t tell them what you wanted to do [laughs].
CB: They told you, so what did you do after school, you know, after you left school?
DK: Well, I helped the butcher for, at weekends, used to help him deliver two or three, when I left school, and then ‘cos I worked on the farm from then on, yes.
CB: And, war was started, so you’d be about er, twenty, something like that?
DK: I was twenty-one when the plane crashed, yes
CB: Right, and you were in the Home Guard?
DK: Home guard and fire watch, yes.
CB: So, was it because you were in a reserved occupation, that you were into farming?
DK: Yeh, at the time, you could have been called up, but you never, you had the medical but you weren’t called up, you see, but one or two round here were kept because the short of, short of, labour round here at the time, yes.
CB: Did you want to join the forces?
DK: I would have liked to join the forces, yeh, but didn’t have the chance, no [laughs].
CB: So, you did your Home Guard duties?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: And, so, what did that -?
DK: Well, we used to have a, have a, on a Wednesday night, in the, used to do some training there, then every Sunday morning, we either did some training or in this [unclear] hill, had er, had places to jump into pits, and things to climb across [laughs], whether it made any good, I don’t know [laughs]. And then at times they would take us into, up to Eaton, where there was a lot of disused mines, where we used to use a Lewis gun or a Sten gun, but it was interesting a lot of it, but, you mean, you thought you were doing a bit of good for the country, but it was, when we were on the bridge, we never saw a soul at all, we’d just got the guns and rifle there [laughs].
CB: Of course, I’ve got to mention Dads Army, haven’t I, you’ve watched that. Does that bear any resemblance to what you did?
DK: No, [emphasis] no [laughter] But, anyway, we enjoyed the, you had a night out, once, I say, different people, each week, I mean, old people and the young ones as well. This chappie was with me, he weren’t a young chap when playing cards, he were good company [laughs].
CB: So, the, the night that we’re interested in, it was obviously just an ordinary night for you that night?
DK: yeh, well, we’d just walked up the village, we always checked in the village for lights and things, if any lights on.
CB: And this is March the fifth nineteen forty-three?
DK: Nineteen forty-three, yeh.
CB: Yes.
DK: We was just walking down back to the Home Guard hut there, and we heard this plane making a weird sort of a noise. Funny, I can’t describe the noise it made and it just went dead, and the plane just went down there and of course, we expected to find it on the rail track, but when we got down there, there was only a survivor on the rail track.
CB: Did it, was there a loud crash or?
DK: Well, it must have woken all the people up there you see, but it just went straight down.
CB: Right.
DK: And, we got the laddie off the railway line and took him there, and just, then me friend and I were walking down to see the plane and we saw these three men thrown out in a matter of space as this, they must have come out the front of the plane, and then the rear, he was in the turret upside down, but there was two more dead in the plane.
CB: So, you are right up close now?
DK: Say?
CB: You were right up close to this Lancaster?
DK: Oh yes, yes, we walked all round it, you see, yeh.
CB: You didn’t think it was going to explode or anything like that?
DK: No, no, I said, ‘any bombs?’, they said, ‘no, no’, so I think they must have run out of fuel or something.
CB: Who did you ask?
DK: Well, no one said that, but someone said, perhaps a shortage of fuel, in one of the letters, I think it said from -
CB: But, at the time, but at the time, you went up to it, you didn’t know whether it, bombs or anything else?
DK: No, within, within, quarter of an hour, the whole lot of serving aircrew, airmen from Lanc, came running to the plane, you see.
CB: I see.
DK: But then we walked away and left, left it to them because it weren’t our responsibility, you see, no.
CB: So, you could see the bodies, in and around it?
DK: Yeh, yeh, yeh.
CB: And, also, one of the, the crew had been thrown out, you say and landed on the -?
DK: On the railway line, yeh.
CB: And, did you go up to him?
DK: We, we, got him off the rail track and took him to the houses, yeh.
CB: So, did you think he was dead or could you see that he was alive?
DK: He was walking on the railway.
CB: Oh, right.
DK: No, no, we couldn’t see his face, but I think he had a head injury, but what, but what they said didn’t they, Joan?
JK: Someone said he had severe head injuries, but he was, he was, compos mentis, because you said to him, ‘are there any bombs on the plane?’, and he said, ‘no, we, we disposed’, you know, ‘we got rid of them all’.
DK: He was only eighteen, but he, he walked pretty well on the rail track, I mean got him off the rail track and took him to the farmhouse there, so, what happened to them, I said everything was lost until nineteen, until sixty-three years afterwards, when they found this, this chappie found a bit of metal.
CB: Oh, can you tell me about that, who was that, was it er, somebody with a metal detector?
DK: The man in the, who was a metal detector and he, what he said was, he found this bit of metal, that’s in Waltham, Waltham museum, all the details there, and er, he kept it for two years [laughs] in his shed, didn’t know what it was. And another gentleman on this village said, ‘ask Dennis, ‘cos he saw a plane crash there’, but erm, it was very interesting to, no one seemed to know what part of the plane it was, where from the plane it had come off, but, in the end I think someone did sort it out, where, where it, which part of the plane it was.
CB: So, you saw them, you saw the crash and the survivor?
DK: Yeh.
CB: And then they came running from RAF Langar?
DK: Yeh.
CB: To pick up the -
DK: Yeh, ‘cos it was in, if it had gone another half mile, he would have landed, but he wasn’t going the right way, he was going, if you like, would you like to see the memorial or not? [laughs].
CB: Yes, we can have a look later.
DK: He was going, how to explain, he was going straight, he would have gone to Bingham, instead of, at the rate he was going, yeh.
CB: Right, did you think he sort of lost his bearings as to where he was going, or -?
DK: Well, I think, I feel for sure, he’d run out of, he couldn’t go no further, no.
CB: Right.
DK: But, but, he, they say that then or some years or so, will never really know what happened to, until this chappie found this metal, then after that Tim Chamberlin found where three of the crew were buried at Long Bennington, but - [laughs].
CB: So, it had, he’d done a forced landing, hasn’t, hadn’t he?
DK: Yeh, er, yeh.
CB: So, er, with, as you say with little fuel.
DK: Well, if he had gone on that way, he’d have landed on the airfield, he was going, not in the right direction for the airfield, but you see below here is an old airfield from the first World War [laughs], but whether he’d got that on his map I don’t know [laughs].
CB: When did they come and take the rest of the plane away?
DK: I say, we had to work again, it was cleared, it was cleared up the same day, yeh.
CB: Oh.
DK: On one of these long, what do they call them, they used to collect them at [unclear], you see, but this plane weren’t smashed up a lot, no.
CB: No.
DK: No, but it, they say, I’ve read in books about it, flying, the pilot, there was not a spark at all.
CB: No, well no bombs and no fuel, so -
DK: No, no, no, there couldn’t have been any fuel, ‘cos I’m sure it would have caught fire.
CB: So, the, the gentleman with the metal detector has found this, and then research starts on it, on this, on this crash I take it?
DK: Pardon?
CB: Did research start then on to what had happened?
DK: Yeh, it was Chamberlin, Tim Chamberlin, who started it all up, you see, then of course, the village got involved, and then that’s when we did a collection and well. Tim got the, Tim got the whole service involved himself, didn’t he, Joan.
JK: Yes, he found the erm, Padre that retired.
DK: Air Force Padre, yeh.
JK: Air Force Padre to take the service and erm -
DK: No.
CB: Yes, the Venerable Air Vice Marshal, Robin Turner.
JK: He organised the service, for the Lancaster and Spitfire to have a flypast after the service.
CB: Who did the research to find the families of the crew?
JK: Well, we all kind of did a bit. Tim did the Canadians because he had a brother in Canada, erm, I don’t know how we found the Barbadian, erm, I think it was David Webb that found -
DK: He found the Barbadians on the wotsit.
JK: Yes, he found the Barbadian, I think, on the, by doing some research on the internet, and erm, then various people, we found out where they were all, the English people were all buried, and did research into the different areas where they were buried, but of course, why we couldn’t find out, how we couldn’t find out er, about them from that. We put adverts in newspapers and you know, in the local area but er, then you see we found the others, quite a few of them had moved, because the, well, found out that the ones from Tyneside had moved down to Daventry, and the Portsmouth ones had moved to Southampton, so we couldn’t, never occurred to us to find out in the Southampton area or the Daventry area. We did all the research in the local area where they were buried.
CB: So, you had, erm, a dedication of the memorial?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: Erm, to the crew of Lancaster ED 549 of a 100 Squadron, on the twenty second of September twenty twelve.
DK: Yeh.
CB: And, erm, [pause] as you say, the Venerable Air Vice Marshal Robin Turner.
JK: That’s right.
CB: Led the, and did erm, did the survivors?
DK: There’s that, what we found at the start, you can have it [unclear], that’s all we found to start off with, you can have that book as well.
CB: Thank you. So, the survivor, erm, Sergeant Davies, erm, he was, his family, erm, he’d died by this time hadn’t he, died in his fifties?
DK: Oh yes.
JK: Died in his fifties.
CB: So, who, who was, did his, some of his family manage to come to the service?
DK: No, no.
JK: No, because we couldn’t find, we found about them after, oh I think it was in the November, after the service, and it was because he was doing, he was asked to do some, his father was asked to do some, no, his son was asked to do some research when he was living in Cyprus, erm [pause] on Bomber, erm, bomb gunnery instruction and it was through that, that he found out, about the erm, the crash here and er contacted us. And he rang up and just said, ‘I’m the survivor, er, I’m the son of the survivor of the aircraft’, [laughs] so, we were all a bit gobsmacked [laughs].
CB: So, you managed to find -
JK: Because the Air Force didn’t know, couldn’t tell us whether he had actually survived or not.
CB: Oh, so you managed to find the family of the Canadian and er -
JK: Yes, yes.
DK: Yes, we found the Canadian.
CB: And the family from Barbados, but not the, not the English survivor.
JK: That’s what we couldn’t understand. I mean, the one that we found out about after was the Hallet family, er, and Emily Hallet rang us from Southampton, but we got the names of the brothers of the, the man that was killed and we found out where they, where they lived, erm, and I say, one lived in Nottingham, and I searched through all the Nottingham telephone directory and rang every Hallet in the Nottingham telephone directory. One was in Northampton, and I forget where the other one was, there were three brothers and er, but no success at all.
DK: That’s, that’s where the plane crashed though, if you like, we can take you down and see where it is [unclear], it’s quite, it’s a rough road, if you like see where the memorial is, would you like to see it, the memorial?
CB: Yes, we can do that later.
DK: The people, the people, Gills of Newark did the memorial, because they did it for a reasonable price you see, but people all in this village contributed to the cost of that, there’s still a bit left in the kitty, to keep it, and our neighbour he did, did something else with it, where the memorial is, yeh. But Tim, now, the Chairman, is now, is redoing it, a book now about the whole families, at the time he’d only got the Barbados and the Canadian, but he’s doing a new book.
JK: Updating the book.
DK: Updating it, yeh, it’s very interesting [unclear] volunteer, yeh, while you’re talking to me.
JK: He’s an American.
CB: Well, you live quite close to RAF Langar, so, and other, and other airfields round here, so you must have seen other crashes and -?
JK: Well, yes, I said, I saw the one which crashed in Belvoir Woods, that plane flew from Syerston, a trainer plane, that killed them all, then, then, there’s one crash near Belvoir, that was all, just one survivor there, then the one crashed in [unclear] Branston there, and there was, no survivors there, then, then at Barnstone, that little village opposite Langar there, there was one crash in Langar there, no survivors and er -
CB: Did you ever get used to all these crashes then?
DK: Well, you see [laughs], you see the Lancs were flying over regular and you just took it for granted that they’d crash you see, then the one which blew up on the airfield, there was some ones not taking the ones not, the ones not, taking a certain, I don’t know, [unclear] it blew up you see, yeh, but er, no but is was er, you’d see them taking off on the way from Langar there, yeh.
CB: So, you carried, carried on your Home Guard duties until the end of the war?
DK: Yeh, yeh [laughs].
CB: And then you went back to farming, I believe?
DK: Farming, we were farming at the time as well, you see, farming in the daytime, yeh [unclear] [laughs].
CB: Did you find wreckage as you were farming round here or -?
DK: No, no, [unclear] you see, but er, let’s see, in, in [unclear] where was it? They came to bomb, bomb Derby one night during the war, but they diverted to Nottingham and did a lot of damage in Nottingham, then they dropped all the bombs round here.
CB: Right.
DK: And they dug two, time bombs off the farm and we had fifteen craters filled in [laughs], but no one was injured, no one, no one was killed, right from Cropwell Bishop to Plungar, they just scattered the bombs, [laughs] [telephone ringing] but we were lucky really, yeh. But they say you [unclear] the war, but you met a lot of lovely people, and these people who came to the dedication, you couldn’t wish for nicer families. To me, because they had a house at Normanton near the Bottesford airfield and they were very impressed with that, after we had done this function that day. My wife did that in the morning, about thirty from abroad you see, then we had the church service, and so many went back to the village hall, was a meal for everyone, the rest came here [laughs] and er, had a lovely, er, I know it was war, but it was really nice, meeting up with them. And so, then Tim found out, Tim the Chairman, found out about the museum at Waltham, so we visited that then.
CB: Do you think that the people of Plungar, erm, sort of came together?
DK: Yeh, yeh.
CB: With this memorial and finding out, and the ceremony?
DK: Mr David Webb who lived at [unclear], he did a lot towards it and then, I said, he guaranteed to find out as much as he could, and Chamberlin got, but at Bennington, there’s an old chappie still alive, he cares for those graves, for I don’t know how many years until he wasn’t capable of doing it, so someone else has taken over since then, but er, [laughs].
CB: So, it’s been er, it’s been sort of, positive effect?
DK: Yeh.
CB: On the, on the village this, to have this memorial and this event?
DK: Yeh, people who have never set foot in church [laughs], I say, my son was going to play the organ but he got this [unclear], my cousin he played for the service but [unclear], he played for the service, and we had the Reverend [unclear], he took part in the service, and I rang the bell [laughs]. And my wife, she, she put, you know, people into which places they wanted to be and we had the boy there, because as they lined the footpath [laughs] so, it was really nice, I won’t forget it you see, no.
CB: When the erm, crash happened did any official come and interview you or anything like that?
DK: No, no, they sent nothing, never heard a thing from them. I know a chap who went down to have a look at it and they told him to get out, so we left it. When the plane went down, we walked round, and when this drove of crew came from Langar airfield to check on it, we moved away and maybe just forgot [laughs].
CB: So, they picked up the remains of the crew, and also, the survivor and then, took them away?
DK: So, where, where they took the dead people too, you know, I don’t know where they took them, where they took those too, but we, as I say, and this chap we moved away and left it with them. It was their job, yeh, but I’d never seen a dead, a dead man before you see, but they were just in an awful state, so they must have gone out the front of the plane, I don’t know, yeh.
CB: With the force of it, had thrown them out I suppose?
DK: Yeh.
CB: Well, Dennis, that’s -
DK: If there’s anything else to show you while I’m at it then, [background noise] but they were very good to me, weren’t they?
CB: Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dennis Kirk. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Clare Bennett
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
2015-06-10
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AKirkDJB150610
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:22:34 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Dennis Kirk was born in 1920, to farming parents, in the village of Barkestone in Nottinghamshire. He says that he didn’t want to be a farmer but when he left school he had to work on the farm. When the war started he wanted to join up but because farming was a reserved occupation, he couldn’t, so he joined the Home Guard instead. He relates how, on 5 March 1943, whilst on patrol at night, he witnessed the crash of Lancaster ED549, in which six of the seven crew were killed. He tells how he helped the injured survivor to a nearby house before personnel arrived from nearby RAF Langar. He describes how, 63 years later, the discovery, by metal detector, of a part from the aircraft stirred up memories of the crash and prompted research into the event. He tells of how the whole village joined in, collecting for a memorial and trying to locate the relatives of the crew. A memorial ceremony was arranged, presided over by a retired RAF chaplain and a Spitfire flypast. A memorial stone, paid for by the village, and an information board were unveiled at the crash site.
Dennis also goes on to describe two other wartime crashes in the area.
Temporal Coverage
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1943-03-05
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Barkestone
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
civil defence
crash
final resting place
Home Guard
Lancaster
memorial
RAF Langar
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e3a345bb092e974dc8b0907b99431d4c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/538/8774/AWinterH150708.1.mp3
af948046d23b15114df2b093cdfc73b5
Dublin Core
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Title
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Winter, Harry
H Winter
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Winter, H
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Harry Winter and two photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 431 and 427 Squadrons before he was shot down and became a prisoner of war. He was one of ten members of the Ex-Prisoner of War Association invited to 10 Downing Street in 2014.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
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2015-07-08
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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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AS: Okay so, this is Andrew Sadler on Wednesday 8th July 2015 interviewing Harry Winter on behalf of the Bomber Command Archive at his home in Streatham South London. Can I start Harry by asking you where and when you were born?
HW: I was born in Cardiff in 1922.
AS: And can you tell me what your family background was?
HW: Yes my father was an er Engineer and Fitter Turner he was a tradesman er he spent the First World War at sea as an engineer on ships and when he got married he worked for the Cardiff Gas Light and Coal Company as a Maintenance Engineer. Er I went to school in Cardiff from about five years of age to Lansdowne Road Boys School and I left there at fourteen years of age, in those days er jobs were difficult to obtain and money was very very short although my father being a tradesman he was in in work all of his life er he had no problem with regard to employment, um and I left at fourteen and I went to the local paper making mill it was a very large mill I went there and I started in the office there as an assistant stock keeper then I went on to costing and finished up er on um on the order department for one particular machine making vegetable parchment, er I was on that until 1941 er when the war had started and I first went into the Home Guard and spent twelve months in the Home Guard and then on January 2nd 1941 Cardiff got blitzed and I decided to pay them back by endeavouring to bomb them, my age nineteen, I was coming up for nineteen when I would have had to be conscripted in any case and I didn’t want to go into the army so I volunteered for air crew, er I was sent to Weston Super Mare for my air crew selection board, passed and er waited er for a few months while er they they organised the er recruitment etcetera. I was called up in September 1941 sent to Padgate er in Lancashire where I was kitted out and then on to Blackpool where we did our initial training such as square bashing and learning Morse, although I had been learning Morse in the Home Guard I was very helpful that I knew most of it when I got there which helped a great deal, um I was in Blackpool from September until the second week of January 1942 er then I was sent on leave and went to Yatesbury Number 2 Wireless School at in Wiltshire er to learn the technical side of wireless etcetera etcetera, and learn about all the various instruments etcetera, and of course drill and er various other things. I left I passed out there as a wireless operator in March 1942 and er I was sent on er oh am not quite sure what you call it on I was sent to Angle a fighter station near Milford Haven to get experience on the radio communication, I spent the summer there until September 1942 er then I was posted to Cranwell Number 1 Radio School where we had more technical work on the more advanced radio instruments etcetera etcetera, and the new inventions. I spent from September until December at Cranwell then I was posted back to Yatesbury for a refresher course in January 43. I left Yatesbury as wireless operator fully fledged in March 1943 and I was sent to Manby Air Armaments School for a short course on air gunnery, then on to er advanced flying unit at Bobbington in Worcestershire where we were flying on Avro Ansoms with navigators, and trainee navigators. From there we were posted to 23 OTU at Pershore er where they were using and er what do you call them using what’s the aircraft er, oh dear –
Other: [?]
HW: Wellingtons [laughs] they were using Wellington bombers, er there we got crewed up I met the navigator of course at Bobbington and er by the time we got to Pershore we had agreed to join together and try and make a crew, er when we were all assembled at Pershore they put us in a hanger and the pilots and bomb aimers and rear gunners were all assembled there and we just mixed together and made up our own crews we weren’t forced to fly with any person we met each other and er we er crewed up together and er there we did our OTU, and from there I did my first operation. Um about June 43 we were sent on a sea search er in the North Sea there had been an American bombing raid the day before and some aircraft had come down in the sea so we went over over the North Sea to er search for a er dinghies etcetera, er we went over as far as Texel and er we got fired on by the anti-aircraft guns at Texel and one of the shells had hit the port engine and er put it out of action so we limped back to an aerodrome near Rugby where my the pilot had been trained as an advanced pilot, er my pilot was an American my navigator and bomb aimer and rear gunner were all Canadians, er we landed at this aerodrome just outside Rugby and the next day we were picked up by another aircraft and returned back to Pershore, that was the only exciting thing I had up to that present moment. From Pershore I was sent to Topcliffe Number 1659 HGU Heavy Conversion Unit where we were converted to Halifaxes and we were there for a month and then we were posted, I was posted, we were posted first of all to 431 Squadron at Tholthorpe in Yorkshire, we did a few trips there and um wee the apparently 427 had lost a few aircraft at that time so they transferred us to 427 Squadron, er 427 Squadron it was this was all 6 Group which was all Canadian Air Force, um er 427 Squadron was adopted by the Metro Goldwyn Mayer Film Company so we were called the Lion Squadron and we had a model lion presented to us by one of the Director’s of Metro Goldwyn Mayer in June 1943, there is a record of it er Pathe Newsreel recorded it I have a recording of it on my computer showing them presenting the lion to the Squadron Commander. We settled down at Leeming, various operations came up and we did various operations over Germany, oh France, Italy and Germany, and during the August and September and then in October er we were doing a few bombing raids in various places in Germany again and on 22nd October we were, oh, [I’ll just finish my coffee, whispers]
AS: Your going now.
HW: Yes we did various trips they varied um er sometimes they were quiet other times a lot of flak and night fighters attacking and er [?] sometimes very heavy cloud, intense cloud, icing etcetera, we experienced all this and um the er er sometimes we had a bomb on sky markers and sometimes if it was clear we bombed on ground markers, er these all went under special names, er they they these names had been invented by the air by er er, what was it, a New Zealand er Marshall who was in charge of um, let me think of it, oh dear my mind wait a minute, er he he introduced what did they call it, pathfinders yes pathfinders, pathfinders used to drop these various target indicators and we used to have to bomb target indicators. Er on 22nd October 1943 we were informed that we were on another operation er we went for our briefing and we were informed that we were 560 bombers were going to bomb Kassel er we were briefed and er went to our aircraft to test them er we were allocated “L for Love” which had the name “Lorraine Day” on one side and “London’s Revenge” on the other side, we went then for our pre-flight breakfast er and er we were due to take off at five thirty in the afternoon, we kitted out went to the aircraft got in the aircraft and um the pilot tried to start the engine and the port inner wouldn’t start we tried three or four times so it was getting near five thirty then so er I got the Aldis lamp out and signalled across to flying control that the engine was US unserviceable, er a few minutes later a seal [?] came over in a car and the pilot informed that the aircraft wouldn’t start the engine wouldn’t start and of course the er maintenance flight sergeant he confirmed it just wouldn’t go so er the the commanding officer said ‘G George is bombed up a spare aircraft go over to that’, er we the transport that had taken us out to dispersal had gone so we had to transfer all of our kit across to “G George”, “G George” had no window that’s the strips of foil for anti-aircraft er er radar blotting out and er so we had to carry all the bundles of window between us from one aircraft to the other, er we got into the aircraft and that started up and of course five o’clock five thirty just after five thirty we took off. We flew down to Cromer where all the aircraft er that were bombing that night congregated to assemble for the final trip across the North Sea, we flew across the North Sea and of course immediately we arrived over the Dutch border we started getting attacked by flak, um there was a diversion er flight going to Frankfurt so we were our course was towards Frankfurt for a while and then we turned off north of Frankfurt to er for Kassel, just before reaching Frankfurt the rear gunner er informed the pilot there was a night fighter coming up on the stern, er the mid upper gunner confirmed he could see it also so er he of course the rear gunner took over then and he requested he demanded the aircraft be put into a um corkscrew the er the pilot corkscrewed the aircraft and at the same time the two gunners started firing on the night fighter er we by the time we came out of the corkscrew the night fighter had gone so we carried on towards Kassel, er we were the second wave into Kassel er there were three waves altogether we were the second wave um five minutes before reaching Kassel we saw all the first TI’s going down and the first bombs going down etcetera etcetera and er we followed in and by the time we got to Kassel the night fighters had estimated our course and er they put a line of er fighter flares above us so we were flying just like going down a high street with all the lights on and er we were lit up just like daylight and the night fighters were above us observing us, and the navigator, the bomb aimer took over for the bombing run and we dropped our bombs and er we turned put to port towards Hanover, [have a drink of tea, whispers], the night fighters of course had been following us we couldn’t see them because they were behind the fighter flares, and er about five minutes after leaving Kassel there was a terrific bang, series of bangs and the pilot said ‘we’ve had just been hit’ apparently canon shells had hit us, er he endeavoured to contact the rear gunner there was no reply, he tried the mid upper gunner there was no reply, so he asked the engineer to go back to see what whether they were okay, the engineer said ‘he couldn’t go back because he was watching the petrol tanks’, so he asked me and I went back I went back to the mid upper turret and hit the mid upper gunner on the thighs and er shook him but there was no reaction at all he had his head down and there was no reaction, so I dashed back then to the rear turret and the rear turret I banged on the rear turret doors I could see the the rear gunner in there er shot down so there was no reply from him so I tried to open the doors but they wouldn’t open so er just as I turned to return er the fighter came in again and attacked us, er I was running at the fuselage and I felt a terrific pain in my right thigh and by the time I reached the pilot I put my thumbs down to indicate there was no life with the gunners and I noticed then that the port wing and engines were all on fire, the pilot shouted ‘bail out, bail out’ so I dashed down the stairs to my position underneath the pilot er which was just behind the navigator, the navigator lifted up his chair and table and lifted up the escape hatch I handed him his parachute and I put my parachute on and as I put my parachute on I noticed I had his name on mine so I tapped him and indicated so we changed parachutes and I went out and er I was out first er I landed in a tree er and er hit a branch with my left thigh and I had a terrific thigh when I hit one of the main branches, er it was quite dark but I could see the branches against the night light and I put my right foot on one of the branches er released myself from the parachute because I was hung about twenty I suppose about twenty feet up in a tree released myself and then put my left leg on the branch to climb down and my left leg gave way and I collapsed and fell from the trees and knocked myself out, er the next thing I knew it was getting dawn I suppose be about seven thirty in the morning this was about nine twenty five at night when we were shot down it was about seven thirty in the morning it was just getting light and er I noticed that I was in this small wood er and er I tried to stand up and I couldn’t so and I was feeling very very thirsty I didn’t realise then that I had lost a lot of blood and that’s why I was thirsty, so I looked around and I could see that it was lighter down below than it was up above so I crawled to the edge of the wood and there was a field there and I noticed there was a farmer and two boys spreading manure etcetera etcetera on the ground, so I shouted to them they came over and I asked them for water er they stood me up and I collapsed again and went unconscious the next thing I remember I was on a horse and cart going across a field I momentarily came conscious and realised what I was doing what’s happening then I lost consciousness again, the next thing I woke up I was on a bed in a hospital with a doctor and nurse looking over me and er when they realised I had regained consciousness they said ‘you have er er broken your left leg and you are wounded in your right leg’ I said ‘where am I?’ they said ‘in Germany’ I said ‘I can’t stay here I’ve got to get back to England’, er I tried to get off the ch the bed then I realised I had no use in my legs so I laid back on the bad, er I was there overnight [takes a drink] and the next day a German medical orderly came and informed me in broken English er that he was escorting to Dulag Luft, they put me on a stretcher I’d been my leg had been strapped up by this time of course and they put me on a stretcher and took me to the railway station which I noticed the name was Lugde [spells it out], um they was only the medical orderly so they had to get an outsider to help carry me on the stretcher and the outsider when we got to the station he left me just left the medical orderly with me the train came in so I had to get off the stretcher I had the use of my right leg by this time and er the the er medical orderly got me into the train er we travelled a short way and we had to change trains [takes a drink] er he took me out and er where we were changing trains there was no platform so we had to get down onto the side of the railway er he took me um the stretcher out then helped me down then helped me across to the platform and then brought the stretcher down for me to lay on the stretcher, er he went to get some refreshment and while he went to get refreshment a big a to me a great big German er huge German with a walking stick came and stood in front of my er stretcher looked down and said ‘my house in Kassel has been bombed’ er I looked at him and er I thought seeing the walking stick etcetera etcetera discretion being the better part of valour I kept my mouth shut, at that time the medical orderly came back with the drinks and er the this civilian went off, er we got back on another train travelled another distance and we had to change trains again, er the same thing he there was no platform so he had to help me down and he took me into the canteen in this station where there was a lot of soldiers, er he went to get some soup for me and er when he came back with the soup a German soldier with a Schmeisser came over he wanted to shoot me so the medical orderly looked around and found a er another soldier of higher rank he’d found a Feldwebel which was a sergeant, the sergeant came over and immediately this German with a Schmeisser went, I felt very grateful to the medical orderly for what he had done so I gave him my name and address which wasn’t against the law anyway because we were allowed to give name address and rank etcetera, we got on to another train and er there oh just before we got onto the next train a a a another escort came up with three other airmen and one of the airmen was my bomb aimer, so er he said to me ‘both the gunners and Bob the pilot were dead’ er he had been picked up er near where the aircraft crashed taken to the scene and er there in the turrets the turrets had come out with the shock of the crash the gunners were still in the turrets the pilot was still in the pilot’s place and of course the fire had burned him, so er he identified the rear gunner by his dentures er half his head had been blown off by a canon shell, er the mid upper gunner had one had been shot in the stomach and of course the pilot er he must couldn’t have got out don’t know why but he went down with the aircraft and was killed in the crash and then burned after. Anyway the bomb aimer and the other aircrew were taken to one compartment and I was taken to another, er we arrived in Frankfurt am Main the next morning er at about ten o’clock and they took us onto the station and er they informed us that as I was wounded they wanted an ambulance so they phoned for an ambulance [pauses to take a drink], so after a while an ambulance came and the three other aircrew and myself were put in the ambulance and we were taken a short distance to Dulag Luft at Ober, Oberursel, the bomb aimer and the other two aircrew were taken off there and I was taken about another kilometre or so to a hospital called Hohemark [spells it out] it was a clinic for mentally disturbed people before the war it had been taken over by the Luftwaffe and the first the ground floor was used for German wounded er the first floor er for British wounded and the third floor and the second floor for the staff to sleep, er I was taken in by on the um taken into Hohemark onto the ground floor into a room and locked in er about five minutes later a German officer came along and he offered me a cigarette and put a form in front of me with a red cross on the top and on there it had my details requesting my details of name, rank etcetera home address, squadron and all the details of the squadron, er I filled in my name, rank and home address and handed it back to him and said ‘that’s all I’m afraid I could inform him about’ he said ‘I will tell you your history’ so he informed me the date I had volunteered in Cardiff, he informed me of every station I had been sent to in Britain er and the dates etcetera etcetera he informed me of all my crew and er then he left and he came back and he said he came back about five minutes later and oh he said ‘I left out Bobbington you were at Bobbington as well weren’t you?’ I said ‘well if you say so’ ‘yes’ he said ‘you were’ so er after about half an hour oh then they had him told me to undress and get in the bed there took all my outer clothing away with him, incidentally the medical orderlies who took me in were all British, er one was a warrant officer mid air front gunner who’d been shot down a year earlier he was a Liverpudlian, there were two Welsh paratroop medical orderlies they had been captured in North Africa and the rest of the staff there was a German corporal, er two German gefreiters and a German doctor, er after the interrogation the two medical welsh medical orderlies came and took me up to the first floor and there were various rooms and ere r various beds had been taken over there were other aircrew with broken legs and broken arms and of course there was a lot of burns there was one ward there with a lot of burnt aircrew, I was put in a bed and handed back my uniform and on my uniform I had two buttons one an RCAF button and one an RAF button the RAF button had a compass in that had been taken off I also had a compass in my front collar stud that had been taken out taken away so they had realised what was in there they had tested and found these compasses and took them away otherwise I had my my er cigarette case and all my own er belongings returned to me, um they put me in a bed there and er oh they had they asked me to stand up so I stood up and er ‘oh they said your legs not broken get in bed’ so of course the next day one of the medical orderlies came to dress my right thigh where I had a lot of proud flesh where this canon shell had hit me part of it and it gave me a wound when I lost a lot of blood and of course he started dressing the wound and looking down he said ‘your leg is broken’ he noticed that it was at an angle so I doctor came along and confirmed it, this doctor who’s name was Doctor Ittershagan [spells it out] er he was a specialist in broken bones er apparently he had taken up a new invention where instead of putting the leg in plaster they opened the wound opened the leg er stretched the leg to put the bones back in place opened the leg and put a metal pin inside the femur pushed it up through the thigh put the bone together and knocked the er pin into the bottom part of the femur and sewed the leg up so and we were able to get around on crutches there and er apparently they were seven six other aircrew there some with arms that had been broken and some with legs that had been broken and they had all had the same operation we were treated as guinea pigs because this was a special new idea, um so Doctor Ittershagan was there to oversee us. Er we spent a few months there and just before Christmas time a fighter pilot came in he had crashed er he was a PRU Photograph Reconnaissance Pilot and apparently he’d been flying over France er taking details of the weather and he hadn’t noticed that his oxygen had given out he’d broken his oxygen pipe and er the next thing he knew he was on in the aircraft the aircraft had flown into the landed pancaked itself into the ground he was slightly wounded, apparently when he got out when they took him to Dulag Luft they found he had two dummy legs he was the second legless pilot er so of course he was sent up to Hohemark and er to have his slight wounds er seen to and er this was at just Christmas time so we spent we had Christmas dinner at Hohemark with Colin Hodgkinson which was his name er he was featured in “This is Your Life“ some years after in the BBC. I was there until right throughout Christmas and various as we were oh Christmas Day we were able to get along on crutches so we went out on Christmas Day and met some of the German wounded so we started playing football on the grounds [laughs] in Hohemark, anyway various aircrew were coming in with wounds, burns etcetera etcetera some of them died there of burns etcetera, one pilot he was a member of the Dunlop Family and he got seriously burnt and he died on the operating table there. There was another Welshman came in er at the end of er March he had been on the Nuremburg raid and shot down and when he was when he bailed out the propellers caught his left arm and left leg and took his left arm off at the elbow and left leg off at the knee and he was on crutches, er various other, oh another one came in he had his legs both legs blown off and he landed in icy water and he had the sense to get his parachute shroud lines to tie around his thighs two girls German girls picked him up and took him to hospital and er he’d been sent to Hohemark before being repatriated of course because he was seriously wounded. We were there through the spring and summer part of the summer and er met quite a lot of er German officials etcetera and some of the German fighter pilots used to come in and have a chat with us about er flying etcetera and of course the interrogators used to come in and every afternoon about three o’clock we used to have coffee so the er interrogator had the habit of coming at about three o’clock when we were having Nescafe and of course he would come and have a cup of Nescafe as against the Acorn coffee that they were issued, and we used to chat with them and er we said to one we said to one of them one day ‘how is it you’ve got all this information about us?’ so he opened his briefcase and get a folder out and showed us details of an American Squadron he said ‘this is Amercian B17 Squadron’ he said ‘they are still in America they are due to fly over to England’ he said ‘we’ve got the details of every aircraft and every member of the crews’ and we said ‘well how do you get a lot of this?’ well he said ‘there is a lot of Irishmen working in America and a lot of Irishmen working in England and the information gets through’, so anyway so that satisfied out curiosity. Anyway one of the er guinea pigs, what was his name?, er oh dear Mike Sczweck [?] he was an ex Polish emigre to America he was a ball turret gunner [?] he’d had his arm broken and he’d had a metal pin put inside it and he was getting rather restless, so we used to be allowed out every afternoon from about two to three o’clock before coffee to walk round the grounds etcetera for a bit of exercise, er this was about the 4th June and the er he informed us that he was going to try and escape so er we er when we got back in we got to our window and of course they had long u um venetian blinds there and the windows were open and the long chords if you put them out of the window they’d reach to about six feet above the ground below so er there were two Canadians and myself er we were in a room and we helped lower him down and this was about half past three in the afternoon, very hot afternoon about four o’clock we had a thunderstorm er we covered as Mike had a habit of laying on his bed they were double bunks he was on the top bunk he had a habit of laying on the bed we made up his bed to look like he was laying on it, there was seven of us “The Seven Pin Boys” guinea pigs in this room so that night er we all went to bed and the German medical orderly came in Adolf Dufour he was ex ex er World War One soldier he came in so and he noticed we were all in bed so he closed the door and we all went to sleep the next morning we got up and had our breakfast and of course they put out the all the meal so er a few of us surreptiously took part of the roll etcetera and marmalade ate it and drank the coffee etcetera then about eleven o’clock in the morning the English warrant officer, Liverpudlian came up and he said ‘where is Sczweck?’ so we said ‘well on his bed I suppose’ he said ‘he is not on his bed’ and he went straight away and reported him as being escaped.
AS: So he’s just been found missing?
HW: Yes and he this Liverpudlian as I say he reported straight away they got in touch with Dulag Luft which was a kilometre away and er they came up with dogs etcetera but of course this was the day before he got away and there had been a thunderstorm in any case so er they said ‘right’ they picked the three of us and said ‘pack your bags’ and they took us down to the cooler at Dulag Luft they walked us down came down to the cooler and we spent a couple of days there, and then two days later they came and told us they wanted our braces and boots er now there was one of the ambulance drivers German ambulance drivers a German American he again had been er er living in America went to Germany at the beginning of the war and they kept him there so he could speak perfect English with an American accent so we said to him ‘why have you taken our braces and boots?’ he said ‘there’s been a landing on the French coast’ he said ‘we don’t want you to try and escape again’ anyway two days later they handed us our braces and boots and sent us to a hospital just outside Homberg and all the other pin boys were there and we all had our pins extracted er and we sent back to Hohemark er on on walking sticks etcetera for a few days until the wounds had healed and they took the stitches out, and then oh by the way incidentally when we were there at Hohemark there used to be a warrant officer an English warrant officer he was down at Dulag Luft and I don’t know what he was doing but er he used to come up periodically he was dressed in full RAF warrant officer uniform, Slowey his name was warrant officer Slowey he had been shot down about two years earlier and no doubt he was collaborating with the Germans so of course whenever he was around we kept our mouths shut he of course he had came up for information, there was also a girl who used to come up from Dulag Luft, her mother was Scottish and her father was German and er at the beginning of the war she went back to Germany and stayed over there and she used to be sent up to talk to us at times to no doubt try and get some information from us but of course they had all these sort of things like going on and tricks to try and get some information from us, anyway I don’t know what happened to Slowey ‘cos as I say we were sent back to Hohemark for a few days then I was posted er er to sent to Obermarshfelt[?] a clearing hospital near Meiningen in the centre of Germany, er it was a mixture of various prisoners there was English soldiers there etcetera er so I was there until er we could walk properly and then in July middle of July we were informed we were being sent to prison camp, er they put us on a train and er they were seven of us eight of us altogether and two guards the two guards only had little hand pistols to guard us with so er on the journey in the morning there was an air raid went and er we heard the aircraft going over and when the all clear went the train started again and we got as far as Erfurt and actually Erfurt had been bombed so we had to change trains at Erfurt, so we got on the platform there was crowds on the platform of people who had been bombed out and there was one particular person with a Swastika ensign on his arm and he noticed us and straight away he started shouting ‘terror fliers’ in German ‘terror-flieger’ informing the crowd that we were terror fliers we should be hung er at that moment a German troop train came in and stopped momentarily on the platform and the guard said to the Germans ’asked where they were going if they were going via Leipzig’ they said ‘yes’ so he got us all on the troop train with the German soldiers and we went off otherwise we would have been hung [laughs]. We got as far as Leipzig where we changed trains again and er then we er the next train was overnight to Dresden, we reached Dresden the next morning and they put us in the basement of the station where we had a sleep etcetera and er of course they’d given us a few rations, a box of Red Cross box of rations so we had our rations and er then we were transferred in the afternoon on a train again and went on to Upper Silesia Bankau which was Luft 7 we reached there about six o’clock the next morning and we marched from Bankau er from the town of Bankau to the prison camp er we were admitted into the prison camp and it was a new one just been built and there was only about forty prisoners there but a lot of huts, the huts were only eight feet high, ten feet long and eight feet wide, and they put six of us in there, there was no beds we had to sleep on the floor no tables no chairs or anything we just had to oh and they gave us a bowl and a spoon and a cup, I’ve still got the cup I got at home with my I still got my German prisoner of war mug, so we were there and there was another compound next to it which was being built with substantially bigger huts the Russians were building that, so in the summer we had just had these huts to live in and the only water we had was a pump in the centre of the field centre of the parade ground er like a village pump where we got our water and where we could only get underneath there and have a bathe. We were there until mid September end of September and then we were transferred to the next compound where we had better accommodation we had double bunks double tier, two tier bunks etcetera etcetera and about sixteen of us to a room um we settled down there and of course they had water laid on there and once a week we were allowed a shower we were taken in batches rooms each room went into the shower, under the shower a German soldier would turn the water on to get us wet let us have a shower a wash turn the water on again to take the soap off and about ten minutes that was our shower that was our cleaning. We were there until January 19th er 1945 when the Russians started advancing so they decided we had to move er we were informed there was no transport we would have to walk, so early in the morning of 19th January they took us out we had no Red Cross parcels none had arrived, er so we went out with no food and we walked thirty kilometres that day to a place called Vintersfelt [?] where they put us up in various er er um cow sheds etcetera etcetera er and some sat out in the open, er we did that forced march then from the 22nd from 19th January to about mid February forced march each day er the camp commandant he informed the Germans and the doctor the English doctor prisoner of war we had informed the Germans we were exhausted we couldn’t go any further so the Germans after we’d marched forced marched through storms etcetera in the night minus forty degrees er with sleet and snow etcetera for about fourteen days um they they marched us to a station where they put us in cattle trucks forty to a truck locked us in and er we were there in this train for two days weren’t allowed out er two days later we arrived at a place called Luckenwalde er which is about twenty kilometres south of Berlin it was a very big camp all nationalities in there so er we were marched into Luckenwalde camp there again there were no beds we had to sleep on the floor er we were issued with the minimum amount of food er I lost about two stone actually in that time er and er we were there until about the 22nd 23rd April er when we woke up one morning to be informed the Russians were outside we looked out and there were Russian tanks out there and they they ploughed down the outer wire and came in they informed us that we could go east if we wished but we couldn’t go west we could go out and forage for food if we wished so various parties went out foraging for food into the town er in the meantime the Russians and the Americans had met at on the Elba. The Americans came over and the Russians stopped them at the edge of the camp and the Americans wanted to take us away and the Russians wouldn’t allow us they were keeping us hostage until they got all the Russian prisoners that had joined the German forces back into Russia to shoot them. So er the Americans informed us that down the road a few kilometres away they would station some trucks and if we could make our way down there we would get away, so after the next day I walked out with one or two others and walked down to this copse there was an American truck there we got in a soon as it was filled up the American truck took us across the Elba that was on 8th May which was er VE Day, so we crossed the Elba into er into a German town and we were put in er a barrack part of an aircraft factory that the Americans had taken over and of course there they fed us er we stayed there for about a day then they trucked us from Luckenwalde sorry from the camp er to um er where was it Mankenberg [?] no not Mankenberg and we finished up at Hanover, er we stayed overnight at Hanover and the next day they put us on Dakota aircraft and flew us to er Belgium Brussels and we arrived in Brussels in the early evening and there they deloused us kitted us out in army uniforms and told us gave us a few francs and told us we could go in town and have a beer [laughs] which we did we came back to be informed we were back on a train er which was a prisoner of war train with all barbed wire and bars on and we were shipped to er er from Brussels to Amien er there we stayed overnight and the next morning there were aircraft landed at Amien and they flew us they flew us to England where I landed just south of Guildford the next day, again we were deloused er kitted out in British uniform and er sent up to Cosford where we were medically examined and if we were fit given a pass and sent home. I arrived home about the 10th or 11th of May er and that was the story of my life up at that up until that time.
AS: Fascinating.
Other: [Laugh] [?] trying to transcribe all that.
HW: ‘Cos there again I as I’d been a prisoner of war I was due for discharge but they wouldn’t discharge me until I had my tonsils out so I had to wait a year before going into a hospital an RAF hospital immediately they came out they discharged me and I went back to my civilian job in paper making and I have been in paper making ever since.
AS: Why did they want to take your tonsils out?
HW: Actually I got tonsillitis in October and I’d been reported sick and of course the day we were to take off I didn’t bother I felt better so I didn’t report sick so I told Bob the pilot ‘I wasn’t reporting sick’ and he said ‘right we are on tonight’ and that was the fateful day [laughs].
AS: Can you tell me about what happened with the German medical officer who stopped you from being shot?
HW: Yes, I he was a medical orderly Gunter Aarff [?] his name was he was about nineteen years of age about two years younger than myself and he could speak fairly good English so of course having met him in Dusseldorf at the Control Commission and we went there and we gave I gave my report he gave his report.
AS: Can you tell me can you just tell me again because you mentioned it when this thing wasn’t on how you were contacted about?
HW: About er er he wrote me and said he introduced himself that I was the person he had escorted to Dulag Luft.
AS: Because you’d given him your home address?
HW: Yes his father had been killed etcetera and he wanted to become a dentist. So of course I arranged it I wrote to the Control Commission they gave me permission to go over I met him we went there together he gave his story I gave mine and er of course he went into university and he became a dentist and of course from then on we kept in contact each year those candlesticks there he sent they were Christmas boxes each year we used to exchange Christmas boxes etcetera etcetera.
Other: Have you got a photograph don’t know?
HW: Yes I’ve got one, as I say we kept in contact ever since we went over there he’s been over here we went one time and he took us down the Rhine boat trip all day trip back up to Cologne etcetera so we did a cruise on the Rhine etcetera.
AS: So he really saved your life and ?
HW: Oh yes he saved, yes that’s why I gave him my name and address because if he hadn’t got this sergeant er the German he was drunk of course he would have shot me, so of course we kept in contact as I say until two years ago er we sent him a Christmas card and we had no reply we did again last year we still had no reply er we had heard in the meantime that he had cancer but er no doubt this has overcome him and he has passed on.
AS: So you really went to the Control Commission to act as a character witness a character reference so he could get into university?
HW: Yes, they said they couldn’t er order the German authorities to give him a place but they could recommend it of course he was recommended and he went into university yes.
AS: Can you tell me after all this how you managed to settle back into civilian life?
HW: Yes, I went back into my er into the paper mill of course they had taken on other staff but they were forced to take us back er and of course they offered us such low salaries that a lot of them just couldn’t afford to go back and they found another job, I was lucky that I had twelve months leave paid leave with warrant officers pay so I was getting £6 a week as a warrant officer and £3 a week civilian pay so I was able to manage to but they gave me didn’t give me my same job back they gave me another job on costing and while I was there I took up paper making studying paper making at City and Guilds etcetera and passed the City and Guilds on papermaking and we had an associate mill at Treforrest where they coated the paper put on this coating for photographic paper, chocolate wrappings etcetera, er waxing, er they used to put the purple coating on the paper for Cadbury’s wrappers etcetera etcetera, er wax craft etcetera er waxed brown paper that is for various jobs in the metal industry um papers for the books for printing books etcetera coated paper and er that was 1946 I went back to the paper mill, 1949 I understood there was a job going in the order department in Trefforest so I applied and of course I got it so then I was in charge of the paper coating on the on all the coating machines, er I was there for about two years inside the office then they decided they’d like me to go out selling paper so I went out travelling they provided me with a car and I started travelling selling paper. In 1953 er there was an upheaval in the with the directors of the mill and the managing director resigned and they decided to take me back in to do the job until they could find another managing director er having experienced outside work I didn’t want to stay inside so I said well I would do it for a year they said right they would find somebody in a year, they found somebody but they still kept me in. At that time my wife’s parents who had been evacuated to Cardiff during the war had moved back to London er and my father in law had contracted er er cancer so we came up for a holiday and er I had a customer in London who had offered me a job if ever I wanted to come up to London so we came up for a holiday and er I went to see him they said yes they would like I could start straight away so I left my wife up here we looked round found a house left my wife here and er I went back put my notice in worked a month and came up to London to live and I started in the paper trade again selling paper to printers and that I did right until I retired in 1986.
AS: Was it difficult when you came out of the RAF fitting back into civilian life?
HW: Yes yes having had the freedom of the RAF I found it very very difficult being tied down to a desk yes.
AS: What do you mean by freedom you were a prisoner of war for several years?
HW: Sorry
AS: You were a prisoner of war for several years that wasn’t
HW: For eighteen months yes.
AS: Eighteen months?
HW: Yes yes and of course er there was the life fighting for food because the Germans gave us the minimum amount of food so we wouldn’t have the energy to try to escape, er we used to play football or cricket etcetera er in the centre of the camp and each day do a march around the perimeter we would all be exercising walking round for miles and miles round the perimeter between the escape wire and the huts to keep keep fairly fit which we were glad of because of the forced march. In September 43 of course there was Arnhem and of course the glider pilots although they were in the Army the Germans treated them as Luftwaffe so they came into our camp and we got really depressed we felt that with the Russian advance we would be home by Christmas and of course that made us our morale dropped a great deal of course we had the paratroopers not the glider pilots there with us joined they the camp. By the time we came out of the camp in January 45 there were fifteen hundred of us when I went there there was about twenty five so you see the number of prisoners of war that was NCO prisoners of war taken in those few months and er only about twenty about ten percent of people flying over Germany that were shot down were made prisoners the rest were killed so you can just imagine the number of people fifty five thousand five hundred and seventy three were killed during the war.
AS: Afterwards did you have you managed to keep in touch with any of your comrades?
HW: Yes I kept in contact with all my crew with the remainder of my crew and of course the parents of the er er members that were killed, there again the parents of my pilot died after a while and er the mid upper gunner then kept writing to me but when in 1949 I told them that I was going to Germany to speak on the part of the medical orderly I think I might have upset them ‘cos they stopped writing, anyway the rear gunners mother she came over here and she went to visit his grave etcetera etcetera we kept in contact with them we went all over we visited them I visited my navigator and my bomb aimer we’ve been over in Canada a few times there so we er kept in contact ever since. Now about five years ago er my bomb aimer died and about four years ago my navigator died we are still in contact with the daughter no the yes the son no grandson of the rear gunner and his family, the navigator’s wife we’ve been in contact with them until last Christmas we sent the usual letter we had no reply er so therefore I am the only survivor the last survivor of the crew.
AS: Well Harry thank you very much indeed.
HW: That’s all right.
AS: It’s been a fascinating tale.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Harry Winter
Creator
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Andrew Sadler
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-08
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWinterH150708, PWinterH1508
Conforms To
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Winter grew up in Cardiff and worked in a paper mill from the age of 14. He served in the Home Guard before he volunteered for the Air Force. After training as a wireless operator at RAF Yatesbury he flew operations over Germany, France, and Italy with 431 and 427 Squadrons. His Halifax, LK633 (ZL-N) was shot down over Hameln returning from Kassel on the night 22/23 Oct 1943. Four of his crew were killed and he sustained injuries to both legs. He escaped summary execution through the intervention of a German Army medical orderly. After the War, Harry helped the medical orderly with his application to train as a dentist.
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Luckenwalde
Germany--Oberursel
Wales--Cardiff
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943-10-22
1944
1945-01-19
Format
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01:19:33 audio recording
1659 HCU
23 OTU
427 Squadron
431 Squadron
6 Group
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
Dulag Luft
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Initial Training Wing
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Leeming
RAF Pershore
RAF Tholthorpe
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Yatesbury
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
target indicator
the long march
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/512/8743/PFranklinJB1616.1.jpg
795421ad1dfce4657298441a0a2fd3a6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/512/8743/AFranklinJB160331.2.mp3
f6e3050fce261c63a251a84f549d2b34
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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Franklin, John Brown
Jack Brown Franklin
John B Franklin
John Franklin
J B Franklin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Franklin, JB
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. An oral history interview with John "Jack" Brown Franklin (1921 - 2018 1484256 Royal Air Force)and fourteen photographs of people and aircraft. He served in the Liverpool Home Guard before enlisting in the Air Force. He served as ground crew with 109 Squadron between late 1942 and 1944 before being posted to Burma with 28 Squadron in 1945.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by XXX and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing mechanic John Brown Franklin of 109 and 28 squadrons RAF at his home in Walton, Liverpool on Thursday 31st March 2016 and the time is 1.45. Also, with me is his nephew Neil Hayes and if you would like to start us off please Jack. You’ve asked me to call you Jack as -
JBF: Yes that’s right. Yeah.
BW: That’s how you’re referred to.
JBF: Yeah.
BW: Would you give us your service number and date of birth please?
JBF: Yes. Ok. Service number is 1484256. Date of birth 28 6 1921.
BW: And have you always lived in Liverpool?
JBF: Yes.
BW: And do you, you mentioned you had, I think, a brother. Do you have brothers and sisters or did you have brothers and sisters?
JBF: I’ve got a brother and sister. My brother was world famous as a ballet dancer.
BW: What was his name?
JBF: Frederick Franklin. And if you want to get his history I believe it’s all on the –
NH: All over the web.
JBF: In the computer. And here’s Neil with his CBE presented by the queen to him at Buckingham palace.
BW: Right.
JBF: And unfortunately -
BW: Wow.
JBF: He died just a couple of years ago aged ninety eight.
BW: And whereabouts in Liverpool were you living at the time?
JBF: Oh at birth. Over a café on the corner of Wavertree Road and Durning Road. We were all three born over the café and my father ran it with his mother and it lasted ‘til about 1923 and then we went to live higher up Wavertree Road in Janet Street and then about ten years after that, it would be about 1933 we moved to Gordon Drive, Pilch Lane, Huyton and that’s where I married from and lived here. I’ve lived here since 1957.
BW: Wow.
JBF: We bought the house then with my wife Dorothea.
BW: And so what was your home life like? Was it -
JBF: Well it was great. We were, they were musical people. My mother was very musical and my sister and they were in to all sorts of shows like the Maid of the Mountains and The Chocolate Soldier and Rosemarie. That kind of show. They loved it. And when my brother decided he wanted to be on the stage they were over the moon simply because he wanted to be on stage and so -
BW: And did he get a scholarship for his dancing or anything like that?
JBF: Oh no what he did was he went with the Jackson Boys to, his first job was he joined the Jackson Boys, a troupe of people dancing and they finished up in Paris at the, I think it was the Casino de Paris and he was there ‘til the Germans, the war started in ‘39 and they were either threatening to overrun France or they had actually started but my mother lost touch and was worried stiff and then the next thing we heard about him was that he was in Holland with the company, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo run by a fellow called Leonide Massine. He’s also a world famous performer if you care to go through the, and the next minute we heard he was in America so of course he was delighted that he’d got out of it ‘cause there was no way he would ever have made a servicemen of any kind. He was just, he was a piano player, played the piano, singing and dancing you know. One of the times he was playing the piano and Miss [Stangette?] whom you no doubt have never heard of, she used to sit on the piano and she was the toast of Paris and she used to come out in this café, Casino de Paris or whatever it was, a nightclub and do the singing while Fred played. My sister was also a pianist so we –
BW: And were you musical yourself?
JBF: Oh yes. I, I was the only one that didn’t get the lessons because the money ran out. My father had a stroke. My father was a veteran of the Boer war complete with medal.
BW: And you’ve got his medal here.
JBF: And -
BW: Which has got to be a rare item in itself.
JBF: Yes well its solid silver, unlike the tin ones we got from the last war.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: With bars and -
BW: Yeah.
JBF: And he was shot off his horse somewhere in South Africa and he said the worst thing about it was the two hundred mile trip in a cart, [bullock?] cart to get to the boat to come home. Well he came home and survived and they invalided him out of the army in 1900 and he was never called up for the ‘14 war. He was unfit for further service and that’s, and he had a stroke about, what, 1931 sometime in the early 30s. I never knew him as a man really. He was, like all Victorians he was here and you were over there, you know. That’s just how it was. He was a nice guy you know, it just -
BW: Yeah. More of a father figure.
JBF: A father figure.
BW: A strict father figure in a sense.
JBF: Exactly. Yeah. Mother did all the slogging, you know. Kept us all together.
BW: And what was school like for you?
JBF: Oh a bit disastrous because I just didn’t get on somehow or other. I just didn’t get on. I left at sixteen and a half and I was really contemplating. I thought well I’d better do something about it so I just started to do the school certificate rerun at night school and the war started.
BW: And what subjects were you studying in your certificate at night school?
JBF: I got credits in history, English, and geography and I failed in chemistry and math er French and chemistry. That was it. And as a matter of interest I had my French book stolen for the last nine months before the exam and so there was no way I was going to pass it anyway you know. I just. Anyway I got out of school. Got this job with paper merchants LS Dixon and Co Limited. Very old fashioned, very conservative Liverpool Company.
BW: And what were you doing in the paper merchants?
JBF: Clerking. Booking orders, arranging for the orders to get out to the warehouse, seeing that they were all packed up properly and delivered to whoever, you know.
BW: And so presumably you had this job for about year eighteen months.
JBF: That’s right.
BW: Until war broke out.
JBF: Well, the story about the war thing is sitting opposite us was a veteran of the war. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘It’ll be over by Christmas,’ you know. It was exactly the same as the pre-war people. It will be over by Christmas and ‘course it wasn’t and then it got around to Dunkirk you know when the three hundred and thirty three thousand were being picked up in France and Eric, sitting opposite me, Eric [McKim?] he said, ‘You know, Jack. We should do something about it really. I know we’re underage.’ We was, I was eighteen I think or something like that and we went to the police station in Derby Lane and signed on and then from Derby Lane I got the call to report to the abattoir in Prescot Road and I was given that.
BW: And this is a card that says you’re joining the Local Defence Volunteers.
JBF: That’s right, yes.
BW: G division.
JBF: Yeah
BW: Dated 13th of June 1940. So this is right after the evacuation of Dunkirk. Right at the height of -
JBF: Well it was Dunkirk that, Dunkirk was the end of May.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: 1940 and we finished up in this abattoir with that and we had instructions when the church bells landed er sounded you know we were told to destroy our identity you know, and so we joined the Home Guard and, or the LDV as it was. We had neither uniforms nor rifles or anything you know and we used to do marching about and guard and such like and the one terrifying moment in the, as an LDV was that the church bells had rung. A corporal came around, 2 o’clock in the morning, ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘It’s on,’ so we get up to the orphanage and we’re stood in two lines at the back of the orphanage facing Speke in front of trenches full of water that we’d dug, you know in the 1914 style.
BW: Yeah. Zigzag.
JBF: And everybody was mystified but we were all looking from Speke for the parachutists you know and we were there for a couple of hours and then suddenly, you know, we, it all vanished. The whole thing fell apart. There was nothing. Nobody landed. And we, we’d been given twenty four hours rations which was hard tack and corned beef. Well we ate those in about half an hour. Just sat around and ate it all. By 3 o’clock we’d eaten the day’s rations you know and that’s how the, it’s perfectly right, I’m Pike in the Dad’s Army because I was that age and everybody else who carefully avoided guard duties and all the nasty bits were bank managers or foremen and something else or assistant managers in bread shops or whatever it was, you know and Mr Mainwaring is a dead ringer for the CO you know.
BW: Of your unit.
JBF: Ex, in the, ex in, he was a bank manager you know and he got the atmosphere you know. It was typical and that went on for fifteen months until I was called up and then finally I got the call up papers and joined the RAF on the 15th of September 1941.
BW: And did you see, during your time as an LDV volunteer did you see any raids over Liverpool because -
JBF: Oh yes.
BW: There were quite a few raids by the Luftwaffe on the -
JBF: That’s a separate chapter. We were formed by the company which was in town, Cable Street, into parties of three and we did night duty on the premises during the blitz and the most graphic one of the blitz was we were playing table tennis as something to do while it was all going crash bang wallop ‘cause we were near the docks and they were really and then this hell of an explosion. It shook the place absolutely, we thought and we were in the cellar so we managed, we decided we’d better go around and see everything was intact. Nothing. So we went outside. Went up Thomas Street into South John Street and at the junction of North John Street and Lord Street was a huge pile of debris, masonry and out of it was sticking arms and legs and so we went up like this, you know the real -
BW: Yeah. Sort of -
JBF: John Wayne, sort, you know.
BW: Covering your eyes. Yeah.
JBF: And on the, on the traffic light was a sailor trying to knock out the lights with a brick so we get up there looking and thinking oh my God what are we going to see and they were all tailors dummies. There wasn’t a person in it. The shops around that area were tailors shops and the bomb had hit Church House, blown that to pieces and the blast had blown all these dummies out of the shop windows and somehow or other they all arrived together in the middle. So we got over that. That was the most graphic of the, and then the next one was during the May we had, I don’t know if you know about the blitz but Liverpool, before Hitler invaded Russia he blitzed Liverpool as a good start to stopping the shipping in the May. The May blitz it’s called and that week we had a floating land mine drift over the house and blew up on the Swanside estate. Blew all those houses up and the blast took the windows out of the back of our house and holes in the roof, hole in the roof and all the celings had holes in where the draft had came down but the most awful thing was the soot because we all had chimneys and everywhere was covered in soot you know so on the Sunday my mother and I we started clearing up and I said, ‘I’ve got to go to work,’ you know so I got the bike out and we started down for the, for the town and I got to [Clatton] Street and the place was covered in glass. I thought well this is the end of the bike if I ride so I picked the bike up, put it on my shoulder and walked down to Lewis’ which was just a hollow wreck. There was nothing visible at all. It had been on fire and they’d put it out and there was just and they ground that down to Boots on the corner, round the corner and I got as far as the bottom of Lord Street, Whitechapel and Paradise Street and there was a tape across so I got to there and the strange thing was where what we could see of Cable Street which was right at the back of Lord Street you could see daylight you know. I thought well that’s funny, it doesn’t look too good so I said to the man, ‘My job’s around the corner.’ He said, ‘No it isn’t,’ he said, ‘It’s finished. You can’t go around there.’ And two four storey buildings that was the office, the warehouse, the factory and the second warehouse were about this high. It had just burned. The whole thing had gone because it was a paper warehouse. Couldn’t be better, you know, once, and it was fire that, on that particular blitz.
BW: Raised the building to about two foot high.
JBF: It was just about two foot high and I was standing there dumb. I thought, ‘Well ok the house has gone up now the jobs gone up. What do we do now for an encore?’ Sort of thing. And I got a tap on the shoulder. I looked around and it was the manager Mr Lloyd. He said, ‘John,’ he said, ‘We’re all around at the Allied Paper.’ So I hot footed it around to the Allied Paper in Hood Street and the entire office collection was sitting there looking at each other you know. So they didn’t know what to, ‘cause there was not even a place to go to. The place had vanished. Literally. Four storey buildings just vanished and Mr Packer was the export manager, he said, ‘Well John, if you need something to do come with me and we’ll see what’s happened to the shipping.’ So I was delighted, so, ‘Certainly Mr Packer.’ So off we set down to the pier head and we went around people like James Dowie, Gracie Beasley the whole line, that kind of thing, JT Fletcher’s and made enquiries to find out what was missing and what wasn’t you know and we made a list of everything because he had cargo on boats you know. He used to do business with the West Indies and the unfortunate thing for him was that Mr Woodley who was about, there was no pension scheme in this particular company and Mr Woodley the export manager was about seventy three and he was still coming to work because there was no pension and he got knocked down and killed in the blackout so that was the end of the, of the export information so they just had to start from scratch you know ‘cause even Sid Woodley had disappeared, you know, and then there was, I can’t really remember because it was the in-between but we ended up in the banana rooms in Fitzpatrick’s in Queens Square. That’s where I left to join the air force. The Banana Rooms, of course there were no bananas coming in during the war and there were just these big spaces and they started the firm from that that the lucky thing was they had a government quota for paper and that didn’t alter despite all that had gone on so they started with the quota that they had and they stocked these Banana Rooms with paper and started to carry on the business and the other intriguing thing was the books had been in the cellar in Cable Street and they were in fireproof safes which was great except they were cooked. They weren’t burned. They were just cooked. So the senior members of the accounts department were transported every day to Mr Dixon’s house on the Wirral and they each had an egg, an egg slice you know and they would lift each page up and turn it over and find out how much ‘cause the books were handwritten. It was just antediluvian but it was part of the course.
NH: The time. Yeah.
JBF: Antediluvian, you know, everything was by hand. We wrote orders in books by hand. The books were sent to the forwarding man and he’d organise the stuff you know and finally I got my call up papers and Mr Cook said, ‘Ok,’ he says, ‘Well as things stand, Jack,’ he said, ‘Your job will be open when you come back,’ and that’s exactly how it was. The job was open when I came back five years later.
BW: And during the time and this was all through 1940. The bombing raids and things.
JBF: Up to September the 15th 1941.
BW: Did you happen to see anything of the Battle of Britain? I know that was concentrated over the south east but there were raids and intercepts from squadrons up here. Did you see anything of that?
JBF: In Liverpool during the lunch hour when we were out there was a couple of times when German aircraft were over and everybody was out looking at them you know and there was a bit of fighting as far as I can remember but I don’t think there was too much this end.
BW: No.
JBF: It was the blitz for Liverpool. That was the thing.
BW: And were you on duty during the night time and sort of working during the day?
JBF: Oh yes.
BW: Did you alternate your civilian job with your LDV duties?
JBF: The big plus factor was that after your night’s duty you went in to Brown’s, the café in Cable Street, and had a bacon and egg breakfast and then you went home you know from the day ‘cause there, there wasn’t really that much happening at that stage of the war. Everybody was non-plussed. Nobody knew whatever was happening. You know. It hadn’t settled down to anything. And -
BW: And what drew you to join the RAF? Did you apply to join or
JBF: Well –
BW: Were you offered a choice of which service?
JBF: When I went for the call up interview I said, ‘Well I’d like to join the RAF.’ They said, ‘What would you like to be?’ So I quickly said, ‘Oh I’d like to be a mechanic,’ you know. They said, ‘’Ok.’ Then the next minute I was sent to, what’s the local RAF place there?
BW: Woodvale.
NH: Woodvale.
JBF: No. Not Woodvale. Closer.
NH: Closer?
JBF: Yeah. Where, where were the Yanks locally?
NH: Oh Burton Wood.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: Burton Wood. It was in that area as far as I can remember and sat an exam.
BW: There was a recruiting centre or an RAF station at Padgate. Does that, that was near Warrington.
JBF: Well it might have been.
BW: Sort of Burton Wood area.
NH: Yeah.
BW: Ok.
JBF: I went in the Warrington area.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: And took, and sat an exam and I passed that and so I was down to be a mechanic.
BW: And when you say mechanic were there different types of mechanic that you could apply to be? Did you have a choice in that or were you directed simply as -
JBF: I’ve no idea. I didn’t even know what a mechanic was -
BW: Right.
JBF: I just said I’d like to be a mechanic because if I played with anything it was with Meccano before the war and I think I had some sort of mechanical ability you know and so I thought well I’m going to be an office for the rest of my life. I’d just like to do something different never realising I’d be doing it for the next five years but there you are.
BW: Did, did the thought of being aircrew ever appeal to you at all?
JBF: Yeah. I volunteered for aircrew and got halfway through the medical until the eyesight test and that was the end of that.
BW: What would you have liked to have done as a member of aircrew? What do you -
JBF: Well -
BW: Think your preference would have been?
JBF: In the talk I was at Wyton at the time and the flight engineers were in vogue at the time. I thought well with the basic knowledge I’ve already got I think I could have passed the rest of it to become a flight engineer so when they asked me at the medical lark I said, ‘Flight engineer.’
BW: Ok. And instead once, once they’d done the assessment and found your eyesight wasn’t up to scratch you were then posted to another base for -
JBF: No.
BW: Mechanical training.
JBF: I just went back to being where I was in Wyton.
BW: I see. So while you were still working as a mechanic you then volunteered for aircrew.
JBF: That’s right. For aircrew yes.
BW: They said you couldn’t be selected for aircrew and you returned to your trade.
JBF: I went back to the trades and being a mechanic. Yeah.
BW: And what squadron were you at there?
JBF: At Wyton it was 109.
BW: And you say this was a Pathfinder squadron.
JBF: Yeah. This was a Pathfinder squadron, yeah. The sister squadron was 83 squadron. They were Lancasters.
BW: And they were on the same base were they?
JBF: Same base yeah.
BW: And –
JBF: We were there for about nine months at Wyton and it was at Wyton that the first Oboe raid by Mosquitoes took place which was my squadron and my aircraft was the first aircraft to do something with the Oboe. The pilot was Squadron Leader Bufton and the navigator was, I think it was a Flight Lieutenant Ifould, an Australian.
BW: So this was Squadron Leader Buckton. Is that -
JBF: Bufton. B U F yeah.
BW: B U F T O N.
JBF: They’re famous in the air force because he had a brother also in the air force and he had a son er another brother rather, a sergeant in the mechanical line.
BW: And his navigator was a flight lieutenant.
JBF: Ifould. I F O U L D.
BW: And so servicing this particular aircraft do you remember anything specific about it? Possibly even the registration or the -
JBF: Well it was -
BW: Code.
JBF: DK33, I think it’s four. The three three’s right but the fours and it was -
BW: Ok.
JBF: D-Donald.
BW: D-Donald.
JBF: Yeah it was D Donald. It was changed to L-Leather later on but it was D-Donald when it was flying when it flew to this, I found out later it was a power station in Holland right on the edge of the German border and that was the first time, I can confirm all this, these books, I’m in these books and pictures you know. This is Tim, you know, he just, ‘Look dad,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen this,’ so -
BW: And did you know Squadron Leader Bufton and Flight Lieutenant Ifould very well? Did they stay with that aircraft for -
JBF: Oh yeah they stayed for -
BW: For a period?
JBF: Quite some time. I mean Bufton became a group captain. I’m sure Ifould did because they were, they were dyed in the wool, I think, pre-war airmen if you know what I mean. They were really the real McCoy you know. This is how the air force won the Battle of Britain. With people like them really because they knew what they were doing.
BW: And I’m assuming that they had already done a tour on bombers prior to becoming -
JBF: They must.
BW: A Pathfinder.
JBF: I should say so. The squadron from Wyton came from Boscombe Down were all the experiments were done.
BW: And what kind of guys were they. These, these two?
JBF: Very nice. Very nice men. Excellent blokes.
BW: Did you have a good rapport with them?
JBF: All the time yes.
BW: And so this remained your aircraft, D Donald for –
JBF: If you want -
BW: Some months.
JBF: If you want a little anecdote with it being the very first raid with Oboe it was the very first Oboe raid for 109 Mosquitos and they decided that nothing should happen to the aircraft so we, they did the MFTs, they did the flying and then they carried the tractors, you know, hooked up the tractors and put the three of them in a hangar. This is, it’s dark at this stage and they’re busy doing and I’m on one wing and I’m bawling, ‘You’re too close. You’re too close,’ and the next minute we’d cracked the [?] on this wing. Pandemonium and, ‘Who’s,’ I said, ‘Look I’ve been bawling my head off.’ And the corporal who was doing the manoeuvring were all too excited to listen, you know. Anyway, it was superficial and in no time they’d got it put right but the interesting thing about this particular time was that the squadron was paraded in a hangar and addressed by the CO and he just simply said, ‘You are engaged in a very special operation and if I hear the word Oboe mentioned in any pub around this district,’ he said, ‘Your feet won’t touch the ground.’ And out of nowhere we were surrounded by plain clothes which I suppose were detectives and everybody was suitably terrified of course and I didn’t mention Oboe till about 1960 [laughs]. There was three types of bomb aiming equipment. There was Oboe, Gee and H2S and they were, they followed on, you know and I think by the time we got too Little Staughton we were in to the H2S or Gee.
BW: And did you work on these bits of kit or were you -
JBF: No. All the -
BW: You still on the airframe?
JBF: All the, the advanced kit, it was Canadians, they all, it was a Canadian unit. They were all Canadians. They all got drunk together, they went out together. It was just like that you know. They were told not to speak to anybody and they were all nice guys it’s just they’d been frightened like us, you know.
BW: So you never worked on these sets but you knew they were on the aircraft.
JBF: Oh yes. We, what we used to do, they did the NFT.
BW: What’s the NFT?
JBF: Night Flying Test. The -
BW: Right.
JBF: In the afternoon. We’d fill them up with oil, petrol and coolant and look at the engines. The big problem with the mark 4 Mosquito was because they were flying a lot higher than the bombers, thirty, twenty eight, thirty thousand feet they were prone to oil leaks so we got quite adept. What we used to do was they’d say that, a bit of a mess coming down and you’d see it everywhere and so they used to take the cowlings off and start the engine up and we’d all, before they started the engines up we’d crawl up the back of the aircraft and hang on and look in to the engine and see if we could spot the oil leaks because there was a million nuts there you know and quite, we did spot -
BW: And so were you, were you on top of the wing at this point?
JBF: You were on top of the wing with about, what, a foot off, well three foot off the propeller.
BW: I was going to say ‘cause you’re having to look over in to the cowling and the blade is spinning.
JBF: The blades are going around full pelt ‘cause they went up high they were at full throttle you know but it worked. It was primitive but there was no other way. The thing was leaking but when they got up that high and with the thing going and we just thought we used to see dribbles coming down. The carburettor was on the back and we used to see dribbles coming down and then we’d work it back. Well it was those nuts and Stan, the corporal, Corporal Wright when it stopped he’d, I said, ‘We’ll check this section,’ and he did do and they were loose you know. We got quite good at that really.
BW: And these, this is clearly in the days before any sort of protective safety equipment and goggles.
JBF: Oh no there’s -
BW: Ear defenders and things.
JBF: Well to give you an idea, when they, have you ever been close to a Mosquito? It’s quite tall you know.
BW: I’ve been to one in a museum, yes, but -
JBF: It’s quite, the end -
NH: Not with engines running [laughs]
JBF: The, we had ladders to get on the back, you know. Well of course within no time the ladders had disappeared because we’d no fuel in the huts so everybody chopped up the ladders and we used to use, when they, as you know you get in a Mosquito in the centre underneath and there’s a metal stair thing.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: Well we used to use those to get on the back and my souvenir was this finger.
BW: And this is on your left hand.
JBF: Yeah. There’s a stich here and a stich there, a stich there and a stich there because -
BW: On your little finger.
JBF: It was wet and being tall you know I was able to go it. I mean Handley, he was about five foot three, couldn’t even get near the thing you know ‘cause I could reach and put the ladder on and it was wet and the ladder slipped and my hand went around the engine nacelle and there’s, I went to the Chiefy, you know, Lendrum and he said, ‘You’d better go and get that fixed,’ so I went to the sick bay and they said, ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘Yes.’ They cleaned it up and I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was that, you know. And they said, ‘Oh yes. We need a few stitches. Right. Stand by.’ So when I’d got over that he said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Two hours excused duties for bawling.
BW: And so they’d done the stitching in your hands without anaesthetic.
JBF: Well I did two hours excused duties. Well I didn’t do.
BW: That was it.
JBF: I went back to the unit and said to the chief, I said, ‘Sorry I’m on excused duties.’ ‘Oh, well, just before you go have a look at this’ [laughs]. So -
NH: Oh dear. Yeah
JBF: That was that.
BW: And the Mosquito clearly used Merlin engines. Do you know what -
JBF: That’s right. Merlin 20s.
BW: And how did you rate those?
JBF: Oh they were smashing. I never worked on anything else other than the, in Burma we had Hurricane, Hurricane 2Cs cannon and they were Merlin engines and then when they converted after the war to Spit 9s they were a very posh but we had to have training for these they were so posh. You know the latest Merlin engine that was in the Spitfire 9 which was of course was five years after the original Spitfires and we just, we knew how to fill them up with the oil and coolant and so on -
BW: And did you specialise in engine maintenance or were you working on the airframe of the Mosquito as well?
JBF: Oh no the air frame was a rigger called Alan Fraser, the rigger. Each aircraft had a fitter and a rigger as we were called. The airframe was a man who’d been trained as an air frame mechanic and I was on the engines as the engine mechanic.
BW: And so who was the air frame mechanic?
JBF: Alan. Alan Fraser.
BW: He was the rigger.
JBF: The rigger. That’s right.
BW: And is that the same.
JBF: That’s right.
BW: Same name as an air frame engineer.
JBF: Air frame mechanic, it was the rigger.
BW: Ok.
JBF: Yeah.
BW: And you had a corporal in charge of the team.
JBF: Yeah.
BW: Stan Wright.
JBF: Stan Wright was the corporal.
BW: And did you mention an LAC Handley?
JBF: Oh he was my pal in Burma.
BW: Ok so he was -
JBF: LAC Handley.
BW: Not part of this particular -
JBF: Yeah.
BW: Team.
JBF: He wasn’t part of this set up.
BW: And your chief tech, is that right, was, who was your chief tech -
JBF: Oh Chiefy Lendrum.
BW: Lendrum.
JBF: Yeah. Lendrum was the -
BW: Is that one, one word L E N D R U M.
JBF: I think so yeah.
NH: It wasn’t Len Drum.
JBF: He was the flight sergeant, you know. He was in charge. In fact I think without, off the record as you might say he was responsible for the ladders. [laughs]
BW: He was the one, he was the one who took them away to use as firewood.
JBF: And they were all, we’d burned them all. I mean there was quite, it wasn’t hilarious, you were working until you, you know feel asleep sort of thing and it was a real band of blokes you know. It was, I think that’s really what won the war was the fact that everybody just got stuck in. Churchill was marvellous. And everybody got stuck in, you know. I don’t think Hitler could have realised what he’d awakened in the British when he was busy refusing Chamberlain’s piece of paper, you know. He didn’t realise exactly because Goering said, ‘Oh you know we’ll subjugate the British. The air force will do this,’ that and the other you know and of course he didn’t. Battle of Britain. And they turned to Russia.
BW: And so just thinking about the maintenance unit or the mechanics involved on the base here.
JBF: Yeah.
BW: So there’s, there’s the two guys there’s yourself and the rigger responsible for the aircraft and a corporal. Was he over more than one aircraft or just -
JBF: No. Just the one.
BW: Ok. So there was the three of you assigned to the one aircraft.
JBF: That’s right.
BW: And the chief tech presumably looked after -
JBF: He was over the flight.
BW: The whole lot.
JBF: A flight yeah.
BW: Ok.
JBF: Yeah. The six aircraft.
BW: Did you know the other crews at all? The other flying -
JBF: Well we knew them but –
BW: Crews on the Mossies?
JBF: We stuck together really, you know. Yes we knew all of them really, by name but -
BW: And you you didn’t have cause to work on any of the other aircraft. Say if one riggers went down.
JBF: Oh sometimes. It depends. One of the features of the Rolls Royce engine was I think it was to do with the carburettor and there was this cup and it used to accumulate water so what we had to do was we had to take off the locking wire, unscrew the cup, drain the water out, put the cup back and put the locking wire on and the finished article had to be supervised by the corporal, you know, that you’d actually done what you were supposed to do and -
BW: And the paperwork that they use nowadays certainly was a form 700. Was that still in place then?
JBF: Yes. Form 700. Yeah.
BW: So that’s been right the way through the service.
JBF: That you signed to say that, yes, you’d done the -
BW: And you obviously knew the crew well in terms of the ground crew who you worked with. Did you socialise together and live together in the barracks?
JBF: We lived together in the barracks. The ground crew. Yes. We didn’t socialise, and it was discouraged, any of the air crew. The air crew were under strict instructions to say nothing when they got out of the aeroplane and in the five years the only time two aircrew ever got out and said something was when they were steaming along at three or four hundred miles an hour in a Mosquito and an aircraft went around them like this.
BW: In a circular motion.
JBF: And they got out of the Mosquito, ‘We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it.’ We said, ‘What?’ And it was the first type of German jet fighter.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: And it was doing five hundred miles an hour or something and it just went around them while they were busy coming home or whatever they were doing, you know.
BW: And so the aircrew never talked to the ground crew.
JBF: Never.
BW: About the mission that they’d done.
JBF: Oh no. No. You didn’t get anything off them. No.
BW: But they must presumably have told you about anything to you like oil problems in the engine.
JBF: Oh yes.
BW: Or anything they’d seen.
JBF: There was a report you see. What used to happen was the air crew would come in and they’d get out the aircraft. Then they’d go and see the adjutant or whoever was in charge. They had to write a report on the raid and a report on the kite and that was relayed through Chiefy Lendrum to Stan Wright and Stan Wright would get it and say, ‘There appears to be a leak on this,’ and, ‘That’s not happening,’ or, you know. They were very reliable aircraft I must say. The only fault with them when the first Mosquitos came the cowling section of the construction hadn’t been talking to the body and so the cowling went up past the intake on the front so when you were getting, you could get it off but you couldn’t get it back in, you know so they very quickly instead of having the cowling to go that way they just had it below the intake because the two intakes are either side of the cockpit and the problem with that was they were having birds in them as they were flying. They used to get birds wedged in these.
BW: So they had regular bird strikes. Is what you’re saying?
JBF: Oh regular, bird strikes were fairly common.
BW: And did that happen during the raid or normal flying testing or was it mainly around the airfield?
JBF: Oh it was around the airfield. I don’t think it was in -
BW: No.
JBF: While they were bombing, you know.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: ‘Cause they went up at least, I think it was, twenty eight thousand feet and the Lancasters were all getting shot down and they were about what about, what, twenty six, twenty four thousand feet. What happened to the Mosquitoes was they’d come back with tiny little holes in and it was the, where the anti-aircraft shell had exploded as they were wooden they took everything. Nothing bounced off and when the chippies came, if there were holes they used to get to this and look through and see the other hole where it had gone straight through, you know. The marvellous thing about the Mossie was despite it being wood it was almost indestructible. It was marvellous, you know. Just a marvellous aircraft.
BW: Because it could take so much battle damage -
JBF: Yeah.
BW: Without being lost if you like. It wasn’t going to -
JBF: That’s right, without it being. What, the chippies had this technique if it was a biggish hole they’d cut a kind of the top layer of the plywood or whatever it was off and fit.
BW: Yes.
JBF: A new piece of plywood in and put the tape, you know, around and that would and do it all up with the dope and it would, you wouldn’t know it was there, you know.
BW: So they’d sort of cut a square patch out around the -
JBF: Cut a square patch out around the hole, yeah.
BW: Around the hole and -
JBF: Yeah.
BW: Replace that.
JBF: And if it was small enough they’d just cover it over and do the same thing. They wouldn’t take any wood out. They’d just cover it over.
BW: And the air crew found that quite satisfactory.
JBF: Oh yes.
BW: There were no difference in handling or anything like that?
JBF: It didn’t detract from the performances.
BW: So, I guess the most complex part of the Mosquito for you was actually the engine that you were working on.
JBF: That’s right. Yeah.
BW: You found them pretty reliable.
JBF: Oh yes. Yeah.
BW: Did you find them easy to work on or were they particularly complex in their own right?
JBF: Oh no once we’d learned the basics, funnily, the lucky thing for me was at Cosford we trained on Merlin engines and so when I was posted to a Merlin, I was first of all posted to an air gunners school with Blenheims and I’d never seen a radial engine because there were no radial engines in, we’d worked on Merlins you know. So I got out of there, I didn’t like it. I put in for a posting which is how I got to Wyton and the big thing about South Wales was the rugby. I was playing rugby for the station because it’s, you know it’s a, you know a big rugby area you know, miles away from the war. It was an air gunners school and the air gunners were carefully separated from the crew, the ground crew, and they were trained and passed out with all the pomp and ceremony and they went on to whichever squadron the were allocated to and lasted about ten minutes, you know, because the technique of downing a Lancaster was to get after the guns to start with so there was the one sticking out of the front, nothing underneath and the upper. The -
BW: Mid upper gunner.
JBF: W/Op AG you know, so the Germans shot underneath behind the tail so that the fellow, nobody could get at them, straight into the cockpit. I mean people go on about the Lancaster. How marvellous it was. It was a death trap and these books will illustrate how because the number, you know they lost fifty or sixty thousand men and they were sitting ducks once a night fighter, and they would never dream of, where you see on all the films where they’re all coming down this way they just went underneath and it was the same with the Flying Fortress. They had to stop flying daylight raids despite all the under guns. They had, they had a fella sitting in a thing with guns underneath. It didn’t matter. The first one that lost his lives was the gunner and then it was a sitting duck. They could do what they liked. I believe one German ace shot a hundred and seventy three Flying Fortresses down. Just one bloke.
BW: The sister squadron on the base you mentioned was 83 squadron.
JBF: That’s right, yeah.
BW: So did you hear back from ground crews and, and talk in the barracks let’s say or the mess about what was happening on their side.
JBF: No. Nothing. They was billeted in separate, 109 was billeted here, say. The other side of the aerodrome was 83.
BW: So completely separate squadrons
JBF: Completely.
BW: With own messes.
JBF: Yes. Well, with us being, they were Pathfinder bombers and it was secret at that stage, this Oboe thing so they wanted the least person that knew you know and they had you suitably terrified. You felt you had private men, you know under the bed sort of thing. As kids, we were only kids. I mean I was about twenty two or something, Twenty three.
BW: Thinking back then to repairing a Merlin what would you say was the most complex thing to repair? What was the most difficult -
JBF: Well -
BW: Sort of repair or work you had to do on it?
JBF: We didn’t do repairs. What happened was they went in after a number of hours for scheduled maintenance and they got the plugs changed and the oil completely changed and the coolant and they did tests on the engine itself to see that it was still workable because they were work horses you know, they was. I mean we never ever had an engine change in the Mosquito. I don’t ever remember one having to go in for an engine change. They all went in for repairs because of damage or wear or whatever. But just a marvellous piece of equipment, you know.
BW: And when they were brought back or once you’d finished the repair did you have to do engine run ups to verify that it was working alright?
JBF: Oh every day, part of the night, you had to run, you had to DI the engine to see it was, you know, add the coolant in and the oil and all the rest of it. Then it had a test run on the ground. The engines were test run on the ground and to start off only the corporal did the testing and then finally we did that, I did, you know I’d been there a couple of years finally and we did the test runs if they were on leave or anything. So you get to, you’ve got to run, a Mosquito is quite, you know, terrifying to start with. The corporal had someone sitting with you and that.
BW: And so this was done on, on a test bed presumably on -
JBF: No. No. Just where it was in the grass.
BW: Ok.
JBF: They didn’t go anywhere.
BW: Ok. And -
JBF: It was part of the night flying test to run the aircraft before it went up.
BW: And although you mentioned previously that when you were looking for a leak you got on the top of the wing to look in.
JBF: On top of the wing, yeah.
BW: Did you have to do the same once you’d repaired, once you’d serviced the engine?
JBF: It was only for oil leaks.
BW: Ok.
JBF: If they came back and mentioned any kind of leak we used to do this on the back of the aircraft and look in just to see if we could see, you know.
BW: Did you ever get to go in the cockpit to start the engines?
JBF: Yes. I’ve actually flown in a Mosquito. Wing Commander Green was going up for an NFT and Stan Wright fixed it for me to go with him and the problem was at twenty thousand feet there was a juddering. It was very slight, he said, but at twenty thousand feet down and it started to do this you know and it turned out a mixture problem. Something was going wrong at that particular height with the mixture and they fixed it up and it was ok. I only did the, I had one trip in a Mosquito.
BW: How long was that? How long did it last?
JBF: Well, basically the NFT about half an hour, three quarters of an hour.
BW: And what, what did you experience during a flight? What was it like?
JBF: Well I was just gobsmacked. I was absolutely, you know, like this, sort of thing.
BW: And he didn’t, did he let you have a go at the controls or not?
JBF: Oh no. No. They wouldn’t let you do anything. God. Strewth. That would have been it.
BW: But you got to sit next to the pilot while he’s –
JBF: You’ve got to, well the -
BW: Was doing the test.
JBF: The navigator’s here and the pilot’s here you know and –
BW: Yeah.
JBF: The throttles were in between.
BW: It was exhilarating I’m assuming.
JBF: Oh absolutely. Yeah. I was, I felt, you know, Group Captain Franklin, here we go, you know. Real Mr Mainwaring job you know. There’s one, I don’t know whether you want any story out of it but there was one graphic story that, that happened. I think it was at Marham and I was on the main plane waiting for the bowser to fill up and suddenly there were screams underneath the aircraft, ‘Help. Help.’ So I got off the main plane and got down and the armourer had primed a five hundred pound bomb and then he couldn’t hook it in so he was standing there so I got the bomb on my back and slowly, I was, you know strong in those days and I lifted it up.
BW: So you crouched underneath it, took the weight on your back.
JBF: I took the weight on my back and while he hooked it in. He said, ‘We’re alright now.’ I said, ‘Well we’re not being blown up at least,’ and the aftermath was I think the op was over because they were filling, we used to have to fill them up immediately they came back you know in case and Stan Wright came to me. He said, ‘You know, Jack,’ he said ‘Were you on the starboard wing?’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I got this scream from underneath and I went down and helped the armourer. We managed to get over the problem.’ When I came out everybody had vanished and the aircraft as far as we could make out had been to France or Germany and back with no petrol caps on the right side. So, he said, ‘You know,’ he said, ‘This is a court martial offence.’ I said, ‘Hang on.’ So I thought about it. So I got on the bike, went, cycled around into the hangar, all the lights were on and there were Mossies being maintained you know so I couldn’t see anybody so I climbed up on the back of this Mosquito, took off the two petrol caps, and the tops, put them in my jacket and got down. Nobody, didn’t see me so I, so I went to Stan. I said, ‘You’re alright, Stan. You won’t be court martialled.’ I said, ‘Here they are.’ [laughs] Gave him the two tops and the petrol. He was absolutely, you know, he was gobsmacked [caught the phrase locally?] and so hurriedly because the people that would have been up for the trouble were the mechanic that was on the other side of the Mosquito ‘cause he’d signed the 700 to say it was full and how the aircraft got to Germany and back with no petrol caps on we never knew and nobody else did because they didn’t know they were off.
BW: And the air crew normally do checks before they -
JBF: Oh yes.
BW: Take off as well.
JBF: Well they start the engines up and all that you know you had to. The method of starting was you had the trolley acc and you primed the engine. There was a little flap on the side and you primed the engine and then you give the signal up to the bloke on the trolley acc, he presses the -
BW: Thumbs up.
JBF: Electrics and it starts up, you know and he, if there was any worry it was when we hadn’t enough ground crew to go around. You had to do the two engines so you had to prime the one on the port side shall we say and then you had to come and prime the one on the starboard side and then you give the, and fortunately despite you know, I think it’s the quality of the workmanship really because we never ever had a failure. You know. Overheating. They both started each time even when there was only one man doing it because we’d no people to do it.
BW: And in all weathers too.
JBF: Oh well it was, you know, Norfolk in the winter is quite something else. The thing they used to do when it was a long raid we knew it was a long raid because they’d come out with urns of cocoa and corned beef sandwiches about that thick.
BW: About two inch thick.
JBF: And you could get, there was an unlimited supply. You could do, if you felt like running around a lot as we were during the night and so we got stuck into these. You know it was fine. Didn’t mind. The, really you have to be the age we were at. Anybody else, it must have been, you know if you were thirty five or forty or whatever it was it must have been awful, just, and with a family you know. Well one corporal developed shingles and it was the family. He was on the phone to the wife and the kid had measles or whatever it was you know and he was beside himself. I was exactly -
BW: And yet -
JBF: The right age for the war. It couldn’t have been better.
NH: Yeah.
BW: And as a single man you were quite happily sharing a barracks with your mates.
JBF: Oh yes. I hadn’t got a girlfriend. I was just a single man, you know. In fact, one Christmas I gave up my leave for one of the married men who had kids you know. Which was nothing heroic. It was just common, you know.
BW: Did, did you feel that your efforts were appreciated by the crews and the -
JBF: Oh yeah.
BW: Officers on the base?
JBF: Oh everybody. It was a together thing. I mean working that close and their lives were involved. It was a very close knit, all the squadrons were the same. A very close knit unit. There was no Captain Mainwaring standing around, you know. I mean there was no saluting.
BW: Really.
JBF: You just got on with it and first names, you know they called you.
BW: So -
JBF: You always called them whatever they were like squadron leader, you know, Bufton and you gave them their rank but we were just Jack and Alan and Stan.
BW: Were there any, you mentioned an error in someone leaving petrol caps off? Were there any incidents that you knew of elsewhere in the squadron perhaps?
JBF: Well -
BW: Where there was something that had been missed that resulted, for example, in an accident or the loss of an aircraft.
JBF: Oh the only thing that we watched from start to finish was U-Uncle and two lads, they could have been more than twenty five, navigator and the pilot, you know and they were very excited. It was their first trip and we got them in and watched them and they took off and went straight, straight in.
BW: So the nose pitched up and they went straight down.
JBF: They went straight down and burned to death, the two of them. Big explosion. Bang. And I said that, there was this old sergeant and I said, he said they probably didn’t lock the throttles. They were that excited about getting up because they had to do a lot of homework in while they were in the aircraft to find out what they were going to do, you know. They just went straight in.
BW: And that was close to or over the base.
JBF: Well we just watched the whole thing. Yeah. And the ,our aircraft finally, when I say our aircraft this DK number 334 I think it was or 335 it crash landed and it was that old the aircrew hated it because it was absolutely on its tips you know. Did a hundred and eleven ops and it landed and the undercarriage went up into the -
NH: The wing.
JBF: Into the engine nacelle and just they weren’t hurt and that was it. They took us around and we were photographed, the three of us Alan, Stan and myself in front of this wreck.
BW: So moving on from Wyton and Marham.
JBF: Yes.
BW: You mentioned that later in your service you transferred to 28 squadron.
JBF: Yeah.
BW: So what happened in the period between -
JBF: Little Staughton -
BW: This would be -
JBF: Was the next thing after Marham.
BW: And did you request a transfer to another squadron?
JBF: What happened was I put in for overseas and said I’d serve anywhere because I I thought, well, realised, that we would never go anywhere else. We were, the war was well on from D Day. They were going into Germany, the armies, France and there was less, and it was rather backing up troops rather than bombing anywhere so I put in for overseas and said I’d serve anywhere and that’s how I came to go to 28 squadron. Next minute I was on a troop ship and then I was in North Western India at a place called Ranchi.
BW: How do you spell that?
JBF: I joined 28 squadron.
BW: How do you spell Ranchi?
JBF: R A N C H I.
BW: And this was in North West India.
JBF: North West India. Yeah.
BW: And so the attraction of going was really because you felt there wasn’t going to be that much more -
JBF: I was -
BW: To do on the squadron.
JBF: The age I was. Twenty four you know.
BW: And you fancied the opportunity of going abroad.
JBF: At least, I thought, yeah. The next minute the CO said, ‘Don’t unpack your kit you’re going to Burma.’ So I thought well this will be a change. So we gave in our blue, all the winter clothing and put in a kit bag and the marvellous thing was when it came back to us in Malaya it was intact for those two years. So with 28 squadron they were on rest and then they suddenly said, ‘We’re off. We’re starting off,’ and we went to Burma by road and rail and we got on the train. It went right up into the North West provinces of India you know, up to, by rail a change to the narrow gauge railway, Assam. That’s it. All that through I think it’s around the top of what is now Bangladesh you know and you go well India’s what you might call semi-primitive to absolutely basics. When you get up there the Naga tribesmen are still in the outfits, you know. I thought gee whiz if these fellas were in the Olympics they’d win everything. Their leg muscles were like this because they were hill men. Apparently, the English had civilised them and they were no longer head hunters. But they chased the Japanese. But what used to happen was you’d be standing there and they’d come down from the mountain and do what we called the shopping which was trying to get food, I think was the main thing. Then on the way back they had conical baskets which they put their provisions in and they each held the bottom of the conical basket and then they started a rhythm of steps and they went straight up the mountain like that. None of this we’ll climb here and all the movement was about fifteen of them all holding on. Nothing was out of place. Nothing. Must have been doing it all their lives. It was great.
BW: Just out of interest how did you get shipped out to India? Did you fly out there or were you -
JBF: No. It was the Cameronia.
BW: Troop shipped.
NH: Tell them about your Suez Canal.
BW: Well the Suez Canal was -
NH: I’ll make some tea while you -
JBF: The reason I’ve told it is on the boxes of dates before the war you always had an Arab pulling two camels and I’m just lounging on the side of the Cameronia and suddenly an Arab pulling two camels appeared on the side of the Suez Canal. So I’ve seen it. You know. Right off the box. So, we, we finally landed in Bombay. Worli was the transit camp and then we were on the trains going to our different placements.
BW: And this is Worli.
JBF: Worli that’s the transit camp outside Bombay.
BW: How do you spell Worli?
JBF: I should imagine it’s something like W R O R L and L I somewhere on the end of it. And the thing to watch out for on the Indian trains are the hookers because they are going that slow when they go up hill the hookers jump on to the train with hooks and hook all the equipment out of the windows which are always open and Handley, my pal gets out in his underwear with just shorts and he gets out with an officer in a dressing gown.
NH: All the gear had gone.
JBF: We’d lost it all with the hookers. And well a real introduction to India, on the floor on the station was this old man covered in flies. He was just covered in flies and I said to one of the Anglos, I said, ‘Well what’s that?’ He said, ‘He’s just dying.’ And that, that sums India up for me you know. That was it. Another time I saw a man, he was quite a big man, he was on a piece of corrugated and four men were holding him you know and I said, ‘He looks dead.’ ‘He is dead. They’re just carting him off. He’s just died.’ It was just like Fu Manchu you know. Flares and this one had been. And we finally we were taken by truck to Burma and it was along the Manipur Road and then it’s, it’s a flat road in between mountains where Kohima and Imphal where they did the fighting and then the road goes like this and suddenly it turns right and starts to go up called The Chocolate Staircase when the monsoon was on because it was, and we were in these trucks, you know, and just went up one side and the other side and these trucks were just and Tamu, that was the first airstrip. Jungle. It was thick jungle you know. Thick jungle airstrip and the first casualty of 28 squadron happened at Tamu. One of the, flight lieutenant [Hewlis?] an Australian, he’d forgotten, they said, to lock, you had to, because the trees, it didn’t taper off the airstrip it came straight up so you had to bounce along the runway and suddenly do this.
BW: Lurch in to the air.
JBF: Well his undercarriage caught on the trees, tipped him over and he was hanging upside down burned to death. You know. And we just, that was the first introduction. Watching him burn to death in Tamu.
BW: And 28 squadron, what did they fly? Were they [?]
JBF: Hurricane 2Cs they were. Clapped out Hurricanes that, I mean, by that stage of the war the government, I should imagine was penniless and you name it and they hadn’t the wherewithal to replace them and it was a reconnaissance unit and the issue, the side sort of activity, shall we say, was shooting up the Japanese on the ground and that’s where we lost most of the aircraft because they were, the Japanese were very good shots and they used to shoot them down when they were doing the ground strafing and we were in the jungle from January, February and we went down the Kobor Valley in a truck which was thick jungle full of malaria and you name it and one thing we learned at that particular, you can’t pee out of a moving truck. It was in a convoy so he couldn’t stop so we each went to the back of the, we had a competition, we each went to the, got off our toolbox, went to the back, hanged up, everything organised and nothing came out and everybody was the same. You can’t pee out of a moving truck.
BW: And what time of the war was this? This was after -
JBF: This was -
BW: D Day wasn’t it so was it late ‘44 when you transferred out there?
JBF: This was ’44. Yeah.
BW: Going in to early ‘45
JBF: Well forty, it was the end of ‘44 ’45.
BW: So this was after the Battle of Kohima when you’d gone through the -
JBF: Oh that was all.
BW: Towns yeah, yeah.
JBF: Oh all that would have been the ‘43 yes. All those, oh yes that was absolutely, the people that did that they should have been, what was left of them, they should be pensioned for life. They were fighting, they were fighting over a tennis court in one of the places.
BW: And so you say 28 squadron was a reconnaissance squadron.
JBF: That’s it. Reconnaissance and two cannon.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: That why they’re called 2Cs, two cannon, heavy, heavy machine gun, you know. What is it? Five?
BW: Twenty millimetre.
JBF: That’s it. Yeah. Twenty five millimetre. Quite heavy shells you know and when we got down to this Kalaymyo and it was just bush and we didn’t see an aircraft because the war was moving that quick. The next thing we were, by truck to a place called [Yau] which was an airstrip in the paddy fields.
NH: Do you want another cup Brian?
BW: Yes please. Thank you, Neil. And this is further into Burma.
JBF: This is further into Northern Burma. Tamu’s up here and you come across like this to Mandalay. Well we went down the Kobor Valley and across to [Yau?] and [Yau?] we went to Sadong.
BW: Thank you.
JBF: Sadong was the airstrip outside Mandalay. The Japanese were still in Mandalay and this is where we lost the aircraft. The aircrew. We lost two or three aircrew here because the Japanese could shoot them as they come over the fort. They were in the fort, you know. They lost them there.
BW: And even that was just down to small arms fire.
JBF: I think it was small arms, I never saw ackack guns or even, we heard all the row that was going on but I don’t ever recollect, I think it was small arms fire. The Japanese rifle is 256 the, the calibre. You know, ours are 303. Their rifles were 256. Smaller bullets but just as lethal but of course they’re all five foot three so carrying something lighter was part of the course for them. So we were in Sadong and we were there quite some time and they used to have the mule trains going up to supply the troops. Like Sadong’s here and Mandalay is there and thirteen miles I think was the difference and they came one day and said, ‘You’re not going to bed. You’re going to fly down to Meiktila.’ And so we didn’t go to bed that particular night, struck the tents, got in the Dakotas. All the Dakotas had no doors on. If you want to be frightened go on a Dakota with no doors. And we landed in Meiktila and they hadn’t cleaned up the airstrip. All the Japanese they’d killed were everywhere which was the first time really I’d seen what you might call a battlefield and well we just got stuck in from there with the aeroplanes.
BW: You mentioned that you’d struck tents.
JBF: Oh yes.
BW: Were all your accommodation presumably out in the Far East was in tents was it?
JBF: While the campaigning was on it was tents. You had a piece of coconut matting with two sort of slide holes and through that went two pieces of bamboo. Now I pinched two full sets of runway grating. I’d call them nails. They were pieces of metal and they were driven into the ground so that when it was the monsoon they had the metal over and the aircraft didn’t sink so I got hold of four -
BW: Pierced steel planking.
JBF: Of these and I drove those in the ground put the bamboo on, tied on and my bed was off ‘cause you couldn’t, they wouldn’t let you sleep on the ground because there were scorpions, you know. All the stuff that’s there. Scorpion. If you left your tent flap open you couldn’t get in because of the bugs. Somebody did to see what would happen and it was an absolute carpet of every conceivable type of flying bug you’ve ever heard of. So we never did that again.
NH: No.
JBF: We got down to Meiktila. It all went very well and we knew the war was going well because the Arakan forces who had taken Meiktila our, our army was General Slim coming this way. The Yanks were on the outside coming that way and the Indian army was coming this way along the Arakan and it was the –
BW: The opposite end.
JBF: Arakan that had captured Meiktila and so we got on to Meiktila and, you know, set up and they were doing everything as usual. It was exactly the same. Seven hundred. Oil, so on and then see them off, bring them in and run them and so on. Keep them -
BW: So even though you were working on different aircraft you were still working on the same engine to all -
JBF: That’s right.
BW: Intents and purposes.
JBF: Merlin 20s. That’s why I was posted to the Hurricane squadron, because it was home from home. We knew what to do and could do it right away.
BW: Even in those adverse conditions and presumably not as well supplied.
JBF: Well -
BW: Did you, did you have trouble with supplies?
JBF: Well we had nothing to eat. That was the trouble with supplies. But I mean hens eggs in Burmese is [ju ug?] [koplar?] is cloths. So you had a pair of underpants and you’d go [ju ug] like that [koplar] and so you’d get the hens egg and they’d get the underpants. So the net result it -
BW: So you’d trade.
JBF: We had nothing to wear either. [laughs]
BW: So you traded your under -
JBF: Not that it mattered ‘cause you never had a shirt on anyway. It was just a pair of shorts, socks and boots you know that’s the and with your boots you had to knock your boots out every day because the scorpions loved, it must have been the smell of your feet, they loved getting in the boots so we had to be, and tool boxes. If you, when you opened your toolbox the first thing to do is wait and see if anything moves. Then you’d know there was something in there that shouldn’t be in there you know. So we’re getting on with it and I think the most distressing part of Meiktila was a trench full of Japanese who’d been, they’d used the flame thrower on them. There was about anywhere between fifty and a hundred Japanese who’d been fried.
BW: All in a trench.
JBF: All in the trench. ‘Cause they, they were facing either this way or that way and the flame thrower had come this way and just fried the lot.
BW: And was this at the edge of an airstrip or near the airstrip -
JBF: Yeah. It was Meiktila airstrip.
BW: Where you were working.
JBF: There were shell holes with Japanese in. The first time we saw, there was one Japanese well over six feet. He was dead of course, in the shell hole. It was the first time I’d seen a big, they were all about this big but, anyway -
BW: And this, this was obviously all after the battle but you never came into a closer contact with the Japanese at any time.
JBF: No. Only as prisoners, not as - the next thing that happened with Meiktila he said, ‘Nine of you are being flown into the [Tongu] Box.’ Well I was picked as one of the nine so we were flown into the [Tongu] Box and I know when it was simply because we, over the radio that we heard that the Germans had packed up so it’s got to be the 8th of May. And we were in the [Tongu] Box and the laugh about that was we’d got two tents, we only had two tents. There was nine of us and suddenly the ants started, up and they had a procession going in no time. There was millions you know. Ants, you name it. They’ve got it. They were going up the guide ropes up to the top right up to the fourteen foot EPI down the other side so we thought we’ll have a bit of fun here so we got the lighted taper thing and we started chasing the ants off the, the next minute they was, your feet, being bitten and the fighter ants were biting, they were all over us, on the feet, biting. Some bad. So we’re in this in this Box thing and I could see the sergeant was getting a bit frustrated you know. The aeroplanes didn’t appear by the way. It was monsoon so they couldn’t land and take off anyway. The Dakotas had a job doing it and he said, ‘Right. We’re going to make a dash for Rangoon.’ So we thought ok, you know, ‘Rangoon. Great.’ So, so he got two West African trucks and we started off and it got to about 11 o’clock in the morning and we stopped and made a brew up. Put it on the tree and we got the fire going and the stuff out, the tea out and everything and as we were doing all this and thoroughly enjoying it out of the jungle came a patrol of British. So we just sort of, ‘Hello.’ He said, ‘What the f’ing are you,’ you know, he said, ‘Don’t you know where you are?’ We said, ‘Yes. We’re on route to Rangoon.’ He said, ‘Of course you are.’ The place was full of Japanese. He said, ‘Get the hell out of it now.’ So we never even got a cup of tea. It was like the keystone cops. The two trucks and drove off and we kept driving and it got, you know it goes dark at 6 o’clock at night there so we’d got to half past five, quarter to six and even the sergeant was getting a bit worried you know. Finally we hit an army emplacement. I don’t know how we managed to do it but they must, the sergeant must have known and he said, ‘Thank God for that,’ so we drove and he asked the officer could we bunk in for the night so we got on the floor there and at least we were surrounded by the military, you know. And so we started off the next morning and finally around about midday, 2 o’clock or something we arrived in Rangoon and they were living in a bombed out hospital at the time. The squadron. There were no buildings. Everywhere was flat, you know and the only question that was asked was, ‘Where the ‘FH’ have you been?’ They thought we’d already died. And so we arrived there and I think the most graphic thing that happened to me then, we still had Hurricanes and they used to do the cooking fires in front of this building that had no roof, no windows, no doors, nothing but at least it was, you were on the flat and it was not, it wasn’t raining you know. Marvellous and a jeep, a jeep drew up. The adjutant and two sergeants, ‘Who’s Franklin?’ So I said, ‘I am.’ ‘Get in.’ So no breakfast. Get in with the cup and the plate, you know. Driven to the flight and there’s a Hurricane standing there and the CO said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Start that machine.’ So I knew it was tricky because the, it wasn’t one where you just, they press the trolley acc and you had to do clever stuff with the accelerator. You know.
NH: Throttle. Yeah.
JBF: And so I got in and just eased it and it was making funny [ch ch ch], the engine you know and then I just eased it on ‘cause I’d done it before, it wasn’t and it started and I did the, you had to go up to two thousand seven hundred revs to test the engine and then you test the magnetos. You switch one off and it works and you switch the other off and it works so I went through the procedures, came down and got out. So I was utterly relieved. You know, at least the thing had worked and this, Blackie his name was, he was the sergeant. He said, ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘You’ve just made me look the biggest f’ing fool in Burma.’ I said, ‘How’s that?’ He said. ‘I’ve been half an hour trying to get this thing started. You come down and it starts first time.’ First time. So I was driven back. They said, ‘Get out.’ Back to the squadron. No breakfast. That’s the only thing that happened to me out of that lot.
BW: So much for their thanks. And within a few weeks or months the squadron transferred to Spitfire 9s you said.
JBF: That’s right. What happened was from Rangoon we were suddenly changed over to Spit 9s it was. The Hurricanes, by the way the aircraft were just thrown in the bushes. Hurricane aircraft I mean. You know. When you went to dig a hole for the lavatory you went behind one of these because at least you had some sort of privacy. They were just there upended and that’s the other joke about Burma is that there were no toilets of course and when you had to go you had to go so the first, to start with you think oh that’s a nice piece of grass, at least it looked like and everybody in the Japanese army had already been there before. It was black. You were waist deep in it you know. That was one of the Burma experiences that you can forget about. That and the bread full of ants. I thought they were currants to start with. I thought that’s unusual, you know currant bread for breakfast and you handled, it was all ants, dead bodies of ants, they couldn’t get them out of the flour so they cooked them.
NH: Oh right.
JBF: And finally we went, the most graphic thing that happened in Rangoon was we were sitting there and the adjutant came through and he just looked at the four of us and he said, ‘The war’s over.’ [long pause] Seventy years late.
[machine pause]
JBF: And I said, ‘Where are we going?’ He said, ‘You’re going to Malaya,’ So, it was a terrible camp. It was a transit camp and we got in these kites and suddenly the kite I was in developed engine trouble and so we locked in to Siam and we spent oh at least three weeks, four weeks in Siam, at the, waiting for replacements or whatever it was you know and then we were flown in and became garrison squadron on Penang island. That was the next RAF station.
BW: So this is obviously -
JBF: This is after the war now.
BW: August. August ’45, September ’45.
JBF: This is ‘45, yeah -
BW: Were you getting news of being demobbed at anytime?
JBF: Oh nothing. What happened was we were, we were supposed to be, it was an army pre-war barracks beautifully built. Nothing, nothing there. The Malayans had pinched everything you know which was what happened to the cockpit covers. They came down with the new aircraft and all the cockpit covers disappeared overnight. So these Chinese detectives appeared out the woodwork you know and all the kids in the surrounding villages had got new clothes which was our cockpits covers [laughs]. And so we were there six months on rest and then we were transported by train along with thirty million cockroaches. The cockroaches are everywhere on the trains and the way to get them out is not to have a light so there’s no lights and you hear this [tapping noise] and the place is covered in cockroaches about so big. Cockroaches. So once they got the petrol mix and the lights they all went back and hung underneath. Fantastic. Even the loo which was a hole in the ground you know, shoulder to shoulder around the hole where you’re supposed to form are cockroaches waiting.
BW: Strange.
JBF: And we went down to Kuala Lumpur and we were in tents and it was, the thing was there was no aeroplanes and then some aeroplanes arrived and then they started educational vocational courses. We thought we’ve got to be on one of these, you know, sort of thing.
BW: This was preparing you for civilian life presumably.
JBF: This was, yeah. I had, I had an interview and I said, ‘Well I left a job and the man promised me I’d have it when I came back,’ So I didn’t need, really need the interview I felt. And there was a football team and I played in that. And things went on and suddenly the demob, the demob numbers started appearing. Well I was number forty and just one day right out of the blue six years, five years later you know they said, ‘Your number’s up.’ Forty. So within a week I was on the train going to Singapore and stayed at that, what is it, Changi is it?
NH: Changi. The airport. Yeah. Well and the Japanese camp of course.
BW: [I was there?] last year.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: And we handed the weapons in to the armoury. All Japanese. Japanese took the weapons.
BW: That must have felt quite strange.
JBF: Well it was ridiculous you know. Well it was ordered but what I’ve forgotten, I’ve just remember was the armistice in Rangoon. The rumour went around that the Japanese were coming for the armistice for Southern Asia. That bit. So they, a Japanese, they got a Japanese bunker and whereas when they captured Singapore they had all the military, the troops lined the Streets and the Japanese commander standing up in a motor car commanding, you know. All the poor squaddies were just stood there you know. We did, they had officers on the runway but everybody, it was like a football crowd so we all crowded around. I tell you what it’s like. General MacArthur on the boat where he accepts the surrender of Japan. It was like that, like a football. Well I sidled around the side and they had a desk a bit bigger than this and two of our generals were standing there and the aircraft, they were like Dakotas only much smaller pulled up and into this compound thing and this general said, ‘Do we salute?’ He said, ‘We don’t f’ing well salute them.’ So they pulled the, and there was the Japanese generals, the Japanese in full evening dress. They climbed out, marched over to the table and they just nodded and pointed to the trucks and they were put in trucks for Rangoon for the surrender and that was the surrender in Rangoon. It was just like a football match.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: There was no ceremony at all. It just -
BW: And that was it.
JBF: As it was, you know.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: Then finally the final news was the boats arrived so of course we couldn’t wait so that’s the only time I saw Raffles Hotel was in the truck going past to the troop ship.
BW: I was there myself in November.
JBF: And came home to Liverpool.
NH: What? You docked in Liverpool.
JBF: Docked in Liverpool.
NH: Marvellous. Yeah.
JBF: Then we got on the train and went to [Worley?].
NH: Back to the beginning.
JBF: Just outside Blackpool and were demobbed from there and so we had the kitbag with your uniform in and bits and pieces. You were in your RAF and your, the bag was your civilian, you know. They kitted me out with a suit, a shirt, a tie, socks, underpants, vest and shoes and it came in a series of boxes it seemed to me, just holding. We were all the same, holding up these boxes and then they just said, ‘Ok, your train’s arrived,’ and we got on the train to Liverpool and I caught the tram home.
NH: They found shoes to fit you did they?
JBF: Yeah. Got, got to Gordon Drive. Nobody’s in. Nobody in the house so [Winn Roth?] called over, ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘Come in for a cup of tea.’ So I sat in there until my sister came back from work and when I got in the house was full of mice because nobody had lived in it you see and all the scratches were on the sideboard and the various places. The meat safe thing. So I started and I caught mice every night for seven days and the technique was we, we, we had a ewbank cleaner and we chased them out of the dining room and I realised they all went in this ewbank cleaner. Every time. No change. So I said to my sister, ‘Fill up the sink.’ So she fills the sink up and takes the bowl out. I lift up the ewbank cleaner and depress and of course the doors open and out drop the mice. I killed eight in one night. The final night. So that was the trick. You know you see these pictures where there’s a party and -
NH: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
JBF: All the relatives. I never even got a party. My mother was in America seeing my brother.
BW: Who must have been in a show in America presumably.
JBF: Oh well he was –
NH: He was touring with his -
JBF: At that stage -
BW: Right.
JBF: He was with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and they, Agnes de Mille, you know the, what is she? A sister of de Mille himself you know.
BW: Cecil B.
JBF: You know.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: She was a choreographer and she choreographed Rodeo, was the name of the ballet and my brother was the champion roper in Rodeo and that was, and it was, well it was you know he was famous and it wasn’t in England.
NH: He was famous over there.
BW: Quite a showman.
JBF: Yeah.
NH: Never over here but he was in America, you know. Well known in the ballet world.
JBF: Yes. So basically I think and oh just one nice touch. I hadn’t been paid. Nobody had been paid you know all the way through from India I can’t remember. We got nothing in India.
NH: I suppose you couldn’t do anything with it anyway.
JBF: And these cheques started to appear. I thought, the five years I’ve worked so I didn’t go to work. I didn’t tell them. So the cheque came through and I said to my pal Tom, who was also demobbed, I said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘Let’s go to London. Just to see what it’s like.’ So we get the cheque and off we go to London. He was the same. And it went on ‘til the week before Christmas when the cheques stopped. I said, ‘I’ve got to go to work Tom,’ I said. ‘There’s no more cheques.’ So I started work about the 15th of December that year having had off September, October, November and part of December. I thought well that’s all the leave.
NH: Yeah. That’s it. Well you’d earned it hadn’t you by that stage?
BW: And were you able to go back to the job that you’d been -
JBF: Oh yes I went back.
BW: Left.
JBF: I was the last in ‘cause I was, I was the last out the youngest and I was the last in and they’d taken, I went back to the Banana Rooms but they’d already taken a building in Sir Thomas Street and built and extension to it so we went back to reasonable offices and started to build up the business from that moment and that’s how it was. I finally retired forty seven years from Dixons.
BW: So you stayed at the same firm -
JBF: Yeah.
BW: For forty seven years.
JBF: Yeah. Well what did I know? I was twenty six you know. I had to learn to play tennis and badminton and in fact be normal. It was something I’d never experienced you know actually coming home at night and sitting down to a meal. We thought it was wonderful, Tom and I, you know. Marvellous.
BW: And subsequent to that there have been in recent years a bit more prominence and commemoration given to Bomber Command.
JBF: There has been hasn’t there? Yes.
BW: How do you feel about that?
JBF: ‘Cause they, well you’ve only got to read those books to know the price paid by the people who actually did it. When they say there’s fifty five, fifty seven thousand aircrew killed in those books that I’ve got.
NH: They’re on the chair there.
JBF: They’re talking about. There they are. Seven or eight Lancasters disappearing in the night. That was fifty six blokes. And it was every night. It wasn’t just [next?] and then there’s a month’s delay. I mean the Mosquitos, we lost about three. One received a direct hit of an anti-aircraft shell and blew up and the others were just shot down. But the rest of them, I mean, our kite did a hundred and eleven ops –
NH: Yeah good.
BW: Not with the same crew though presumably -
JBF: Oh no we had all kinds of crews.
BW: Just thinking back to your time in the Far East did you get to know the pilots on the squadron, 28 squadron at all well?
JBF: Oh yes very much so. They were very, one pilot wouldn’t let you touch his aircraft. He used to, Eddie Hunter was a Canadian. He said, it was my turn to DI his kite he said, ‘Look Lofty,’ he says, ‘I know about aircraft.’ he says, ‘I’ll do the necessary,’ and he filled up the, I filled up the juice and he checked the engine and did the oil and the coolant and that and he got shot down that day. What happened was he, from his, they used to go in twos you know. The second man, the report was, Eddie went down strafing the Japanese and as he was coming up he hit a tree, just caught the tree coming up and he crashed and killed him.
BW: Just clarify a couple of expressions if you don’t mind. DI what does that stand for?
JBF: Daily inspection.
BW: Daily inspection.
JBF: Each aircraft has a daily inspection and it was very important because it’s always after a raid, you know or a flying test or whatever and you have to sign the form 700 to say it’s, your bit’s ok.
BW: And trolley acc. That’s a trolley accumulator is that right?
JBF: Accumulator. There’s twenty four volt is it?
NH: Yeah. It’s like a –
BW: Yeah.
JBF: And they’re on two wheels.
NH: Generator thing isn’t it that they charge the engine with instead of having a starter motor.
JBF: Plug it into the aeroplane.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: You’ve primed with the pump, there’s a little hatch and you open that. Prime and screw up and then press the trolley acc. It starts. And the Merlin 20 was like that all the time.
BW: How did you rate the Spit 9s that you worked on?
JBF: Sorry?
BW: How did you rate the Spitfire 9s that you worked on?
JBF: Well they were very interesting. Not that we knew anything about them but there was nobody to tell you anything. They were just dumped on us you know and we just sort of –
BW: Were they Merlins 66s in the 9 mark 9.
JBF: They were much, they were engines we’d never seen or we knew where the oil was and we knew where the coolant was but the rest of it was just totally different.
BW: Did you feel that they were more reliable then the Mark 20 engines?
JBF: Oh yes. Well it was the, what you might call the essence of all the experience because the Lancasters had, you know, starting with Spitfires, Lancasters, Mosquitos all had Merlins in.
NH: So yeah.
JBF: I mean they were all, the Merlins underpinned the whole shooting match you know.
NH: Right. Yeah.
BW: And you still found the 66s to be pretty reliable.
JBF: Oh yes. Yeah.
BW: And they had a supercharger on them.
JBF: Yeah.
BW: Didn’t they?
JBF: That’s right yeah.
BW: Did you know much about those or work on those?
JBF: Oh no. They were just stood there you know. One thing I haven’t mention was watching a B17 fly into the ground if that’s of any interest. Is it? At Little Staughton which was very close to a lot of American bases I was DI’ing this kite and I looked up and I saw this aircraft low flying. I thought God strewth and they did a lot of low flying and it kept on flying and then it dipped and I just watched it coming towards me and it dipped into the ground and suddenly everything started to fly off it and it finished about eighty yards from me. It finally disintegrated and blew up and I’m mesmerised. You can’t, I don’t know what it is, you can’t run away and then I heard a voice, ‘Lofty’ he said, ‘Come here,’ he said, ‘Get under this,’ and so we hid under a Mosquito with six hundred and forty gallons of petrol [laughs] and we’re under the engine, you know, because it was the most protection but what I remember of the, of that was one of the cylinders complete, when the explosion of the engine it blew the cylinders out and you recognise it mid-air, ‘Oh yes there’s the’, and it just came out and dropped just short of where the Mosquito we were under you know.
BW: And so you watched this bomber coming towards you -
JBF: Yeah just watched it and -
BW: Disintegrate as it hit the ground.
JBF: Into the ground. Nothing. Not one of those.
BW: Yeah not going straight in. Going in at a sharp angle.
JBF: There was nobody in it. It was on glide, you know. It was on pilot. The Yanks came around, ‘Oh is this where it fell?’ You know.
NH: Autopilot.
JBF: All our aircraft were full of holes but -.
BW: So they must presumably have baled out.
JBF: They’d baled out. Yeah.
BW: And left it to fly on.
JBF: Well I wouldn’t say it was common baling out but we could look in, we watched the Liberator on fire in the air and suddenly five or six of the crew jumped out in parachutes and you know it was all part of the course if you know what I mean. It wasn’t, and the flying bomb was the same, we were walking into, at Staughton walking into the cookhouse, 4 o’clock in the morning. We’d done the op. It was all buttoned up and ready and there was an erk leaning on the side of the door smoking a cigarette. He said, ‘Do you want to see a flying bomb?’ So we said, ‘Ok,’ you know so he said, ‘Just turn around and watch that,’ and there was a light and a putt putt putt putt putt putt putt and then suddenly it stopped. The only flying bomb I saw was just that one.
BW: So thinking back to your experience of Bomber Command and looking back at it how do you feel the service has been commemorated? Is it, it is getting better or -
JBF: I was disappointed to start with because I did hear that somehow or other Bomber Command was pegged out, you know. Pushed around the back because it wasn’t right bombing Germans you know. Bombing civilians and all that. And I was delighted to see that they’d got this commemoration up to the air crew in London and of course Eric Brown, my cousin, he was killed and my friend Eric [McKim?], he was killed. Both aircrew. Both on these.
NH: Missions.
BW: And so from the Green Park Memorial to the Centre that’s going to be at Canwick Hill did you get to the unveiling of the Memorial -
JBF: Oh no.
BW: Last year.
JBF: I’ve never been in any kind of Association like, you know, old comrades and all that. I’ve been to two or three reunions but you were only friends in that, once you’ve, you were all looking at each other. Perfect strangers.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: You know, solicitors were looking at accountants and accountants were looking at clerks and clerks were looking at petrol attendants or –
NH: Yeah.
JBF: Garages.
NH: Had nothing in common by then did you?
JBF: I remember two.
NH: Who was the guy that you, there was the fella with a ‘tache wasn’t there that sort of set himself up as a, as a leading light in that thing and you said he was, you knew him anyway, there was a guy that sort of ran it or tried to get -
JBF: Oh yes. Yeah. Well -
NH: That organised the reunions.
JBF: Organised the reunions. Yeah, well.
NH: Who was that fella?
JBF: To be honest except for Handley and Dom and Clive and Bill Gill, that was our little gang, and we all went to the reunions, we went to two reunions but there was nothing in common.
BW: Right.
JBF: We had nothing in common. Pat Handley was a big lorry driver on the motorways. Dom worked in a garage. I don’t know what Clive did. And I went back to office work.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: And the friendship was just at the time you know. In Meiktila for instance Handley had the brilliant idea. Japanese built the bunkers for their aircraft and of course there’s a trench around where they got the air to make the bunker so Handley has this brilliant idea he won’t bother with pegs and that he’ll just put the tent over one of these bunkers which is great except for the monsoon started. He’s standing in two foot of water and instead of rushing to help him we all died laughing, you know.
NH: Yeah.
BW: And so you’ve yet to see the memorial spire to Bomber Command crew at Canwick Hill at Lincoln where -
JBF: Is it really?
BW: So you’ve yet to go and see that.
JBF: Do I?
NH: Well he can’t get around much these days.
BW: Yeah.
NH: That’s the problem.
BW: Yeah.
NH: He’s not very mobile.
BW: Yeah.
NH: Are you? So you -
JBF: Oh no. I’m housebound you know.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: I can’t go out.
NH: Yeah.
BW: Yeah.
NH: He gets to his art.
BW: That’s a shame.
NH: He painted all these.
BW: These pictures on the wall.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: There’s, there’s -
BW: [?]
JBF: The one that’s see the latest underneath that see that one.
BW: Yeah.
JBF: Of the skyscrapers, right at the bottom, beside the little girl.
BW: Yes. This one.
JBF: That’s, Tim’s got that one. That was the last one I painted.
NH: So that’s, that’s as far as he gets these days.
JBF: You know they’re sort of this size.
BW: They’re wonderful paintings.
NH: Yeah.
BW: Ok.
NH: They’re his.
BW: Ok. I think that is all the questions that I have for you Jack unless there is anything else that you want to add.
NH: The only other thing is you mentioned my mum. Didn’t you used to meet up? She was at Bletchley and you used to meet up.
JBF: She was at Bletchley Park and I was at Little Staughton and we arranged to meet and I used to go to Bedford I think it was, catch the train and we’d meet. She’d bring a WAAF friend and invariably we went to the pictures and I never ever saw the film. I fell asleep immediately because I’d come off duty to get there so I’d got myself washed and dressed and in my best blue and out and we used to go to the pictures and I never saw a film because I just fell asleep.
NH: Did you ever know what she was doing at Bletchley? I mean.
JBF: No. I only knew what she was doing about 1960.
NH: You knew she was there though.
JBF: Yeah.
NH: Yeah.
JBF: It was very very -
NH: Oh absolutely.
JBF: Yeah.
NH: That’s right.
JBF: It was like the Oboe. The start was very, you know.
BW: And they were told not to speak about it and many of them didn’t for you know sixty years -
JBF: Well 1960.
BW: Let alone thirty.
JBF: The first time I even mentioned the word you know. I don’t even like to say it now to be honest.
BW: Different times.
NH: Absolutely.
BW: Right. Ok. I think that is everything for the interview so on behalf of the Bomber Command Centre thank you very much your time Jack. It’s been a pleasure.
JBF: Here’s the, do you want to have a look at some of the pictures?
BW: I’ll have a look at some of the -
JBF: Let’s see what’s in here.
BW: Items.
NH: So what is this centre?
BW: It’s going to be a digital archive for the audio and any documents that -
NH: Yeah.
BW: People hand over.
JBF: That’s the kind of terrain in Burma.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jack Brown Franklin
Creator
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Brian Wright
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
2016-03-31
Format
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01:51:22 Audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFranklinJB160331
PFranklinJB1616
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Description
An account of the resource
Jack Brown Franklin grew up in Liverpool and worked in a paper merchants. He discusses Liverpool being bombed and his service in the Local Defence Volunteers. He joined the Air Force in 1941 and trained as an engine mechanic. He served with 109 Squadron, Pathfinders before being posted to 28 Squadron in Burma.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Burma
Great Britain
Burma--Meiktila
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Liverpool
England--Norfolk
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
109 Squadron
bombing
civil defence
crash
demobilisation
fitter engine
flight mechanic
ground crew
ground personnel
home front
Home Guard
Hurricane
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
Oboe
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Marham
RAF Wyton
Spitfire
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/510/8412/PDunnG1501.2.BMP
505c4b2651ad5389c9a6458077b498ac
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/510/8412/ADunnG150405.1.mp3
d86cd9b1133884331255b8b76f63465f
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
Dunn, George
George Charles Dunn
G C Dunn
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dunn, GC
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Two oral history interviews with George Dunn DFC (1922 1333537, 149315 Royal Air Force), a photograph a document and two log books. He flew operations as a pilot with 10, 76, and 608 Squadrons then transferred to 1409 Meteorological Flight.
There is a sub collection of his photographs from Egypt.
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
2017-03-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Andrew Panton, the interviewee is George Dunn, Mr Dunn was a RAF Pilot who flew various types of aircraft during the Second World War, the interview is taking place at Princess Marina House in Rustington West Sussex, on the 5th April 2015.
GD: My name is George Dunn, I was seventeen years of age when the war broke out and I was born at Whitstable on the North Kent coast, so I saw quite a lot of the Battle of Britain and being facing the Thames Estuary all the hoards of German bombers that were coming in to bomb London, when the London Blitz started, at, I joined the local defence volunteers, and then that became the Home Guard, and when I reached the age of eighteen I volunteered for aircrew. I was interviewed up at Chatham and I originally registered for wireless operator/air gunner, but they said to me would I consider pilot training, which I agreed, and after a written exam and a selection board, I was advised that I could take up pilot training. First aircraft I flew was a Tiger Moth because I did all my training in Canada, the first place was at Saskatchewan, a little place called Caron west of Moose Jaw and from there I went on to A V Roe Anson’s at a place called Weyburn again in Saskatchewan. When I came back to the UK in September 1942 I was then posted to Chipping Norton which was a satellite of Little Risington on airspeed Oxford’s this was to acclimatise us to the flying conditions in this country, we had been used to flying with full town lights and city lights, but this was of course flying in blackout conditions. From there I was posted to Lossiemouth which was number 20 OTU, and formed my crew, and we did my OTU on Wellington’s.
AP: So can you say a little bit about the Wellington Bomber, how you found it to fly and what you did [inaudible word]
GD: Well the Wellington Bomber I found was a nice aircraft it wasn’t difficult to fly and we had quite an easy course on it.
AP: What about op’s with the Wellington? Can you remember any?
GD: No I didn’t do any operations on Wellington’s
AP: So from the Wellington, where did you go next?
GD: From Wellington’s I was sent to Heavy Conversion Unit which was at Rufforth just outside York, on Halifax aircraft.
AP: And was that your first op aircraft?
GD: No, surprisingly enough, normally if you went to a Heavy Conversion Unit, you had, you flew a certain number of hours and then you were seconded to a squadron where you had to do two operations with an experienced crew, but in my case I was sent to number 10 squadron at Melbourne to do my two second dickey trips as they were called and believe it or not I had not set foot in a Halifax aircraft until that first raid. First raid was Essen, which was rather a heavy place to go to, to start with but we got through that alright and the following night I did my second, second dickey trip to Kiel, so I got two fairly good targets under my belt to start with.
AP: And could you talk a bit about the experiences you had on those trips, I mean did you engage fighters, flak, ack ack searchlights?
GD: What when I was on my own crew?
AP: yes.
GD: Yes, our first trip as a crew was to Dortmund, and right throughout our tour we were fairly lucky we were never attacked by a fighter but we were coned at one stage.
AP: So can you talk about what that means?
GD: Yes, coning is when you initially get trapped by a blue searchlight, a radar searchlight and once that’s on to you the white searchlights form a cone so you could be, you might call it sitting like a fairy on a Christmas Tree, and the only suitable manoeuvre to get out of a coning, is by a corkscrew method, if you can do that then you’re ok, but on this occasion we managed to get away from the cone.
AP: And
GD: Yes if you are coned the thing is, is to keep your eyes on your instruments, don’t look outside because you will get blinded by the light. On the 17th, 18th August 1943 I was based at Holme on Spalding Moor south east of York and on this particular afternoon the first thing we noticed when we got to the briefing room were there were extra service police on the door which we thought was rather unusual, and when we got into the briefing room and they drew the curtains across we saw this red ribbon going all the way up to Denmark up the North sea, across Denmark, missing the North German coast because of the heavy flak and then we saw this tiny little place on the Baltic coast, and we thought what, what’s going on there, what’s this all about, never heard of it. When we were briefed we were only told that it was a secret research station connected with radar, at no time were we given any indication of the real work that was going on there. The chilling remark that was made at the end of the briefing was that the target was so important that it should be destroyed that night, otherwise we were told quite firmly that we would go back the following night, the night after that until it was destroyed, and you can imagine the feeling we had knowing what reception we would get if we had to go back on the night after. After the briefing of course we went back to our usual pre-op dinner or meal, bacon and eggs usually, and eventually to the parachute room picked our parachutes up, and into the crew room, dispose of all our wallets and anything that might identify us, and took off, reached our climbing height, and proceeded through the Yorkshire coast up towards Denmark. Included in the main force was a low number of Mosquito’s which were used as a spoof raid on Berlin, this was to make sure that the German authorities were thinking that the main force was going to Berlin, and of course as we got nearer the main force veered off to Peenemunde, and the Mosquito’s carried on to Berlin. This caused quite a lot of consternation amongst the German aircrew controllers because they weren’t sure where the main force were, and when the German night fighters were alerted they had no idea what was going on, the German ground controllers were in a bit of a state and one German pilot realising what was going on proceeded to Peenemunde without being told, so of course by the time the German fighters had got there the raid was virtually half over. We were fortunate we did our run in from the Island of Roden which was about a five minute run in from the North, and we went in on the first wave, the target was well marked we went in at about seven thousand feet it was a brilliant moonlight night and my bomb aimer got quite excited because this was the first time that he had actually been able to identify the target because normally we were bombing from eighteen or nineteen thousand feet, so this was quite an occasion, and I can remember telling him don’t get too excited just concentrate on what you are doing. So we moved in no trouble at all the flak was very very light we were able to, despite the pathfinder markers we were able to identify our aiming point visually, dropped our bombs and came out without any problem. We were very lucky that we were in the first wave because we were able to bomb and get away from the target before the fighters arrived, in the original plan, four group which I was a member of, was scheduled to go in on the last wave, but because they were frightened of smoke from the ground generators obscuring our aiming point we were reverted to the first wave which was very fortunate but not so fortunate for those who were transferred back from the first wave to the last. There were three aiming points on Peenemunde itself and our aiming point was the living quarters of the scientists and the technicians, and one wag on our squadron said there would be a prize given to the first aircraft back with a scientists spectacles hanging from its undercarriage. Once you begin your final run in you are really under the control of the bomb aimer because he, he’s the one that can only see the actual line of path to the target so he will be giving you instructions, such as, right, left left, right right, steady, until you actually came to the point where he’d say bombs gone. We were only told that it was a, as I said before, a secret RADAR station, and it was some time afterwards before that it was revealed that it was for rocket research. So, of course the best thing was that the day after, it was only after a Spitfire reconnaissance which evaluated the amount of damage that we knew with some relief that we were not going to have to go back that night. The aftermath of course was what was the overall result and it was generally recognised that the rocket programme was put back by at least two months, and in his book Crusade to Europe, General Eisenhower said that the second front would have been seriously compromised had the Peenemunde raid not taken place when it did. It is possible that the raid on Peenemunde could have taken place a lot earlier, because in May 1940 a note was pushed through the door of the British Naval attaché in Oslo, from the writer claiming to have very important information connected with German activities, and if the intelligence people were interested would they put a coded letter or word in the broadcasts that were made usually to the resistance, this was done and another letter was pushed through the door and the sort of information the writer indicated that they had, was to the intelligence people so ludicrous that they thought it must be a hoax, and it was ignored, and it was many many, well this was 1940, it was some years later when snippets of information came through and two German Generals who were in a , they were prisoners of war, were in a bugged room and amongst the things that they discussed was that they couldn’t understand why Peenemunde had never been bombed, this of course brought it to the notice of the authorities and from then on every endeavour was made to secure other bits and pieces of information, to ascertain whether this was true. The final answer to the problem I think was when a WRAF intelligence officer very keenly spotted a launching ramp on one of the reconnaissance photographs, and this really was the, was the result of good reconnaissance, and it really gave the answer that there really was something going on at Peenemunde, and from then on of course a committee was formed Mr Churchill appointed Duncan Sands to chair this committee and eventually after a few meetings it was then that they decided that this would, Peenemunde would have to be bombed. Of course one of the things was how were they going to do it, Air Vice Marshal Cochrane of five group who’s group had been used to some time and distance bombing wanted to go in with about, I think about 150 Lancaster’s, it was also discussed that a small force of Mosquito’s would go in, but Sir Arthur Harris the chief of Bomber Command, he felt that if a raid was going to take place it would have to be successful one hundred percent at the first go, and he made the decision that it was going to be a maximum effort, so all groups of the Bomber Command were going to take part. Consequently almost six hundred aircraft were sent, probably the decision was right because the place was destroyed, virtually destroyed on the first raid. Four days after the raid on Peenemunde, the place was visited by Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and Albert Speer the armaments manager and they, after a survey Hitler himself decided that the place would not continue to operate, at least on the scale that it had done, and it was then that the whole project was moved to various places particularly the Harz Mountains. Of course the success of the raid was not achieved without some loss and unfortunately the total aircraft loss was forty and two hundred and twenty aircrew were killed, mostly occurred in the last two waves of the, of the raid so as I said before we were very very lucky that we had been moved from the last wave to the first wave, because we were virtually in and out without any problem. Of course the success in some ways of flying on operations is the team work, the crew have got to work together and I was very fortunate I had a very good crew, we originally formed up at OTU at Lossiemouth, it was a question of one person getting to know another. I well remember my bomb aimer coming up to me and saying “have you crewed up yet?” and I said “no” “how about crewing up with me” “yeah sure do you know any navigators?” “Yes I know a navigator” and that’s how it went on, so we finished up with five, and later on we acquired a Mid-upper gunner and a Flight Engineer who was actually allocated to us. We were lucky in this respect because my Flight Engineer’s Wife and Mother ran a pub just outside Horsforth in Leeds so on our nights off all seven of us used to pile into a Morris Eight, and go off to a night out and as you can imagine the customers made a great fuss of us, and we were never short of free drinks. [laughter] I can well remember the only time when my navigator did suffer from, I don’t know what it was, but he suddenly came up on the intercom and said “ Skipper were about ten miles off course” and my reply was “well look we can’t be, I’ve been steering this course that you gave me without any deviation, so get your finger out and get us back on course, otherwise I’ll get the bomb aimer to take over the navigation” this really put the wind up him and he, he got us back on course, don’t ask me why but whether he’d made a mistake with his GEE box fixing it turned out ok at the end. Of course most of our navigation was dead reckoning but the saviour that we had, but it was only I think to about five degrees east that the GEE box from where we could get a fix on our position enabled us to keep to a reasonable course. Of course whilst the aircrew got most of the glory, it was the auxiliary staff that really supported us people like the parachute packers, the ground crew, as far as we were concerned we had an excellent ground crew on our aircraft, everything was tickety boo, the windscreen was all polished they went completely out of their way to make sure that the aircraft we were flying was in one hundred percent condition, and the only way we could reward them was taking them down to the pub on the occasional evening and buying them a few beers, it was our way of saying thank you to them. I well remember that on our last night our very last raid which was a castle, outside the control tower there was a whole host of personnel waving to us a lot of air cadets and when we got to the runway for our final take off the crowd round the caravan way, the crowd outside the caravan the controller which gave you a green light when it was ready for you to take off, and then finally opening the throttles for what you knew was going to be your final operation, and wondering how it was going to go, but of course at that time you were really concentrating on getting the aircraft safely off the ground. I well remember, I don’t know which raid it was but probably my fault we had not secured the front escape hatch properly, and on take off it blew open, my oxygen mask, tube rather was ripped off and I had to borrow the mid-upper gunners oxygen tube, he had rather an uncomfortable flight trying to breathe his oxygen having given up his tube to me, but we did get over it, and we did manage to close the escape hatch with some difficulty, I must take full responsibility for that error. Yes on that final flight when you got the green light knowing that this was going to be your final operation, you had that feeling of great support from those people that were standing there, they knew that it was your final op, and they were willing you to go on and come back safely and that was, that was really comforting, but of course you were more or less concentrating on the take off at that time because that was a very dangerous time for a fully laden, fully fuelled, fully bombed aircraft, until what you reach was known as safety speed, where it was, you were then able to climb to your normal altitude.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with George Dunn
Creator
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Andrew Panton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-04-05
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Sound
Identifier
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ADunnG150405, PDunnG1501
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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
Civilian
Format
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00:25:12 audio recording
Description
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George was born at Whitstable and was 17 when war was declared. He joined the local Defence Volunteers which became the Home Guard. When he reached 18 he volunteered for air crew. He was interviewed at Chatham and sat an exam and selection board to train as a pilot. All of his training was in Canada and his first aircraft was a Tiger Moth. When he returned to England, he was posted to RAF Chipping Norton on Oxfords flying in black-out conditions. From there he was posted to RAF Lossiemouth, operational training unit on Wellingtons. He was then sent to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Rufforth on Halifaxes. George was posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He flew operations to Essen, Kiel and Dortmund. On 17/18 August 1943, while based at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor, he took part on the bombing operation to Peenemünde rocket research station.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Canada
Germany
England--Chatham (Kent)
England--Kent
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Essen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1943-08-17
1943-08-18
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
10 Squadron
20 OTU
aircrew
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
civil defence
crewing up
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
military ethos
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Chipping Norton
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Melbourne
RAF Rufforth
searchlight
Tiger Moth
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/486/8370/ABurdinJR170206.1.mp3
110add58ae6a4b4edfbbb17f5230f227
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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Burdin, James
James Roy Burdin
J R Burdin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Burdin, JR
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with James Roy Burdin (b. 1920, 1109124 Royal Air Force) and his service and release book. He worked as a radar technician.
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
2017-02-06
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 today is Monday the 6th of February 2017 and I’m in Longton near Preston with James Roy Burdin and we’re going to talk about his work in the RAF in the war largely to do with radar. What is your earliest recollection of life Roy?
JRB: Living on our small holding in Longton and helping my dad from a very early age with his, with his work on the small holding.
[pause]
CB: And where did you go to school?
JRB: I started school at five I think I would be. I’d be five when I went to Longton, Longton Primary School. That’s not a very satisfactory [question?] is it? You know, the local village school. Longton Primary School and I was there until I was, I went in for the scholarship examination as we called it then. It was before the eleven plus day and it was virtually the entry to grammar school. Only the ones that the teachers at school thought had a chance were put in for the exam because we had to go to Preston to sit the examination and I passed and was awarded a place at Hutton Grammar School and I studied there for the school, for the, what did they call it in those days? It wasn’t the GCE was it? The equivalent of today’s GCE anyway and I I passed that and got my certificate for that but there was no question in those days, very few people went on to further education after that. For one thing I knew that there wasn’t money in the family to support me to go on to university or anything of that sort even if I’d been eligible for it so I I left school with that qualification and it was at the time of the big Depression in the ‘30s and jobs were very difficult to get but eventually I went to work for a small business in Preston. Radio repair and sales. Just a one man business [at that point?] but that didn’t last very long because the main trouble was that it was I had to use a bus to get into Preston. Although I’d only been with this situation for a short time the proprietor usually had calls to make on his way down to work from his home in Longridge and I was left to open up the shop although very inexperienced at the time and very often he’d be out either delivering or collecting radio sets for repair until quite late at night and the shop hours were very long anyway so my dad thought that I was, shall we say, I don’t know how to put it really. Anyway, my dad thought that I would be better off coming and helping on the, on the small holding so I went to the agricultural, or horticultural rather, training station at Hutton and took their course which was only a short course and I continued working on the holding. We had greenhouses and market garden mostly and orchards and it was quite a pleasant life but not exactly a pot of gold, you know but I was doing that until, until the war started and eventually of course as I said before, I think, I joined, I volunteered for the RAF.
CB: Why did you choose the RAF rather than one of the other forces?
JRB: Well, some of my ex schoolmates discussed it all and we thought that the RAF would be a good unit to, to get into. We thought the conditions were better for one thing and you wouldn’t get involved in the dreadful trench warfare of the previous, previous war which everybody expected might recur again and so it was actually at the time of Dunkirk that I realised, I seemed to have rather a blank in a way about the international situations and that sort of thing and I wasn’t very, very quick to realise the danger that Germany was presenting to the, to the world and when the near disaster occurred at Dunkirk and the Germans were more or less on our frontier I decided it was time to, to join up so that’s when I volunteered for the RAF. When I first went for my interviews for the RAF they said, ‘Well there will be a, a gap. We won’t take you right away. We’ll call you at a bit later date.’ So in the meantime the, what became known as the Home Guard but started off as the Local Defence Volunteers was formed and I joined the local group and we did a bit of rifle practice and general infantry training really and we had a patrol on Longton Marshes. We did a night patrol down there and from there we could see the, the German bombing of Liverpool but of course we were a little country district so we didn’t attract any of the, of the bombs and I I was with that until the RAF called me up and then -
CB: When did they do that?
JRB: I was posted to Blackpool and billeted in one of the boarding houses there. We, we were kitted out and given basic training, foot drill and all that sort of thing on the promenades at Blackpool and the Winter Gardens became a Morse school. It was all fitted out with tables with Morse keys and that was where a lot of the air crew in the RAF got their Morse training. As I mentioned to you my speed didn’t build up satisfactorily on Morse. I could, I could learn the code easy enough but I couldn’t get, I wasn’t confident enough to get any speed up and so they said, well there’s a new branch opening up and since you’ve had experience of radio repair work and actually radio had always been my hobby right from school days so they said, I think they said, ‘Do you know what a supersonic hetrodyne is?’ So I had to tell them that which a lot of people didn’t know and that got me on to the, it was, it was highly secret at the time, nobody would mention the word RDF which was our original name for the, what became known as Radar. It wasn’t until the Americans came in that they started calling it Radar but to us it was RDF which was Radio Detection Finding. So there was some delay in starting the course that I was destined to go on and in the meantime I was sent over to a place called Bircham Newton which was a Coastal Command station on the Norfolk coast and I spent some months there waiting for my course to be organised and there I was just doing ordinary general duties. You know just, it was a sort of a standby position but I saw quite a bit of the, the Coastal Command life and I was there when the, what do you call it? I’m not very good at this I’m afraid. I was there when the Fleet Air Arm, I think they were Gladiators. Would they be Gladiators?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Or would they be -?
CB: Yeah. No. They’d be Swordfish.
JRB: Swordfish probably. The old, the old biplane.
CB: Swordfish.
JRB: I was there when they dropped in at our station to refuel and have a break and a meal before taking off to bomb the German battleships.
CB: Oh Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
JRB: Yeah. And of course most of them were lost anyway on that raid. So I was there at that time. And then I was sent to London to join a course at Battersea Polytechnic on general radio principles and that type of thing and at the time we were billeted in premises that the RAF had taken over next door to the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square so we had the whole place taken over and converted into RAF billets really. We were taken each day by coach to Battersea to do the course at what later became London University or part of London University. The end of that course I was posted to Yatesbury on Salisbury Plain and that was the first glimpse we got of radar equipment or RDF equipment. They had obviously, they’d got the school all set up there and they’d got the equipment, the transmitters, receivers and ancillary equipment for a radar station and we studied there for several months and on, on passing out there it was practically Christmas time. This would be in ‘41 wouldn’t it?
CB: Ahum.
JRB: So we were all posted to our various units and my friend and I got postings to St Bride’s in the Isle of Man. So we duly arrived at Liverpool expecting to get a sailing across to the Isle of Man but they said, ‘Oh, no more boats sailing until after Christmas. You’d better have Christmas leave.’ So we weren’t displeased about that and went off home. He to Manchester where his home was and I to Longton. And on reporting back again, beginning of January they said, ‘You’re not going to the Isle of Man anymore. You’re going down to a place called Ruislip near London.’ So we went down to Ruislip and reported there to find that it was a small unit that was building up convoys into radar stations. The, the equipment, the transmitters and receivers and other equipment were made by commercial firms obviously such as Metro Vickers, they made transmitters and Cossors and other people made receivers and so on but I think the reason they were scattered about in that way was because they didn’t want the people to know what it all, put together, what it all became when it was assembled together. Anyway, we, that was our job. To, to set up mobile radars ready for going overseas mostly. I seemed to gravitate to, to being on the transmitters which were a very massive piece of equipment made by Metro Vickers of Manchester and they were about two tonnes a piece. Well we had to manhandle those into, into vans which were on the old Crossley vehicles of which the RAF had a lot. Big hefty thumping old, old type vehicles and they, they had bodies specially made at Park Royal body builders and so on at, at London. So we had to receive these by road from the manufacturers and manhandle them with crowbars and and whatever equipment we needed to get them in to place in these vehicles. Then we had to tune them up to the required frequency and check their output and all the functions and alongside us the receivers were being treated in a similar manner. And a convoy would consist of a transmitter vehicle, receiver vehicle, a trailer for the antennae and the wooden towers which they used for the transmitters, for the signal for the aerials for the transmitters so altogether there would be oh and there would be a diesel generator on a, on a separate trailer and all that together would form a radar station and after, after us doing all the tests and cabling all the connections and everything they would be sent off to wherever the army or the RAF wanted them. So I worked on that for quite a while. Do you want me to carry on in this –?
CB: Please do.
JRB: Yes.
CB: What was the crew, the number of people who would be on this crew for the convoy? How many people?
JRB: We never saw the full, we never saw it go out as a full unit. I don’t know how -
CB: Oh so you -
JRB: There would probably be, well you see with radar it would have to work pretty well twenty four hours a day so they’d have enough people to, to form crews to cover the twenty four hours and -
CB: So these were, you were able to move them around but what, what were they used for? Was it for training other people or were they used inland because the chain radar didn’t read inland?
JRB: Oh this, no this was, the chain radar was already in place.
CB: Yes.
JRB: Now the chain radar had heavier equipment still and the transmitters for that were pretty well built on sight, you know. They weren’t moveable really but that was operating because there had already been the Battle of Britain and the chain stations were very active during that time.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: But these were mobile convoys which would go overseas and wherever the theatre of war needed them they’d, they’d go but that didn’t, that didn’t tie up directly with the chain stations because as I say they were a very, a fixed, absolutely fixed installation.
CB: Yeah. And only -
JRB: They used, they used three hundred and sixty foot transmitter towers, steel towers and they used two hundred and forty foot receiver towers. You know, the chain system had fixed antennae which, looking back on it, it seems quite a primitive type of equipment to us but in its day it was the front of technology and we all thought we were very big stuff to be associated with it. But the purpose of the chain was to cover mostly the south and east coast although there were stations further, further afield along the coast. Every so many miles you would have a chain station and they all had to work together.
CB: So those were large and static. You’re using mobile but I thought, what I want -
JRB: These were, these were very static stations.
CB: Yes.
JRB: And of course the chain with these aerials and the frequency they worked on only looked one way.
CB: Yeah. Outwards.
JRB: The transmitter aerials or antennae were a fairly widespread beam. Not the, not the highly directed beam that we associated with higher frequency stations but the, the frequency they were working on was what we would consider very low today but obviously aerials of that sort couldn’t be swivelled around on a gantry. They had to be fixed. The receiver aerials likewise on separate towers were what I refer to as cross dipoles. That means to say that one aerial is north south and the other is east west and by using an instrument known as a Goniometer the operator on the receiver could swivel this knob that was a Goniometer which was graduated in degrees of the compass and could differentiate the direction from which the echo was coming. The whole system of radar of course as you are probably well aware is that you transmit a pulse and you measure the time it takes for that pulse to get back reflected from an aircraft or whatever, it might be a flock of seagulls and when you measure that, that time interval of the return trace you know since electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light you know what the distance is so that’s how we were able to forecast the approach of bombers and the operators were largely recruited from the WAAFs and they became very adept at, at this work. From experience they could tell pretty well how many aircraft were involved. If it was a raid with say fifty aircraft in it they would be able to tell the controllers pretty well the size of the numbers involved in the raid which was very useful of course. So that was operational all during the Battle of Britain time and continued on right through the war actually but other forms of radar came along later on. Higher frequencies as you know with the, with the rotatable antennae. The first one I knew of that type was what we called CHL. That was Chain Low. CHL, Chain Low, because the original chain stations didn’t see the aircraft if it was quite low down so they wanted this other. Now that was on a higher frequency and it could detect aircraft at lower levels and also it used what we call a PPI which was a Planned Position Indicator tube which was a round tube. The original chain station drew a straight trace across the Cathode Ray tube and aircraft caused a downward deflection of that trace so it was like a V would form on the trace. That meant it was picking up a return signal.
CB: On the screen you mean?
JRB: Yeah, on the, on the -
CB: Cathode Ray tube.
JRB: Cathode Ray tube screen. Now the PPI, the aerials rotated and you had the display more like a map. It looked, as it swept around the, the location of your station was the centre point of the, of the tube and the trace would turn about it actually, axially so that you could get the direction and the distance of the incoming echo which was a big improvement really. I don’t think anybody would think of a radar receiver without that facility nowadays because now that we’re on much higher frequencies that is a generally accepted way of displaying it. So back to 4 MU at Ruislip where we were setting up the, the stations which were working on the same principal as the, as the chain station. They had fixed aerials and had the same drawbacks you might say as the, as the chain as the big chain stations but they were supposedly mobile but they were rather clumsy awkward things to, to consider as mobile. Then a lighter equipment called, what did you call them? [pause]. Anyway, it was a sort of a much more mobile and much more, much lighter equipment than the, than the forerunners and they started to arrive at Ruislip for us to set up and so there was a separate flight formed. B flight, which I was put into and we, we used to fit those into fifteen hundred weight trucks or vans and they had, they had a rotating aerial. They ran off a petrol generator which was adapted from a motorcycle engine I believe and then of course there was a receiver vehicle and the, the aerials were mounted up on the top of the same vehicle.
CB: Was the principal of these the same as chain? You weren’t on to parabolic aerials by then were you?
JRB: We’d got, we’d got a step forward on to higher frequency so that’s why we could use rotating aerials.
CB: Right. Rather than parabolic ones.
JRB: Yeah. And the whole equipment was very much lighter and more mobile than the previous one. Well some of these we were fitting into, into these fifteen hundred weight trucks which were very common in the army and the air force in those days and we also had, to accompany them, a jeep with the radio communications equipment so all told that made up a convoy which again were ready for going out to, well again they were used quite regularly in, in the desert and later on in, on the continent.
CB: So they’re main, mainly going to the desert were they in those days.
JRB: Yes.
CB: To North Africa in other words.
JRB: A lot went to North Africa and of course when we invaded D-Day at they went over to the continent with them and that was what I worked on for most my time there.
CB: So you were loading up these vehicles but who were the crews to look after them? Were you training the crews for the equipment or did they -
JRB: No. The crews -
CB: Come already trained?
JRB: The crews were trained at the radar schools, I expect. At Yatesbury and places like that you see. All we did was just put the convoys together and get them ready for operational use.
CB: And were they air force people who were running these radars or army?
JRB: Mostly air force I would say. Yeah. So that’s what we were doing.
CB: So they went to Algeria after the Torch landings and then on to Tunisia and then they were coming from the other end. That’s what you’re saying are you? In other words coming across the desert from Egypt.
JRB: Yes. So wherever radar was needed to follow up the forces. Of course the, being an RAF scheme it would be directing our aircraft where necessary to attack the enemy.
CB: And detecting the German attacks on the British forces.
JRB: Yes.
CB: Now you mentioned the fact that later version could the CHL gave you, gave the lower altitude detection. Was that only on the Gee, on the CH chain or was it on your mobile ones as well?
JRB: No. On the, on the mobiles as well. That was -
[pause]
JRB: Various other equipments came along and they more or less all passed through our hands at Ruislip. I don’t know. I think we’ll have a break.
CB: Ok. We’ll have a break. Thank you.
[recording paused]
JRB: I don’t think I’m doing, completely ready to switch on.
CB: So in those days -
JRB: [When it left us?]
CB: In those days everything was done by using huge valves, well valves anyway, but big, how big were the valves that would be used in your mobile radars?
JRB: In the mobile, in the lighter one they were very much smaller. I should say about six inches tall. Something like that. Probably a bit less than that. More like four inches.
CB: Each valve.
JRB: But -
CB: Was the different, was there a difference in valve size between the transmitting part of the radar and the receiver?
JRB: Oh definitely.
CB: So how big were the transmitter ones?
JRB: Well the transmitter ones I’m talking about really.
CB: Oh right.
JRB: Because I had more to do with the transmitters than the receivers. For some reason I always seemed to be picked to be a transmitter man.
CB: Right.
JRB: And I quite enjoyed working on the transmitters. Of course they were using very high voltages and a lot of people didn’t want to know about them. They were a bit scared of them.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: We’d a, I remember on one occasion at Ruislip we had a, I don’t know what his rank would be but he was, he was Ministry of Defence and he was not exactly like a signals officer but he was, he was, he classed as an officer and he used to come around more or less overseeing what we were doing and one day I believe that he got a bit too near the high voltage and got himself knocked out but he came around again but the transmitting side you’d be talking about two thousand five hundred volts and that sort of thing you know which were really very lethal if you didn’t know what you were doing but anyway that’s -
CB: So what was the process? You mentioned earlier that the equipment was built by different companies so that it wasn’t obvious what the package was.
JRB: What it was going to be when it was all fitted together.
CB: So it arrived with you from the manufacturer. Then what did you and your colleagues do with all these parts?
JRB: Well as I say we fitted them in to the respective vehicles and did all the cabling and necessary inter-connections and tuned then up to the correct frequencies that was designated and that was about it.
CB: And with the convoys was -
JRB: Any, any, any faults we had to correct and put new parts in if necessary.
CB: And each convoy had a generator.
JRB: Each convoy had a generator.
CB: What, what was that and what was its capacity?
JRB: Well, the, the ones for the original mobiles, that is the ones that were very similar to a slightly smaller version of the, of the chain station the, the generator was a, I think it was a three cylinder Lister diesel engine driving a three phase generator. Quite a hefty piece of equipment and these particular diesels, diesel isn’t very easy to turn over by hand anyway but there were no self-starters on them. The only way to start them was by a crank handle and in cold weather in the winter it was very difficult to, to turn that handle around. In fact we resorted to tying ropes to it and having a couple of men on either end of the rope and push pull to get, to get it over the top dead centre of the starting point but that was that. We had to use whatever equipment was sent to us. I think these, like a lot of the wartime equipment I think it had been adapted from some civilian usage but the ones for the lightweight convoys they were much more manageable. They were a two cylinder horizontally opposed engine. I think they were a firm at Coventry called Climax I believe had those.
CB: Again, diesel was it?
JRB: That was, that was a petrol driven generator. It was adapted from a motorbike engine. Now going on from that eventually we, they were stepping up the frequencies anyway. It was always, always trying to find equipment which would work on a higher frequency which was preferable for radar purposes and also it meant that the aerial size was smaller and we were supposedly, the magnetron was developed which would, which would operate where the old, the old type valves wouldn’t and we could, we could use much higher frequencies with that.
CB: So the magnetron was the key to reducing the size of the kit was it?
JRB: That was the key, the key to improving the radar system altogether really.
CB: What was the key point about magnetron? It’s ability to handle high frequency?
JRB: Well it worked, it worked on an entirely new principal.
CB: Right.
JRB: It would be a bit too to difficult to explain [unclear] but it involved especially designed core which had a number of cavities on a cylindrical pattern and by, its difficult to explain really. By subjecting this to a very strong magnetic field you could get, you could develop an oscillation from it whereas an ordinary valve wouldn’t oscillate above a certain, certain frequency so that was, that was much, a big improvement for it.
CB: So that was the key to the centimetre wavelength.
JRB: Yeah.
CB: Now when you go first, fast forward now to D-Day, how was the equipment handled there? Packaged and handled.
JRB: Well, prior to D-Day we had a programme for water proofing equipment and we had to, we had to make up convoys which were swathed in [blue?] fabric and Bostik cement to keep the sea water from getting on to them but they were still in the same vehicles so they could only go in shallow water virtually. They weren’t on a tracked vehicle of any sort but we all got in a horrible mess with all this Bostik and stuff around and it got on to all our tools and you couldn’t pick a screwdriver up without sticking to it [laughs] but that apparently saved them from being damaged on the landings. I don’t say they went in at the very first landings but they’d have probably followed on very shortly afterwards. So that was, that was -
CB: Now -
JRB: D-Day.
CB: Was, were there two sizes of equipment all the time or was it simply that they were being made smaller as time went on? In other words was there a bigger one for longer range and the shorter one was for -
JRB: No.
CB: More tactical use.
JRB: I don’t think so. I don’t. I think I think the original mobiles were sort of gradually phased out. I think we went more on, on to the lighter weight ones. LW. Lightweight Receivers they were called and there was another occasion when we, when we had a special job. At some stage, I think it was before D-Day the Germans started a night bombing campaign which became known as the little blitz. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of that.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JRB: But the little blitz was designed to renew the, the bombing campaign against Britain, against London in particular and the Germans thought that they’d got an advantage because they’d developed a rear, a rear looking radar which they would fit to the tails of the bombers and so they could see our night fighters coming up from behind. ‘Cause as you probably know the object of downing a bomber is to put the rear gunner out of action first and then it’s the bomber’s a sitting duck virtually so with this they thought they could get away with it and come up behind our our aircraft and -
CB: So how did that link in with you?
JRB: Well I was going to say, [pause] just a minute I’ve got something [unclear].
CB: This is interesting because they actually lost -
JRB: Lost something there I think.
CB: They actually lost sixty percent of their aircraft in that mini blitz, so, shot down -
JRB: I’m not talking about our raids on Germany.
CB: No. No. We’re talking about their, their mini blitz.
JRB: Of the German’s raids -
CB: Final fling.
JRB: On this renewed bombing against London. Now -
RB: You were going to say something about Meershum the other day weren’t you? Is that to do with it?
[pause]
CB: Did you get hold of one of these as a result of it being, the aircraft being shot down?
JRB: That was, wait a minute. I’ve got a bit lost I’m afraid.
CB: Ok. We’ll have a break.
RB: I’ll make another cup of –
[recording paused]
CB: So we’re just talking about the mini blitz and the fact that the Germans had got a rear facing radar detector.
JRB: That’s right.
CB: So what came out of that?
JRB: Now then, it turned out that the frequency that their rear, rear radar was working on was quite near to the frequency of our, some of our transmitters so we were asked to retune to get on to the German frequency and to put out a jamming signal which we did by modifying a transmitter so that instead of sending out the usual radar pulses it would send out a continuous noise signal which would block the display of the German rear radar and we always presumed that we were successful with that because we did a [panic?] programme, modifying equipment and setting it up. We went out on fitting parties along stations, the old chain station sites such as Pevensey, Pevensey and along the south coast and we went and fitted up this modified equipment in, in these mobile vans that we were using for the, the radar, anyway but instead of sending, you know that radar sends out a pulse from the transmitter and then it, it shuts off. It’s just a short pulse and you wait for the echo to come back. Well, now we were, we were asked to modify a transmitter so that instead of doing that it would send out a noise signal continuously and we set these stations up, mostly at the existing sites of chain stations and it wasn’t very long before the Germans called off their night raids so we always, we never got any direct feedback on it really but we always claimed that that had, that had influenced them in deciding to call it off and for some reason or other they named that Operation Meershum which of course is the name of a German type of pipe isn’t it?
CB: How is it spelled?
JRB: I think you spell it M E, M E, would it be M E E R S H U M or something like that. Meershum.
CB: Ok. We can look it up. So these mobile transmitters were placed where to achieve this?
JRB: They were sited on -
CB: On the CH stations.
JRB: Mostly the old, the old existing stations, you see.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: We were -
CB: Facing inwards.
JRB: Eh?
CB: Were they facing inwards in to the country these, these mobiles because they were on the back, the German radar was on the tail of their aircraft
JRB: They were -
CB: So to jam them they’d need to have, would they -?
JRB: Do you know I can’t quite remember.
CB: Was the idea to get the Germans before they reached the UK or more -
JRB: No. It was too -
CB: When they were inside.
JRB: After they got inside I believe.
CB: Yeah. So, so the, what I’m asking is if the mobiles were facing inside to be able to do the jamming.
JRB: Well I imagine that -
CB: They must have been mustn’t they?
JRB: The aerial would be sweeping around. On it’s usual -
CB: Ok.
JRB: Every time it came around it would -
CB: Ok.
JRB: Block them out wouldn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: I’m not quite sure about that but I know that we always thought that we stopped this mini blitz on London anyway.
CB: Right. Right. So there’s an important point here isn’t there? The CH stations only were for the protection and identification of aircraft coming towards Britain. In this particular case we’re talking about aircraft that got through the coastal area and were inside but your aerials were effectively giving a rotating beam whereas the CH stations were only directed out.
JRB: The CH stations were just directed outwards. Yeah because of course the equipment of the CH was, it would be quite impossible to –
CB: Yeah
JRB: Have it rotating anyway.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll stop there.
[recording paused]
CB: So -
JRB: The landing like Arnhem and that -
CB: They used gliders extensively.
JRB: They used gliders a lot and we, we had a, you’ve heard of the old Hamilcar glider have you?
CB: Yes. A big lifter.
JRB: A big one. Well the manufacturers sent us a dummy body of one of those to our station at Ruislip and the idea was that we were to build equipment which could fit in to this Hamilcar. So the thing was they wanted to make sure it would drive in as opposed to do it on the rule of thumb you might, might say and we had, we had specially set up equipment. These transmitters and other equipment which were in vehicles. I think the, I think the radar, yeah the radar would be in a specially built up body in a fifteen tonne truck and it had to be possible to drive it in and out of the Hamilcar so we, we had those made up locally and we’d one or two, not, not everybody could drive in those days you know.
CB: No.
JRB: And we’d one or two people who were quite good drivers and we trained them up to get these vehicles in and out the Hamilcar car. Well, we made up, I think it was six convoys like that to go with the troops and there was -
CB: That was for Arnhem was it? Or for D-day? D-day was a sea landing.
JRB: No.
CB: Was it for the vehicles.
JRB: It would be the -
CB: For Arnhem?
JRB: The river crossings wouldn’t it? The, like -
CB: Oh ok for crossing the Rhine.
JRB: Arnhem and that type of -
CB: And the Rhine. Yeah.
JRB: Wouldn’t it because that’s where the gliders were mostly used wasn’t they?
CB: Ok. Yeah.
JRB: We had special equipment for that and there was one, there was a station down near Bournemouth, Tarrant Rushton and that was a big depot for the gliders. I suppose quite near the coast to make a fairly short crossing and we took one set down there and there was some snag about it and it was suggested that I and one of my mates would accompany it. They were, they decided to do test flights to about six different stations up and down and one of them was a station near Bedford and we said well we’ll go on that one and there was a fault on it or something. I can’t quite remember just what it was at the time. So we got a trip in the glider which was quite an experience.
CB: To Twinwood Farm.
JRB: And -
CB: Twinwood Farm was the -
JRB: Yeah.
CB: Airfield there.
JRB: But you know when you, when the, when the glider casts off its rope you’re entirely at the mercy of the glider pilot and he knows that there’s no case of going around again and trying again. He’s got to put the thing down somewhere and pretty quick and it was a grass field and he, he had to land on the grass which was a bit, a bit hairy really but anyway.
CB: Were you looking our or did you close your eyes?
JRB: [laughs] No. We were looking out. But I don’t think we were very, very happy about it but of course a lot of the gliders were lost weren’t they? They were shot up and shot down before they ever got there [I reckon?]. That was about the only excitement we got with it really.
CB: What was the purpose of the tests? Was it to see whether the equipment would survive?
JRB: To see if it would be, the operational feasibility to do it, you know.
CB: I was thinking of terms -
JRB: To get out of the, to get the equipment out and rolling and get it set up isn’t it?
CB: I was thinking of the vulnerability of the valves to a heavy landing.
JRB: Well they had to take their chance didn’t they? And also it had to carry goodness knows how many jerry cans of petrol for the generator so it was a thing liable to go up in smoke at any minute sort of thing.
CB: I’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
JRB: The space between D-day and VJ, wait a minute. Not D-day.
CB: Arnhem.
JRB: No. No. I’m moving on.
CB: Oh ok so crossing the Rhine.
JRB: Yeah but after, after VE day.
CB: Oh yes.
JRB: Victory in Europe.
CB: Yes.
JRB: We concentrated on the war in the east of course and we expected that to go on for quite a long time. Now the, we got reports back that the termites were eating all the insulation off the wires and that in the, in the ordinary sets so we had to strip them all down and rebuild them with this new development. PVC wiring. Because apparently they couldn’t eat that and so we had a big job taking all the receivers and transmitters to pieces and rewiring them with this termite proof wire and things like transformers and components of that type, they had to be immersed in a solution of Perspex or something very similar and dried off so that they were coated in a something that the termites wouldn’t eat which of course as you well know the American atomic bombs put a rapid end to that war so these things weren’t really needed much longer than that.
RB: Although I suppose in, would they have termites in Korea after that.
JRB: But we’d, we’d modified quite a few equipments ready to go over there.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: But that was about the end of the war wasn’t it?
CB: So that was August ‘45. Then what did you do?
JRB: Well I stayed on at Ruislip and of course things got very quiet and we didn’t do very much more until the end of the, until getting demobbed but of course as you know we all had to wait our turns for, for demob.
CB: How did they keep you busy during that period? From August ‘45 to when you were demobbed?
JRB: What did I?
CB: How did they keep you busy from that, during that period ‘cause we’re talking about eighteen months?
JRB: I think there were one or two new developments coming out because there was one case where we, it was when the parabolic reflectors started coming out more and we had one or two sessions with developing or testing those of different types. I’ve got a photograph somewhere of, of a team of us setting up one of the parabolic reflectors but I just couldn’t lay my hands on it at the moment. But that was about it really you know just thinking about new equipments coming along and developing for peace time use I suppose. More or less.
CB: So the development of the parabolic aerial. What did that do to the overall size of the convoy.
JRB: Well it wouldn’t make much difference to the convoy but they were gradually getting more into microwave technology and just general, general developments that were coming along, you know but nothing very outstanding as far as I -. The pressure was off, you know. It was -
CB: Yeah.
JRB: But we were getting, going down to TRE and setting up -
CB: So what was TRE?
JRB: Technical Research Establishment I think it was and no, it was just, of course I suppose the modern radars are a big advance on what we were using at the time but we were just experimenting and testing out some new developments during that period.
CB: ‘Cause that was at Malvern at that time wasn’t it? So did you go up there?
JRB: Malvern was a centre for that sort of thing.
CB: How many vehicles were there in these convoys? What were, what were, what were the vehicles?
JRB: Well, the big the original ones. The heavy ones there would be a transmitter, a receiver, a communications, a trailer of the aerial and a trailer for the diesel generator so there would be about five, five items in a convoy really.
CB: And as time went on they did -
JRB: And then of course when we got on to the light, the light warning system
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JRB: There would more or less be only a transmitter, a receiver and communications vehicle but all all very much smaller vehicles. More manoeuvrable.
CB: And where was the petrol stored when you were travelling? With the generator or in a different trailer? ‘Cause you used a lot of petrol or diesel.
JRB: Well as I say the ones that we did for the airborne landings they’d got to carry the petrol with them in jerry cans. Enough to run for a good time and then I suppose they’d get their supplies through normal channels you know but it wasn’t a good thing to be carrying loads of petrol on board when you’ve got troops in as well on the gliders. But I always think that I had a very easy and comfortable war compared with many, many people.
CB: So what was the accommodation like at Ruislip?
JRB: Our site, it was only a small unit, our site I think we’d two, two billets. Two huts about thirty men to a billet in the middle of a field. No, no heating unless you could scrounge some coke and get the coke stove going. No proper toilet facilities. No, no baths but there again you rely on somebody to keep the, keep the coke fired boiler going to give you hot water and and of course a few toilets but quite basic accommodation really at that place but we, we had to put up with that for several years. When I was promoted up to sergeant I had the choice of going either into, we, we were just across the, the railway tracks from the records office at Ruislip and I could have used the sergeant’s mess there but I elected to take up an option of being billeted with some friends in the area.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: So I finished off being in in billets with these people.
CB: You had to pay them rent.
JRB: Well that was all done automatically through the, through the exchequer, you know.
CB: Right.
JRB: I just had to, I suppose they got, they got sort of postal orders or something like that. They never complained. They always, always seemed to think they’ve been paid alright for it.
CB: They had your ration book.
JRB: They had my ration book yes. They [could draw?] my rations.
CB: So the accommodation for you -
JRB: ‘Cause you see in, in, when you were in RAF billets in the camp you didn’t need ration books anyway. They just -
CB: No.
JRB: You just had a cookhouse.
RB: Were you always segregated in the accommodation?
JRB: Well, eh?
RB: Were you always segregated? I mean, in your hut there would only be radar people or would there be other RAF personnel as well?
JRB: No. Just reckon that we, we were all working together in the radar.
RB: So you were all in the same boat.
JRB: Yeah all -
CB: What was the unit called? MU was it?
JRB: 4 MU.
CB: 4 MU. Yeah.
JRB: 4 MU. 4 MU at Ruislip.
CB: And where did you eat in the daytime?
JRB: We had a little cookhouse and meals were, meals were done there. And we had a NAAFI. Again, just sort of temporary. I think the NAAFI was just a, like a wooden hut but we were only a very small unit altogether you see. So that’s about what I -
CB: Good. Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: Now yours was mobile radar but the whole concept was based on the original chain radar. So how did that work Roy?
JRB: Well the -
CB: And where was it?
JRB: The British aircraft carried a special piece of equipment which would send out a signal when, when it, when the initial pulse from the transmitter reached the aircraft it triggered this equipment in the aircraft which would send a, a varying signal back and if the, if the echo on the CRDF was pulsing they would know it was, it was this IFF responding.
CB: So what was IFF? Identification -
JRB: Identification Friend or Foe.
CB: Right.
JRB: IFF. So if it was a British aircraft it would be, it would enable it to send out a signal which would cause the echo on the tube to vary and that’s why they would know that it was a friendly.
CB: So where were the chain radar stations?
JRB: Where were the chain stations? Well they were all along the coast. They were at Pevensey. Isle of Wight. You name it there was a whole string of them all along the coast. Every so many miles apart. I can’t tell you -
CB: And what was the purpose of the chain system?
JRB: The purpose was virtually to detect incoming raids. ‘Cause you see there, there were various systems. They realised, when war was pretty imminent they realised that we’d no way of detecting incoming bombers until they were right overhead and they tried various systems. One of them was based on the sound of the aircraft engine. They built, they built a few of these big concrete dishes supposed to pick up the sound of an engine and amplify it and give warning in that way but of course that didn’t work awfully well at all and the principal of radar was well known because it had been used, it had been, been experimented with before the war and one of its uses that they foresaw was that they would be able to measure distance to planets and so on because the same, the same theory applies. If you, if you send out a radio pulse it becomes reflected from anything it hits so if you, if you directed it towards the solar system you could, by measuring the time lapse and converting it from the well known formula of the speed of electromagnetic waves and time you could, you could work out the distance so the scientists of the day were experimenting with that sort of thing and it was just that Watson Watt seemed to get the credit for it but I think that the principal was already known before that and I have always believed that the Germans had quite good radar equipment although we always claimed it was a British invention and it was, it was a big saviour to us. Which, no doubt, it did help a great deal in the Battle of Britain but its main reason for its success was the fact that with our coastline we could form a chain of stations which would detect incoming aircraft. Now the Germans were at a disadvantage because they had such a long and dispersed coastline that they couldn’t very well cover it anyway but I’ve always had in my mind that the Germans knew quite a bit about radar and in fact do you remember we sent over a party, RAF, an RAF flight sergeant I think in charge of it. A secret landing on the French coast to capture equipment from a German station and I’ve no doubt at all that the Germans knew quite a bit more about radar than what we would admit. We were always, always, always claiming that it was an entirely British invention but it was, I think it was common knowledge in the scientific world that a radio transmission would be reflected by a solid object.
CB: What did you do after the war? You were demobbed in ’47 so what did you then do?
JRB: I came back here. My dad had carried on with his little smallholding business all during the war years and I came back fully intending to take over because he was retirement age and becoming less able to do the work and I thought that would be my future which it was for quite a few years wasn’t it Ray? When you were born it was.
RB: About, about ten years wasn’t it?
JRB: About ten years I was, I was running that.
RB: I think it was a combination of -
JRB: And we -
RB: Of cheap imports and fuel prices.
JRB: Yeah. We were, we were producing well a very nice orchard in those days which is now defunct and greenhouses and we were making our living from that. I got married just after the end of the war and my wife came. She was a girl from London but she came up here and threw her lot in with, with me helping on the smallholding and that’s what we did for, as Ray says, about ten years and then there was a time when prices were very bad for produce and unless you’d a lot of capital to develop in a big way the small, the small units were beginning to get faded out. You know, they were getting superseded and I think it was when, we used to sell our produce on the market at Preston you see. Well you could go, you could go and set up your stall on Preston Market and sell your own produce but that all seemed to fade away didn’t it Ray? You know I don’t think they have that your way now do they?
RB: I think supermarkets really -
JRB: And supermarkets.
RB: The nail in the coffin weren’t they?
JRB: Supermarkets were beginning to come along and of course they were only interested in making contracts with the, with the big producers and it just got it wasn’t really a viable thing and of course with having had my wartime experience and knowledge of radio I applied to -
RB: The civil service. Barton Hall.
JRB: I think, there was an air traffic control centre just outside Preston just on the A6 going north from Preston called Barton, Barton Hall and that was, it, there was a Met section and what do you call it Ray? A meteorological section.
RB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
JRB: And there was a civilian section which was connected with Manchester Airport and that was, it had an airline for civilian aircraft coming down from Scotland into Manchester and that was like a first contact point this, this civilian air traffic control and also running alongside it more or less the RAF had got a emergency system. The idea being that we did twenty four hour coverage and but we had what in those days was considered to be state of the art technology which enabled us to position accurately an aircraft anywhere over the north of England virtually which was called auto triangulation. Now the idea being that we had, of course, remember this was entirely before the days of the, of the satellites and the the navigation that they’ve got today. We had a selection of RAF airfields in the area. Woodvale, Bishop’s, what were it? Bishops Court Northern Ireland, one on the Isle of Man, another up on the Cumbrian coast and one or two further inland over the Pennine areas and with this equipment which was put in by Standard Telephones we could get a position from each of these, each of these RAF stations could give you the bearing of on aircraft.
CB: They could triangulate it.
JRB: They could triangulate it by, we had this big, big screen with the map of the area on it and the position of each of our forward relay stations as we called them and if an aircraft, it was, it was designed specifically for aircraft in distress, civilian or RAF and when an aircraft transmitted on the international distress frequency it would draw traces from the various stations on our big map and a cross, well it was never a perfect cross it was always a little bit ambiguous but roughly call it, they called it a cocked hat. It would form a little, maybe like a little five sided area of probability so that you could say, you could, you could call the pilot up again on a forward relay station. You see all this, we’d got land lines, GPO lines to each of these stations so our controller could use, well, say for instance valley in the isle, in the -
CB: Anglesey.
JRB: Anglesey was one of them. We could use their transmitter if the aircraft was in that area.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Or we could use one of the other transmitters, speak over the landline to that local transmitter and of course you’d get a better signal than if it was coming all the way from Preston and, and we could give him, give him his position pretty accurately and we could say, you know, ask the nature of his emergency and say well fly such and such a vector to such and such an airfield you see and direct him to try and get down.
CB: This is because you were using a big planned position indicator with a map on it aren’t you?
JRB: Yeah.
CB: And when he squawks then the line comes out.
JRB: We used, you know the television, the early television projector sets? They had a little, a little tube which would project on to a bigger screen hadn’t they? Not very distinct I would always thought but anyway we used those same -
CB: Same principal.
JRB: Those same tubes to project on to this big map that we had on our control desk and so it worked very well that did but we, we had to run on it on a watch system because it was covering the twenty four hours.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: And it was the emergency service you see.
CB: So what were you doing there?
JRB: I was maintaining all the equipment.
CB: Right.
JRB: At the Preston end.
CB: Now, you were, you during that period you trans -
JRB: You see, we had to, over our land line we could talk to the people at, at each station and if the, if we suspected that their signals were not quite right we’d have to call them to go and have a look at their equipment on the airfield and check and of course we, we used to have the authority over them to call them out if necessary for that sort of thing but it was quite a, quite a good system really but of course the sat nav type thing has entirely put that into the history books hasn’t it now?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: You’ll have heard of the RAF equipments called CADF and CRDF. Well they were installed on the airfields and each control tower if the, if the aircraft in his area called up his own station could give him his bearing to fly to the station but it couldn’t give him how many miles away it was or anything like that so this would give him a fixed position. So we used to have, thankfully we didn’t have a lot of emergencies, true emergencies but we used to do a lot of test, tests with aircraft in the area. So call, call up on the emergency channel and just check that everything was in order you know. It worked very well I thought.
CB: Now that was a transition. During that period you were, the technology was moving from valves to printed circuits. Well to -
JRB: Only just. This equipment -
CB: Transistors was what I meant to say.
JRB: This equipment was still on valves.
CB: Was it?
JRB: But -
CB: So we’re talking about the fifties and the sixties are we?
JRB: A friend, a friend of mine who served with me in the RAF after the war, this is Terry Parnell, he got a job at Standard Telephones and he, the two direction finding equipment that I mentioned CADF and CRDF they were in use by the RAF using the valve technology and I believe he converted it and brought out the transistorised versions of it and that worked alright for quite a long time.
CB: So when did you retire?
JRB: When did I retire?
RB: Well there was, there was another stage in your career when Barton Hall closed down in the early 70s. You went to Sealand didn’t you and you were working for the civil service at the, on laser, laser guided things.
JRB: Oh that was later on wasn’t it? Yes, of course.
RB: After Barton Hall closed down. So you actually retired from the laser -
JRB: Originally –
RB: Thing.
JRB: Originally we had five control centres. There was Preston, Barton Hall, Uxbridge and one up near the Scottish borders somewhere wasn’t there? Anyway there were about five, five areas. Well gradually they combined them. We took over the Yorkshire stations as well as our western stations and Uxbridge took over from somebody else so it was centralised from five to about three and then eventually it was centralised all on Uxbridge so of course the Barton Hall equipment was superfluous as regards this auto triangulation system. It was all being done collectively through Uxbridge.
RB: That’s when you were transferred to Sealand.
JRB: And that’s when, that’s when I transferred to Sealand which as you know is on, near Chester and I worked there until the end of the war er till the end of the, of my service.
CB: Which was 19 -
JRB: To my retirement and -
CB: 75 was it? 1970’s
RB: ‘85.
JRB: Sixty five wasn’t I?
RB: Yeah but ’85 you were sixty five.
CB: 1985
JRB: Yes I retired at sixty five and the last bit of my time there I was on, 30 MU at Sealand was a big RAF station. It had been a wartime flying station.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: And it became a central maintenance unit for airborne radio for the RAF. Most of the, most of the stations, if they had faulty equipment it would be sent to Sealand to be sorted out at that one place you see instead of each station doing their own repair work.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: It would come to a sensible point which was Sealand. So I worked on that for several years and then the Cossor’s, not Cossor’s, Ferranti’s. Ferranti’s of Edinburgh, they developed a laser equipment.
CB: At Sealand.
JRB: Now laser as you probably know is quite similar to ordinary radar but it’s using a different part of the spectrum.
CB: Infra-red.
JRB: It’s using infra-red and they, I don’t know whether it’s still in use but they fitted it in the Jaguars and I think in the new, the new fighter that replaced, well it was the Jaguar wasn’t it but I can’t remember what that was called but anyway but that was known as, I’m just trying to remember the [pause] Oh mark, laser ranger and marked target seeker. Now that had two purposes. From an aircraft it could, it could detect and range on a target or alternatively somebody on the ground, hopefully a little squaddie with a pack set, could direct this laser on to a bridge say that he wanted eliminating and that would be detected by the aircraft who could then range on that specific target you see so that’s why they called it the marked target seeker. So I worked on that which was a new technology again altogether using, as you said, infra-red instead of -
CB: To illuminate the target.
JRB: Radio waves. And I believe they used that in the Shetlands.
RB: The Falklands.
CB: In the Falklands war.
JRB: In the Falklands. Sorry. In the Falklands and one or two incidents since I believe but I don’t know whether it’s still, you see this, this is, we’re going back now what thirty years Ray. Something like that.
RB: Well yeah it was before Kit was born. Kit’s thirty at the end of this month.
JRB: Yeah.
RB: That’s my son, dad’s grandson.
JRB: Yes. That’s right.
RB: He’s thirty in a few weeks.
JRB: So presumably that equipment is now out of date anyway.
CB: Well just more sophisticated isn’t it?
JRB: It was the start of the, start of the laser usage for this purpose.
CB: Yes. Right. Excellent.
JRB: And then of course that was what I worked on right up to the end of my civil -
RB: Until you retired.
JRB: Service type of thing.
CB: So how many years did you do in the civil service? About thirty I suppose.
JRB: Something like that.
CB: ‘55 to ’85.
JRB: Something like that. Yeah. At, I was up at Barton Hall for quite a number of years wasn’t I Ray and then at Sealand again.
RB: Yeah.
JRB: About thirty years I suppose. Yeah.
CB: Right. We’re stopping there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: As a final point Roy what was the most memorable point about your service in the RAF?
JRB: In the RAF.
[pause]
JRB: I don’t know. It’s hard to say really.
[pause]
CB: Ok. What about in, in, when you, in civilian life? Was there a memorable part of your activities when you became a civil servant with radar, laser and so on?
JRB: No. There was nothing very exciting about it I’m afraid. It was just, just the same humdrum stuff.
CB: And what was your interests in the background in all that time? Were you keen on sport or some other -?
JRB: Never been much of a sportsman but I think, would you say our, our overseas holiday trips? That sort of -?
RB: Yeah. Well you went on foreign language courses didn’t you and did evening schools in various things.
JRB: Yes.
RB: Did you do a maths course? What was that -
JRB: No. I didn’t do a maths course.
RB: You didn’t do maths. Some, some
JRB: You see Peter, Peter -
RB: Sort of, was it a City and Guilds course you did? Something in -
JRB: Yes. Well that was more to do with my service life wasn’t it? The City and Guilds. It was qualification for -
RB: You did sort of later, qualifications in later life didn’t you?
JRB: Yes.
RB: And did you do Italian courses? And French.
JRB: Well I did one or two study courses. Yeah.
CB: Good. Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: Just clarifying the mini blitz because clearly that was a memorable thing for you. You had to react quickly did you to this situation and so was this a particularly memorable event? The Meershum.
JRB: Yes it was because it was a sudden request that we got and we had to pull the stops out and design a modification to the equipment and get it, get it out to the airfields. We’d quite a hectic time going around and installing it at the various -
CB: At the CH stations.
JRB: Fields.
CB: Was it at airfields or CH stations?
JRB: It was at CH stations.
CB: Right. Thanks.
RB: That the [unclear?] isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Have you got it there?
CB: How long did it take you to do this? Literally a weekend or was it weeks?
JRB: Literally, literally just over a weekend.
CB: Amazing.
JRB: We were going all over the place, split up into different fitting parties and took one, one equipment to each station you see and set it up. So we landed down at Pevensey and that was the one that I was most involved in and the rest of our company did likewise. We were all separate, separate little fitting parties going along the various -
CB: You went by road -
JRB: Stations.
CB: I presume.
JRB: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Yes. They laid transport on for us and of course we went, went straight to these stations.
CB: 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 James Burdin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
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
2017-02-06
Format
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01:51:55 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABurdinJR170206
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. Coastal Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
James Burdin went at Hutton Grammar School and worked on radio repair and sales. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force but had to wait and joined the Local Defence Volunteers instead. He did some rifle practice, general infantry training and patrols. James had his initial training at Blackpool where the winter gardens had been converted into a Morse school. Owing his background in radio, he later went to work on radar: he discusses his postings at different training establishments and provides details of radar technical advances, installation, modify and repair, vulnerability and equipment mobility. James served in mobile equipment units in Algeria (Operation Torch), Tunisia, Egypt, Normandy (D-Day landings), crossing of the Rhine, Netherlands (Operation Market Garden), Mauthausen camp (Operation Meerschaum). Discusses the end of the war, continuing to work at 4 Maintenance Unit at RAF Ruislip developing equipment, components and technologies. He then worked at the Technical Research Establishment until demobilised in 1947.
After an unsuccessful attempt to run his family business, he applied for the civil service and worked until 1985 on radar development, auto triangulation, Cathode-Ray Direction Finder, Identification Friend or Foe, infrared devices, laser and chain radar stations.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Lancashire
England--Blackpool
Algeria
Austria
Austria--Mauthausen
Egypt
France
Germany
Rhine River
Netherlands
Netherlands--Arnhem
Tunisia
North Africa
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
civil defence
demobilisation
Gneisenau
Home Guard
military living conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
radar
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Ruislip
recruitment
sanitation
Scharnhorst
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/450/7970/AHarrisonR151116.1.mp3
78c4628fae306c070946abd90f7380e4
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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Harrison, Richard
Richard Harrison
Dick Harrison
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Richard Harrison (b. 1924, 1833947 Royal Air Force) a page from his log book and documents about gunnery training. Richard Harrison flew operations as a B-24 air gunner with70 Squadron, 231 Wing, 2015 Group in Italy.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Richard Harrison and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Harrison, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay then so, this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command centre and Lincoln University, and today I’m with Dick Harrison in York, and what I’d like you to tell me is, first of all, is just date of birth and just a little bit about your family and your, your upbringing, what your parents did, that sort of thing.
RH: Yeah, I was born of the 5th of February 1924, I was born in Köln en Rhine, Deutschland, Cologne, Germany and er yeah, Dad English, Mother German, we came back to England in I think it was 1926, I was two years old.
AM: How did your Dad meet your Mum then if she was German?
RH: He was in the army of occupation.
AM: In? In Cologne or?
RH: In Germany.
AM: In Germany, yeah.
RH: Yeah, because he’d been on the Western Front from 1915 to 18, he was a regular soldier when he was in Cologne and various other places in the Rhineland, but he met my Mother in Cologne.
AM: Right.
RH: I think they were married there in 1922, something like that.
AM: So, what did he do when you came back to England? What did your parents do?
RH: Well he was a regular soldier and he carried on being a soldier.
AM: Right. Right through, yeah?
RH: Yeah until 19, yeah 1936.
AM: Oh blimey, right.
RH: He left the army and became a civil servant.
AM: Ah, me too, well that’s another story.
[laughter]
RH: And me too.
[laughter]
AM: So, tell me a bit about your school years then.
RH: School years, well Dad’s camp was near Salisbury, Winterbourne, so I went to a primary school in Winterbourne, and although people say today, you know, how good the schools were back then, this was a truly appalling school [laughs] well, and from there, I can’t remember what it was called, you sat the exam when you were eleven. And from there I went to Bishops school in Salisbury which was a local grammar school, then unfortunately my Dad left the army, the civil service post was in Gloucestershire, so we had to move to Gloucestershire, and I went to and I had to transfer schools, from a very [emphasis] good and excellent school in Salisbury to certainly a below par one in Gloucester.
AM: Right.
RH: Near Gloucester.
AM: What age were you when you left?
RH: When I left what?
AM: When you left school.
RH: Sixteen.
AM: Did you do schools certificate and everything?
RH: No, I didn’t.
AM: No.
RH: No, I had enough of that school.
AM: Right. [laughs] So what did you do when you left school?
RH: Worked in an office.
AM: Yeah, doing?
RH: Pardon?
AM: Doing just normal administrative?
RH: Yes.
AM: Office work.
RH: Yes, just clerical work, that’s all.
AM: Yeah.
RH: It was a company that, it was a [unclear]company so I was dealing with invoices and things like that.
AM: Right. So what year are we up to now? Sixteen, nineteen, I’m just trying to work my own arithmetic out, if you were sixteen?
RH: I left school in 1940.
AM: Right, so the war had started.
RH: Yeah and I was already involved.
[background noise]
AM: Right, and I’m looking now at the County and City of Gloucester air raid precautions, and this is to certify that mister Richard Harrison completed his course in anti-gas training, under the auspices of County and City of Gloucester air raid precautions central authority and has acquired sufficient knowledge of anti-gas measures to act as a member of the public ARP service. Tell me about that then, what was that like?
RH: Erm, and that’s what I—
AM: Oh, I’ve missed a bit, nature of the course attended was—
RH: Was a cycle messenger.
AM: Right, what did that mean?
RH: We were about ten miles north of Bristol, so when they were attacking Bristol, you know I was very interested, the first time I saw flak [laughs] but—
AM: What was that like then?
RH: Well, I mean as a kid it’s all very interesting, isn’t it? I mean we, the village hall was our local ARP post, and every Friday night that was my job, even when I was at school, every Friday night, get there for six or seven o’clock, I think it was, until six, seven o’clock the next morning, with my bike ready to go anywhere. And all over Bristol, it was a fantastic sight really was, searchlights, flak, German bombers coming over lit up, one crashed about a mile away from us here, but no it was quite a, quite a sight, and when they attacked Avonmouth and the oil tanks were set on fire, the whole of the horizon was red, yeah amazing sight.
AM: So, where were you sent off cycling? Taking what sort of messages?
RH: [sighs] Well we was just, I can’t remember the details. I remember one, one regular one was to cycle down to the pub and bring them back a pint of cider or something, and that was a regular run.
[laughter]
AM: Right, so the message was, how many drinks?
RH: Yeah.
AM: So, so when, so that was it, you did your cycling in your messenger training.
RH: Yes.
AM: And then what?
RH: What?
AM: What made you join the RAF? Oh, what came next should I say with regards to?
RH: The Home Guard.
AM: Right.
RH: I joined that when, yeah before I was seventeen I joined that and despite what people say and that, because there’s that film—
AM: Dad’s Army
RH: Dad’s Army. I mean, it was one of the most useful things ever because I was in a platoon where the officer commanding was World War one soldier, my Father was a platoon sergeant, World War one soldier, there were several of them, I mean when I went into the RAF, foot drill, arms drill, using a rifle, shooting on the range, using a machine gun.
AM: You’d already done it.
RH: It was easy, yeah, it was easy. I also joined the Air Training Corps about the same time.
AM: Right.
RH: So, at one time I had three balls in the air [laughs] ARP, Home Guard, Air Training Corps.
AM: And [unclear]
RH: And in addition to that, I took a St John’s, St John ambulance first aid course and got a certificate for that, so—
AM: Right.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Blimey. So, when you joined the RAF, but I think Gary said RAF regiment?
RH: Pardon?
AM: I think Gary said you joined the RAF regiment?
[phone rings]
RH: Excuse me.
[interview paused]
RH: Where were we?
AM: So, where were we?
GR: You were juggling three balls, ATC.
AM: We were juggling all those balls with your ATC, and your Home Guard.
RH: In the end I packed up the, one of them became civil defence from ARP, so I packed, I packed that up, I couldn’t get—
AM: Right.
RH: Otherwise I was chasing round four nights a week [laughs] and weekends with the Home Guard.
AM: And working in your office.
RH: And working as well.
AM: And working as well.
RH: Yeah.
AM: So, you’re coming up to eighteen, why the RAF? Where did you join? What was, what was you’re, what was it like?
RH: For a young lad I mean it’s, it’s just the glamour of the thing. King and country had nothing at all to do with it [laughs] don’t say that—
[laughter]
AM: We’ll cut that out.
RH: All I wanted, well I mean, one saw a war films didn’t you, ‘target for the night’ and all the rest of it. But unfortunately, I had a heart condition and my, on my medical records which I saw, because I wanted to go into aircrew, I wanted to be a wireless operator.
AM: Right.
RH: Wireless operator [unclear] because I’d been, Father had taught my brother and I morse code, and in the house, he’d rigged up two keys and we used to use that, even when we were ten or eleven years old we knew the morse code, and in the Air Training Corps, when the CO discovered I already knew morse, I became the morse code instructor for the squadron.
[laughter]
RH: And, but when I went for the medical, I think I was, temporarily unfit for aircrew duties, they said that would right itself eventually, and I remember being interviewed by the, this officer, he said, ‘well, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘ that you’re fit for ground crew duties but you’re not fit for aircrew duties,’ I said, ‘right, in that case I don’t want to join the RAF, I’m going to join the army,’ [laughs] because I was fit enough for the army, and I had a mate, a school friend who was up at Catterick driving a tank, saying how great it was and I could picture myself in that, so I said, ‘I’m going to join the army, the Armour Corps,’ ‘no you’re not,’ he said, ‘no you’re not,’ he said, ‘we’re not going to waste, what was it twelve months or more Air Training Corps and then you go in the army,’ he said, ‘you’ll be called up,’ and that’s what happened. I got, yeah, before Christmas it was, 1942.
AM: Right.
RH: And I got my call up papers and went to Penarth in South Wales where they sorted you out, and because I’d been a clerk in civvy street, I went through trade tests, maths, English, I could type, type writing, book keeping, and that took all morning, and then at the end of it they said, ‘alright you’re now a trade group for clerk general duties,’ but it did mean that whereas a lad going in without any trade at all was getting three shillings a day, I got four shillings and threepence a day because I was a trade [laughs] and of course guys like one of the guys I sort of chummed up with, he had been a metal worker, and I can’t remember what trade he went into, but I know he was getting sort of, six shillings and something a day because he was a group one trade as against group four. Right, so what do you want next then?
AM: Ooh, well, what happened next? Tell me about it. What were you actually doing then? So, you got three a day—
RH: I can think, in my eight weeks I think it was, square bashing and then I was posted to RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire.
AM: Right.
RH: And, that was the base for the special duties squadrons, 161 and 138, and they were dropping supplies and people for the resistance.
AM: Right, okay.
RH: And it was all top secret, I mean I suppose I didn’t know what they were doing.
GR: There was Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins.
RH: Well, maybe so, Wing Commander Pickard, DSO, a couple of bars and all the rest of it, he was, he was the C.O. and, but I knew something about aircraft, and so what struck me was these Halifax’s, they had no mid upper turret, and I thought well that’s strange, and bomb trolleys were parked alongside the hangar with grass growing through them, so they weren’t being used [laughs] but no one told you anything. Eventually one of the guys in the office said, ‘Dick, do you know what we are doing?’ and this was after a month or so, I said, ‘yeah, I reckon you’re dropping agents into, into France,’ I said, because I had to do a what, a sort of duty every now and again, overnight, man the phone and so forth, and during that time, you would see a couple of black saloon cars going, going by, and they were going over to, what I discovered later, was a farm, an old farm where they were kitted up before they did their jumps. And, yeah, very secret, so I remember a guy crashed on take-off and they were all killed, and that night or the next night the father was calling and I answered the phone, and I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything,’ you know, ‘was he on the raid to Berlin?’ I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ [laughs] I knew what had happened to him but wasn’t allowed to say. And another little story, no need to record, as I say it was all top secret, this Halifax was missing, so that was seven guys as well, so into the HQ, came their, the NCOs, their pay books and in the pay book was a next of kin listed. Now the wireless operator in that crew had listed his next of kin as a girl in Sandy village, which was four or five miles—
AM: Yeah, I know where you mean.
RH: Away, you know?
AM: Yeah, I know exactly where you mean.
RH: You know where I mean? So, the Padre and another officer went down to give her the bad news, sort of thing he was missing, but I mean I wasn’t witness to this, I only heard about it afterwards, and apparently when they gave her the bad news, she said, ‘well he’ll be alright wont he?’ they said, ‘what do you mean?’ ‘well I mean, they are dropping supplies to the French resistance and they’ll —
AM: Oh God.
RH: Get him back. Which they didn’t. While I was there, not him, but while I was there a guy came back, but the only thing I saw was her arriving with an RAF police escort in a car, and she was wheeled in to see Wing Commander Pickard, and I suppose he read the riot act to her, keep your mouth shut.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And some years ago when I was caravanning down there, I went back to see if I could get onto Tempsford, but it was all wired off, but you could see the huts in the background, and I met, a local woman came out of her house, and as a wee child she remembered this place and she said, ‘you see that hedge there?’ she said, ‘we lived up on the hill and we weren’t allowed to come below that hedge, no civilians were allowed below that hedge line,’ it was so, so secret.
AM: It’s amazing isn’t it.
RH: On one occasion Wing Commander Pickard, flying a Hudson, that’s that one up there, that was—
AM: I’m looking at, I’m looking at models here.
RH: Yeah, that was his aircraft, and he’d taken people down to the south of France to a landing ground down there, and when it came to take off, he’d bogged down, because it was just a field, and so they had to turn out local farm horses and so forth and pull him onto hard ground so he could take off. I remember next morning in the HQ, one of the guys said to me, ‘have you seen the CO’s Hudson take off?’ I said, ‘no,’ he said, ‘well go and look at hangar so and so,’ and there it was parked up outside, still with mud up into the engines themselves, and he got a, I think he had three DSO’s, was it, Wing Commander Pickard? He was shot down in the end on another raid, yeah. So, there we are, what’s next then?
AM: So that’s that, well you tell me. What came next?
RH: I must have been the worst clerk general duties that the RAF ever had, because I wasn’t a bit interested in what I was doing [laughs] and I was always on the—
AM: Wanting to be up there.
RH: Back in front of the adjutant flight sergeant being given a lecture about something I’d done wrong. Then one day two guys came into the office and I knew they’d been in north Africa, and they said, ‘can we have a form to volunteer to go overseas,’ I said, ‘but you’ve only just come back.’ [emphasis]
AM: Two aircrew this?
RH: Pardon?
AM: Two aircrew you talking about?
RH: No, they weren’t aircrew.
AM: Oh right, okay still—
RH: They were two groundcrew. Said, ‘we’ve only just come back,’ and I said, ‘you want to go back out there again?’ ‘well, [emphasis] England, terrible place isn’t it, full of Yanks and all the rest, no, the sooner we get out of here the better,’ so I thought, what a good idea.
[laughter]
GR: Get me one of these forms.
[laughter]
RH: Get me one of those forms, yeah. And then I had a medical and this medical officer said, you know, as I said to you on the phone yesterday, he said, ‘right, condition no longer, so I’ll put you forward shall I, for the aircrew medical?’ I said, ‘no, no thanks I want to go overseas.’
[laughter]
RH: Did you read that letter?
GR: This one?
RH: Yeah, the one, the regiment one?
GR: Yes, I’m reading it, yeah.
AM: I’ll take a copy afterwards. So, you went overseas rather than aircrew?
RH: Yes, I volunteered to go overseas, it was all very quick, in fact I was sent on what they called, embarkation leave.
AM: Hmm, hmm.
GR: Yeah.
RH: And I think that was one week or two, and while I was at home in Gloucestershire, a telegram came telling me to report back to Tempsford, and I’d only been home two or three days, and so I went back and there was my posting notice, and I think, I thought the RAF were taking their revenge on me for not carrying on with aircrew because they posted me to an RAF Regiment squadron. And believe me in 1943, to be in the RAF Regiment, you know, I mean today, yes, they’ve got a good reputation, but that was really the backend of everything. And there were about a dozen of us, tradesmen, clerks, cooks, vehicle mechanics, armourers, wireless guys and so forth, and all resentful [laughs] at being posted to the regiment.
AM: Where was that though? Where were you posted to?
RH: Oh yeah, that was near Peterborough, near Peterborough. And, when I arrived there, there was a corporal clerk in the, what do you call it? Orderly room, in the orderly room. And as soon as I arrived, he sent off a signal under the adjutant’s signature, under who was away at the time, to the airman’s records at Innsworth in Gloucestershire saying, that Corporal so and so, can’t remember his name, was unfit for overseas duty. And so about, a couple of days later a signal came posting him out, didn’t get off kindly. [laughs]
AM: So where, where from, where did you go from Peterborough?
RH: Overseas.
AM: Yeah, but where though? Whereabouts?
RH: Sicily.
AM: Sicily.
RH: We went to, yeah it was a, it took a month altogether, although I think it was three weeks to Algiers on a troop ship as a convoy—
AM: I was going to say—
RH: As it was, but— Yeah, although in my letter I said, not eventful, in fact it was interesting at times because a U-boat got in amongst the convoy, and there were destroyers dashing up and down dropping depth charges. [laughs]
AM: It’s probably quite exciting when you are eighteen, nineteen.
RH: It was, when you are a kid, when you are a kid.
AM: You’re still a teenager, really aren’t you?
RH: Yeah, I remember saying to one of the seamen on our, on our troop ship, you know, ‘why is that, why are they flying a black pennant?’ he said, ‘that’s because they’ve detected a boat,’ he said, ‘they’ve detected a U, U-boat.’ Then we went to Algiers, and then we left Algiers, still didn’t know where we were going at that time. And then, I was in what was called the headquarters flight, which all the tradesmen were in that flight and we were called up for a briefing by the adjutant, and then we knew we were going to Sicily, and there were maps passed round for us to look at, and we were going to takeover, it was a light anti-aircraft squadron by the way, it had a twenty-millimetre cannon.
AM: Okay.
RH: We were going to take over defence of the Gerbini airfield near Cantania in Sicily, and that was the plan. But unfortunately, the Germans, you know, didn’t know what our plan was—
[laughter]
RH: And so, when we got to Sicily they were still there. [laughs] And er, yeah, we landed, we went to Malta first, I think we stayed there overnight or a couple of nights, and then we went to Sicily, and it was over the, over the side, down scrambling nets onto the landing craft and then onto a little [old?] pier sort of thing. And then we formed up and marched up into an olive grove and we were there for about a week. We were waiting for our trucks to arrive and the cannon, but they’d all been sunk. It was funny when we were en route from Algiers to Malta, there was a, ‘boom,’ bang and a great column of smoke over in the distance, that was the ship going down, and we heard later that was our ship [laughs] with all the trucks on.
AM: Blimey.
RH: So when we got to, then we were posted and moved to Lentini and that was a new, new landing ground, and we were sent there for anti-parachute troop duties. The Germans had dropped paratroopers into Sicily, not, not straight into combat, they dropped them as reinforcements to the guys who were already there.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And, but some of them were dropped too far south, and when the 8th Army had pushed up and they were left behind.
AM: I’m just looking, thinking about the geography, so you’re in the south of Sicily?
RH: Pardon?
AM: I’m just thinking about the geography of Sicily, so the Germans were on the island?
RH: Oh yeah, and eventually, eventually they had four divisions there. They had three to, three to begin with and then, then they dropped in two regiments from the 1st Parachute Division, and they were dropped in as reinforcements, behind their own lines. But they were the guys who eventually who stopped the 8th Army, you know, getting any further. But, and so when we got to Lentini, they were forming patrols of about a dozen guys and an NCO, and they [unclear] [laughs] searched the local olive groves and go through, and as I said in, in the letter, you know, God help them if they come across any German para’s because I’m sure we would have been sending out the first missing in action signals.
[laughter]
RH: Because they wouldn’t have stood a chance, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against those guys. So, that was that.
AM: So, how long were you there for, on Sicily?
RH: Pardon?
AM: How long were you on Sicily for? Ish?
RH: Yeah, we landed there a week after the invasion began, July, August, and then, when did we go into Italy? September the 3rd? So, we went into Italy on September the 10th, something like that.
AM: Right, so, so the Germans had been pushed back?
RH: They evacuated.
AM: They evacuated.
RH: Yeah, they got everything away, they got everything away, they had a defensive line sort of thing, and they just took it step by step back, and meanwhile they, I think forty thousand men all their guns and tanks, everything they managed to get across the Straits of Messina. And, [pause] the regiment squadron, we were on, we moved from Lentini to the Scordia landing ground, again it’s only a rough strip through, through the fields and that was the American 57th Fighter Group. They were equipped with P-40 Warhawks and they used to go out day after day trying to stop the Germans evacuating the—
AM: Getting across the Straits.
RH: Their, their stuff. And that was the first time I’d come across American, Americans and they were great guys, [emphasis] they really were. And later on, we were on the same airfield, when I was in aircrew and again, you know, they really are first, first class blokes, I thought.
AM: So, you’re on, we’re on the push now, what, what month did we say we were? August? What, what—
GR: No, September into Italy.
AM: And September into Italy.
RH: September into Italy.
AM: So you—
RH: I’ll just tell this little story while we—
AM: Go on, yes.
RH: At Scordia, I mean they were suffering losses because I mean they were having to make quite low level attacks with their fighter bombers. And we were watching these guys coming back, and, and one of them he came in rather high, banged [emphasis] down onto the ground, up in the air, bang [emphasis] and then turned over onto his, onto his back, so the pilot was trapped under, underneath. But I mean, they were very, very quick, in no time there was a, the er, a fire tender, an ambulance, and a mobile crane. And the mobile crane lifted the aircraft up, turned it over—
AM: [inaudible]
RH: And they forced the canopy open and out [laughs] got this young lieutenant, stepped on the wing, walked away a few paces, reached into his overalls, pulled out a cigar—
AM: [gasps] Oh no.
RH: Lit it and went on walking.
[laughter]
RH: And I thought, well there’s, there’s a nerve for you, [laughs] there’s a nerve for you. But on the other side of the coin, I remember, I used to like going out into their dispersal and watch them come in. And, they’d taken off—
[background noise]
RH: And then one of them left the formation, came round, landed and then taxied up to where we were, we were, sort of thing, switched off the engine, pilot got out and he walked over to the, the er. There was a sergeant who was a sort of an engineer mechanic, whatever, and I can’t remember the words after all these years what the pilot said, but he was complaining that there was a fault in the, in the engine, there was something, something wrong, and then he walked away. And I said the sergeant, I said, ‘what do you thinks wrong with that then?’ Now, you’ll have to excuse the language.
AM: It’s alright. [laughs]
RH: He said, ‘nothing he’s just shit scared,’ he said.
[laughter]
AM: Fair enough.
RH: So then we went into Italy, [pause] now tell you, this was a regiment [laughs] with a squadron, and so I knew [emphasis] very well, being, being in the HQ, the squadron had been told they had to go to Crotone landing ground which was sort of under the, that part of the—
AM: The heel.
RH: Italian boot.
AM: The heel.
RH: And of course, and we were following a Canadian division along the coast. They were way, way, way ahead, we never ever saw them. When we got to Crotone landing ground, nothing there at all because it had already been evacuated. Now the same time as the 8th Army landed on the toe and moved up on the north coast, the Canadians were moving along the south coast and the British 1st Airborne Division came in by sea to land at Taranto to push up on the Adriatic coast. And when we were somewhere west of, of Taranto we came across the Airborne guys, and, and they were stopping our convoy. Now in our convoy would be about a dozen three tonne four by four Bedfords, three or four jeeps, two Italian trucks that we had pinched, stolen and, and motorcycles and so forth. Yeah, we spotted these Italian trucks in a little town called Catanzaro down on the toe and the C.O. had seen them, two big Fiat trucks, and so he said to our corporal fitter, engine fitter, ‘do you reckon you can get those going?’ he said, ‘yeah right.’ So sometime around midnight he and another mechanic went out and started them and drove them up the road a bit and then we found them [unclear]
AM: Appropriated them. [laughs]
RH: And then painted them in RAF camouflage and off we went. And then so, yeah, we met the guys with the, with the red berets and from what they were saying is, ‘go careful, keep your heads down because there are German para snipers in the area,’ [laughs] and I thought to myself, we shouldn’t be here, we had no business to be there with just our, just the C.O. You know, woo, let’s just going, you know so think you can imagine we were some kind of Panzer unit or something. And then we drove into Bari, you know that?
AM: Yeah.
RH: Well as we went to Bari, there were people on the pavements, waving and cheering and then passing out bottles of wine.
[laughter]
RH: And I thought, well this can’t be right, and, and where are our guys? I didn’t see any British soldiers at all, and we drove through Bari, and I can’t remember the name of the town now, but about ten miles north of Bari on the main coast road, we came into this little township, and again, [emphasis] people came out and they were waving and saying oh—
AM: Italian civilians you mean?
RH: Yeah, [emphasis] Italian civilians, I thought it’s got to be something, it’s got to be wrong you know, and then the word quickly came down the, the line, the Germans left here this morning.
[laughter]
RH: Well that decided the C.O., all the trucks were turned round. [laughs]
GR: You were the spear guard you were, you were out in front.
[laughter]
RH: We go back to, we went back to Bari, and he looked at his map. Bari airport which was an Italian air force base then, we’ll go there, and we’ll the, we’ll take over the airfield, we had no business—
AM: Is this just you the RAF Regiment, you’re talking here?
RH: Yeah.
AM: Right.
RH: No business at all to be, to be there. And we drove up to the entrance and there were gates and as we drove up, there were armed Italians carrying their funny little carbine rifles, they shut the gate. Now I wasn’t there I didn’t hear what, what was said but they refused to let us in. So, then the order came down the line, ‘get your rifles out men and load them, and stand by the trucks.’ And of course, in our headquarters truck, where are the rifles?
[laughter]
AM: We’re laughing now, but I bet you weren’t laughing at the time.
RH: Scrambling, put ten rounds in the magazine, get out the truck. Meanwhile the Italians, a lot of them, had crossed the road and were in the olive grove in that side, so I thought, God, we are going to be between two lots here, but I think that fact that they saw a hundred guys or more getting out the trucks with their rifles ready, and that decided the Italians to open the gate and let us in.
[laughter]
RH: Yeah, so.
AM: Blimey.
GR: So you’re fighting your way up Italy?
AM: And your C.O. wanted you to be fighting your way up.
RH: Pardon?
AM: And your C.O. wanted you to be fighting your way up.
RH: And the, what do you call it? SWO, he was, he was another sort of, you know, let’s get up there and we’ll, all the rest of it. But, yeah then we went up to Foggia and there were several airfields there which the Germans had used, and yeah, we were, I think on two different airfields there, if I remember rightly, well airfields, landing grounds it was just a single strip. But I can’t remember anything worth reporting there. And by that time, we were subordinate to Desert Air Force, and so you’d get the daily orders from Desert Air Force. And on one they were appealing for air gunners, air gunners, now I thought right—
AM: This is it.
RH: We’ll have a go at this, and so I, you know, I applied and went to Desert Air Force headquarters to get the preliminary medical as such. And, it was, it was quite interesting, because they had my records there and the first officer to examine me, flight lieutenant or squadron leader, doctor or whatever he was, he said, ‘I can’t understand why you were failed in, a year ago,’ he said. He said, ‘there’s nothing wrong,’ and I said, ‘well it says temporarily unfit,’ ‘I can’t see nothing wrong, well, we’ll get a second opinion,’ and he called in the chief, the group captain, and he came in and checked me over, ‘yeah,’ he said, ‘no,’ he said, ‘I can’t think,’ he said, ‘why you were failed a year ago,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with your, with your heart.’ I used to think afterwards, they failed me because when they looked at my background, they realised in fact, that Mum was a German.
[laughter]
RH: I’ve thought that might be a—
GR: That’s possible.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah, yeah, possible.
RH: Yeah. Because when it came to the aircrew selection board, that was the next thing.
AM: Are you still in Italy at this point?
RH: Yeah, oh yes.
AM: Yeah.
RH: The, the aircrew selection board, and they asked, they asked that question, ‘what if you were ordered to?’ I mean there was no possibility for me to fly from Italy all the way to Cologne, but still, [laughs] They said, ‘what if you were ordered to bomb Germany, bomb something in Germany, you know, you were born there and your Mothers German, what, what if you were ordered to do that?’ [laughs] And I said, ‘I would obey orders.’ [laughs]
[laughter]
RH: Yes, so then there was, I was still with the Regiment Squadron, but I mean they hadn’t, they hadn’t fired a shot in anger and they were anti-aircraft, there was no need for them, so they found a new job for the RAF Regiment. That was to go up to the, our artillery gun line which would be a three, or four miles behind the front line, and by day if our guys were flying and bombing, they would put out smoke indicators to show where our front line was, so that our guys didn’t bomb in it. And by night they would put out flares and I was only there less than, less than, less than a week and but apparently, they did have some casualties later, later on. But, so that was it, now I went to Desert Air Force headquarters, and I had three or four weeks there, and then before I went back to the Middle East. Desert Air Force headquarters was the best posting ever I had in the RAF of a, really good guys to work with, we had an Australian flight lieutenant who was our, the C.O. of what’s called the organisation section where I worked. And he used to share his food parcels with us and he knew I was sort of going through them and I was going on for air, aircrew training and he called me in one day and he said, ‘Harrison,’ now I know this sounds like a line shoot, but he said, ‘Harrison, you’ve done a really good job here,’ he said, ‘we’re very pleased at the way you’re, you’re working.’ That’s because I had a gen, I wasn’t responsible to anyone even though I was only an airman I was doing my own, my own job, sort of thing, which was location of units.
AM: Right.
RH: And briefing people who came in asking questions about you, he said, ‘now why don’t you forget this aircrew thing,’ he said, ‘and I can guarantee,’ he said, in a few months you’ll have your first stripes,’ he said, ‘and I can see you going on from there,’ and I said, ‘no thank you, very much.’ [laughs] And so that was it, now I went back to Egypt
AM: Right. Where did you do your training, your aircrew training then?
RH: Air gunner training.
AM: Air gunner training, where did you do that?
RH: Yeah, a place called El Ballah.
AM: In, in Egypt?
RH: On the canal zone.
AM: Right. And how long, so how long were you training for?
RH: Right. [pause]
[paper rustling]
RH: You can take these away.
AM: Okay.
RH: Later. There were three six-week courses.
AM: Right.
RH: The first one was at 51 Air Gunner Initial Training School, and they’re all the subjects.
AM: Yeah.
RH: Then you had a forty-eight-hour pass into Cairo and then you came for another six weeks—
AM: Okay.
RH: At 12 Elementary Air Gunner School.
AM: Yeah.
RH: From there are all the subjects again.
AM: So, I’m looking at, I’ll, I’ll copy this, and but I’m looking at things like, different gun turrets, the Frazer Nash, the Boulton Paul, the Bristol.
RH: Yeah that’s right.
AM: Pyrotechnics, the Very pistol, the flares, forty flashes. Smoke floats?
RH: Yeah, smoke floats, yeah.
AM: Yeah, what’s a smoke float?
RH: Well it was, about, about that big and the idea was that, that in daylight, over the sea, over, over water, the navigator would ask someone to drop a smoke float, okay? And then the tail gunner, the rear gunner—
AM: Yeah, yeah.
RH: Himself. You see that smoke float and you take a bearing on it with your sight, and there’s sort of a compass ring—
AM: Right.
RH: And you say,’ okay, it’s at so many degrees,’ and then the navigator would count off so many seconds and say, ‘okay take another reading,’ so you take another reading and it shows you your drift.
AM: Right.
RH: The difference between the two readings.
AM: Yep.
RH: Yeah, smoke float by day, yeah.
AM: Oh.
RH: And that’s 13 Air Gunner school where you finally get to fly.
AM: I’m looking at this one because I was, I was going to ask you, what were, what did you actually train in? And we’ve got Avro Anson’s?
RH: Yes, it’s up there, somewhere.
AM: One of those up there? Dinghy drill. Did you all have individual dinghies at that point?
RH: No, seven-man dinghies.
AM: Because—It was a seven-man dinghy. Right.
RH: Then we trained in, in the Suez Canal, and the canal was only a couple of miles away from the, from the air field, so the instructor would tow an inflated dinghy out into the middle of the canal. And that was another, another thing and I’ve never come across it before and I’ve mentioned it to other aircrew types and they’ve never heard of this before. You had to swim fifty yards [emphasis] and if you did not swim, if you couldn’t swim that fifty yards you failed.
AM: That was it, you were out.
RH: You failed the course. So, I mean you had a life jacket on which was a damn nuisance believe me if you’ve got a Mae West and you try swim. [laughs] So you went out, two of you at a time, went out to a dinghy and righted it.
AM: Oops.
RH: Sorry. Righted it, then got into it, and then when the instructor was satisfied, when you got out you pulled the dinghy over you so it was upside down for the next pair.
AM: Right, and swam out from under it.
RH: To go out, yeah.
AM: I can’t imagine what the canal was full of?
RH: Oh yeah, [emphasis] yeah. Now and then whistles are blowing and everyone would have to get out if a ship came by. [laughs]
AM: Theres, there’s crocodiles isn’t there?
RH: No, no.
AM: Is there not? No. Alright then.
RH: There’s far more—
AM: I was thinking about horrible [unclear]
RH: Theres worse stuff floating in the canal, believe me.
AM: I can imagine.
[laughter]
AM: So, you’ve done your training.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Then what?
RH: Then we’ve went to [paper rustling] from Egypt—
AM: Hmm, hmm.
RH: To Palestine.
AM: Right.
RH: For the O T U.
AM: Right. [pause] So, I’m looking now at the, it was the 76 Operational Training Unit.
RH: That’s right.
AM: And you were on Wellington medium bombers at this point?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Tail gunner you said you were, weren’t you?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Tail end Charlie.
RH: Yes, we formed up of, as you may know, you know, the people weren’t detailed, we all assembled in a hangar.
AM: You did the crewing up.
RH: And we sort of—
AM: No other end.
RH: Pardon?
AM: No other end, is an expression—
RH: Is it?
AM: An expression, I’ve heard.
RH: Yeah well. And Joe, the other gunner, he, he eventually found a pilot who wanted two gunners, and so we met this Eddy who came from the Midlands, and he said to us, ‘who’s best at aircraft recognition?’ and Joe said, ‘he is,’ pointing to me.
[laughter]
RH: ‘So, right you are the rear gunner then.’
AM: So that was it? That was how that was decided. But then, so when was heavy Conversion Unit, were you still in Palestine at that point?
RH: No. We went back to Egypt for it.
AM: Back to Egypt for that, right.
RH: That was only four weeks I think at that point.
AM: So this is the 1675 Heavy Conversion Unit, into B-24 Liberators.
RH: B-24 Liberator, yeah. At least we got into a decent aircraft.
AM: Yeah. What, how many crew were on that? Was there seven or more? Seven.
RH: Well, seven. We trained as a crew of seven but operationally on the squadron, you carried an extra gunner, who manned the two waist guns.
AM: Right, so there was waist guns on there?
RH: There was also these, yeah, I did two or three [unclear] trips as a beam gunner, but you were the odd job. I’ll come to that when we get to the squadron then.
AM: Alright, okay. So, carry on—
RH: Well, [unclear, interviewer speaks over]
AM: Tell me about that and what happened and any stories about the conversion unit course or on to what happened after that?
RH: I can only think of a funny story on that. Sometimes, the nose wheel of the Liberator wouldn’t come down. And so, someone would go from the flight deck, for landing on the flight deck was a pilot, the engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and top gunner, six of them all on the flight deck in that area. If the nose wheel didn’t come down, there was a, a drill for it. One of them would go back into the nose and help to pull the thing down. Well, we’d been on a night exercise, and Joe our top gunner, a Lancashire lad, he always had intercom trouble. He was an electrician by trade, but he was a real jinx [emphasis] when it came to in, in, intercom. And the nose wheel hadn’t come down, so I mean I’m hearing everything on intercom, so the skipper said to, I think it was the bomb aimer Ron, ‘Ron go on down into the nose right and see if you can do it,’ and so Ron goes down there. Then the next thing I here, Ron’s on the intercom, ’no, I can’t do it and I need some help,’ ‘ah yeah, okay,’ and so the navigator is sent down. So, now there’s two of them in the nose trying to pull it—
AM: Yank the thing, yeah.
RH: And get the wheel down, and then they come back on the intercom, ‘no I can’t do it,’ so skipper, Eddy turns to Taffy our engineer and says, ‘Taff, go down and sort it, will you?’ So, Taff gets out of his seat and goes down. Theres a hatch in the flight deck that goes down into the nose. Now, Joe the top gunner, knows that the nose wheel hasn’t come down, and then his intercom goes dead. And one after another he sees the bomb aimer—
AM: Oh God.
RH: The navigator and the engineer all disappearing through that hatch down below, and what does he think? He thinks they’re all baling out. So, his seat release is a wire handle and he pulls that, drops out of his turret, goes straight through the hatch into the end of the bomb bay.
AM: Oh no.
GR: [unclear] [laughs]
RH: He just had a few bruises that was all.
AM: I was going to say, I thought you were going to say he went right through and had to pull his parachute. [laughs]
GR: Well, the thing is to anybody listening, obviously Lancaster, Halifax, B-17 all land, and land tail down, but the B-24 was one that landed, and landed with its nose up.
RH: Nose wheel
GR: The same, yeah. So, it landed, straight—
RH: Yes.
GR: As opposed to sitting back on the tail, so when you were on about the nose wheel coming down that’s—
AM: That’s why it’s important.
GR: Yeah
RH: Well, I— [unclear, interviewer speaks over]
GR: In fact that was the only bomber that, that—
RH: Yeah.
GR: The only, only four engine bomber that, that happened.
RH: If I remember rightly in HCU and I mean, I knew guys who were ahead of me and so forth, and Norman, and he came back and he came up to the truck as we were getting off it, and he said, ‘have you heard Mick Berry’s gone?’ Now, Mick Berry had been a corporal armourer and he was in our tent at gunnery school—
AM: Right.
RH: And he taught us more about the machine guns than the instructors. After all, that was his, his trade, he was a, I can still remember, he was a great [emphasis] man, he really was a good lad. And there they had, had crash landed and burst into flames, and Mick was in the mid er, top turret. Now that was held by, I think it was four bolts and it was a common fault that bang [emphasis] on, on the deck and that turret would drop out, and he was trapped and he couldn’t get out, yeah.
GR: Oh God.
RH: Mick Berry, he’s buried in the cemetery near Cairo.
AM: Oh, right. How big is it? I’m looking at a model of the Liberator here. How big is it in comparison then to the Halifax and the, and the Lancaster?
RH: [unclear] it’s a hundred and ten foot wingspan, the Liberator and the Hal, well Lanc, well it’s just over a hundred feet, in total.
AM: I was going to say, it looks a bit bigger to me.
RH: Yeah.
AM: On the, on the model, I know [unclear]
GR: Well at the same scales, they’re actually, the Liberators on a par with the Lancaster, probably slightly bigger.
AM: I’m showing my ignorance now, is it American?
GR: The B-24 was originally was an American bomber.
RH: Oh yeah.
AM: Oh.
RH: Yeah, consolidated to the aircraft company, yeah. [pause] Nice aeroplane to fly because after flying in the Wellingtons as the rear or tail, tail gunner, the heating system, well, didn’t really exist. And, in O.T.U. going out on a flight at night, and we’d six hours, six and a half hour flights sort of thing in freezing [emphasis] weather and you’d have long johns and, and then your shirt and your pants, and so forth. And your wool, pullover, woolly, the battle dress, then over the battle dress, the, an inner flying suit—
AM: Right.
RH: Which was sort of kapok something or other, brown silky, you put that on. Then over that, the outer flying suit which wasn’t padded at all, then over that your life jacket, then over that your parachute harness. Now, some of the gunners at O.T.U. there was only one entry hatch and that was in the nose, so the guys used to take their kit with them and get dressed when they got down into the fuselage. But I had an arrangement with the navigator, and the bomb aimer, and the armourer who would turn the turret of our aircraft to a hundred and eighty degrees, so I could get in from the outside. And they would lift [emphasis] me up into the turret, and then when we got back I would turn the turret a hundred and eighty degrees, open the doors, fall out—
AM: We’re talking about the rear turret then?
GR: Yeah.
RH: Pardon?
AM: Yeah.
RH: Yeah. And they would—
GR: Tumble out.
RH: And they would get me out.
GR: [unclear]
RH: The advantage of the Wimpy of course, and the rear, and with the Lanc and the British aircraft wasn’t it, you opened the doors as a tail gunner and you just bale out and go backwards—
AM: You just flipped out.
RH: Couldn’t do that on the Liberator.
AM: So, we’ve done Heavy Conversion Unit, you’ve got your crew, you’ve done your training with your crew, when was—
RH: I can’t think of any incidents.
AM: When was your first operation then?
RH: In February 45.
AM: Right, and where, where was it too?
RH: That’s a very good question, I think—
AM: Germany somewhere?
RH: No, I, no we were in Italy.
AM: Oh, oh.
RH: Yep, I think that’s just March, isn’t it?
GR: That’s just March, yeah.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Can you remember what it was like going up? Right because now you’re doing it for real instead of training? Did it make a difference?
RH: It was just a job. I think, you know guys of our age at that stage of the war, nine, you know, coming up to the end of the war, and you, I can’t think of the term really, indoctrinated or whatever, and you are used to it, you are used to it.
AM: So, were you scared?
RH: No I wasn’t, no.
AM: No.
RH: Because I didn’t have enough up there to be scared.
[laughter]
GR: Am I right in assuming that the, the bomber force in Italy at the time, was doing things like marshalling yards—
RH: Yeah.
GR: In northern Italy.
RH: Yeah.
GR: Austria.
RH: Yeah.
GR: Southern Germany? I think that there was a couple of trips.
AM: I think, yeah, I thought, I thought you went to southern Germany?
RH: No, we there were, I never went on a trip into Bavaria.
GR: But that was some of their, their area of operations.
RH: Yeah.
GR: There was the northern Italy marshalling yards, the Turin’s, that sort of thing, Verona, to try and stop—
RH: It was mainly the railway lines coming down through Bremen.
GR: Yes.
RH: And also down to Trieste and so forth.
GR: Which was the main supplier [unclear]
RH: And also, we, yeah, we bombed, what was it? Monfalcone, a little port, Ancona and Assa [?] yeah, they were, they were where the Germans had ships and used to supply their troops by night by running these boats along the coast, sort of thing.
GR: Did you normally fly with an escort? With a—
RH: On daylight, yeah.
GR: Daylights, yeah.
RH: Yeah, yeah. We had the Americans.
GR: Yeah.
RH: American B-51’s.
GR: Tuskegee, Tuskegee airmen?
RH: I don’t know who they were.
GR: They, they were the black—
AM: Yeah.
RH: I remember on one, on a trip to Monfalcone in the daylight, I mean we didn’t fly in formation, I mean our guys didn’t know how to fly in formation I never, not on heavies. And it just the usual stream, and so there were, sort of sixty, eighty aircraft in a stream. And we picked up the American escort, this was at the top end of the Adriatic, Trieste.
AM: Yep, yep.
RH: Right, it was the port next to Trieste.
AM: Yep.
RH: And, we picked up the escort and it was coming up, and our wireless op was listening out on their frequency, there had to be some sort of contact for, for, I didn’t hear this. But I remember we’d said, said afterwards, he said, ‘when they saw us coming,’ he said, and they were [laughs] saying about look at those sort of God damned limeys they’re not in formation, you know, all that how do we protect this lot and all the rest of it. [laughs]
AM: It’s like herding sheep.
[laughter]
RH: Yeah.
AM: Or herding—
GR: Are the Luftwaffe putting in much of an appearance?
RH: No.
GR: Towards that stage of the war?
RH: No, no.
AM: Were they not?
RH: No, they had, they were 109’s on the Italian, northern Italian airfields, but I think most of those were in what was called the Italian Republican Airforce.
GR: Yeah.
RH: You know, Mussolini’s lot, so you did see them, you did see them. Right and I remember seeing a strange sight one night as we were coming away from wherever it was in northern Italy. It was all a tremendous glare of course and, and looking out I saw these three Lib’s flying in and they were in [laughs] formation more or less and then at the back end of the [unclear] was a Bf 109. [laughs]
GR: Oh.
[laughter]
AM: Following you.
RH: Following the—
AM: Did you ever get shot at?
RH: With flak.
AM: With flak, but not, not as Gary said, not from a fighter?
RH: No, no, I saw, yeah there was a, we were 70 Squadron, 37 Squadron operated from the same airfield. I mean I didn’t know who they were, were at the time but and coming back at night from somewhere, Austria I think it might, might have been, the, and then suddenly seeing green tracer which I knew it was German. And then red tracer [laughs] sort of thing, and then ‘woof’ [emphasis] up went the Lib and down he went, yeah and that was 37 Squadron. Liberator, all lost.
AM: All gone. Did you ever shoot your guns at anything?
RH: No.
AM: Never?
RH: No, no you even if, and we were tailed one night by a fighter coming back from Trento I think it was, Trento, Trento marshalling yards you know, and I just reported it to the, to the crew, it was a 109. And he was sitting out and sort of, sort of four hundred yards or so away, you’d just see them occasionally with the glare in the background but he didn’t close and I certainly wouldn’t fire at him because it would show where we were.
GR: Were you were.
AM: Other people have said that, why would you fire—
RH: Yeah. Quite.
AM: And you know, mark yourself out to them.
RH: Yeah.
AM: Effectively.
RH: Yeah. Yeah, no you never, never fire unless you’re fired at. Okay?
AM: Yeah. I think, have you got any more questions?
GR: No, no.
AM: How many operations did you do in the end?
RH: Bombing, eighteen.
AM: Eighteen.
RH: And then we converted to supply, as the war was coming to an end—
AM: Okay.
RH: And the bombing stopped, and then they put some sort of racking inside the bomb bay so we could carry four-gallon cans of petrol and things like that.
AM: Right. So, what did you do between the war ending and demob?
RH: Er, yeah, we carried, you see although the war ended we’d already converted to transport.
AM: Yeah.
RH: And so, yeah for two or three weeks after VE Day we were flying, we were talking up supplies up to the north of Italy. And then after that they converted the bomb bay so you could carry bodies, troops, we could carry twenty-two.
AM: Live bodies?
RH: Yeah.
AM: Live ones.
RH: Twenty-two in the bomb, bomb bay. Poor blokes, [emphasis] I mean they just had to go down into the, down onto the catwalk and then climb over the back of these seats and then sit down. And there was the aircraft fuselage wall, just there sort of thing, and they had to sit there and on flights back to the UK, it took six and a half hours.
AM: You can’t imagine, can you?
GR: No.
AM: Were these troops or did you take any prisoner of war back?
RH: No, no—
AM: It was troops.
RH: These were troops. The ones we were flying back were due to be retrained and reformed to go out to Burma. These were the, I remember, you see they didn’t need the air gunners as such, so you became an odd bod sort of looking after these soldiers and so forth. And I remember on one occasion we were flying back with some guardsmen from a guard’s regiment, and the truck arrived and this lieutenant got out with his twenty odd bods. And they piled around and he said to our skipper, ‘we were all NCO’s, we were all senior NCO’s, he said, ‘have you anything to say?’ to the men sort of thing, and he said, ‘no.’ Since I was Harrison, generally I was called Harry, and so Ken said, ‘now Harry will look after you,’ well that wasn’t good enough for the, for the lieutenant. He turned around and he said, ‘when you are in the aircraft I don’t want you putting your hands out and grabbing any wires or anything.’
[laughter]
RH: So I saw them on board and we were flying up to Peterborough, Croughton, just south, it was an American base at that time and I used to bring them out one at a time and with the beam hatches open they could have a smoke—
AM: Right.
RH: Sitting there. And I think it was one of the last guys, came out and he sat on the other beam gunners seat, and he didn’t have intercom of course, we could only talk to each other by shout, shouting really, and he shouted, he said, ‘do we go through customs?’ he said, I said, ‘well I don’t.’ Crewmen didn’t, you just went straight through, [laughs] I said, ‘you, yes you will have to go through customs,’ and I said, ‘why?’ and he pulled back the sleeve of his battle dress and [laughs] there were watches—
[laughter]
RH: On, on there. And I said, oh, how did you get those?’ and they disarmed an SS unit or something and so, and relieved them of all, of all their odds and ends. And er, and then he reached into his blouse, fiddled about and pulled out a pistol, and I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t think you’ll get through with that,’ he said, ‘I’ve got another one in my kit bag.’
[laughter]
AM: I thought you were going to say you took them through for him.
RH: No, no, no.
AM: If you didn’t have to go through customs.
GR: They’re here.
AM: [laughs]
RH: No, after, after we’d landed and I got my travel warrant, and had a forty-eight-hour pass to get back to Bristol.
AM: Right.
RH: Or near Bristol. And so, it was late evening when I caught a train from Peterborough to Kings Cross, and Kings Cross to Paddington, and Paddington to Temple Meads, then Bristol. Which, I arrived about seven o’clock in the morning, then I had to walk over to the bus station and get a bus, and I arrived at my parents’ house I think, yeah it must have been about nine o’clock in the morning. Knocked them up, then I had, since it was a Saturday, I had to leave next day, just after lunch—
AM: To get back.
RH: To get back, yeah, so my forty-eight-hour pass in fact was about thirty.
AM: In the middle.
RH: Oh, so, anything else I can help with?
AM: Yes, this is, just out of interest this question. So, your Mum was German, how was she treated during the war?
RH: Yeah, okay.
AM: Were people okay with her?
RH: Yeah, you see we were, when I say Dad went in, into the civil service, he did, he and a lot of other guys including the major commanding who is based and so forth. Some of them were sort of even if they hadn’t given their time were said, okay you’re finished, because now you’re going to an establishment in Gloucestershire where you’ll be training police, fire, in what today are called civil defence duties. And so, you know, my environment from a child and all the way through to the time I left home was, was semi military because all the other guys were like Dad, they all ex-army.
AM: Right.
RH: They were all ex-army and some of them I remember when we lived at Salisbury, I remember a couple of German women coming there to visit Mum and they were again were wives of soldiers and so forth. But, no and of course we had relatives in Cologne and at the time of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, we had a telegram which came through the Swiss Red Cross, from Mums sister Gerda, in Cologne, asking if we were all okay. [laughs]
AM: Were they all okay, did they ask to—
RH: No.
AM: Did your relatives not survive?
RH: No, no they were, they lived, well as most Germans do in the cities, they live in an apartment block and the block was, was—
AM: Blown up.
RH: Hit, and Uncle Johan as he was, he died of phosphorus burns. And my aunt and my two cousins, saw one cousin, they were evacuated into, into central Germany. The other one, my, he was about a year or so younger than me and had been like you know like all the rest of them in the Hitler movement and so forth. And then when he was sixteen I think, he volunteered for part time duty on a flak battery, and then when he was seventeen he became a full-time member of the Luftwaffe [emphasis] on a flak battery. When I met him, you know after, we used to have a joke about it.
[laughter]
GR: That’s a, well at least you had the opportunity.
AM: At least you never shot at me.
RH: Never fired at me because you were in, on the Rhineland and in the Ruhr, yeah
AM: Yeah, Happy Valley, the Ruhr.
RH: Pardon?
AM: Happy Valley, I’ve heard the Ruhr described as.
RH: Yeah, yeah. But they’re all, my cousins and my aunt are not, they are all dead now so, no contact.
GR: What I’ve just found amazing is, you’ve saying like yeah, during the Battle of Britain, and Bristol was being blitzed and all that, and a family in Germany sends a telegram [laughs] to a family in England saying are you okay?
AM: Are you okay?
RH: Yeah.
GR: And that’s just like, that’s incredible.
AM: Ordinary people in the war.
GR: Yeah.
AM: As opposed to the Nazis and all the rest of it.
GR: But the fact is, so you are in Germany, and you’ve got Hitler, yeah, we’re going to invade Britain and do this, do that, but you can send a telegram. So, it goes from Germany oh yes, certainly a lot of it went through Switzerland through the Red Cross.
AM: [inaudible as speaking at same time]
RH: Yeah.
GR: But you got the telegram in England, are you okay? Is everything alright?
RH: Yeah, yeah.
AM: What did you do then after the war then, after you’d been demobbed?
RH: I became a civil servant.
AM: Which bit? Which, which department?
RH: The Home, Home office—
AM: Oh.
RH: Was the governing training department but again [coughs] it was, it was, it civil defence training I sort of followed on, I and my brother we were lucky having a father in it. [laughs]
AM: Not what you know, but who you know.
RH: Yeah, well yeah, well you had to go through selection board.
AM: There was always full fair and open competition and all that, allegedly weren’t it. I’m just looking at this, the warrant on the wall here, which is?
RH: The what?
AM: I’m looking for the year, 1962.
RH: That was commission—
AM: You became a, well you tell me what it is?
RH: Yeah, I was commissioned in the volunteer reserve training branch here.
AM: Ah ha.
RH: The Air Training Corps.
AM: As a pilot officer.
RH: Yeah. Eventually I was a flight lieutenant.
AM: Yeah, crikey. Well I think on that note we’ll switch off.
RH: Have you been recording all—
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Richard Harrison
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-16
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:07:06 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHarrisonR151116
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Italy--Sicily
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1965
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Harrison was born in Cologne in 1924 to a German mother and English father. His desire to be aircrew was thwarted initially by a failed medical, something he later surmises could be on account of his mother’s nationality. A member of the Air Raid Precautions, Home Guard and Air Training Corps, he was called up in 1942. He was posted to RAF Tempsford, base for Special Duty Squadrons 161 and 138, who dropped supplies and people for the resistance. In 1943 he was posted to Sicily in the RAF Regiment Squadron for anti-parachute troop duties and then to Italy. He successfully applied to join the Desert Air Force and had air gunner training at El Ballah in Egypt. He went to Palestine as a rear gunner on a Wellington for the Operational Training Unit, followed by the 1675 Heavy Conversion Unit in Egypt with B-24 . His first operation was in Italy. After VE Day, they transported supplies and troops. After the war, he worked as a civil servant in the Home Office. In 1962, he was commissioned as a pilot officer in the Air Training Corps and eventually became a flight lieutenant
Creator
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Annie Moody
Gary Rushbrooke
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Sally Coulter
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
138 Squadron
161 Squadron
70 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
B-24
bombing
civil defence
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Operational Training Unit
RAF Tempsford
Resistance
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/283/6705/PJonesPW16010023.1.jpg
9794fdd397996cb2086e617dc37dbc62
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/283/6705/PJonesPW16010024.1.jpg
1af263da550358378912a09dadb37aa8
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
Jones, Thomas John
Tom Jones
T Jones
Description
An account of the resource
62 items. An oral history interview with Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs, correspondence, service documents, aircraft recognition manuals, medals and a memoir. He flew operations as a flight engineer on 622 Squadron Stirling and 7 Squadron on Lancaster. <br /><br />The collection also contains an <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2566">Album</a> of 129 types of aircraft. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Jones 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
2014-12-04
2017-12-07
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. 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
Jones, PW
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
Three members of the Home Guard
Description
An account of the resource
Three quarters portrait of three soldiers standing by a railing in front of a brick building. Tom Jones is in the centre. On the reverse 'Homeguard '40 Birmingham'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940
Format
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One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
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Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PJonesPW16010023, PJonesPW16010024
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Birmingham
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
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.
civil defence
Home Guard
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/337/3501/PTaylorEC1701.1.jpg
acbcb633c679d09f01c94a0f7e54d530
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/337/3501/ATaylorEC170928.2.mp3
9a15f4d3f4e54369b0747cf28be0b8eb
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
Taylor, Eric
Eric Charles Taylor
Eric C Taylor
E C Taylor
E Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Squadron Leader Eric Charles Taylor.
Publisher
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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
Taylor, EC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: So this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre, interviewing Squadron Leader Eric Taylor at his home on the –
BT: Where are we?
DK: 28th of September 2017. So if I just put that there, put that that there –
ET: Yeah.
DK: Put that there. I’ll keep looking down, I’m just making sure that it’s working.
ET: Yes.
DK: That looks okay. So if we leave that, yeah that looks okay. Well, what I wanted to ask you first was what, what were you doing immediately before the war?
ET: School.
DK: Right, so you went straight from school to –
ET: I left school in the June forty-three –
DK: Mhm.
ET: Sorry, [pause] –
DK: It would be 1943 wouldn’t it?
ET: Yeah it is forty-three.
DK: Yeah, yeah. So you went straight from school, straight from school to the RAF?
ET: Yes.
DK: So what made you want to join the RAF then?
ET: Because I, I joined the, the LDV I think they called it –
DK: The Home Guard.
ET: The Local Defence Force.
DK: Mhm [BT laughs].
ET: And they put me through hours of drill [laughs], and I didn’t like that very much. I thought I’ll probably better join the Air Force, and you used to get all these magazines of course, you know, with all the things about the –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Battle of Britain and that type of thing. That’s what encouraged me to, to join. I went to Edinburgh for a testation [?] which was delayed for six months, so I actually went in, in the February –
DK: Is that on? Yeah, okay.
ET: Forty-three.
DK: Right. So –
ET: That was wrong, I told you –
DK: You’re right, it says forty-two in here.
ET: Must have been forty-two [emphasis].
DK: Right.
ET: Twenty, 1923 and something.
DK: That’s 1940 isn’t it? Okay, don’t worry, don’t worry.
ET: 1940.
DK: Yeah.
BT: 1940, you’d be seventeen.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Must have been forty-one then.
BT: Forty-one was it, okay.
ET: Left school.
BT: Yeah.
DK: So forty-one.
ET: Yeah, because it was forty-two –
DK: That you joined the Air Force.
ET: That I joined the Air Force.
DK: Yeah, yeah, okay.
ET: That’s right.
DK: You left school in 1941 and then joined the Air Force –
ET: Yeah.
DK: In 1942. So what, what was your first posting in the Air Force then? Where, where, can you remember where you went to?
ET: Well the first , well I went to London, and the – ooh we attended several lectures, you know, mainly about venereal disease [all laugh] and all the rest of the things.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And the, from then on I went up to, I trained at Staverton, Gloucestershire, Number Six AUS [?].
DK: Right.
ET: And that took about a year.
DK: So at this point you were already training as a navigator?
ET: Yeah, oh initially I did a small six hours course. I went in as a PNB.
DK: Right.
ET: Pilot, navigator or –
DK: Bomber aimer.
ET: Bomber aimer. Didn’t quite make the pilot stakes [?] so I became a navigator.
DK: Right.
ET: And then I went to the CUS [?]. That was the first straight navigator course, because before that they had the air observers, they called them.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Yeah, so we didn’t do any bombing aiming at that time. Course I went through them very quickly [emphasis], it only took about a year.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Then from there I went to Stratford-on-Avon to the OTU.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Operational training unit.
DK: Yeah. Just going, winding back a bit. What, what was the training as a, as a navigator? Were you actually flying [emphasis] at the time then?
ET: Yes, yes.
DK: So what sort of aircraft were you –
ET: Anson
DK: Ansons, right.
ET: Anson mainly. And then we came onto the Wellington when we came onto the OTU.
DK: The operational training unit.
ET: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, so that was Number 16 Operational Training Unit?
ET: That’s right.
DK: Yeah, and that was at RAF Upper Heyford?
ET: No.
DK: Oop, sorry.
ET: It’s at, it was at, it, just past Stratford-on-Avon.
DK: Stratford-on-Avon, right, okay.
ET: Yeah.
DK: So that’s 16 OTU at Stratford-on-Avon. And, and what aircraft were you training on there?
ET: Wellingtons.
DK: And is that where you met your, your crew then?
ET: Yeah. Well we all met [emphasis] –
DK: Mm.
ET: And just somebody would say, ‘would you like to fly with me?’ It was very, it wasn’t a rigid [?] thing at all, you know.
DK: No. So how did that work then? Were you all pushed into a hangar and you all had to work –
ET: Well we’re in a big hall, yeah, and the pilots were there and [laughs] –
DK: Right. How did you think that worked, ‘cause it’s quite unusual for the military. Normally you’re ordered to go somewhere.
ET: Well that’s right.
DK: This was quite an unusual way of where you –
ET: Yes.
DK: Picked your crew.
ET: Anyway, that’s how they did it and it seemed to work out there pretty well.
DK: And you found your, your pilot there then did you?
ET: Yes.
DK: And can you remember your pilot’s name?
ET: Yes, Cyril Pearce.
DK: Right.
ET: I think he’s no longer with us –
DK: Yeah.
ET: I don’t think any of the crew are with us now, you know.
DK: So you would have met your pilot?
ET: Yes.
DK: And –
ET: I met them all, the bomb aimer –
DK: Bomb aimer.
ET: And the wireless operator.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And the gunner.
DK: Mhm. And, and did you all get on well together when you –
ET: Yes, we seemed to, yeah.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Yeah. And I – the navigator didn’t do a lot of the pilot training on the aircraft, you know, the local flying circuits and mops and that.
DK: Yeah.
ET: But on the cross countries of course, we, we all went on those.
DK: Mm.
ET: Some had a dual instructor and others smaller [?].
DK: Yeah. What did you think of the Wellington as an aircraft?
ET: Actually quite good after the [laughs] – it was a bit bigger. The big thing I remember is – I think the model’s a 1-C that we trained on.
DK: Right.
ET: At the OTU, but then we got a mark three I think. ‘Cause we took an aeroplane out with us when we went to Tunisia.
DK: Right.
ET: And that was a long flight.
DK: Mm.
ET: We had to go miles out to sea to avoid the Bay of Biscay, you know, ‘cause all the Germans –
DK: Yeah, yeah.
ET: Were there, and we flew from Portreath to a place called Ras el Ma –
DK: Right.
ET: On the west coast of Africa. The big thing I remember there was there was always an enormous amount of flies [DK and ET laugh]. You had a plate of soup, had a quick swipe [DK laughs], put your spoon in quickly [laughs]. And from there we just, we went on through Blida and then ended up at the Kairouan.
DK: Right.
ET: With aircraft – 142 Squadron and 150 had both just gone there. There was nothing, there were no facilities at all. There wasn’t even a latrine initially [laughs].
DK: So, so out your training then, you’ve done the operational training unit and really cross country flights around England.
ET: That’s it.
DK: And then your posted to your squadron and you’re posted out to Africa.
ET: Yes [emphasis].
DK: Oh right.
ET: Actually we just cleared [?] Africa, North Africa. Well we arrived there –
DK: Right.
ET: And when I was, we were there, we had the invasion of Sicily of course.
DK: Mm.
ET: And Italy. And most of our bombing were, they were to, you know, targets in Sicily.
DK: Right.
ET: And several, going up the coast to Italy.
DK: Right, and this was with 142 Squadron?
ET: 142 Squadron.
DK: Yeah. So can you remember how many operations you did in the Middle East and Italy?
ET: Yes I, thirty.
DK: Thirty [emphasis]? Oh right.
ET: That was a tour then.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And I came back to UK. Oh I went with a journey from Tunis to Algiers –
DK: Mm.
ET: By train, and on the carriage I’ll always remember it said, ‘forty orm [?] or five [laughs], what were they, sivar [?] horses’ [ET and DK laugh]. Took five days, the journey, and then you got on a boat, came back to Liverpool.
DK: Right.
ET: This was at the end of forty-three –
DK: Uh-huh.
ET: And the – I thought I’d move to Scotland so I went all the way up to a place called Edsoff [?] where I used to live and the last bit I had to do by bus, you know, train then bus.
DK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ET: Then I met this girl on the bus and she said, ‘what are you doing?’ And I said, I said ‘I’m going home [emphasis], what did you think?’ She says ‘I think they’ve moved’ [laughs]. Ah, I had then to go and search where they’d gone to.
DK: And this was your family?
ET: That’s my family –
DK: They’d moved while you were away [laughs].
ET: My parents – well I didn’t get the letter of course to say they were moving.
DK: Oh of course.
ET: And they’d moved to Woodhall Spa would you believe.
DK: Oh right.
ET: In Lincolnshire.
DK: Yeah, yeah, know it well [DK and ET laugh]. So when you were in Africa then, your parents moved from Scotland –
ET: Yes.
DK: To Woodhall Spa.
ET: Yeah.
DK: And you didn’t, you didn’t know [laughs].
ET: Didn’t know.
DK: No. If I could just go back a bit, your operations in the Middle East. Did you find navigating something that came to you easily or –
ET: Quite difficult.
DK: Difficult? Right, because –
ET: Actually, we did have one, one navigation error which a very lucky to get away with it in many respects because coming back from Italy, we hit this land [emphasis] and I thought it was the north coast of Africa –
DK: Right.
ET: It turned out to be the north coast of Sicily [emphasis], going along.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And, course there’s some very high mountains there. Our signaller, our wireless operator finally got a , what we’d call a QDM –
DK: Mm.
ET: You know, a course to steer.
DK: Yeah.
ET: So we turned on that. Of course we’re getting short of fuel and all sorts of things, and we threw out the guns onto the turret to make the aircraft lighter, and coasted at quite a low altitude –
DK: Mm.
ET: Thinking of the mountains there –
DK: Yeah.
ET: And landed , there was an emergency airfield right on the tip of, which we landed at.
DK: On Sicily?
ET: No, no, in North Africa.
DK: Oh North Africa was it, right.
ET: Right at the top there.
DK: Right, oh right.
ET: So that was a real bit of luck there.
DK: Did you, did you get into any trouble for navigating?
ET: Not really.
DK: No, good [DK and ET laugh].
ET: What I remember is my pilot got in trouble because there was a taxi accident.
DK: Right.
ET: That’s the worst thing that can be done, you know. I think the wing hit it [unclear] on one and knocked [?] it up and twice, and I remember the station [?] commander at briefing for an operational trip. He’d see [?] pilots in front of him and say, ‘look at these men, traitors to the cause.’ I always remember that.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Terrible thing to say really.
DK: Bit harsh isn’t it?
ET: They felt bad enough as it is.
DK: Yeah. And one of those, one of those was your pilot was it?
ET: Yes [emphasis].
DK: Stood up – so he had to stand in front of everybody and get told off?
ET: Well there was three of them.
DK: Three of them, right.
ET: Yes, two’s [?] being blamed for the trip, you know –
DK: Yeah.
ET: That night. And this came out.
DK: Oh dear. It’s not very good is it? [Laughs].
ET: Very unsympathetic.
DK: No. Were commanding officers like that then? Were they a bit tough?
ET: This is a copy, what’s it? [Papers shuffle]. Is there something in there called “Blida’s Bombers?” A book. Oh yeah, it’s about him.
DK: Oh right.
ET: There’s something in [papers shuffle, pause]. All this mail, that’s Kairouan [laughs].
DK: Right. Just for the recording, it’s a magazine or a pamphlet called “Blida’s Bombers.” B-L-I-D-A, Blida. That’s, that’s in Algiers isn’t it?
ET: That’s right.
DK: [Unclear].
ET: That was a big base, as the Army. We started going in with the first army –
DK: Right.
ET: [Unclear].
DK: I actually went there many years ago, to Blida in Algiers. And just for the recording, this is “Blida’s Bombers” by Eric M. Summers. Did you know Eric M. Summers?
ET: No.
DK: No, no.
ET: But there was a Group Captain Powel, his photograph was in there which I was trying to, to find.
DK: Right.
ET: He was a man that –
DK: Oh, Group Captain Powel –
ET: Yeah.
DK: Here he is.
ET: Yeah, but there’s a picture of him with his –
DK: That’s in there.
ET: Fly [?]. He always used to fly [laughs].
DK: So he was your commanding officer was he?
ET: He was the station commander actually –
DK: Station commander, right.
ET: Group captain, yeah.
DK: And was it him who told your –
ET: Yes.
DK: The three pilot off?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Well that’s for the recording then, Group Captain Powell [laughs]. Ah there he is, there is he is.
ET: That’s him.
DK: Yeah.
ET: That’s exactly with his – yeah.
DK: Oh, so just for the recording here. It’s Group Captain Powell, briefing for Radan Recina [?]. And it looks like he’s got a fly swat there.
ET: That’s right. He always used that as a pointer [DK and ET laugh].
DK: He looks like he must have been a bit of a character. Oh wow.
ET: Quite a forceful –
DK: Forceful, I can imagine [?].
ET: Yeah.
DK: So there’s the Wellingtons –
ET: Probably [unclear], that’s him, yeah.
DK: You were flying.
ET: Yes, yeah.
DK: So this is all – the book itself is about the Tunis campaign then?
ET: What I can remember is when we got later [?], the power, the whole, the whole instruments used to shake and [laughs].
DK: [Unclear] my phone’s on. Sorry about that. So you got Noel Coward’s poem [?] there, ‘lie in the dark and listen.’
ET: Yes.
DK: Yeah, ah. So while you were in North Africa then and you’re bombing targets in Italy, were you, was your aircraft ever hit at all or, can you recall?
ET: Er, not really. Should they call it sometimes [?], few peppered.
DK: Right.
ET: But nothing direct.
DK: Nothing serious.
ET: Direct hit.
DK: So you never got attacked by German aircraft –
ET: No.
DK: At all?
ET: No.
DK: Right. So what did you, what sort of targets were you hitting there in –
ET: Mostly airfields.
DK: Mostly airfields.
ET: There, [papers shuffle] here you are –
DK: Right.
ET: I don’t have the – oh [unclear]. That’s how we got there.
DK: Right okay, so that’s, for the recording here, that’s your logbook.
ET: That’s my logbook, yeah.
DK: So –
ET: Number one.
DK: Your pilot then is Pearce.
ET: Yes.
DK: Sergeant Pearce, and you’re the navigator down on here.
ET: We’re all sergeants –
DK: You’re all sergeants, right.
ET: At the time. There was very few, very few commissioned there on the squadron.
DK: Right, so the whole crew was sergeants then?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, so from the logbook then, so you’ve gone from Portreath to Ra –
ET: Ras el Ma.
DK: El Ma. Ras el Ma to Blida.
ET: That’s right.
DK: Then Blida to Kairouan.
ET: Kairouan.
DK: And I’ll spell that for the recording. It’s K-A-I-R-O-U-A-N. And so your base was Maison Blanche?
ET: No the base was Kairouan.
DK: Kairouan was it?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Right okay.
ET: It looks as though someone must have taken an aeroplane or something up there.
DK: Oh right [something pings in background].
ET: And I don’t know how we came back but it –
DK: Right. So you’ve done operations then to Nissena [?] –
ET: Yeah.
DK: And that’s in a Wellington, 19th of June 1943. So Nissena [?] seems to be a regular target, hmm. So Nissena [?], Italian airfield, Syracuse.
ET: Syracuse, yeah.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Masala [?].
DK: So quite a number of – so you said you did thirty operations there in North Africa?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Hmm, the Nissena beaches I noticed [page turns]. So what were the, what were the briefings like in North Africa? Were you sort of in a tent and – what were the facilities like?
ET: Yes, was all under canvas, the whole thing. The food was corned beef –
DK: Yeah.
ET: For everything. In fact, I got an attack of jaundice –
DK: Oh right.
ET: Through that. I went into hospital and they gave me tinned fruit –
DK: Rivht.
ET: And I thought this was a most wonderful thing to, to get. In fact, there was a big American camp near us and they – we used to trade whiskey [DK laughs] for tinned fruit –
DK: Yeah, yeah.
ET: You know, that they had.
DK: [Tape moved] I’m not sure that that’s such a good spot now [laughs].
BT: No.
ET: Not now [laughs].
DK: Not now, no. Oh right.
ET: I suppose thank goodness for corned beef otherwise the [laughs] –
DK: So at, at the briefings then, presumably you’re sort of sat down and told what the target – were you told what the targets were?
ET: Told what the target is, yes.
DK: Right. So in North Africa, were they mostly military targets, airfields and –
ET: Yes.
DK: I noticed here you’ve got here [reading from logbook]: ‘30th of September 1943, ops. Port engine caught fire on takeoff [emphasis].’ Do you remember that?
ET: Not really [both laugh].
DK: Well it says you landed okay after twenty-five minutes.
ET: Yeah we always – obviously we’d have just gone –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Round and there –
DK: And landed again.
ET: And landed again.
DK: So then you’ve had, got several places in Italy then. I noticed you’ve got Pisa is one, ops to Pisa.
ET: Yes.
DK: Yeah [paper turns].
ET: I remember the vehicles [?], I remember we were on that night, bobbing and the beaches, you know, before the army got in.
DK: So that’s 142 Squadron then, and you’ve done two hundred and forty-two hours, fifteen minutes operations then.
ET: Is that the end?
DK: Yeah that’s the end there, yeah.
ET: Yeah [page turns].
DK: So you’ve, you’ve come back to the UK then, you’ve come back to England. What, where –
ET: I was an instructor then.
DK: Right [laughs].
ET: Or so – we didn’t have half the instrumentation that the UK aircraft had.
DK: Right.
ET: So it was like an idiot teaching an idiot really [laughing], until we got used to –
DK: Right. So you, you went onto training then did you? You were –
ET: Yes.
DK: Right.
ET: It, I did a year –
DK: Right.
ET: Mainly at a place called Barford St. John –
DK: Right.
ET: Which is not far from Oxfordshire. Oh it’s about three miles away from, what’s the name of the town [pause], starts with a B I think.
DK: Bedford?
BT: Bicester?
DK: Bicester?
BT: Bicester, yeah?
ET: B – well down that way, yeah.
DK: Right. And that was in Oxfordshire was it?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Right.
ET: And then the –
DK: So what, what aircraft were you flying doing the training there?
ET: Wellingtons.
DK: Wellingtons again, and that, you said they were better equipped than the ones you were flying in the Middle East?
ET: Yes [DK laughs]. There’s a thing in navigation called G [emphasis] –
DK: Yes.
ET: Which we didn’t have out there, you know. It was a wonderful aid, very accurate –
DK: Mm.
ET: But I had to learn [laughs], I had to learn that, you see, when I came back .
DK: So although you were training people, you yourself didn’t know –
ET: Well [laughs].
DK: Oh right.
ET: You know radio, you know, out there, about thirty-five miles was the range of our radio. You know –
DK: Mm.
ET: If you did want to call our base [laughs] –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You had to be within thirty-five miles of it.
DK: So not very far then?
ET: Not very far at all, no.
BT: Banbury, it was.
DK: Banbury.
ET: Banbury [emphasis] was the place –
BT: I just looked it up.
ET: Yeah sorry, Banbury, Banbury’s where – it was just outside Banbury. And anyway, at the end of the year they changed from Wellingtons to Mosquitos.
DK: Right, okay.
ET: So I just stayed there and did the course, met the pilot. He was a very good pilot. He, when he finished training in Canada they kept him on as an instructor.
DK: Right. So you’ve come – I slightly misread this earlier and I want – for the benefit of the tape, your initial training was at Number Six Air Observation School at Staverton.
ET: That’s right.
DK: And then you went to 21 OTU, Morteon-in-the-Marsh.
ET: That’s correct.
DK: Then [emphasis] to North Africa.
ET: For operational training –
DK: Then to North Africa –
ET: North Africa.
DK: Sorry I misread this, with 142 Squadron.
ET: Yes.
DK: Which we’ve just covered.
ET: That’s correct.
DK: So you’ve come back then and you did a year’s training –
ET: Yes.
DK: Instructing, and that was at 16 OTU, Upper Heyford [?].
ET: Yes, that was the main base –
DK: Main base.
ET: But as I say, I spent it all at Barford –
DK: Right okay.
ET: St. John.
DK: Right. So then in early 1945 then, you’re now converted onto the Mosquito?
ET: That’s right.
DK: Can you remember your pilot’s name on the Mosquito?
ET: Yeah, Green, Dave Green.
DK: Dave Green.
ET: We didn’t have a – he was married, the chap in the, well obviously [unclear] he met a girl out there and married her, and so we didn’t spend a lot of social time together at all.
DK: Right.
ET: He didn’t drink at al so l [laughs].
DK: Was that quite unusual in the Air Force then? [Laughs].
ET: Well a bit. But yeah he was a good chap.
DK: Right. And would he have been a pilot officer or –
ET: He was a flight lieutenant.
DK: Flight lieutenant, right. So that’s Flight Lieutenant –
ET: I expect –
DK: Dave Green
ET: If you, if you finished top of your course –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You were normally commissioned, the top. So as he did well, kept him on as an instructor, I suspect he was –
DK: And you say he was an Australian?
ET: No, no, he was English.
DK: English, right okay. So, and you’re in the Mosquitos then. What did you think of the Mosquito as a aircraft?
ET: Oh it was great [laughs], with so much speed.
DK: Mm.
ET: Amazing aircraft because to carry that load, to carry one four thousand pound bomb, was like a big oil tank, you know.
DK: Mm, yeah.
ET: Oil drum, for the business. And course we’d overload tanks on the wings as well, so she was pretty heavy.
DK: Yeah.
ET: But it was wonderful. We used to bomb at twenty-five thousand feet.
DK: Right.
ET: And when the bomb went of course you shot up about three [DK and ET laugh], three hundred feet.
DK: And this was at 571 Squadron?
ET: 571, yeah.
DK: And –
ET: It was very short lived – each squadron, they were created [emphasis], you know, and of course the war, the war finished –
DK: Right.
ET: And they disappeared again.
DK: Can you remember, can you remember where you were based with 571?
ET: Yes, Oakington.
DK: Oakington, right okay.
ET: Which is a big –
DK: Housing estate now [BT laughs].
ET: Oh is it?
DK: Yeah, afraid so. It’s all been knocked down.
ET: But did it, did have all these refugee, I don’t know what they were, refugee centres?
DK: It was for while, yes.
ET: Yeah.
DK: It was a refugee centre –
ET: Yeah.
DK: After the war.
ET: Oh but, but I haven’t mentioned that I – when the war finished, they asked for volunteers to ferry the aircraft back from Canada.
DK: Oh right.
ET: SO I volunteered for that. I got out to Canada, went out by boat, and they said ‘oh you’re not wireless trained’ [laughs].
DK: Mm.
ET: ‘So you can’t do that.’ So I ended up doing about thirty hours in Dakotas.
DK: Oh right [DK and ET laugh].
ET: And I was there for about three months, and came back in a BUAC [?] Liberator.
DK: Right.
ET: [Laughs] to Prestwick, I remember that.
DK: Just, just going back a little bit to your time in the Mosquitos.
ET: Yes.
DK: Can you remember how many operations you did on Mosquitos?
ET: Yes, I did twenty.
DK: Right, so that was thirty operations, Wellingtons in North Africa –
ET: Yes.
DK: And another twenty –
ET: When we were operating on the Mosquito, we had sort of two nights on and one night off.
DK: So what was your role with the Mosquito, because you weren’t really flying with the main Bomber force were you? Were you separate to them?
ET: Well, it was diversionary [emphasis] normally. We went to targets to make them think that the –
DK: Right.
ET: Main force was going there. You had your sneaky little – I went to Berlin thirteen times [laughs].
DK: Right. What was it like flying over Berlin?
ET: Well it’s quite, quite intense. The flak was, you know, they had these predictions, the marshal [?] –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Predicting –
DK: Predicting flak –
ET: You’re very happy if you saw it bursting a bit beneath you, you know, thinking ‘oh they haven’t got it right.’
DK: Mm.
ET: And they had these incredible searchlights, and a marshal would come on you, and then all the sleeves [?] [unclear]. It’s a really lovely feeling [laughs] being all lit up at night.
DK: So when that happened, what did your pilot do? Did he –
ET: He couldn’t do much at all really –
DK: Right.
ET: For that. Because with that height, you know, it would take a long way to –
DK: To get out the searchlight. So you’re, you’re being fired on all the time while you’re in the searchlights?
ET: Well, you might be or you might not, you know. It didn’t – we had a little indicator on the aircraft, a light it was, which was supposed to switch on if you were being attacked.
DK: Yeah. So you, did you fly out with a number of other Mosquitos?
ET: Yes.
DK: And could you see them at night, or –
ET: Well that’s the amazing thing is, there’s all these aircraft together –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You suddenly see, if another one gets lit up by the searchlights you think, ‘I didn’t realise he was there,’ you know.
DK: Mm.
ET: You were like a loose formation I think, you weren’t in flying formation.
DK: Right, so you never saw other aircraft then?
ET: Not very often.
DK: So your role was then, the main force would go off to one target and you’d attack somewhere else to, to draw –
ET: Yes.
DK: Their defences there –
ET: Yes.
DK: Presumably.
ET: Of course, we had the Pathfinders.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Who would – now this, well a secret as it was at the time, called Oboe.
DK: Mhm.
ET: And they used to drop on that, and this thing was amazing. Two different aircraft flares go down, you go down one on top of the other. You’d think it was out of one aircraft, you know.
DK: Right.
ET: This was getting towards the end and –
DK: So when you saw these two flares go down, what was your, what did you have to do then?
ET: Well, I’d, it would tell you, or, if it was some apart [?] it would tell you which one to go for. Well, I had to get down into the bomb bay, and, well about ten, you had a ten minute run in when you had to stay rock steady, you know, and I had to get down into the front and set up the bomb, bomb site.
DK: Right.
ET: ‘Cause one night, an incident was that I got down there and I wasn’t making sense about it to my pilot, and he was very quick at knocking my oxygen off [laughs].
DK: Oh.
ET: And he quickly catched on what was wrong and put the switch –
DK: Right.
ET: Back on.
DK: So he switched the oxygen off then, right.
ET: Yeah just getting, getting down into the – I had a harness [?] on, you know –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Just to –
DK: So, so although you were navigating then, on the Mosquitos you actually acted as a bomb aimer as well then did you?
ET: Yes, I did both jobs.
DK: Right.
ET: Yes, I did a small bombing course with a Mosquito conversion. We did a course on –
DK: Right.
ET: With Oxfords [emphasis] it was this time, which was a training aircraft.
DK: Mm.
ET: Used to bomb in the Wash.
DK: Mm.
ET: You know, the target.
DK: Yeah.
ET: The Wash.
DK: Yeah, so, so you said you went to Berlin thirteen –
ET: I think it was about thirteen –
DK: Thirteen times.
ET: Times if you –
DK: So for the recording, I’m looking at the logbook again so, so 1st of March 1945, Mosquito. You’ve gone from ops to Erfurt, E-R-F-U-R-T.
ET: Erfurt, yeah.
DK: So you’ve got one four thousand pound bomb.
ET: That’s a bomb we carried, just one.
DK: And then 3rd of March forty-five, Wurzburg, one four thousand pound bomb again.
ET: Yeah.
DK: And then it says here Berlin on the 5th of March, the 7th of March, 9th of March, 11th of March, 13th of March. So every other day there for about a week, you were going to Berlin.
ET: Yeah.
DK: So each time it’s one four thousand pound bomb. So those trips to Berlin, can you recall, were those diversional then, or part of a, a main attack on Berlin?
ET: I, I don’t think it was a main attack because we didn’t see other aeroplanes there really.
DK: Right, so the main force has gone off somewhere else?
ET: It’s more a nuisance, you know, morale type thing I think –
DK: Right.
ET: On that.
DK: So you’re also going out there then to, not as diversions as such but to just keep the defences alert?
ET: Keep it going, yeah.
DK: So then 15th of March, Erfurt again [page turns]. [Laughs], and then here 21st of March, Berlin, 23rd of March, Berlin and the 24th of March, Berlin [page turns]. Think the people in Berlin must have got a bit fed up of you turning up [all laugh]. So your, and it says here, so the same pilot, Flight Lieutenant –
ET: Yes.
DK: Is it, was it Dave Green? Dave, Dave Green, was it? Green?
ET: Dave Green, yeah.
DK: Dave Green. And just reading for the recording here –
ET: Yes.
DK: So 4th of April, Magdeburg, and then 8th of April, Berlin, 10th of April, Berlin, 12th of April, Berlin [BT laughs], 13th of April, I’ll spell this out for the recording. It’s S-T-R-A-L-S-U-N-I, or S-U-N-D, Stralsund I think it is. 17th of April, Berlin, 20th of April, Berlin again, 23rd of April, Flensburg [page turns]. So the end must be coming to an end here then. And finally, 25th of April, a power station at Munich.
ET: That’s right, that was the last one.
DK: Mm.
ET: It, I had a son out there [laughs].
DK: Right.
ET: He worked with the, what’s it called, you know, the –
BT: Eurofighter.
ET: Eurofighter.
DK: Oh right, oh okay.
BT: After the war you want to add [DK and BT laugh].
ET: After the war, oh yes.
DK: Yes.
ET: But I said, ‘I probably passed this part,’ I said, ‘I probably bombed [emphasis] that part’ [all laugh].
BT: Yeah.
DK: So years later, your son was working on the Eurofighter in Europe?
ET: He was in the Eurofighter, yeah.
DK: So can I, if I just add those up [page turns]. Where are we, that’s Berlin. One, two, three, four, five [page turns], six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Yes as you say, thirteen.
ET: That was –
DK: So out of those twenty operations in Mosquitos, thirteen of them were to Berlin.
ET: Yeah.
DK: And your trips to Berlin, it’s obviously quite a long way. I mean, are you fired on all the way or is it mostly quite dark and quiet?
ET: Bits and pieces.
DK: Mm.
ET: Sometimes flak would come up, you know, you could see it at – you just hoped they hadn’t predicted you, your height.
DK: Hmm. But in a Mosquito you’re a lot higher than another aircraft.
ET: Twenty-five.
DK: Mm, twenty-five thousand feet.
ET: We were, and sometimes we used to get to thirty coming back, you know.
DK: And can you recall, were you ever attacked by German aircraft at all?
ET: Not that I know of.
DK: No.
ET: No.
DK: So as you’re, as you’re approaching the target then, you’ve got down into the –
ET: I get down into the, the bomb bay –
DK: So –
ET: And set up the wind and that –
DK: Yeah.
ET: On the – in fact, so that we could keep together more of the navigation, you’re trying to navigation –
DK: Yeah, yeah.
ET: The leading aircraft might pass back the wind, so as we’re all using the same wind to, to part [?] with our drift and that –
DK: Right.
ET: So as we’d keep –
DK: ‘Cause presumably wind change can really affect your navigation?
ET: Oh yeah, well effects your drift and everything you see, so if you get different winds you could be offsetting differently.
DK: Right, what was it like, if I can ask – you’d obviously have a briefing beforehand –
ET: Yes.
DK: And, and this is in the building at Oakham. What were your feelings like when you saw what your target was going to be?
ET: Well you think –
DK: Presumably they have curtains and they put it back and –
ET: Well they tell you where it is. Oh, the routine was, you take the aircraft up for an air test –
DK: Right.
ET: Up there about fifteen minutes, see it’s alright in the morning, and then, this being the morning, then the afternoon you would go to briefing. Told you where it was, you had to make charts up, you know –
DK: What was your thoughts when you saw Berlin again? Were you –
ET: [Laughs] yeah, ‘can’t you find somewhere else to’ –
DK: So you now know the target, so you’re now doing your charts presumably as the navigator?
ET: Yeah.
DK: So you’re, you’re told the winds and –
ET: Got to put a tracking of where we’re going and that, all these sort of things. Oh yeah, you get briefed by the MET officer of the winds and the weather.
DK: Mhm.
ET: And after that, you had a meal, and then you went back. The worst thing I found was you went back to your billet and then you’d devour [?] away these hours –
DK: Right.
ET: Until, ‘cause it’s always at night of course, you know, until you’re ready for takeoff.
DK: So it came as a bit of a relief then, when you got to the aircraft to takeoff?
ET: Oh yeah, once you get going, you’re too busy really to think about anything else, provided you didn’t swing. It was quite a nasty aircraft to swing in on takeoff –
DK: Mm.
ET: Mosquito, you know, the propellers going the same direction –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Until they got the tail up for a bit of –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Control.
DK: And your pilot then, Dave Green, was he a good pilot?
ET: Yes [emphasis]. But just as I say, he was a quiet chap so I didn’t really see much of him –
DK: Right.
ET: Apart from work which, which was fine [laughs].
DK: But did you – I’m presuming you’d have to work well [emphasis] together then.
ET: Oh yes.
DK: So you worked well together?
ET: Yeah.
DK: We’ve covered what you did over the targets, so you’ve come back after the operation and your landing. How did you feel then as you got back?
ET: Relieved once you got down but of course you’re coming back, you’re all coming back together aren’t you? In these airfield, the seconds [?] they overlapped.
DK: Yeah.
ET: So it was a bit dodgy at times. We landed once at the wrong airport [laughs].
DK: Really?
ET: You know, the wrong way, direction was the same.
DK: Yeah.
ET: We ended up at Wyton [laughs].
DK: Right.
ET: Anyway, they just briefed us and, and that was it. I think we took off in the morning to get back to base [DK and ET laugh].
DK: So you, once you’ve landed then, what’s the procedures then?
ET: Oh you go for a briefing.
DK: Right, a debriefing [emphasis].
ET: De –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Debriefing.
DK: And, and who would take that?
ET: Intelligence.
DK: Mm.
ET: Officers.
DK: Mm, and what sort of questions did they ask?
ET: Did you hit the target, did you think you hit the target?
DK: Right.
ET: We used to take a, a film [emphasis]. Some were better than others, you know –
DK: Mm.
ET: Of the target area and when it happened.
DK: So a photo would be taken when you –
ET: A photo when you pressed the plunger for, to release the bomb a photograph would be taken –
DK: Oh right.
ET: A little later.
DK: Right. So you’ve got back then and you’ve got feelings of relief. What happened then, you just went to bed?
ET: No.
DK: Ah.
ET: Went for a meal.
DK: Right, okay [DK and ET laugh].
ET: And a beer.
DK: Mm.
ET: And a few beers [DK laughs], otherwise I never slept really, you know.
DK: Right.
ET: It’s all night [?], but oh, it was a relief [emphasis] –
DK: Mm.
ET: Really. I mean we were very lucky in the Mosquito, we didn’t have near the number of losses –
DK: Mm.
ET: That the – the loss that I saw, well, the loss that I saw was at – one aircraft completed [?], he was up on his air test and of course he came and tried to beat up the, what we called the flight hock [?] [emphasis], you know, where our ground crew were.
DK: Yep.
ET: And these, these overload tanks in the wing. He hit a tree and knocked one tank off, and the aircraft just [unclear].
DK: Cartwheeled.
ET: I watched this –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Just rolling [emphasis].
DK: Yeah.
ET: And it went straight in the front of the, the sick quarters.
DK: Mm.
ET: That was a complete waste of lives. Another accident we had was at the – one chap lost an engine and he came roaring in far too fast. Oh no sorry, he spun [emphasis] in and of course, they were killed. It happened a second time to another person, and he thought ‘I’m not going to stall’ [laughs], so he came rolling in too fast and [taps four times] wasn’t able to stop at the far end. And then the disciplinary thing at Sheffield, so they sent them to Sheffield. [Unclear] fly –
DK: Right.
ET: But just for discipline [laughs].
DK: But at least he survived that one.
ET: He survived that one, yeah.
DK: But got into trouble for it, yeah. Okay that’s, that’s great. Just ask you, after all these years how do you look back at your time in, in Bomber Command? How do you look back on that?
ET: I don’t really look back on it all that much nowadays.
DK: Mm.
ET: I think – well I was occupied, of course seeing an Air Force and getting in transport we had the Berlin Airlift –
DK: Right.
ET: For a year.
DK: So you got involved with the Berlin Airlift then did you?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, so –
ET: I did three hundred lifts on that.
DK: Oh right. So you’ve, let, you’ve – so just reading here, that’s three hundred and two lifts –
ET: Yeah.
DK: To Berlin.
ET: That took a year.
DK: And, and what aircraft were you flying?
ET: York.
DK: Right, the Avro York. So what, what was Berlin like when you, you went there after the war?
ET: Oh they were very, very grateful that we’re keeping away from the Russians I think was a big thing, you know, there.
DK: Mm. ‘Cause it’s, it’s kind of strange ‘cause one moment you’re dropping bombs [BT laughs] and then the next –
ET: Three years later, yeah.
DK: You’re giving them food.
ET: That’s right. It’s amazing when people have nothing, you know. If anybody had a bar of soap or something like that –
DK: Mm.
ET: It was like a gold [emphasis] to them, you know.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Things like that.
DK: So what kind of stuff were you carrying in the Avro Yorks then?
ET: Oh you name it, everything.
DK: Food and –
ET: There was coal.
DK: Right.
ET: Actually the aircraft – I forget they were a lot heavier when they finished, it was all this coal dust.
DK: Mm.
ET: They erm, hay for horses, all the natural stuff that people eat.
DK: Right.
ET: Anything like that.
DK: So flying into Berlin then, did you have to stick to certain routes or –
ET: Yes –
DK: ‘Cause you’re flying over –
ET: The Northern – we used to go up north and then go down from a northern corridor, and come back at a centre corridor.
DK: Right.
ET: ‘Cause basically, Onsturfrun [?]
DK: So you went to Onsturfrun Gateaux [?].
ET: Onsturfrun [?] to Gateaux [?] yeah, yeah that’s right.
DK: Right.
ET: And –
DK: So they’re just continuous flights then, going –
ET: Yeah.
DK: In the northern route and coming out the southern route.
ET: Oh it was a shambles in this case. We had lots of different speed aircraft, you know. There was, there was Yorks, there was the Dakotas –
DK: Mm.
ET: Valettas, and what was happening, supposed to go off on waves but one wave was [laughs] overtaking the other wave, you know –
DK: Right.
ET: And things like that. It’s amazing there weren’t more accidents than there were, but after they got it settled it worked very well. You just went along, you got in. If you missed, if you couldn’t get in you came straight back, you didn’t, you couldn’t go round again, you know –
DK: Right.
ET: To Gateaux [?]I mean.
DK: So you, you had to land first time?
ET: You had to land, that’s right.
DK: Yeah.
ET: But it worked very well. And we went down to two lifts. Initially we had to do three lifts. It was a tremendously long day ‘cause you had to wait for the aircraft to get ready and complete your three lifts.
DK: Mm.
ET: That was it, but they put it down to two [emphasis] so we did a night shift or a day –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Day shift. It was well organised towards the end.
DK: Was it easier for you as a navigator, doing that then, because they –
ET: Oh I didn’t do very – there wasn’t very much navigation at all.
DK: Right.
ET: For – you just, it was a corridor, you know –
DK: Right.
ET: And took me an hour coming back ‘cause you flew over quite a bit of Russian territory coming in.
DK: Mm.
ET: The only, the odd fighter used to come and have a look at you [laughs]. Think ‘I hope you go away again,’ you know.
DK: Oh right [ET laughs]. So after that then, you’ve remained with transport and –
ET: Yes.
DK: Yeah. Just looking, so you were in Valettas, Varsitys, the Beverlys?
ET: Yes.
DK: So that was, you went out to Aden then, and –
ET: Yes.
DK: And Iran? Yes.
ET: Yeah, did two years in Aden.
DK: Was that during the conflict out there or –
ET: There, there was a bit of conflict –
DK: Yeah.
ET: But [coughs] there was a lot of trouble in – what do you call that country?
DK: Yemen?
ET: Yemen.
DK: Yemen, yeah and Aden, Aden is Yemen I think, isn’t it? Oman?
ET: There’s another one I think, further east.
DK: Right. So, so what were you doing there? Was it supplying –
ET: Oh just loads of [?] – it was wonderful, a place called Macierz [?] –
DK: Mm.
ET: Which was about eight thousand feet high, and from Aden was very steamy, you know [laughs], and you get up there, your stockings fall down because it’s so dry up there.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Byt they’ve got stuff in there you didn’t know if you could get before, you know.
DK: No.
ET: Like quite big trucks and that type of thing.
DK: So what was, what was the Beverley [emphasis] like as an aircraft then? They’re quite big, quite bulky things aren’t they?
ET: Oh dear [DK laughs]. It was slow [emphasis], it was noisy [emphasis]. In fact the navigator’s table used to be on an angle, you had to, you had to [tapping] flatten it and you had to [tapping], they tried to [?] bounce on it, you know [DK laughs]. And that had a fixed undercarriage, and if you got into icy conditions, these legs used to ice up which meant you even go slower [emphasis] than [DK and ET laugh]. But it had this great capability of short landing in –
DK: Yeah.
ET: In getting into these airfields, you know.
DK: So then you’ve gone onto the Britannia.
ET: That’s right.
DK: So what, what was the Britannia like?
ET: Oh it was lovely.
DK: Yeah
ET: Yeah, I did five years on.
DK: And what was that, mostly trooping flights was it? So whereabouts did you use to go to?
ET: All over the place [coughs]. Did a lot to Norway because the commander was a not [?] – always went there from January to March –
DK: Mm.
ET: They go for their winter training –
DK: Right.
ET: So we’d lots of flights there and back. That was an adventure [?]. We had a lot of flights out to Woomera –
DK: Right.
ET: You know, the atomic –
DK: Oh right, the atomic bomb tests.
ET: It was a little box.
DK: Oh.
ET: Didn’t know what it was [DK and ET laugh]. But we used to go down to Adelaide.
DK: Probably best not to ask [all laugh].
ET: Well, quite a lot.
DK: Yeah.
ET: When all these tests were going on.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And just [coughs] –
DK: You, you didn’t witness any of the tests then did you?
ET: Oh no.
DK: No, no.
ET: We used to use an Edinburgh field recorder, it was a RAAF base. That went on quite a lot. We did trips to Singapore and back –
DK: Mhm.
ET: But when it first started, you know, there was no slipping [emphasis] crews –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You just had a – everyday it took five [emphasis] days to get to Singapore, you had two days off there and five days to come back. And I think what a waste of aircraft it was really [DK laughs]. I suppose we had so many we didn’t bother. That was on the Yorks [emphasis] then.
DK: Yeah [ET laughs]. So finally you’ve become ATS navigator instructor.
ET: That was on Belfasts.
DK: So you’re, you’ve – and then 53 Squadron on the Belfasts?
ET: That’s right.
DK: So, so what was the Belfast like as an aircraft?
ET: Oh it was nice, nice. Well lovely, very palatial for the crew.
DK: Mm.
ET: Just the pilots could get in from the outside of the aircraft into the seat, you know, being a big aircraft –
DK: Right.
ET: It was very palatial for the crew.
DK: So what sort of loads would you have on the Belfasts?
ET: All sorts, helicopters.
DK: Yeah?
ET: Tanks, just stuff like that.
BT: You took the Concord engines didn’t you as well? Concord engines.
ET: Oh I had a big, yeah. Oh my big flight was I went – we carried an engine for Concord once. It went on a world tour.
DK: Oh right.
ET: Well, went to Far East sales pitch. It never needed the engine [laughs].
DK: Right, so it was just a spare –
ET: But it was a few pictures somewhere of that. Is it in there [shuffling].
BT: Yeah that’s the one, that’s the Concord.
DK: Ah.
ET: There’s one with the tours [?] on.
BT: I’ll have a look [ET laughs].
DK: That’s the original prototype isn’t it?
ET: Yeah.
DK: DBSST.
ET: That’s right.
BT: Oh wow.
DK: Okay, so I’ll just finish this off. So you retired in 1978 as a squadron leader.
ET: That’s right.
DK: Ah.
ET: They eventually decided to promote me after [laughs] –
DK: So they promoted you just before you retired?
ET: Yes.
DK: Ah [laughs]. Okay, well I’ll stop that there because I’m conscious of you talking for a whole hour there, but thanks very much for that. I’ll switch that off now.
ET: Well –
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ATaylorEC170928
PTaylorEC1701
Title
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Interview with Eric Taylor
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:54:10 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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David Kavanagh
Date
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2017-09-28
Description
An account of the resource
Squadron Leader Eric Taylor joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and served as a navigator. He served in North Africa and completed a tour of operations against targets in Italy before becoming an instructor in England. He describes the differences in instrumentation between the North African and English aircraft, such as the Gee navigational aid. He flew nuisance and diversion operations in Mosquitos over places such as Wurzburg, Erfurt and Berlin thirteen times. He was involved in the Berlin Airlift and then spent a couple of years serving in Aden and the Middle East, and remained in the Air Force until 1978 when he retired as a squadron leader.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Tunisia
England--Cambridgeshire
Algeria--Blida
Algeria--Râs el Ma
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Erfurt
Germany--Würzburg
Tunisia--Qayrawān
North Africa
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1945
142 Squadron
16 OTU
571 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
civil defence
crewing up
Gee
Home Guard
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Oakington
RAF Upper Heyford
training
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/PNoyeR1501.2.jpg
2653db561dc3c7ee26ea68bcaca8b1ef
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/310/3467/ANoyeR151022.1.mp3
be6dc302b639364c57f551e47bc43bba
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Noye, Rupert
Rupert Newstead Noye
Rupert N Noye
Rupert Noye
R N Noye
R Noye
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history with Rupert Newstead Noye DFC (1923 -2021, 1332761 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Noye, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RN: My name is Rupert Noye. I was born in February 1923. When the war started I was, er, sixteen and in 1940, when Churchill formed the LDV, I volunteered for that. We were renamed later Home Guard and it came in useful when I eventually went into the Air Force because we had learned a lot of rifle drill, marching, things like that. And in, after just a few days after my eighteenth birthday I volunteered for the Air Force as a wireless operator air gunner. I was accepted in April ‘41 but then put on deferred service and eventually called up in September ‘41 and, er, went to Blackpool on a s— a radio course, failed it miserably and re-mustered to air gunner. We were posted to Hendon then and at Hendon for about six months and then I was posted onto Scotland to take the gunnery course. After gunnery course we did OTU on Whitleys at Abingdon. When that course was finished we were posted to St [unclear] attached to Coastal Command, where we were doing sweeps over the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, and one day we did actually see a submarine and attacked it but we never knew of any definite result. After that we were posted on to Wellingtons, went to Harwell to convert from Whitleys, and we were then to posted 166 Squadron at Kirmington and our pilot disappeared one day and we had another pilot, an Australian, starting his second tour. He was very, very good and, er, we finished our first tour at Kirmington when they converted to Lancasters in September ‘43 and I was posted to Operational Training Unit as an instructor. I was recalled in April ’44 to 12 Squadron at Wickenby to replace a rear gunner who had been injured and they, the crew, had already volunteered to join the Pathfinder Force so I went along with them. We went to Upwood and started operating with Pathfinder Force. You had to do so many marker trips before you got your Pathfinder badge and, er, but due to an incident of — we, the crew was broken up. I stayed at Upwood as a spare gunner and during that time I flew with quite a few different pilots and eventually finished up, er, in about September ‘44 with, er, Tony Hiscock. He was what we called a blind marker. He bombed on radar or dropped the flares on radar and we did quite a few, well we did about nineteen trips together, and the last one was over Hamburg, a big daylight raid just before the end of the — 31st March actually, 1945. After that we were all made redundant, went to various stations and different jobs and I volunteered to stay in the Air Force for another three years and eventually was posted back to Upwood on 148 squadron, again on Lancasters, and I stayed there until I was demobbed in 1949. That’s about it. I was very lucky during my time in Bomber Command. I did three tours of ops and was only once was attacked by a fighter. That was on the 5th of January 1945. We were coming back from Hanover and I saw [bell rings] a fighter, a single engine fighter, approaching from starboard side. I told the skipper and he started to corkscrew but the aircraft did fire at us and we were damaged in the tailplane and the wing. The damage to the wing disabled my turret completely because of the hydraulics were damaged and the — but there was no real serious damage. We got back to base quite happily but we did lose about three hundred-odd gallons of petrol. Then in March ‘45 I was again rather lucky and I was awarded the DFC and Tony Hiscock, the pilot I flew with, he was awarded a bar to his and, er, he was a very good pilot and we got on very well together as a crew, which was one of the biggest things you needed, to be a happy crew. I think that’s about enough. When you flew with Bomber Command you were in a crew and the crew — you were trained as crew and you got, generally speaking, you got on very well together and at times, er, when me as a rear gunner would have given instructions to the pilot, having seen possibly an enemy aircraft, instruct the pilot to dive or corkscrew and he would do that without any hesitatation, although I must say we were — that I was lucky in my time that we didn’t have many times when that was necessary but the crew, the crewing up system was a bit haphazard. When you reported to OTU you were all at one time, a varying number of pilots, wireless operators, navigators, bomb aimers and gunners were put in a big hangar or big room and told to crew up, which seemed very haphazard, but the system seemed to work. Later on, if you went on heavies as a crew, you went to a Heavy, Heavy Conversion Unit and got a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer and, er, I never had that because as I joined from a place of rest to a place as a rear gunner. I think that’s about it. We got up to about to, er, on our training and we went into these Defiants and the — firstly you couldn’t, not allowed to work the turret until the pilot says so, and so he said, ‘OK.’ So, I turned the turret round and you have to raise the guns first, turn round and looked at the tailplane and there’s this little tiny tailplane behind you and you think, ‘That’s all that’s holding us up.’ [slight laugh] But it wasn’t, we had wings built the right way round and a good engine [slight laugh] but it was funny really because I mean that was the first time the vast majority of us had ever flown when we were on training because, I mean, you didn’t fly much in those days unless you paid five bob ride with Jack Cobham when he came round to a local airfield and you could go and have a short trip for five bob or seven and six or something. Alan Cobham that was. He started off doing refuelling in mid-air didn’t he, er, down in Dorset? But funny ‘cause when we were at Blackpool we went to the Pleasure Gardens there had they had what they used to call in those days the scenic railway and got on this thing and then down in almost vertical swoops and up the other side. And I think that was designed to put you off flying. [laugh]
MJ: Did it?
RN: It didn’t. No, Not really. Not when you got on a bit on bigger aircraft with the rest of the crew, you were alight, you were quite happy because you couldn’t do much with a Whitley [slight laugh]. It was quite good fun.
MJ: People don’t realise it was good fun.
RN: Well, it was as you steadily, as you, after you crewed up and got steadily got to know a bit more about the rest of the crew because, er, that pilot we lost when we got on the squadron because I think he went LMF. And — but he was married and had a young daughter. He was a Welshman and later on the wireless operator went LMF. There must have been something wrong with us because the navigator and the bomb aimer and myself finished the tour eventually on, on Wellingtons. But we had a nice picture of the Queen, didn’t we, for our 60th wedding anniversary? And I must get a frame for that. Put it up. But it’s a nice picture.
MJ: That’s the point. It’s — that’s how it works. That’s how you remember things.
RN: On Pathfinders, um, they were all volunteers from various squadrons but we used to have talks on the squadrons from, er, Hamish Mahaddie who was one of Don Bennett’s leading men and he used to come round trying to talk people into joining PFF and, um, he must have been very successful because they were never short of volunteers.
MJ: Did — what sort of training did you have to do for that?
RN: Well, when we went to PFF you went to Warboys because Warboys was the Navigation Training Unit for Pathfinders and you went there and you did so much, about a week or ten days’ course there, training, mainly training for navigators and then you were sent to the squadron and did the ops and marking as the time came [background noises]. You didn’t mark straight away because you were, weren’t considered experienced enough or trained up to the, the standard that they wanted.
MJ: Did you have to go with another crew then?
RN: No, you had instructor pilots that went with you mainly but, of course, all the navigators’ logs were sort of checked by the navigation officers after you came back from every trip whether it was training or an actual operation. [background noises throughout sentence]
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Rupert Noye DFC for his recording on the date of — I forget what it is now, 26th? 27th, ah —
RN: 31st is Saturday.
MJ: I’ve got — I’ll see this is on and stays on. 27th of October 2015. Once again, I thank you again and even though I got the date wrong. Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ANoyeR151022
Title
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Interview with Rupert Noye
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:12:40 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Date
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2015-10-22
Description
An account of the resource
Rupert Noye completed two tours of operations as a rear gunner with 166 and 156 Squadrons.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
12 Squadron
148 Squadron
156 Squadron
166 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
civil defence
crewing up
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Home Guard
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Abingdon
RAF Harwell
RAF Hendon
RAF Kirmington
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
submarine
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/276/3429/AHutsonB171030.2.mp3
2ac848ab085e8dc708490c52520aca2e
Dublin Core
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Title
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Hutson, Brian
Brian Hutson
B Hutson
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Brian Hutson (b. 1935, 22887820 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-30
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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Hutson, B
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HD: Right, I’m Hugh Donnelly for the International Bomber Command Centre, interviewing Mr Brian Hutson at his home in [redacted] Waltham. The date is the 30th of October 2017 and present at the interview is a Mr Barry Wallace who is also with the International Bomber Command Centre.
BH: Hi folks, you must bear in mind that I was only a boy at the time. I was born in 1935 and war started in ‘39 so I was only about four and a half years old when it started. But I can remember being out, staying outside the house and waiting for eleven o’clock for the Prime Minister to announce that the war had started. What my parents must have thought then: we had three children and they must have looked at us in wonderment, see what was going to happen. We as children, of course, soon as the war started we were, there was Germans and English, and we had made our own guns and bayonets and so on, to play Germans and English with our, the rest of our pals. I used to go with my father, when he was working on the airfield, helping to carry bricks and rubble to make the runways, et cetera and it was interesting to see the airfield develop and I can remember taking out air raid shelters around the village and so on, with the horse and carts and delivering these air raid shelters to the houses, which, looking back, it must have been quite a big effort on their part. When the airfield became operational, we as children would lie in bed [clearing throat] and would count the aeroplanes going out and then would count them coming back again. At that time we had two families living in a two bedroomed cottage, so space was not very available. So we had to sleep in the air raid shelter, four of us children, two at the top and two at the bottom, you know, and then we thought we were safe in there, but how safe we were we don’t know, and then the rest of the people were spread around the two bedroomed cottage. Night time you could hear the planes going out as I said, and you had to have, all the lights had to be out, curtains drawn, not a speck of light and the warden used to come round shouting, ‘Lights Out!’ at a certain time and then he would go right round the village, searching round the village and seeing, seeing if he could see any light. That was a worrying time. As far as I can recall, when the planes was coming back in, as far as I remember there was a red light on a hill, on a house on top of the hill, and that was the only marker there was for the planes that was situated at the end of the runway, and that was the only marker the planes had as far as I can remember. I, when I left school at the evening, I would call at my auntie’s house and she would save me the crust from the end of the loaf and she’d spread home made jam on it - that was delicious. And then I would go to the blacksmith shop and get warm, by the fire, by his fire and at the back of the shop there was a pan with a Lancaster bomber on it and we were able to stand at the back of the plane and watch the airmen getting it ready for the night-time raid. In those days we only had short trousers so when the plane tested the engines the grit from the pan would cut into your legs. Eventually there was, they had balloons, erected out on the shore, I believe they were on, out like Humberston, about that places, and one day one came over, must have been a storm in the night or something, and it came down not far from us, and we as children, being children, managed to cut some of it up and we made kites, and to fly in the sky, but that was a no-no, and my father panicked, and he always used to get up about five o’clock in the morning and he lit the fire and put this barrage balloon on the fire, this barrage balloon material, on the fire, which was like putting petrol on the fire really and it just set fire to the chimney stack, and the soot and everything, and the smoke and this was at lights out as well, five o’clock in the morning, and the soot was coming out the chimney and the flames was coming next and massive, massive big panic going on, you know. [Throat clear] Anyway, that’s how that, and he tried to get rid of the evidence, but he didn’t do it in a very nice way really, or the sensible way. And then of course along came the Home Guard. Well, if you watch “Dad’s Army” today that’s just how it was, just how it was, perfect, they couldn’t have done it better. And my father, [throat clear] when they were on exercises in the, at Grainsby Park, about five mile away, he used to cycle there, the others used to go on the lorry but my father used to cycle there, and then at four o’clock the war had to end, because me father had to cycle back to milk the cows. [Laugh] Oh we had to laugh. He did, and that was the end of the war until he returned back again about six o’clock at night, and then we used to watch the Home Guard practicing drilling, shooting, throwing hand grenades, on a Sunday morning, and that was interesting. And then also, there was an old ambulance there, in the implement shed, the old, what did they call it, Blue Cross or something, anyway this ambulance, we used to play in there, we made it our den. Also remember there was, all the driver had a little tiny slit to look through, about nine inches by two inches, that’s all he had to look through to, driving. We used to wonder how on earth he saw where he was going really. And then eventually along came the KOYLIs, the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. They were based on, opposite the Public House now, which is now Holton Mount. I remember the big shelters there, the big billets there, the wooden ones, they had a big stove in the middle, big round stove in the middle, and they were in there and we used to watch them practicing bayonet practice and there was sacks on stakes, stuffed with straw, and they was charging, all “grrr”, and charge, and stick the bayonets in the sack, you know, and practice. It was frightening really, for children, but we never used to watch it. And then just by us there was a searchlight, on the brow of a hill, just behind where the red light were, where the planes used to come over, and just below there was a big searchlight and it used to swing round, had a swivel chair and they could swing round looking for, looking for planes in the sky - the enemy in the sky - and that was manned by soldiers. And then I used to go to visit soldiers, bearing in mind I’d only be about five or six, seven, and they used to get me on this swivel chair and whizz me round and round and round, until I, when I got off I was dizzy, you know. Of course they were only young children, only young kids then, eighteen, nineteen, and they used to be laughing their heads off, cause I went dizzy, my legs had gone, you know, and then they used to give me, the NAAFI wagon used to come round and they used to give me a cup of tea and a biscuit, I think that’s why I went really, and that was that, you know. But then one night, one night my father worked on the farm and they were harvesting, we were playing in the farmyard, you know, and the soldier, it was a lovely summer’s night, and the soldier came running across the field, I can see him now, coming, and he was: ‘Get down, get down, get down!’, and there was an enemy airplane had come under the radar, about two hundred yards, about two hundred foot up in the air, and you could see these tracer bullets going, firing the plane, and we had to hide in the barn, you know, as children, get in undercover until it we got the all clear, and yeah, that was a frightener, that was a lovely summer’s evening and he came under the radar. I think they shot him down in the end like, but. That was something I shall always remember, seeing this soldier, he must have been brave, to walk across, you know, run across, he had about two hundred yards to run across this open field, he did, and the enemy plane and then also I can remember there was two barriers, one was placed just around what they called Clay Lane corner out at Holton le Clay, one was there and the other one was the other side the village prior to the runway coming in and they would, obviously they would stop traffic when planes was coming down. I remember that and I remember a big convoy of bren gun carriers coming through, one day, must have been about fifty, sixty bren gun carriers coming through, and it, yeah, they were coming through. Now they was all interesting. And bombing raids, we used to listen to the bombing raids in Hull and Grimsby, and then one night, one night there was this big raid on and they tried to bomb the Grimsby to Louth railway line, and they missed by about fifty yards, the plane must, must have been coming straight down, it missed by about fifty yards or so. Bombs were dropped, there was one at New Waltham, one at North Thoresby and I remember that night my mother was hanging her coat up on a hanger, on the door, and boom! It blew her right across the air raid shelter, you know. Luckily she didn’t get too hurt like, but the blast was, it was that close. That was close. It was, and then we actually moved then from where, from that cottage, to about five miles down the road near to the old to the station at Holton le Clay, on the old Chetney rail station and so we moved away from that really, but then, coming on to that, towards the end of the war we used to, the prisoners used to come. We used to have three prisoners come, to work on the farm, and they would, it was hard work and they would come with maybe two cheese sandwiches or something and my mother used to have tea and sugar and milk to make them a cup of tea at break times, and bearing in mind they were only young nineteen year olds, and we got, we got plenty of food then, unofficially I suppose, off you know the farm, potatoes and turnips and eggs and things like this and my mother used to bring them, ask them in, we used to sit round the table she used to say ‘they’re all somebody’s children’, you know what I mean. They were only eighteen nineteen and yeah, and they used to work really, really hard, but course they knew they got well tret so, they used to come on the bus and drop so many off at each farm and when we used to have same three drop off, they knew they was on a good thing, you know. [Laugh] We used to look after them. And then of course there was the end of the war and I remember that, my uncle, he was a prisoner of war, he got captured in Crete, when Crete fell, so he was a prisoner of war with the Germans for about five years and he came home and you know, it was the best thing he thought he’d done, getting caught like. He was out of it, but anyway the Germans apparently looked after him really well, so it works both ways, don’t it. The airfield closed down, we managed to get to that, to a hangar. Oh yeah, the existing hangar what’s there now, when we became teenagers then, a few years later, it all closed down but that one hangar, what’s standing now, we used to just, we could get the door open about two foot and sneak in, there used to be about thirty of us in there on Sunday afternoon playing football, massive big undercover pitch, you know, now that was, that was good. But as I say that’s all I can remember really, ‘cause I was only a boy at the time. But, well, other things I can remember about existing on the airfield now is like the board outside telling you how many members, how many people flew from there and never came back and then there’s the site’s still there of the CO’s house, where the air raid shelter is still there, the Flying Control still there, and some of the runways are still there, the main runway’s still there, which is used now for training learner drivers. So that’s more or less all I can remember as a boy. But if there’s any questions, please ask them.
HD: That’s absolutely super, Brian, thank you very much indeed. Did you ever keep in touch with these prisoners after the war?
BH: No, no we didn’t, I know.
HD: You didn’t, nothing like that.
BH: No, we didn’t actually, but, they was close like, you know, they would say they became family, but you know they were prisoners at the end of the day. They were from Donna Nook, you know, to bring them from Donna Nook, North Somercotes there, but some weren’t so good. When some of the eyeties came, they weren’t so good. Because I mean when you think about it some of them was office workers, you know, and then come, brought on the farm, I mean in those days it was catching the corn sacks, weighed sixteen, eighteen stone, you know, I mean now you’re not allowed to lift more than four! And they were doing it all day. Well they couldn’t do it, I mean they used to get about three stone in the bottom of the sack and put it on and were running to try and keep up and they couldn’t do it because they had to carry the sack, on their shoulders, normally our farm workers, my father and so on, about, I don’t know, twenty, forty yards and then up about fourteen steps to the granary, you know. Can you imagine doing that all day long!
HD: Hard work.
BH: That’s how, how much work, how hard work it was, but they were good, yeah. We survived anyway, we survived to tell the tale.
BH: Lovely Brian, thanks. That gives us an insight into sort of village life and what happened, especially so close to an airfield. How did you get involved, did you get involved at all with the airmen?
HD: Well, they used to, they were only obviously on the airfield there was football pitches and things like this. We used to go and watch them playing football, they used to let us, sneak us in, you know. I remember going past the guardroom on this guy’s handlebars and he stopped at the guardroom and had a few words, and he was actually refereeing, this bloke was, this soldier was, airman, airman, he was refereeing that day. [laughs] We used to watch them. Of course then there were dances and that in the village, you know. We’d get a lot of the airmen and soldiers at the dancing, you know, things like that, but as I say we were only boys. [laughs]
BH: That’s great, thank you very much indeed. Right, we’ve just got another little addition that Brian’s going to add, about the air raids over Hull et cetera, and the butterfly bombs. Sorry, Grimsby, I do apologise. Grimsby that is.
HD: Right, yes well, what I can remember is waking up one morning and there was all this commotion going on and, because what they called butterfly bombs had been dropped at Grimsby, anti personnel bombs, and they were in the shape of pens and pencils and lighters and things like this, and people would obviously pick them up and they would blow their arm off and blow their leg off and there was you know quite a lot of damage done. In fact I had a friend who was going to school and one went off near him and for years and years and years the marks was on the wall where this bomb, this anti-personnel bomb had gone off, so it was very, very frightening and Grimsby was maybe the only place to have these anti-personnel bombs and if you look on Google now you can bring it up and it will tell you all about it.
BH: That’s great, once again, thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AHutsonB171030
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Brian Hutson
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:18:48 audio recording
Creator
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Hugh Donnelly
Date
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2017-10-30
Description
An account of the resource
Brian Hutson was a child during the war. He remembers his father, who worked on building airfields and delivering air raid shelters. He remembers his childhood, sleeping in a shelter and listening to aircraft, air raids, blackouts, playing with friends, helping in the village and watching men train for combat. He was on the farm when it was attacked by an enemy aircraft, as well as times working with prisoners of war, who his mother treated fairly. Brian also recalls anti personnel bombs dropped on Grimsby and their devastation.
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Grimsby
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
home front
Home Guard
Lancaster
prisoner of war
shelter
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/263/3411/AGrayCJ151017.2.mp3
d77b2a53b586aa10835d976fe3601a19
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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Gray, Jeff
Jeff Gray
J Gray
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Jeff Gray.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Gray, CJ
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. This is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Jeff Gray at his home on the 17th of October 2015. I’ll just leave that there and if you want to -
JG: Yes.
DK: Go through your pictures.
JG: I -
DK: If I can, one thing. If I keep looking down it’s just to check that the -
JG: Yeah. Yes. Running -
DK: Old machine’s working.
JG: I was very fortunate in my choice when I joined the RAF. I was packed off to Texas. To America. And -
DK: If I just take you back a little bit.
JG: Yes.
DK: What made you want to join the RAF? Did you have any -
JG: I was -
DK: Choice in the matter or –
JG: I was in the Home Guard. LDV which became the Home Guard and I decided that I would like to join up and so I asked the farm manager I was working for if I could have a day off.
DK: So you were working on the farms -
JG: Yes.
DK: At the time then.
JG: I’m a farm boy.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
JG: Still. And he said, ‘You want a day off?’ He said, ‘But you’ve got a day off. You’ve got New Year’s Day.’ So I said, ‘I think, I think I need more than that,’ so he let me go. I went to the recruiting centre, the combined recruiting centre in Aberdeen.
DK: Yeah.
JG: The army and the navy guys weren’t there. The RAF man was and I think he thought it would be fun if he stole the would-be Gordon Highlander away who had come to see if he could get a kilt and joined the RAF. He said, ‘You’d like the RAF better. They sleep between sheets at night.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’d love to try that.’ But he didn’t realise that I was, anyway that led to another station in Edinburgh a few weeks later and I went to that two days so I had to say to Jake, the farm grieve, ‘I need a week off.’ He said, ‘You can’t go doing that,’ he said, ‘I’ve signed. You’re producing food and I’ve signed all the documents and you’re exempt from military service.’
DK: Was it considered a reserved occupation?
JG: Yes it was.
DK: What you were doing.
JG: It was reserved.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JG: And I said, ‘Well growing food isn’t going to be enough to stop this Hitler guy, I don’t think,’ so I went off. He gave me the week off. What defeated him was he said, he said, ‘I’ll have to take a week’s wages off you.’ My annual wage was ten pounds. I said, ‘Can you do the mathematics of that Jake?’ He said, ‘No. I can’t.’ So, so off I went and once again fortune smiled upon me. I was able to make a reasonable impression on the board but I failed the mathematics. The mathematics were truly, I hadn’t covered at my school. They said, can you retake this if we give you, if we postpone your date of joining till September can you take the, and I said, ‘I can, yes’. And so I came back and thought now how do I do this so I asked the headmaster, a chap I’d always liked, the domini and he said, ‘Well you can’t go into Aberdeen. You can’t do any of that. You’re going to join the classes here, you’re going to sit at the back,’ he said, ‘And I’ll teach you mathematics till it’s coming out of your ears.’ So that’s what I did and when eventually I was up to snuff took the exam and that was it but they had already set my date to go and so I was stuck with that and I had to earn a living for a little while and I found that there were more ways of earning a living as a farm labourer than I’d realised. It was harvest time. If I went south I could go to harvest and they would pay me five pounds. Come back to Aberdeenshire and get another five pounds for the next month and go north into the wilds -
DK: Nice one –
JG: And get another.
DK: Excellent.
JG: So in three months I’d got fifteen pounds and my annual wages was only ten. I said, ‘Jeff. I think you’ve made a discovery.’ I was never able to really put it into practice and when I reported to the Lord’s Cricket Ground they went through the training there and assembled us eventually and decided where we were going to go and they shipped us off across the Atlantic on a ship called the Banfora in a little convoy and although it was a horrible ship and I didn’t care much for it it was very useful because we had a destroyer on each side sending messages to each other so we spent the time taking down their messages, you know, from the Aldiss lamps and when we got there they assembled us in a hangar and told us where we were going. Texas.
DK: Oh.
JG: Well like every school boy of the time I’d read everything I had about you know adventure comics, all that stuff and what a wonderful thing that was. So here we are in Texas.
DK: Oh right.
JG: A photograph, and there’s Jeff Gray there.
DK: Ah.
JG: Yeah.
DK: So at this point, by the time you got to Texas there had been no flying at all. All your basic flying was done -
JG: I had to do a grading course on the Tiger Moth.
DK: Right. And that was in the UK.
JG: And that was in the UK.
DK: Right.
JG: And if you passed the grading course you could go.
DK: And then straight out -
JG: Failed that and -
DK: To America.
JG: You didn’t get anywhere.
DK: Ok.
JG: And so -
DK: So this was your class at the time then.
JG: It is yes. Here’s the full class all fortunately named Number One British Flying Training.
DK: So just, just for the recording so it’s Number One British Flying Training School.
JG: Yes. That’s -
DK: Number nine course.
JG: You will find the G men in a row here.
DK: Right.
JG: Gordon and Gray.
DK: Oh I see.
JG: And Guttridge.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
JG: And -
DK: All alphabetically -
JG: We were the G men. Eventually, they, I was the only one who survived the course.
DK: Really.
JG: Which was, but they all had a career. Gordon for instance had been a policeman. He, I forget what he did in the RAF but he went back to his native Glasgow and became chief of police there.
DK: Really.
JG: Had a splendid career and Guttridge who never got over failing the course went and did something. A replica trip of Shackleton when they sailed across that ocean and across -
DK: Oh.
JG: And so he wasn’t lacking in courage.
DK: No.
JG: So there we are. So there are a number of pictures of aeroplanes. The Wellington.
DK: Wellington.
JG: Which, of course, I spent a lot of time on the Wellington as an instructor and a picture of the -
DK: Manchester.
JG: The Manchester.
DK: Manchester. Yes. Yes.
JG: You will recognise the Manchester was the most deadly of aeroplanes. It had these unreliable engines.
DK: Yes.
JG: It was simply awful.
DK: So how long were actually in America for?
JG: I think it took nearly a year altogether you know as a journey time and what have you.
DK: Ok.
JG: Yes. And when I came back of course they said we’ve got to knock you guys into shape again you know and you’re not allowed to wear shoes because you’re not commissioned and only commissioned officers can wear shoes and these lovely shoes we’d brought back with us from the States had to be scrapped.
DK: Oh no.
JG: Very foolish but anyway this aeroplane, the Manchester, you can see from the tail unit that it became the Lancaster.
DK: Yes.
JG: Just as it was. It is in fact a Lanc with new wings and new engines.
DK: The four, four engines.
JG: And so became a, I’ve got a picture here. I don’t think anyone recognises who she is. She was one of my childhood, school heroines.
DK: Oh it’s not Amy Johnson.
JG: Amy Johnson.
DK: It is Amy Johnson yes. Yeah
JG: Yes. Yeah. And at that -
DK: Did you, did you -
JG: Meeting in Lincoln I passed that around the table and -
DK: Did you ever -
JG: So much for fame. No one recognised her.
DK: Did you ever, did you ever meet her?
JG: I never did get to met her.
DK: You never met her.
JG: No. No.
DK: No.
JG: Our paths did cross at some time when she, I arrived in a Comet, flying a Comet to Australia down to Melbourne and, by chance on the date when she had done her flight.
DK: Right.
JG: Now there’s always this rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne said Sydney doesn’t count. She finished here. And she was carried ashore, down the street by the staff of the Menzies Hotel and when I got there the street was crowded and there was a guy who’d been a nobody on that occasion, now he’s the chief porter and he said, ‘We’re going to make you re-enact this. You’re going to be carried.’
DK: Did, did people like Amy Johnson influence you in to sort of a career in aviation? Is it -
JG: I think it was one of those things that yes you form these impressions.
DK: Yeah.
JG: And yeah. So -
DK: So when you got back from America, from your training there and you, what happened then? Did you join, go straight to a squadron or was there further training?
JG: No. No. There was a lot of training. We’d only flown single-engined aeroplanes. We had to be checked out on, on Ansons and the like to -
DK: Right.
JG: To multi-engined aeroplanes and then we wound up at an Operational Training Unit at Cottesmore. Number 14 OTU and where we flew the Wellington.
DK: Right.
JG: And when we’d done that we had to be converted to the four engine Lancasters and there was a -
DK: Did you, did you have to –
JG: Conversion Unit at Wigsley which we did that.
DK: Wigsley. Yes.
JG: And we flew Halifaxes and Lancasters because they were running low on the Lancasters and they still had a few Halifaxes so -
DK: So that was the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley.
JG: That was the Heavy -
DK: Yeah.
JG: Conversion Unit. Yes.
DK: Did you ever get to fly the Manchester?
JG: No. No.
DK: No.
JG: No. I just, someone sent me some pictures of it and I kept them because it seemed to me to be such an intriguing tale of this very unsuccessful, unreliable aeroplane.
DK: Such a successful -
JG: Which turned into the most successful ever.
DK: Can you, can you remember much about the Wellingtons and Halifaxes? What they were like as aircraft to fly.
JG: I loved the Wellington. Oh yes. A great aeroplane really. It had no vices at all except maybe one thing. It had an automatic trim that when you put down the flap the automatic trim readjusted the attitude.
DK: Yeah.
JG: And if that didn’t work you had to be the automatic trim, [laughs] if it didn’t work and you had to catch on quickly but apart from that as a defect I thought it was a great aeroplane to be able to fly and it was robust, and Barnes Wallis, of course, again. Yeah.
DK: What about the Halifax? Was that -
JG: Well I don’t have much impression of the Halifax except it was very similar and the instructor pretended that it was a Lancaster.
DK: Right.
JG: And you called for the power settings you would call on a Lancaster and he set the power for the Halifax.
DK: Right.
JG: So this was very confusing [laughs] I found.
DK: I can imagine.
JG: I’m not sure I cared a lot for it.
DK: So, so although your training was on the Halifax. They were really preparing you for the Lancaster.
JG: Yes. Yes. It was just they had run out of Lancasters and they’d substituted Halifaxes which at the time they seemed to have plenty of them. Yeah.
DK: So, from, from heavy conversion unit then was it straight to your squadron.
JG: Yes. They said, they took us, they put us in a hangar and we were assembled there and told to choose our crew and we were handed a list. When that had been done that would be your crew and if you couldn’t do it they would make up your mind. They would give you a list.
DK: I’ve often heard about this where you were put in to a hangar. I find it very unusual because -
JG: Absolutely weird. Yeah.
DK: Because the military is normally you do this, you do that.
JG: It was.
DK: And this is very different to sort of the military thinking where you got -
JG: I thought it was a very clever move indeed.
DK: Really.
JG: And I stood there like an idiot. I didn’t know where to start and this scruffy Yorkshireman came up. An aggressive, little, scruffy Yorkshireman come. He said, ‘Have you got a navigator yet?’ ‘No,’ I said. He said, ‘Well you have now. Let’s go and find the rest of them.’ [laughs] So that was my first impression of Jeff Ward the Yorkshireman and we were buddies from then on.
DK: So this, this forming your own crew in a hangar, you think it was a good idea then. It seemed to, it seemed to work.
JG: It was a very smart move. Yes. It meant there was no objection. It was your choice. You’d done the rounds there and you’d picked them all and that was it. If you couldn’t decide they decided for you but mostly people were able to pick guys they liked the look of or whatever. Yeah.
DK: So after that it was then the posting to 61 squadron.
JG: No. I think, I think we did the OTU after that but -
DK: Alright. Ok.
JG: I’m not quite sure. Yes. And the 61 squadron, I don’t know, was the luck of the draw I suppose. Yes. And that’s what brought me into contact with Lincoln and the cathedral.
DK: So where were you based with 61?
JG: We started at Syerston.
DK: Syerston.
JG: In Nottingham and we were very displeased to be moved because we were just getting to know all the pubs there and [laughs] all the Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem and all those and suddenly we were shifted off to Lincoln and that seemed, and then and then from Skellingthorpe they sent us to Coningsby and that I liked. Coningsby was a great place to be.
DK: So you went to Coningsby next then.
JG: Yeah.
DK: Right.
JG: And then back to Skellingthorpe.
DK: Skellingthorpe.
JG: And Skelly was a cold and sad place in a way because it was very basic where the others, Syerston and Coningsby were regular accommodation and a good style.
DK: It’s a housing estate now.
JG: Yeah but I think if, if you’re in a group and you’re living in the same nissen hut and you’re eating in the same mess and everything you all become pals.
DK: Sure.
JG: It pulls you all together. Yes. Yes. So and I was interviewed just before I went there for a commission and I was interviewed by a chap called Bonham Carter and I took a very poor, I have a very poor opinion of Bonham Carter because my school in Scotland was [Raine?] North Public School. To his mind I had defrauded someone. It was not a public school. So I had to explain to him that the Scottish educational system was better and greater than the English and when we said it was a public school the public could attend. I said, ‘When you talk about a public school -
DK: Yeah.
JG: The public may not attend.’ And he put down on my documents, “Not officer material.” Quite right too. [laughs]
DK: Oh dear.
JG: He got that right but he did me a great favour in fact in that I went as an NCO and we were a crew of NCOs and were all mucking in together as it were.
DK: Did you find on a squadron a bit difficult though that some of the pilots were obviously officers?
JG: Yes.
DK: And some of them weren’t so you didn’t necessarily mix with all of the pilots.
JG: No.
DK: Was that an issue or –
JG: I don’t think it was really.
DK: No.
JG: People seemed able to cope with that. I think I felt sorry for chaps who were allocated to senior officers because that sort of changed the relationship altogether.
DK: So the dynamics of the crew sort of –
JG: Yes. Yes.
DK: Yeah
JG: But they seemed to be able to bond quite well but I think it took them a little bit longer and we had, I always felt that this Bonham Carter had done me a favour.
DK: Yeah.
JG: Because we bonded straight away and shared everything.
DK: So your crew were all sergeants.
JG: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JG: As in that -
DK: A picture here. Yeah.
JG: [?] I showed you.
DK: Oh.
JG: Yeah, that one. Yes. There we are. Yes. So – and I’ve kept a number of things that impressed me. There’s a plot of, there’s a bomb plot for Stettin which seemed to me to be self-evident that all this scatter coming in from this direction that what they needed to do was to, instead of picking the target they should have -
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
JG: Moved the target a bit beyond it and then they would have got most of the bombs falling where –
DK: Yeah.
JG: They wanted instead of wasted out here.
DK: It was known as creep back wasn’t it?
JG: Creep back. Yes.
DK: Creep back. Yeah.
JG: And it seemed to me there was a very simple solution to that rather than master bombers and that nonsense but, so I think that was why I kept that because no one paid any attention to it really [laughs].
DK: So you put the aiming point about there.
JG: Yeah. Put the aiming point -
DK: And then that would move –
JG: About a mile further on. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
JG: Yeah. An imaginary point the Pathfinder guys could find the area and identify it but then move the pretend and you would get a lot more of these bombs where you wanted them.
DK: Was it at 61 squadron then the first time that you saw the Lancaster and flew the Lancaster?
JG: Well yes. Yes that’s right. Yes.
DK: So -
JG: We had the Conversion Unit.
DK: Right. Ok. So what were your, after the Wellington and the Halifax what were your feelings about the Lancaster?
JG: I liked it from the beginning. Yeah. I thought it was a great aeroplane. It was a natural aeroplane. It didn’t have any defects that I, except getting in and out of it was a bit of a squeeze but it was a very bad aeroplane to escape from but otherwise it seemed robust and it, yeah I liked it. I thought it was great. And the sad thing is that it’s only recently that it’s sort of come into its own. Up till just recently and perhaps that Memorial it was the fighter boys, the Battle of Britain boys, they were the glamour boys. Bomber Command were nowhere and they’d rather blotted their copy books towards the end with that bombing raid on Dresden but then that Memorial seemed to change something quiet subtly in the minds of the British people and so the Lancaster has now become the aeroplane to have been on [laughs]. So -
DK: Strange that isn’t it?
JG: Yeah. I feel -
DK: So, can, can you recall your, your first mission then? Where that was to?
JG: Modane was the first one we did.
DK: That was the first one, to -
JG: And then the next one was Dusseldorf when Bill Reid got his, his Victoria Cross.
DK: So did you know Bill Reid then?
JG: Oh yes. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
JG: I knew Bill Reid fairly well because we were fellow countrymen, you see.
DK: Sure. Sure.
JG: I met him. He’d just got his medal ribbon up and he was out celebrating with his crew in Boston and we’d been to the Assembly Rooms to a dance and he wasn’t the sort of guy who danced. He was one of the guys who just looked on from the doorway and I was often one of the guys who missed the transport back to camp but I’d found a lady who would give me bed and breakfast so I’m on my way there when I come across [Ellis] and it was his radio officer [both?] looking for somewhere to sleep the night. I said, ‘Come with me to this lodging house,’ and the landlady answered the door, ‘Oh Jeff,’ she said, ‘Come in. Not him,’ she said, ‘He’s drunk. He will make a mess of my beds.’ ‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘Mrs. You will be the only landlady in Lincolnshire, perhaps in the country who has turned away a man who has just won a Victoria Cross.’
DK: Oh no.
JG: ‘Get off,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But it was true and he behaved himself. I said, ‘He’ll pay for any damage anyway.’
DK: She let him in then did she?
JG: So she let him in. So every time I met him I would tease him a little bit about his days when he was dancing and so on and his wife really never quite followed it. He doesn’t dance, he can’t dance, he thinks it’s a route march.
DK: I’ve always heard the story, I don’t know how true it was that when he met his wife it was some years before he mentioned that he’d been awarded the Victoria Cross.
JG: Oh I don’t know about that but quite possible yes. He had quite a career after that. The MacRobert’s family took him up and sent him through university.
DK: Right.
JG: And where he got a degree which and the MacRobert’s family they’d bought a Spitfire and I think they spent money on a Stirling -
DK: Stirling.
JG: Of all things. And he was given employment with them on their fertiliser division.
DK: Right.
JG: And so every time I met him at these get-togethers I said, ‘You’re still are pushing the bull shit then.’ [laughs]. ‘You’re selling horse shit.’ [laughs] I think I’ve kept some -
DK: Yes.
JG: I think I’ve kept. There he is, a piece of information there.
DK: I did meet him actually about fifteen years ago.
JG: Yeah. Yeah that’s -
DK: Because he ended up a prisoner of war didn’t he? I believe he was shot down later on.
JG: Yes. Yes. Yes. There. What else have we got here? I went from Bomber Command to Transport Command and that’s a BOAC York. That’s a York which was a development of the Lancaster.
DK: So you flew, you flew the York as well.
JG: Yeah. I, I flew the guys back from the Far East.
DK: Right.
JG: Who had been prisoners at Changi jail and all that dreadful railway and the guys who couldn’t be shipped back were flown back and I had to sign up to do that. My demob was cancelled until we’d finished this particular project. What I didn’t realise because I was enjoying myself I told the other guys around me pick me up the best of the jobs.] [laughs] So -
DK: So how many, just stepping back a little bit, how many operations did you actually do with Bomber Command?
JG: Thirty.
DK: Thirty.
JG: Yes.
DK: So one tour.
JG: We were, we were pulled off after that dreadful Nuremberg trip.
DK: Right.
JG: And I think Bomber Command decided, I think, at that stage they weren’t going to be able to bomb the Germans into submission and that start the preparation, preparing for the invasion.
DK: Were you actually on the Nuremberg -
JG: Yes. I was.
DK: You was.
JG: Yes. It was, it was a beautiful clear night. It was going to be cloudy all the way until we got to the target when it would be clear but the reverse was true. They’d picked a southerly route. It was moonlight. It was like clear as day and I think we were in real difficulty with the, with the routing and on that occasion we quickly found ourselves with an enemy on each side. Now that is the trap. You can’t beat these two if they’re working together ‘cause you turn towards one and you’ve given the other a non-deflection shot. You’re dead men really if you try and corkscrew your way out of that one and I thought we’ll try and outrun them. I put on full power. Well of course that was useless and I knew it would be ‘cause they had twenty knots faster than we were. They could catch us at any time so they just kept position and kept signalling each other and so I then pulled off the power, put down some flap which was illegal and said, ‘You’re not going to enjoy this bit guys because we are going to see the,’ our stalling speed will be lower than theirs. ‘They’re not going to enjoy following us now,’ and sure as hell they didn’t. Their stalling speed was much higher. They daren’t risk it and I was just on this, but anyway once I’d seen them off we straightened up, put on the power and climbed back up again and, got it, ‘Done it Jeff,’ I said the other Jeff and blow me down, there they were again and I said, ‘Well I’m going to pick this guy on the left. He’s the leader I think. I’m going to ram him so stand by. We’ll hit him with the nose. We might lose a bit of the aeroplane but he will lose his starboard wing.’ ‘Yes,’ they said and we headed for him and I think the guy realised it. He shot off. He disappeared. They both did. And my navigator said, ‘I haven’t been able to follow that,’ he said, ‘I think we’re lost.’ ‘No, no, Jeff we’re never lost. We’re uncertain of our position.’ ‘So what will you do?’ I said, ‘We will add ten minutes to the eta,’ and I goofed. I should have added ten minutes to the end of that route because the last leg was down to the southeast but I added it to the run so I turned on eta and of course we were well short and we were getting to the end of this ten minutes when some searchlights came on looking for us. ‘Davvy.’ I said, ‘We’re going to give them a surprise. Bomb doors open. Let them have it.’ So we bombed that bloody searchlight battery and the lights went out but there were a lot of guys in the same position. I didn’t know until afterwards who saw the incendiaries burning and they started bombing and in fact we’d hit Schweinfurt.
DK: No.
JG: And we didn’t know until it was back plotted the next day but at that stage by the end of it I could see sixty, seventy, eighty miles away in the distance the show was beginning and we’d missed it. They’re going to be, blotted our copy book. We’ve bombed the wrong bloody target. We’ve made a horse. When I got back I was astonished. They greeted us with open arms there were so few coming back [laughs]
DK: So you -
JG: And they were trying to keep the number below the magic hundred. Yeah. They were cheating. They weren’t including the guys who crashed.
DK: Ok.
JG: [who never came back]
DK: ‘Cause it was over a hundred wasn’t it?
JG: It was over a hundred. No doubt about that.
DK: Did you see many of the aircraft go down at –
JG: No. I don’t think I did. No. We, it was only very occasionally that you saw someone being blown up. We had what were known as scarecrews which was something that we’d invented that didn’t bloody exist. We thought it was some German pyrotechnic. No it wasn’t. It was some guy, usually a pathfinder carrying all the coloured flares.
DK: I’ve heard, I’ve heard the stories of the scarecrows.
JG: Yeah.
DK: So you’re saying they were actually -
JG: They were.
DK: Pathfinder aircraft going up.
JG: Yeah. They were but we believed at the time that it was a pyrotechnic that the Germans were using.
DK: Was that a story that was purposefully put around do you think?
JG: I think it was a story that the Bomber Command guys like myself invented and the bosses decided to keep quiet about it. I think they knew but they didn’t deceive us. They just let us go on thinking what we already thought.
DK: So you weren’t in any trouble then for hitting the wrong town.
JG: There was no question, there was no question of it. No. They were just so bloody pleased to see us they didn’t give a monkey about where we’d been -
DK: No.
JG: Or what we’d done.
DK: How did you feel knowing that there was those losses and the way the route had been drawn that you were going in a long straight line for several hundred miles in, in full, it was full moonlight wasn’t it?
JG: Yeah I think the winds were a nonsense, the weather forecast was completely the opposite. When they said it was going to be cloudy all the way, we’d have cloud cover, it was clear all the way except the target was cloudy and so I think the actual attack on the target was not very clever but in a way it’s helped the end of an era. They switched us to the French targets and the French targets were such a piece of duff they were only going to count as a third of a trip but it turned out that that was not correct because to bomb a French target we could not bomb a French target while there were French workers there in the marshalling yard or the factory and we had to wait for some system of someone in the resistance would send a signal to the UK who would send a signal to us to tell us when we could start bombing so we were circling around you know with nothing to do except wait and the Luftwaffe -
DK: While you were being shot at.
JG: Began to take an interest in us and come up and shoot people down and on one of the worst of those Mailly le Camp in Belgium they shot down I think it was forty two aeroplanes.
DK: Were you on that operation?
JG: I was on that one, yes. Yes. I claimed to be the guy who put out the spot fires. I may be mistaken. It was disputed by everybody except I continued to say it and I can still to say it now the others have gone [laughs]
DK: So the spot fire?
JG: It was being marked by Cheshire.
DK: Right.
JG: And he had developed this idea of low level marking and of using these red spot fires and he had everybody waiting with the flares that his colleagues had circled this and I took one look at that and said to Jeff Ward, ‘We are not joining that. We’re heading into the darkest place we can find and then we’ll come back now and again and see what’s happening.’ And just as it happened, as we got back he had it marked and we went in and when we pulled away my rear gunner Jock [Haye] said, ‘We put the bloody red spot fires out.’ I said, ‘Jock, I don’t care we’re on our way home,’ and we could hear these arguments going on. I think it was either a Canadian or an Australian and they were giving him a hard time because he wanted to remark the target, ‘Stop bombing, stop bombing,’ and they wouldn’t because -
DK: Wanted to go.
JG: They could see what we’d done and I think it was forty two aeroplanes lost and we killed one German. They’d left an NCO to guard the camp and that was their only casualty. Our chaps busy with the crosswords and whatever, some of their intelligence was a bit duff. They thought there was a whole army there at this tank training school but they’d left the week before. So -
DK: Yeah.
JG: So it was a sad tale that one and there was nothing happy about it.
DK: What was your opinions of Cheshire at that time was he well known throughout Bomber Command or -
JG: Yes he was and I got to know him after that because when he left and he inherited this property he set up these Cheshire Homes.
DK: Yeah.
JG: Some guy that, you know, had nowhere to go he took with him and he said anyone who came along would be taken in provided they could do something useful. There was no charge. He paid for it. Yeah. And I thought he’s taken leave of his senses but then I realised afterwards that he was the first to come to his senses and I was flying this time in BOAC and on a VC10 and he was a passenger on one occasion and I talked to him at Heathrow in the VIP lounge and he was grumbling about the coffee and I said, ‘Put a shot of this in with it,’ and of course he was teetotal [laughs] Poisonous you see. And I said, ‘Do you remember a place called Mailly le Camp?’ And he said, ‘Shall I ever forget?’ So I chatted to him on this trip and I found, yeah he was the first guy to come to his senses and we became not exactly friends but I got to know him afterwards though I didn’t know him at the time. Yeah.
DK: Interesting. So is he someone you’ve got the respect for of that post war [chain of who was?]?
JG: Oh yes. I think what he did he went around after that every year visiting places where they had been bombed and delivering the cross of nails which I think I’ve got a picture here of one of the German newspaper. There I am with the chairman and that’s the cross of nails. The Coventry.
DK: Ok.
JG: [?] whatever.
DK: Yes.
JG: And every year and he visited Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
DK: Yes. Yes because he was-
JG: Check that they’d got them there.
DK: He was actually on the Nagasaki raid wasn’t he?
JG: Yeah.
DK: He was the British observer.
JG: Yeah so that’s, that’s in Germany that’s the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church that we destroyed.
DK: That’s Berlin isn’t it? I have seen that.
JG: Yes.
DK: Well not that. I’ve seen the church.
JG: Yeah. Yes. [pause] So that’s my favourite aeroplane.
DK: Ah the VC10.
JG: The VC10. I liked that beast. I liked the Comet as well but I like the beast. Yeah.
DK: The first aeroplane I ever flew on was a VC10.
JG: What?
DK: The first aeroplane I ever flew on was a VC10.
JG: Oh was it really? Yes.
DK: 1981. British Airways.
JG: Yeah. Yeah. That’s one. Yes.
DK: So, you, you were in Transport Command then.
JG: I was in Transport Command. Missed this lot.
DK: Right.
JG: You know. I struggled to get a job. When we were on 61 I did have an offer from Bennett to join the Pathfinders.
DK: Right.
JG: And I called a get-together with the crew where we would vote on the issue as to whether we stayed with 61 or if we went to the Pathfinders and it was a bit of a set up because I had got this, with this DFM I’d got twenty five quid and it was the only twenty five quid that I had at the time.
DK: Yeah.
JG: I spent it all in Leagate public house and of course it snowballed on me. Not just my crew but the ground crew and the girls from the parachute, they all came and anyone who came in the pub the bartender was saying, ‘Are you with Jeff Gray’s crew?’ And they said, ‘No. Why?’ ‘Well there’s free beer if you are.’ ‘Oh, yes, good old Jeff.’ [laughs] And so the vote was stay 61.
DK: Ok.
JG: It could hardly have been anything else but I don’t know if he forgave me or, ‘cause I didn’t ever meet him personally but after the war when I came out I missed this lot. The one guy who offered me a job was Bennett and, but he said, ‘You won’t be flying as a pilot. We’re taking off all the navigators on this British/South American route we’re starting and you will be acting as navigator.’ And I said, ‘Oh God. Never. I think it’s a dreadful mistake. A recipe for disaster.’ And it was of course.
DK: He lost a couple of aircraft didn’t he, in South America?
JG: He did and he did try to take the top off the Pyrenees.
DK: Yeah.
JG: And they cancelled the airline. Put him out of business.
DK: And it was at the point you joined BOAC then.
JG: Yes. Yes. That was about all that was left. [laughs] I looked at Quantas and I foolishly turned that down because they were the worst paid in the business but today the top but, and I knew that I couldn’t join any of the continentals because I was hopeless at language but so the BOAC as a very humble first officer was where I got to.
DK: So what did you start flying on with BOAC then at the beginning?
JG: Oh dear. I’m hopeless on dates. I don’t have that.
DK: Or the type of aircraft.
JG: On the, on the Yorks to start with.
DK: Avro Yorks.
JG: And then we moved up to the Comets and the VC10s and then one day I wound up when I didn’t go on the Jumbo which I really should have done as everybody else did but what I had in mind I knew that the Concorde was coming along and I thought that’s for me and, but when it came to it and I was interviewed for that they said you have to have three years clear service before you can repay the cost of the training and you haven’t got three years clear so there I was on this bloody tripwire that they’d set for me. I couldn’t get on the Concorde.
DK: That was a shame.
JG: And, however, as one door shuts another one opens. The Gulf Aviation in Bahrain were buying some of these VC10s and I was offered a job straightaway to train their guys because at this stage I was an instructor, an examiner and all the rest of the stuff so I went to Bahrain for two years and stayed for six.
DK: Ah.
JG: Yeah.
DK: So did you actually fly the Gulf Air VC10s or were you just training?
JG: Yes I flew the Gulf Air VC10s and then when they got the Tristar
DK: Tristars. Yeah.
JG: I flew that. And it was at that stage that I had to, I’d promised myself with the old Atlantic boys that I met on the Atlantic you mustn’t stay too long. There comes a time when you begin to lose it and don’t stay till then. Go just before. Always leave the party when it’s at its height and I thought this aeroplane can do everything I can do except it does it better. It flies, the autopilot flies better than I can. It does the navigation which was always my weak point, it’ll do the communication. What the hell am I doing here? Time to go. So I quit. Yeah.
DK: So what year would that have been?
JG: That was -
DK: That you stopped flying?
JG: ’74. I came back from Bahrain. It was 1980 I think. Yes.
DK: 1980
JG: Yeah. Came back in time for Christmas and I’ve stayed away from aviation ever since. From that time I had staff travel but they then brought me out of that.
DK: Did you ever get to fly on Concorde?
JG: No.
DK: You didn’t. Oh.
JG: No. Sadly. When I was in Bahrain one of the first flights I did was to Bahrain. I was able to see it and talk to some of the guys that were on it but I really didn’t want to know. I was really very, I was still very huffy about it. [laughs]
DK: So what did you think about the VC10? What was, what was that as an aircraft?
JG: Yes the VC10 was a lovely aeroplane, yes. Really. A winner. It was a shame that they didn’t continue the development but they didn’t. They went all American. So, yes. I was involved very briefly in the saga of the material that Rolls invented. This new, what do you call it? The new -
DK: The engine. The alloys. The -
JG: Yes. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
JG: They were making the blades of this new –
DK: Alloys yeah, yeah.
JG: And we had number four engine was fitted with that on the VC10 with these new turbine blades and they were looking for a favourable report on it and we went down to Lagos. The weather was bad and we diverted to Akra. We ran through some thunder storms and heavy rain and we had to shut the engine down. This number four. And as I walked ashore a guy at the aeroplane was shouting at me to come back. It was the engineer. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said, ‘skipper.’ And it was hanging like knitting. It had shredded. The material was no damned good.
DK: Wasn’t any good.
JG: And I did myself no good by sending in a voidance report saying, ‘Any of you guys with Rolls Royce shares, sell today.’ [laughs] The Americans took up the material and perfected it.
DK: It’s the old story isn’t it?
JG: The old story and they’ve been scoring on it ever since. Yes. And now the whole aeroplane’s made in America.
DK: Yes. So looking back on your time in the RAF particularly your time on Bomber Command how do you look back on it now all these years later? Is it -
JG: I regret to say that I have some misgivings. I had at the time, I think it was Lincoln Cathedral did it for me when I first saw that and I thought armies of men came here and built this thing and what do we do? We try and knock them all down.
DK: Destroy them.
JG: It seemed all wrong to me but that’s the business we were in and I think I kept that idea in mind and I got involved with, let me look and see what I’ve got on that. Oh I think that the, that church there is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. My wife and I set about that to see if we could do something about it and I thought I’d go down there what else have I got? Have I got anything on it?
DK: It’s not it there is it?
JG: Oh that’s it. Thanks very much.
DK: Ok.
JG: Yes. I decided that this is the -
DK: Yes I recognise that from my trips to Berlin.
JG: That is the church which we destroyed that but the bell tower is still stood and they kept it as a symbol of defiance. They’d defied the bombing, they’d defied the Russians, they’d defied, defied the partition of the city. Everything. And the bell tower stood and, but it will have to be demolished because bits were falling off it and people were objecting and the council said it would have to be demolished or rebuilt but they had no money so I wrote to them and said why not set up a fund and ask the guys who did the damage to pay for it and I think I’ve got all that here. [London Times?] of your dilemma. You should try to save it. Why not ask the guys who did the damage to make a contribution to a restoration fund and so on and I took part in a number of raids against Berlin starting on the 2nd of December 1943 and on their behalf I would like to make a contribution to the fund of five hundred pounds to start the ball rolling. To my astonishment they took it up. There is the reply from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and so the fund was successful. We raised quite a lot of money by giving the sole story to the Berlin newspaper chain that, there we are being interviewed for that. That’s the picture -
DK: Yeah.
JG: Being copied here and so they did it and there we are. That’s myself, my wife and my grand-daughter, my son’s wife Gerlinde. And ‘English bomber pilot triggers off fund raising’ and I’ve, there’s the, it stalled for a bit and then the, raising funds. The guys in this country didn’t want to join in I’m afraid.
DK: No.
JG: They were all raising money for the Bomber Command Memorial here and didn’t want to know about this one. Then, but the National Lottery came in with money and then Angela Merkel -
DK: Oh yeah.
JG: Moved in.
DK: Yes. Yes.
JG: Topped the fund out so -
DK: Yeah.
JG: The restoration started and I think it’s complete as far as I know and I would like to think there might be a big ceremony of some kind but nothing has happened.
DK: No.
JG: It should have been ready last year but then they were celebrating the Berlin wall taken, took everything. I should think if they do it it will be the 26th of November when we destroyed it so -
DK: So, how, how do you feel this is the, you obviously do, it might sound a silly question, is this an important part of your, your life and in some ways a response to your time in Bomber Command?
JG: Yes I think it was. Yes. I think it was. These are a number of smaller shots.
DK: Yeah.
JG: I had made if you want to and, yeah I think it was a reaction to that, a guilty conscience I don’t know.
DK: Did you –
JG: But anyway I’m very pleased that it succeeded.
DK: Yeah. Did you manage to get many more, any more RAF -
JG: No.
DK: Guys.
JG: Very few.
DK: Very few.
JG: I was very fortunate in that the ones I knew and I was able to ring up and talk to them or to their widow they would say, ‘Sorry Jeff. I think you’re a bit off your trolley. It’s not going to work.’ And they were quite right so I said, ‘Ok. I’ll have to do it without,’ and we did get, my wife and I did get invited to the, when they got the glockenspiel working and ringing mid-day but she wasn’t well enough to go.
DK: No.
JG: And so I didn’t get to that.
DK: Ok.
JG: But I have lost touch with them a bit since then. Yes.
DK: Ok.
JG: I’m really hopeful that this crazy Scotswoman who has appeared, Nicola Sturgeon.
DK: Sturgeon. Yes. Yes.
JG: Is moving in everywhere she can. I’ve been in touch with her because I think she’s got some good ideas and she’s one of the people who gets things done. You may not like her or like what she’s doing.
DK: No well. Yeah. Yeah.
JG: As a fellow Scot and she wrote in very sympathetic vein and so I think that I will be in touch with her again to see if there is anything is happening. If there’s going to be a ceremony could she get in touch with Angela Merkel and see if we could arrange a ceremony because having separated Scotland -
DK: Having got that far
JG: She might like to make a fuss of it.
DK: Yeah. Definitely.
JG: So wait and see.
DK: Hope something comes about.
JG: Some of these pictures I’ve got that have been made up are for her attention.
DK: Right.
JG: Because if you hit people with pictures like that they pay attention.
DK: Yeah. Definitely. So how many raids on Berlin did you actually -
JG: Nine.
DK: Actually do. Nine.
JG: Yeah. I met people who did ten and I met people who did dozens more but not of the big sixteen you see. Yeah. And that first one that they did in November which destroyed the church did a lot of damage, you know. It destroyed the zoo and there were wild animals rushing about everywhere and had to be rounded up and that. I think that rather misled the guys in Bomber Command into thinking this was going to be easy but it wasn’t and I think we set off with the wrong kit. The stuff they’d done on the short range, the Cologne and the like, medieval cities, wooden frames, narrow streets.
DK: Burnt.
JG: You set up a fire storm with a bomb that shatters the tiles and the windows and the incendiaries, you know, get into the building and people die in the fire. Lack of, suffocate. But none of us had been to Berlin. It’s not like that. Great wide boulevards and the tall buildings made of stone and brick and steel with sloping roofs and we had the wrong kit. We were never going to set that on fire. Ruined the plane trees in the street, they all burned, you know but the nature of the buildings they were sheltering in they had made passages through from one to the other so if that one caught fire they went -
DK: Yeah.
JG: Into the next one. Yeah. And in the morning they cleared up the rubbish and tidied the street and went back to work and I think the real thing that defeated us was the fact that in the blitz in the UK in Coventry and London it produced a spirit of defiance. And I think if you produce that in people you can’t defeat them.
DK: No. No.
JG: So -
DK: No.
JG: Anyway, so -
DK: And what’s, what’s the German, the Germans you’ve met there, what’s their, been their reaction to this? Has it been favourable?
JG: I think they quite like the idea of their symbol of defiance being turned into a symbol of reconciliation.
DK: Reconciliation.
JG: That’s the theme I pedal. A symbol of reconciliation and I think of late we’ve had programmes showing us Germany and some of the bombing and some of the damage that was done and showing us the places and the people who were affected and being told their stories and, yeah. And I think they’ve been doing a lot on the Dambusters of course who were, became famous because of the wonderful film they made you know and playing with those bombs and it wasn’t until recently that I realised that Churchill was worried about the bombs that hadn’t gone off and that the Germans were able to examine and began making a list of the dams in the -
DK: UK.
JG: In the UK that they could bomb. Yes. Yes. So you learn these things eventually that you didn’t know at the time but I do think that if you get that spirit going among the public that they will not, they will defy you, you’ve lost it. Yeah. You’ve lost it.
DK: Yeah.
JG: Yes.
DK: And did you meet many Germans who were there at the time, when you went out there?
JG: No. I haven’t. No.
DK: Ok.
JG: No. Of course I rely on Gerlinde as my interpreter because I’ve only got a few words -
DK: Oh right.
JG: In German.
DK: So scrape by on -
JG: She can speak German then.
DK: Yes. She’s a Bavarian. Yes.
JG: Oh I see. Right. She’s, right, ok. She’s German.
DK: So -
JG: Or Bavarian I should say.
DK: Yes she would say she’s a Bavarian.
JG: Bavarian.
DK: Yes. Quite right. She’s not German. She’s Bavarian. I’ve made that mistake before.
JG: Yeah. So -
DK: Ok. I think I’ll stop there.
JG: Yes.
DK: It seems a sensible place to stop so thanks very much for that. We’ve been talking for nearly an hour.
JG: It’s been a pleasure anyway. Yes. Yes.
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AGrayCJ151017
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Interview with Jeff Gray
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eng
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00:57:16 audio recording
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David Kavanagh
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2015-10-17
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Jeff Gray was a farm labourer in Aberdeenshire when he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He trained to fly in Texas and completed 30 operations as a pilot with 61 Squadron. After leaving the RAF he worked for BOAC flying Yorks and VC10s.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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France
Great Britain
United States
France--Mailly-le-Camp
England--Lincolnshire
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Julie Williams
61 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
civil defence
crewing up
Halifax
Home Guard
Lancaster
memorial
pilot
RAF Coningsby
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
Scarecrow
searchlight
training
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/254/3401/AFisherLS150814.1.mp3
92f6b8ab71b7b2ca626a670b285dd0e0
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Title
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Fisher, Laurence Sidney
Laurence Sidney Fisher
Laurence S Fisher
Laurence Fisher
L S Fisher
L Fisher
Description
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One oral history interview with Laurence Sidney Fisher (1091186 Royal Air Force).
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2015-08-14
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Fisher, LS
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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SB: This is Sheila Bibb interviewing Laurence Fisher on 14th of August 2015 at his home in Canterbury. Laurence, to start off with can you just give me some general background to family life, where you were born, and how you came to join the RAF?
LF: I was born in Peterborough which was then the Soke of Peterborough and a friend of ours was a pilot in the RAF in France and came to stay overnight when he was travelling and I was in the Home Guard as a lance corporal and he advised us to volunteer for the air force so my friends and I went over to Northampton where we volunteered in advance of being called up. One of the options open to me was armourer. I wanted to be air crew but I was colour blind and as an armourer I needed some colour vision but not sufficient to bar me. When I was posted to the Middle East to Number 4 Re-Arming And Refuelling Unit but that in fact was left at 235 Wing which was at Sidi Barrani where I volunteered for air crew because I knew that they wouldn’t have the colour book and my colour test was map colours which I’d learned at school, the colour of a royal sovereign pencil which was bright scarlet and the colour of the orderly’s hair which was bright ginger so I was sent back to South Africa and trained there for about a year when we were required for first priority in the Middle East. So we were flown up the middle of Africa and stopped at Ndola in Northern Rhodesia as it was then where I was able to call in on friends who came back in their little car with the golf clubs in the back. Seeing me on their veranda said, ‘Whatever you do don’t tell daddy we’ve been golfing on a Sunday.’ So we flew on. Landed at Kisumu. Then on to Cairo where we were divided into two halves and our half was sent straight to the squadrons. I flew via El Adem to Naples where we had the pleasure of staying in a marble hotel and sleeping on marble isn’t ideal. Then on to Foggia. Now, 167 squadron was an elite squadron. The day after we left them they dropped arms to the insurgent Poles in Warsaw but to return to my story we didn’t like the idea of being sent back without doing any operations so I was deputed to go to the flight commander and, but I persuaded him to let us have the COs aircraft. The first op we did went well and we attacked Verona martialling yards. The second night we were sent out in bright moonlight to attack the Weibersbrunn German fighter station and they didn’t like it much but on our return we were jumped by a radar guided ME109 and its cannon fire and other armaments soon killed half of the crew but fortunately the aircraft was flying on George and so there was an opportunity to get out. Now of course I hadn’t been fitted into my parachute harness so I folded my arms across my chest and just hoped for the best and of course as the chute opened my arms were flung to one side. As I went down I was rotating in the air and could see the aircraft on fire gliding into a, a clearing between two stands of trees which stripped the burning wings off and put out the fire but by that time I was rather close to the ground because jumping from two thousand feet is not ideal and I guided myself in to the middle of a potato patch but a strong wind at ground level coming up the mountain blew me into a pine tree where I fell horizontally, breaking a branch with my shoulder and my head so that my flying helmet was full of blood. I had a look in my evasion kit but felt that the odds were too much against me particularly as I’d got rather loose flying boots on so I made the decision to go to the farmhouse and on my knocking at the door they opened a little flap and offered me seeded bread and some milk. I accepted these but I showed them the blood on my hand from my bleeding head and they let me in and sent for the landmacht so I met up with two other members of my crew in the police station the following morning. And then from Graz we were taken to Vienna by rail in a very crowded train and then on to the lens factory which was next door to the prisoner of war reception centre and there we were kitted out and sent off to Bankau in Upper Silesia by train. Cattle trucks of course. That was fine as far as it went but the Russian advance meant that we had to be moved so we were marched two hundred and fifty miles via the outskirts of Breslau to Cottbus just outside Berlin and there the camp contained Southern Irishmen who were all Welsh Guards. Naturally being Irish they’d be in the Welsh Guards and they were very good to us indeed. Gave us free, things that normally they would have charged cigarettes for. In the end we were liberated by the Russians and on the Americans giving the Russians the lorries we were transported to the River Elbe where we walked over a narrow footbridge with rather itching backs out of the Russian zone into the American zone where Lancaster bombers were used to fly us back to Oxford.
SB: Very good. What were your feelings when, when you were handed over to the police etcetera?
LF: When I was handed over to the police I had injured my foot slightly and was limping so I was left in the police station guarded by a landmacht and the other two members of the crew were taken off to the site of the crash where they saw the flight engineer lying on the ground. He had landed with the aircraft, probably in his seat and the impact had broken his neck. He didn’t know this, climbed out of the aircraft, walked a few paces and then fell dead and that was, that was a very sad thing really. My South African navigator, bomb aimer didn’t want the Germans to know that he could speak German so my school boy German came in to recover the pencil his wife had given him that the Germans had taken away with all the rest of our possessions. Then we were put into a German air, air force camp where we were all confined to one room and anything remaining of our aircrew equipment was taken away from us. We were rather afraid of not having sufficient clothing because we were in tropical kit but we were well equipped at Breslau by the, by the Red Cross. Yeah.
SB: It’s interesting there you mention the Red Cross. Had you had any other dealings with them earlier in the war or not?
LF: No.
SB: That was the first time.
LF: We had had no dealings with them earlier in the war but of course when we were prisoners of war we subsisted on Red Cross parcels and they arrived regularly until the RAF bombed the rail system so much that it broke down and we didn’t get any more. That lasted for about the last two months or three months of our captivity. We were fed as troops in barracks which meant a pint of so-called soup a day which was mainly cabbage and a slice of bread. That, that was the entire ration the consequence of which was I, a normal eight stone came back home weighing only five stone. During that time, during the march I was turned out of a straw field barn at gunpoint because it was too full according to the German regulations and had to sleep on an upper floor in chaff. Now, if you bury yourself in chaff it can kill you and I knew this so I was careful but during the night the temperature fell very low and I received what I think is called frost nip so that a certain disability exists but apart from that I, being young of course, survived far better than some of the older members.
SB: Did you, you say you had schoolboy German. Did you have any problems with communicating at all? Or -
LF: We were not allowed to learn German during our captivity. Although some people learned Italian. Learning German was considered a collaboration with the enemy but most of our goons who walked about among us spoke quite good English and I asked one what he was going to do after the war to which he replied, ‘Watch you rebuilding Berlin.’ That never happened fortunately.
SB: Did you have any idea how things were going?
LF: Ah. As among air crew there are wireless operators who could also make wireless sets in our camps we had several wireless sets and we got daily bulletins broadcast by the BBC which were read out to us. During one of these sessions a German officer came into the barrack to find about three hundred men standing stock still and silent which must have surprised him but of course the newsreader was warned of his coming and we soon began a normal buzz of conversation until he had gone when we listened to the rest of the news bulletin which included the American capture of Iwo Jima I remember.
SB: How did that affect you?
LF: Well we were certain. Well, our morale was high. Bear in mind this was 1944/45 and we received orders from London that we were not to try to escape because that would simply clutter things up unnecessarily but our morale was high because we could see that it was obvious that we were winning the war. We were lucky that we did. [laughs]
SB: Were there times that you wondered how long you’d be there?
LF: Well in those circumstances you live one day at a time because the need to know is one of the things that stops you learning a great deal about your fellows and telling them anything much about yourself so we had card schools. I myself taught English composition in the camp school. One of my friends took banking exams through the Red Cross until that was cut off but every day of course we always did a certain routine amount of walking in order to keep fit and that was an essential part of it and one thing, it passed the time and another thing it enabled us to remain fit enough to survive.
SB: Were there many outbreaks of illness at all?
LF: No. There were very few. We had a medical officer and his sole medical kit consisted of aspirin. The Germans themselves were very short of medications and their people fared no better than we did but I think our limited diet was a very healthy one and of course Breslau was in Southern Poland so that it was a fairly isolated camp on sandy soil which is obviously well drained. Chosen by the Germans because it was difficult to tunnel in and so mostly being young men we were very healthy.
SB: Going back to your time before you were actually captured, when you, first of all you said you were in Egypt. How long were you there for?
LF: I was there for a matter of a few weeks really. About two or three months because it was the time Rommel was approaching El Alamein and so although we were at Sidi Barrani which is 05 which is five kilometres from Alexandria I think we weren’t very far into the blue. We were moved back to a holding camp at Kasfareet and our unit, Number 5 Re-Arming and Refuelling Party was disbanded as being no longer needed. My experience of Kasfareet was of a padre wanting to involve me in Christmas celebrations upon which I told him that by Christmas I should be in South Africa of which he was rather envious.
SB: And when you got to Foggia what did you think of that as a place? At that time?
LF: Foggia was an enormous, ancient crater the whole of which had been turned into an airfield as far as I could tell. There were American squadrons as well as British squadrons there. As our stay there was so brief and as our tents were on the outskirts of the occupied zone I really know very little about it because when I arrived back I arrived back in the middle of the night of course so if you miss the [Garry?] taking you back to quarters you just didn’t know which way to walk. [laughs]
SB: So how long were you in Foggia before the fateful mission?
LF: I think we were there about a fortnight in all. Yes. [laughs]
SB: A short sweet stay then.
LF: Yes, that’s right.
SB: Right. If we think then to once you were brought back to Oxford what happened at that stage?
LF: Well, we were, when we were brought back to Oxford we were kept hanging about until it was getting dark at night when we were directed to our billets but the director had a sense of humour because in common with other flights we were directed to the WAAF billets and disturbed those poor girls in the middle of the night. They were able to direct us to our proper billets in no uncertain terms. So having, we were then disbursed to re-arming, to rehabilitation camp and I was there until I gained weight and until they were reasonably sure that there was nothing physically wrong with me. The whole experience took about two months and it was a really excellently run and excellently organised piece of work. After that we were taken around various firms which might lead to employing us but none of that was of any use to me as it happened.
SB: So when you were finally given the all clear where did you go and what did you do?
LF: Ah. After, after rehabilitation I was sent on ninety days leave and fortunately while I’d been a prisoner of war I’d still been paid so I had ninety pounds which was a lot of money in those days and I was able to go home and then think about what a future career might hold. I had the opportunity of remaining in the RAF but as a peace loving person I didn’t see I had a role in a fighting force in peacetime.
SB: So what career did you take up in the end?
LF: Ah I trained as, in emergency training in teaching and ended up at Christchurch College in Canterbury training teachers. Fortunately, I was able to take early retirement three or four years before I was sixty five and before I was quite outdated as far as the students were concerned.
SB: During your time in Italy and then in Germany and so on were you still able to get news from home at all from the family?
LF: I can’t recall having more than one or two letters from home but I wrote regularly. That I became quite used to. Nor did I receive any parcels from home as longer term prisoners did. Some prisoners had been in the cage for five years so the lines of communication had become established but as we were a newly formed camp just for air crew no lines of communication got established for us and we were lucky to get the Red Cross parcels that came. They were, you know, a valuable communication themselves although of course they received, they had no messages in them but the fact that they were the sorts of food we were used to was very important.
SB: So what did those parcels contain? Can you remember?
LF: Mostly, they were, the ones we received were American so we had a tin of Klim which is perhaps an anagram for milk, a tin of meat, a bar of chocolate which the Germans removed because they said it might be used in an attempt to escape. I don’t know whether the chocolate escaped eating but there was a pack, a pack of tea and very valuable to the Polish among us [vitaminski pilioul?] which were quite palatable but not very high food value and of course butter or margarine and the margarine was called Oleomargarine and I think oleo stands for oil. Tasted rather like that too. We used to trade with the Germans because cigarettes were also contained in the parcels and so was soap. Now those were very valuable commodities and we traded soap with the goons and once we’d traded with them we could report them and this would have led to dire consequences for them so that enabled us to build up trade and we got a certain amount of loaves of bread. The well organised among the escape committee got other things that would be useful in escape and one man even got a camera with some film but that cost a lot of cigarettes but we had a good supply of cigarettes and they were a powerful tool in trading with the Germans.
SB: So you’ve talked about the physical aspects of this. The injuries and the weight loss etcetera. How did you feel emotionally and mentally?
LF: When you’re on such a low diet you tend just to exist. Emotionally you kept on a very even keel because to be emotional cost effort. One of the things I did was to get hold of some Red Cross wool and needles and to re-finger a pair of gloves which were very useful in the German winter. But we had, we organised regular discussions and one of those I contributed to was to do with space travel in which I happened to be very interested. Of course our knowledge of space travel in those days was very limited indeed and one of the things I remember saying was that astronauts would have to have magnetic boots which I don’t think is the case. We also got the medical officer to talk about sex and his briefing was that he should tell us about the birds and the bees but he didn’t spend long on that fortunately [laughs]. But the school also occupied time and cooking for ourselves on the stoves in each barrack room with the potatoes from our soup was another occupation and also keeping the fire going with pieces of wood from our bed rolls but the time didn’t pass too slowly because there were card games and other games supplied by the Red Cross which were available.
SB: You mention the school. Who were you teaching there?
LF: Well, many of the men hadn’t taken more than elementary education and they wanted to keep their standards up in order to take exams either through the Red Cross if there was time or when they got back into England again so as a time passer the school was really very popular and it covered quite a wide range of subjects according to the qualifications of fellow prisoners of war but I, again, in the need to know, I only knew about the English section and a friend of mine took English grammar but he didn’t want to do English composition but I got sufficient paper from the man of confidence to enable those of my class which consisted of about fifteen men to write essays which I then criticised.
SB: Taking that on a bit further did the men actually write about their experiences or did they just write about things in general?
LF: Of course we were limited in to the subjects of composition and we stuck to the sort of compositions that would have been set in an English school. Nothing about their war service. Nothing about camp conditions. Nothing that could have been of possible use to the Germans had they seen it so that the compositions were rather literary really.
SB: Did they appreciate it?
LF: Oh the school was very popular. Very popular indeed and of course in those circumstances the authority of the teacher doesn’t always count for much. It was very much a matter of cooperation so that you can’t give orders as you can in an ordinary school. [laughs]This experience came, became quite valuable later in life when I taught adults.
SB: So, what, for you, was the highlight of your war experience?
LF: I think the highlight was knowing that the raid in which I had been involved had helped the Americans to reduce the output of the Ploiesti oilfields by about a third and the constant raids kept the oil down to that figure and while we were on the march from Breslau to Cottbus we passed a German tank of the latest mark stuck in a village, run out of a fuel and that again was heartening although we were careful not to show our appreciation to our German guards who were a bit touchy and didn’t like the idea of the march very much. The farms that we were quartered in were very limited in the amount of stock they had and they had to account for everything of course but we made sure they were a few chickens short by the time we left and they were very fed up because they knew they’d be paid for any damage we did in deutschmarks which wouldn’t hold their value very long.
SB: How long did the march take?
LF: The march was about two hundred and fifty miles and took three weeks. We had at the rear of the column, pulled along by those of us who were fitter than others a flat, a flat wheeled vehicle for those who just couldn’t walk any further and among those was the rear gunner of one of my opos who had hurt his back on coming down by parachute and he went into a German hospital because he could no longer stand the conditions. I wonder what happened to him?
SB: How many actually survived your crash?
LF: Half my crew were killed. Yes. The pilot I think was killed outright and so was the upper gunner. And the rear gunner, the navigator, bomb aimer and myself came down by parachute. The flight engineer I’ve already described. Probably broke his neck, got out of the aircraft and fell down dead as soon as he tried to turn his head which is what can happen apparently.
SB: You said two of them were sent on ahead of you because you’d hurt your feet, your foot when you -
LF: Yes.
SB: Were taken so did you catch up with them at all later?
LF: Yes. They were returned to the police station and of course the rear gunner and myself went to one camp but the navigator, being an officer went to an offlag and we saw no more of him.
SB: Did you have any contact with them after it was all over?
LF: I wrote to him because he was a South African mining engineer but I never got a letter back again.
SB: And thinking back now to your family when you finally got back how much had they been aware of what was happening?
LF: They’d received my letters but none of theirs had got through to me and I think they were very relieved to see me back especially as I was placed on double rations and had two ration books. When I got married, before rationing ended that didn’t allow me two wives. [laughs]
SB: Good try [laughs]. So if you think back over the whole, the war and your time afterwards how did your involvement in the war affect your later life? Or didn’t it?
LF: Well I think having seen so much of the world and such a variety of people with whom I had to get on when I was sitting the examination in armament for air crew having been an armourer I knew the Browning machine gun very well and in my examination answer mentioned a part that the examiner didn’t know of but he found it and as a consequence I was put to lecturing to other members of the flight who hadn’t done so well on the Browning gun by the armament officer and also to taking a group of Polish airmen who needed help in learning about armament and I think this led to my promotion from sergeant to flight sergeant within twenty two days which made me senior man which isn’t always uncomfortable, which isn’t always comfortable in the groups I was in but the Polish airmen when it came to the exam said they just couldn’t understand the questions which was very sensible of them. My experience of lecturing to the other members of my flight had followed my promotion in the Home Guard because I lectured to those who didn’t know, from a First World War army manual which I was given on armament. Ok.
SB: Yeah. So it seems to me that throughout your career at some point you ended up lecturing.
LF: [laughs] Yes.
SB: So it was perhaps natural that you went on -
LF: That’s right.
SB: To take that as a career.
LF: Yes. Yes I think that’s very likely. Yes. Always have had the gift of the gab I think.
SB: And do you think it had any impact on your family life when you married and had your own family?
LF: Well I think when you’ve been through near death experiences it concentrates the mind on the essentials of life and in bringing up my own children I’ve tried to look ahead to taking account what their qualities were, what they would be likely to be fitted for and my second son, he became a computer expert and my daughter became a social worker so that I think they followed in keeping to the basics of life as well.
SB: And you say your, one son was an MOD worker.
LF: Yes. Yes he was an electronics engineer in the Ministry of Defence. My daughter was first of all involved in Southwark, which isn’t the easiest place to work in, in adoptions and then in supervising adoptions in Southwark and has recently retired. She deserves a medal too I think. [laughs]
SB: Ok well thank you very much for that it’s been very interesting.
LF: [laughs] I love shooting a line. [laughs]
[machine paused]
LF: No I don’t think so. It’s too general to be -
SB: Well just explain -
LF: Really of interest.
SB: Just explain a little bit about it to me then.
LF: Right. Hang on a moment.
[pause]
LF: Upon arrival in prisoner of war camp one of the early things that one should do is to have a private conversation with the man of confidence. The man of confidence is a prisoner of war in whom his fellow prisoners of war have absolute confidence that he will not betray what they say and it’s a way of ensuring that all prisoners of war are in fact genuine ex-service men, prisoners of war and not German stooges. To the man of confidence you’re allowed to say things that you mustn’t say to fellow prisoners of war. In fact all the detail of your training and whatever and any observations you had about being shot down which might be useful to people who are still fighting. Now this was really quite important and I think it also gave people a sense of the cohesion of all being prisoners together on the same level. Now, I’ve spoken of wireless sets. The man of confidence was in communication with the Air Ministry. So we were told. And I think this was born out because through him came the message that we were no longer to attempt to escape and daily orders could come through which were quite secret from the Germans. How this was done of course I don’t know because I didn’t need to know but the Germans constantly searched of course for wireless sets but because these could be made up, for example, using the solder from the sealings on tins of food using wire and crystals supplied quite openly by the Red Cross which the Germans didn’t bar. Wireless sets would not appear to the uninitiated to be anything at all because they were dismembered and hidden as soon as the broadcast was finished. No prisoners, apart from those actually operating the wireless sets knew where they were except by misadventure and that’s the way it was kept so that interrogation by the Germans would not have been likely to have broken the secrecy.
SB: So the man of confidence, who put him in that position?
LF: The man of confidence was put in that position by the early members starting the new prisoner of war camp and they, there was a camp leader elected as well. In our case it was an Australian airman but, but because during his captivity he was promoted to officer rank he was removed by the Germans and we needed to elect another one which we did by an open ballot. There was also an office run by three or four senior prisoners who were responsible for all contacts with the Germans and some of those were selected because they were able to speak German. Of course we had daily parades and counting and it was against our interests to try and trick the Germans into miscounting and we didn’t do so because we had no need in our camp to conceal the fact that anybody had escaped. Yeah. I think that’s the lot.
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AFisherLS150814
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Interview with Laurence Sidney Fisher
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eng
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00:50:01 audio recording
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Sheila Bibb
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2015-08-14
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Laurence Fisher grew up in Peterborough and served in the Home Guard before joining the Royal Air Force. He served as ground personnel before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations from Italy before his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
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Royal Air Force
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Great Britain
Egypt
Italy
South Africa
North Africa
Egypt--Sidi Barrani
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1945
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Julie Williams
bale out
civil defence
Home Guard
Me 109
prisoner of war
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/236/3380/ACooperFA170810.2.mp3
654e9d538c89f433d64a0478a6f31ed1
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Cooper, Frances Anne
Frances Anne Cooper
Frances A Cooper
Frances Cooper
F A Cooper
F Cooper
Description
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Four items. An oral history interview with Frances Anne Cooper (b. 1931), a memoir, family history and a photograph.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Frances Cooper and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-08-10
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Cooper, FA
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank, and today is the 10th of August 2017, and we’re in Sandhurst talking with Frances Cooper about her experiences in the war, and after the war, and in life in general. But what is your first recollection of life?
FC: Well, I was brought up, I was born and brought up in Uganda and my parents lived on safari, and I think [emphasis] the first serious memory I have is of the – we called them the natives - killing a goat. And I think they must have cut its throat and then it sort of danced around with its head hanging off, and the natives thought it was hysterical and they were all dancing about too and I went back to my mother splattered with blood and she was quite shocked and upset about it, she thought perhaps she shouldn’t have let me go, I think that’s the first thing I can remember. Little smatterings of life in Uganda: the smell of zinnias, I think, flowers, coming home on the boat when I was about two and a half, having a real tantrum being put on a lavatory and the water came up and wet my behind, because previously I had always been on a potty, and having a real go at my poor mother. Also as a great treat from my father being taken down to the engine room of the ship to see all these very noisy bits of machinery, you know; he thought it was interesting. My parents decided, because in those days it was thought better for European children not to stay in the tropics too long, to stay at home when I got to be about six. My father had one more two and a half year tour to go, on his contract, and so they bought what, in those days, was a cheap house in Suffolk for me and my mother to live in while he went back to Uganda to do his last tour. As it happened, war broke out and he was stuck in Africa and poor mother was stuck at home with a small child in Suffolk, and it was a very [emphasis] remote part of Suffolk, still is, and in those days it really was, but because she’d lived on safari, you know, she could cope with it. I went to a local sort of dame school, kindergarten I supposed it was called, and then somebody who was the wife of a parson in a local village near Sudbury had a little prep school, I went to that, and after my father came home in 1941, because a, I was an only child in a very isolated village, the only education was elementary school which my mother, who was a bit of a snob, didn’t really approve of, I went away to boarding school in a village called Long Melford, which was not very far away. It had been based in Felixstowe, but it was evacuated because it was dangerous on the coast, to an old rectory [cough] in Long Melford, and then when the war was nearly over everybody moved back to Felixstowe. It was quite a small, not very good school and didn’t teach children over about fifteen or sixteen, so then I left that school, went to girls’ grammar school, High School, in Sudbury, for two years, or may have been three and then I did a year’s commercial course in Ipswich, after which I joined the Air Force. All right?
CB: I’ll stop there for a mo. Thank you. That’s really intriguing, so what was your father doing in Uganda?
FC: He’d come out of the RFC. He wanted to stay on and be a pilot. His mother had recently been widowed with four younger children. She wanted him not to be in a nasty dangerous occupation. He would have very much liked to have been a river pilot, a Thames pilot which his father had been, but his father unfortunately went to the dogs. He got syphilis and um, because he was never at home, and so my grandmother didn’t want that [emphasis] for her precious son, so he had to find a job and the Ordnance Survey I think were offering to train people, they went, he went down to Southampton for a year, trained as an ordnance surveyor and then he was employed by the Colonial Office, in Uganda. [Throat clear] And my mother met him when he was on home leave, probably after about three or four tours that he did. They did two and a half years out there, six months’ home leave and so on and so on, and he was engaged for twenty years.
CB: Engaged in the job for twenty years.
FC: Yes. By the Colonial Office, and then he was finished. Because again, it was considered the white man’s grave, you know. And that’s why they ended up in Suffolk.
CB: Sure. So what sort of education did your parents prepare you with in Uganda?
FC: Well, I don’t remember being educated. I just do remember doing letters in a notebook and I just think my mother talked to me, um, just chatted. I can’t remember being educated, you know.
CB: So when you got back here you had to start school, so how did that work aged six?
FC: Yes, started at school. But it was a very small school and I suppose we did lettering and learning to write. Don’t remember much else. My mother was a great reader so I suppose I just accepted that I would learn to read and I suppose we did sums but I can’t remember. Haha.
CB: What about sport at school? Games?
FC: No. Well there was none in the dame school, I don’t remember much at the prep school, of course this was in a war, a lot of the teachers had disappeared. We did have games at boarding school, netball mainly, what laughingly called athletics in the summer – high jump, running races things like that - nothing at all, nothing like nowadays, you know. You were sent outside in very few clothes and told to run up and down, you know. It was horrible! [Laugh]
CB: So when the war started you were about eight, coming up to eight.
FC: Yes. Eight or nine. I do remember the famous broadcast, I’m pretty sure I do [emphasis] remember, and my mother being terribly upset because she was stuck in, you know, in one place and my father was in Africa. But she’d been very worried before, because she could remember the First World War, and there’d been preparations in the village, things like you had to black out your house, the Home Guard was beginning, and we had a telephone, one of the few in the village, and the sergeant of the Home Guard lived just near us and, so he of course didn’t have a telephone so mother was delegated, if the Germans came, she had to go and get him up, or out, or whatever. And she did have to go a couple of times, in her nightie, across the road, you know, she’s not happy. Fortunately the Germans didn’t come, so you know, but she was sort of nearest point of contact.
CB: Quite sophisticated really! [Laughter]
FC: Later on in the war, an awful lot of men obviously were conscripted, but farm labourers were considered to be, it was called a reserved occupation and so they stayed at home to do the harvest and they had their rations topped up by meat pies, which were sort of like meals on wheels I suppose. You had to have a ticket, an entitlement to a meat pie, and my mother – who was a very fierce woman - was in charge of the meat pies. [Chuckle] So presumably a lorry delivered them to the local school, which was unused, and she was on duty to dish out these pies to people, and you know, [telephone] it was from ten to twelve, a very strict routine, ten till twelve, she was on pie duty. If they didn’t turn up in that time the pie went back to the factory, you know. She was very fierce! So I think they were all a bit frightened of her. But anyhow, she was in charge of the pies, that was her war work.
CB: And the telephone. And the telephone!
FC: Yeah.
CB: So what do you remember specifically about the first days of the war, apart from that?
FC: Well I do remember, because in this village there was a sharp right angled turn, great convoys of troops used to come through, I don’t quite know where they were going, I think we thought they were going to the coast, but I really don’t know, and a soldier was posted on this corner to direct the traffic round the corner ‘cause otherwise they would have shot off down a little back road. So he was there on duty and I used to go and talk to him and it was a huge coincidence was his name was Frances too, so for a child, I thought that was miraculous and I don’t know, we just used to chat. And eventually the convoys stopped and he went away, but that was in the early days of the war. Otherwise all I can remember is my mother being very anxious, worried about food, although in the country you didn’t starve by any stretch of the imagination. We had a big garden and you got eggs, and we had milk from the farm and then I think milk must have been rationed ‘cause we ended up having goat‘s milk and goat’s butter from a farmer who kept goats a bit down the road, sort of top up our nourishment, and I’ve never been able to eat goat’s cheese ever since, haha, but at the time it was nice. Don’t you like goat’s cheese? No. [Laugh] Then in 1941, after a lot of hoo-ha, my father came home from Africa having had to go round the Cape instead of through the Mediterranean, on the boat back from Mombasa. Mother knew he was leaving Africa, and she knew he wouldn’t be able to come the short way so she didn’t expect him to come as quickly, I think he took six weeks, she didn’t expect to hear from him for some time. Then she got a cable from Freetown to say he was still on his way, much later than she expected and she didn’t know where Freetown was, she said ‘it must be Ireland, it must be Ireland’ – wishful thinking I suppose - and looking at in my school atlas and finding it was West Africa which was a terrible disappointment, and then, we didn’t know, but the convoy, not his boat, but one of the boats, was torpedoed coming up across the bottom of the north Atlantic, I think two ships were damaged so then they had to go to Halifax in Canada, when she heard from him again, for the ships to be repaired and then they had to come across the north Atlantic, you know, in the middle of the war. So it was, it must have been an awful time for my poor mother and he ended up in Greenock or somewhere up there, then he came home on the train and I can remember going to Lavenham station to meet him and he just said hello, there were, nothing, I suppose we were both shy of each other and really after that my family life rather deteriorated because I’d had my mother to myself for three years and suddenly this strange man turned up, you know, and before very long I went off to boarding school and really that was the end of my childhood I think. I’m making it sound very, very soppy, and it wasn’t, and they did the best they possibly could, but from a child’s point of view, looking back, it was unfortunate to say the least. They were very hard up because my father’s pension had been set in 1921 and by 1940 something money had you know, gone down the drain, so they were on edge about money I think. He tried to get a job but he was too old, tried to be an admin officer at Wattisham: too old or too awkward. He worked for some man in the Works and Bricks of the Army in Sudbury and he didn’t get on with him and he ended up in the Observer Corps. I don’t know if they got paid or not, the Observer Corps, but not much if they did. He did that for the war. We had a very big garden, so it was a bit like “The Good Life”. Grew things, kept bees, ducks and geese, mother bottled fruit, made jam. It sounds idyllic but it was bloomin’ hard work for them both there, because they were worried about money all the time. Anyhow, that’s really why I ended up joining a service, because there was nothing in Brent Eleigh. I had done quite well at school, in Geography, and I rather fancied doing meteorology which they did in the WRNS. I applied to join the WRNS but didn’t get in. It was quite a, it was a snobby thing; the WRNS was better women’s service. My father thought that joining the RFC had done him the world of good and I think he thought it would set me up, you know, so really I went from boarding school to the Air Force. It was a continuation of what I was doing, you know; it wasn’t any particular vocation. When I joined the Air Force, well you had to go and have tests and interviews, and at the time Russian, learning Russian, was the thing and I had been quite good at languages, so I said, well, you know, I suppose they asked what do you want to do and I said ‘well, anything but sums, I’ll do Russian or whatever’, and guess what, I was put on an accounts course. [Laughter] Which is, I think they might have been trying to tell me something but I didn’t realise, you know, and so that’s what I, did the OCTU and then went on an accounts course.
CB: So when you applied for the RAF did you know that you were going in as an officer?
FC: I think so, I don’t think my mother would have tolerated anything else. I think I was, it was just expected that I would go in on a Short Service Direct Commission it was called. I think that’s why, I had to go to the Air Ministry or somewhere in London; in the Strand or The Aldwych, for interviews, and doing what now they call telemetric tests or something I remember, you know, what shapes fit boxes and that sort of thing.
CB: And how long was the engagement?
FC: Three years.
CB: Okay. So you didn’t feel too happy with being put on to accounts, or did you just become resigned?
FC: No, I was horrified! But I don’t think I knew that when I went on the original Officer Training Course, you know. You were accepted, you went to OCTU and then you waited to be told what you were going to do after that, by which time you were in the Air Force, you know.
CB: No choice.
FC: I don’t remember there being, no, any choice, no. [Laugh]
CB: They were probably short of accountants at the time.
FC: Well they must have been desperate, yes, I was terrible, terrible [chuckle].
CB: Just pause there for a mo. So near where you were living with your mother and then father, what was being constructed nearby?
Fc: Well, there was a village called Waldingfield on the way to Sudbury which is where we used to do our shopping every week. We used, there was no petrol so we used to have to cycle to Sudbury through Waldingfield and the main road ran parallel with what I suppose was the peri track of a big, big American airfield and the whole place was, even our village which was four or five miles away, overrun with very glamourous American soldiers in jeeps, with their feet hanging, legs hanging out of the side, you know, whizzing about, annoying all the men, the British men, including my father. Who do they think they are, the Yanks? You know. Any woman, or female I suppose, over fourteen or so or was considered fair game by the Americans, or was thought to be, thought to be fair game. My mother, who I say was pretty fiery, was cycling home from Lavenham one day and she was stopped by an American in a jeep, I think who, well propositioned her somehow, and when she said certainly not, he gave her a tin of peaches and some other kind of gift, because they had everything and we hadn’t, you know, so she came home with a tin of peaches. And they were just so glamorous I can’t tell you. They had lovely uniforms, beautiful barathea instead of hairy old things that the Home Guard had, they were young, they had American accents like film stars. There were all kinds of terrible rumours about women going, or being no better than they should be, et cetera, you know. When I was at boarding school, one of the girl’s mothers, I think was having affairs with an American, I don’t know what had happened to her father, and she had records and shoes and nylons – that was the thing, nylons, you know. And as a child it was just so [emphasis] exciting because I wasn’t worried about people being killed or anything like that. We did have a Liberator crashed at the end of our village and all the kids went running up to look at it. It was just a big hole in the ground with bits of metal and a lot of mud, but I don’t remember being the slightest bit moved by it. When my father was looking for a job he, I think he thought he might drive an ambulance, thought that might be useful, but he went out with an ambulance and they, the people in it, said that they’d been to collect somebody who’d been a, an American in a crash, and was burnt and this man was shrieking all the time, so my father thought well he didn’t think he could stand that so he didn’t pursue that any more. They just took over the countryside, you know, and we used to cycle past all these aircraft and dispersals.
CB: They had an image that they were over paid, over sexed and over here.
FC: Well that’s what the locals thought, you know, that was just the perception. Because I was a child I didn’t really appreciate that. We did also have prisoners of war in camps, who got, if they were German they got taken out to the farms, under guard, to help with the harvest, things like that. If they were Italian they very often lived at the farm because the Italians were thought not to be interested in escaping. And I mean a lot of the Italians, particularly, were peasants, they loved working, you know, it was like being at home, they stayed, married the farmer’s daughter and you know, lived happily ever after. And we also had a Polish camp, I suppose it was a Polish Army camp at a village, can’t remember its name, called Groton I think, which was on the way to Sudbury. The big house in our village was volunteered, well, I mean they were commandeering big houses and these people jumped first and were taken over as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, who all wore blue uniforms, with red ties, do you remember? White shirts, in case they escaped from the hospital I suppose, you know. And they were all walking about the village smoking cigarettes, thoroughly miserable, annoyed my father. Um, and they sort of, well they were more interesting than cattle, and farm labourers as far as I was concerned. And then I went away to school and very few competent teachers, [microphone banging] because even the women were conscripted, so there were all kinds of sort of fairly useless has beens who were teaching. And that’s all I can really think of at the moment. Sorry!
CB: We’ll stop there if that’s all right.
FC: And the Germans were feared, and my mother, at the beginning of the war, told me, you know, if you see a nun with boots, it’s probably a German parachutist, they really believed [emphasis] it, especially if he offered you sweeties, you know. And they, it sounds ridiculous but we all believed it in those days. They took signs off the signposts in case they help the Germans go from one small village to the next, you know, because they were [emphasis] afraid of invasion, really, seriously. We all had gas masks, which again my mother insisted on me practically taking to bed with me, where other people’s mothers were much more free and easy. I can’t really think of any more, just at the moment.
CB: So we’re talking really, you were born in 1931, so you were ten when your father came back.
FC: I suppose, yes.
CB: 1941. So at the end of the war you were fifteen, sixteen, er, fourteen, fourteen, weren’t you.
FC: Yes.
CB: So your interest was changing as time went on. How did you feel about that?
FC: Yes. But, because I suppose I’d led quite a sheltered, isolated life, being away to girls’ boarding school, then came back home to go to this, the grammar school, on a coach, and then you just came back again and did your homework, and so on and so on. Then I went, lived in Ipswich, in digs, when I was on a commercial course. I didn’t really have a life, you know, it just a case of doing courses and getting through the time. I mean I never, didn’t have a social life, went to the pictures occasionally, but always with my parents, or my mother, and because we were poor and isolated, nothing happened, compared with nowadays. It just didn’t. I don’t remember feeling deprived, but it just, nothing happened.
CB: And the catering was quite good because although there was rationing, the garden was providing what you needed. Is that right?
FC: Yes. And as I say, the farmers were generous with eggs and things like that, and when it was just mother and me we didn’t eat an awful lot of meat or anything like that. We had been established in the area before the war broke out and in those days you had a butcher who came and a grocer who came, so we were part of the system. And again, as a child, I didn’t really worry about food, it was mother who worried about nourishment and such things. When my father came home he was a very big man and he worked very hard in the garden, and I think he probably felt hungry. But every, I mean things like eggs which were rationed were always distributed fairly, he didn’t have more than his share I don’t think. He just had to fill up on bread and potatoes, things like that.
CB: What age was he at this time?
FC: He was, er 1941, he would have been forty three; he was born in 1898. [Throat clear] A different era.
CB: Yes. So this airfield was constructed and the American Air Force, Army Air Force, moved in and they’re big aeroplanes, and noisy, so how did the local population get on with this disturbance?
FC: I don’t remember any particular feeling at all, I think really they were just sexually jealous of the American airmen. We never came across any socially, at all, because we didn’t have a social life, we didn’t belong to anything, or get invited, so I don’t know. I mean they were noisy but you just got used to them I suppose, like the aircraft from Heathrow going over, you just sort of take them. And you know as a child you just accept it all, don’t you. There’s no question of querying it, it just happens.
CB: And as a girl you weren’t old enough to be going out in the evenings in any case.
FC: No, no. And because it was such a long way away from anywhere there was no social, I think the farmers’ sons went to the occasional Young Farmer’s thing, Hunt Ball, I don’t remember Hunt Balls. They did have an occasional Young Farmers’ Dance but I never, never went to them. My mother was, as I say, snobbish, she thought she was a bit, a cut above rather. But I don’t remember feeling deprived. It’s only looking back I think golly, what a funny old life.
CB: You talked about your father and yourself having a slightly distant relationship.
FC: Yes.
CB: That was something that a lot of people, after the war, found with their parents. Did this improve or did you always have this slight distance?
FC: Yes. Well of course you see I then went away to school and he remained a stranger.
CB: Away from you. Yes. And when he returned, he, you returned home and went to grammar school. Did you have a different relationship with your father?
FC: I don’t think so. I think if anything, I was a bit frightened of him. He was a very big, physical, physical man. And I think it was really because he was hard up all the time. He was always anxious and edgy and if something broke or went wrong it was a really serious problem, and it, you know, it makes people crotchety because they’re worried all the time about how they’re going to cope. They had a dreadful struggle paying my school fees but they thought it was worth it, because people did in those days. My children can’t understand it, but that’s what people did.
CB: Yeah. So the war ended on the 8th of May 1945. What do you remember about that?
FC: Yes. I remember, it was probably half term at school, and it was extended a bit because of VE Day and I, again, can remember my father being cross because he said the school was swinging the lead a bit giving us a few more days off, you know, when they should have been educating us [laugh]. But we were back at Felixstowe by then.
CB: The school was. Yes.
FC: Yeah. Big anti-climax as far as I was concerned, I mean nothing happened in Suffolk for VE Day.
CB: Nothing happened in the village.
FC: No, as far as I remember, no.
CB: What about the Americans? What did they do?
FC: Well I don’t know what they did, I’ve no idea, ‘cause I was just home on holiday, from school, and I mean it was a good thing, but I don’t, there was no celebration and you, know.
CB: And when you got back to school, then what was the school’s approach to that?
FC: I don’t remember anything.
CB: Just carried on as usual.
FC: Just carried on as usual, as far as I remember. Nothing.
CB: And VJ day was in August so that was holiday time. What do you remember about that?
FC: I just remember, I think probably general relief, but although a lot of Suffolk men were in the Far East, I suppose a lot of them didn’t come back but I’m not aware of that, and I just think was just general exhaustion and relief and then when the General Election came and Labour got in, you know – horror! [Laughter] Because it was accepted that Churchill would carry on, and he didn’t.
CB: Yes. Well the Tories got out, got caught out the same way as they did with Corbyn this time.
FC: Yes, amazing, absolutely amazing. This time last year we were joking about Trump and Corbyn, and now haha!
CB: What did your father do when the war ended?
FC: Well he tried to get various jobs and then he ended up in the Observer Corps and then when that stopped he didn’t do anything.
CB: Because he had his Colonial Pension, which wasn’t big.
FC: Minute yes, I think it was four hundred and eighty pounds a year, which wasn’t very much in 1940 something. Because of the Depression, although you were supposed to get an increment every so often, some time in the late twenties or thirties they decided that you would miss out on one, one increment, which meant that his final income was less than it should have been so then halve that, pretty pathetic by the time he got it. Just hard luck, but not enjoyable. And he had no family money.
CB: Right. So it was hard altogether after the war as well.
FC: Yup. And mother had no money, so you know, it was, I think they had a hard time.
CB: We’ll pause there for a mo. So we’ve covered the wartime. So you, we touched a bit earlier on you joining OCTU, the Officer Training Unit, so where did you sign up and get your initial training?
FC: Well I can never remember taking the King’s Shilling. I can’t remember sort of a ceremony at all. I can remember going for interviews, being told I’d passed and being told to report to RAF Hawkinge, which is in Kent, on a particular day, which I did. Was like going back to school actually. And then, as far as I remember, we were put in probably rooms of four people, in huts, that was like school. Tailors came down from London to fit us up in our uniforms – our best blues. We were issued with battle dress, you know, everyday stuff. We did drill on the airfield, marching up and down, some poor flight sergeant [chortle] who was very polite, but you know, pick up your feet ma’am, and you know how women march, putting their arms wrong, he must have nearly gone mad, but you know, we did manage to learn. We had to learn all the um, when you give the order, you know, by the left, one two, halt, all that kind of thing, because he knew we were going to be telling people who had to do it on the right thing. We learned how to salute and march up and down and yeah, mostly it was the sort of giving of the orders, you know, how to do it at the right time, because you couldn’t just say stop, it all had to be according to protocol. We must have had lessons about Air Force life. How you mustn’t put the port on the table at dining-in-nights. I suppose how to behave socially, but I think most of us knew that.
CB: Which way round the table do you pass the port? Which way round?
FC: Left to right, but they don’t do it, don’t take any notice now!
CB: Don’t they?
FC: No! We used to go to, because John was with the AEFs, we used to go to dining in nights [banging sound] thumping the port all the way round, my hair standing on end, anyhow, it was pretty trivial isn’t it, things like that. I remember we were taken to Manston to look at a Mosquito. The local Member of Parliament took us round the Houses of Parliament. Just I suppose, general, after school education. And then we had a passing out day when our parents came and then we were all sent off on leave and then on courses.
CB: How long was your initial training anyway?
FC: I think it was twelve weeks, but it might have been a bit longer. I know I went in in July and I ended up on the accounts course in January, so it was.
CB: Where was the accounts course?
FC: Bircham Newton, in Norfolk. Coldest place on earth, really awful in January. We lived in one place, we ate in another mess and we were on the accounts course in another place. We spent all the time marching backwards and forwards, one place to the other, in January, in Norfolk and it was hell, hell. [Laugh]
CB: How long was the accounts course?
FC: Well I think it was three four months, something like that, I can’t remember.
CB: Then did you get a choice of posting? Or how did that work?
GC: No, I don’t remember. I was posted to Stafford, 16 MU, which was an enormous [emphasis] Maintenance Unit on the edge of the Potteries, so it was dirty, hanging our shirts out to dry and all covered with smuts. And if you’ve lived in Suffolk and Africa, that was a bit of a shock. It was a very big, soulless place, full of all these remustered aircrew, and I was hopeless at accounts; I didn’t enjoy it at all. I don’t know, do you remember having a form called a 1369?
CB: Absolutely.
FC: Well on mine, at the end of the first year at Stafford, at the bottom of it you have to say what you want, you know, how do you see your future or something, and I put ‘a small unit in the country’. Which amused the Adjutant, very much. But I was posted to Feltwell, so they did do what I asked. [Laugh] Still as accounts, but then I managed to get transferred to P3, which was airmen’s careers, which I really enjoyed. When I’d been at Stafford I had been seconded, I suppose you would say, to the P3 department there, which was run by an elderly schoolmaster so efficiently, and so when I went to Feltwell the place was, the P3 department was a bit of a shambles but I managed to rejig it how this man had done his, and it was well thought of actually, when we had a Group inspection, I think they were quite impressed, but by that time I was on my way out so I never hit the high spots.
CB: So, what rank did you reach in the end?
FC: Flying Officer, and that was just time.
CB: Yeah. Time served.
FC: Yes. You didn’t have to do exams or anything, it was just, you know.
CB: Not for that promotion.
FC: No, no it wasn’t really promotion, it was just.
CB: Same for Flight Lieutenant, yes. But did, you were on a three year engagement but were you obliged to be in the Reserve for a while afterwards?
FC: Yes, I think so.
CB: How long was that?
FC: I think it was two or three years, but I really can’t remember. And it was all fairly theoretical, being a woman, I think the men got called up to go to Korea or somewhere, but the women didn’t.
CB: No. So while you were in, what sort of experiences did you have, with other people there?
CB: Well nothing really, well I mean yeah, he was there as well.
CB: Who was that?
FC: John was there, yeah. There were two messes, two officers messes, there was the mess that belonged to the admin part of the station and there was Number Two Mess where, it was a Flying Training School, where all the cadets messed and some of the instructors lived as well. I lived in the main, Number One Mess, and John lived in the Number Two. But I think we all ate together, as far as I remember. And you know, we just went backwards and forwards. I don’t think Number One people went to Number Two, but Number Two people came in and the WAAFs had a wing of the Number One Mess, just at one end, [cough] in a wing and I just lived in the mess. Again it was really quite like school, you know, you went to work, came back for lunch, went back again, so on. Orderly Officer, which I always thought was a bit ridiculous: there was I, nineteen years old, supposed to go round guarding the station in the middle of the night, especially at Stafford, which had lots of outposts. And you were driven round with a couple of very, or probably only one, National Serviceman who hadn’t much more clue than I had, you know. if anything had cropped up I don’t know quite what we would have done but it was what one did, you know.
CB: What was the attitude of the National Servicemen in the RAF would you say?
FC: Um, I think they just accepted it. I don’t think they were terribly pleased to be there, but I think they put their heads down; most of the ones that I came across just got on with it. They did keep applying for postings to get nearer home if they happened to be sent off into the wilds, but they went on courses, I think they just decided that they’d just get on with it, not make waves. I did feel very sorry for quite a lot of the air women who, when they joined up, all wanted to be drivers or dog handlers, and they were inveigled really. They were told well join up and then once you’re in we’ll see about you being a driver or a dog handler, and they wanted to be drivers ‘cause they wanted to learn to drive a nice big, were they Humber Hawks, with the little flag, you know?
CB: My driver.
FC: Yes, you know the feeling. But you haven’t got a flag, have you!
CB: Not yet [laughter].
FC: And that’s what they hoped, but they ended up.
CB: Driving staff cars.
FC: Yeah. But they ended up as batwomen and in the kitchens and things. And they were always coming and saying can I, what about this course, can’t I be in, hugely [emphasis] over-subscribed, even more so with dog handlers, but they were in by then, you know.
CB: So with dog handling what was the attraction, particularly?
FC: Well I suppose they just liked dogs, thought they’d like to be looking after a dog. I mean they probably lived in a slum somewhere or very poor background and they thought it would be lovely.
CB: These were not National Service. These were people who’d signed on.
FC: These were women, yes.
CB: How long would their engagement be?
FC: Well I suppose two or three years, I really don’t know. And of course because it was quite soon after the war it was almost, it was an option to join one of the services because a lot of their sisters and people had done it, had been conscripted, but it wasn’t quite such a strange thing to do in those days.
CB: So we’re talking there about what was commonly in the Air Force called the erks, but there were National Service Officers. So what was their approach?
FC: Yes. Well I think they were a bit peeved, but again I think they got on with it. I do remember being very [emphasis] impressed with the, what did they call the sub-adjutants, the ones that worked in the Adjutant’s Office, under, he was called the under Adj or something anyhow, and he was Jewish and one of, an educational process was going to a court martial. In the Maintenance Unit, people were very light fingered, they were stealing platinum points off the sparking plugs hugely. Anyhow there was a, there were court martials and we had to go to a court martial to see what happened and this Jewish person wouldn’t wear a hat, you know, for the oath, and wouldn’t take the oath, the normal oath.
CB: On the bible.
FC: On the bible, yeah. And I can remember, I’ve never ever, as far as I knew, met a Jewish person before, you know, and I admired him for sticking up for his, um, his religion I suppose, you know. I mean nobody made a fuss about it, but it was, I didn’t even know it happened, you know, I was so wet behind the ears. And another fairly funny thing that happened, when I was at Feltwell, very junior, people were given jobs to do apart from their work and one of which was being I/C badminton. Well, I have never [emphasis] picked up a badminton racket in my life and I was made I/C Badminton! And had to go to Halton for a meeting about badminton I can remember. Talk about a farce, you know! I can’t remember what happened there. It was a very nice mess, it was a Rothschild place.
CB: It’s still in use.
FC: Yes, still is. It was all terribly grand, and we all presumably talked about badminton and then I came back again, you know. It’s ridiculous wasn’t it.
CB: Everybody else was keen on it, but not you.
FC: I presume, and were fit! You know. [Laugh] And I also represented Group, I think, in the relay race. ‘Cause I was tall, could run reasonably fast and didn’t drop the baton, you know, and I got a medal [chuckle] but it was pretty pathetic really.
CB: So when you met your husband to be, John Cooper, what was his role at the time and how did you come to meet him?
FC: Well we lived in, more or less, in the same mess, he was an instructor and we just came across each other and he asked me out and you know, one thing led to another.
CB: So you kept in touch, ‘ cause he stayed in the RAF and you left.
FC: No, oh yes, he was, I left, but he was still in the Air Force. He was posted to Ternhill and we went to Ternhill together, but I was out of the Air Force by then, I was just a wife, you know.
CB: Oh, you got married while he was, you were both still in the RAF did you?
FC: Yes. But you weren’t allowed to be married, a married officer in those days. Somebody had to go and it was always the woman. And also he had more of a career than I had.
CB: Sure.
FC: And we lived in a caravan because there were no quarters for junior officers, lived in the caravan on an airfield, which eventually became the deposit for our house. [Laugh]
CB: So when you came out?
FC: Yes.
CB: So when did John leave the RAF?
FC: Well, we went to Felt, er we went to Ternhill.
CB: Ternhill. That’s in Shropshire, yes.
FC: Yeah. And then he came back to run the Communications Flight at um, somewhere near Croydon, I can’t remember the name of the airfield.
CB: Kenley was it?
FC: That’s right, Kenley. We came back down in our caravan and by that time I was pregnant with our first child. [Cough] He dearly wanted to stay in the Air Force, but there were no jobs for pilots, you know, they were just so many pilots, not enough pilot’s jobs, so he just had to come out and eventually became an air traffic controller [throat clear] and then he got mixed up with the Air Cadets and became a, what they were called, an Air Experience pilot, for the cadets which he absolutely enjoyed because he could go off to camp, fly aeroplanes at the Air Force’s expense, you know, so and I was completely out of it. [Background sneeze]
CB: So he was in the Volunteer Reserve for that.
FC: Yes, yes. But by then I’d got children so my life took a different turn.
CB: We’ll stop there, thank you. [Beep] We ran out of time with this interview, so we didn’t cover certain things to do with the war which we’ll pick up with later, and her career after she left the RAF when she became a teacher and came across a head who’d been a SWO. [Beep] Incidentally the significance of this interview is that Mrs Cooper, as a child in the countryside, had experienced living next to an airfield which the Americans operated from, and also came up against evacuees and prisoners of war, both Italian and German, and at the end of the war she was still a mid teenager, but later married an RAF bomber pilot when she was serving in the RAF herself.
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Identifier
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ACooperFA170810
Title
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Interview with Frances Anne Cooper
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
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eng
Format
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00:54:45 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2017-08-10
Description
An account of the resource
Frances Cooper spent her early life in Uganda before settling with her parents in England for her schooling, then joining the WAAF. She speaks about the small village she lived in during the war, the arrival of Americans and prisoners of war, as well as the effect this had on the local population. Frances recalls the end of the war, then her time in the service before marrying a pilot and leaving to raise her children.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Uganda
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
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1941
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
childhood in wartime
civil defence
ground personnel
home front
Home Guard
military service conditions
prisoner of war
RAF Bircham Newton
Royal Observer Corps
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/233/3376/AColensoF170522.1.mp3
62f276f7578995b81676e568202f437e
Dublin Core
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Title
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Colenso, Frank
Frank Colenso
F Colenso
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Frank Colenso.
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
2017-05-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Colenso, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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PL: Hello and, and first of all an enormous thank you. My name is Pam Locker I’m in the home of Mr Frank Colenso of [redacted]. Frank it’s wonderful that you have agreed to talk to us today and so a big thank you on behalf of the Bomber Command digital archive.
FC: Thank you for inviting me.
PL: It’s a pleasure.
FC: To do that.
PL: So, I guess what I, where I’d like to start Frank is to ask you a little bit about your family and, you know, a little bit about your childhood.
FC: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I come from a very old Cornish family. There’s a lot of names with ‘o’ on the end but we’re not Italian. My, I was brought up in Falmouth in Cornwall. My dad was a boiler maker in the Falmouth docks. So, I was a young lad at school, in the scouts, a choir boy in the Parish church. A boy scout for many years and then when I started work at fourteen it was as a recovery porter on the Falmouth Packet weekly newspaper. So, the, the reporter there was Alan, doesn’t matter, he was, I, I started the job in February 1939, when I was fourteen and a half and left school. So, on the newspaper, Alan the reporter was showing me the ropes and he was in the territorial associate, the territorial army so as we went through 1939 and the war was imminent in the UK and Alan was off to war so for, for the next two years I was on my own as a, but it was a wartime rationing of paper we had not a lot of space for much news mostly it was funerals and whist drives and things like this, council meetings and such. So, then when the war broke out that year and Dunkirk happened with all the rescue allied forces from the Dunkirk area, scores of ships came into Falmouth Bay and they off loaded and the soldiers, and they were processed and given some clean clothes I guess and put on the train. So constant trains going up country from Falmouth. And my mother was a red cross nurse at the time and she was nursing these survivors from that awful time. Very much a, upset by the soldiers especially those who had swallowed fuel oil in sea water, in a bad way. So, here we are 1940 and Falmouth was bombed. The town was bombed, people killed and because the Germans were on our doorstep almost the reaction the day afterwards for hundreds and hundreds of men to join the local defence volunteers along with us young lads. Not quite sixteen some of us, so but they took us all on into the local defence volunteers and started to give us something to do. In the initial few days we were cycle patrol with an old vicar with his automatic from World War 1 which only had about eight rounds. He was our leader, so we drove, rode around the high ground round Falmouth at night, especially at night. Watching out for people setting up lights to align a bomber with say Falmouth harbour or the town or whatever. But I think the Germans wouldn’t possibly not wrecked Falmouth all the dock and repair facilities so they aimed for the town. Because they wanted a deep-water harbour and that Falmouth is the only one down that way. So that was background. We were well trained. We immediately had the sergeants all had tommy guns. The officers had side arms, the revolvers or automatics. We had American Springfield 300 calibre rifles with fifty rounds of ammunition in, in a cloth round our ear and we were well trained. We were always at the range shooting regularly and when we were kitted out gradually with uniform, boots and everything a soldier has. Well almost everything. We were well trained we was parade nights twice a week. Firing on a range Saturday afternoon. They formed us into platoons and they started at night guards around six different parts around the town from the looking across the bay to the high ground and along the low ground on the little Penryn river. So that was a pattern of my Home Guard thing was every six nights night guard. Along with that we would do with the Army exercises with the Army which got us used to the whole area around Falmouth because we drove to all the little paths and by ways and short cuts and where the high hedges were. So, you could form an ambush then. Throw all the stuff you had on with a few little turnips from the field and then just disappear because that’s the point about you really you don’t stand and fight. You get them worried that wherever they go there’s a shadow that might be us or somebody else. So that was the pattern of it. But we were well armed, we had, we had grenades and [unclear] bombs. We had mortars, spigot mortars that could fire twelve pound or eighteen pound bomb. We had what we called Vickers machine guns. The newest guns which was like an aircraft type gun, 300 calibre. We had something like phosphorus bombs. One of the bombs had five-pound weight of gelignite in it in a glass sphere. There was sticky bombs which you threw and if you threw them hard enough you took the covering off to stick on things and explode. We’d have done ourselves no favours using these things, but this was desperate times. The Germans had come right through across into France, all up as far as Norway and down towards the whole French Coast. And we were next, they were unstoppable except they had to defeat the Air Force before they could think of crossing the Chanel. So that was the pattern of the first bombing of Falmouth started the Battle of Britain, early July 1940. So that was the bombing in Falmouth. We got used to it. You were, took notice of the, the air raid warning the warbly siren and you dressed, undressed very tidily because we only had candles in the bedrooms and of course in air raid you don’t light up candles you’d got to be able to put your clothes on in the dark. So, you took your clothes off and laid them out in the right order and you were the worse and we got dressed. We had a little attaché case with odds and things in case you were blown out of your house and we took shelter next door in Cliff Roberts’ house. We were a terrace house, he’d built a huge air raid shelter in his garden. Being a deep-sea diver from the docks he’d brought a great lorry load of wood home, dug a big hole in the garden, lined it and covered it over with massive beams and that’s — Dad sawed through the fence to make a little gate. So, air raid meant we dressed, took our little attaché cases, went downstairs, through the gate into the shelter and the next-door below us was a tug boat skipper, one of the Falmouth harbour tugs. He dug a big hole, helped by his two sons and cleverly when they got a bit tired, I suppose, Mr White would find a half crown, so that made the boys do a bit more digging. And I realised, I didn’t think about it, I thought that was real treasure they were finding but I think the crafty Dad he wanted to [laughs] keep them shovelling. So, he was — that was the pattern of bombing. We weren’t allowed to write up about things like that in the newspaper but inevitably wrote about the funerals. One occasion which I didn’t put in my diary, if you imagine a stick of bombs, a stick of four bombs, one landing, I think on the boards, boarding house school. Anyway, it wrecked that school. One was in the quarry. The next one was, we were exactly in line, the next one was a hundred yards away which flattened a house and killed the occupants. So that was a narrow escape. In the early bombing as well in Falmouth my pal who was in the scouts with me and at school, Jeff Maynard. He was in Lister Street with, along with two relations who had come down from London to escape the bombing and that particular raid, parts of the town, his house was completely blown apart and collapsed on them. They were under the stairs which was a strong point, recommended to be and the gas main had been fractured. The water system pipes were broken, so they were faced with the water and gas leaking. They were dug out by the rescue, volunteer rescue parties and luckily not requiring hospital treatment. They were found a house in the, in the country about three or four miles away in Constantine and now Jeff was due to start work in — where my brother worked in Burts the electricians which was only three hundred yards from his house, so when this happened, he had to get the bike out. But we were all cyclists. We cycled patrol. Only lasted a few, a few weeks to give us something to do. But we were well trained. We had Army instructors, we had all these weapons that we learnt. We did grenade throwing and mortar usage, using mortar. So then and along with this night exercises perhaps which meant we’d just come off night guard because of six nights, each day was different and there was an exercise that started Saturday afternoon with the Army and ran all through the night until Sunday morning when they hoped to finish it, so we could get home for our Sunday dinner. That was the pattern of it. So, you were very tired at times but that was it, that’s normal to be quite — and you were cold sometimes on guard because, it was before we had greatcoats, we would have a blanket round our shoulders, patrolling along the cliffs. With these little glow worms sometimes but for the first bit of a town boy your night sky is just a few stars here and there but when you are out in the country and there is no other light from anything else that big ball in the sky is something you’ve never seen before. So, this was the pattern. Along with this was all the newspaper work, meetings, council meetings all sorts of evening affairs. I had to write about court cases and I was getting half a crown a week. I, I started as an apprentice you see, and I was bringing myself up really. Well I was on my own. So, this was six pence a day but I was never broke. I think I gave my money, my mother something as well and we were lucky. The Cornish Echo was the paper that operated from Falmouth and I was very friendly with Bill Ward their reporter and of course typically we worked together. We always met at court cases and things. In fact, for court cases, if I sent my copy up to the Western Morning News by putting it on the train I was paid a penny a line and I was often getting more with my, whatever you call it, sending my material up to them than I was [laughing] but then that was [unclear] no [unclear] really. So, with the, with the shooting I became quite expert. I was a sniper, we were snipers in the, in my platoon, and so that when — later on it was time to decide what I wanted to do because conscription was looming and if you could volunteer before then you went where you chose to go. So, my pal Bill had — older than I, he was a grammar school boy, so better suited to be training as a reporter really, than a young lad with me like I was. Now, he was a bomb aimer on 50 Squadron later on. My other pal, Nick, whose father was in the Bristol Aeroplane Company a roaming repair and modifications man, he was down on — working on [unclear]. On a Beaufighter. And he said if you come down to the Lizard Peninsular where the big scanners are now, you come down and I’ll show you round the Beaufighter. And whatever else is there so. These, these places weren’t fenced. So, you just came across and of course it’s a treat for young lads of fifteen or sixteen to get inside an aircraft like the Beaufighter for instance. Anyway, he showed us around the, also Vulcan and Hurricane which was another fleet. So, later on Nick’s dad said I’m going to take you up to London, he said I’ll ensure you get on the train I shall meet you at Exeter where you change, and we’ll go to the Windmill Theatre, there’s something to somebody, somewhere we can stay so that then this happened. We went to the Windmill Theatre which was a, we never close was the motto. And the attraction there was the nude, the nudes on the stage. So [laughs] but they weren’t moving, they weren’t allowed to move just graceful poses. So, you can imagine that with the gauzy screens, I suppose, in front. I can’t remember quite but no doubt a clever way of screening the fine detail of them and then when there was a little interval and people were leaving in the rows of seats. If there was an empty seat in front of you the men would clamber over to get into it because when they had a few intervals they got nearer and nearer the action [laughs] or the inaction [laughs]. So that was one episode and my memory I took away of all things, not about the nudes but about Vic Oliver, who’s the son in law of Churchill who was a comedian and played a violin and he could do most marvellous things with that violin. He could make it laugh [laughs] which had us in hysterics really to hear himself. This was the world of darkness it was then during the war. So back home again it wasn’t long before Mick’s dad said you get a job in the, in the Bristol Aeroplane Company because with all you do your in work, you’re in your workshop all the time making things. Because I made a half scale tommy gun for Nick’s nephew and in fact, because I could copy the detail in, I was obviously capable of making it from scraps of things. I made myself early on a practice rifle. The right weight of ten or eleven pounds to strengthen up my old muscles because I was a little weedy eight and a half stone when the, in 1939. Later on, when I went to join the Air Force I was well over, well about ten stone plus. So, I did volunteer, no I did go to Weston-super-Mare for an interview and of all things to show how nimble and clever I was with my fingers I brought a cigarette lighter that I’d made, not really knowing that this was a joke. Everybody around the country would say all they do is make cigarette lighters in the factories so anyway the, then I had a letter to take me on and then I had another letter. The, all our recruiting has been taken over by the government so that agreement is not valid now. So that’s when I joined, I volunteered to be an air gunner. Went to the normal medical at Plymouth and then later on went to Oxford for an aircrew medical when they discovered that my left eye was below standard and my right ear. So, thinking back all these seventy odd years later really, that, that saved my life, that bad eye saved my life really because as we know half of the Bomber Command people never came back. So that was, so as I was unfit for aircrew and so stamped on my document, I believe, then I could have a choice of what I wanted to do. What trade for instance. And I chose to be airframe. Airframe mechanic to start with because Nick’s dad said if you’re an airframe fitter, it’s a use, such a useful thing to know and after the war you can turn your hand to anything. And, in fact, it proved right really. So that was my time when I was called up go to Padgate up around Manchester way, I believe, as a recruit to be kitted out and do a bit of marching about, I guess and, so that was the first time that I was in a hut with about twenty odd others. But really as I had been in the Home Guard with sleeping in a guard room every six nights with the noise that goes on and the bustle that happens at times, it’s no big deal. Same as being shouted at on the parade ground, that was nothing new. Whereas it was bit of a great culture shock for a lot of chaps first coming into it. So, I took all that in my stride. So, the recruits then, new recruits were off to Blackpool, billeted in the landladies houses, you would first of all when you arrived and got, got into a situation where you marched down these streets. They would halt and right fourteen of you in here. That’s how they set you off in the different houses and the landladies were I’m sure occupied all through the war. Which is why they were after the war able to have so many marvellous changes, I would guess that happened. So that was it, but you see Blackpool was marvellous it was the only place, one of the seaside places that civilians could come to. The aircrew chose Torquay as their initial training and Torquay itself was barred from anybody coming, the beaches were all mined, mined here and there. Well a lot of mines and they had big obstacles to prevent ships landing, landing ships coming in. So, but Blackpool with all its electric trams going up and down the long, long coast sparkling away at night, must have been a great giveaway. But often the Germans didn’t get across that far. So that was a marvellous place, four shillings a day was our pay, I think, but beer was I think, maybe went up to nearly a shilling a pint. Anyway, imagine the tower, Blackpool Tower, now inside the marvellous ballroom and we couldn’t dance but there were nine bars there and they were so busy, if you, when you wanted to get a drink you were, there was two deep in front of you at least and close packed, trying to catch a barmaid’s eye. Anyway,but it was such a friendly place and when Christmas came and New Year this was a great place where a lot of kissing went on and hugging and kissing so good for us young lads it was a real eye opener really ‘cause we weren’t into girls before then, we had boys’ things to do. We had the Home Guard to keep us busy. So, this was an adventure then. So, one of these girls was from Bury in Lancashire, an ATS girl. Yes, we palled up and I saw her a few times. Only kissing and cuddling, nothing beyond that. And then later on, a year later on in Burma when I found this tower, Blackpool Tower beer label and on the back, she’d written her address. So, I started corresponding and we had lovely exchange of letters and she was a great poet. She would write marvellous poetry. And then another girl that I was also friendly with later on, in Wellington, I wrote her, and that was a nice little friendly exchange of letters but that’s digressing really. This early recruit training, stamping of feet around the [unclear] whereas out on the parade ground there was a lot of swearing went on. In Blackpool ‘cause you’d march around the streets and did your square bashing there the, the one in command had to watch his, watch his language. But he often marched us to a particular café for the break time, so that meant he would have his free, free [unclear] and we paid a tuppenny of course. We had to have a bath Fridays, Fridays and Mondays because they would march us to the big communal baths there with a swimming pool of course, that was a great attraction. Derby Baths, I think. So, we did our training there, the assault courses. We were shooting, we were running around, which was making us fit. Basically, it was keeping us fit. And also, when you think, stop to think about it on a parade ground when you respond to every order immediately that sets you up for the pattern of the future when you do, you respond to what your asked to do without question. That’s the point of it I think. And then from there I went to Western-super-Mare where Locking is the training, one of the schools of technical training. So that was in the summer of forty-three I suppose. Yes, it was. And we were in huts there and in the mornings when we woke up and had breakfast we marched to the, where the school was with a band in front of us. So, this was a great place for being a seaside place, a lot of people there. It was in the summer especially but we spent a lot of money on the dodgem cars. It eats up your money really when you don’t get much a day [laughs]. Cuts down your money for beer or cider and then one time coming from a local village, walking back west to Locking I kept wanting to take my greatcoat off, lay it on the white line on the road and lie down on it. So that was, I had to be dissuaded of that was not a good idea. Because all the vehicles headlights were havoc, were completely masked except for a narrow slit which was guarded from going upwards by a, like a peak of a cap.
PL: Um.
FC: So, they didn’t produce much light so that was I’ll explain why it’s there, I would do as I was told. But the cider was a powerful drink [laughs]. So, from there a group of us, we were all airframe mechanics, we went, we were sent up to, to, to Shropshire, to Peplow. An airfield which was half way between Wellington and Market Drayton. Wellington is now Telford. The big city of Telford since we were there. And this was, we were, we went there as part of 83 Operation Training Unit, because Wellington twin engine bombers but we hadn’t got any. So those early weeks we were, I suppose, the advance, in advance of the advanced party, really, ‘cause they were recycling themselves from Wales where they were based to there so we were getting things ready. Did meet my old friend who, when I got, I can see his face now, the morning after I got the worse for wear I can see that disgust on his face now. So that’s a reminder that I shouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t drink too much [laughs]. So that was a, a waiting time, working and waiting. We only had one Wellington there in a hangar with both wings off so and that wasn’t anything to learn from. Anyway, they did come and we settled in to some work then with the flying, daily inspections before flight, before flight the inspections turn round inspections and after flight inspections. Flying night time as well because they were doing navigation and working the crew up to a, to work together as part of it. So, but we only had a few other visiting aircraft come so it was only the Wellingtons and about time when they came back, we had all the engines had to be covered every night with a big, like an aluminium cover, balloon fabric with asbestos patches where it would come over the hot exhaust pipes. So that was a task at night in the wind trying to get these covers on.
PL: What was that for Frank?
FC: The reason for covering them over was to keep the moisture out of the engine otherwise the electrics, I think that was a good reason and they wouldn’t — the oil wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be as cold because turning over, if the oil is thick and cold it takes more effort to turn it over by the starter motor so there’s a reason for it. So really, we didn’t have real contact with the crew. We just helped, just supported the ladder as they climbed in, I guess and normal conversation I expect but no, not much memory of any detail of them. But once starting, once started and the signal for chocks away we pulled the chocks away, waved it off and did our salute as they moved, as they gathered speed, so and this main runway, though I think it was newly, newly made because it was completely tarred with, tarred with a black pitch and then covered with oak chips, oak wood chips which were then rolled in. Now, what that was for, thinking back afterwards, partly it could be to camouflage a new runway ‘cause it sticks out like a sore thumb when its new concrete. Might have been that. But certainly, it proved to be a good thing to save tyre wear. You imagine with our training lots of circuits and bumps around the take-off, circle round and landing, you know scores, scores of landings went on that wouldn’t otherwise have gone on with a flight, a flight of Wellingtons. So then, from there I went to Blackpool again to upgrade to a fitter 2A, fitter 2A airframe, so that was more time at Blackpool and that covered Christmas as well so a bit of a repeat, but in the meantime, we decided we must learn dancing. So, at Blackpool, over one of the shops was Madam somebodies dancing academy, so there we were learning the quickstep and the waltz and the foxtrot whatever and I have wrote, written in my diary that I am getting quite good at the waltz, but I haven’t tried it with a girl yet. So, but you can imagine the tower, the marvellous ballroom there, same as the Winter Gardens, sort of a up market place that had all those facilities and a huge dance floor and stage for the band. The whole place was crowded. The bars were crowded sometimes two or three deep waiting, trying to get a drink and no wonder sometimes we drunk these bars dry. So that was where our money went and then in my diary, I realised that I would occasionally draw ten shillings out of my Post Office account to keep my appetite for the old John Barleycorn [laughs]
PL: So, what were you doing at Blackpool when you returned to Blackpool?
FC: When I returned, we went to Wharpton[?] on buses and there, there was another school of technical training. I think it was Wharpton[?] but since called Warton, and so we were doing benchwork and my diary reminds me that I was nearly top of the class for different things like this because I had always been making and mending things as a boy, even when I was a reporter I spent a lot of time in my workshop making this tommy gun, half size tommy gun and making myself an automatic pistol, but it wouldn’t have been automatic but to fire, point two-two ammunition, but prior to that with my little cap gun, made of a steel castings probably put together for a roll of caps. I modified this pistol by drilling a hole where the hammer struck, just the size of a point two-two blank cartridge and then the hammer I drilled it so that I provided it with a spike which, when you, when you discharged, when you pulled the trigger that set the round off but I made a mistake really. I should have had it in the vice when I first fired it but I was holding it like you would and when I fired it really when you think about it there was no where particular for the, for the, blast to go, all it could do was to throw the side, pivoted side part of it off and crack, crack it off to my finger, so I thought I won’t, I won’t use that again.
PL: So, what were you making at the technical school?
FC: We were doing, we were doing filing. We had to file within a few thousands of an inch or even less. You were drilling, you were making brackets shapes, folding metal, drilling the holes, riveting, getting the, the idea of the rivet clearance hole and so on and riveting up and you were judged on the final product. So that’s where I got top marks again. So, I graduated, if that’s the word, we never used that, came away with a, with the upgrade which I think it gave me six pence a day more which was well worth it. So then back to the, back to Peplow, carrying on with the and then I was in modifications section and the diary reminds me that we’d start picking dual control on a Wellington on one morning we’d work all day, all evening, right through the night until six o’clock or so in the morning when we’d finished the job. We made provisionally an extra seat in that position because normally the pilot sits on the left with easy access for the crew down to the bomb aimers section and up to the front turret, but once the seat was in it was a bit of a squeeze to get by so we fitted an extra control column linked with the first pilots’ and another job we did in the modifications thing was strengthen up the under-carriage attachment structure. Where the under carriage pivoted from to, to be trapped that had to be reinforced. The radius rod which braces the length once it’s locked down, that structure was cracking. There was a, actually there was a heavy landing or any landing that was the, the main attachment pivot point and the radius rod attachment rod were trying to spread themselves. So, we, the modification was to strap a diagonal strut to strap between the two fittings which had I think three quarter bolts on it and my diary records that we did this Wellington in, on one side in eight and a half hours. So typically, with modifications seems to take time to do the first one but once you get the swing of it. And then because, because once we did that the aircraft had to have a test flight which meant all the crew positions had to be occupied, not just the pilot and his engineer. So, I was in the tail turret for this first flight I’d ever done, proudly stroking the, the gun butts, for the, the machine guns in there. So, we took off happily and we circled, climbed, circled and did different manoeuvres and looking over the fields for the first time from above it’s a real eye opener. Then there was an aircraft coming from behind, a single engine aircraft, I can’t remember what on earth it was but it was overhauling us from the star, from our starboard side and I knew, I knew you, you must never point guns unless you really mean, from the Home Guard you never pointed guns but in this case I was the hero with a wicked German and I was following him in the gun sights, I mean there was no ammunition, following him in the gun sights until he came along side by which time the turret was at right angles and there was an enormous bang behind me. And a rush of wind, a terrific rush of wind and what it was I hadn’t latched the doors, two doors together properly, which I mean it must have happened with lots and lots of other people at the time, so I nursed the turret back in line and scrambled, round to try and shut the doors because when it flew open and I looked over my shoulder at the green fields farm, you know, I only had a three or four inch strap around my waist and the chute, parachutes is clipped inside the aircraft in a bracket, so you’re a bit on your own there if you want to jump out. Not a happy place for anyone to be when things are happening for real. So, this is one of those things that the story must, must have been told endlessly if the doors flying open [long pause]. So, the pattern —
PL: So, so the point, what was the, what was the purpose of the test flight?
FC: Well the test flight was to, to operate the controls. We did other —
PL: Dual controls?
FC: We did other things regarding the rigging as well.
PL: Right.
FC: The, now, the undercarriage knock down selection [pause] it pulled the flaps, I think, partly down it was all through the aircraft, with all its trim somehow with its undercarriage dangling down, so it was linked up with the flaps but the, the, the point was if the — yeah, if they were flying and with the, with the trim controls, that was the other edges wasn’t it? Anyway, if you were flying and you operated the tail trimmer and then [emphasis] selected the undercarriage down, if you operated the tail trim too much and the flap and the undercarriage came down it would pull on the cable to do what it thought it had to do and it meant the cable snapping so it finished up with a spring strut being put in the cable somewhere I believe. But the Wellington was very touchy when you jacked it up in the hangar you had to, you had to know what you were doing. The jacking point typically you would think is on the point of balance but then that’s not a happy thing to do. You need weight on the tail when you’re jacking so because of this reason it depends, if you’ve got your engines in, it’s different to when you have got no engines in, but you had to watch jacking that you didn’t let it, let it tip so. It was a case of securing the tail wheel down till you were safely jacked and then the retraction we did, adjustments we had to make, the hydraulics all new to us we were learning how everything worked. We — when you fly the Wellington and if you think of a, perhaps a better with a low light coming across the wings you realise then what, how an aeroplane works, you get reduced pressure on the top side and increased pressure underneath. You realise then that being a fabric covered wing and geometric construction which is like a lattice work you looking across the wing, it’s like looking across a quilt on your bed, it’s all in squares, little square humps and you think it’s, that’s holding the blessed aircraft up that fabric. So, it’s well laced on.
PL: Um, um.
FC: It’s well secured, and the Wimpey could take a lot of damage. We didn’t have any damaged aircraft coming back to our patch because but, the, this design proved itself. If you had a big hole blown in it, it destroyed these, this lattice work then it wasn’t terminal for the aircraft. The strains could be shared up with whatever was there.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: And then they went — the ones that had an engine fire and maybe burnt the fabric off, burnt the fuselage fabric off right into the tail plane they would still get back.
PL: Good gracious. There’s sometimes you’d have aircraft coming back, and it was really a skeleton.
FC: Yes, I know. Maybe just one, one tail plane and a bit of an elevator to control. But they were sort of an all laid back aircraft in the air. They were moving a bit, when you’d, a lot of aircraft when you look back towards the tail, it’s like a, a ship at sea. They describe a little square pattern, repeated pattern, on a ship. I mean later on a troop ship, sleeping on deck the mast and the stars they would be making little squares in the sky. But certainly, as I said the, the, the low sun across the wing made you realise that you been,the aircraft had been supported by it.
PL: Um, um. So, can you take a guess at how many Wellingtons you converted to dual control?
FC: No, I didn’t record it you see I didn’t have room for recording things like that. It was all about the, the drinking and the dancing and the meeting of different ones.
PL: [laughing]
FC: Now one night, I’d forgotten about this. On one diary entry I’d drawn a picture of a brooch with a nice letter ‘M’ with wings. That was for one of the good girls that I was with and then, Marjorie, and then when I’d finished it, I mean in the diary it gives me away what type of chap I am. I, it came up so good, the words are in the diary, but that it’s too good to give to Marjorie. I’ll wait till I find another girl with a letter ‘M’ [laughs]. But in fact, I gave it to my mother.
PL: Oh
FC: Her second name was May but I said this is ‘M’, ‘M’ for mother.
PL: Oh, how lovely.
FC: [laughs]
PL: So how long, how long were you a flight engineer?
FC: I wasn’t a flight engineer, ground engineer.
PL: Ground engineer, sorry.
FC: Well this was once I was a classed as airframe fitter, fitter to airframe then, then I said farewell to my pal I joined up with, Jeff Grinden, of all things had taken his tenor saxophone with him, like musicians do.
PL: Um.
FC: Because he had a marvellous life, like pancake. We had a mountain of spuds to peel, Jeff would be tootling away on his saxophone. He’d go to the bands that were playing music for the, for the Officers’ Mess or whatever and of course abroad he had it all the time he was abroad. When, when we parted company at Bombay he went with others to the Cocos Islands on a Liberator Squadron in fact. But on the, when we were, the draft that I was in to go to Blackpool again, the ready crew, the ship from the Clyde at Gourock I think. That was at Blackpool again. So that’s where I said farewell to Jeff. Who was at the next town up from Blackpool. I went there, I shouldn’t have left the area really, strictly but said my farewells. Then my train to Gourock, or Gradock or whatever, whichever it was. There I was lumbered up with all my webbing packed up with backpack, haversack, kit bag on my shoulder trying to find G deck and A deck, A deck’s the lifeboat deck, a long way down. Coming down this wide, quite wide stairways, there was a chap coming towards me and I moved to the side and he moved to the side and we stopped. And I looked up and it was Jeff, so he was on the same troop ship [laughs]. Oh yes, G deck was a long way down.
PL: So how, just trying to clarify how you moved from working on Wellingtons. So, did that work come to an end?
FC: Oh no, we just —
PL: So, so how did you get to be on a —
FC: Well in my case, I didn’t know it at the time, they needed well over two hundred upgraded fitters 2A.
PL: Right.
FC: Airframe people. They did over two hundred airframe people to put them on a 9613B, now why did I think of that. Well our kit bags had it on. And on the troop ship we had instructions from the CG-4A Waco glider, a small glider.
PL: Right.
FC: Because we going, this was for Burma, for the going into Burma. So, we had all the instruction on it and then we got to Worli, to Bombay, Worli is a huge transit camp for people leaving and coming in. And when the dhobi wallahs came around in the huts asking for our clothes to be washed we innocently, naively gave them all our sweaty old clothing and when we — later on, we saw about four acres of khaki spread out to dry in the sun. So, but they had a clever code, they’d invented their own sort of barcode amongst themselves. Just a pattern of dots inside the collar perhaps and then on the, from the outside troops, I mean it was a four-year tour when I went, a four-year tour. They were, they wanted to raise some sterling, so they were selling things off and one, I bought a topi, a pith helmet, flat, sort of thick with a flattish top with a RAF [unclear] with an RAF flash on it. I don’t know how many — how much that was. Another one was Irish linen, a stone coloured suit in the RAF pattern which is starched. Very smart. So I bought that off him. I can’t just think what else. But I was proud to wear that suit, I’ve got pictures of it. So, in India, that’s right, that’s right, about eight or so of us airframe fitters went up to, to, to 144 repair and salvage unit which was based at the time at Risalpur, North West Frontier Province as we used to know it. Right by Afghan border where the, where the Khyber Pass starts.
PL: Um.
FC: Nowshera is a town across the Kabul river. So that was our first of the Indian town we went in, and I remember the cinemas there with Indian films and then there was a big pre-war army, army station with, with lots of facilities there, marvellous billiards rooms. We had our barrack blocks had a wide veranda, a covered veranda and a big rack to put your rifles in to lock them up and pegs over each bed to put your harness or whatever these cavalry people needed to have with them and we had our own bearer there we paid about six annas a week, of course clubbed together with a dozen of us. We had the young lad guarding our possessions and keeping the, keeping it clean. And then we got used to the Indian char wallah coming around with — on his shoulder was a harness arrangement, he carried an urn with a, with a heated, heated urn to, to serve up hot tea and egg, egg sandwiches [laughs]. So that was a good place and then Christmas came again celebrated with the officers coming round serving up the grub I suppose and 35MU was also based there. The maintenance unit. While we were there on the Frontier we were, we were, our particular party, working on the Hurricane doing a major inspection and completely recovering the fuselage with fabric, that was our task. And that had flown all the way from Burma. What they did, the aircraft in Burma that came to, need repair or whatever stage of air worthiness it was, if they had the, the time left on the major inspection date and could do it, they could fly as far as they could. They wouldn’t want to put all the aircraft into the first repair unit, so that distributed all across India. It went on, there was a three and a half year campaign, so you imagine it was a lot of work for the set up for the, right across India and of course that then was a good start when they started their own airlines later on. They had a lot of, a lot of experience in aircraft. So that was a, a memory that, and that aircraft turned up in Burma later when I was told to, when I was told to do something on this Hurricane when I was in central, lower Burma [pause] yes it, as you approach it you see how it settles, just checking the whole thing you walk around the aircraft checking things and typically you’d give it a slap underneath the fabric areas to check whether there was any water in there. So when I came to this Hurricane which had on its [unclear] a long piece of cord on the trailing edge on top of the trailing edge [unclear] and I said to myself ‘I was right after all, somebody else has done it’ and when I turned round to just look at and realise what number it was, it was the one that where, on the North West Frontier when it flew after we did all of the rigging checks, after the major,it was I think left wing low so having rigged it all with a, a positive droop or something the answer was to put I think eight inches of cord on top of the trailing edge of the rear, of the rear part of it. Bolt that on, which put a slight down pressure on. Just a gentle thing, but left wing low again and that’s why I put this quite long piece of stuff on [laughs]. So, the chaps were glad that it’s doing the, still going strong.
PL: Um, um.
FC: But, but when I first went, three of us got posted to Burma.
PL: Right.
FC: For a few weeks.
PL: So why did that happen? Was there just need in Burma?
FC: Well with, with the Air Force, no with the Army if you were in the regiment and down to a platoon, it’s like keeping an aircrew together in the war. These platoons have got to, have got to train together, whereas and they would, they would keep keeping that platoon together. But the Air Force it was all numbers, it was like if they wanted two hundred airframe fitters by that time, they went through their books and we met up with those we’d been training with as recruits. So, the time comes when they needed three chaps in Burma like they would happen. With the units, I mean they, this was another repair and salvage unit so three of us got our rations and I don’t know how long the railway journey took on these hard old wooden seats, where you had your mess tin and you had your loose tea and you went up on the, when the train stopped, you went up to the locomotive, asked the driver for some boiling water for your tea, he would blast this, you want to get out of the way, blast this super-heated steam which is well above boiling point, you know, it’s a super-heated stuff, down a pipe and then run water through it. By the time it came out it was boiling so that was our provision. And then on different stations the Indian fruit sellers were there and cakes and things you could get. So that was at Delhi. We didn’t get to the Taj Mahal we only had a day or two stop there. By the time we reached Calcutta in a big, in a transit camp there where, that’s where we was ventured in to Calcutta find where Thurpos[?] restaurant is and have a lovely meals there. [pause] So, then the, the journey on to where, whereby new unit 131 repair and salvage unit was. We had to go by train and boat and, and truck, across the Brahmaputra that’s right because the — oh the, with the Burma medal, the Burma star it was, it was for people who served East of the Brahmaputra, that was the line, so by the time we — when we got to Dhoapalong, not far from Cox’s Bazar on the Arakan Coast of Burma, the Bay of Bengal Coast. It was an airfield, we were in a lovely area which had bashas, lots of bashas which are huts made of — thatched huts with bamboo, woven bamboo side panels and things like that with, with beds in there. So that was — and then the airfields were Cox’s Bazar and Chittagong and so on. And we were repair and salvage so our task was to be in that position to, to be covering aircraft perhaps, and if you think of that coast, there’s a long beach, seventy miles long on one stretch of that coast, so a great safe landing for the pilot, not all that good for the airplane though, when you had to get there quickly, before the tide came in [laughs] so that was a — and if it was a belly landing job you had to try and lift it to get the undercarriage down and that was a task really and a half. So, but then they were desperate for any aircraft parts to be sent back to, to the big repair depots, that’s where they got their spare parts from. Now when we moved when Akiabyron[?] was taken, just by the Danba[?] Coast, we had an advanced party go down to get our new camp prepared and — oh and then I was tasked to be an escort for spares, going from Chittagong to Akyab and I wore my lovely stone walking out suit that I’d paid a few pounds for when I first landed at Bombay. I wore that and when I had to find somewhere to sleep I think because I was so well dressed, they said the CO is away you can use his tent and his bed. Clean sheets, imagine, this is, we shouldn’t keep the sheets on in case we made them dirty [laughs] now, so typically in the morning, no, there’s no, there’s no aircraft seat for you to return, they’re all jammed up with the wounded but while you’re here if you roll your sleeve up, to see, the [unclear] I think shows your, I was going to say postcode, your blood group.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, there was me in this MASH type forward hospital, laid alongside this soldier, for the first time giving a donation. Well its quite moving in a way and I remember thinking you could, you’ve got your religion here, I said, I’m C of E I wonder if my blood’s alright for him [laughs] thinking that, it set you up to do blood donation. For fifty or more times while I was at Farnborough later on. So that was my, the time when I —
PL: So, they just asked you if you would do a blood donation?
FC: Yes, anybody, any visitor wanted, any visitor they would —
PL: Right. Any visitor came along, and they would ask.
FC: Well, they were desperate days, weren’t they?
PL: Yes.
FC: And the wounded that were carried away in the daks[?], there were so many that were too, too bad to move.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And yet these forward hospitals had a lot, a lot on their plate.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, the only aircraft to come back was a Tiger Moth, a little biplane, a trainer biplane a very old design. So here I was with my, a, a thunderbolt propeller spanners and kit for a Hamilton propeller with that in the rear seat and sitting on the pilot’s parachute because he only had some blankets to sit on. And we were flying a lovely flight really up, just on, just inland of the coast, a nice area to fly in and this big, this big telescopic spanner with a tommy bar, I thought if any Japs come I should point this other weapon [laughs] like a —
PL: So, they’d think it would look like —
FC: Like a forty millimetre gun.
PL: Excellent.
FC: [laughs] So that was the only time I ever wore that suit once I was in Burma because I just put it away and went with a jungle green. So that was when we moved to Akyab that was, we were quite, it was a camp we were in, a flat area, if you — you only had to dig a hole, I mean, not knee deep and it would fill with water. So, you were alright for washing water and [pause] and Thunderbolts, Squadrons. New Thunderbolt Squadrons had moved in so I think the first day I frightened them, four or six of them were, had come from the airfield up the perimeter track around to, to where the runway was and one had got rather to the side of the, of the good ground and it sunk its wheel right up until the wing tip was on the ground so and that was all armed up you see, so we had to, that was our first salvage job to get that back on its, back on its wheels on its feet again but then nothing was damaged so that’s another Christmas tree to us we could take bits off as spares. I remember one chap there with his — he’d got a, I think it was a hydraulic tank all blanked off with a — he was putting air into it to check for bubbles so the only liquid around at the time was an open top had been cut open off a forty five gallon drum, it was a couple of feet of petrol in it so you submerge the tank in it to check for bubbles and somehow, I don’t know, it was stupid really cause you can blow with your mouth, you can blow a pressure of two pounds a square inch, but goodness knows what pressure he put on the tank because it expanded up almost to a ball and so he’d wrecked the tank but it was great for us it was like, it was like a kettle, once we’d left a few blanks on and a spout that was for boiling up our hot water for Crow the engine pit, the engine mechanic who was the butt of everybody’s humour. He would be grinding, grinding up this K rationed chocolate into little crumbs to make cocoa with, so that was a good use for that little tank. But another time, oh, we moved to a better area on a bit higher ground. And then the, the toilets had to be dug. About three barrels deep, a long way down and set up that for a latrine and the, the, they made beds out of telephone wire, bamboo poles and telephone wire, like a, like a grid, no springs but we were off the ground. So, when we moved — but when we were in Dhoapalong before we moved there to Akyab I’d made myself a camp bed. I went into the jungley bit where there was an old, one of our ground tanks abandoned and I used that to do the metal work for the legs of the, of the camp bed. I found an old tarpaulin off a lorry that I took to the [unclear] he was a tailor in the nearest village where he sewed up the canvas for the camp bed which cost me eight annas I think. So that was all it cost me. So that was good to have my own camp bed. And then I had a bed roll, a bed roll where you made your bed to sleep in and then you left it like that and you rolled it all up so you could easily unroll it and hop into it. Like a modern way of doing it I suppose. So Akyab —
PL: So what sort, what sort of date are we talking at now when you were in Burma? What sort of date was it?
FC: It’s in the diary, it’s in, just into forty-five, just into 1945. I got, it’s all in my diary somewhere. In fact, when I put in a claim for this shoulder that had gone wrong after they took, I had lots of cancer operations, they took a big one away from here which attached itself to my shoulder and neck muscles. So, once they took about three hours operation, anyway once that was radiotherapy on it.
PL: Um.
FC: To kill off the cancer, I describe it as a friendly fire that came. It was a risk with anything but certainly to kill the cancer. The fact that my shoulder dropped. This shoulder, the right shoulder has always been two inches lower than the left. Because the neighbour, who sadly died, he was a tailor, registered tailor, one of the top tailors in that line. Do all the Mess kits with their elaborate frogging and gold braid and he was — and he got me to try on the Sultan of Brunei’s Mess kit and Prince Charles’s Mess kit, in fact Len had made the Queen’s scarlet jacket she wore on early parades in London. Horse Guards Parade. He said your right shoulder is two inches lower. Well I didn’t know it. Didn’t realise it.
PL: Um, um.
FC: But in the bathroom with a mirror which shows the tiles behind you, he was right. But now this shoulder has dropped, now this shoulder is lower than this and you’ve gone out a bit out of kilter. And I have constant pain with it.
PL: Oh dear.
FC: My neck, tilts movement and I only got a sixty degree arc to travel through. So, but I, I tolerate pain really quite happily. I got peripheral myopathy in the legs which, which makes my leg burn. I can’t lay down in the day they just burn.
PL: Oh dear.
FC: But I can stand all day.
PL: Um, um.
FC: In fact, when they, when I’m trying to get to sleep and they burn, I’ve only got to lift the leg up, off the weight of the leg even if it’s soft or hard. Lift it up. Oh, it’s marvellous, I wish I could levitate my legs when I sleep. It’s not much to ask, I suppose. But that’s one of the things I’m , so I’m very stoical about that. But anyway, going back to Akyab.
PL: So how long were you there for?
FC: Well it’s —
PL: How did it all draw to a close? I mean it sounds like you became very clever at making something out of —
FC: Out of scraps.
PL: Out of scraps.
FC: Well this was our motto really, there was no job we can’t do was my corporal’s motto. So, you, there was great improvisation really.
PL: Did you have a workshop there? Did you have all the other kit that you —
FC: Well we didn’t have a workshop as such. I don’t, don’t remember much in the way of workshop situation. There’s a marvellous book called “The Bamboo Workshop” and I knew the bloke, the author of it, because in the early get togethers at, at the Albert Hall in London, this is in the early days, 1947 they had already had got together earlier than that, so each year we went to — for a reunion. Oh, anybody in South East Asia was there, you know Burma or beyond. Getting together because we want, we had [emphasis] to be together. You had all that time like, all unified in that in Burma and with all the, I mean it was a million soldiers in, in the fourteenth army, we were part of the fourteenth army. In fact, in, yeah, in General Slim’s book “Defeat into Victory” which tells the story of the defeat and so on. Just in the last chapter there’s a paragraph that stood out to me talking about 221 Fighter Group that, oh no, 224 Group was bombers, we were Fighter Group and then there’s 221, no we were 221, it was 224 on the [unclear]. Anyway it, he talks about the such close working together with the Air Force that we, we considered 221 Group to be, to be part of the fourteenth army.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So that’s a good feeling really.
PL: Um.
FC: I’ve got newspapers of, we had a daily newspaper in Burma that came up with the rations when they flew rations, dropped rations, or flew them in anywhere. They tried to make a daily paper available which put you in the background of the what the rest of the world was doing as well.
PL: Um. So how long were you there for Frank?
FC: I had, when I joined, well when I was at Akyab, that’s right, that was maybe a couple of months later. I’ve got the dates, but then about a dozen or more of us were transferred to a number three repair and salvage unit, mobile unit which was formed in the Middle East, worked through the Middle East, come through India and then to the Arakan, to, to actually, took you up to Chapalong[?], this nicely set up with the bashas and things. In the book that was written that he wrote, Ranson, Samson, Reg, and he was always asking people in the Albert Hall ‘tell us about your units’. A lot of history and I regretted I didn’t tell him about 131 or number, well number three in the book was in the early chapter. But there were about twenty or more repair and salvage units that worked all across India.
PL: Right.
FC: And all into Burma. We were the number one —
PL: So, was it a sort of lorry, was all the kit, was it in the back, or how did it work?
FC: We were mobile, we had vehicles, we had three tonner lorries. We had high, high load up RAF trailer.
PL: Um, um.
FC: We had mobile workshops with a lathe, its own, it generated its own power a, lathe, a [unclear] I guess, a, but “The Bamboo Workshop” is a book that’s well worth reading.
PL: So, was that about — so, so did you work on the mobile, on, on the mobile unit?
FC: Yes. That was number three, when I was two years then with that unit.
PL: Right. Right.
FC: With the mobile unit. And so, they, when we joined the unit from the other unit, flew in, flew in across the mountains, the Arakan to Magwe I think, to — before they came down. We landed at Segore[?] it’s a Japanese built airfield just on the Mandalay Road up from Meiktila, only a few miles up there and we landed taxied around and the CO met us. Of course, you’re in a litter of damaged, Japanese aircraft and bodies around but the first thing he did because he was keen, ‘Are any of you footballers?’ And of course a lot, a lot put their hands up like they would because later on he formed — how many of us were there. Must have been a dozen football teams.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: And we played on the dirt runway. Not a happy place to come to grief on.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But he — and then later on Kendrick, Squadron Leader Kendrick, he organised a, a bullet cart race down the runway. He got the locals to [laughs] bring their bullet carts on and the, the CO, Kendrick, he’d had a grass skirt, he’d got a proper grass skirt, but it wasn’t grass it was nylon towrope, glider towrope about as big as your finger I suppose but so strong, but, so the electricians jeep he had a, this for towing because a chain is a typical thing they issue or a cable but that’s solid whereas using, towing a vehicle out of the dirt, or the mud typically.
PL: Um.
FC: The tow vehicle could go forward and gather its strength up, pull on it without a jerk which could stall the engine.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So that’s what he kept in the back of his jeep, but that disappeared and reappeared as the grass skirt. [laughs] And then he, he thief proofed his jeep, this electrician, so nobody could steal it. And what he, all he did, clever in my terms but simple. He had a change over switch, so what he did he interrupted the cable running down to the horn, horn, cause that’s just thin cable and then the starter one, button on the floor, that’s a, a small cable to trip in the relay to put the power in from the battery.
PL: Right.
FC: It doesn’t take a vast load but he, he got these side by side to the two-way switch. He could start the engine, nobody could start the engine because he’d cleverly moved the two-way switch. So, starting the engine was pressing the horn button, which nobody would have thought about. A thief especially. And the, the button on the floor, he — I think it you easily found with your foot. He put a little top hat shaped bracket over it with a hole in the middle to guard it, as a guard really.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But it meant that he could casually go down and press that button to, to plug the hole.
PL: Goodness, gracious me. So, what happened next Frank? So, you —
FC: Well this was, we, we got, the unit, number three had just got there the day before and put up their old tents and all the place, the only place we could sleep was on the, in the cookhouse tent. That big hundred and eighty pounder tent, tent. So, we soon got fixed up with a tent and settled in. What were we up to there? Oh yeah. Meiktila in lower central Burma on top of the plains. There were eight airfields the Japanese had built. Pre-war there was one at Toungoo a bit further on the Rangoon Road, off the Rangoon Road but the one we were on had a marvellous runway, cambered enough to keep the water off.
PL: Um.
FC: And stop any pools developing whereas the perimeter tracks being flat, there were pools that, puddles and pools on that but they, but they’d excavated massive monsoon ditches and big storage ditches. Plus, they’d got the locals doing it all.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, it was, it was operable and they had their control tower up on, on poles on the, the, the trees. Well, well designed that was. And also, where the standing trees were, they got earth embankments to make a huge shaped pen to put the aircraft in.
PL: Right.
FC: So that on one occasion I was working on a Spitfire in this, in this pen. There was standing trees they’d left which was good for shade, you see. I was working on this Spitfire, sometimes if you had to put another tail unit on, you had to crawl down, you would support the aircraft prop, crawl down to uncouple the cables, trim the cables and the rudder and elevator cables and then the transport bolts on the, that took the, the front half, forward half to the rear half, a row of transport bolts to take out. That was rather a hot job. But this particular time I wasn’t there doing that when I was working on something on a little bench, it was a metal one, when, and I’d noticed this Hurricane with its forty-millimetre cannon parked outside and suddenly these cannons were firing right through the trees bringing branches down.
PL: [gasps]
FC: And I ducked under this little tiny bench and it went on and on and on. It seemed to go on forever but in fact I think their magazine holds about fifteen rounds. But if you think of [clapping] going on for — it seemed forever. We went around to see who’d, who’d fired this and standing in the cockpit a bit shame faced was the instrument man. He had put a new film in the cine camera which you matched up to the firing, put a new film in it, put the camera in, he [laughs] the Spitfire control column has a spade, spade shape, well that’s it. Suitable for your right thumb and the gun button has a guard around it.
PL: Right.
FC: So, if you’re working in the cockpit and pull it towards you and if you surround it you won’t set it off. But you’ve got the guard, you move it to a test position and then press it, that’s what he should’ve done, test. What he did was put it on full fire listening for this little whir of the camera and he’d got, fired this lot off and I think he, he was paralysed, he must of thought who’s doing that when it suddenly happened.
PL: Oh dear.
FC: But he kept his thumb on the button obviously.
PL: [gasps]
FC: And luckily, goodness knows where the shells were finishing up, a mile or two or more away. Because it fires about a two pound in effect a bullet.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: And they can be explosive ones as well.
PL: Um, um, um. That’s amazing.
FC: So that was — and we came around and everybody in the unit came round and the cooks as well and the CO come up in his jeep. So that he had to explain by Mr Neal who we called guns, called him guns after that.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But particularly with the Spitfire, I mean the Hurricanes are totally big high aircraft on the ground a Spitfire is lower down so with the muzzles of the cannons.
PL: So luckily.
FC: You can be like a labourer leans on his spade, you drape your arm over that and it’s happened to people — those have been fired.
PL: [gasps]
FC: Been fired accidentally.
PL: Oh, my goodness.
FC: Maybe twenty millimetres [unclear] there. So, you see tail wheeled aircraft like the Hurricane and aircraft of that day, if they accidentally fire, they’re, they’re set up to about ten or fifteen degrees.
PL: Um.
FC: With a modern aircraft, tricycle undercarriage nose wheel, they’re parallel to the ground and if they fire any of those things of course, it’s just the height.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: To be aware of. So, you wouldn’t walk in front of an aircraft. [laughs]
PL: So, were there many accidents?
FC: I don’t remember many luckily, no, but it’s a warning when there were, to those around and you work safely.
PL: Um, um.
FC: Yeah, I’ve got all my fingers and thumbs. We had to — the one Spitfire that had a damaged wing we got the wing off another of our Christmas tree wrecks and fitted it. Now the pneumatics were connected up, the pneumatic pipes on the route end of the wing. And, now Rolls Royce can put the whole shape into the pipe on a, on a piece of paper but in those days the pipe was just lazily bent to a sort of “S” shape which is kind to the pipe you see but when you’ve got a whole group of them coming up like this from one wing and you take it off and you’ve got to put on another you see, easy to — so when the — right, when I went to test it, right, clutch down, hiss of the flaps. One flap went down and it copped, cropped the cannons in the wing so I thought to myself, that’s a problem with no labelling you see.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, this is a lesson that —
PL: Um, um.
FC: You label everything. But if you got the one wing off another aircraft without thoughts [pause] anyway that’s a lesson.
PL: Um.
FC: And then the — yes, we were detached. They had, typically the unit had the main, main base somewhere and with up to six or eight mobile repair sections, MRS’s and for instance, the one that I was on, number four, we had a crane, a Coles crane, a typical RAF one of the day. We had three tonners, jeeps and [pause] and what else did we have? I don’t know. I forget now. But at one stage — when we moved to Toungoo, that’s it, that was a pre-war airfield, a grass one but it had a big hangar and that hangar the Japs used as a warehouse for rice ‘cause it was — rice was in a huge heap like they pile up road salt nowadays, don’t they. In this hangar, great pile of it, goodness knows how many tons were there, but when we were — I was at Toungoo when the war finished and it was ceasefire and before the ceasefire, I think for eleven in the morning, the noise that morning they were, all these squadrons giving the Japs a good hammering and the, beside the airfield these big guns were firing up into the hills where the Japanese were, but suddenly you were, I don’t know, over awed by the silence because you’d never had, even the little chirpy insects seemed to be stopped. And then you realise the war is over, except the Japs were — they were waiting out Japs for a year after, they kept the West Africans back to, to flush out these Japanese. So, the — luckily the unit had, number three, had followed the, they were at Imphal, on the Imphal Plain with, which has got about eight airfields. The one there was Tollihull[?]. American built, because the American equipment made the road into China across those mountains.
PL: Um.
FC: So, when they were given the length of the runway as, whatever it was, five thousand feet or something, no, five thousand feet, that can’t be right, they must mean yards. Whatever it was it, it was the hugest longest runway but marvellous really because if you had an aircraft come to grief on it there’s plenty more of it.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: Whereas on a shortish run you’d have to clear the wreck off to make room.
PL: Um, um.
FC: For the newcomers.
PL: So, after the end of the war, what was your experience between the war ending and coming back? I mean were you involved with the decommission of aircraft or — ?
FC: Well in Burma we were — my unit was, was chosen to be part of the British Commonwealth occupation force to occupy demilitarising the Japanese.
PL: Right.
FC: So, our unit was chosen, being the top one with experience, but we, we, we will go there, we backed up the three Spitfire squadrons. There was a number four Indian squadron and number four and, no number eleven and seventeen squadrons, well, they operate the top aircraft. Now they have had an almost uninterrupted history from world war one. I mean they stand them down sometimes when they have got to get a new aircraft and when they stand up again the unit with the new aircraft. That’s the way they work. But that was a marvellous unit.
PL: So, you stayed on for a while?
FC: Well we were — yes, you could, you could opt out of going to Japan so in fact we were volunteers and there were two thousand RAF volunteers to go there with us, my unit as support and the Spitfires were rounded up from where ever the war left them and put on an aircraft carrier because we were going off in December forty-five but the, they loaded up this carrier with it, all these aircraft and they were on that carrier for six months. We couldn’t get the shipping we couldn’t get the three ships. We needed three ships with all the squadrons and equipment and stuff of ours.
PL: Um.
FC: Well the small ships of the day, so when we did — while we were there in Burma a hugest hole in the world that I have ever seen was made by the Indian engineers to dump all the aircraft in. A huge trench, if you like, ramping down each, up and down each side. So, we [clears throat] had a like fun which you would think of as fun putting all the Japanese wrecks in there.
PL: Um.
FC: And then our Spitfire useless parts.
PL: Um.
FC: So that occupied our time and they were tidying up Burma in fact when we, and Meiktila is quite near Upping Lake for swimming and typically we had the Spitfire overload tank as an actual raft and then drop tanks and we had the blow up you know plate of all assault dinghies to swim from and that pal of mine who was, er, he was, he was a Geordie but he spent all his time in another part of the country until he came into the air force and he had a camera, as I had, so we took a few pictures between us but when it came to develop and print and the fixer, the, sadly some of the photos have faded away.
PL: Ummm.
FC: Actually, faded away. But I am digressing there. But, that’s right we went to, to Toungoo in the — we were there when, when the war finished. So that was a tidying up time.
PL: Um, um.
FC: Then the, the, the jeeps were modified with rail wheels ‘cause the, it’s the same railway, it’s an old, the old pictures, the old carts of the old days the ruts they make you’ve got to stay in the rut and this is what the blessed trains are. Brunel had the right idea, what’s it, eight foot broad not four foot —
PL: The Western, the Western Railway.
FC: Yes, not the four foot eight and a half inch silly things but then that’s, that’s what’s happened all round the world they kept to that silly measurement.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, we tidied up Burma into this big hole and then we went swimming and then the order came the Burmese want all the scrap metal they can get hold of. Especially aluminium.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, we had to winch and drag and hoick these things out of the trench.
PL: Out of the hole.
FC: Onto tank transporters [laughs] lash them down to take them, go onwards to the scrap yard.
PL: So, having filled the hole you then had to empty the hole [laughs]
FC: That’s why stories go back people have seen the aircraft in the hole they know it’s real.
PL: Um.
FC: As people left, they’d tell the tale
PL: Um, um.
FC: And this business of crates being buried, well [pause], crates weren’t sent to Burma they were sent to India, Bombay maybe and shipped across. The aircraft had to be erected, test flown and, and it, you didn’t have facilities to do that in Burma.
PL: When you said crates?
FC: Crates, big boxes.
PL: What does that mean?
FC: Well big boxes.
PL: Big boxes of parts and things?
FC: The whole thing is in a box.
PL: Right.
FC: For instance, in Japan we had I think six or was it four, Harvards that came all boxed up.
PL: Right.
FC: So —
PL: Like giant Meccano?
FC: Well, no, no, no they were complete aircraft.
PL: Complete aircraft?
FC: No, no well as complete as they could be. Their wings were off.
PL: Right, ok.
FC: And the engines and the tail.
PL: Right, but everything else came in the box?
FC: To get it in the crate, yes.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: Now this, when we were erecting and testing these, test flying these Harvards, they’d been in that packing box for about three years and then Jim, my good friend, the engine fitter he built up the — got the engine on and built, coupled it all up and did everything like that. He wanted to do the engine run, he was desperate to do an engine run you see.
PL: Um.
FC: Now the Aussies had Mustangs, new Mustangs. We had old Spitfires. The Kiwis had their Corsair a big American goal wing thing.
PL: Um.
FC: We had the Spitfires so there was a bit of leg pulling between us and but once we got this Harvard outside, Sergeant Robinson our Sergeant said to Jim I shall run this, you know, pulling rank on him [laughs]. Although Jim had done all the work. Anyway, as we started up, I think Jim was standing, standing just by the cockpit I think, just started up the engine, just started up and there was a, there was a bit of a bang from the cockpit and this instrument glass had blown out and hit him.
PL: [gasps]
FC: And what it was, two pipes had crossed you see. The suction pipe and the pressure pipe, this little pipe across there — the pump should have been, the instrument was driven by suction.
PL: So, was he all right?
FC: And then Sergeant Robinson didn’t want to do any more engine running he let Jim do it [laughs] so Jim’s doing all the others making lots — the Harvards makes a wicked noise the propellers make an awful noise.
PL: Um.
FC: As you know. But —
PL: So how did it all end for you Frank? How did you sort of — what was the beginning of the end and heading home?
FC: Well that was once we were in Japan you see, we —
PL: What was it like being in Japan?
FC: Well it was, thinking back it must have been what Japan was like about twenty years before
PL: Um
FC: ‘Cause the Japanese were, until 1945 when the Japanese surrendered in China, ten years that war was. I mean at one time they had all the South East area right up to the North side but when you think about forty million Chinese was killed, what sort of a cope, what do they all the greater cope prosperity sphere or something, fancy name, they made old friends wherever they went.
PL: Um.
FC: With all the murder, I don’t know, same as Germany when all these countries making no friends at all. What sort of empire were they aiming at? You see it’s the few people at the top having it all done for them. They make decisions but in Japan we had earthquakes we were on, I was on guard on the bomb dump which was an area where there were underground aircraft factories. They were stacked up with materials as well.
PL: Goodness me.
FC: But we had a bomb dump there and we were there on guard one night when in the deepest winter. Bad winter of 1947, which happened here, Europe, but also in Japan, roads completely thick with ice. We were sitting, two of us huddled in this little sentry box when we felt it move, ‘somebody out there, you go that way and I’ll go that way’ so we grabbed our rifles but there was nobody there, ‘now what was that all about?’, but it was the earthquake, just tremors just starting. Now just across the road from us there was a big lagoon but it was thick with ice, you see, because we were trying to break it by finding, throwing big rocks on it but when the earthquake started it made this ice crack up. So, we had our little bit of fun there with an earthquake and then once, once the three tonner came changing the guard taking us back. In the guard room a big demijohn full of rum, but you were only supposed, not to have any before you went on guard, just after you came out so I, my pint mug, I had a couple of fingers of it in there I suppose and of course when you’re on guard room you only take your boots off and get in bed, which doesn’t warm the bed up properly because you were [unclear] anyway I had this rum, finished it off and was then, I was in a dream that I was on a sailing ship because of all the creaking and movement, I was in a sailing ship in my dream and I opened one eye and the, the light was swinging and moving like this, I realised what it was so I — there was a Sikh chap with his turban on just sitting up in bed he said ‘I think it’s an earthquake’ and I don’t think he took his boots, and he slide the window open, they were sliding windows not fitting very well.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And jumped down onto the ice and the snow, well, frozen snow, and a lot of thundering of boots [noise of footsteps] coming down the stairs of the upstairs and it was dangerous too because it was, the lights fused, the lights went out and then there was some scaffolding along inside the building so it restricted the — but they all went out and I thought, I’ve had four, four hours guard out there so I’ll stay here.
PL: [laughs]
FC: But was dangerous really.
PL: Oh goodness.
FC: But the buildings are made, I realised when there was not a lot of damage by the American bombing naturally and not uninhabitable in fact we were in tents when we went to Japan. Now when we had left Burma the big transit camp down in Rangoon was so cold that they found a new area to put the tents up in. The Japanese prisoners put those up, like they would.
PL: Um.
FC: So I had my camp bed, everything else was on a vehicle for loading, so happily in the camp bed when was awoken by the tent having collapsed inward, almost collapsed down inward, because, well it was new tent that, which we’d never seen before, ours were awful old tents, this was a new one but you can imagine new rope and the tent pegs weren’t hammered in very much, very deep because the ground was so hard. But nobody had put tents there before it was in the area that flooded.
PL: Oh.
FC: So, we had a good two inches of water around our feet, so that was — I, when I wrote it up later, I thought, yeah, suppose the boot was on the other foot, think if the British were prisoners, the Japanese were going to their homeland and we put their tents up which had fallen down, it wouldn’t have been any laughing matter. We could laugh with the Japanese in the morning.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: When it came, but not if it had been a different tale wouldn’t it?
PL: Um.
FC: So, our welcome in Japan was to be in tents again. Cherry blossom time I think later on. They were coolie, it was a flying boat station as well as an airfield with a big crane so when the aircraft carriers eventually came with their cargo of Spitfires there was this massive dock side crane. And then they were, we were divided up into working parties. There was some on the aircraft carriers and then some on the lighters, the big barges that they brought in, I don’t know three or four at a time and a big hook of this crane dwarfed, you know, dwarfing everybody and they’re dangling, when I wrote it up being a bit poetic.
PL: Um.
FC: And, about their first landing in Japan from the crane. And we had no tractors, we had no tow bars, don’t know if we had steering arms. They had to be pushed to the airfield about two, two miles away.
PL: Gracious.
FC: One at a time. Now, Bas, my corporal, when there was — jumped down into the lighter that had come in the barge to a hooker, he said ‘we, we got more help here’ and I can’t remember them introducing me to him properly, might have been Peter, but anyway he was stripped off. He was a moon man, you know, one with, with, a pasty chap who’d not been out in the sunshine much, but very willing and we worked together. I was telling him all about the unit, telling him about all the wheezes we could get for a, if you flogged your cigarettes down in the town you had a, each cigarette would more or less buy you a bottle of beer in the canteen you know, things like this.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: Like you would [emphasis] tell a newcomer.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So, when the, when the last Spitfire got moved off and went back into this little workshop by the hangar where, where tops, and when I reached up from my NAC jacket, when he brought it, he was the new group captain. [laughs]. Telling him all the fiddles we could get up to.
PL: [gasps]
FC: But I mean, he, he and he said something like, it was a marvellous introduction to my new station. When I didn’t realise what he meant new station until that’s what he was.
PL: Oh no.
FC: [laughs] But then —
PL: So, did you get into trouble?
FC: Oh no. No, no. I mean he’d have been flannelled. If, if an officer or any — he’d have had a lot of flannel wouldn’t he. Well, this was honest, he knew we wanted to get the aircraft, wanted to have the aircraft, our aircaft flying again.
PL: Um, um.
FC: Not what I did at the time. He had the right spirit of us.
PL: Um. So, when you had to take these Spitfires for two miles, was it a question of ropes round everything and people pulling, pushing?
FC: People pulling, people pushing.
PL: Literally, so it was manpower? Were the locals sort of drafted in to help?
FC: They had, they had Japanese labourers. I think there was a requirement for the Japanese to work for the occupation force for so many days a month at least. Because when you think about it, we were getting them the idea that it’s a democratic situation.
PL: Um.
FC: Not rule, what they did as well, all the lords, think of our lords of the manor in our country with all the hard workers, like serfs doing their stuff. All the ground divided up between all these [unclear] a similar thing in Japan. They deposed all these characters, I think they went off to Tokyo for a ticket. But I didn’t know at the time but Air Vice Marshall Bouchier who’s a, our overall commanding officer, officer commanding. He took over this manor house to live in, just a few miles up the river where the Kintai bridge is, it’s a five arch wooden bridge with granite piers its often in photographs and pictures. The Kintai bridge. Now before we went there, we were, we had a pocket book telling you the custom of the country and so on and all sorts of helpful things and we were not supposed to fraternise. No fraternisation, so like you would going down by the river and meeting these Japanese girls we were like sitting on a little beach where the, alongside the river. It was, must have been a nice feeling just be sitting with a girl when you’ve got your book trying to say things and then laughing, you imagine they’re laughing and then they’re trying to read English.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: To know what — but it was only bit of harmless fun really but a good job we didn’t get him outdoors up the river seeing us. So, then the jeep, you see, it’s — we all got around with jeeps at the time. Well think of this five arch bridge taking a jeep over it, well it weighed a couple of tons or something and it’s a wooden bridge meant for foot traffic
PL: Um.
FC: I mean its arched like that and you’ve got very shallow steps and then it curves and so, so it’s a bumpy thing for a vehicle so it was pointed out that the Japanese had been complaining that we should take more care of their old things. Beside it only led you to a park. The Japanese are a great one for parks. That’s to their credit. But Japanese we could, we could walk around at night without any fears around Hiroshima. We didn’t have any fears. We were, felt safer there than we did in parts of India.
PL: So, you, you were at Hiroshima?
FC: Well we were based on the Inland Sea where Hiroshima is based about sixty miles west but that was our nearest place to do some shopping in. And of course, we climbed up the —
PL: What was that like?
FC: Well it was — I was just going to say we climbed I think about an eight-storey building but all that was left was the concrete shell of it, you know, everything else was gone but when you got up there about, perhaps eight floors up and you looked across the city the roads had been cleared. Which showed the grid the patterns of the roads, but it wasn’t long before people went back and claimed their patch and put a little shed thing on it and the shops grew then. There was a dance hall and in fact I got tickets, dance tickets for the hostesses, I’ve still got them, so —
PL: Um.
FC: Whether I was hoping to go back and spend them I don’t know.
PL: [laughs] Goodness me. So, what, what, when would that have been? What year would that have been?
FC: That was 1946.
PL: Right.
FC: Yeah. We were due to go December forty-five, that was delayed right till April I think, forty-six when we landed.
PL: Um, um.
FC: But we needed three ships. Now before, while we were tidying up Burma because what was a good trade for the locals, if you wanted chicken or eggs.
PL: Um.
FC: Was some of your canteen things.
PL: Right, right.
FC: So the word went up that the Japanese were desperate for soap of all sorts.
PL: Right, okay.
FC: And you thought well yes, that’s it. That will be a good trade, so our test pilots one took the Harvard across over the mountains to Chittagong bought up all the soaps he could all sorts of soap and then the other test pilot took it to Cox’s Bazar and along that coast, and other places, getting all the soap he could. Thinking that would be good a trade for the impress money from the unit when we get there to build that up so this was loaded on our trucks. Boxed up and loaded on the trucks and though we had about fifty vehicles I think, they had a job to find drivers for them all. Anyway, everything was aboard and that and I travelled down as a passenger in a very comfortable situation laid on top of the bed rolls in the three tonner and I had, we each had a crate of American beer. Little bottles, little lager type things. And of course, in Burma they were always desperate for bottles because they make their, you know their wines and spirits, using, they need bottles. You had a, if you had a bottle to dispose of and you saw some Burmese there by the roadside you could drop the bottle out into the dust ‘cause there was either six inches of dust or six inches of mud.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So that was the way we travelled. When we, we didn’t go half way to Rangoon and stop and spend the night there because the water, the doctor with us said no that water’s all right that water’s all green. When it’s all green like that its healthy water its only growing good water so, but mostly we drunk it as tea. I think we seemed to get by during the day without a lot of water. We never had water bottles, well we had a little enamel one to hook on your webbing belt, but —
PL: So, what happened with the soap in Japan? Did you manage to sell all the soap?
FC: The mistake was after we loaded the vehicles into this particular ship there was no escort for this, for the truck with the spares and all the equipment no escort on the ship and the dacoits who were the bandits and thieves of Burma lifted all the soap. Now when we got to Japan, we found the boxes had been opened and we, we, we deliberately made a shortage of soap around that area and then the robbers had the soap to sell. So, they must have done, done a lot of, done themselves a lot of good.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: Because I said later whether CID or whatever they were, were trying to investigate the thieves showed a clean pair of heels [laughs] with all that soap.
PL: [laughs] I see.
FC: So, we had — this, oh this earthquake that I was saying about when I was on guard. I went back and that upset the runway. The aircraft in the hangars were damaged.
PL: Right.
FC: They were crashing together, moving together.
PL: Right. Oh no.
FC: So briefly I stayed in bed. But when they were repairing these buildings, I thought those joints, those joints are too loose because they were making the uprights a tenon going into it. A great big slot for it, just with a big peg.
PL: Um. That’s what it was for.
FC: Meant for it.
PL: Right, right.
FC: When you pointed it out to the Japanese. And then one morning [clears throat] oh, we found the Japanese labourers with two big shell cases about six inches, a couple of feet long, I think they were off the cruisers, sunken cruisers in our harbour possibly, they were polishing them. So that evening when we went to, to do our drinking decided what mischief we could do, we thought we’ll get those big, big shell cases, we’ll take those and they were a bit of a heavy weight to carry when you’re a bit tiddly but by the time we were approaching barrack block, ‘H’ shaped barrack block, we were upstairs on the first floor. We didn’t know what to do with them, so the New Zealanders were billeted right below us and we crept, we slowly came in, put one each side of their doorway and crept upstairs to bed, like you would and like you would, I think possibly a weekend, well Saturday, I suppose it was Saturday or Sunday, came down, came out to go to breakfast [clears throat] looked over the balcony and down below it was a static water pool that was meant for, you to supply water for a fire, the Japanese were making a little arrangement of the garden in it. But below they were gathered around these Kiwis, gathered around these, these chaps who were, who had got their Brasso and cleaning them up so in my little write up as we went to breakfast, I said to Jim ‘by now all our fingerprints have gone they have only got Kiwi prints’.
PL: [laughs] Oh dear.
FC: So, they got in trouble, like they would. But that was when we got one over on them you see.
PL: [laughs]
FC: So how do you explain it that we found them there?
PL: Um, um.
FC: We found them there sir.
PL: So, were they engineers as well?
FC: Oh yes.
PL: So, you were all engineers together?
FC: Yeah. Well different trades of course.
PL: Yes, yes, yes.
FC: But they had their own Corsair aircraft.
PL: Right, right. So what sort of things—
FC: Patrolling around the, we, we had a Southwest, South side of the island, main island, the main occupation force was the Americans of course. We were under General MacArthur then.
PL: So, were the Spitfires really just for sort of, you know, keeping an eye on things, reconnaissance and things?
FC: Well they were patrolling around.
PL: Right.
FC: They were watching out that nobody was travelling from Korea, to and fro to Korea, I think.
PL: Right.
FC: But it was to show a presence there.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And then four [pause] 4 Squadron put up, well about four aircraft once and then 11 Squadron put up, 11 Squadron, eleven aircraft. Then what about you 17 Squadron blokes, how many have you got serviceable? I got a panoramic view from the control tower at Miho, this is on the North Coast where you count, I don’t know, how many Spitfires, thirty or something. One is taking off, I took it when one was taking off another one had just fired its Coffman starter cartridge to start the engine at, with a great puff of white smoke so that’s obviously in action, two things in action, and then by the time I’d moved around here to overlap the pictures, there was a view of other Spits and a, one was in the, in the flying position, the armourers were aligning the, synchronising the guns, but the Japanese armourer helping them like you would have to do.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, but then Japanese were pushing, like you were saying pushing, pushing behind the trailing edge. Once there’s enough of you, it was a strong enough area to push. But when, a trick was with the Spitfire, the flaps were taken down by the pneumatic rams and then flaps up, all it did was to let the air out because there was a spring recovery, so when people are pushing like this and you are in the cockpit on the brakes, ready to put the brakes on, pneumatic brakes so it traps up and can trap a few thumbs.
PL: [gasps] Ouch.
FC: Well it was, despite this. On the carriers. The Spitfires on the carriers to get lift for taking off on that short thing, they would have the flaps partly down. Well, in no way you could do that, they were either up or down but what they did, they had blocks of wood, put blocks of wood, let the flaps came up by a spring onto a block of wood. They’d be in the best position to get lift for take off and once they were happily airborne, just flick the flap switch down and up again and they could put the wood before that. So, I’ve got this panoramic view, I thought I must —
PL: And that was taking off from aircraft carriers?
FC: No, no that was taken in a time when they did like in Malta.
PL: Right,
FC: They had to do this didn’t they?
PL: Um.
FC: You know, we had a, one time when the squadron was all worked up, back to working pitch at that time. The operation firepower or something like that. They were bombing up and loading up and doing their firing, live firing. So that was good for the pilots to get that, to get together like that. Do your turn round inspections and arm and rearm.
PL: Absolutely.
FC: So, it was this, these underground aircraft factories, they yielded off some metal and things and we made great — and I made a nice cabinet, wardrobe thing and the bottom shelf had a beer, crown beer bottle opener on with a cigarette tin underneath at the bottom, because it just took a crate a beer. I could lazily reach out, knock the top off you see.
PL: Um, um.
FC: And then they decided because we had to have somewhere to put our kit to make a long wardrobe, the full length of the barrack room out of aluminium and things and so of course you had to be about thoughtful and you had to be careful shutting the doors when people were asleep because of the noise.
PL: [laughs] So when did you get sent home?
FC: This was, demobilisation, you were given a number, a group number, so when group forty was ready, was ready to — that batch of people would be demobilised. When it got to fifty which was mine, we were on a long way up in Japan and [unclear] troop ships every Thursday or something and anyway [clears throat] and then ‘cause was when, oh Jim, that’s right. There was a Sir Geoffrey Depretes[?], an MP of the day came out to talk like a politician would have to do. At this big assembly of us [unclear] Kiwis and the Aussies and us and the Indians so afterwards any questions, so Jim next to me, when I’m, I’m, I’ve not got away in my group, my group, in my group I’m in so the top man boy Boucher, he said see me afterwards and I, I can guarantee you’re on, you’re on the next troop ship so we had a little farewell drink with Jim and we waited on and on and on and the troop ship never came until finally Jim went away on the same ship as we did.
PL: Oh my goodness. So, when was that?
FC: That was 1947.
PL: Gosh that’s a long-time getting home.
FC: So, from 1942 they hung onto me. Well if you think of it in April forty-seven the war over in Germany was over a couple of years nearly.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, we did a long stint. We didn’t do a four-year tour because prior to that they brought the four year down to three and a half and then three and then two and a half which was what I did.
PL: Um, um.
FC: So, tour expiry came as same as that. On the North West frontier when it was on the cooler times a lot of the old ones still had a dog collar RAF uniform, they didn’t want to part with it. They didn’t want a blessed collar and tie they wanted to show that they were old stages.
PL: Um.
FC: So, my tunic is upstairs. I’m letting out the seams. So, I’m looking forward to wearing it when the centenary of the RAF is in April coming.
PL: Fantastic.
FC: So, I came out you see of Japan back to Blackpool again because we were based, we were in Nissen huts at Kirkham in the tail end of that 1947 winter. When the first thing they did when we got to Kirkham there was a stove in the middle of the Nissen hut you kept burning hopefully. They took our greatcoats away.
PL: Oh.
FC: First thing they did.
PL: Why?
FC: So, we wouldn’t flog them.
PL: Oh, for goodness sake.
FC: But we wouldn’t have flogged them. We wouldn’t have, would we?
PL: You’d have worn them.
FC: Would happily take them back in the summer.
PL: [laughs]
FC: [laughs] That would be a different tale.
PL: Goodness me.
FC: So that was Blackpool again.
PL: Um.
FC: So, we had a, had a fair bit of time at Blackpool in between other things. Yes, sorry, then I had three months leave to take paid leave. Well, you didn’t have to take it. I had three months paid leave. So, I had no leave when I was aboard. I had the old rest camp in Japan at Kobe, above Kobe at the, on the hill was a nice maiko it means Japanese dancer, I think. Where we had Japanese food and when the rice came, I wanted some jam on the rice because I had never had rice at home unless it had -
PL: Oh, jam on, oh, wonderful.
FC: We were squatting on low, I’ve got pictures on the low tables of girls, all nicely made up and dressed. So that was Japan.
PL: So, what, so when you got home what was your career after the war? Just very briefly because you’ve been so generous with your time.
FC: Well I didn’t want to — I had so much time using, working repairing things and making and mending things. I didn’t want to go back to reporting because really quite honestly I mean for a fourteen-year-old boy to come as to be reporting, it would be better for a grammar school boy to start because he’s got, his mind is trained and he’s got a lot of advantages. So, I — there was a job, I took all my three months and hadn’t done anything about — I knew I didn’t want to go back but the RAF newspaper, I was in the RAF Association magazine, advertising for trade engine and airplane, air people for Boscombe Down and Farnborough. So, I came to Boscombe Down when they wanted — and they had just taken on, if you can imagine, like a queue in a way, they had just taken the last one on when I arrived, so I went on to Farnborough to the Royal Aircraft Establishment as it was, who needed sixty, or it needed quite a lot of staff. So that was where I —
PL: So that’s how you ended up here?
FC: Yes, that’s it, that’s what brought me to Farnborough and the experimental flying squadron with all the different aircraft from Lincolns and Yorks, the, the Hudsons. We had the, had the sea fliers the Spitfires. The naval flight was there so it was exciting times when they were launching and arresting. Quite exciting times. Because at the end of the hangar was a big assembly that was the sort fitted on a ship to, to catapult them off and the Spitfire with four big rockets attached like under its armpits. The engine fitter had to go up there and run the engine, all engines had to be run every morning, typical wartime thing, so Farnborough must’ve been a noisy place.
PL: Um.
FC: With the Halifax’s and everything.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: But anyway, the engine man hated having to go up there. It was perched in the middle of the sky it —
PL: Yes, yes.
FC: And then another time a bit later when the Korean war was on, I think, we had a Sea Fury on the, on our radio flight operating that one. That had to be put in the twenty-four-foot wind tunnel. They must have had trouble in Korea with the certain stores they were carrying or something, I don’t know what it was. Then my good friend who joined up the same day as me in Oxford, now, he was the engine man and he didn’t like being in the wind tunnel where they got a full bore and in with, sitting in with the engine going full bore.
PL: Um, um, um, um.
FC: But that was the typical thing they did.
PL: Um. So that must have been a very interesting life. How long, how long did you?
FC: Well I was there forty years.
PL: Wow. Gosh.
FC: Till 1988. And then of course it’s, it’s about a hundred years ago since I retired now because it’s, it will be thirty years next year won’t it? Three and four.
PL: It feels a little like we need to come back and speak to you again Frank about your, your experience testing, in Farnborough.
FC: Oh yeah.
PL: And your career doing that.
FC: Oh yeah. We did fly, did fly the Lincoln up to Valley, RAF Valley and they were, the Window, you know they drop Window these aircraft. Because various sorts, sizes of it. The worst one comes in packs which you daren’t disturb in a, in a dispenser thing on the wing tips of a, of a Canberra and if you drop one the pack all busted open because they were only about ten millimetres long, a little tiny bit of aluminium, ‘V’ shaped that way and then ‘V’ shaped that way.
PL: Was this for the —
FC: They spun.
PL: Right and this was to confuse the —
FC: This was to put something that looked like an aircraft.
PL: Oh right, right.
FC: And in fact, on ‘D’ Day, teams of RAF aircraft were flying in a pattern like this.
PL: Um.
FC: And dropping Window.
PL: Um, dropping them
FC: So that to their screens it looked like there was an armada of things coming. Well they knew how to confuse. But the one that went to, I was dumping this stuff out of the, the chute and there were ack-ack firing behind, firing at us behind. I thought, I hope they keep firing at that — and when we’d circled and landed at Valley the last bundles that must have been hooked up or something littered the airfield because I remember they were black and gold, or black and yellow, long. So, we were there for the weekend. We came on the Saturday, Sunday they had all the RAF out in a long line.
PL: Picking them up.
FC: [laughs] Doing the foot plod, picking them up. Nothing to do with me [laughs]
PL: Oh Frank, thank you so much that has been an absolutely fascinating interview.
FC: I’ve been linked up with FAST Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum to keep the heritage of Farnborough’s flying alive.
PL: Fantastic.
FC: We’ve built a replica of the first aircraft to fly. Fifty-two-foot span. Quite an impressive thing. So that draws a lot of people to see and learn about Cody, Sam Cody.
PL: Um, um, um.
FC: So, there’s another story in that.
PL: Um. Well I’d just like to end by saying a huge thank you on behalf of the Bomber Command Digital Archive because it’s been such a valuable, valuable interview. So, thank you very much indeed.
FC: Thank you. Well you’re welcome to my diaries as well.
PL: Thank you very much.
FC: Couple of years there, ok?
PL: I’ll pass that on.
FC: Thank you, yeah.
PL: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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AColensoF170522
Title
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Interview with Frank Colenso
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:36:39 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2017-05-22
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Colenso grew up in Cornwall and worked for a local newspaper at the outbreak of the war. He recalls the return of injured survivors from Dunkirk into Falmouth Bay. He joined the local defence volunteers following the bombing of Falmouth and describes training and weaponry within the Home Guard and civil defence precautions. He volunteered to serve with the RAF and trained as an fitter airframe and served with 83 Operational Training Unit. He discusses modifying Wellington aircraft, prior to being posted to Burma to serve with repair and salvage units. He speaks of the living conditions in Burma and of his work there which included repairing Spitfires and Hurricanes. After the war ended he remained in Burma as his unit was part of the Commonwealth occupation force prior to his demobilisation in 1946.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Burma
Great Britain
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Lancashire
England--Blackpool
Burma--Akyab (District)
Burma--Meiktila
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1943
1945
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Carolyn Emery
83 OTU
bomb dump
bombing
civil defence
demobilisation
entertainment
fitter airframe
ground crew
ground personnel
home front
Home Guard
Hurricane
love and romance
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
runway
Spitfire
training
Wellington
Window
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/212/3351/ABlackhamCP161023.1.mp3
41156d573a080b43ea5fb588daf52a1f
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Title
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Blackham, Charles Philip
Charles Philip Blackham
Charles P Blackham
Charles Blackham
C P Blackham
C Blackham
Description
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An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Charles Philip Blackham (1923 - 2019, 1624693 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 550 Squadron.
The was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-23
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Blackham, CP
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Julian Maslin, the interviewee is Mister Philip Blackham. The interview is taking place at [deleted] Cheshire, on the 23rd of October 2016. Philip, good afternoon.
PB: Good afternoon.
JM: Could I ask you to tell us a little bit about your family background, where you were born and brought up and where you went to school?
PB: Well, I went to Stockport School, which is a well-known secondary school in Stockport on the main Wellington road going south out of the town and I was there for four years and I rose from being seventeenth in the class to top of the class. Amazing because they decided to honour my parents who’d paid for me to go to the school, I hadn’t won a scholarship so I went on to be top of the class to my absolute amazement, sharing that top position with another young man in the class of twenty or thirty cadets and pupils and I got my school certificate with a distinction in art, believe it or not, and physics.
JM: So you have some science and maths in your background.
PB: Yes, I was a hopeless failure at chemistry. Otherwise I passed in everything.
JM: And what had you thought you would do with your life, had you got a choice of career in mind?
PB: I thought I was gonna be a priest at one stage but it didn’t happen, it didn’t go on in that direction. I became an apprentice in mechanical engineering at a very big and famous diesel engine company called Mirrlees, Bickerton & Day, a very, very wonderful firm which I had greatly admired and it’s just been dismantled in the last twelve months.
JM: And had you started your apprenticeship before the war began?
PB: No, the war was already starting, I think. I hope I’m right about that because I can’t be absolutely certain.
JM: Had you got any experience of flying? Had you ever thought of joining the Royal Air Force when you were at school?
PB: No, no, I hadn’t, no. I just wanted to get into the services cause there was a war on and my father had fought in the Great War and become very lame so I had to stand for [unclear] his good example, he was still alive and hobbling from war wounds in his legs.
JM: So you perhaps didn’t feel to join the Army but perhaps the RAF was a choice.
PB: Well, I had no interest in the Army whatsoever. The Air Force interested me because it was aeroplanes and petrol engines where of tremendous interest to me.
JM: So, your interest in engineering was really a factor of perhaps you becoming a flight engineer
PB: Oh yes, yes. I also became an engineer, I took the engineering qualifications at Barry, South Wales.
JM: Right. When you were in the RAF.
PB: Yeah, qualifying, after qualifying as a pilot, took the engineering degree as well.
JM: Right.
PB: And I still got the certificates.
JM: Let’s go back a bit. What age were you when you joined the RAF?
PB: About seventeen or eighteen.
JM: Seventeen or eighteen. Had you seen anything of the air raids against Manchester or Liverpool?
PB: Yes, yes, we had a bomb in our own garden in Stockport, a district known as Edgeley and this was a plane that was dumping its bombs I think and the neighbour tried to throw a sandbag on a firebomb and while he went to fetch another sandbag because the first one burst, a high explosive bomb dropped, about as near as that wall there.
JM: That must have done a lot of damage.
PB: And I had me motorbike, I was, I must have been seventeen cause the motorcycle at the time had been inverted so I could fit a bicycle dynamo to it, cause it wasn’t an electrical motorbike, it had an acetylene light, 1929 model, I was very fond of it, it was a lovely thing and I got it going extremely well, used to take people out on it, going horse riding in the country in Cheshire. All over the place on a 1929 Raleigh motorbike so I was fond of engines.
JM: Right.
PB: And I had totally rebuild that engine myself. So I was going to be an engineer and I was and in due course became the chief, something, the title for my position in Mirrlees, Bickerton & Day, [pauses] I’ve forgotten the title.
JM: Doesn’t matter.
PB: I had a big title for the whole of Europe at London office, they moved me from Hazel Grove, Stockport to the west side of London.
JM: I imagine you could probably have stayed in that company during the war as a reserved occupation.
PB: Yes, they were trying to reserve me and I wanted to get out to it and get into the services.
JM: Why did you think so strongly to, that you wanted to join up?
PB: I wanted to be in the action because the war was at its worst at the time, at the time of the Blitz and the bombing.
JM: So, we’re in 1940, the summer and the autumn of 1940.
PB: Yes, I can’t see you very clearly by the way, there is a very bright light behind you. I don’t know whether the curtains could be closed, could they, just to reduce the strength of the light, that’s a good idea, thank you.
JM: What did your family say when you told them that you were going to sign up?
PB: Nothing. They just, they accepted it, there was a war.
JM: Did you have brothers perhaps, at all, older brothers?
PB: Yes, my brother came with me into the Air Force, my older brother and he was recruited, conscripted, I volunteered, so I could be with him,that was how it happened.
JM: Right. Do you remember where you went to enrol?
PB: Oh, I’d been in the Home Guard already, by the way, I had no interest in the Army, I had been a Dad’s Army member, a very happy one too and I used to walk home down our road from the Headquarters of the Home Guard to my house carrying a rifle and ammunition. That wouldn’t be allowed now, would it?
JM: No, it wouldn’t.
PB: At my young age and I had the amazing experience of being told, if you don’t stop asking stupid questions you’re gonna be thrown out of this lecture room. That was what the Commanding Officer said to me.
JM: And what were the stupid questions you were asking?
PB: Oh, just quizzing him about things he was lecturing us on, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you exactly.
JM: Well, they weren’t stupid questions if you were, seeking clarification.
PB: They weren’t stupid questions, they were questions about six rounds, rapid fire between yonder bushy top trees,that was the sort of terminology. And I became a Home Guard driver eventually, that’s another thing that levered me towards being a motorist. I knew how to drive but hadn’t driven, so I got myself into headquarters where the, there’s an Armoury in Stockport, a major building for military purposes called the Armoury, and I got myself recruited there as a driver and took a party of Great War veterans with their respirators and tin hats to a village nearby, name was Marple, in snow and ice, and I’d never driven before ever [emphasises] on the roads, but I had a motorbike, so I knew what the rules of the roads were, this 1929 Raleigh which was my pride and joy incidentally and got myself to Marple which is a very, very hilly area and I was stupid enough to get the passengers to get out and push instead of bouncing as I should have done up the steep hill called Brabyns Brow.
JM: Let’s go on with your time with the Royal Air Force. Do you remember where you went to enrol and what happened to you once you joined?
PB: I went to Manchester to enrol, was immediately accepted, I was fit and well and very thrilled about going into the Air Force.
JM: And where did you receive your initial training?
PB: Cambridge University.
JM: Was it?
PB: Would you believe that? Wasn’t I lucky? In St John’s College, Cambridge, which is a very famous college
JM: It is.
PB: And had a very famous choir.
JM: It has.
PB: And I was there in the ancient buildings on the river Cam.
JM: And were you receiving basic military training there or was this aircrew?
PB: Yes, Air Force engineering and stars and sky and [glider]
JM: How long were you there for, do you remember?
PB: Twelve months.
JM: Twelve months.
PB: And I was living in the college building and even got, for some silly reason a friend & I decided we would sleep out in the quadrangle one night and we were, some students were also in the college, they carted us off into a far corner of the quadrangle where we couldn’t easily get back into our quarters and the rain came and the [unclear – could be “sirens”] went all at the same time.
JM: I imagine there were plenty of examinations, weren’t there, as you were being trained?
PB: Oh yes, they were.
JM: And how did you do with those examinations?
PB: Probably still got the books if the truth be known.
JM: Really? Yes?
PB: I’ve certainly got my brother’s books.
JM: Did you pass the examinations well?
PB: Oh yes, I had to do that.
JM: And what happened to you when that course of training was complete? Where did you go next?
PB: Uh, got to think about that. I can’t remember.
JM: Do you remember if you went for flying training?
PB: Not till I got to Cambridge.
JM: Right.
PB: That was my first flying where I went to Marshalls Airport, Cambridge.
JM: Yes, it’s still there.
PB: And eventually, much later still, I became the Manager of the Marshalls Airport.
JM: Right. How did you get on?
PB: [unclear]
JM: Do you remember what you flew first of all?
PB: Tiger Moths.
JM: Tiger Moths. How did you get on flying with Tiger Moths?
PB: I loved them, beautiful little plane. And I was not taught to look out behind me and look for trouble and I was criticised for that but that was the teacher’s fault, he hadn’t taught me to look round.
JM: Do you remember?
PB: There is a chimney there called Joe’s something or other, it a brickwork
JM: Yes.
PB: On the other edge of Cambridge Airport, do you know it?
JM: I don’t know.
PB: Cambridge Airport, Smokey Joe it was called
JM: Right.
PB: And we used that to tell the direction of the wind.
JM: And do you remember how many hours before you went solo?
PB: I didn’t actually succeed in going solo until I got to Canada.
JM: Right.
PB: In a plane very similar to a Chipmunk, it was a Canadian built two seater, [pauses] just like a Chipmunk to look at
JM: Yes.
PB: You wouldn’t even tell the difference but it was in fact a six cylinder engine, whereas the Tiger Moth and the Chipmunk had just four cylinder engines.
JM: So you were sent from Cambridge by sea to Canada to complete your training.
PB: That’s right.
JM: And that was in 1941, was it?
PB: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. And what was it like? What were your impressions of Canada, a young man arriving in Canada?
PB: Terribly impressed, was a big thing cause I’d crossed the Atlantic by sea in the submarine chase.
JM: Do you remember the ship that you travelled on?
PB: Yes, the Aquitania.
JM: Right.
PB: Let me think about this, yes. That’s it.
JM: Yes.
PB: I was hoping for the Queen Mary.
JM: [laughs]
PB: Cause it was in use in those days but I didn’t have the luck to go in the Queen Mary, I went in the Aquitania.
JM: Well that was a big ship, was it?
PB: Was a huge liner, built in 1914.
JM: And do you remember whereabouts in Canada you went to?
PB: Yes. First of all, De Winton near, what’s the big city in the far west?
JM: Vancouver?
PB: No, not as far as that.
JM: Calgary?
PB: Calgary.
JM: Right.
PB: De Winton is the airport for Calgary.
JM: So you went to Calgary.
PB: It’s straining my memory trying to remember these answers for you.
JM: Well, you’re doing very well but I mean, I think people will be interested in what it was like to be living in Canada and flying there
PB: Oh.
JM: So, anything you can remember,
PB: I can remember all that.
JM: Please tell us a bit.
PB: We had a first posting was the eastern part of Canada, a place I can’t remember the name of, where my cousin has just gone to live now to look for work in the building industry. I have not told you about that, have I? He’s gone to live there, looking for work as a builder.
JM: But what was it like for you in 1941 being in Canada? What was the food like?
PB: Oh, everything was perfect. It was very cold, I remember that, we had to be careful not to get frozen. And when we eventually got out to the prairies. And then we went from eastern Canada and I’m sorry I can’t name the exact spot, we were there for say a week or ten days and we went by rail right across Canada. And if you want a silly joke, the attendant in the steam train said that “you want to hurry up, if you hurry enough you’ll see Lake Winnipeg”. And we did, we hurried down for breakfast to make sure to being ready to see Lake Winnipeg and we were passing it for a day and a half.
JM: [laughs]
PB: That is a fact.
JM: So, that’s a big lake.
PB: A day and a half by a slow steam train, which was very dirty and dusty. And they had to come round with a brush all day long sweeping up the soot. And we eventually got via intermediate cities across Canada to Vancouver, no, sorry, not Vancouver, Calgary. And there I was for six months learning to fly a little plane, very similar to a Chipmunk.
JM: Yes. So, you were flying single engine aircraft at that stage.
PB: Yes.
JM: And did you want to continue as a fighter pilot on single engine aircraft or?
PB: Yes.
JM: You did.
PB: I did.
JM: And how come you were selected then to fly bombers?
PB: Well, I think they were short of bomber pilots and they had to convert me to a four engine pilot.
JM: Do you remember what, what large airplanes you flew first of all? Once you’d qualified.
PB: Just those. We flew Chipmunks of course, for 190 hours on Chipmunks learning to fly to get our wings.
JM: Yes. You must have been very proud when you got your wings.
PB: Oh, I was. Still got one.
JM: [laughs] Good for you.
PB: I’ve never worn them for [unclear] have I?
JM: No.
PB: I got a pair of Air Force wings which is my pride and joy. Best thing I’ve ever done in my life. And we were graduated in the middle of the Canadian desert, as it were, it was a wild and windy place with cold weather.
JM: I was wondering.
PB: It was the 21st of April, I can remember that too. I always remember the graduation date.
JM: I was wondering if you ever flew the Oxford out there.
PB: Only as a navigation exercise.
JM: Right.
PB: Just once or twice.
JM: Yes.
PB: Navigation with about three of us on board, taking turns to navigate it.
JM: Yeah.
PB: Yes.
JM: And how did you find navigation? Was that a skill you could master?
PB: Oh yeah. I was qualified as a navigator.
JM: Right.
PB: I got a certificate to say so.
JM: Did you do observation of the stars as part of your navigation?
PB: Yes, all that lot. And I frightened one of my instructors by doing a violent evasive action when what I was avoiding was Saturn.
JM: [laughs]
PB: This is a fact, it frightened me to death. I still dived out of the route I was supposed to be taking, when doing some low flying over the Bow River in Calgary area.
JM: Did you meet the Canadian people very much? Did you go to their homes?
PB: Yes, one or two were very good to us and kind and we got friends with the family, doctors and such like. And we even were allowed to drive their cars and we got petrol for them. They had English cars with American tyres on them that were below standard, they were some wartime grade of tyres they were allowed to use in wartime. And we had a “meatless Tuesday”, I’ve never forgotten, “meatless Tuesday”, as a feature of Canadian life.
JM: A number of airmen who trained there and came back to Britain remarked as how they’d grown when they were living in America and Canada and eating all the steaks and the fine food that wasn’t available in Britain. Do you have that sort of?
PB: No, I don’t recall that at all. Just had good food I know
JM: And exercise.
PB: Very satisfactory.
JM: Yeah. Where did you go when you were off duty?
PB: To the local cinema [laughs]. That’s all.
JM: Did you have dances or it was just the cinema?
PB: Oh yes, we had dances and invited the local villagers from another, yeah, the next aerodrome I went to after De Winton was another one which I have forgotten the name of, if you could switch off for a minute I could.
JM: Now, Phillip, I gather you have a story about a motorbike tyre.
PB: Well, I was running an Ariel Square Four motorbike by then and I’d graduated from the 1929 Raleigh 250 to a 1939 Ariel Square Four and it needed a tyre and I bought a tyre in Stockport, my local town. But it proved to have a fault, it was a crack in the side of the tyre or something undesirable, so I took it out to Italy because I knew they put up with any tyres they were short of anything at all that goes on their cars and motorbikes. They didn’t realise it was a tyre of an undesirable size, unsuitable for a Fiat or any other sort of small car. But they gladly gave me quite a lot of money for it and put it under the seat of the Lancaster [laughs], carried it to Italy and disposed of it there for a good price.
JM: [laughs]
PB: Was quite amazed. And what’s the other story?
JM: The other story is about the picture at the reunion at North Killingholme for Operation Manna and.
PB: Well, I can’t remember a reunion, there’s something that-
US: Each year the reunion that the Dutch come to [unclear]
PB: They come and join in our parties and the prayers at the memorial, there is a beautiful memorial being built at North Killingholme [sighs] probably before the end of this talk we shall remember where I was trained for the Lancaster, I’m sorry I can’t think of it.
JM: It’ll come to you. I’m interested to hear about the reunion and the story of the painting of the Lancaster. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
PB: I’ve got a print of it, that’s all, just a print of the Lancaster with a title on it, forgotten what the title is, it’s gone, I’m sorry.
JM: Now, Phillip, we are looking at a lovely copy of a painting of Lancasters flying over Holland dropping food. Can you tell us a little bit more about the story of this painting?
PB: Not of this painting, I’m sorry. Because I don’t remember ever seeing a windmill in Holland.
JM: That might be a bit of artist license, mind you.
PB: I think they substituted that. But it’s a lovely painting, isn’t it? These are the bankings around the water, I think. Here, drainage areas, but I can’t add anything to that except there are three, five Lancasters, I don’t remember seeing it, can I look at the other side of it for a minute? I don’t know why I wasn’t aware of this. There’s the Phantom of the Ruhr.
JM: Yes, there is another painting here showing the Phantom, the Lancaster PA474.
PB: I got a print of this.
JM: Yes. Wearing the colours of the Phantom of the Ruhr 550 Squadron aircraft.
PB: I’ve got a print of that one but that one is new to me.
JM: Philip, at the top of this print of the Lancaster there are a number of signatures. Do you see these here?
PB: Can I look? Cause I may have signed this, Jack Harris, who is a well-known organiser of the meetings.
US: He’s the other pilot.
PB: Can you see any other names? Can I bring it nearer to you? There I am. [unclear]
JM: [unclear].
PB: It’s very indistinct. Yes, I’m there. How did you get this? Cause I haven’t got one with my signature on it. Do you notice we have aerials spreading from the cockpit to the tops of the rudders?
JM: Yes.
PB: Spitfires had a rather similar arrangement with aerials trailing to the top of the rudder.
US: I think a couple of these chaps are now dead.
PB: I wouldn’t be surprised, Jack Harris was the organiser of our meetings at North Killingholme.
JM: Who is that, Philip, can you read that one?
PB: Let me try and see that. It’s not clear in my sight at all.
JM: Ok.
PB: He’s the navigator.
JM: It doesn’t matter-
PB: Chaz somebody. I might be able to recognise his name if time comes. By the way, I continued flying right up to the Squadron being closed down in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.
JM: I was going to ask you about that.
PB: I will come to that later if you like.
JM: Well, please tell us now while it’s in your mind.
PB: Alright, well, I went and joined the Royal Auxiliary Air Force while I was earning my living in Manchester and working as an engineer and representative and I [pauses] what did I do?
JM: What was it like in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force?
PB: Wonderful, a real life and the CO used to organise motor rallies.
JM: Did you fly with the Royal Auxiliary Air Force?
PB: Oh yes.
JM: What did you fly?
PB: Meteor jets.
JM: Did you?
PB: Phew
JM: So you were a jet pilot as well as a Lancaster pilot.
PB: Yes, that was the big thing in my life. Every weekend I was zooming about in Meteor jets twin engine, at all levels and in all kinds of formation aerobatic and I survived it, two, three of my friends were killed.
JM: Very sad.
PB: Three of them,
JM: Yes.
PB: For various reasons. One who I’d just taken home on leave and he was killed the next weekend.
JM: And I believe you also had time with the Air Training Corps, I believe you were an officer with the Air Training Corps, will you tell us about that?
PB: Yes, I’ve been a civilian and
JM: Civilian.
PB: Everything in the committee that you can be,
JM: Yeah.
PB: All the small positions right, leading right up to the top position as the manager, civilian manager of the Air Training Corps.
JM: So I expect you flew with them.
PB: Two or three different squadrons in Manchester and Stockport area, so.
JM: I expect you must have flown an aircraft in the ATC.
PB: Yes, to this day I am still the Superintendent of an Air Training Corps squadron.
JM: Right.
PB: Still active although I’m immobilised as you will have noticed, I still do that work.
JM: When you look back now from where you are in your life now to your wartime experiences, what feelings do you have? What did it do for you?
PB: Well, it’s a long distant past now, it’s just the past and it’s gone by, that’s how I feel about it. The happiest days were at Cambridge, there’s no doubt about that, but I also continued in Cambridge as Manager of Marshalls Airport, on another job for the Air Force.
JM: Yes, yes. So when you left the Air Force, what year was it you left, do you remember?
PB: No, I couldn’t recall
JM: No, no. But you
PB: I’m sorry.
JM: Your life after leaving the airport was very much involved with engineering?
PB: I was a chief sales manager of the Marine Division of Mirrlees, Bickerton & Day and National Gas & Oil Engine Company which were associated with each other, they were related, two factories eight miles apart.
JM: And you were telling me that you had a job as a journalist working on a magazine to do with steam trains.
PB: Yeah. That’s right.
JM: Tell us about that, would you?
PB: Well, I, the publisher was, the name of the publisher, has just escaped me, who was right near the, [pauses] there was a famous cathedral.
JM: Here in Manchester or? No, in London?
PB: No, in London. Can you name a cathedral?
JM: St [unclear]
PB: A famous cathedral?
JM: Saint Paul’s Cathedral?
PB: No, no, further south than that.
JM: Uhm, Southwark Cathedral?
PB: No.
JM: Westminster?
PB: Westminster Cathedral.
JM: Right.
PB: We were just outside the doors of that.
JM: Were you? Yeah. And you were producing.
PB: I was writing and checking and working with them and I learnt the art of editing a railway gazette and writing nearly the whole of the articles sometimes, the whole of the magazine was my responsibility. I even went to the publishers, which was Odhams Press, to put it to bed as they call it.
JM: So, your whole life really had a theme of engineering in it from when you left school, through the flying and in your life after that, your working life after that was, engineering was a common thread, wasn’t it?
PB: Yes, absolutely. And I, huge engines in, were as tall as this room, massive marine engines
JM: yeah.
PB: And I’m very proud of one or two jobs I had to do. One was this City of Victoria, a huge passenger liner with four engines sailing from Vancouver to Victoria Island across the water
JM: Yes.
PB: Do you know that area at all?
JM: I’ve been there once, yeah. But I wanted to ask you about your, you told me that you had kept in touch with your crew members.
PB: Yeah.
JM: I gather you were quite involved with the veterans, the members of 550 Squadron.
PB: Oh yes, yes. Still go.
JM: Are there many left now?
PB: There’s dozens, but only a few go.
JM: Right.
PB: Cause a lot of ground staff go.
JM: Did you have much to do with the ground engineers when you were on the squadron?
PB: No, nothing.
JM: You just kept yourselves as a crew flying.
PB: We were flyers.
JM: Yeah.
PB: And we had, one of the nicest thing was one Sunday, I was minding my own business with my Ariel Square Four tucked away in safekeeping while I was overhauling the cylinder head, I was always working on these motorbikes, as well as using them to come to Stockport at the weekends and the Flight Commander arrived in my hut right across the fields from church parade where he had been. You know the church we go to? Well, I found myself sitting close to the Wing Commanders and people in charge of the squadron and one of them suddenly turned up at my, in my Nissen hut, and asked to see my Ariel Square Four, well, I think, get out of bed and take him out to the Gents toilet where I kept it [laughs] across a muddy field and he was in his best outfit, cause the church parade was medals, in all his fancy regalia in uniform and his flat hat on, a top man in the squadron, not the Commanding Officer but one of the very, very senior flight commanders. I used to fly in the RAFVR. RAFVR
JM: Yes.
PB: After the war, after my full-time service. Oh, I stayed on with the Air Force because I loved it and it meant everything to me. So what, did I say I’d done?
JM: In the African desert.
PB: I had a job of repairing the engine of a York, which is identical to the engine of a Lancaster by the way, but the wings are higher up the body, they’re down here in a Lancaster and they’re up there on a York and I had to be on the scaffolding doing the repairs myself cause I was qualified to do that sort of thing and repair the fuel feed pump, something that had to be changed and everyone else was having the afternoon in bed on a very, very hot sunny afternoon and I was working on the scaffolding on the aircraft, which was a terrific, terrific privilege to me to be allowed to tinker with the engine on a York aircraft. I’d never tinkered with one before by the way.
JM: And you were successful.
PB: Oh yes, it flew away to Singapore. And I should have been going with it but this delayed my departure so that I wouldn’t have been back in England in time to report back to work. So therefore I had to get off this York and then get me baggage and rubbish and go back with another plane back to England and guess what I came back in? A Sunderland flying boat.
JM: Tell us about that.
PB: That was a wonderful experience to me. This beautiful Sunderland flying boat was gently resting on the waves at Valletta harbour and they took me on board to give me a lift home and said, would I like to fly it? And apart from the act of take-off and the landing, I did all the flying all the way back to England.
JM: Was it an easy aeroplane to fly?
PB: Beautiful, amazing experience and something I’ve always remembered. And the crew went to bed in the back of the plane. Honestly.
JM: Oh yes, a big aeroplane.
PB: With little round windows all way along the side. And I’ve since met an Air Training Corps officer, very senior one called Cross, who was in charge of the whole of the Air Training Corps, and he said, his father was an Imperial Airways pilot that what set him up as a pilot in the first place. So he knew what I was talking about with regards to flying a Sunderland, huge plane but beautiful.
JM: And this would have been presumably in the late 1940s?
PB: They did the take off and the landing by the way, I didn’t do that but we found out where we were, we got lost over France cause we weren’t expecting to be very precise with our navigation over France. I’d done numerous jet’s trooping between England and Italy, England, Italy, England, Italy, Italy, England, from Milano to this aerodrome that I couldn’t name in Southampton area, I’m sorry I can’t remember the name of it, it’s a very well known, it’s where they fly American transport planes to this day.
JM: Well, we’ll come back to that. Are there any other stories that are in your mind from your RAF time either during the war or after that you’d like to tell us?
PB: Certain funny ones. One in particular was when I was driving back from Grimsby on a motorbike and only a 350 and we found an Australian crew of a Morris Minor, now I don’t mean the modern Morris Minor, I mean the wartime Morris Minor which is a very square [unclear] sort of, very sluggish sort of aeroplane, eh, car I mean sorry, and they’d broken down by the roadside so I offered to tow them back to the aerodrome, they were members of my crew. And we got going you know, slowly gathering speed up a very gradual incline up to the aerodrome about five miles and they had about five people in this tiny little car and they had to get out on the running boards to accommodate them all, including my crew member as well, my navigator in this case or my, uhm, not the bomb aimer, yes, it was the bomb aimer, a man whose name I could tell you later on, he may still be alive too. Uhm, he was an expert on Robbie Burns, and that was, he was, he loved reciting to me, taught me all about Robbie Burns, he was my bomb aimer and we carried on until I felt the back of the motor bike was squirming like this, and I looked round and it was going from curb to curb [laughs] we got up such speed and although it was only a 350 motorbike with all these Australian crew plus my bomb aimer hanging on the running boards not in it but on it, we got out of control so I had to slow down and I got them back to the aerodrome.
JM: It’s a story of young men enjoying themselves for the moment.
PB: Well, they’ve been out enjoying themselves in Grimsby and, or some pub on the way to Grimsby. I had the great joy of escorting them back on the end of a rope from a motorbike. It must have been their rope by the way.
JM: You wouldn’t have one of those on your bike, would you?
PB: I wouldn’t have had a rope on it, no. But this was only a little 350 Triumph. A powerful one by the way. Before I graduated onto an Ariel Square Four.
JM: Are there any other stories that you’d like to tell us? About your wartime service, your flying time?
PB: Well, only that we were chased by Spitfires for practice for them, that was quite an interesting experience.
JM: Tell us about that, please.
PB: Well, I just took photographs of the Spitfires that were honing in on us, homing in on us, to take photos I suppose.
JM: I think that was called fighter affiliation.
PB: That’s right, that’s exactly what it was called.
JM: And that was giving them a chance to practice intercepting and you a chance to practice evading.
PB: That’s right. And they were probably from an aerodrome which I subsequently flew at myself on Spitfires and the name’s escaped me just at the moment, uhm, [pauses] sorry, the name’s gone, it’ll come back, cause I used to be there for months after my demob, well, towards my demob and they were a nice crowd till the Flight Commander was killed while I was there.
JM: In a flying accident?
PB: Yes, he made a mistake doing a roll over the runway and just dived straight into the ground and he had just given me leave, was very sad about that. The name of the aerodrome I shall easily find in my memory because of having difficulty with remembering it in the past. I’m sorry it’s gone. You want to switch off while I’m thinking that name? I will do in a minute. I want to tell to them ‘cos it’s so funny.
JM: Tell us the story then.
PB: Well, I’ll tell you about Lyneham being a landing point back in the United Kingdom near Southampton and they now have American transport planes landing there.
JM: And this was when you were bringing the prisoners of war home.
PB: Troops, not prisoners.
JM: Well, ex-prisoners of war.
PB: Yes. Or servicemen who couldn’t wait for a boat.
JM: Ok. Oh, I see, so they were any servicemen.
PB: Not just prisoners.
JM: Right.
PB: A story about life on North Killingholme aerodrome, was near Grimsby, we had a Warrant Officer called Warrant Officer Yardley and he stopped my navigator and said to him, Warrant Officer, well, forgotten his surname at the minute, “what are you doing out on your motorbike without your hat on”? Which is how he expressed himself, he was a very brusque Warrant Officer in charge of the discipline on the Air Force bomber station, “what are you doing without, your, riding your motorbike without your hat on”? And “Warrant Officer” the man at fault said, “but Sir”, very polite to this Warrant Officer cause he was very firm, “you can’t ride a motorbike in a strong wind”. Forget exactly how he expressed it, “you can’t” and the Warrant Officer looked round at the sky and said, “but there ain’t no wind today” [laughs]. It was a calm day that particular day.
JM: Was a calm day.
PB: But he still had to wear his hat and of course he’d generated a certain amount of that wind himself.
JM: yeah.
PB: I had a nasty smash on that same motorbike and finished up in hospital for a week.
JM: Oh dear.
PB: When I should have been doing some bombing runs.
JM: Philip, you’ve told us many lovely stories, you’ve really described the life of a young man here in England and in Canada and on operations at the end of the war. Thank you very much for your interview. It’s very important, thank you.
PB: It’s been a pleasure- And I’ll tell you the name of.
JM: Just as an afterthought, you’ve told us that you were commissioned as a Flight Lieutenant and I’m going to conclude this interview by thanking Flight Lieutenant Blackham for his interview. Thank you very much.
PB: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABlackhamCP161023
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Charles Philip Blackham
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
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00:46:52 audio recording
Creator
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Julian Maslin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-23
Description
An account of the resource
Philip Blackham became an apprentice engineer at Diesel engine company Mirrlees, Bickerton & Day, of which he became a sales manager post war. He served in the Home Guard becoming a driver, then he enrolled in summer 1940 with initial training at Cambridge University, St John’s College, for engineering. After that he went to Marshalls Airport, Cambridge for flying training. Eventually he became a flight engineer at Barry, South Wales.
In 1941 Charles was posted to Canada to complete training at RAF De Winton, learning to fly a Chipmunk and then converted to four engine aircraft: 'I got a pair of Air Force wings which is my pride and joy. Best thing I’ve ever done in my life'. Canada was described as being nice, vast, and cold, inhabited by friendly people, with plenty of fine food that wasn’t available in Britain. Very few details are given about wartime service. After the end of war, he went on to serve in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force as an engineer and representative of Meteor jets, which he also flown. Charles also became an Air Training Corps superintendent. Describes his involvement in one of the 550 Squadron reunions at RAF North Killingholme where they discussed Operation Manna. Talks about PA474 Phantom, a 550 Squadron aircraft.
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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cambridge
Canada
Alberta--Calgary
Alberta--De Winton
Alberta
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jean Massie
550 Squadron
aircrew
civil defence
flight engineer
Home Guard
Lancaster
memorial
Meteor
military ethos
military living conditions
navigator
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
pilot
RAF North Killingholme
recruitment
Sunderland
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/126/1281/PCarterRH1505.2.jpg
82e4c36f3cc01a97985fcef2e3524d4a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/126/1281/PCarterRH1506.2.jpg
411f4770efab12569ad02a1e01b2ccd1
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
Carter, Robert Haywood
Bob Carter
Robert Carter
Robert Haywood Carter
Robert H Carter
R H Carter
R Carter
Description
An account of the resource
16 items. The collection contains an oral interview covering childhood and wartime experiences of Robert Haywood "Bob" Carter who was a farm labourer and auxiliary fireman during the war living close to RAF Dunholme Lodge. Documents including identity cards and clothing ration books for Robert Carter and Eva A Haire as well as a victory message from the King and prisoner of war camp money vouchers; newspaper article about an airman reunited with his wife after being a prisoner of war, Photographs of home guard and auxiliary fire service personnel in Welton and Dunholme.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Carter and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
2015-06-29
Identifier
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Carter, RH
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
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
Home Guard on parade
Description
An account of the resource
Group of home guardsmen on parade in three ranks. In front are two officers with peaked caps and one with greatcoat. Guard of honour of three men, two flankers with shouldered rifles stand in front of front rank. Bob Carter's father is right hand man in honour guard. All other ranks are wearing battledress with side hats. Some are wearing greatcoats. In the foreground part of a brick wall and in the background a number of brick building joined by high wall with slate roofs. On the reverse 'Bob Carter, my father is the corporal guard of honor [sic] on the right'.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Creator
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Frisby
Format
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One b/w photograph
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
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PCarterRH1505, PCarterRH1506
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
civil defence
home front
Home Guard
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/126/1270/NCarterRH150629-02.1.jpg
368003914a60a4eaf181962e44d918c7
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
Carter, Robert Haywood
Bob Carter
Robert Carter
Robert Haywood Carter
Robert H Carter
R H Carter
R Carter
Description
An account of the resource
16 items. The collection contains an oral interview covering childhood and wartime experiences of Robert Haywood "Bob" Carter who was a farm labourer and auxiliary fireman during the war living close to RAF Dunholme Lodge. Documents including identity cards and clothing ration books for Robert Carter and Eva A Haire as well as a victory message from the King and prisoner of war camp money vouchers; newspaper article about an airman reunited with his wife after being a prisoner of war, Photographs of home guard and auxiliary fire service personnel in Welton and Dunholme.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Carter and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-29
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Carter, RH
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.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[photograph]
[inserted] [symbol] Bobs Dad [/inserted]
They were a fine body of men
On parade in Welton at around the end of the Second World War.
This picture, lent to me by Mrs Aderyn Walker of Ryland Road, Welton, shows members of the village Home Guard lined up in Lincoln Road, facing the church.
Aderyn’s father, Cpl Richard Glew, is on the picture.
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
They were a fine body of men
Description
An account of the resource
Photograph shows a group of home guard men on parade on a road in front of several stone buildings. At the front are two officers behind are three rows of men in uniform with side caps. Three men stand in front of the first row, the two outside men of this group have rifles sloped over left shoulder. The front right hand man has a arrow drawn on with caption 'Bobs Dad'. Article underneath explains that photograph was taken in Welton around the end of the war and was lent to the author by Mrs Aderyn Walker who's father is also in the picture.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One newspaper cutting
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
NCarterRH150629-02
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.
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Welton (Lincolnshire)
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
civil defence
home front
Home Guard
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/272/1094/PBubbGJ16010017.1.jpg
00506c543ae02bbc7483102d9c35e158
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/272/1094/PBubbGJ16010015.1.jpg
3fa032e61a16b343c8f067ff00fd8f23
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/272/1094/PBubbGJ16010016.1.jpg
c58f6ca700bc068816f6eec4538b57f7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/272/1094/PBubbGJ16010018.1.jpg
9cc3c8d24fffe7cec7386b9b9b623e87
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/272/1094/PBubbGJ16010014.1.jpg
d8845b1822a62b792c0c12226f50200e
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
Bubb, George. Album
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The album contains photographs, propaganda, service material, memorabilia and research concerning George Bubb's service with 44 Squadron at RAF Spilsby.
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
Bubb, GJ
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
George Bubb's Royal Air Force and Local Defence Volunteers documents
Description
An account of the resource
At the top a postponement of calling up for service document with G Bubb service number name and address. Dated 21 MAy 1941. States that recipient should report when ordered, In the meantime will remain in the reserve without pay or allowances and then gives instructions to remain in current employment. Where practical, ten days notice to report for service would be given. In the centre a red Warwickshire Local Defence Volunteer identity card. Outside cover is red with Warwickshire Local Defence Volunteers Identity card and instructions if found. Inside states that bearer G Bubb is member of volunteers. At the bottom a medical treatment chit From Royal Air Force Spilsby Station Sick Quarters concerning treatment for G Bubb, date unreadable.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three documents mounted on a scrapbook page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBubbGJ16010014, PBubbGJ16010015, PBubbGJ16010016, PBubbGJ16010017, PBubbGJ16010018
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Warwickshire
England--Lincolnshire
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.
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
civil defence
home front
Home Guard
recruitment
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/105/993/PAmbroseBG1601.1.jpg
cdac676b07b3efabf981b58dc69e67da
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
Ambrose, Basil
B G Ambrose
Basil G Ambrose
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-29
Description
An account of the resource
18 items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Basil George Ambrose (1923 – 2016, 1604870 Royal Air Force), his log book, a page from his service book and 15 photographs. Basil Ambrose was a flight engineer flying Lancasters with 467 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force from RAF Waddington between September 1944 and March 1945 and with 617 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa.
The collection was been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Basil Ambrose and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ambrose, BG
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
6 March 1942: Joined RAF as a trainee turner
Posted to RAF Sealand, qualified turner
Posted to RAF St Athan, Flight Engineer training
5 July – 8 September 1944: RAF Swinderby, 1660 HBCU, flying Stirling aircraft
8 September 1944: Promoted to Sergeant
22 – 26 September 1944: RAF Syerston, Lancaster Finishing School, flying Lancaster aircraft
29 September 1944 – 23 March 1945: RAF Waddington, 467 (RAAF) Squadron, flying Lancaster aircraft
Commissioned, promoted to Pilot Officer
November 1945 Promoted to Flying Officer
22 April 1945 – 9 January 1946: RAF Woodhall Spa, 617 Squadron, flying Lancaster aircraft
11 January 1946 – 15 April 1946: Detached with 617 Sqn to Digri, India Command
28 May – 1 July 1946: 617 Squadron RAF Binbrook
October 1946: 1604870 Flying Officer B.G. Ambrose released from Service
<p>Basil George Ambrose was born on 24<sup>th</sup> June 1923 in Derby Street, Reading, the youngest of five children. He attended Wilson Road School near Reading’s football Ground. In 1937, when he was just 14 years old, he left school and took up employment as an apprentice turner at the Pulsometer. He was paid five shillings a week, half of which he had to give back to pay for his indenture training.</p>
<p>Although engineering was a reserve occupation, on 6<sup>th</sup> March 1942, he was able to join the RAF as a trainee turner. On completion of training, he passed out as a Leading Aircraftsman and was posted to RAF Sealand. Whilst there, he applied, and was accepted, for Flight Engineer training at St Athan.</p>
<p>His first ever flight was memorable in that he took the opportunity to join an old family friend (a test pilot at St Athan) who was taking a Beaufighter up for an air test. While airbourne over the Bristol Channel he witnessed a long line of merchant ships, all nose to tail as far as the eye could see, the ships were readying for the for the D Day landings.</p>
<p>On 7the June 1944, he completed his Flight Engineer training and joined the HBCU at RAF Swinderby, before moving on to the Lancaster Finishing School at RAF Syerston. In September 1944, Sergeant Ambrose and his crew, now fully trained, joined 467 Squadron (RAAF) at RAF Waddington. </p>
<p>On just his second operational flight, tasked with destroying enemy field guns in Holland, his aircraft had to drop below the cloud base at just 4000 feet. Almost immediately, the aircraft alongside them was hit by ack-ack and went down in flames. Basil’s aircraft returned safely, but the mission ended in failure.</p>
<p>Just over a fortnight later, his first ever night operation proved even more eventful, one they were all very fortunate to survive. En-route to Brunswick, a fire in the cabin set alight the blackout curtains surrounding the pilot and navigator. Basil had to use two extinguishers to put out the fire. The events caused significant delay and at their estimated time of arrival on target, they were still approximately 40 miles away. By the time they got there all the other aircraft had gone through and were on their way home. Basil’s aircraft was now completely alone over the target and although they were able to drop their bombs successfully, the aircraft was illuminated by a whole cone of search lights from the ground, plus an enemy fighter aircraft was fast coming in from the port side. The skipper took evasive action by immediately putting the aircraft into a 5000 feet dive and Basil found himself pinned to the cabin ceiling by the ‘G’ force; conversely when the aircraft pulled out of the dive, he was forced down to the cabin floor. The evasive manoeuvre was repeated one more time before they managed to lose the searchlights and the fighter. The trip home was conducted at low level without further alarm. In all, Basil and his crew went on to record thirty operations together. </p>
<p>After 467 Squadron, Basil was commissioned as a Pilot Officer and was posted to 617 Squadron in April 1945. He was never to fly operationally again although with 617 Squadron he served for a brief period in Digri, India. Basil reached the rank of Flying Officer and was demobbed in 1948.</p>
<p>Basil returned to the Pulsometer and finally qualified as a turner. After a short period working in Birmingham, he settled in Reading with his wife Jean and two children. He continued to work in engineering, eventually moving into the engineering safety field. He retired from his final position of Chief Safety Advisor for Greater London Council in 1981.<a href="https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/war-veteran-still-swing-90-4802178"></a></p>
Chris Cann
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
Home Guard troop
Description
An account of the resource
28 Home Guard personnel sitting front row and standing in two rows behind. Troops are all wearing battledress with side caps. In the background a brick building. Captioned ‘Lance Cpl, Lance Cpl, Cpl, Sgt, Major, Captain, Cpl, Cpl’. Basil Ambrose's brother Gerald is seated at left of front row.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PAmbroseBG1601
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
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
civil defence
home front
Home Guard