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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/608/10282/AMcDonaldEA150918.2.mp3
0f2d6ecf3f91adbe56622e816552729a
Dublin Core
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Title
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McDonald, Edward Allan
E A McDonald
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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McDonald, EA
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. Two oral history interviews with Edward Allan McDonald (1922 - 2020, 1076170, Royal Air Force), a memoir, his log book, documents and photographs. He flew 28 operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Edward Allan McDonald and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2015-07-13
2015-09-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: Right. This is an interview with Edward Alan McDonald or Alan McDonald, by Dan Ellin. We’re in Riseholme Hall. It is the 18th of September 2015. So, Mr McDonald could you tell me a little bit about your early life, your childhood and how you came about to be in the RAF?
AM: Yes. I think I can. I was, unfortunately it’s a bit of a miserable story this. My father was killed when I was four and so of course my mother had to bring us up. But anyway after that misfortune my mother looked after us very well as best she could. And I always fancied —my uncle he used to take me to Hedon Aerodrome which was just outside of Hull. And it was a landing field. It wasn’t, no runways on it. And it was where Sir Alan Cobham used to visit and give his displays. And I used to go there on my uncles crossbar and we used to come on the outside of Hedon Aerodrome and watch the various displays that Sir Alan Cobham went through which fascinated me. And from there onwards I wanted to be a pilot. And it’s a long story this because with me wanting to be a pilot I went to the recruiting office at what I thought was the right age. The war was on now. And they sa said ys, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘I want to be a pilot.’ ‘Have you got a secondary education?’ ‘No.’ ‘No. You haven’t. Well you can’t be a pilot so forget about aircrew. You can’t be aircrew. You’ll have to be ground staff.’ So I said, ‘Is there any way I can get —?. ‘No. There’s no way around it. You either have or haven’t passed in to a secondary education. You’ve not. You can’t be aircrew.’ So, anyroads I went on now to a place in Ireland to a place called Nutts Corner which was a Coastal Command station. And it was Fortresses and Liberators flown by the RAF and I enjoyed being there. I enjoyed being connected with the aircraft and getting trips home in any aircraft which was empty. And I worked on flying control at the station and I was putting the angle of glide out. What they called the glims out. Which were small three legged lights down the runway and down the perimeter tracks. Sorry, I’ll correct myself there. It wasn’t on the runway we put them in. It was on the perimeter track.
DE: Right.
AM: Back to the dispersals with these small lights that were battery driven. And then down the runways we had like the old type watering can.
DE: Yes.
AM: Full of paraffin and a very thick wick down the spout and we put them one every hundred yards at each side of the runway. And then we had, at the beginning of the runway, a chance light which could be used. And we also had an angle of glide which was for the oncoming pilot to see if he was in the right position for descending on the runway. Anyway, that episode passed very nicely but the next thing was they asked me to work with control. In control. So I did. I worked in there and I was in there one day and they said to me, ‘You’re going on leave on Monday aren’t you Mac?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. Why?’ They says, ‘Well there’s an aircraft going somewhere near. Near Hull. Do you know, have you ever heard of Leconfield?’ I said, ‘Oh yes. That is. That’s just outside Hull. It’s near Beverley. Oh if I can get a lift there I’m as good as home.’ So the next day we had to be there for 9 o’clock. And I’d taken three of my mates with me and they also were included in the load for this Wellington which was coming there. But anyroads as the day arrived and the time arrived it was cancelled. And so they monitored all the around aerodromes and at Aldergrove, sorry at Langford Lodge there was an American Lockheed Hudson going to the mainland that day and they would take us if we could get there. So we hitchhikes from Nutts Corner to Langford Lodge which was on the banks of Loch Neagh. And having got to Langford lodge the American guard outside with a rifle and a bayonet on said, ‘What do you guys want?’ So, ‘We’ve come to get a lift on a Lockheed Hudson through to the mainland.’ ‘You aint going from here bud.’ So we said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Well there’s been an accident and the two pilots have been killed and they’re in the runway.’ And anyway I don’t want to relate the story which I do know about but anyway they said, ‘We’ll ask around the different ‘dromes if anybody’s got aircraft going to the mainland.’ Yes. The station we’d come from — they had. Another Wellington was coming in. So they put a jeep on. And I’m sure the jeep passed any aircraft. He certainly got this clog down did that American. They’re a grand lot to me. I think that we owe a great deal to the Americans. In my opinion they were the best people in the world. Some of the best people in the world. They really helped us a lot. That’s my opinion. But, anyway, regardless of that we got through to Nutts Corner and there was a Wellington just ticking over at the end of the runway. We get on to the Wellington and off we goes. Now, he, the driver of this jeep that brought us, he stopped I’m sure two inches from the side of the Wellington and I mean two, I’m serious when I say two inches. That’s the distance he stopped. But anyroads, we got in to the Wellington. Off we goes and we flies out over Bangor and we goes across the Irish Sea across to Scotland and across the Scotch coast. We head south and we goes along the Scotch coast. Then we go along the English coast. Then we go along the Welsh coast and then we eventually comes to Lands End. And we’re out at sea all the time. Not over land at any time. And now we’re going out in to the South Atlantic as far as Britain is concerned. And then we turns to the east towards France. And going along the coast or to that particular position we had glorious sunshine all the way, and I was stood in the astrodome. The other three were sat on the floor of the Wellington. I should have mentioned this but I’ll mention it now. And I had a good view from the — where I was stood. Anyway, we’re now going along the south coast past Southampton and those places until I estimated, we were in and out of cloud all the way along the south coast, and as we were going along past Southampton I thought well we must be getting somewhere near to the coast — Dover now. And if we are near Dover I should be able to see France with a bit of luck. I’d never ever seen France before then and I was looking forward to seeing it. Anyroads, we gets, comes out of the cloud and lo and behold at the side us, and within about fifteen yards of us, no more, that was the maximum, was an ME109. So I had no means of communicating with the pilot. So I ran to the front of the aircraft, tapped the pilot on the shoulder and this is what I did.
DE: [laughs] the Nazi salute and a Hitler moustache. Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Yeah. I went through all the motions to let the pilot know that there was a fighter there.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And so he stood up and looked through a panel at the back of the Wellington which I didn’t know he could see through, above the top of the fuselage but he could. There was about ten inches or so where he could look through the canopy for anything behind him. I saw his face change and then he dashed back to the controls, put us straight into a dive and we went into a cloud. And then we headed for Dover. And then when we got to Dover we headed then inland and went to a place called Nuneaton and landed. Now, we get out of the aircraft and we’re walking along to exit the ‘drome. Nuneaton drome. And somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Thanks lad.’ [laughs] with a smile on his face. So —
DE: I’ll bet.
AM: It was, it was nice to hear him say that. But anyroads, it worked. So we got away from Fritz there. Very –
DE: Yeah. That was lucky.
AM: Very fortunate. Why I turned around there on that particular second to look at France I don’t know. I don’t think we were anywhere near France. But anyroad I had done.
DE: Yeah.
AM: It was a mistake which turned out to be our advantage.
DE: Yeah. Very lucky.
AM: So that was that little story. But anyroads, from there on I had my leave. I went back. I went down to Dublin and I got chased in Dublin. We arrived in Dublin, my girlfriend and I, and I says, ‘Oh,’ we’d just got off the station and there was a big meeting not far from the station. Maybe hundreds of yards or so. And I says, ‘I bet that’s the IRA.’ She says, ‘It will be the IRA. Don’t go near it.’ I says, ‘Well I want to know what they’re saying about us.’ I says, ‘All we get is the newspaper reports about the IRA but I want to hear what they say myself.’ So she says, ‘Don’t go to the meeting. You’ll wish you hadn’t.’ So, anyroads, I says, ‘Are you staying there or are you coming with me?’ She says, I’ll come with you.’ Well when I was at school I used to run in the school sports each year. I liked running. I liked it but I never put my back into it and I should have done. But anyway that’s beside the point now. But anyroads, what happened was [pause] I’ve lost my place now.
DE: The IRA meeting.
AM: IRA meeting. That’s right. Yes. What happened with that was that as I was walking towards the meeting there was several hundred there. The man in the middle pointed straight at me and I couldn’t understand why. Why he’d done it. And the crowd turned around and then they surged. Actually surged. ‘Come on. Run.’ So we ran. She was from Ireland and she says, ‘Run.’ She says, ‘It’s the IRA.’ Anyroads, we did run. I held her hand and we both ran down O’Connell Street in Dublin and I won’t say where we got but we got somewhere where they didn’t find us. And anyroads we evaded them and now it was dusk. And we went along the street, O’Connell Street and there was a cinema at the end of this street. I went into the cinema and, ‘How many seats?’ She says, ‘There’s only two left. They’re on the front row.’ I says, ‘They’ll do.’ So we got the two seats on the front row. And the young lady that I was with was called Myrtle and the picture was an American picture. And there was a man sat in the chair as I’m sat here and a door there and a man comes in, ‘Now then Joe,’ he says, ‘How’s that gal of yours?’ He says, ‘Do you mean Myrtle?’ ‘Myrtle,’ he says, ‘I didn’t know they called her Myrtle,’ he says, ‘If I’d a gun I’d have shot her.’ She’d got a name called Myrtle and there was Myrtle at the side of me. But I thought that was funny that. They were going to shoot her if they called her Myrtle. But that was just one little thing, little episode in Ireland.
DE: Yes.
AM: But there was many others of a similar nature. I was on a bicycle going from a place called [Sleaven Lecloy?] Now [Sleaven Lecloy?] was a dummy aerodrome and I was on that dummy aerodrome. And what happened on that dummy aerodrome was that when we used to come away from the place you had two ways to go. We could either go, come up a long lane which led from the dummy ‘drome to the road, which was only a narrow road in any case and when they got to this road they could turn left and go to the station and then to Belfast. Or you could go to the right towards Lisburn and then go down towards the Falls Road. Well in Belfast there’s two roads. There’s the Falls Road this side and the Shanklin Road that side and they’re both parallel with each other. The Falls Road is a Catholic road. This road here, the —
DE: Shanklin.
AM: Shanklin Road. That there is a Protestant road. And of course the dagger’s drawn. They never should be. They should be good friends.
DN: Yeah.
AM: But unfortunately they’re not and if you were seen in the Falls Road by people in the Falls Road you was liable to be stripped naked of your uniform and everything, tied to lamppost and they’d pour tar over you. A bucket of pitch. And then they would give you a good lashing. And then they’d leave you there for the —that was the Catholics. They would leave you there to be dealt with by the police. They would come along. Well I was going the Falls Road which, from where I was at [Sleaven Lecloy, Sleaven Lecloy] is up here in the mountain and you come down all the way to Falls Road. All the way down in to the centre of the town. It’s all downhill. Every inch of it. Now, I’m going down the Falls Road on a pushbike and on the right hand side I noticed a chap stood outside a cinema with a sten gun. I thought well that would be the IRA. As I got near to him he set the Sten gun on to me. Fortunately for me a tram car came between him and me. And of course I kept pace with this tram car. I didn’t lose the tram car for quite a way. I got full steam up and went downhill with the tram car on the bike. So I escaped from that but this is just some of the little hitches in your stay in Northern Ireland. And in Southern Ireland for that matter. And it’s all silly nonsense to my way of thinking.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Nobody’s doing anything for any good. It’s all a lot of nonsense that they’re encouraging. To kill people that they don’t know. Anyway, I won’t go on that tack but anyway, fortunately I got out of it and fortunately I made many friends there. And I had a great time in Ireland. In Northern Ireland and I did in Southern Ireland. But there was this here, what shall I say? Shadow hanging over all the events. And anyway that was just one of the things that happened. And then whilst I was in Ireland I decided I would have another try at being aircrew.
DE: Yes.
AM: I’d had a lot of dealings with aircraft there. With Fortresses and Liberators at dispersals. Anyway, the warrant officer says to me, ‘Mac,’ he says to me, ‘Don’t you understand what I’m saying?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘I do,’ I says, ‘And I still want to be aircrew.’ So he says, ‘Can’t you think of any other words but you want to be aircrew?’ So I says, ‘Well that’s what I want to be I says. I’ll stop pestering you when I become air crew.’ So he says, ‘Is that a threat?’ You know. I can’t remember his exact words but he implied that I was threatening him by saying this which I probably was. But anyroads, he says, ‘I’ll see what I can do for you.’ Because I’d been so many times he says his hair was falling out. But anyway, a tannoy went, ‘Would E A McDonald report to the station education officer.” So I went and, ‘Anybody know where he is?’ So somebody gave me directions and I found him. And he says, ‘You’ve been plaguing the life out of the station warrant officer. You want to be aircrew. Well,’ he says, ‘If you’re sincere and mean what you say and put your back in to what you’re going to get you’ll become air crew. But otherwise you won’t.’ So, he says, ‘To start with — do you want to be aircrew or don’t you? Let’s get that straight because,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to waste my time with you if you’re not going to put your back into it.’ Words to that effect. Maybe they were not the exact words but they implied that to me. So I says, ‘Well, I do want to be aircrew,’ and I says, ‘And I will put my back into it.’ So anyroads he says, ‘Right.’ He gave me a programme which I had to abide by and I spent quite a bit of time being schooled there. So the day of reckoning came. Well I was trembling. I thought, I bet I’ve failed. I feel sure I’ve failed. And I was saying it over and over to myself and getting worked up. Anyroads, when I went to see him he says, ‘Congratulations.’ So I says, ‘What for?’ So he says, ‘You are McDonald aren’t you?’ I says, ‘Yeah. I am.’ ‘ So he says, ‘Well you’ve matriculated.’ Well the word matriculated. To me I’d never heard the word before and I thought what’s he on about. Matriculated. What does that mean? He said, ‘You’ve matriculated.’ So anyroad when you get back to the billet there was a man in our billet called Fred Hillman and this Fred Hillman you could ask him anything and he’d always — he was like King Solomon. He knew every answer to every question. And he says to me, ‘How have you gone on Mac?’ So I says, ‘I don’t know really. I don’t. Honest. I don’t know.’ He says, ‘Are you meaning that you haven’t passed?’ I says, ‘No. I’m not meaning that at all.’ I said, ‘I hope I have,’ I says, ‘Because he shook hands with me and I thought was a good indication but he also said I’ve matriculated, and I’ve never heard that word before.’ So he says, ‘Well I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’ve qualified to enter a university.’ So I says, Are you joking?’ He said, ‘No. I’m not Mac. That’s what it means.’ So I says, ‘Thank you very much,’ I said, ‘Then I’ve passed.’ He says, ‘Yes. You’ve passed.’ So I went back. What happened was I was there for a fortnight and there’s a part of this story I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you why and it’s not something I’ve done wrong. It’s something that happened to me and I don’t know how it came about. But anyroads it happened and I’ll leave the matter at that. But what it was when I arrived there, at the station at RAF headquarters there was a WVS van outside. And this place was I would say as big as Buckingham palace where I went to RAF headquarters. And the young lady in the WVS van said to me, ‘You’re McDonald aren’t you?’ So I says, ‘How do you know my name?’ She says, ‘Oh I know a little bit about you.’ I says, ‘You know a little bit about me?’ I says, ‘I’ve never been here before,’ I said, ‘You can’t know anything about me.’ ‘Oh but I do,’ she says, ‘And they know about you in there.’ So I says, ‘In where?’ She said, ‘You see those two doors? You go in the right hand door. Don’t go in the left hand door. Go in the right hand door and when you go into that room you’ll be there with seventeen WAAFs and three airmen, and you’re one of the three airmen.’ So I says, ‘What about that then?’ She says, ‘Well you’ll find out when you get in.’ She said, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’ So I says, ‘I don’t get this,’ I says, ‘I’ve never been here before.’ So she says, ‘Well maybe you haven’t but,’ she says, ‘I know about you. And you’ll find out why when you get inside.’ So I says, ‘This is funny this is. I can’t make head nor tail of what’s going on.’ So anyroads I went into the room and nothing was said. Not a word except, ‘Hello.’ That’s all. Anyroad, I thought well this is funny, what’s she on about. They haven’t says anything. So this — I had to for an interview with an officer there and he says, ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘You’ve come here for some exams haven’t you?’ So I said, ‘I understand so.’ So he said, ‘Right, well we’ll deal with that while you’re here but we’ll explain to you that while you’re here what we want you to do maybe wont occupy all your time. So your time that you have surplus to our requirements — it’ll be yours and you’ll not be expected to do anything in that time, but otherwise you’ll be taking documents from office A to office B. And you’ll — I want a signature from office B to take back to office A and maybe to office C and so on. And these documents want signing for.’ Anyroad, I was doing this and then I got a funny comment. ‘Oh it’s you is it Mac?’ I thought, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Oh it’s you is it Mac?’ And this was a WAAF and I thought, I can’t get this. They seem to know a bit about me. So I says, ‘Have you got the right Mac?’ She says, ‘You’re McDonald aren’t you and you’ve come here for some exams?’ I said, ‘Yes that right.’ I says, ‘How do you know about me? ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘Oh never mind. I do.’ So I thought well this is blooming funny and they made a mystery to me of myself and I didn’t know what was happening. Anyroads, in the end this person came up to me and said, ‘You’re bringing my tea and my cakes and we’ll have a squaring up.’ So I says ok. Thinking that I would I would pay for mine and they would pay for theirs. And this person that I’m talking about, I didn’t know who it was. I hadn’t a clue who she was. And she says, ‘I’ll pay for the tea and the cakes.’ I says, ‘You will not.’ I says, ‘I’m an LAC,’ and I pointed to my arm which was like a little propeller on my arm.
DE: Yes.
AM: I said, ‘I’ll be on a lot more money than you.’ So she says, ‘I’ll pay for you.’ I said, ‘You won’t.’ She says, ‘I will.’ So I said, ‘You’re not paying for my tea and cakes. I’ll pay for yours or we’ll pay for our own. Whichever way you want it but you’re not paying for mine.’ So she says, ‘I’ll pay for yours and don’t argue with me.’ I thought you’re a bit bossy. Who are you? Anyroad, I’ll not go into that. I’ll leave that as a blank, blank cheque as to who she was. Now then, I left there and I started as air crew. Training that is.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And I went to, to St John’s Wood. And whilst I was in St John’s Wood the sergeant came to me. He says, ‘Stores. You.’ I said, ‘Stores? What am I going to the stores for?’ He said ‘you’ll take your uniform off you’ve got with you and you’ll put a brand new uniform on. Brand new shoes, brand new cap. All brand new.’ He said, ‘And then tomorrow you’re going to meet someone.’ So I said, ‘Who?’ So he did tell me who it was. It was the queen. The queen mother. The queen at that time. And we were all lined up and it come to my turn to be introduced to Her Majesty The Queen. And I started speaking and nothing came out. And it had never happened to me ever before but it did then. And I was trying to speak and nothing happened whatsoever. So she passed on to the next one. And so that was a little experience there. And from there I went on to [pause]was it Bridlington or Bridgnorth? Bridgnorth? Bridlington. I think Bridlington we went to. From Bridlington to Bridgnorth. Bridgnorth through to Evaton. They called it, in Scotland Evaton. I called it Evanton. E V A N T O N.
DE: Yes.
AM: But they called it Evaton. I asked on the, the man on the station, the worker there. He says to me,’ Are you lost?’ I says, ‘I think so,’ I says, ‘I don’t know which platform to get on the train for Evanton.’ ‘There’s no such place as that around here.’ So he says, ‘Let’s have a look at your pass. Oh you mean Evaton,’ he says. ‘Oh ok then. Evaton.’ So I went to Evaton and we were flying there with the Polish pilots. Every pilot there as far as I’m aware. I never saw and English pilot there but there may have been one that I hadn’t seen. But any roads I was flying with the Polish pilots. We were machine gunning dummy tanks.
DE: Yes.
AM: And I had quite a good experience there of flying. And on a morning each day as we came out the billets the Polish pilots were coming out their billets which was next to ours or near enough to us and of course the first thing they would say was, ‘Dzien dobry.’
DE: Good Morning. Yes.
AM: And I would say, ‘Dzien dobry,’ And in the afternoon I think it was, ‘dobry wieczor.’ And all because I could say, ‘Dzien dobry,’ only by mimicking them. Could I do it? I didn’t actually — I couldn’t have spelt it.
DE: No.
AM: Or maybe I could but maybe I couldn’t. But anyway they were ever so friendly towards me. And when I went into the aircraft, ‘Oh he’s here.’ You know. You got a nice welcome. And we were doing machine gun practice and all sorts of exercises with them and then we progressed from there and we went to Bridgnorth. And then from Bridgnorth we went to Syertson — not Syerston. Winthorpe. Winthorpe to Syerston. Winthorpe was Stirlings and on the Stirlings we went on leaflet raids over Germany with the bomber stream.
DE: Yes.
AM: Now we could only reach four thousand feet and they were up at ten thousand feet and more sometimes. But with a Stirling it was called the flying coffin. And it was a coffin. It was a coffin. It was a nightmare to fly in.
DE: Yes.
AM: And we came back once with a Stirling and put the undercarriage down. And the starboard wheel went down and the port wheel went up and came out at the top of the wing and it shoved out the dinghy. And as the dinghy floated down to the ground it landed. It just missed a WAAF who was walking across the grass. And it just went, I’m sure, no more than, I doubt if it was six inches from behind her where it landed. And of course it would burst I should think and it would frighten the daylights out of her. I would think anyway. Because there was all the dinghy equipment with it as well. The transmitter and other equipment. So now we had to go to a place called Woodbridge and that was that. But I have missed that the first place we went to when we were flying was a place called a Market Harborough which was an OTU. This was after flying up in Scotland. And when we were flying in the OTU we were on night bombing exercises and we got airborne and I said to the skipper over the intercom, ‘Skipper, there’s a strong smell of petrol in the rear turret.’ So, he says, ‘Well keep me informed.’ So I said, ‘Ok skipper.’ So I rang up a bit later, I says, ‘It’s getting stronger, the smell of petrol.’ So he says, ‘Well it’s still reading ok Mac. I can’t understand what’s going on.’ So I called him a third time. I said, ‘It’s getting even stronger.’ So the fourth time I called him up I was soaked to the skin in petrol. I said, ‘My vest’s soaked in petrol. All my clothes. My flying clothes.’ And I said, ‘The bottom of the turret is full of petrol floating about on the floor.’ So he said, ‘Oh we’d better get back to base.’ This is night time. So we gets back to Market Harborough and coming in, in funnels.
DE: Yes.
AM: And almost about to land when the aircraft did an about turn. The engine cut out. One of the engines caught out. We did an about turn and she skimmed over the top of a building. Anyroad, we come down behind this building and we ran across two or three fields and as we were coming to slowing down I got the turret opened. I thought, well I’m not going to be in this. If it catches fire I don’t want to be about. So I sat on the turret the wrong way around. I’d got my legs dangling outside. And I had my parachute just in case it was needed. But this was before I landed I put it on but I’d still got it on. So anyway as we’re going along it was, it hit some bumps did the aircraft and the turret went up and down and threw me out. And as it threw me out the parachute caught on something. It caught in the wind and I got blown across this here field that I was in. On my back in the field. Anyroads, I managed to, you know just jettison the equipment.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And get up. And I was alright. I hadn’t got damaged in any way. And then I picked up my parachute up and I went to where the crew were congregating and the pilot, the farmer came up and he says — he used a bit of strong language. I won’t repeat that. I’ll leave that unsays. So I can leave that to anybody’s imagination. But what happened was, he says, ‘If you people,’ that’s the skipper he’s referring to, ‘If you people would get on with the war instead of playing about. Look what you’ve done to my corn field.’ He says, ‘You’ve nothing better to do than destroying my cornfield.’ He says, ‘We’re crying out for us to make production.’ And so he went into a blur about how he was being badly done to by aircrew not respecting him as though we’d come down there from choice which we’d not.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyroad, it had got quite flattened quite a bit. I would agree with him. But, and it was the middle of the night. It was dark. It wasn’t daylight. It was dark. Anyroad, we waited for transport to come and we went back to, to our place.
DE: Yes.
AM: We had to report it and give an explanation. Anyway, if we remember that. In a future episode of something this comes up again.
DE: Right. Ok.
AM: But it was on over in France where it occurred. We’d been on a raid in Germany and our route took us over Belgium at night time. And as we got crossing Belgium the anti-aircraft gun opened up on us and it hit the nose of the aircraft and blew a strip of aluminium off which was about fifteen to twenty foot long and about three to four foot wide. That was from behind the front turret right back to the where the pilot was. Not the pilot. The flight engineer who was sat next to the pilot. A great piece about that width stripped from the front turret right back to where he was. It had wiped out his controls on his dashboard. The skipper. It had ripped, the shrapnel had ripped through them. It had cut the navigator’s top of his flying boot, cut a big gash in it but didn’t damage his leg. Didn’t scratch his leg. And a piece of shrapnel went through the mid-upper gunner’s pannier of ammunition which was under his arms. One at each side. Went through it and stopped just below his arm. This big lump of shrapnel. And the aircraft, a piece had jammed in the controls when we were in a dive. And it had jammed the controls in such a way that the more he was pulling it to get us out it was getting tighter in the dive. So it wasn’t getting out the dive. It was getting us worse in to the dive.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
AM: So anyway, cut a long story short the skipper decides, ‘Well our time’s up now. Bale out.’ Well he gives the word bale out but I was, I didn’t find out then but I found out later, my intercom wire had been cut with the shrapnel so I didn’t hear the word bale out and I’m still looking for fighters in the rear turret. Getting my turret going from side to side to side to side. Up and down. Looking for fighters and that. We were in the searchlights. And we were going down. I thought we seemed to be going a long way down [laughs] anyway. Anyway, what happened was he decided after he’d told us to bale out he’d put it into a steeper dive and see if that would do any good. Which he did and the piece of shrapnel fell out. Because afterwards when we landed I went and found the piece of shrapnel that had caused the trouble. And I threw it into a field. I thought, you’ve done enough damage. We’re not keeping you anymore. So I threw it into the field. And anyway it got us out the dive and he cancelled the ‘Jump. Jump.’. But before he cancelled the, ‘Jump. Jump,’ Dougie who was at the front nearly got cut in two with this big piece of shrapnel that ripped the sheet of aluminium from the side.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And it just went above his head somehow. I don’t know how but this is what we were told. And Dougie baled out and landed in a wood. Now, Dougie the bomb aimer was a New Zealander. Also the skipper was a New Zealander. Hughie Skilling, the skipper —
DE: Yes.
AM: And Dougie Cruikshanks, the bomb aimer, were both from New Zealand and they both knew each other very well. And we had a crowd which was next to none. There was none, none to equal us. The friendship among us was unbelievable. It was absolute paradise to be in with them. They were a great crowd. The others as well as the skipper and the bomb aimer. The bomb aimer had gone now.
DE: Yeah.
AM: He’d landed in a forest at night time. And he says, I got, a lot of things he told me about what he did but they’d take too long to tell. He buried his stuff, his equipment. What he had. And came out of the wood. He didn’t know which way to go. He says, ‘I just picked and came and I came across a road.’ There was no traffic on the road whatsoever. He says, ‘I started walking and I thought am I walking the right way? I think I am.’ Anyroads, he says, ‘I’m walking west. I think. And arguing with himself. ‘Am I going west. Am I going east?’ And he says, ‘I had quite an argument with myself what I was doing.’ He says, ‘Until I come to a bend in the road. When I turned the bend , lo and behold just round the bend was two Germans there with rifles with fixed bayonets.’ He says, ‘Now what do I do? He says, ‘If I turn around and run away they’ll shoot me in the back.’ He said, so he said, ‘I pulled my shoulders back,’ he says, ‘And I marched past them in military fashion and they never says a word to me. They carried on talking.’ He says after marching past the two German sentries he says, ‘I came to — ’ I think he said it was an American sentry but I could be wrong about this. It might be a British sentry but I understood it to be an American sentry. And he took him in at bayonet point. Took him to his commanding officer. And his commanding officer said, ‘Oh, you’ve got another one have you?’ So Dougie pricked his ears up. Another one? Another one what? And he says, ‘We’ve got two of you Germans tied up outside. We’re going to, you’ll be tied up out there with them and the three of you will all be shot together.’ So he says, ‘You’re going to shoot me? What for?’ So they says, ‘Because you’re only pretending to be a New Zealander.’ He told them he was New Zealand. He says, ‘You’ve only told us you’re New Zealand but we don’t believe you. Not the way you’re talking. You speak better language than that in New Zealand.’ So anyroads they got him outside and were about to tie him up and shoot him with the other two that were supposed to be Germans in RAF uniform. So Dougie come out with some language. And the officer said, ‘Let that man go. The Germans couldn’t know such language. And so, Dougie, as I say, everything’s got a purpose. Well bad language had a purpose there.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And it saved Dougie from being shot. Now, they let him go and he went to Brussels from there, and when he got to Brussels he came to a meeting of squaddies and [pause] what do they call the announcer? Richard Dimbleby.
DE: Yes.
AM: Richard Dimbleby was talking and sending messages back. New Year messages back from the front line. And one of the soldiers says to Richard Dimbleby, ‘We’ve got an airman here why don’t you interview him?’ So he says, ‘Where is he? Put your hand up, the airman.’ So Dougie put his hand up. So he invited him to come to him. So he says, ‘How do you come to be where all these soldiers are? Where’s all your crew?’ So he says, ‘I’ve baled out of a Lancaster and I’ve been in a wood and I’ve walked so many miles on the road and I’ve been taken prisoner by,’ whether it was American or whoever it was, and he says, ‘They’ve let me go because I’ve used such bad language with them.’ So he explained this to Richard Dimbleby and Richard Dimbleby says, he says, ‘Where are you from then?’ He says, ‘I’m from New Zealand. From Christchurch.’ Which he was then. But after the war, since the war, I’ve been to New Zealand. The skipper invited me for a fortnight’s holiday at his place at Christchurch. And then when Dougie knew I was there he wasn’t, we were real good mates Dougie and I, and I met Dougie. We had to go to Dougie’s from Hughie Skilling’s place in Christchurch and it was a fair way. I should say it was twenty miles from where the skipper lived. But Dougie wanted to see me.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And when he saw me he put his arm around my shoulder and he says, oh, ‘Thanks for being our rear gunner.’ So that, that was Dougie. Anyway, we had a nice little natter did Dougie and I, and Hughie Skilling. We had a natter about things. And I think I mentioned about what the Germans said to Hughie. They called us Skilling’s Follies.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they’d sent word back that they would soon be having Skilling. So he said, ‘Before you get me you have to get our two gunners first.’ So he said, ‘You’ve got to get through them and then you might get me.’
DE: Was, was your aircraft painted up with the name on the side?
AM: No.
DE: No.
AM: No. We had. We didn’t have our own aircraft. The commanding officer used to let Hughie fly his aircraft which was VNG-George. But we didn’t always get his aircraft because other people were using it as well.
DE: Right.
AM: So we — sometimes we’d get T. T-Tommy. X-Xray. It could have been any aircraft. It’s in the logbook.
DE: Yeah.
AM: What the aircraft we flew in.
DE: How did the Germans know about Skilling’s Follies then do you think?
AM: Well [pause] well on our drome we had a spy. Not if. We did. Definitely. No matter what anybody says, we did. And what happened was one day I was going into the office block where the people — where we used to have briefings. Part of the building. And this officer came to me. He says, ‘Mac.’ So I thought he knows me. I don’t know him. Who he is. I thought who are you? So he says ‘Are you going in to,’ oh I was going to say Scunthorpe, ‘Are you going in to Lincoln? Are you?’ So, I said, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Would you do a little job for me?’ So I said, ‘What’s that?’ He says, ‘Do you know where the taxidermist is in Lincoln?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I says, ‘Isn’t it somewhere near the station? Near the railway station isn’t it?’ he said, ‘That’s right. Yes. It is.’ So I says, ‘Oh fair enough.’ I said, ‘I just want to check up.’ He says, ‘Well I want you to take this if your will and leave it at taxidermist.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He says, ‘It’s a bird.’ And it was in a packet. And he said, ‘I want you to take this to have it dealt with by the taxidermist.’ But I did know what a taxidermist was then but it wasn’t long previous to that before when I didn’t know what it meant. But anyroads I’d got to know what it meant and I took this parcel to this taxidermist. And afterwards I thought to myself [pause] I had a lot of thoughts about this encounter but I’ll not say what they were. And since the war it’s come to my notice several other things. And it was, they tried to find out. In fact, we had a do where Wing Commander Flint gave us a warning about something and he looked at me and I thought are you going to tell everybody I’ve taken a parcel there? I don’t want you to say that because it would look as though I’m working in league with the — whoever might be the, might be the ones. Anyroads, it didn’t work out that way. It was maybe my thoughts and maybe thinking too much of myself.
DE: You were worried there was a message inside the bird.
AM: Yeah. I was.
DE: Yeah.
AM: I thought, oh don’t say I’ve collaborated with the, with the enemy. And anyway it seemed that since then I’ve got to know various other bits of information and I wasn’t alone in my thoughts.
DE: Right.
AM: And apparently other people had been asked by this officer to take things in to the taxidermist. Now where would an officer get things from to take to a taxidermist? Only the same as anybody else. I know. And we were in the country yes.
DE: Yes.
AM: But I never saw any livestock there of any kind. At anyroads that’s another story altogether. But I don’t know what happened with that. Whether anything happened or not but I’ve thought to myself I wished I could get on to that roof and just have a look. See what type of aerials, if any, are still up there. And you could find out what frequency they were on then.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyways, that was, it’s just thoughts.
DE: So how did you hear about the message from the Germans about Skilling’s Follies?
AM: Well I’ve met people at meetings. At the reunions. And different people have said about remarks about it. And they said, ‘We know you’ve taken a parcel.’ I said, ‘Yes I have. I can’t deny that.’ I said, ‘But it looked very much, very bad for me,’ I said, ‘Taking this parcel. I don’t know what was in it.’ But they said, ‘Well you shouldn’t have taken it.’ I said, ‘Well I can say that myself now, I says, ‘But at the time it was an officer and it was just a parcel as far as I was concerned and I took it.’ But it maybe wasn’t. I don’t know. But anyroad, that’s the way it went and I heard since that they come to the conclusion that it was that place where the information was being taken to.
DE: Right.
AM: Now whether it was or not I don’t know and I can’t say. I can repeat what I’ve been told but that’s gossip.
DE: Yes. Of course. Yes. So what station was this? Where was this?
AM: Skellingthorpe.
DE: It was Skellingthorpe.
AM: Yeah. And we know when we went on raids they were waiting for us. You don’t wait for somebody on a ‘drome or in a specific area unless you have information to, to confirm what you’re thinking. That they will be coming there and they were literally waiting for us. And this happened several times and you was outnumbered with fighters. So I mean it wasn’t, it wasn’t by accident it was by somebody had got it right. That they were getting information from the station.
DE: Were these daylight operations or at night?
AM: All raids. Night and day. So we certainly got a good clobbering wherever we went. So — they always seemed to be on the ball, the Germans. As though, as though you couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes. But I don’t think that was the truth at all. I think the truth was, as was says on the ‘drome, somebody was passing information back.
DE: I see.
AM: They definitely were. And then when they sent a pilot back. Now, I’ll give you a little example. I was a witness to a crash there. Our site for VNG then was at the long runway which was east to west. At the west end of the runway and on the south side of the runway at the end — say if that’s the runway. Taking off in funnels we were all in a line around here. 61 Squadron around that side. 50 Squadron around this side and we’d be one after the other going. One 50, one 61.
DE: Yeah.
AM: One 50, one 61 ‘til we’d all taken off. And what happened was that [pause] I’m losing myself now. What happened? Oh this memory. Its —
DE: So you’re all taking off and it’s a story of when they were waiting for you.
AM: Yeah. We — oh we were parked here at this end of the runway. That’s it. I’ve got it.
DE: At the dispersal.
AM: We were parked at the exit end of the runway. So by the time they got to where we were parked, just in front of us and that the rear turret was facing the end of the runway and we was getting ready to go on the same raid.
DE: Yes.
AM: And I was doing my drill in the rear turret. Anyway, watching the aircraft take off — one of them, I thought there’s something wrong with him. He kept low. He didn’t climb like the others. The others took off and climbed.
DE: [unclear] Yeah.
AM: Up and up until they got to the height and set on the direction they were going but he didn’t. He went over Skellingthorpe village and I should imagine he very nearly hit some of the chimney tops. But he turned around and came back and when he got over the end of the runway and only just on it he dropped like a stone. And of course it was the whole bomb load went up and he went up and that was the end. There was nothing to be seen after that. And I thought oh they’ve all had that. And unbeknown to me the rear gunner, one of the ground staff saw something gleaming in the — he’d been cycling his bike somewhere. I don’t know where. And he’d seen a light shining in the hedge bottom somewhere. A ditch.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And he’d gone to this and he’d found the rear turret. It had been blasted off the ‘drome in this into this ditch. And when he looked inside the rear gunner was there but he says he was black. He was all black. Which I can understand he would be. Anyroads, I learned a few days ago that he was, he was still alive up to two years ago. And he just died two years ago.
DE: Really.
AM: So, so I’m told. If I’m telling you wrong I’ve been told wrong. But that was unfortunate. The whole event was unfortunate because, and I had to go as a witness to relate what I’d seen and it didn’t end up there. With me things don’t just go from A to B. They go from A to B to C to D to E and it’s like a kangaroo jumping along with information. And what happened was, with me, was this. That when when it was reported everybody knew about it. The man that took off number one was Skillings and I should call him Squadron Leader Skilling.
DE: Yes.
AM: Because that’s what he was and he earned that title. He didn’t get it easy. He got it. He qualified and in my opinion he should have got even higher. He was an absolute wizard. He was out of this world as a pilot. He got us out of many difficulties. And what happened was his pal was the first one off. Now, he’d taken, he was up here when he, this one here was taking off.
DE: Yeah. Yes.
AM: So he hadn’t seen this one at all. And on his way to the target he’d got serious engine trouble and landed in a field in Germany. And they’d landed quite safely and they’d all got out safe.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they were trying to set fire to their aircraft which was the procedure and Fritz come up with machine guns and said, ‘If you go any further with that you’ll all be dead.’ So they had to abandon the setting fire to the, to the aircraft. So they were taken in and they said, ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know that all the crew are not dead on that aircraft that crashed.’ They’d not seen it. They were up there. Well away from the event happening so they didn’t know a thing about what they were on about. And they thought they were making a yarn about this other aircraft. They said, ‘But you’ll be pleased to know the rear gunner is still alive.’ Now, this is before they’d reached the target. They’d got this information. So surely that would verify that someone on the ‘drome was talking to the Germans in some way. Of course radio obviously. But they had this equipment and I mean, the building, if you look at the place where, If I could back to it, to the what do they call them again? Taxidermist is. There’s tall buildings. I think they’re three stories high. Well you’ve got a good height there above all the surrounding buildings. You’ve got a good clear run to get an aerial from up there to Germany. It would be ideal for a, for a sight to broadcast from. And of course you’d get all mixed signals from that area. From the railway. From other equipment. Bus companies. Various other places. There’d be signals of all kinds buzzing about in that area so they had a good cover.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they wouldn’t dither and dather doing. They’d have a code no doubt.
DE: Yes.
AM: And having a code they would condense their messages and make it as brief as possible. So obviously when one of them came back, was released by the Americans and it was this pilot. The Americans captured the ‘drome where he was.
DE: Yes.
AM: Not the ‘drome. The prison. Or the prison camp. Whatever it was where he was detained. And they told him, when he got back to Skellingthorpe would he tell Skilling that they were after him and that they’d soon have him. And they would have Skilling’s Follies as well. That we were the Follies.
DE: Yeah.
AM: The crew and anyway, they didn’t get us. And they nearly did once or twice but we had an event which was rather unusual. I never heard of it happening to anybody. Only us. And that was this. We were on a raid where, when the tannoy went it said, ‘Will the following nine aircrews please report to briefing room.’ Now nine aircraft. Not nine squadrons. Now usually there were twenty of 50 Squadron and twenty of 61 Squadron. ‘Would the following crew — 50 Squadron and 61 Squadron, report to the briefing room’. That was it, but with us, ‘Would the following pilots report to the briefing room.’ Skilling was one.
DE: Right.
AM: And when we got to the briefing room we thought what was this going to be about. And they says, Wing Commander Flint says, ‘We’ve a very difficult job on. We can only send nine aircraft to the target. And the target is a barge and this barge is in the Mittelland Canal. And its night time and it will be well guarded. And you’ve got to get in and sink it. It must be sunk or you must bust the banks of the canal. Whichever you do it’ll leave him stranded. Now, if this here barge gets through to where they’re hoping to get it to.’ Where ever that want it to be. I don’t know. They says that, ‘We’ve nothing to stop this tank. It’s so good. It’s the most powerful tank the Germans have ever made and if it gets through we haven’t a gun that’ll touch it and we’ve nothing otherwise will deal with it. So get it sunk and come back and tell us you’ve done it.’ So, anyroads we gets off and we goes to the target. And we, we had to start with of the nine. One malfunctioned on take off so it left eight. Enroute to the target there was a big red glow in the sky. The sky all lit up. And on our port side was two Lancasters. The far Lancaster was on fire and there was one between him and us and there was also one behind our tail. Just behind us. So that was three. Anyway, we’d not been going much further. Number two Lancaster now is on fire. So that was that. So we’d gone a bit further. Now it was our turn. The mid-upper screamed, ‘Corkscrew port. Go.’ And we go straight down and all of a sudden there was such a row above the turret and a rocket passed the top of the turret a few inches and it filled the turret with fumes as it went by. It had missed us with Johnny Meadows, our mid-upper giving the word corkscrew. He saved the day did Johnny. But it was a bad way of having to do it because it was one of those nights that’s absolutely, call it black black. It was absolutely so dark you couldn’t see a thing. We couldn’t see the ground. We couldn’t see another aircraft. And yet this Focke - Wulf 190 came head on and attacked us. And he come just above. Just scraping the top of the aircraft with his belly. And I got the guns and I thought, ‘Oh I can’t.’ You’re going to say why.
DE: Why?
AM: Because there was a Lancaster just behind us and if I’d fired at him I would have hit the Lancaster. It was just behind us. And I thought oh dear and I wondered if they’d crashed but they hadn’t. They hadn’t crashed but anyroads this Focke - Wulf come over at night time. Of all the times. I’ve never known of it before. Maybe other aircraft have had it but we’d never had an head-on attack. We’d had attacks from the side, from below and various places but never, never from in front. So that was that. And anyroads we, we had a good time of it because we was coming back from it and over Belgium the anti-aircraft unit opened up on us and that’s where they took the sheet off the side of the nose of the aircraft.
DE: Oh I see. Yeah.
AM: The full length of the nose of the aircraft was minus a sheet of aluminium about two to three feet wide.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Maybe more. I don’t know the exact measurement. But it was, I think, about the width of the this table.
DE: Did you manage to — Dougie baled out. Did you —
AM: Dougie baled out. Yes.
DE: Did you manage to make it back to England then?
AM: Yes, he did. And he came back and when he came back the skipper says to us all, ‘We’re going out. I’ve got permission. We’re going out tonight to celebrate Doug’s survival. And we were taking Dougie in to Lincoln.’ So I says, ‘Good.’ Now I’m ready and everybody’s ready and Dougie’s ready and Dougie hung back. And somehow I get the feeling he wanted to talk to me. I don’t know how I knew but I did. And Dougie hung back and I hung back and he got hold of me and he says, ‘Mac.’ I says, ‘You’re not.’ So he says, ‘What do you mean?’ I says, ‘You know what I mean. You’re going to tell me that you’re yellow.’ He says, ‘I was. I was yellow.’ He says, ‘I was the only one that bailed out.’ I says, ‘Dougie you wasn’t yellow. You carried out what you was instructed to do and did it as you was told to do it. You was on the ball. That’s the only crime you committed. You was on the ball. You got out the aircraft when you should.’ Well underneath, Dougie, the bomb aimer, is a hatch about this square.
DE: Yes.
AM: And it’s easy for him to just jettison that. I mean I would have to find out how to do it but he knew how to do it. And he zipped it out and he was straight out. Followed the instructions and he landed with his parachute in the forest. Yeah. And from there onwards he ended up as a prisoner of war to be shot for being a German spy. That was Dougie.
DE: Yeah.
AM: The New Zealander. The skipper was a New Zealander as well. Hughie Skilling.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And he was pretty well known. Whatever station we went on, ‘Hiya Skilling. That’s the bloke that taught me to fly.’ And this was, wherever we went somebody did this. Every ‘drome we went to.
DE: Wonderful.
AM: Never missed. He taught ever so many people to fly. That was him. He had a marvellous reputation and he had with us.
DE: Yes.
AM: As his crew we couldn’t have picked a better man.
DE: So what was your job in the crew?
AM: What was —?
DE: Your job. You were a rear gunner. What did, what did that entail?
AM: Well I was just in charge. I had four guns there and all I had to do was to keep the tail clear or the side or wherever my guns would face I had to patrol that area visually. And I did do. And I never stopped. I never wore glasses. I never sat down ever. Every minute of my flying was stood up. If you look at my logbook you’ll see how many hours I’ve been on trips. I’d been to Munich and back and never sat down. It was too risky I thought and so I never sat down for that reason. I thought at times it’s proved to be successful. I’ve seen aircraft and the skipper says, ‘Well keep him under view Mac until he comes into range and then see what you can do.’ We had one that followed us for quite some way. I said, ‘Skipper we’re being followed with a JU88,’ and he was on our starboard side. So I thought well I’ll let him know. I said, ‘And I don’t think he’s coming in to attack.’ He said, ‘What do you think he’s doing then?’ I said, ‘He’s finding out where we’re going to and he’s keeping us in view and if he follows us we’ll take him to the target.’ And I said, ‘He’s out of range of my guns.’ So he says, ‘Well when he comes into range give him something.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re only waiting for him to do that but he’s not. He’s a wise bod. He knows full well if he comes any nearer he’ll get a congratulation.’ But anyroads he didn’t. He just cleared off. I think he’d had enough of us. He’d followed us for a quarter of an hour at least. We did have occasions when we brushed with them but usually we were fortunate. We managed to keep out of their way so to speak.
DE: I see.
AM: Yeah. So we didn’t get any damage from fighters. We got [laughs] we got some awakenings at times when he suddenly spotted one. We wondered what he was going to do but usually they went for other aircraft. And we was fortunate.
DE: Did you open fire at any?
AM: No. No. I never, never fired one bullet. Not on active service.
DE: But you kept your eye open.
AM: I was never in a position where I could fire at one. They came near us and as soon as they saw that you were taking precautions they cleared off and went for somebody else that maybe hadn’t seen them.
DE: So did you call corkscrew and that was enough?
AM: Well yeah but, oh we did corkscrew a few times. We had to do but when you did that — well I’ll tell you what did happen with the two squadrons. They sent, the newspaper sent an article, I don’t know which newspaper it was, could they send some reporters to find out what it was like on a raid? And the squadron, this was before I was on the squadron. I’m repeating what I was told. And we were told that yes they could send some reporters and we’d fix them up. There’s two squadrons. Twenty in each squadron. There’s forty aircraft. How many are you going to send? They sent five. Well four of them went with 61 Squadron. Two in one aircraft and two in another. And one came in one of 50s aircraft. And the two that went in the 61 aircraft they didn’t come back. The one that came in 50 Squadron he came back and he’d got so many bones broken. He’d corkscrewed and he got thrown about the aircraft and he ended up in hospital. So that was [laughs] I don’t like laughing at it but it was unfortunate for them that they couldn’t have been instructed before they went in what to do in a corkscrew.
DE: So what would you have to do to —?
Well you get a firm grip on somewhere otherwise you are going to get thrown about. And if you get thrown about he’s trying to be as vicious as he can with the aircraft. You’re going to get some rough treatment and there’s only one thing to do and that’s hang on. I mean I was stood up in the turret. When we went in to corkscrew I held on to the two supports and of course I could still stand up. Even in a corkscrew. Well they wouldn’t know this.
DE: No.
AM: But I did. I wasn’t there when they did it so I mean so I couldn’t say do it because I didn’t know. I never seen them. But it was unfortunate for them what had happened. I never did find out whether the others were prisoners of war or what happened to them but certainly the one that was on our squadron I did hear about him. And as I’ve, as I just said he got so many bones broken. What they were exactly I don’t know.
DE: No.
AM: I didn’t enquire.
DE: No.
AM: So —
DE: Oh dear.
AM: But it was a vicious thing was a corkscrew and it got you out of trouble.
DE: Yeah.
AM: So that was some of the things. There was other things but —
DE: What sort of other things?
AM: Well what can I think? I’ve not given it much thought really [pause] Well yes we went to a target where it was terrible weather conditions. Really bad. And it was in a mountainous area. If I looked in the logbook I maybe could find where it was because we landed at Tangmere when we come back. We’d no petrol. We were registering empty in the tanks. But anyroad I’ll tell the story from the off.
DE: We’ve got the logbooks scanned so we can look that up later. Yeah.
AM: Well the place that I’m referring to it was a bad trip because it was ice all the way there. And lumps of ice had fallen off the aircraft. We was having a job to keep our altitude. Anyway, we gets to the target area and we goes in and we makes an orbit of the circuit. And enroute to the target, just before we reach the target, what seemed to me to be in an aircraft a few yards but it maybe was miles. There was, on the mountainside, on the same level as us, the mountain at each side of us and on the port side of us looked, on a ledge on this mountain was an area all lit up. And I says, ‘Oh that’s a listening post.’ There was a good array of aerials and that on it. I thought that’s a listening post that. I’ll bear that in mind and mention it if the opportunity crops up. Anyroads, we gets to the target, we goes in to bomb, comes out the run. ‘How many bombs did you drop Doug?’ ‘Not one. They’ve froze up.’ So, ‘Right we’ll go around again.’ So we goes around again. ‘How many bombs did you drop this time Dougie?’ ‘None. They’re all froze up.’ ‘Why? Did you have the heaters on?’ ‘The heaters have been on all the time, skipper. They’ve never been off. They’re on, and they’ve been on all the time.’ ‘And we haven’t dropped a single bomb?’ He says. ‘No. We’ve got the cookie and the five hundred pounders.’ So we goes around again. The third time. No. We haven’t dropped one. So we goes around for the fourth time and they dropped the, I don’t know how many of the thousand pounders dropped but some of them dropped. But not the cookie. That’s the four thousand pounder. So the skipper says, ‘Dougie—’ Oh I haven’t mentioned this part here — this was Dougie’s thorn. This is the thorn in Dougie’s side. I didn’t tell you this part. At briefing Wing Commander Flint said, ‘We’re getting very short of four thousand pounders. And if for any reason you don’t drop your thousand pounder — four thousand pounder, I want to know the reason why you’ve dropped it, where you’ve dropped it and how you’ve dropped it.’ He said, ‘And I want a good explanation if you’ve dropped it.’ And he said, ‘You’re in for it.’ So anyroads we comes out and the skipper says, ‘Right, Dougie. We’ll have to get rid of it somewhere.’ So Dougie says, ‘You can’t.’ So skipper says, ‘Why can’t we?’ He said, ‘Well you heard what Wing Commander Flint says. If we can’t drop any four thousand pounder we’ve to bring it home or he wants an explanation why not.’ So he said, ‘Well we can give him one.’ So Dougie said, ‘What’s that?’ So he says, ‘We won’t reach base if we carry it. We’ve been around four times Dougie,’ he said, ‘And we’re getting a bit short of petrol. As it is we’ll be lucky if we reach the French coast.’ So he says, ‘Oh we will will we?’ So he said, ‘Well, I don’t care what you say. I say drop it.’ So the skipper says, ‘Well we’ve got to drop it before we get to the coast because we call it galloping petrol down.’ So he says, ‘We’ll have a vote on it, Dougie. Mac —rear gunner. What do you say?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Mid-upper?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Wireless op?’ ‘Drop it.’ ‘Navigator? Drop it.’ ‘Flight engineer?’ ‘ Drop it.’ ‘Pilot? Drop it.’ But I think he said, ‘I think we’ve won.’
DE: Yeah.
AM: So he said, ‘Will that do Dougie?’ So he says, ‘Well I’m voting against it.’ So he said, ‘Dougie if we do,’ he says, ‘I’ll guarantee we won’t reach the French coast if we take it back.’ ‘We won’t?’ He said, ‘We’ll be lucky now if we reach the French coast.’ And as it turned out we, he dropped it on this here, this here sight which I said was the listening post and he got a bullseye on it. And they forgot one thing. They forgot to take the difference in altitude of that from dropping a bomb. It was so many thousand feet up, this.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And that should, that should have been added to the distance between us and the height they dropped the bomb from. But they didn’t do that. They forgot about it. Well the aircraft got such a smack. The skipper says, ‘Mac, are you alright in the tail?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Thank goodness for that.’ He says, ‘Has any damage been done?’ I says, ‘Not that I know of.’ So he said, ‘Are you sure? Wireless op go and have a look down the fuselage. See if there’s any damage. I’m sure we’ve got some damage somewhere.’ But we hadn’t. We’d got no damage. So we heads for the French coast now. And I heard them talking as we were crossing The Channel there, ‘We’ll be lucky if we make the coast. We might have to ditch.’ Anyroad, we landed at Tangmere. And we got, we stayed there the night and got petrolled up and back to base but we wouldn’t have done with a cookie.
DE: No.
AM: It was a good job we got rid of it. So in the report they put down that we’d hit this here listening post. Which they did. They got a bullseye. Because they hadn’t, there wasn’t much difference, there wasn’t much difference in the height between them and us. But these are little side kicks to what made flying interesting. You did get little kicks now and again that boosted you up when you saw it happening to them and not to us.
DE: Yes.
AM: But, but then when you sat down seriously thinking oh aren’t we stupid. We’re bombing their lovely buildings that they’ve taken centuries to build. The pride and joy of Germany. We’re knocking them down.
DE: Yeah.
AM: They’re doing the same here. They’ve come to Coventry. They’ve knocked beautiful buildings down there that’s been up for centuries. And this is the thoughts that go through your mind. We must be mad to instigate such things as killing each other like we do as though it’s the right thing to do. But it’s not. It’s the wrong thing to do. But anyroad that was, that was it. There was other occasions when things happened but you can’t — I couldn’t bring them all to mind at the moment. Maybe when I’m in bed and thinking what I’ve said today. Maybe these things will come to my mind which they do when you’re not in a position to relate them.
DE: That’s always the way. Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. The memory does strange things.
AM: Yeah. We had some close dos. But we could rely on the skipper. He was, he was A1. Absolutely A1. And he invited us to their home in New Zealand for a fortnight’s holiday and the wife and I went and we had a marvellous time there. And as I’ve said we went to Dougie’s.
DE: Yes.
AM: Yeah. He says, ‘I’m pleased you was our rear gunner.’ [laughs] I don’t know why but that’s what he says.
DE: That’s good.
AM: So anyroads.
DE: How many operations did you do?
AM: I don’t know. I’ve not counted. It would be about twenty eight I think. Something like that.
DE: So what happened at the end of the war in Europe?
AM: Well what happened to me was we got a direct hit at the tail end of the aircraft and I was stood, in front of me it was open and I was stood there. The next thing I knew I was laid on the floor. And I come to and I could hear on my earphones Hughie shouting through the earphones. Oh I says, ‘Was you shouting me Hughie?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ he says ‘What happened?’ ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘You know that shell that hit us?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘It pulled my intercom out.’ I said, ‘It come unplugged.’ And he didn’t believe me but I thought I’m not going to tell him I’m laid on the floor. So anyroad, I got up off the floor and felt myself and I thought I’m alright. I says, ‘Everything’s alright at the back end here Hughie, I said, ‘It was just a bit near. That’s all.’ So anyroad, when we landed he says, ‘I want to see you.’ He says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ So I says, ‘Why? What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.’ I said, ‘What about?’ He said, ‘You know what about. You told me you were alright, didn’t you? On the intercom.’ I said, ‘Well I am.’ So he said, ‘You’re not.’ He says, ‘If you could see your eyes you would know why.’ So I says, ‘Well what’s wrong with my eyes? He said, ‘They’re all bloodshot. Both of them. They’re in a hell of state,’ He said, ‘You’re going to the medical centre.’ ‘ No,’ I said, ‘I aren’t. I’m alright Hughie.’ He says, ‘Mac we rely too much on you to for you to go up like that. You couldn’t see properly.’ I said, ‘I can see alright.’ And I thought I could. Apparently I was in hospital for a fortnight. But anyroad they kept me in. They wouldn’t let me out.
DE: Which hospital was that?
AM: It wasn’t. It was the army hospital — Air Force hospital. So, and I says, ‘Can I go back to flying?’ And they says, ‘Oh not again.’ I says, ‘Well I don’t want to be here.’ I says, ‘I appreciate what you’re doing but I don’t want to be here. I want to be back with my crew.’ I said, ‘I’ve only two more ops to do. Or one to do. I don’t know how many,’ I says, ‘And then we’ve finished the tour.’
DE: Yes.
AM: He says —
DE: Yes. Did they not fly without you then?
AM: No. They got another gunner.
DE: Right.
AM: I don’t know who he was. But anyroad they got another gunner and he took my place for the last two or the last one. I don’t know if there was one or two we had to do. So —
DE: So were you in hospital at the end of the war in Europe then?
AM: Near enough.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. Anyway, they doctored me up in there and I think I could have managed without. I think I could anyway. I think they were taking precautions but they’d no need to. I was alright.
DE: Sure.
AM: I thought I was anyway.
DE: Yeah.
They said, ‘No, you’re not. Not again.’ I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Just let me go and,’ I says, ‘I’ll get back with my crew and then that’s it. You’re finished. You’ll not put up with me.’ So they wouldn’t. They said, ‘No. You’re stopping here a bit longer.’ I was there for a fortnight. Anyroad, that was that. So that was the only incident I had. And it wasn’t too bad either. I mean I didn’t know much about it [laughs] I was just laid on the floor. And, oh a young lady in there in one of those photographs. Is she, oh she’s in here. This young lady — we meet her at the meetings. In our reunions.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Where is she? That’s — have you seen them?
DE: I’ve seen those ones. Yeah.
AM: You’ve seen them. And that young lady there in the middle. Yeah. That young lady there her husband was on the same raid as us and he got killed. He got shot down and he was killed. She enquired until she got to us and ever since then she’s, she’s clung to us. She’s from Wales somewhere. And when we go to the meetings she makes a beeline for us on account of us being on the same raid as her husband.
DE: I see.
AM: I don’t know what the connection is except her husband unfortunately, he come unstuck there. We were lucky. We got through.
DE: Yeah. Do you go to a lot of reunions then?
AM: I’ve been to quite a few.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. When I can go I go.
DE: I see. And what did you do after the RAF?
AM: I went back. I was an electrician. And I were working in Hull. I were working on mine sweepers. And I worked on — I think it was called the Virago. I don’t battleships. I don’t know whether it was a destroyer or a cruiser. It was a fairly big ship. Plenty of guns on it and plenty of anti-submarine equipment. And with ASDIC and sonar on it. And I was lucky with that because I struck with a note with a man that was piped on board ship. And the man that was the captain of this ship was called Crumpelow. A navy ship this is I’m referring to.
DE: Yes.
AM: And they piped this officer aboard on ship and he says, ‘I want you all to hide out the way while we’re bringing him on board ship. We don’t want him to see any of you.’ So we says, ‘Ok fair enough.’ So I was a charge hand then and I says, ‘We’ve got to keep out of sight while this officer’s coming aboard ship.’ So they says, ‘Ok. We can manage that alright.’ So we goes down below. Down in the bilges.
DE: Yes.
AM: Gets out the way. And he came and he went. And then we were working on the ASDICs and when a few days later on I had a “Practical Wireless” in my back pocket. And I was working down below in the ASDICs with the rest of the squad and I felt someone lift this book out of my back pocket. I thought who’s taken that? And I turned around. He says, ‘It’s alright. I’m not pinching it. I’m only looking at it.’ And it was this officer that they’d piped on board the ship. So he says, ‘What are you going to make out of this?’ So I says, ‘Well I’m thinking of making that condenser analyser.’ So he says, ‘Well do you know,’ he says, ‘I don’t know if my qualifications are good enough,’ he says, ‘But what I use for doing that, nothing as complicated as what you’re going to make.’ He says, ‘This is what I use. A pair of earphones and a resistor. And I calibrate the variable resistance with the earphones across the condenser,’ he says, ‘And I have a set of condensers that I have that are calibrated and are precision ones,’ and he says, ‘I use them to work out what the ones are that I’m putting in. He says, now then, only me can use this now because my hearing and your hearing and anybody else’s is not the same. The earphones are calibrated to my hearing. Not to yours.’ He says, ‘If you make this you’ve got one of the best condenser analysers there is in the market. He says, ‘And that’s what I use on this here ASDICs and Sonar’
DE: I see. Yeah.
AM: So he says, ‘Send this for this CPO, chief petty officer will you?’ — to this bloke that was with him. So he went and he came back with this chief petty officer. He says, ‘If this man wants any gear out of the radio room —’ the pantry he called it. I think he called it a pantry, he says, ‘Give him it. But he will return it. He’s not getting given it for good he’s being loaned it. And I’m giving him, sanctioning that he can have anything he wants out of that radio stockroom and he can have the use of it providing he brings it back.’ So I thought well how good of him and he didn’t know me from Adam. And from there onwards we were the best of pals. We really got on, you know, really well. He was a smashing fellow. Really nice. I thought he was anyway. I could have made a life-long friend of him.
DE: Marvellous.
AM: So that was, that was a little bit there about that. I think they called it the Virago.
DE: Right.
AM: I might have got the name wrong because it was a long time since now.
DE: Sure.
AM: That’s what I was doing. Working on ships.
DE: Can I just take you back? A couple of things you started to talk about and then, and then we’ll press on with it.
AM: Yeah.
DE: You had a crash landing at Woodbridge.
AM: We had. We had four crash landings at Woodbridge.
DE: Did you?
AM: Yeah. We had a Lancaster got a burst tyre, with shrapnel that was. And the undercarriage was damaged and we landed with one wheel down and we didn’t know whether it would stay up or not because it had come down of its own accord. Not selected down. We landed with a Lancaster. We landed with a Stirling. And we crash landed at Juvincourt in France and we landed in a field there on New Year’s Eve after we’d been to Mittelland Canal. Yeah. I think it was the Mitteland Canal we went to and we got clobbered there but we got the two engines — the port engines on fire and the port wing on fire. We got the controls damaged. They got the intercom to the rear turret damaged. There was quite a lot of damage done and got the bits stripped off the front which was twenty foot long.
DE: Oh this was when Dougie baled out.
AM: Yeah.
DE: Right.
AM: And it was all —
DE: So you crash landed in France after that.
AM: At a place called Juvincourt. Which is just about approximately three miles. I’m estimating this as approximately three miles north of Reims. And we landed there and I had a marvellous time there myself for several reasons. First of all when we landed there an officer came up with a sten gun. It was night time and we was in the middle of a field. We said, ‘What have you brought that for?’ He said, ‘Well yesterday,’ or last night, ‘An aircraft landed and a man come out the darkness and stabbed the pilot to death.’ So he says, ‘I didn’t want him to be setting about you people so I brought the sten gun. And if he comes tonight he’ll get his, what he’s earned because,’ he said, ‘I won’t mix my words. If he comes up I’ll not give him the chance to use the knife. He’ll have had it.’ But nobody came. So that was that. Now then, I mentioned early on when I was talking about Market Harborough and about the parachute packer.
DE: Yeah.
AM: That I would probably come back to that.
DE: Oh yes.
AM: Now, when we handed our parachutes in, ‘Oh its McDonald is it?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘I suppose you want something do you?’ He said, ‘Yes I do. I want my seven and six pence.’ So I said, ‘What did I tell you I did?’ He said, ‘You told me that when you flew over Germany you emptied your pockets, left it in the billet and when the airmen there knew you wasn’t coming back they was to spend it.’ I said, ‘That’s right. Well,’ I said, ‘That’s what’s happened tonight. My money’s still back in the billet. I haven’t got a penny piece on me.’ I said, ‘I’m not giving my money to the Germans. Not as a prisoner.’ I said, ‘So I’m sorry you’re out of luck again. ’So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what,’ I says, ‘When I can and if I see you again I’ll have the seven and sixpence and you’ll get it.’ And I have. I’ve three half crowns in a cupboard at home waiting for the day that I ever meet him again. And if I do or if I can contact him he’ll get his seven and sixpence. So that was it. We had a good natter him and I. You know. A sort of friendship builds up don’t it?
DE: Yeah.
AM: You can tell whether anybody’s friendly with you or whether they’re aggravated at what you say. And at first with him an immediate friendship. We struck it off together.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And anyway that was that. Now, after meeting him I went to the cookhouse and he says, ‘I wonder if any of you likes turkey?’ So I said, ‘I do.’ So he said, ‘How much did you want?’ So I said, ‘How much can we have?’ So he says, ‘You can have as much as you want,’ he said, ‘We’re on American rations here,’ he said, ‘And we’ve got that much turkey it’s going to have to be thrown away.’ And he says, ‘I don’t like throwing food away.’ So I said, ‘Well you’ve no need to do that.’ I says, ‘Can I have just turkey on my plate? No potatoes. Nothing at all but just turkey.’ ‘You can, he said, ‘With pleasure. And I’ll pile it up.’ So he did. So when the other, the rest of the crew says, ‘What’s up with you? Haven’t they got any vegetables?’ I said, ‘Yeah. If you want them.’ So they says, ‘What do you mean if you want them? Well you get vegetable normally with your turkey.’ I says, ‘Well, he asked me did I want turkey? I says yes. He says how much do you want? I says can I just have turkey? He says yes you’ll be very welcome to have turkey. And he says and he’s filled my plate up.’ And I says, ‘I think if you people asked for the same as me he’d be very pleased because he doesn’t want to throw it away.’ So they went up and they says, ‘Is he speaking the truth? And he says, ‘Why? What did he say?’ He says we could have turkey and no vegetables.’ He says, ‘Yeah you can if you want.’ ‘Oh. We’ll have just turkey then.’ So the rest of the crew had turkey. But I haven’t mentioned this so far. That when we were in our orbit we were in a dreadful state at that time. The aircraft that is. Not us. We were alright. And the tannoy, the intercom was going and this aircraft had obviously heard us talking to ground control. Heard our pilot talking to ground control. And he says. ‘I hear that there’s another aircraft in the orbit the same as us. His two port engines on fire and the wing on fire. And we’re very short on petrol.’ He says, ‘I’m afraid I daren’t go around and make a proper landing the right way around. I’m going to have to land the wrong way around.’ Well that meant we were landing and we were going up to that end here and he was coming in this way. And we ran off the runway. We’d no brakes. Off the runway, across the perimeter track, across the grass verge into a field and in the middle of the field we came to a stop. Now it was right in line with the runway where we were right underneath the funnels. He came in low down and he made an excellent landing. He actually touched down on the perimeter track with three wheels. Now, I think that’s a marvellous landing. Because usually you’re a little way down the runway and then you touch your wheels down. Not him. He made sure they were down because they were the same as us. They’d got knocked to blazes with this anti-aircraft unit in, in — not France. In Belgium. And we were to find out after it had all happened and we were discussing it. Somebody says, ‘Well we’ve captured Belgium.’ And then it suddenly dawned on us it was our own anti-aircraft fire that had clobbered us. And it wasn’t our British anti-aircraft. It was our allies anti-aircraft that had shot us down. That had shot him down and then following him as he landed another one came in that had got the same again. And apparently this anti-aircraft unit of the Americans they only used anti-aircraft shells with proximity fuses in. So instead of passing your aircraft by missing it if it was at the side of your aircraft the proximity fuse would detonate the shell and you’d get an explosion at the side of you, which for them was a good thing. It was ideal. It brought the aircraft down. Which it did. So it brought three Lancasters down within a few minutes that were passing over the unit. So we were one.
DE: Right.
AM: And this other aircraft was the next one and then of course one followed him. He got clobbered the same.
DE: Oh dear.
AM: So three Lancasters were lost there. But nobody fortunately was injured on any three of them. So that was even better still.
DE: Yeah. That’s good.
AM: So Dougie, he was going to get shot.
DE: Yeah.
AM: He was the only casualty. But anyroad, he didn’t get shot. And anyroads things, things turned out for the better.
DE: Yes.
AM: Nobody was injured and Dougie got away scot free. Thank goodness.
DE: Wonderful.
AM: He got a good frightening I suppose. Tied up and they were going to shoot him.
DE: Yeah. Your tea’s probably cold now.
AM: Oh well. Not to worry.
DE: There’s a couple of points that you made and I sort of, I let them go because you didn’t seem to want to tell me but I’d like to just ask you again.
AM: Yeah. Don’t you.
DE: That the WAAF that you met at headquarters. I’d like to know who she was.
AM: Who she was?
DE: Yeah.
AM: Well to be quite honest with you I know very little about her except that she used to come with a young lady much younger than herself. And I took it for granted it was her daughter. So I was talking to her one day and I says, ‘You know your daughter?’ ‘Well, you don’t, you’ve not seen my daughter.’ I says, ‘Well I’m not blind. You come with her every time.’ ‘That’s not my daughter.’ I said, ‘Whose daughter is it then?’ She said, ‘Well what happened was I got put out my house.’ for some reason. She didn’t say what. ‘And that lady owns property in Grantham, and she accommodated me and I’m living with her. And that’s how I know her and that’s why she comes with me to these meetings. She likes coming to these Association meetings.’ And to be quite honest with you she was very friendly with me and I says, ‘Well, your mam,’ this — ‘My mam? You’ve not met my mam.’ So I says, ‘I have. That’s your mam isn’t it?’ ‘No. She’s not my mam.’ She says, ‘I’ve taken her in because she got put out of her house.’
DE: I see.
AM: So that’s, that’s how I know. Well I don’t know her from that really. I know from the fact that her husband was on the same raid as me and he got killed.
DE: Right. I see.
AM: So that was on a raid to Munich. I went twice to Munich. And apparently on one of the raids he was on it and he got killed. And she goes to see him. It’s somewhere in France where he’s buried. And they invite her over there and she goes each year and she says they make a right fuss of her. They’re ever so good to her. So that’s her. I don’t know her name. I couldn’t tell. I’ve never known her name.
DE: I see. Ok.
AM: I usually just go up to her and talk to her like maybe you from now on. Like maybe if I see you in the town, ‘Oh now then how are you?’
DE: Yeah.
AM: But I won’t say John, Charlie, Harry, Joe or Ken or whatever. I wouldn’t because I mean I don’t know. I would say, ‘Hello.’
DE: Right. I see. Ok.
AM: So that maybe explains that one.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Now what’s the second one?
DE: It was you were sort of alluding to some secrets at RAF headquarters.
AM: Yes I was. And I shall have to be very careful that I don’t mention it.
DE: Ok.
AM: It’s very very high.
DE: I can’t, I can’t persuade you to tell me the story.
AM: No. No. But I’m in a difficult position. I could tell you as easy as wink. I thought I’d given you a clue when I said to you, when I was in London at St John’s Wood I was presented to the Queen Mother.
DE: Yes. I think I’m with you. Say no more.
[pause]
DE: I think that’s been an absolutely wonderful interview. You’ve nearly been talking for two hours.
AM: Have I?
DE: Yeah. Your son’s about right. Yeah.
AM: And I’ve only told you a fraction of what happened.
DE: Well we can do all this all again if you’d be up for it another time. Just while the tape’s still going, what do you think, what’s your opinion on the way that Bomber Command has been remembered over the last seventy years?
AM: Well they’ve not, they’ve not given us any publicity whatsoever. I mean I heard the news during the war and to me our aircraft went to Hamburg. That’s it. No mention of losses or anything. And the Germans were so efficient that I was jealous of them. I was literally jealous because the Germans were so efficient with their aircraft with how they attacked. They didn’t, they didn’t make one false move and they were always on the ball. You could never take it for granted that they wouldn’t be waiting for you because they would. They were there all the time and they come in. They never hesitated. They’re straight in. We were more than fortunate. We really were fortunate. But a lot of people, I saw a lot of people go down as you can imagine. And I felt sorry for them that went down but you couldn’t do anything about it. You couldn’t reach them. If my guns would have reached that fighter I would have given him a burst. For example one night there was a Lanc behind us. We’d bombed the target and was coming away from it. And coming away from the target this here JU88 was just behind a Lancaster going that way. And this JU88 was here and he stopped, I should say no more than thirty foot from the rear turret. And I thought what’s going on. Why doesn’t he fire? Why doesn’t the Lanc fire? And neither of them fired at each other for minutes. I thought good grief if I could persuade my skipper to drop behind I’d give him a burst and he’d be down easy. And he didn’t fire at the German. And the German didn’t fire at him. And then all of a sudden the rear gunner, I don’t know that he’d got trouble with his guns. Something had been switched off or suddenly wasn’t working. That I don’t know but then he did open up and of course the JU88 went down. But it was ages before he did.
DE: Crikey.
AM: And I couldn’t understand that at all. It seemed to me to be ridiculous.
DE: It is strange.
AM: Anyroad, if I’d, if I’d had the courage to ask my skipper let us drop back I could have easily, we was a little bit above him. Not far. He wouldn’t be a hundred foot below us. Less than that but behind us.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And just a little bit below us. Anyroads, he got him. Oh did I give a cheer when I saw him fire. And I couldn’t understand it. I’ve never seen it before or since. I’ve seen plenty of ours go down. Not many, not many of theirs. There were some went down. Yes. But not many. They weren’t, they weren’t like our Battle of Britain where the Jerries were going down most of the time. So we’re told.
DE: How did that make you feel?
AM: It was war and I accepted it as such. You got to accept all sorts of boss-eyed things in the war haven’t you? Things are not normal by any means.
DE: Yeah.
AM: And I just accepted them for what they were. Sometimes I felt sorry. Sometimes I says whoopee. Depended which side it was.
DE: I know you says you used to leave all your money behind.
AM: Leave?
DE: You used to leave your money behind.
AM: Yes I did.
DE: Were you, were you frightened? Were you reconciled to not coming back some times?
AM: Well the possibility was very strong. That you wouldn’t. And I knew this. And I thought well they’re not going to have my money. I don’t care what happens. They’re certainly not having that. And so I left it behind and left it with the blokes in the billet. They knew where it was. They never touched it. So yeah that was just one of the things. There’s a lot of funny things in a war. Many funny things. You meet people you never dreamed that you would rub shoulders with and you get things happen to you you’d never think would happen but they do. War is a funny thing. It’s a mixture of all mix and manders. Absolutely. It really is. I’ve been on a ship and I was on a ship between Ireland and Stranraer and there was a raging storm in the Irish Sea. And I was violently sick. And I went up on the deck and a wave — I got stuck between one of those —I think they call them air funnels. They’re not letting gasses out. They’re taking the air in down to the boiler room. And I got wedged between that. And it was the only thing that stopped me getting washed overboard. The wave came over the side and over me. And my great coat [laughs] and everything on me was wet through. And I thought well I don’t care if I get washed overboard. I was that fed up of being ill. I don’t care. I don’t care if I get drowned. That was it and that was the way it was. At night time by the way. Not day time. And then to end it a destroyer or a cruiser, or some, some navy ship shone his searchlight on us and then he put it off and they’d see me on the deck. Whether that put them off or not I don’t know but they put the searchlight off and we just progressed getting back to Stranraer. So, but I didn’t mention another little thing. Whilst we were at Juvincourt I went to our Lanc when we got up in the morning. I didn’t get any sleep. But the night time — oh I didn’t tell you that part. We got into bed. That’s the yarn.
DE: Right.
AM: Now I got into the bed and the bed tilted. If that’s the bed it’s there. I got in to the bed at this side.
DE: Yes.
AM: And this is what happened.
DE: It went through ninety degrees. Yeah.
AM: I’d never heard of this before but anyroad I ended up on the floor. So I got my tunic and I wedged one side of it and I thought well I’ll sleep at that side, but then my tunic crumpled up or whatever you call it and of course that side went that way [laughs] where the tunic was. So I thought I’m not messing about any more. I didn’t get any sleep at all that night. They were all having a good laugh at me being on the floor and under the bed twice. Anyway, to cut a long story short the next morning we gets up, we goes to breakfast and I says to Johnny, the mid-upper, I says, ‘Are you coming to have a look at VNG-George?’ He says, ‘Is that where you’re going?’ I says, ‘Yeah are you coming with me?’ So he said, ‘Yeah. I’ll come with you.’ We’ll have a look. See what damage has been done.’ So we went to, got on to VNG-George and we went up and oh what a mess it was inside. You’d have thought they had a gun inside the aircraft. There was holes all over the place. It was like a colander. And we went up front to where the skipper was. The dashboard was all smashed. And the seat where Hughie was there was a piece of shrapnel. Now, let’s get this right now. I’m going to say the wrong thing if I’m not careful. I know. I’ve got it. At the back of him was a sheet of armour plate like that.
DE: Yes.
AM: A half an inch armour plate behind the skipper. A half inch thick and the full width of his seat.
DE: Yeah.
AM: So he was protected from the back and just there on the seat was a piece of shrapnel. It had gone through the armour plating and were just sticking out at this side. But it hadn’t got enough force to go any further. It had finished there. And I tried to get it out and I’d not anything heavy to hit it with. I thought I’ll get that out and give it to the skipper because that’s the nearest he’s ever been to having a bit of shrapnel in him. And it would have got him at this, behind his shoulder because that’s where it was.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Where his shoulder would have been. Anyroad, we come out the aircraft and we saw the damage that was done and we saw the piece missing off the side of the starboard side of the aircraft. From the turret right back to the, where the flight engineer sits. You could see inside the aircraft all the way along. Anyroads we goes from there. I says, ‘Let’s look all the way around John. Let’s look at the ‘drome.’ Well there were debris all over the place. There was ammunition. There was guns. There was spades. There was uniforms. There was helmets. You name it, it was there. Where they’d been fighting on the ‘drome. Apparently according to our information we were told that they had only captured the ‘drome the day before we came. Before we landed there. And that there had been fighting on the ‘drome which they had. And so I said, ‘Come on let’s look around John.’ And we were walking along the perimeter track and it took several bends. And one of the bends we went around, ‘Look at that.’ ‘Well what about it? It’s only a Focke-Wulf 190.’ I says, I says, ‘I’m going on to that. I’m going to start if up if I can.’ He said, ‘Do you think you can?’ I says, ‘I don’t know. I’ll find out.’ So I climbs on to the wing. Climbs up to where the canopy was and it was perfect. There was no damage to the aircraft anywhere that I could see. I thought they’ve abandoned this in their escape from the place. I bet it’ll start up. And there’s me trying to get the canopy undone and I couldn’t find out how to get it undone. I struggled and struggled. Pulling and writhing and I couldn’t get the canopy undone. And all of a sudden, ‘Will you come down from there.’ [laughs] This officer come up, ‘That aircraft is probably booby trapped and if you’d got in it you and the aircraft would have gone up. Not just the aircraft but you and it. Come down and don’t come up again.’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ So I came down again very obediently. I thought this is where you play very gentlemanly. You don’t, you don’t say what you’re thinking because it gets you deeper water. I come away. So I said, ‘Come on John.’ We didn’t go the way he went. He went that way so we went this way. I thought the bigger the distance between us if anything else comes up he’ll be going that way and he won’t, he won’t see me. So anyroads we turns one or two corners. ‘Oh look at that.’ And it was a Heinkel 111, I said, ‘I’m definitely getting in John.’ I said, ‘Keep a look out for me, and if he comes give me a shout and I’ll lay down and keep out of sight.’ So anyroads, he didn’t see anybody coming and here’s me struggling to get this canopy open. But I couldn’t get it open and I was going to try and start that one up. But could he? No damage. No visual external damage. I thought well that might start up. Anyroad I thought good I’ll have a go at this at least if I got it started up before he comes back. I can’t hear him if he shouts up. I was dying to get this aircraft started up. But anyroads he came and oh. ‘Will you get down from there? Now. And I’m going to follow you. You’re not coming around this area any more. Off this site.’ So we had to back track to the main perimeter track area. So we goes back to the perimeter track. ‘If I catch you again you’re for it.’ He says, ‘I’ve told you twice. I’m not telling you anymore.’ So I said, ‘Ok. Come on John.’ So we went walking along the perimeter track. Well we went to look in one of the trenches and there was guns. There was ammunition. There was tins with food in. There was allsorts there. If we’d had a lorry we could have filled it and another one as well with this equipment that was laid about. I said, ‘Oh come on we’ve had enough down here wading around in the mud.’ So we come out of this here trench and we were walking along. ‘Hey. Look there, John. Can you see what it is?’ He says, ‘Yeah. It’s a tank.’ ‘No it isn’t.’ He says, ‘It’s a tank.’ I said, ‘It isn’t. I says where’s it’s guns?’ He says, ‘He hasn’t got any guns has he?’ I says, ‘Well it’s not a tank then is it?’ So he says, ‘Well what is it?’ I said, ‘It’s a radio controlled tank.’ So he says, ‘Is that what it is?’ I says, ‘That’s what it is John.’ I says, ‘I feel sure it is. Come on we’ll go and have a look.’ So we walked across this field and we got as far as that chimney from here.
DE: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. From it. From the tank. And what, I was going to climb on board it and have a look around and see what there was. And all of a sudden there was a load of blokes shouting and calling. They reckoned that we hadn’t got parents [laughs]. You silly —
DE: Yeah.
AM: ‘Do you know where you are?’ I said, ‘Yeah. We’re near this tank. Why?’ So he says, ‘It’s a radio controlled tank.’ I said, ‘We know that.’ So he says, ‘Do you know where you are?’ I says, ‘Why? We’re in a field. Why?’ They said, ‘Do you know what’s in the field?’ I says, ‘No, what?’ He says, ‘You’re in the middle of a minefield. That’s what we’re calling out.’
DE: Oh dear.
AM: So he said, ‘When you come back look to see if the ground’s been dug. With every step you take.’ So we didn’t bother to look down. We just walked off the doing. And we got on to the perimeter track and that was it.
DE: And that was alright.
AM: We didn’t get damaged in any way.
DE: Yeah. Oh dear.
AM: But that we finished there and we were walking back and they said, ‘Oh we wondered where you were. There’s a Lanc come and he’s taking us back and we couldn’t make out where you two were.’ So we had to go straight in to the Lanc and back home. So we landed at that place. What do they call it now? Near to [pause] near to [pause] near to Brigg. It’s not far from Brigg. It was where the spies used to land. I do know the name when I hear it. A double-barrelled name.
DE: Near Brigg. Elsham Wolds.
AM: No. I don’t know about that.
DE: Killingholme.
AM: It was a ‘drome where the spies used to be taken from and they took supplies from there. And nobody. The guards —
DE: Tempsford..
AM: Eh?
DE: Tempsford. .
AM: No.
DE: No. I don’t know then.
AM: Each aircraft there had a guard outside. All the Lancasters there had a guard outside.
DE: Ludford Magna.
AM: That might be it. That could be it. I’m not sure. But I think that might be it. But that’s where we landed. And the guard was outside a Lancaster and the aircraft had twenty one of us in. You know.
DE: Yeah.
AM: From three Lancs. And there were officers and they says to the guard, ‘You’re going to let us in aren’t you?’ He says, ‘No.’ He said, ‘If I let you in,’ he says I’ll get court martialled.’ We says, ‘We’re not going to tell anybody but we’re going in.’ So he says, ‘You can’t.’ ‘Well we’re going in.’ And we all went in. All the lot of us went in. And it was a bit different to ours. A little bit different. It had a bench at each side and chairs down each side. So they had transmitters at both sides and seats so that people could sit in the seats and operate the equipment. That was then. So I mean now it’ll have gone to the scrap yard by now I should think. But it was interesting. Oh there’s all different things will well up in my mind that I maybe should have told you. But there’s so much happens to you. You can’t sort of remember it all at once. And it was good. You was always being entertained so to speak. Something was always happening that was of interest. And well that’s the way it went, and I don’t know whether that’s on the tape or not but —
DE: It is.
AM: Is it?
DE: And its two hours ten minutes now we’ve been chatting. So I think I shall, I shall wind it up. Thank you very much.
AM: Ok.
DE: That’s a wonderful interview. Thank you.
AM: You want me to sign that do you?
DE: I will do. I’ll just press stop on here.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Edward Allan McDonald. Two
Creator
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
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AMcDonaldEA150918
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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.
Date
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2015-09-18
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Mittelland Canal
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Allan McDonald was born in Hull and watched Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus as a child. He worked as an apprentice electrician before joining the Air Force. He served as ground personnel in Northern Ireland until he passed the exams to become aircrew and trained as an air gunner. He recalls seeing a Me 109 and during training, his aircraft crash landed and he was soaked in petrol. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe and recalls seeing aircraft exploding in the air, a dinghy deploying by accident and nearly hitting a WAAF, and making an emergency landing at Juvincourt after being attacked by a Fw 190 and being hit by anti-aircraft fire.
Format
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02:10:44 audio recording
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
bombing
crash
decoy site
forced landing
Fw 190
ground personnel
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
perimeter track
RAF Evanton
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Skellingthorpe
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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Title
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Cothliff, Ken
Ken Cothliff
K Cothliff
Description
An account of the resource
486 items in 12 sub-collections. The collection concerns Ken Cothliff's research on 6 Group Bomber Command and contains an interview with Adolf Galland, documents and photographs. Sub-collections include information on 427 Squadron, 429 Squadrons, Gerry Philbin, Jim Moffat, Reg Lane, Robert Mitchell, Steve Puskas and logs from RAF Tholthorpe.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ken Cothliff and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-20
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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Cothliff, K
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 Günther Rall
Description
An account of the resource
Gunther Rall was raised in Stuttgart and enjoyed outdoor and sporting activities as a youngster and he was also a Boy Scout. He became a cadet in the army, and joined the 13th Infantry Regiment. He met a friend in the air force, and decided it was the service for him. He joined the Luftwaffe in 1938, and he decided he wanted to be fighter pilot. He scored his first aerial victory in 1940 during the Battle of France, shooting down a Curtiss P36 Hawk. During the combat he also sustained damage to his aeroplane realising how dangerous air combat can be. He also took part in the Battle of Britain flying against convoys and supporting Ju 87 Stukas, and facing Spitfire and Hurricane fighters of the RAF. He was posted to Romania flying the Bf 109F and took part in support of the German invasion of Crete, and the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the attack against Russia, shooting down Russian bombers. Flying as a squadron commander with Jagdgeswader 52, in support of Stuka dive bombers he became an ace. In one combat with the Russian air force, he cut off the right wing of his opponent with his propeller, damaging his own aircraft, but made it back to friendly territory. During the attack against the Russians he experienced harsh weather conditions, and relied on re supply by the few Ju 52 transport aircraft available. In 1943 he received the award of Oak Leaves and Swords to his Knights Cross and Iron Cross from Adolf Hitler, and after his meeting left depressed, and with a feeling that the war was lost. In 1944 he became commander of Jagdgeswader 11 flying in defence of the Reich, mainly in daylight against the American 8TH Air Force. During his career he was able to fly captured aircraft such as the P 51 Mustang, and Spitfire, he also flew the Me 262 jet fighter. After the war he became a prisoner, and was flown to England where he met some of his former enemy fighter pilots, and particularly remembers Wing Commander Robert S Tuck. In the 1950s he joined the post war Luftwaffe and became project officer in the procurement of the F104 Starfighter aircraft. In later life he was invited to meet some Russian fighter pilots, and veterans at their base in Kubinka, and was treated to the finest foods, and drank many toasts. This item is available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
Creator
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Ken Cothliff
David Tappin
Coverage
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Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
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01:39:16 audio recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is a transcription of a video interview taped by a third party. It is available here as derivative work 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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ARallG[Date]-01
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
Russia (Federation)
France--Marseille
Germany--Stuttgart
Black Sea
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Requires
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KC: So, it’s just a general, and then we’ll finish off with a little bit about what you did in NATO?
GR: Yeah.
KC: So, it’s a sort of —
DT: I think we ended up in the right place.
KC: Yeah.
DT: Are we ready to go?
KC: Are you happy David?
Other: Yes. I’m happy. Ok chaps, and if you can keep looking this way all the time just try to ignore the cameras here.
GR: I can guarantee.
Other: Ok. Off you go, chaps.
DT: Generalleutnant Gunther Rall, on behalf of everyone at the Yorkshire Air Museum may we welcome you to Yorkshire?
GR: Thank you.
DT: We are delighted to see you, sir.
GR: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here.
DT: If we may ask you a few questions about your family background.
GR: Yeah.
DT: Before we go on to the aviation.
GR: Ok.
DT: What exactly is your family background?
GR: I was born in the Black Forest but I was raised in Stuttgart and I actually, Stuttgart, consider to be my home town. I went to school and all the time as a young boy I had in Stuttgart and my father was a merchant. My mother was an excellent housewife in those days and I have a sister. The dominating activities during my youth was the, I was a member of the Boy Scouts, the Christian Boy Scouts and this really dominated all the activities. I was an outdoor boy which in those days we didn’t have these luxury camps, you know. We, we built our own tents and we were out. This was the one activity and the next one besides the school [laughs] I was, I was at school very well and there was, no problems. Sometimes better, sometimes less but anyhow, it wasn’t a problem. And the second activity was sport. I was an enthusiastic sportsman at athletics. A hundred metres up to four hundred metres. The, how do you call it? Long jumping and javelin throwing and this type and I was very successful as a youth and made some small championships in small circles. But anyhow, this was a dominating factor in my youth and after the elementary school I went to the Gymnasium. What we call Gymnasium, Humanistic Gymnasium, and I learned Latin and Greek. The old type of science. Latin. Greek. History. This was the predominant, the faculties at school.
DT: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
GR: I have a sister. I have a sister. She’s still alive. She lives in Stuttgart. She’s a widow but she has grandchildren and there’s a very harmonised family.
DT: So, is your, is your wife still alive?
GR: No, unfortunately not. My wife, she was a doctor. She was a Viennese and I get acquainted with her when I was in a full body cast when I was injured in Russia, we maybe we touch this later, and finally ended up in Vienna in the hospital for special treatment. There was a very famous professor and I was partially paralysed on the right side by breaking my back in three places, and my station doctor became my wife.
DT: When did you —
Other: Stop there a second. I’ll just close this door. There are people coming down the stairs.
[pause]
KC: General Rall would you perhaps just, if you are finished would you just move your finger.
GR: Yeah.
DT: Ok. Just something like that.
GR: So, that you can then start your —
DT: Yeah. Ok. Ok Darren?
Other: Yes.
DT: When did you first become interested in aviation?
GR: It was quite late. My wish was to become an officer, and first of all I wanted to get into the Navy but it was so difficult in those days. It was a tremendous selection so I thought do what you hope you get and I made my application to become an officer cadet in the Army which happened, and I became a cadet in the Infantry Regiment 13 near Stuttgart, a very famous old regiment and I made my career in the Army Officer School. And after the promotion to lieutenant then I changed to the Air Force because when I was in the Officer’s School in Dresden, I had a friend. He was in the Officer’s School in the, in the Air Force which was also in Dresden, and every Saturday we met and he told me where he was. He was in Hamburg, he was in Munich, flying. I said what the hell. I was laying on the ground and grubbing around in the, on a, on a training camp. A training field. I was challenged by this and think that’s a wonderful life and I wanted to become a flyer. This made my decision.
DT: When did you join the Luftwaffe?
GR: I joined the Luftwaffe in 1938.
DT: Was it your wish at that time to be a fighter pilot?
GR: Yes. Right from the beginning. I think according to my temperament I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I loved all the acrobatics. I was single crew flying and I, I wouldn’t have pleasure in just sitting in a big cockpit with a crew and dropping bombs. I wanted to be a fighter pilot.
DT: I knew an old gentleman who flew in the First World War with a Sopwith Camel who said that the, all the fighter pilots were the madmen and all the bomber pilots were the intelligent sane men.
GR: Ok. Let them think that way [laughs] I was happy to be a fighter pilot whether intelligent or not. I didn’t care.
DT: Did you have any boyhood heroes? Aviation heroes.
GR: I mean in those days certainly, Richthofen, Boelke. These were heroes but they were far away, unreachable, you know. They were, it was a challenge to be like he. He was too far out of my imagination.
DT: Would you describe to us your first aerial victory?
GR: The first air victory was over France. Way, you know, there was when the war against France was declared there was about six months, we had nothing. The French called it drole de guerre and when the invasion, the German invasion started, attacks started we had to escort a reconnaissance plane back from France from a mission and the rendezvous point was near the North Sea. Metz, in this area at six thousand metres and we took off from Trier which was an airfield right to the front, to the frontier and we saw the, the reconnaissance plane coming back but I also spotted ten or twelve dots behind. Far away, but pretty soon I saw these were fighters chasing that Heinkel 111. We approached them very rapidly and luckily the Heinkel was on the level, was not anymore of interest to the, to the fighters on both sides so we were in the, we were in a, in a very hectic dogfight. It was the first time I ran into the enemy and I saw the [cook house], and everybody was very, very excited. I led the second element in the squadron. I jumped down. I’d just, French P-36s. They flew the P36. Curtiss P36 just was ahead of me and was a tremendous curving and turns, rapid turns. It was the first time that I recognised if I gain a very rough turn just by gravity the leading air slots come out on the outer wing which causes a snap and they give me a, one warning of the characteristic of this aeroplane so I released the stick a little bit and everything was ok, and I give a burst and the poor guy got on flames but luckily could bale out. This was my first victory. At the same time, I heard a hell of a noise in my aeroplane and I got shot at and had a lot of holes. So, it gave me a tremendous self-confidence. I was a victor. But also, a warning because I was hit several times.
DT: How did the air fighting during the Battle of Britain compare to the Battle of France?
GR: You know, in France the, the Air Force was, the effect of the Air Force was very poor. The French in, in their planning they put priority on the Army and the Air Force was inferior in numbers and in quality. Quality as far as equipment is concerned. I mean they had very courageous pilots no doubt but it didn’t play that role as the German Air Force played in the battle against France, you know. The Air Force was a tactical Air Force with tremendous power, Ju87 dive bombers with a very effective support for the German Army. Against the British it was a different situation. The difference was that the British came with their Spitfires, with their Hurricanes. Very good equipment. In some areas superior to the 109. They were fighting over their own territory and this makes a hell of a difference. If they had to bail out, the next day they could fly another mission with another aeroplane. We were, we had the wrong tactics I must say. I just speak for my own group. We were a young group, inexperienced and the group was established three or four months before that so there was not an experienced fighter group, and we had to fly against convoys in the British Channel escorting Ju87 and the order was direct escort. Close escort. So, we gave up our, our superiority in speed. We had to reduce the speed to the Ju87 which was a deadly tactic because the Spitfires and Hurricanes just waited upstairs and came down, shot off and we had a lot of losses in a very short time.
DT: Was there a great deal of aerial fighting in the battles for Crete and the Balkans?
GR: You know the, when we came to Greece the battle was gone already and was decided and we went down to the Peloponnese for the attack to, to Crete Island and over Crete Island there was not very much air activities. It was more air to ground and, you know there were a lot mistakes from the German side. They dropped the troops at too high altitude so that means they were hanging from their parachutes for too long time and they were shot at by the New Zealanders on the ground. And then the gliders who came over there they crashed in the, in the olive, in these olive trees, and the terrain was very rough and was, there were hills. So, there were a lot of losses just by, at the landing when the, when they started. And we had to support the Army by ground attacks but it was very difficult because they dropped the, the weapons in containers, and they were, they were in a flag of swastika, with swastika and they dropped it and they just landed by the New Zealanders and they laid out the flag so we couldn’t know who is who. This was our problem.
DT: What were your thoughts when you realised that Operation Barbarossa was about to commence, with the situation on the western front still unresolved?
GR: You know, there was, we were a little bit shocked because it was against every logic. A two front war was a very deadly operation. The operation hadn’t been finished in the west and we started in the east with a tremendous enemy and with a tremendous land space to cover and we all remember the Napoleon. His fate. And we couldn’t believe it at the beginning until two weeks before we started and then it was a fact.
DT: Can you recall the first week of Operation Barbarossa?
GR: Yes. I was down in Romania, just shortly before we came back from Crete Island and we got new aeroplanes. The F 109. F was a brilliant aeroplane and we loved it. The first one with the round wing tips, and with the DB 603, and in the evening, I got the order to go with my squadron. Fly with my squadron, to Mamaia because the Russian had attacked the, the harbour of Constanta on the Black Sea and the harbour had a tremendous importance because it was an oil harbour to ship the oil and there were refineries also. So, I flew with my squadron down to Mamaia, to the beach of the Black Sea but there was nothing on that airfield. Just an empty hangar. That was it. No radar. No telephone. No. No nothing. So, I, I, the very night Ju52 came with barrels of fuel so with a hand pump we filled our aircraft and right from dawn in the morning I sent out a patrol. Two ship patrol over the ocean because if the Russians attacked, they had to come to Constanta. It was the only target. They flew patrol in six thousand metres about twenty kilometres out to the Black Sea and the whole Romanian squadron was on cockpit alert. And when they gave the signal they come, we scrambled and we were very successful. We also, we always could catch them before they reached the coast and we shot down quite a number of DB3 two engine bombers. They came without any fighter escort and this was for them a very deadly operation. And after one week with heavy losses they stopped and they never came back.
DT: What was your rank at the time of Operation Barbarossa when it began? And were you still with the same Jagdgeshwader that you were with in the west?
GR: Yes. I had the same squadron, you know. I became squadron leader in the British Channel. Due to the losses of our senior officers and the commanders were, were shot down so I became a squadron commander and I was a squadron commander for three and a half years of the 8 Squadron in the Wing 52, and at that time I was first lieutenant and squadron commander.
DT: Did you think that victory was possible in the east in 1941 or did you think it was a foolhardy episode?
GR: You know, if you start, if you go to war you always think you’ll win. Otherwise, you forget it. But pretty soon you have doubts, and we had doubts when we saw these masses. But at the beginning I must give in, there were, the Russians had tremendous losses, particularly the Air Force and the, our opponents on the other side on the run in they were not qualified. They had obsolete equipment, they had not a very good training, and they had very bad tactics so they had tremendous losses. This gave us some feeling of security.
DT: How did the Russian tactics then compare directly with the Luftwaffe’s tactics? What was the difference in the way they operated?
GR: You know, the Russian Air Force was under the command of the Army so it was a supporting Air Force. They say they also had a strategic fleet but they never showed up. Not at least in our area and I flew for quite a time. I never saw a strategic bomber from the Russians. The main bulk of the Air Force was the ground supporters. It was too heavily armed to, to the ground, and always escorted by fighters. This was the main operation. They supported their Army activities and actions continuously, and we flew the front line in the areas of priority and you always run into a bulk of EL2 escorted by fighters.
DT: How did you cope with that first dreadful winter?
GR: You know nobody was prepared for such an extreme winter situation. Particularly with the, with the temperature. We went down to minus forty centigrade, unprepared. Not technically prepared for our aircraft. You know, it was very, very difficult to start the engine in the morning which caused that we sometimes we had open fires underneath the aircraft just to heat it up. On the other hand, also our mechanics and our pilots were not prepared for this. We didn’t have the suit for that. You know, the overalls. It took time to get them over there. Can you imagine what it means for a mechanic to work on an engine without gloves at a temperature of minus forty degrees? This is a problem
DT: Yes. Which victory in Russia do you recall most vividly?
GR: You know, the most dramatic one was my mid-air collision. It was a victory but I didn’t know that it was going to be a victory. It was the day of the Pocket Battle of Kursk. In the late afternoon in the east was a tremendous cumulus cloud. In the west was the sun and the cumulus cloud was lit, you know, bright and I flew from west to east and spotted two dots ahead of me far away and I approached them with my adjutant. We flew, we had a two-ship formation and when I came closer, I saw two aircraft with a big radial engine. I knew that at that time for these tremendous operations in the, in the Kursk battle a German F-190 unit was transferred to this area. A friend of mine was the leader of that. I never have seen a 190 in the air before. I saw it in a, on a picture but not, there was no, so when I approached, I was not sure if this now was 190 or was a La 5, because against this white cumulus you only could see the silhouette, not the colours. So, I approached with high speed. I pulled up to the side and looked down and saw green, red star so I couldn’t turn away otherwise I would have been chased. So, I turned again back to the sky, down. I gave him a full burst which hit him. Pulled up my aeroplane and got in a high- speed stall and just crashed and slipped over him, and I never forget this big bang and I cut off his right wing with my propeller, slipped away and he cut off my body of the aeroplane with his propeller. But he couldn’t recover because he got in a spin. Without, without one wing you cannot recover. I had a tremendous vibration in my aeroplane and it was over Russian territory. I want to get to the German lines and it was about four thousand metres altitude and the aircraft was in a tremendous vibration. I was always looking for the right RPM setting to reduce this but it didn’t happen. But I made it back to the German lines. I lowered the gear. I was very, very cautious in making a turn because I thought maybe the, the tail comes off and breaks off by any G load on that. I landed and I saw that I had a split underneath for about one metre. He cut off that. I was very lucky. It was a victory [laughs] and it was a dramatic one.
Other: Can we just —
KC: We’re getting a bit of vibration from the —
DT: We’re picking up a bit of noise from your shoes against the legs of the table General.
GR: I see.
KC: Just. Yeah. Ok. Yes. Yeah.
Other: Ok chaps.
KC: Ok?
Other: Yeah.
DT: Which of the battles in the Soviet do you consider to be the most significant?
GR: You know, there are three battles, and I refer to the Russians themselves and they are, they are two. The first, the German didn’t reach the objective in the first year. The plan was to reach a line Astrakhan [Hungaris]. We couldn’t make it because we were late. The winter came and we couldn’t even make Moscow. The winter stopped us and the Russians stopped us in front of Moscow. That was number one. Number two was Stalingrad. Stalingrad was a turning point and we lost the Sixth Army which was a tremendous loss by wrong planning and by wrong orders directed from Hitler, you know. He never allowed a retreat of the Sixth Army. Stay where you are. And it happened. And the third battle was 1943. June. July. The Battle of Kursk where the Russians really knocked out the German tank force, and the German tank force what they say would have been a very serious part during the invasion, but it didn’t exist in that numbers any more. From the Russian side of this this made the invasion possible.
DT: Can you tell us something about Hans Rudel and Erich Hartmann? Rudel the Stuka pilot, and Hartmann the fighter pilot both as air fighter, and as people.
GR: I flew many, many escorts for Rudel and Rudel was a unique Stuka pilot. Very fanatic. He flew three or four missions a day and he also invented the tactics to kill the tanks, you know. He had these tremendous guns in his undercarriage and over the time he knocked out five hundred tanks. That’s a tank army by one man. Later on, I was, after the war I was together with Rudel in Tangmere as a prisoner of war and we were in the same room so we became very close. We had different opinions. It doesn’t mean that he was a Stuka pilot, I was a fighter pilot but I respected this man tremendously for his dedication. For his courage. Bubi Hartmann came to me 1941 or ’42, to the Caucasus as a very young lieutenant and fighter pilot. It, it took some time to adjust him to the unit and all of a sudden, he became successful, developed his own tactics and had a, developed also a certain charisma in his squadron. But his, his ability was more or less to be a single fighter pilot. His own success Certainly he raised the success of his own squadron. Bubi had a very bad fate and I have to tell this which characterises the man. Being the number one pilot very well known to the Russians. When the Armistice came Bubi Hartmann was on the Eastern Front and he got the order from higher headquarters to fly to the west. Not to come to, become a Russian prisoner. Bubi refused. Bubi said, ‘No. I share the fate of my Wing.’ And he stayed with them and he became a prisoner of war, and had a very, very hard time for ten years in Russia which almost broke his personality. But he was a very brave man. No doubt.
DT: Was he popular as a man in the squadron?
GR: Oh yeah. Oh Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.
DT: And was Rudel. Rudel was a loner, was he? Did he sort of work hard?
GR: I can’t tell how he was in the squadron, you know. I only know him as a person and what he did was extraordinary.
DT: Who do you consider to be the best German fighter ace of all? Who do you consider?
GR: I mean, the most talented and the most, dare I say one unique judgment, this is Marseille. Marseille is a great fighter. He was a great fighter pilot. He was. You can dispute about him as a soldier. He was a, he was a unique character. Very intelligent, with some civilian attitude but once he became a leader responsible for a school, he was a tremendous good leader and he has the benefit to have a very father type in command which was [unclear]. He really held his hand over Marseille and Marseille developed his own tactics which were tailored for him. You never can, as a proven, as a norm because everybody who would fly like Marseille would be killed. He’d make acrobatics. He’d be running to the circle of the Spitfires and he was outstanding and he was lucky for a certain time until his bad fate.
DT: Can you give a direct comparison flying the Messerschmitt 109 and the Fokke Wulf 190 and really was the TA15 —
Other: Sorry, we should change the tapes now.
DT: Right. Ok.
[recording paused]
DT: Ok.
Other: Right. When, when everybody’s set, we’re ok. Ready.
DT: Ok. General, can you give us a direct comparison between flying the Messerschmitt 109 and the Fokke Wulf 190? And was the later mark of the Fokke Wulf 190 the Dora or the TA152 as it was sometimes called better than the Messerschmitt 109 G Gustav?
GR: That’s a very difficult question. I haven’t flown all these types. I flew the 109, all the marks and the Fokke Wulf and some, some flights with a long nosed but always, I always said the Fokke Wulf to me it’s a sabre and the 109, it’s a florette, and each aircraft had its advantages and disadvantages. The Fokke Wulf was a rugged aircraft. A good undercarriage, a good adjustment of weapons, that is four guns and it was like a shower. The 109 was more sensitive. This aircraft, you know. It had a very touchy undercarriage. It had slots and I only had three weapons. One through the, what do you call it? Through the propeller. And two guns. One cannon. Two guns. Now, this is the difference and I figured out that all these victories in one day, the serious was most cases started with the Fokke Wulf, not with a 104 err not with a 109. The long nosed I don’t have this experience. Certainly, the long nosed Fokke Wulf for [unclear] with the injection engine was supposed to be better but it came late and never came in operation in considerable numbers so I cannot give you exact comparison versus the 109.
KC: It was reputed that at the end —
GR: Yeah.
KC: The, the Fokke Wulf was.
GR: Sure.
KC: An improvement over the Gustav.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
KC: General, what were, living conditions like on the Eastern Front?
GR: It was very different, you know. In the north there was a very static wall and they were in front of Leningrad for three years. We in the south, I mean south, let’s say from Kiev, well down to the Caucasus Mountains was a fast- moving wall. Forward and back, forward and backwards and it raised tremendous problems, logistic problems particularly in the, when we had the weather season when we had mud on the road or in winter when we got a lot of snow. For the pilot himself and for the crew itself it was a life like, like gypsies, you know. We were staying for maybe for one week on a lawn selected from the air. It was not a prepared airfield. Living in tents from April ‘til October. Then we dug into the ground to get some cover from the, from the from snow and, and from the temperatures. So, this was a very different situation in the south. There was not a solid front line also, you know. You were always in the open and one day my Group, I was in the back my Group were rolled over by tanks also. By Russian tanks. It could happen. So, this was a quite different situation to the situation to the air warfare in the north or in the west.
DT: Who do you consider to be the most aggressive air fighter on the eastern front?
GR: You mean the person?
DT: Yes. For —
GR: What type?
DT: Aggressive, straight in and attack type of fighter, in the east.
GR: From the, from the Russians?
No. From, from the Luftwaffe’s point of view.
GR: Oh, I can’t tell you this, I think. I think as far as I remember in my group, you know we had a lot of very aggressive fighters [unclear] Krupinski, Bubi Hartmann, these were all very aggressive fighters and I’m sure that in other Wings they had the same calibre.
DT: Can you recall the day when Bully Lang destroyed eighteen Russian aircraft in one day?
GR: Who was it?
DT: Lang.
GR: Ah, Lang. No. I didn’t have any contact with him. I knew Emil Lang before the war. He was a great athlete. Eight hundred metre runners. He was a very good runner and I knew him from there but I never was in the same theatre with Lang. Lang was in the invasion front and he got killed there. And at that time, I was over Germany or in the hospital.
DT: During 1944 Adolf Hitler personally awarded you the Oak Leaves and Swords to your Knight’s Cross.
GR: ’43.
DT: 1943.
GR: ’43.
DT: Shall I ask that again?
Other: Yes. Please.
DT: During 1943 Adolf Hitler personally awarded you the Oak Leaves and Swords to your Knight’s Cross and the Iron Cross. Can you recall these occasions and can you recall what he said to you?
GR: Yes. You know, I got the first what was it, the first report to Hitler was 1942 when we were in front of Stalingrad, in front of El Alamein, and there was a very euphoristic mood in the headquarter because everybody thought we might get it in the next two weeks. And at that time Hitler talked to us. We were four, Captain Steinhoff and [unclear] In fact, nine months later, this was ’43 I had to report again. And you know, it was not only me but from the oak leaves onwards was what handed over the medal by Hitler himself, and after the handing over ceremony we were sitting around the fireplace and he developed his ideas. In ‘43 this was quite a different Hitler. What happened in the meantime between the first and the second visit to the headquarter was that we lost Stalingrad, we lost the Sixth Army, and all his forecasts were [laughs] not realised, and we were on the retreat in North Africa and this was a Hitler who never spoke. In fact, he spoke in mystery. In deep valley, and dark and we have to get through and silver strip on the horizon, and this junk, you know. Not substantial. And it was very, I left the headquarter very depressed like this, and we are not going to win the war.
DT: Do you think that Hitler himself appreciated that victory was impossible at that time?
GR: That’s very hard to say, you know. There’s [laughs] I’m not [pause] Hitler was a psychopath and how, what his ideas were, you can hardly analyse. You know, how can you analyse a man who says in the very last days of war if the German nation is not worth to win the war then it’s worth to get disappeared. Out. I mean one man claims the right to, to give the fate to a whole nation.
[pause]
DT: We understand that Hitler had a form of Parkinson’s disease which affected his, did you think this affected, can I ask that again, Dave?
Other: Yes.
DT: Is it correct that Hitler had some form of Parkinson’s disease and if so, could this have, affected his judgement in crucial areas?
GR: You should ask a doctor. A medical doctor. I cannot tell. I cannot give you an answer. The only thing I can say, the third time I had to report to headquarter was the 10th of January 1944, and all the, the bearer of the Oak Leaf with Swords had to report there to get the certificate, the [unclear] certificates. There was Galland, [unclear] a lot of good outstanding fighter pilots who got killed later on were assembled there and we sat around at lunch and I saw what Hitler, his medicine. It was a battery of [unclear] with around his, his table setting, and I saw my God how much medicine he has to take, but I couldn’t certainly not realise that he had a Parkinson with it. So then, this was recognised after the 20th of July when, after the explosion in his headquarters. He said that Hitler had shivers in his hands. I couldn’t make them like this.
DT: During operation Barbarossa how were the [Wehrmacht] and the Luftwaffe supplied during the critical periods of the autumn and winter?
GR: How do you mean?
DT: Shall I just explain quickly Dave?
GR: Yeah.
DT: Logistically, how did you get the, how did you move equipment?
GR: Yeah. You know —
DT: Can I ask the question again, general?
GR: No, I know.
DT: Right.
GR: This was a very difficult problem, the logistic problems of supply because there was a very, very poor road system and from fall onwards it was mud. We couldn’t move very much our trucks, heavy trucks. And in winter this was snow and it was ice and it was frozen. So, we sent back all our heavy trucks back to the west. We couldn’t use them which means we strictly depend on air transport, Ju52. But the problem was there was a lack. We had only few Ju52 available because in the Battle of Crete there were tremendous losses in Ju52 which never recovered. So, we got our support and supply by air, by Ju52. We strictly depend on them.
DT: Was the large powered glider the Messerschmitt 323 Gigant, was this a successful aeroplane during the Soviet campaign?
GR: You know, I don’t know. It never showed up in the front line. It was too big and too manoeuvrable, and too vulnerable. I flew it back from, from, when I had to report in the, back home. I flew back with, with this aircraft but from an airport which was too the west. It didn’t show up in the front area.
DT: Is it correct that when you left the Eastern Front in 1944 you were at that time the world’s leading fighter ace?
GR: It could be. It could be. I think I was. Is there a number 2? You know we always, we were equal, always, even with Nowotny. Nowotny was in the middle section of Russia and I was in the south and one time I was ahead, and he was ahead. Exactly I can’t tell you the situation when I came to the, to the home defence.
DT: Were you conscious of a rivalry between yourselves to be the leading ace?
GR: Oh, this was a friendly rivalry, you know. It was not a, I respected Nowotny. He was a very very fine character and I met him several times, and I respected him and I liked him very much.
DT: A very similar situation to the First World War.
GR: Yeah.
DT: In 1918 with Udet and Loewenhardt.
GR: Yeah.
DT: They, they battled for the —
GR: Sure.
DT: To be the leading ace.
GR: Sure. Ok. You are always you know as a young pilot you were eager to be successful but not to, you are, I was also happy when he was successful.
DT: Yes.
GR: Yeah. There was no jealousy.
DT: So, when you left Bubi Hartman was the third ranked ace.
GR: Yeah.
DT: Behind you and Nowotny.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. Bubi Hartman came up much later, you know, I was the leading when I was shot down and lost my thumb. That time. And I think at that time Nowotny was, he flew the 262 then. And I don’t know whether he was already killed or still alive, but anyhow when I was shot down and lost my thumb I had to go into hospital. At that time, I was the number one and it took three months and when I was in hospital that Bubi Hartmann came up. Bubi Hartmann and Barkhorn.
DT: And at the end of the war that was the position. Hartmann. Barkhorn. Rall.
GR: Right. Right. That was it.
DT: Batz, number four.
GR: Yes. I don’t know. Yeah.
DT: Wilhelm Batz.
GR: Yeah.
DT: When you left the Eastern Front and transferred to the west you took over command of Jagdgeshwader 11.
GR: No. For a Group.
DT: Oh sorry.
GR: The 2nd Group.
DT: How did the conditions in air fighting compare in the west to conditions on the Eastern Front?
GR: There was a completely different situation. First of all, the, the air warfare over Germany was a, was a air warfare on its’ own right. Not in relation to the Army. In Russia that was always supporting the Army. Over Germany air warfare on its own right with highly capable experienced pilots and very good equipment in numbers. In numbers. In quantities. This was our problem when I took over the Group. The situation was that every mission we flew against the, we flew in daylight so in most cases against the Americans from the Eighth Air Force in, in south England. They came over escorted by long range fighters in numbers. And the average loss rate was fifty percent which every pilot knew. Every second pilot would not return.
DT: When you, when you first went into action in the west had the P51 been introduced? Had it replaced the P47?
GR: Both were there. The P47 and the P51 but P47 was in a process of be pulled out and replaced by P51, and I had the privilege before I took over to [pause] no after that. After that I had the privilege to fly the P51 and the P47, and I could see the difference to the 109 for instance you know, in the flight manoeuvrability and all this, speed it was absolutely adequate but the big advantage was the endurance. They flew for seven and a half hours and we flew for one and a half hours. That was a big difference.
DT: How, how was the P47 as a dogfighter?
GR: A dogfight it has its benefits. I feel, you know climbing in a dog fight we feel superior. In a dive he was much faster. The structural strength was much higher than in the 109, you know. They could stand up to fourteen hundred kilometres and the 109 was limited up to a thousand kilometres. So, the rule was don’t dive away from a P47 because it’s faster and it had a bit better structure than a 109. But you cannot always select what you want. You are forced to some even illogic manoeuvres.
DT: I understand that a Thunderbolt pilot removed part of your anatomy during 1944.
GR: Yeah [laughs] He became a friend of mine which was very unusual. It was the 12th of May ‘44 and I run into Thunderbolts, and there was a dogfight and there was lucky. I got two Thunderbolts. Big flames because they were full of fuel and as the leader pulled away and made escape manoeuvres, rolls and what the hell and dive from me his second element spotted me and they chased me to the dead end, you know. They shot off my thumb, shot off the engine, cooler. It was bang, bang, bang in the aircraft and I was in a dive which was certainly I knew that I cannot make it against four P47 flying line abreast and chasing me. What can I do? When I turned to the left, I turn in the guns, I turn to the right I turn in the guns. So, I went down to tree top level, pulled up. I wanted to get out of the aeroplane. They wanted to go back to England. So, I was in that situation had a better condition. Just dropped out of the aeroplane, and pulled my parachute and after freefall of about five, eight hundred metres and the parachute opened and then I came down. Much later, years later by studying all the documents they identified this was the P47 Group, was Hub Zemke’s Wolf Pack and we became friends.
DT: Is Zemke still alive?
GR: No. Unfortunately, he died two years ago. He lived in California.
DT: How would you compare the American bomber commanders Ira Eaker, and Jimmy Doolittle with their tactics?
GR: I can’t. I wouldn’t dare to give a judgement over this. I had the privilege to visit Jimmy Doolittle when he was retired in his home in Pebble Beach in California. He was a great, great man but in those days ninety years old, over ninety years old. He was beyond of daily problems you know, and he was a very graceful man, and we are sitting there and together with Galland, with Peter Townsend was a group of us and it was a great privilege to meet him before he passed away.
DT: Did you know that the American bomber crews called him something like Doolittle the murderer because he released the fighters on the free chase?
GR: Yeah.
DT: Rather than, than fly close escort to the bombers.
GR: No.
DT: At first.
GR: No. I don’t know that.
DT: They realised later.
GR: Yeah.
DT: That it worked.
GR: It worked. It was our problem, you know. The direct escort of give the fighter the freedom to sweep the airspace clean, and use his own tactics and apply his own superiorities where, in which area he ever could.
KC: Did you use the Messerschmitt 109 with the rocket attachments underneath?
GR: No.
KC: Not at all.
GR: No.
DT: Ok. Just distracted me a bit.
[pause]
DT: Were you greatly outnumbered in 1944 when you —
GR: Yeah.
DT: Attacked the Americans.
GR: Yes. Very much, and I’ll give you an example. On this particular mission 12th of May 1944, we had a unit with two Fokke Wulf Groups. Heavy fighters. They were supposed to attack the bombers and I had a Group with twenty five high altitude fighters, 109 polished and cleaned for that and all unnecessary equipment out of the aeroplane. We cruised at a level of eleven thousand metres without pressurisation. Without, without heating of the cockpit and it was a group of seventy five. The bombers were eight hundred and we had escort, fighter escort by radar. Recognised from the Hartz Mountains down to Stuttgart. All together about eleven hundred. There might have been another German Group which I don’t know but we were, we were at the spot, you know and with this outnumbering magnitude of bombers and fighters.
DT: So, the, so the total ratio of bombers and fighters to yourselves was about thirty to one.
GR: I don’t know. I must say this this was not in our area. I mean, a bomber stream of eight hundred bombers takes about a hundred kilometres.
DT: Yes.
GR: You know.
DT: It must have been a daunting prospect.
GR: But at one point we were there, you know and this is, it was, it was always we were always outnumbered. We were outnumbered in Russia.
DT: How did you feel when you, when you saw the huge size of the American offensive operation? The sky must have been full of aeroplanes.
GR: No.
DT: Did you feel —
GR: You don’t. You don’t, you know this is a wide space. The, the, in there and you see some, you see some here, you see some there and what do you think? You know, this is more, this is not only a thinking process. It’s also let’s say a hunting instinct also. Certainly, you know the rules. How to attack, when, from which direction. How to get your formation to the enemy, you know. But from there it’s his business, you know. We cannot direct every part in a dogfight. That’s his own business, but to get them in in a good position but this is a matter of a fraction of seconds very often. Not long -term planning. It’s a moving target. A high-speed moving target and the situation changes from every second.
KC: You said that you actually flew aircraft that were stripped and polished.
GR: Yeah.
KC: So that they gave an improved performance.
GR: Yeah.
KC: The Americans did this and they took the camouflage off their fighters and polished them.
GR: Ah yeah.
KC: Did you actually fly silver polished aircraft?
GR: No. No. No. No.
KC: They were still camouflaged.
GR: They were still, yeah camouflaged you know [laughs] It doesn’t, it doesn’t work very much if they identified us whether with colour or not.
KC: You said a few moments ago that you had the pleasure to fly the P47.
GR: Yeah.
KC: And the P51. Did you fly any other captured aircraft, and whereabouts was this that you flew these captured aeroplanes?
GR: A P38, a Spitfire. I flew them and I think that one of the outstanding aeroplanes is a Spitfire, but the Spitfire had the same problem with me. I only flew, all the European’s aircraft where a fighter aircraft, were designed for short range.
KC: I understand that you have a particular quote for the P38 that it was quite a good aircraft, but there was a particular role that it was more suited to than any other.
GR: Yeah. I would, I would, I would like to fly with a P38 on vacation you know. Fantastic. Luxury. Good space in the cockpit, two engines, not the status. A very comfortable thing, you know. Beautiful. But in a dogfight, I think it’s two big, you know with two engines it turned out. The concept, we had discerned on the German side also once this idea to have the long range destroyer [unclear] and it didn’t work out. They had tremendous losses. It wasn’t that the P38 was not as bad as the 110 but compared the 51, 47 I would prefer the 51.
Other: Stop it there, chaps. We’re about to run out of tape again.
[recording paused]
Other: Ok, chaps.
KC: Going back to the, the flying of captured allied aircraft was this with the special unit that you —
GR: Yes.
KC: You flew. Were you detached to this unit?
GR: Yeah. At that, time I was not able to fly in combat because I still had an open injury, yeah and I was ordered to be the commander of a German Fighter Leader School and I had to train young officers to become squadron commanders. And we got a visit. There was a German unit formed by captured aircraft. They flew captured aircraft painted with the German insignia and, just for evaluation and they came to me, and I certainly took the chance to fly all of them as target against my students. So, I get very well acquainted with all these planes.
KC: Did, did you, did you come across the P39? The Airacobra or the Kingcobra.
GR: No. We didn’t. In Russia yes. We had a lot of Airacobra in Russia and the Russians liked them. Particularly Pokryshkin, one of the outstanding fighter pilots, Russian fighter pilots. He flew the Airacobra. We also liked them because sometimes I thought it’s a, it’s a good target because the Airacobra has the engine behind the pilot at the back which means it has the centre of gravity is way back in this aeroplane and in a dogfight if you hit and this is what I recognised, when you hit an Airacobra in the wing you get instability, you know and then it gets in a spin and can’t recover because of this centre of gravity situation.
KC: Were you invited to join General Galland’s jet unit JV44 to fly the Messerschmitt 262?
GR: No. I flew the 262. At the time I was the commander of this Fighter Leader School, and I took the chance. It was very close to the training base in the south of Augsburg where my friend Heinz [Behr] was the commander said, ‘Come over.’ Gave me the chance to fly the 262. So, I got checked out to fly the 262 and flew about twenty, thirty hours. Not in operation. Just to get acquainted with the aeroplane and then I had to take over another Wing. The Wing 300. This it would be to come to the 44 Wing from Galland, and all these guys who were in Galland’s wing their units were dissolved. They didn’t exist anymore, but I had to take over a Wing. I mean these were the ruins of a Wing but it was Wing.
KC: And was, was among obviously the aircraft was dramatically different to fly but how did you feel as an experienced pilot?
GR: It was a new dimension, you know. First, if you taxied with a, with a 262 it was a wonderful feeling. You had a beautiful view because you have a nosewheel. You taxied like in a taxi. Yeah. You know, not the zigzag of a 109 where you had the engine in front of you and you reduced the visibility, forward visibility. So, this was number one. Number two you had a very good radio situation. No background noise because there was no interference from the engine. This was very clear. Without noise. Then take off. The, you had to accelerate the throttle very, very carefully and slowly. If, you do it rapidly you can over heat and risk of fire in the engine which happened quite often. So, advance the throttle very carefully and slowly. Once you release the brakes and you rolled down the runway catching up speed and getting into the air the 262 at the beginning is very heavy and unmanoeuverable, until she really catches up speed. Then we are superior. And the 262 was the only aeroplane designed to make dogfights, you know. The advantage was attack with high speed go and start again but don’t turn the old-fashioned dogfights. This is not for the 262. But the 262 flew at about the double speed. Double the speed of the normal conventional aircraft.
KC: After the war you got to know Steinhoff very well indeed. He served with you in NATO and I think he became a friend of yours.
GR: Yeah.
KC: He often said that he felt that his crash in the 262 was due to a bomb crater but when we met General Galland he seemed to think that there was a movement between, there is control for a flap.
GR: Yeah.
KC: And the throttle controls were very close together, and he seemed to think that possibly Steinhoff had used that as well as a contributory factor. Did you get to talk to Steinhoff about that particular incident?
GR: No. You know and you have to, this was such a dramatic accident. Even the memory of Steinhoff, you know was not, couldn’t be realistic, you know, because there are a lot of psychological influence in such a situation. What really happened I don’t know. Some say with the flaps. Lowering for flaps, or reducing flaps too early and he says the crater, a bomb crater. I don’t know and whether he could have the right memory I don’t, after such a dramatic, dramatic accident, you know. He lost his face and his consciousness. Everything. How can he commemorate exactly what happened?
KC: At the end of the war of course you came into the allied, the, became a prisoner of war.
GR: Yeah.
KC: In the west.
GR: Yeah.
KC: How were you treated and what was your story of your movement from operational status to —
GR: Yeah.
KC: Prisoner of war.
GR: Well, you know this was from one day to another one you know. We want to go home. The war is over. There is no, no fighting anymore and we dissolved our units and I said goodbye and thanked them and you go to north and we go south and soon you get the food. That was last and everybody tries to go home. And we marched with my staff until the late, [unclear] and what we didn’t know at that time there was a very strong, there was a very strong all these soldiers came this is the alpine fortress. Something like that. Very fanatic Nazis fighting to the dead end. It wasn’t true. We wanted to go home. Ok. They got us and then I had some camps. Lousy camps. I don’t blame the Americans you know, because there was such a number of prisoners from one day to the other. They hardly could feed them, you know. There was a logistical problem. There was, no camps. Where to put them? And so it would happen to us also, you know. From one day we had thousands and thousands and thousands of prisoners but no camps, no food. We were fed and suddenly we have an, we had an array of people, other people who couldn’t stand it. They passed away. There was tremendous malnutrition but it was due to the fact that it was unforeseen situation. Then I was picked up by the Secret Service or whoever we call it. CIA or what. They called to get all the Air Force officers, and they called out the name. Five. Rall bump, bump and then we were interrogated privately, individually and the question was, ‘You flew the —’ Asked me, ‘You flew the 262?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And they said, ‘Would you, would you assist us by giving us your advice? By building up a jet force. We don’t have —’ The Americans didn’t have a jet at that time in operation. The war was over. Our sympathy was with the west and I said, ok. Then I said, ok, and we were taken out from this camp and you know after we didn’t have, we were really suffering from food and no food. Lackage of food. And when this oversized jeep took four of us out of the camp after one hour or after half an hour he stopped in a small trail beside the main road and opened his trunk and here came sausage and food and tomato juices and this was the first time we were very, very happy. Then we went to Heidelberg and from there to Wiesbaden, and finally we were taken over to England in to an interrogation camp, and every day we walked up and down and talked the war over again, you know. Primarily about the different types. 262 certainly. This was a main interest. And with one of these interrogators we still have, or Galland had a close friendship with Colonel Wigman. An American colonel. He lives in Vienna and he also attended the funeral of Galland. He was a good friend. So, the treatment was very [pause] comfortable. Not comfortable but acceptable. Put it that way. Acceptable. And then I was taken to, from England to when, you know we lost, they lost interest in our, in our personalities you know, the persons because the war is still running in in the Far East, and they dropped the atomic bomb and the whole thing was over. Then we, then they lost every interest in us. And I was in France and I was as a, as a, as an American prisoner, and they were asked to lend us to the British and then we came over to Tangmere together with Rudel, and in Tangmere we sat together in the evening with all the outstanding British fighter pilots, Bader, Stanford Tuck and [unclear] and they treated us as gentlemen up there.
KC: I believe —
GR: Grateful. Very grateful.
Other: Can we just hold that chaps. I’m about to lose the batteries.
[recording paused]
GR: He was a blockhead, you know.
DT: Yes.
GR: [unclear] I cannot say that here.
DT: Right.
GR: It becomes history. This man is damned, you know. I don’t like that. He was a great fighter, no doubt. But certainly, I wouldn’t call him a friend, you know.
KC: What was, what was he like as a, did it come across in conversation, his, his attitude.
GR: Me. I. ‘I was the greatest.’ ‘I had the highest decoration.’
DT: Mohammed Ali type.
KC: He couldn’t, that was it, the special medal he got. What was it called?
GR: He got the, he had the Knights Cross with Oak Leaf and Swords in diamonds in gold.
DT: That’s right. And only Goering had —
GR: Only. Only he. Only he has. Yeah.
KC: Ok.
GR: Actually, he has the highest decoration. Rudel.
KC: Could, could you just tell us of that flight from France and your first meeting with the British officers at Tangmere.
GR: Yes. You know, we were American prisoners and one day in a camp in, in the Brittany [pause] or Normandy, Normandy and one day the American officer came, ‘Pack.’ Didn’t know what to do, and I had to be at the main gate in ten minutes, and there also was Rudel. Rudel was in the hospital camp and they also came over and the jeep came and we jumped in to the jeep, and here we went and Rudel was always saying, ‘Where are we going? Where are we going? I think the Russians have sent a ship and they turn us over to the Russians.’ The command we are not that important that the Russians come with a cruiser from Leningrad to, to Cherbourg to pick two guys up and bring them back. We ended up in Cherbourg in a little airfield and waited. And after a while a Beechcraft came with British cocarde blue, white, red. Ok. Here we go to England, and we jumped into the Beechcraft and flew over the Channel. I knew the Channel and right after we crossed the border the, the, the, the coastline the pilot reduced the throttle. We are going to land. We looked outside. I said, ‘Ah, here’s a base.’ I saw the base and we went down. Circled down, and came in and landed. And when we landed, we jumped out of the plane and the air police came and Rudel jumped out and he had his rucksack, and in his rucksack, he had his artificial leg. He was on stretchers, one leg marching. The other one was in the rucksack [laughs] It was not the brightest view of the German Air Force. Anyway, they took us very politely. Escorted us to the prison. I thought this could not be the only reason to come over here. To go in another prison. But they left the doors open. This is a good indication. Say to Rudel, ‘You must be optimistic. The doors are open.’ After a short while a very smart British wing commander came. Good looking and exquisite German, ‘Excuse me. You came earlier than expected,’ and offered us immediately a cigarette. Never happened in the last years. I mean offered a cigarette. Very nice. And then he asked us in German, ‘Did you have lunch?’ I said, ‘Sir, I didn’t have lunch in the last three months.’ And he escorted us to the officer’s mess, and we get the lunch. It was fantastic to us as prisoners, always treated by guards with a machine gun, ‘Macht schnell. Macht schnell,’ and now treated as gentlemen. And the man who treated us as gentlemen was Wing Commander Stanford Tuck and I’ll never forget. This man gave us a feeling as we were treated as gentlemen.
KC: Did you, did you know then of his reputation at that time?
GR: No.
KC: As a fighter pilot.
GR: No. I knew his reputation after. He came over and we became friends in Germany, and he attended our fighter pilot’s meeting. He was, became a good friend of Galland, as Bader did. So, but not at that time.
KC: Eventually you became a major contributor to the build Other: up of the, rebuild of the Luftwaffe after the war in the 1950s. Could you tell us a little about your role?
GR: Yes. When I got, you know Steinhoff, they joined the office in preparation to build up the force and he wrote me a letter, Steinhoff when, when the time has come and we are legally authorised for new Germany. ‘You have to come. How should we build up an Air Force without you?’ Without you, not meaning me but all the pilots, the old fighter pilots. I said I was really lucky to because you know the, the bad experiences and the, the trauma of this feeling that we fought maybe for the wrong objectives, and with all these new knowledges, what happened, and all these arguments I was not willing to jump in a new adventure at this time. So, I was reluctant but I was convinced certainly in our new democratic system an armed force was necessary for the defence, you know in those days. We still had tremendous confrontation between east and west. The hot war. The, the Cold War. The Cold War. And finally, I said, ‘Ok. I come.’ And then I joined on the 1st of January ‘56 the new German Air Force which at that time was just in an early build up situation.
KC: And where did you train for this?
GR: First, I was on the staff to do our staff work and to make all the conditions for building up the force. We had to build up the staff, the schools, the structure. And then I went to, I went to flying and I was working on a programme to get all these wartime pilots trained in the States. You know, we started our training with the Harvard Mark 4 as a trainer. Then to the T33, first jet, and then we went to the States to Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, Arizona, and we were trained on the F84. Some others were trained in Canada on the F86. This was the nucleus of the units in the new German Air Force.
KC: And eventually you went on to fly the Starfighter, I understand.
GR: Later on. You know, in ’58 my general asked me, ‘Do you want to fly the 104?’ And I said, ‘Yes sir.’ It was a most spectacular aircraft. The first aircraft who went through the barrier of sound in a climb. There was a [unclear] sixteen thousand pound thrust rate, six thousand pound, sixteen thousand pound thrust. So, one to one. I said yes so, they took me over to Palmdale, to Los Angeles with a group of engineers and they have to try to figure out the German version of the 104. The T version. At that time, we made six flights from me to the Lockheed Company out in Palmdale and I flew the A the B, and A model, and this was for me a new dimension. Fantastic. And when I came back, I was declared to the project officer of the 104, and from there on I was every year three or four months with young pilots and we flew all the tests of first, full maximum load and night flying and with the bomb being, which changed. The problem was that due to political pressure the 104 had to replace these old timers early as possible which meant that the, the production sometimes was parallel to the, to the design, to the to the development of the aircraft. This was sometimes a critical situation.
KC: At this time the aircraft actually became surrounded in some controversy because it got the reputation as a widow maker.
GR: Yeah.
KC: As an aircraft that was unreliable.
GR: You know, the 104 you can argue about this for hours and hours. What was the reason of the unacceptable losses we had on a 104? If you ask a pilot, every pilot who flew the 104 said it’s a pilot’s aircraft it was the best aircraft we could get. The 104 was an aircraft which wants to fly. You have to. You have to force it through the air. It flies by itself. A very stable weapons platform. But you have to follow the conditions, you know. Don’t make a mistake. It’s an unforgivable aircraft also with the small wings. Due to the fact that production development was parallel and some others certainly there was a source of mistakes, of failures. But as an overall judgement the, the losses of the 104 was not due to the wrong construction of the aeroplane, mistakes in the aeroplane it was a genius development of design from Kelly Johnson in the States. But we always had, or ninety percent of the whole losses were human failure in some area. Not only the pilot. The maintenance, the [unclear] or whatever.
KC: It was designed of course as an interceptor. A pure interceptor.
GR: I know.
KC: But in Europe it was employed in a ground attack role.
GR: It was a multi-roler. We had a multi-role. We used the 104 as an interceptor, as a fighter bomber, and as a reconnaissance and we thought for financial reasons we cannot afford to have a logistic system for interceptor, for fighter bomber and for the reconnaissance. This was, surely it was wrong, because a multi-role aircraft means always not the extreme best solution for the particular role. It means a compromise. A compromise is always giving up some advantages, and this is true of the 104.
DT: Do you still maintain contact with your wartime comrades?
GR: Yes. Sure. We, in Germany we have a very fine Association. A Fighter Pilot’s Association with a tremendously good president and due to him you know we have a very good contact. And what he does you know this is biological problem that if you have in fifty years of Fighter Association there’s nobody there. They all passed away so how can you solve this? Keep this unit, this association alive. It means you have to get in new pilots. A new force. So, most of the wing commanders of the new German Air Force I mean, the unit is fifty years old already. Much older than the old one. They all became members of the Fighter Pilot’s Association so, they will, if the old characters pass away, they still arrive, the Association.
DT: I understand you were one of the first if not the very first German ace to be invited to Moscow to speak to the Russian fighter pilots.
GR: Yeah.
DT: Tell us of your experiences in Moscow.
GR: Yeah. This is, you know I was invited by the veterans. War veterans. And I was invited through the German Embassy and the German Air Attache delivered this invitation. And the, the man who had the invitation was General Oberst Andreyev, he was not a wartime veteran he was younger but he was the commander in chief of the Warsaw Pact Air Forces for a time. And when I came over, I was received very politely at the airport. Four, four persons saluted me and took me to my hotel. It was a very friendly treatment, and the next day we went out to Kubinka. Kubinka is the third most important operation base of the present Russian Air Force and it is the home of the acrobatic team with the MIG29 and the SU27. Highly modern aircraft. And there an assembly of five, four hundred officers and all the maps from the war time and all with the figures. How many army soldiers we had at the beginning and they had to compare, and the old veterans they couldn’t always get upright because they had tons of medals on their pressing down. Like a, like an arming plate, you know. But this is a Russian habit. And now, we were on the front stage and we are on the table and they delivered their speech to the four hundred officers. This was the meaning. To give these officers inspiration because the Russian armed forces are in a very, very critical shape. This was a privileged cast in the past. Now, they are completely underprivileged. They don’t have money, you know, and many draughtees don’t show up. They don’t come and all the privileges are gone and from one day to the other, you know. This is only a very short time so they are in a situation and they want to motivate their officers. Therefore, they invited the old groups, all to talk about the war and all the medals. And then I was on the stage and I had the privilege to have a very good interpreter. A very nice lady. And I spoke one sentence, and she could translate and I would think of the next one so, because I was completely unprepared. I didn’t know. It was very nice and I recapulated all my experience in the east and certainly also spelling out my high respect for their great fighting morale. Their capability to switch from a very obsolete Air Force to a very modern, very very acceptable Air Force during the war. And after that we went out to a balcony, and we had the demonstration of the acrobatic team with the MIG29 and SU27. It was outstanding. Excellent. And after that finally, we went to lunch. It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and there was a tremendous table set. Beautiful. We came in. There was a band playing Russian, very nice Russian songs, and a colonel, a lieutenant colonel. He was a singer. He sung, beautiful Russian voice and a major in a duet sometimes and what I spotted on the table set was every thirty centimetres one bottle of vodka.
Other: Can you just hold it there? I’m sorry.
[recording paused]
Other: If you want to go back over the, maybe the setting out the table.
GR: About the what? Sorry? Yeah. OK.
DT: Go back to you went, you went out on the balcony.
GR: Ok.
DT: And saw the aircraft.
GR: No. When we came back into, into the lunch room, you know.
DT: Yeah.
GR: With the little band playing and singing. The lieutenant colonel singing and the major singing. It was, it was wonderful. And then we are sitting at the table, and I was sitting next to General Andreyev, and he delivered a speech and then he gave me the wings of Russian Air Force. I was very touched by this. And then there was beautiful for food, Caviar and what you have. And then he asked all these veterans toast to so and so, and it was in Russian. I couldn’t follow that, trust me [laughs] And all these old timers, one after the other toasted to somebody, to something. I don’t know what but I know after every toast of [unclear] vodka, no swallowing, just pouring in. You can imagine after eight toasts, it was a very gay club there, and this is what I would really liked, you know, and a two star general, Army general stood up and gave a poem, you know. He, how do you —
DT: Recite.
KC: Recited.
GR: Yeah. A poem. And then it was sung. And next to him was the pilot of the MIG29, and when I had, I was offered to, to make some, give some words to them, and I said, well I’m deeply touched about the wide span of Russian mentality from a very sentimental, very amusable, very agreeable situation by the songs of Russian songs, about the poems about the very, very literal mood to the strong tactical side of the pilot of the MIG29 and SU27, this was a wide span recording the Russian soul. It was no doubt.
KC: Grateful that you came over here to Yorkshire to the Yorkshire Air Museum and helped us with our fund raising. I think everybody who came to the lecture that we had last night thoroughly enjoyed themselves and certainly David and I would be pleased to know whether you are actually grateful that eventually after many phone calls and letters you did give in to the persistent Yorkshireman as you call him, my colleague here.
GR: I am very glad to be here and I’m very, I’m convinced it was good to come over here to meet friends. I can say that and to make a contribute to the, to the very, very fine Yorkshire Air Museum. And I envy you I must say. When you are about here because of the great interest and enthusiasm of your people here in masses to be interested. Historical events, and events of today which I am slightly missing in Germany. Thank you.
KC: Sir, thank you very much indeed.
Other: What we need to do now is, if you just carry on chatting and I’ll just get some listening shots.
KC: Right.
Other: You know, but if you can try and keep him quiet. So, I’m just do, you know a few close ups of his face listening, and then we’ll do the same with you.
KC: What? Talking. Listening to me, talking, you mean.
Other: Yeah.
KC: Right.
Other: [unclear] I’ll just get —
DT: Right. So when, when does your plane go general, today?
GR: 14.40 I think.
KC: Yes. Yes.
GR: And I will go to Gatwick in one hour. Then I arrive Salzburg, I think 1910, which is here 1810.
KC: I think we have to say that David and I, certainly David was the inspiration behind these things, aviation lectures and when we first started them which was about what four years ago —
DT: Yeah.
KC: Four years ago, the first ones we had was a local speaker and I think there was six people turned up.
DT: Something like that.
KC: Six or seven people turned up to the first one. We had a —
DT: And a dog. And one dog.
KC: And a dog. We had some, we had a quiz which was again just a few local people.
GR: Yeah.
DT: And at that time one of our museum colleagues said we decided to put up the entrance fee from two pounds to three pounds and our friend said. ‘You’re being very risky. Keep it to local people and about two pounds.’ And four years later here we are with such distinguished speakers as yourself as yourself and Johnny Johnson, and Wilhelm Johnen.
GR: Yeah.
DT: And the various people we’ve had.
GR: Yeah.
DT: Colonel David from the Canadian Air Force.
GR: Yeah.
KC: From all over the world. I mean it is quite remarkable. I don’t think David and I in our wildest dreams would ever have thought that we’d have spent such time with people like yourself, and the British aces. I mean it’s absolutely incredible.
DT: I’ll tell you, if we are not on record, General Rall, I said to the museum chairman one year ago we may have an opportunity to speak to Gunther Rall, and he said, ‘Who is Gunther Rall?’ [laughs] I said, ‘Well, he is the — ’
GR: Was he a German? Sorry [laughs]
DT: ‘He is the world’s leading fighter ace still left alive.’ ‘Oh,’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Nobody in England has heard of him apart from you.’ Apart from me.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
DT: I said, ‘That is rubbish.’
GR: Yeah.
DT: ‘Many people have heard of Gunther Rall,’ I said.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
DT: He said, ‘I think it is a big risk for the Yorkshire Air Museum — ’ So — [laughs]
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
DT: We’ve taken —
Fw 190
Hurricane
Ju 87
Me 109
Me 262
P-51
RAF Tangmere
Spitfire
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/845/10839/AGreenWG150911.1.mp3
ba6635496652503178b42beb5d3131ea
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Title
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Green, Geoff
William Geoffrey Green
W G Green
Description
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An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Geoffrey Green DFC and bar (176170 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner and gunnery leader with 100 and 625 Squadrons.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-09-11
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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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Green, WG
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Transcription
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AGreenWG150911
BW: Right. This is Brian Wright. I'm interviewing Squadron Leader Green at […], and it's Friday the eleventh of September, twenty fifteen, at two thirty. So, Squadron Leader Green, I understand you were a rear gunner in a Lancaster.
WG: Yes, Gunnery Leader. Yes, I was in the rear turret, yes.
BW: Could we just start with your full name and your rank at the time you were doing these operations.
WG: Yes, it's William, do you want the [pause] name, when you say name, full name.
BW: Yes please, yes.
WG: What's the word I want for the Christian, ah, Christian names you want, do you?
BW: That's right.
WG: William Geoffrey Green. That's, er, Geoffrey is G E O double F R E Y.
BW: OK. And what rank were you at the time, when you joined the squadron?
WG: I was a Sergeant.
BW: Sergeant.
WG: I passed out as a Sergeant, yes.
BW: OK. And, if you would, just describe for me, please, what your life was like prior to you joining the RAF. Where did you live, and what prompted you to join the RAF?
WG: Yes. Well, I was born in Kings Lynn, Norfolk. [pause]
BW: And how long were you living there before you joined up?
WG: I joined up when I was seventeen and a half, officially, but as far as they were concerned, I was eighteen, because you had to be eighteen then. Yes, anyway, that's right, I joined up and then from there, I went to, oh dear, it's a long time ago [pause]. Well, I was being trained, you know, in various places; OTU's.
BW: Yes
WG: Operational Training Units, and all those sorts of things. The usual, the usual drill, you know, for a new boy, if you follow me. And, er
BW: Did you come from a large family?
WG: No, I had one sister.. [pause], I had one sister, was she in the WAAF? I don't think she was. Oh, it was you in the WAAF, oh no it wasn't?
Laura: No. Mother.
WG: Oh, your mother. Yes, that's right and then, oh, I've lost my train of thought now.
BW: And what prompted you to join the RAF? There was obviously a war going on at the time. Why the RAF and not the other services?
WG: Yes there was. I had a silly though that if I didn't [pause], if I didn't join the Air Force to fly, there was no point in joining it. That was the main reason. I didn't, I had no, all my friends at home, school friends and what-not were in the Army, and I hadn't anything, hadn't any keenness to join the Army. I always, I think I always wanted to fly, until I did, and then of course, I didn't want to [laughs]. My father used to say, 'I can't understand why you want to fly'. And of course, I thought that over, and I thought, 'you're dead right’. I don't know why I wanted to fly, because as soon as I started I was, not terrified, but bordering [laughs]. No, it's a bit of a line, that. I was pleased to fly. I realised I wasn't a Navy type, and I don't suppose they would have accepted me, anyway, because they were, the people they, the people that went into the Navy who I knew were all sort of special types, they'd got something to really offer that service. Well, I had nothing at all to offer the Air Force, but I just wanted to, I just thought it would be just nice to come home on leave, and walk up and down the High Street in my uniform. [laughs]. Oh dear.
BW: And did the thought of becoming a pilot attract you, or was it something that you thought, I’d rather be in a crew?
WG: Yes, it was. I got accepted, I was accepted under the PNB scheme, which stood for Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer. In other words, if you failed as a pilot, they tried to train you then as a Navigator, and if you failed at that, you were trained as a bomb aimer. And if you failed at that, you were out [laughs], so I should have got out in the first place to save all that trouble.
BW: So how did you end up, then, as a gunner? Because if you were on that scheme, and as you said, if you weren't successful in one of those categories, you were out. What then led you to be a gunner?
WG: Well, that was the last thing I could be before I was out.
BW: I see.
WG: That was the lowest form of animal life, I suppose, and if you failed at being an air gunner, well they didn't want you. You can't blame them, I suppose but fortunately, I didn't fail. I often thought I would, but I wasn't good at maths and that sort of thing, you know. I did think of, I was mustering to train as a navigator, and then I realised that I would need a higher standard of maths than I could offer, so I just had to let them sort of guide me through the Air Force, sort of thing, without volunteering for anything.
BW: And what were the tests like, that you had to sit during your training? Do you remember those?
WG: Err, well yes, there were partly navigation, but very, very junior navigation stuff. Nothing complicated, because if it was, I wouldn't have got it but -. What else was it, oh, it's a long time ago. Err, aircraft recognition, that sort of thing, signals, and that's about all, you know. And then I, and then I was transferred on to do an instructors course, and I joined an instructors team to train the lads coming in, sort of thing, you know. But it didn't last very long because I, well, oh for about, maybe about six months, because I was not really the type to train people. I was too short tempered, I suppose. If they didn't, er, if they didn't sort of pick it up the first time, I didn't want to know, and I didn't give a second chance. I had many a second chance, but I didn't, I didn’t agree with that. Oh, I don't know. So there you are.
BW: And what was life like on the base? You went through the training and the Operational Training Units, and you got to base. What was the accommodation like? What were the facilities like on the base at the time?
WG: Excellent. You mean living accommodation and food, that sort of thing? Oh yes. Yes, in those days, aircrew had, aircrew had, er, they didn't eat with the non-aircrew type, if you follow me. You didn't actually have special food, I suppose, though I don't really know, but it was jolly good food, and you were built up a bit that way. I was a bit of a weedy lad when I was young, younger, so I was built up really, I suppose.
BW: So you were well fed?
WG: Well fed, yes, oh yes.
BW: Your training and lifestyle really made a man of you in that respect
WG: Oh yes, yes, and of course, when you'd finished in the daytime, you were really on the town at night, you know. The SP's were chasing you, or you were chasing the SP's [laughs], and being rude to people, I expect. Oh dear.
BW: So where did you socialise when you went off base, where were the local towns that you would visit?
WG: Oh, Grimsby. Grimsby, er, oh dear, I should have got the log book, I could show you my log book, if you wanted to see it, if it would be any use to you, would it?
BW: If you have it, and it's not inconvenient, yes, that would help.
WG: It's in the drawer, Laura dear, would you mind. That's very kind of you. Yes, what was I talking about?
BW: Visiting Grimsby?
WG: Log book, oh I remember, yes, I'm very forgetful nowadays, you've obviously noticed.
BW: You were talking about Grimsby, and visiting towns.
WG: Oh yes, Grimsby, Grimsby, Lincoln, er. Yes, I did a tour from Grimsby, I did a tour from Grimsby at a place called Waltham. Was it? Yes, Waltham. And then I thought, 'well that's that, I've finished my flying'. But I hadn't. Instead of being transferred to instructing, I think they realised I was no good at it, because I was interviewed, instead of being, er, what did I do then? I went to, I went to, I stayed on at Grimsby instructing, for a while, and then I went to two or three other stations in Lincolnshire, instructing, you know. And not only instructing, but giving talks on what it was like, if you follow me, you know. I suppose line-shooting, you know.
BW: And was this with a view to encouraging new recruits to join the Air Force?
WG: Beg pardon?
BW: Was this with a view to encouraging new recruits to join the Air Force?
WG: It was, yes. It was going round instructing to recruits, yes. I went round to one or two stations. Bircham Newton and Finningley, all in the Lincolnshire area, you know and then I, then I was screened, as they called it, taken off, and I thought, 'well that's that, I've finished the dicey part of flying'. But of course, I hadn't. I should think it would only be about six to eight months, and I was sent back again, which rather shook me, because I thought I'd done with all that nonsense. And I thought, ' well, this is tempting suicide', but it wasn't. I completed a second tour then and then I went back on to instructing again. And what happened then? It was getting towards the end of the war, I suppose. And it's difficult trying to remember what I did then. I stayed in Lincolnshire, I know. Mainly, I was always flying anyway as well as instructing, well, with instructing, you were flying as well. The new recruits, the new aircrew people and then I suppose the war ended. Well, no, it couldn't have done because I did a second, I was going back on a third tour. Voluntary, actually. Other blokes, er, I was no good at instructing, and I was interviewed for another instructors job, but I asked to go back on a third tour, but fortunately [chuckles] the war ended. So I didn't do a third tour. That's why I'm here, I suppose.
BW: And so, you were doing the instructing in between your tours? You did your first tour, then had the instructor posts you were talking about.
WG: That's it.
BW:Then second tour.
WG: Second tour
BW: Followed by another post as instructor.
WG: Well yes, but it didn't come off, the second, the second instructing bit
BW: Right. So, just take us back, then, to that point when you met your crew. How did you join up as a crew, how did you meet and crew-up?
WG: We went to, I can't remember the station, but it, as I say, it'll be in my log book, which is out there. Oh, Laura's got it. Thank you very much. I, er, oh dear. Excuse me. Here we go. Oh, there's a five pound note there, Laura. Is it yours?
Laura: No.
WG: That's something, isn't it? I'm glad you came [laughs]. Would you like to look at this yourself?
BW: Yes, we can have a look through. I'll just put the recorder on pause while we pick out one or two points in the log books.
WG: Alright. This is 'Results of Ammunition Courses and Remarks'. That's the one, that's it. There you are, there's a good write up here [laughs], though my mother wouldn't agree, 'could have done much better had he tried harder' [laughs]. That's what the school people used to say. 'Over confident, needs watching'. One signed by a Squadron Leader, here it is, 'could have done much better had he tried harder'. 'Over confident, needs watching'. That's that bit. And then here, [paper rustling] oh dear, oh dear, here we are. Here we come to the nitty-gritty stuff. These are all the, this is Seventeen Air-gunners School, Stormy Down, Bridgend, Glamorganshire, South Wales. I was a trainee here. Here I was training on Whitley's, Defiants. Whitley's and Defiants, yes, and that was headquarters training with number 17 AGS. And then in nineteen forty three, I was on number 28 OTU, Wymeswold, Leicestershire. Er, circuits and landings, and what-not. Cross countries, landings, formation flying, air test, cross country, bombing, exercise, and all that business. What's all this? Oh, exercises, bombing exercises, circuits and landings, circuits and landings, at night, circuits and landings, cross countries, cross countries, bombing, that was all night flying. [unclear] Then I went to heavy conversion unit, Number 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit, Lindholme, Yorkshire, where I flew on Halifaxes, Lancasters. Circuits and landings, cross countries, oh dear, they were a bind.
BW: What did you think of flying in the Halifaxes and Lancasters? You'd previously flown in, say, Whitleys, how did that?
WG: Well, it was really, really nice to be on them, because it was a step up, if you follow me. Halifaxes, I didn't like Halifaxes, except that there was plenty of room down in the rear turret. You could move about a bit, you know. In fact, they seemed to me to be too big, quite honestly but they were much better, in my opinion, they were much better than the Lancaster. The Lancaster, you were a bit cooped up, you know, it was a bit difficult to move. They were hard to get into. To get into, you got in the back door and then you lifted up onto a sort of a table, a long table, then you had to get, you had to hang on with your hands at the back, and get your feet on to this table, and push yourself forward until you got to the doors of the rear turret. And then you got into the rear turret and closed your doors, and you really felt trapped in, sort of thing, but once you started flying, you, I overcame that. I don't know about others but I overcame it.
BW: Is it correct you had to leave your 'chute outside of the turret? You had to put it on the side?
WG: Yes, on the left hand side. In a clip. You couldn't, with the Lancaster, you couldn't get your, that was a snag, you couldn't get your parachute actually in with you. If you had to bale out, you had to centralise the turret, turn it to starboard, open the door, open the doors, and you really were, as you opened the doors there, you were outside in the thin air, you know. But with the, that was with the Lancaster, but with the Halifax, it was a bit different, to a point anyway, but it was all a bit, it was all a bit nerve-wracking to begin with. And then you suddenly got used to it, and you got used to people saying, 'well, you shouldn't have joined', sort of thing, you know [chuckles], which of course was very true. But too late. [laughs]. I was looking back, well it's different looking back, but at the time I used to think to myself, 'I'll be glad when this is over', but when it was over, I was rather pleased that I could think back on those days, and the people I knew. They all seemed different from the, this is, shouldn't really say it but they seemed different from your ground crew friends, you know. Different type. As if when you were being selected for flying, that they were looking for something. Which they found [laughs]. Oh dear, yes.
BW: And how did you feel being a rear gunner, when there were other gunners on board. I mean, being a tail gunner is perhaps traditionally thought of as, er, a job a lot of people wouldn't want.
WG: Very true, yes. I felt safe in the rear turret because it was, in my opinion, I think, when I got in and got the door shut in the training, I thought, well, at least if anything happens, I've only got to turn this to port or starboard, half turn, and do that, or do that, and the doors automatically opened, and you go out backwards. Once you got your parachute clipped on, you know. Er, yes. What was that question you asked me?
BW: Originally, how did you crew up, how did you meet? At the Conversion Unit.
WG: Oh yes, that's it. We went to an Operational Training Unit, and they said, 'right, you're going to, there are either seven or nine crews of you'. In other words, there were either, there were seven to a crew, so there were either forty nine of us, which was seven to a crew, oh, I forget. I can't forget how many there were in the other lot. And then we were put into, we were put into an operations room, and said, 'right, well there are seven aircrew positions amongst you, and each, each aircraft has seven men', seven different types, gunners, signallers, all that nonsense, and we were told to pick our crew. And you sort of looked round at people, and I found myself with another bloke, just stuck. Nobody seemed to want us, we were just standing there. Everybody else had got, had been picked, as a crew, you know. Which I suppose is rather fortunate, because I, that's how I met Ron Clarke, who I've kept in touch with ever since. But he's dead. He died suddenly. He and his wife died. But we, and then there were six of us who were there that, later on, on my second tour, were picked for going up to Air Ministry for being decorated. And [chuckles], yes, that's right yes, we went up to Air Ministry, and so many of us got a DSO, I got a DFC. And then, let's see, after that I was posted to Bircham Newton, I think it was, training staff, training aircrew, you know, which was a bit of a bind, so I volunteered for a third tour, but it never came off because the, it was quite obvious that the war was ending, and it did, and I didn't do a third tour. Which perhaps was a good thing. That's why I'm here, I expect [laughs].
BW: You mentioned going up to the Air Ministry to get a Distinguished Flying Cross, and they were only awarded to officers at that particular time-
WG: I beg your pardon?
BW: They were only awarded to officers at that particular time, a DFC. Do you recall what the event was that led you to be decorated?
WG: Er, oh yes. Yes. It was, there were several air, several air, several Lancasters were lost, and it was, all I could really say was, it was a very dodgy period. It was, well in my case you were frightened. Quite often. You didn't just think you were frightened, I was frightened, but you overcame that, I overcame that to the point where, I wasn't pleased to go on Op's, but I used to wake up in the morning thinking, 'well, if we're on Op's tonight, is it going to happen?' That's how it got me in the end, and I used to wonder if I would lose my life, you know. Which I didn't, of course, but there you are. And then after my first tour, as I say, I went on instructing, and I was going on for a third instruction course, but I was selected for another tour of Op's, and I took rather a dim view of that, because I thought to myself,' you could go on too long', you know. There's a limit to it. Lots of blokes, I knew several people, several blokes who were, who had done two or three tours, but it was a bit dodgy, you know. So fortunately, I went back on to instructing, went on to instructing, oh, and then I went round, then I went round to schools, in the Lincolnshire area, I suppose, in other words telling them how brave you were [laughs]. And they seemed to believe it [chuckles]. Yes. And after that I was taken off flying. I think I got a bit 'flak happy', as they called it. If you'd done too much operational flying, you were getting a bit round the bend, you know, and you were doing silly things, and taking too many risks, I suppose. And then, yes after the instructing, I suppose the war ended. I don't know when it did end.
BW: You mentioned about, er, thinking about whether you were going to be on Op's the next night, and so on, and it was popular for crews to take mascots, or lucky charms, or have certain rituals. Did you have any of those?
WG: No. I had no faith in lucky charms.
BW: Did any of the crew that you flew with have anything?
WG: Yes, they used to take things that, usually belonged to their wives. My navigator had a, what was it, oh, a little paper, not paper, a little doll about as big as that, that she'd had as a kid. And I suppose they thought, 'well, if I take this, I shan't get killed', sort of thing. That's how you thought of it in those days, you know. You thought, I half expected, I didn't think I would get through, quite honestly. I never thought I'd get through a second tour, and when I was half way through my first tour, I said, 'well, if I get through my first tour, I'm not going to volunteer for a second tour'. But I did. I volunteered to stay on [laughs].
BW: And it was usual, for pilots certainly, who had completed thirty operations to be awarded the DFC? What did you get your DFC for?
WG: No, it wasn't [pause], you're right in saying up to a point, but my skipper was awarded a DFC, but not for doing a second tour. There were, there were, I did know one or two blokes who got them for doing a second tour, but nobody ever seemed to know why. We took a dim view that you joined, you went as aircrew, and that was your job. So of course, of course, you were flying on op's, and bombing Germany and all that sort of thing, but to be decorated just for becoming aircrew, I thought was all wrong. But that was all besides the point, I suppose.
BW: And was yours awarded because you'd completed a number of operations, or was it for a single action?
WG: No, I shot down- oh dear, what did I shoot down? An ME109, I think. I've got it in here somewhere. I've got it in here somewhere. Yeah, I shot down [pause], I don't know if I'm boring you?
BW: No, no. Not at all.
WG: Kelstern to form. Oh yes, I went to Kelstern then, to help form a new squadron. 625 Squadron, with two other aircrews. And we went on another, we went on, we went on to, we formed 625 Squadron, at Kelstern there, and then I got an immediate award. I've got it here in red ink. See previous page. 'Doug Wheeler badly wounded'. He was the bomb aimer, he was badly wounded. And I went up onto the [coughs], there was a bed in the aircraft, just before you get into the pilot's area, and the navigator's, the front part, and he was badly wounded, and they took him up onto the aircrew bed, and I sat with him and [coughs], that’s right. and Warrant Officer Clarke was the pilot, and he was awarded the DFM as well, and the flight engineer was as well. The three of them were awarded the DFM, because they were all NCO's then. And that's about all there.
BW: Your bomb aimer was badly wounded, and you went up.
WG: The bomb aimer was badly wounded, that's right, yes. The bomb aimer was badly wounded, and he lost quite a lot of blood. And it was thought, not by me, but it was thought by, I think it was the bomb aimer, er, I think it was the wireless operator relieved me sitting with him, and he seemed to think that he was losing too much blood, so he couldn't last much longer. But he did, of course. And he and I left together, and I remember, I remember walking down to Grimsby railway station, and our kit was already there. We were being posted. I was going home, home on leave, and he was going home on leave, and it was on the railway station, that's right, both of us on the railway station, and we both said goodbye as our various trains, as our trains came in, and that was that. I kept in touch with him, we kept in touch with each other, but I did not see him again. I went to his home town in, I went to his home town and I met his mother, his father was dead, and I think I met his brother, who had already been accepted for aircrew, but was still a civilian. And then from there I went somewhere else instructing, so I thought, well, I couldn't keep on with this instructing business, because I was never good at it really. I was the wrong temperament. And I volunteered for a third, I volunteered for a third tour. But it was quite obvious the war was ending, and I was never called back to do a third tour. And that was that, I went on a further instruction course, and I was going to join, I was going to be transferred to the er, transferred to the American Air Force, with others but, who were stationed in Lincolnshire, but it never materialised, fortunately. I went to, oh I forget where I went then.
Laura: You went to India.
WG: Oh, I went touring. Touring round various stations, Army and Navy, no, not Navy, but Army and Air Force stations telling them what it was like on operations, sort of thing, you know. You shot a line [chuckles].
BW: Now, you mentioned on that particular instance when you were looking in your log book, that the pilot and the flight engineer were also awarded medals. The pilot got a DFC and the navigator got a DFM. Was your DFC awarded on the same raid, because they got those medals as a result of their actions over Mannheim.
WG: No, I got mine, yes, Mannheim, wasn't it, I got mine after I'd left them. I was on my second tour then. I think I'd started my third tour, quite honestly. But I don't really, it'll be in the log book here. Yes, yeah, I can't remember really.
BW: Ok, do you recall that night when you flew over Mannheim. It was a particularly notable instance, but what were your recollections?
WG: It was, sorry?
BW: It was a notable raid that night.
WG: It was indeed, yes.
BW: What were your recollections of it?
WG: Er, perhaps being more frightened than I normally was. Yes, when you're running up to, the bomb aimer, as you obviously know, was right in the front, I mean, the bomb aimer's nose was there, and there was the fresh air, there, sort of thing, you know. And when you're up the front there, I suppose I was more frightened, but it did pass off, you know. Because I thought, well, if I'm going to frightened like this, I'm going to be no good to the aircrew. They won't want me. That's when he was taken down to the bed, and I went down there with him as another member of the aircrew. Immediate award of the DFC to Warrant Officer Clarke, and the DFM to flight engineer. Warrant Officers and Officers, if they were decorated, got a DFM, and, oh yes [unclear], oh I don't remember, but it's not important.
BW: You mentioned that you'd shot down a ME109.
WG: Yes.
BW: And was that while you were over Mannheim? Or was that on a separate raid?
WG: No, it wasn't when we were over Mannheim, no. Everybody thought Mannheim was going to be a killer, sort of thing, but it wasn't, so it must have been another. No, it wasn't Mannheim. [reading]. 'Immediate award of the DFC, immediate award of the DFC.' Oh yes it was, it was Mannheim. It was Mannheim that we got it, the three of us. We were badly shot up by night-fighters. We were coned, we were coned in searchlights. The searchlights, when you're coned in a searchlight, it switches on twice, a certain searchlight. You see the searchlight in the distance, or I would see them at the back of me, being in the rear turret, creeping up at you on the back, and they would switch on and switch off, twice, and the third time when they switched on, they'd got you. And it was just like this in the turrets, daylight, you know. And of course, that's when the fighters see you and they come in to attack. But we weren't attacked, but we were coned, and it was, it was just like daylight. [Reading] 'Night-fighter, night-fighters, coned in searchlights', that's right. And, that's right, yes, that's it, we were hit there because it says here that we were, 'coned in searchlights and riddled with flak. Upon landing aircraft broke in two', oh yes, and on landing our aircraft broke it's back. And we went, I think Clarke took it into a hedge, because we were still going pretty fast down the runway, having just landed, and we went off the runway, dead ahead, and into that hedge, sort of thing. Which obviously stopped us, and nobody, no sound and nobody moved, it was just as though the whole lot of us were dead [laughs]. It wasn't until we crawled out, feeling very sorry for ourselves [laughs].
BW: And you were saying about the flak on that, on that mission, that it was accurate, and it was at the height that you were at, and it sounded like hail on the side
WG: That's it, the flak, the flak, the flak that was coming up from the ground to the fighters, was coming down onto our aircraft as well, and we could feel it. It shook, it shook the aircraft a bit. That was particularly frightening, I suppose, but only for a while. I'm convinced that, I'm convinced that many times, I never spoke about it, to see if others witnessed it, but many times I was so, so frightened to a point where I was frightened back to normality. I used to think to myself, 'Christ, I'm frightened. This is no good.' And then suddenly, it was suddenly clear, and I would be quite happy to be sitting there, waiting for it to happen. It was as simple as that, you know. You were so frightened, you would be glad to be hit, and shot down. That was the truth, I suppose. Up until then, up until then, when you knew Op's were on, and you were getting up and shaving and what not, you thought, 'well, what's going to happen, I wonder, today.' And, 'tonight', rather, and so often nothing happened. We were only attacked twice, I think. I did fifty five, I did, yes I did fifty five bombing raids on Germany, nine on Berlin, and that was pretty frightening. I was frightened going over Berlin, because they really were a crack lot, the German, the German fighters. I mean, once they'd got you in their sights you could imagine them saying to themselves, 'I've got him this time’. And they would, you see, you'd see others being shot down, of your own type. I saw quite a lot.
BW: You saw quite a lot?
WG: Well, I say quite a lot, less than a dozen, but you know, if you look across at somebody by your side, you see maybe a mile away, and then you see a ball of light on this aircraft, and it gets bigger and bigger, and then suddenly it blows, and that's frightening, you think, 'well, it could happen to me, this’. But, it didn't. But it was frightening to see somebody else, some of your own people shot down. And, I suppose, to see others, the enemy shot down, because you think, well they've all got mothers and fathers. What are they going to say when they get home, you know.
BW: Some veterans talk about it being relatively isolated in the formation, in other words, they would fly a mission and not see other aircraft, perhaps until they were over the target. Was that something you saw as well?
WG: Sorry?
BW: Some veterans say that they didn't see other aircraft in the formation until they were perhaps over the target. Do you, was that something you experienced as well, or were you aware you were in a formation all the time you were on the mission, or did you only see them over the target?
WG: No, we weren't so much together, in a heap, going over. You didn't see any of your own aircraft, seldom saw. The only time you saw other aircraft, or I saw other aircraft, was when German aircraft were firing at our aircraft, in the sky somewhere, but not actually firing at ourselves. So rightly or wrongly, I thought, 'well, thank god they're firing at them and not us’, sort of thing. You know. I didn't feel sorry for the others, I was just pleased for myself [chuckles].
BW: Were you able to pick out enemy night fighters at the time?
WG: Yes. Not so much fighters, but Heinkels. Bombers. We flew alongside, they flew alongside us, or we flew alongside them, same thing, for quite a while and you didn't open fire, I didn't at least, the other two gunners in our aircraft and myself didn't open fire, because you thought, well they're not firing at us so they haven't seen us, so if we fire at them, they're going to see the light from our shots going out, you know.
BW: The muzzle flash and the tracers.
WG: Pardon?
BW: They would see the muzzle flash and the tracers.
WG: Exactly, yes. You'd be giving your position away. And you just called up the pilot, and he would usually do a power dive, which could be quite dicey because you never knew if you really would pull out of a power dive. Especially if you'd still got your bombs on board. So the practice was for the bomb aimer to jettison his bombs, no matter where he was, where we were, but to jettison the bombs to lighten your load and increase your speed a bit, in a dive, you know. We'd been down as much as below a thousand feet, which is a bit of a bind, in a way. You get away from them, but you've got the bind of the slow climb up where they could see you, they could see your engines lit up, you know [pause], yes, they could see you more clearly then.
BW: And I believe you flew a couple of raids over Italy as well.
WG: Oh yes, that's right. Oh yes, so I did. I flew over [reading] Munich, Stuttgart, Hanover, Berlin, Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Mannheim, er, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Milan. There you are, Milan. Peennemunde, Leverkusen, Berlin, Nuremberg. Oh yes. Did not complete operation. One of the engines was hit. It started a fire, we thought, but it didn't. And Berlin again, then Berlin, Mannheim, Munich, Mannheim. Mannheim was a bad place to bomb. They were very good there, with their night fighters. Hagen, Munich , Stuttgart, Hanover. Oh dear, so it goes on, so it goes on. Stettin, er Russelsheim, Stettin again. Oh, yes, then we went on to the V2 sights. They were in daylight, which was particularly bad. Frankfurt, Danzig, mining. mining Danzig Bay, that was a long trip, that was nine hours there and back. Westkapelle, daylight, Calais, daylight, Cap Brunet, daylight, three hours fifteen, oh dear, oh dear, Westkapelle, damn-busting, daylight. Saarbruken, Stuttgart, six hours fifty five minutes, Essen, five hours thirty, Cologne, oh dear, oh dear, I didn't know I'd done all this [chuckles].
BW: This must have been in nineteen forty four.
WG: Yes it was, November. November forty four. Gelsenkirchen, Van Ickel, that was in the Ruhr, Dortmund, er Maasberg, wherever that was, I don't know. That was on the second tour. Er, Marseilles. Yes, that's about it. The rest of it's all Transport Command stuff. Getting toward the end of the war then. And, er, and, that was it. Calcutta. Delhi and Calcutta, Delhi and Calcutta, Bangalore, Yellow Hanker.
BW: What were you flying there, in Transport Command? In India.
WG: Er, Lancasters. I was always on Lancasters. Except in training, when I was on Lancasters, and oh, what do you call the bloody things? [unclear] I've forgotten what they're called. [pause]. They're all Lancasters there. They're all Lancasters.
BW: You spent a lot of time. obviously, over the Ruhr. So your aircraft, when you were at 100 Squadron, the Phantom of the Ruhr, was appropriately named, wasn't it?
WG: Yes, yes. Sorry?
BW: I say your aircraft, the Lancaster, was called the Phantom of the Ruhr.
WG: That's right, yes.
BW: It was appropriately named, you spent so much time over it.
WG: Yes, the navigator, no, not the navigator, the bloke next to the pilot, the flight engineer, did a very good etching of the scene. What was it was called?
BW: Phantom of the Ruhr.
WG: Oh, that's right, yes. He did, he actually drew a phantom, the head, you know, of a phantom, then underneath he wrote, ' Phantom of the Ruhr'. Yes, I had a photograph of that, I don't know what happened to it. I've lost lots of things I wish I'd kept. Um. Yes [pause]. Yes, there were good and bad days, you know, good and bad days. I often thought, many times, I should never have volunteered, and then I thought, well, if I don't volunteer for flying, there's not much point in volunteering for the Air Force. And I couldn't volunteer for that, I couldn't be an Army bloke. I couldn't have been in the Army. I wouldn't have wanted to be a soldier.
BW: I have a photograph here of the nose-art of the aircraft.
WG: Oh, that's it. The engineer did that.
BW: I think this was after your time on the aircraft, it went on to fly over a hundred sorties.
WG: Yes, that's right.
BW: I think the crew pictured here, unless you recognise any of them, are from the end of the tour, because there's quite a number of –
WG: I don’t think I’ve seen this. Yes, here you are.
BW: - bomb markers on the side, there, to indicate the number of sorties.
WG: May I just show this to Laura? You can come over, it's all right. That's, our flight engineer drew that, and I stood, er, I stood, this is the front of the aircraft, as you'll appreciate and I stood beneath the aircraft here. I stood on a [slight pause], what do you have with Scotch to drink?
Laura: Tonic?
WG: Tonic. I stood on a Schweppes, an empty Schweppes tonic box and held the paint, held the point, no, the pint, held the paint up like this, while he dipped it in and drew that.
Laura: Very clever, wasn't it?
WG: Yes. He was standing about here, and I was over on this side, and, yes, well, that's nice, that. And then he would, and then I held the thing, whatever he wanted, his paint, when he painted the first half of those, they were all the bombs we dropped. And then our aircraft, we were taken off, and our aircraft went on to another crew, and that was their bit that they did.
Laura: My word.
WG: Yes. Now what was in there, oh nothing. There was something in there I was going to show you. But it's not important. Sorry about that.
BW: That's alright. There's another photograph here of your skipper, stood at the back of the aircraft, which has damage to the starboard elevator plane.
WG: That’s it.
BW: And there's your turret at the back, with a hood over it. It shows some of the damage that was received to the aircraft on that particular raid over Mannheim. The holes that the shells caused.
WG: Oh yes. That's it, yes. Oh yes. Yes, that's it. That's dear old Ron Clarke. He was a Warrant Officer then. There's his Warrant Officer's rank badge, there.
BW: Yes, on his right sleeve.
WG: Pardon.
BW: On his right sleeve.
WG: That's it, yes. And of course there're the holes in the aircraft that the flak caused, that shot up at us. And that was covered up, that was covered over for some reason or other. They were usually covered over, turrets, if they bought somebody back dead, you know. They were taken down to a special hanger for any repairs to be done, and for whoever was in the turret to be taken out, and then they'd, as a mark of respect, they covered it over. Thank you. Yes. [Pause]
BW: Do you have any other information in the log book, at all? Do you have any other photos or descriptions, that you particularly recall?
WG: Oh, I don't know [unclear[ [pause]. No, all I've got is a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Air, presents his compliments [chuckles], and by command of the Air Council, has the honour to transmit the enclosed awards granted for service during the war of nineteen thirty nine, forty five. That was that. I don't know what this is. This is, Squadron Leader in correspondence from reserve [unclear], oh, The Council, the Air Council desires me to convey to you their warm thanks for the services you have rendered to the Royal Air Force, which they greatly appreciated. They have granted you permission to retain the rank of Flight Lieutenant under the terms of paragraph three oh two of Queens Regulations and Air Council Instructions, but this grant of rank does not confer the right to any emoluments. Your attention is drawn to the attached memorandum, and also to the enclosed extract from Queens Regulations regarding the occasion on which officers who have been permitted to retain their rank, wear uniform and the badges of that rank. So I always keep that in case. I used to, I used to go on parades when I was still in the service, um, on uniform parades, but you couldn't do that unless you'd actually got permission to actually do that. Thank you. Well, sorry about all this, this is a non-issue.
BW: That's alright. That's no problem. You mentioned that you joined as a sergeant, and at some point you've obviously been commissioned.
WG: Yes.
BW: Do you recall when and how that happened?
WG: Well, I didn't actually join as a sergeant. I joined, I joined. War was declared on the Saturday. I was in the kitchen, helping my mother with getting the food ready, and war was declared at eleven o' clock on that Saturday, and I asked mother if she could lend me some money to get a ticket to go to Lincoln to volunteer for aircrew. And she, yes she did, she gave me the money. She wasn't, and of course my father was very, well, not very annoyed. He said, 'I can't understand it’, he said, ‘why don't you wait until you're called up?' [laughs] I said, 'if I wait, if I wait until I'm called up, I've been advised that they will put you anywhere in the crew, but if you volunteer, you can more or less choose if you want to be a rear gunner, or a signaller, or navigator', though I hadn't got the brains for that, navigator. But if you volunteered, you could choose more or less where you were going to fly, but if you didn't, you were put anywhere in the aircraft, where they wanted a spare bod, I mean. A Lanc would come back with, maybe with somebody killed in a turret, so they'd whip him out and stick you in, sort of thing. Filling in space, you see, that sort of thing, so that was the reason I volunteered, so that I could volunteer – I felt very happy in the rear turret. I never felt, I don't think I felt really frightened, once I got up in the air. But waking up in the morning, knowing that that night we were going on operations, I did feel a bit dodgy, but it wore off once I got on to the squadron, sort of thing. But until then I did feel a bit, I thought, well it could happen, and that sort of thing, and what's mother going to do, you know.
BW: What was your social life like on the squadron? You mentioned, you wouldn't be on op's every night.
WG: Oh no, no, The amount of flights I did, it's in the log book. Most op's was four nights in seven, following on. You see, you go on op's, and you might be on again tonight, and you were on again tonight, and you'd say, 'well, we can't be on tomorrow night'. But of course, when you woke up you found you were on, you know, I used to, even though I was not commissioned then, we did have a batman who used to look after us and keep our buttons clean, usual thing, you know, and they would do various things for you. I've forgotten what I was going to say, never mind, it doesn't matter.
BW: And did you get time to socialise? You mentioned going out to Grimsby and places, did you socialise in the mess, the Sergeants Mess?
WG: Oh yes. If you'd got a bit of money in your pocket, you would go out of the mess, into town, where'd you'd girlfriends, and that sort of thing, you know. But if you'd, if you hadn't got money, you would stay in the mess and use the facilities there, the bar, they usually specialised in supplying you with a good bar. I mean you paid for it, you had to buy the stuff, but there was a bar in every mess, and if you hadn't got much dough you would go into the bar in the mess because you could book it. And you didn't have to pay until the end of the month, when you got your money. Until then, you had to pay for it there and then.
BW: And did you socialise really with your crew? Did you go out together, or did you socialise with your other friends, who were gunners on other aircraft?
WG: Very seldom. If I socialised with anybody, which I did, it would be with those of my rank and air-crew calling. You know, air gunners would go with air gunners, and navigators with navigators, and that sort of thing. Occasionally I would go out with Clarke, my pilot. Quite often, I suppose really. He was an extremely nice bloke. And we used to go, er, we used to go, I suppose boozing. But not to get violently drunk, you know. Because it was too expensive, anyway [chuckles]. Otherwise we would never have been sober.
BW: And I believe you liked doing crosswords, as well, is that right?
WG: I beg your pardon.
BW: I believe you like doing crosswords.
WG: Yes, I used to do a crossword in the turret coming back quite often. It was advised not to in case we were followed back, and we were seen by whoever was following us back that we weren't really, that the turret wasn't moving. So that once you got up, once you left the shores of the country, you never kept your turret still. You always went backwards and forwards, up and down. So that if you were seen by enemy aircraft, they would see that you weren't asleep, you were alert, sort of thing, you know. That was the idea.
BW: And I believe that on the way back from a raid on Mannheim, when you had actually been shot up, and the searchlights were still on you, and following you away from the target, you joked that you had enough time to finish the crossword, because there was a light in the turret.
WG: No, at night time it isn't that dark. When you're flying, when you're up in the air at night, even if you're the only aircraft in the sky, the sky's still light. Not like this, but you know, you can be seen.
[Noises off as someone knocks to come in]
BW: Yes, I'll just pause the recording here for a moment.
BW: So, we're just looking through one or two things in the log book at the moment. Would you mind if I read a couple of extracts from it? Would that be alright?
WG: Say what? To read it out? Oh yes, yes.
BW: There's, [pause] firstly there is a description here for seventeenth of August nineteen forty three, a night mission to Peenemunde, codenamed Hydra. And the description underneath, which you've indicated, reads, 'six hundred aircraft, Lancasters, dropped sixteen hundred tons of high explosives. This prevented the stockpiling of five thousand V2's, which Hitler intended to be dropped on London simultaneously, in one day’. And there's a quote in a short section from the Daily Telegraph magazine which indicates that in general, the raid, Bomber Command's raid was an outstanding success, and a shattering attack on Peenemunde research and radio location factory, Germans biggest development centre for air defences. In a message to Sir Arthur Harris, Chief of Bomber Command, the Air Minister says, 'photographs prove the outstanding success of your attack’, and goes on to say, 'the accuracy of the bombing, in spite of a smokescreen, and of fierce fighting over the target, testifies to the skill and determination of your crews, and to the effectiveness of your planning and tactical methods’. And that was dated the fifth of June nineteen forty three. So that was obviously a very well defended target, but notable because of what was achieved as a result, in hitting the V2 sights. The other description in here comes from, erm, the forth of November nineteen forty four, which I think must be your second tour.
WG: Yes, yes it was the second tour, forty three, forty four.
BW: When you went on to 625 Squadron, based at Kelstern.
WG: Yes. We formed there, I think.
BW: And, I believe it was C Flight from 100 Squadron that formed 625.
WG: That's right. Yes.
BW: The description here says that it was a raid on Bokum, and that, in brackets, a jet aircraft, ME262 confirmed, and the description goes on to say, 'awarded the DFC. This was their fastest and latest fighter, and the first to be shot down at night by Bomber Command, and confirmed’.
WG: Yes, that's right. I shot it down, yes.
BW: That's particularly notable because firstly, it was a jet aircraft, and secondly, it was at night.
WG: Yes.
BW: Do you recall how you recognised the aircraft? Did it appear to be a jet, were you able to recognise it? Or was it just another target for you?
WG: Well, when I was on then, on both tours, the only [pause] if it hadn't got four engines, which were easy to pick out, even at night, because it's not as dark as all that up there at night. But it is dark, of course, but if it hadn't got four engines, you had a go at it. Because it shouldn't have been up there, sort of thing, so it must have been an enemy. Must be an enemy. You didn't recognise it perhaps as an enemy, except that it had only got two engines. Otherwise, it would have four. Which meant it was one of your own.
BW: And who saw who first? Do you think.
WG: Well exactly, yes.
BW: Who saw who first on that occasion? Did you see him?
WG: That I can't remember. I don't, I only remember being attacked maybe a couple of times, but that was in the early part of the war [pause]. It's difficult [pause]. Yes it’s, you could pick them out, quickly. But even if you didn't, you still fired at them, because you couldn't take the risk. If you didn't fire at them and they were enemy, they fired at you, it would be too late because they might hit you. But it was better to take a chance, and sometimes a wrong chance. On occasions your own being shot down. That has happened. I don't know how it was proven, but it all comes out at, it all comes out when you come back, and you're interrogated. And you really are interrogated, I mean, you don't stand a chance, even if you want to, to shoot a line or tell a load of lies, because they'd soon find out, the way they interrogate you. They aren't aircrew themselves, they're ground crew, and really, really trained for that job of sorting out the truth from the shooting a line business.
BW: And so when you landed, how soon after landing would you be debriefed?
WG: Straight away. You'd be taken in transport straight away. You wouldn't even speak to your ground crew, be allowed to speak to your ground crew. The, er, as soon as you landed, the first people you spoke to were the ground crew, the ground crew, er, oh dear, questioning you, interrogating you [pause].
BW: And were you debriefed as a crew together? Or were you debriefed individually?
WG: You were all put in the debriefing room, and each aircrew department were briefed by their own people. And then you were together briefed as a crew. And it was there to make sure there was no line-shooting, you know. Well, I suppose it was, that's what it was done for. They could easily say, well you're telling us this story, but your mate is telling us this story. That sort of idea, you know.
BW: By line-shooting, you mean telling them something inaccurate.
WG: Telling lies. Yes, telling lies and lies that could never happen, you know. You were boosting up your bravery perhaps, I suppose. If that's the word, yes. I don't know if you could say that many of us were brave. It was just one of those things. You'd volunteered to do it and you were there, so you'd got to do it, but I don't think that I looked upon it as bravery, I looked upon it as being a bloody idiot for being there [laughs].
BW: What I'd just like to do now, is just to show you a list of the crew, and you've talked about Ron Clarke, and there's your name at the bottom, this is when you were on 100 Squadron.
WG: Oh yeah. That's right.
BW: Yeah? And there's one or two other names you've briefly mentioned. Are there any particular instances or things you would remember about each of those men that you flew with?
WG: There's Ron Clarke. I think Clarke got a second DFC, but I'm not sure. Bennett got a DFM, that's right. Flight Engineer. Sidell, Jim Sidell. Well, Jim Sidell was killed, the navigator, so he got nothing. Wheeler, the bomb aimer, didn't get anything. Easby, the wireless operator, didn't get anything. Simpson didn't get anything. And then there's myself, yes. No, that was the crew. And er, what was the question, what did you ask me?
BW: Do you remember anything other about the other members of the crew, anything else about them? What sort of chaps they were?
WG: No, we didn't. I don't remember any of us really teaming up when we weren't flying, and going out together. We used to sort of go on our todd, so if we got up to something we didn't want too many people to know [laughs]. Which was my idea, anyway. I don't know about Clarke, But no, Clarke didn't, he’d be doing something. He'd be studying, I expect. He was a studing type [unclear]. Easby's very ill now. I don't know if he's still living. I intend to phone up and speak to his wife, but-
BW: Do you know if Harry Bennett is still alive?
WG: Bennett, Bennett. Where's Bennett's name here? Bennett, yes, Flight Engineer. No I don't actually. I don't even know, I don't even know where Bennett came from.
BW: I believe he came from Preston. In Lancashire.
WG: Now that's a point, yes. Somewhere up North. Yes, he was a north country chap. The Flight Engineer. He was a good bloke. He could, if something went wrong, he would get out of his seat up front, next door to the pilot, and walk down the aircraft with his tool kit, and if anything was wrong, and he could do something there, he would stay down there and mend it, and do all that sort of thing. He was a very brave bloke [coughs].
BW: Do you recall how he got his DFM?
WG: Who?
BW: Bennett.
WG: Bennett. No, no I can't. No.
BW: There's a description that when you were over Mannheim one night, and because you were heavily hit by the flak, it severed the flying controls to the ailerons.
WG: Oh yes, so it did.
BW: And there was a lot of vibration going through the flying controls, which meant the pilot couldn't handle the aircraft properly.
WG: That's right. That's it.
BW: And the story goes that Bennett took out his penknife, and bearing in mind you were probably at five thousand feet at night over Germany and France at the time, apparently he took out his penknife and severed the starboard trim control cables.
WG: That's right, he trimmed the controls, that's right. I don't know if it was his penknife, but he did sever controls, yes, which steadied the aircraft, and it was, well everybody was, we all were scared when this, when the aircraft was really shaking, you know. And then it suddenly stopped, and after, we realised that dear old Bennett had done that. He'd gone down and put his, put his breathing apparatus thing on, and stopped the vibrating.
BW: That's quite a thing to have done.
WG: Well, yes.
BW: Firstly, to know what to do, and then to be able to see it and cut it.
WG: Yes, yes. Yes. It doesn't say anything there, but I think Bennett was decorated as well. There were, there were, there were three of us decorated to my knowledge, I think he could have been the fourth one, but I'm not really sure. But three of us were decorated, and as I say, I think he was the fourth one, but actually, getting down and stopping the vibration, which it was thought could have prevented the aircraft being flown properly [coughs] or safely. Safely was the word, not properly. Same thing.
BW: And the other description that I just wanted to read on the back of the log book that you've got here; on the tenth of January nineteen forty five there's a description in here from a Squadron Leader, which looks like a Flight Commander of 626, in relation to your proficiency and assessment says, 'this', oh.
WG: This officer?
BW: 'This officer [pause] that knows his job, which he does well, this officer that knows his job, which he does well, put up a splendid show whilst on this', I can't make out the last word, but it says underneath, 'awarded the DFC'. Does that description-
WG: Which bit? Oh, 'whilst on the squadron'. Whilst on the squadron, yes. What does it say there, then?
BW: It says, 'Our officer, that knows his job, which he does well, puts up a splendid show whilst on this squadron. Awarded DFC'.
WG: Oh, I see. Yes.
BW: That would be your second one.
WG: That's right, yes.
[Pause}
Laura: You’ve not drunk your tea, Pops.
WG: Pardon?
Laura: Your tea
WG: Pardon?
Laura: Your cup of tea?
WG: Oh yes, my cup of tea. Oh there's a cup of tea, look.
BW: From these tours, then, what happened after, towards the end.
WG: Sorry?
BW: From, after completing these two tours, or three tours, because you completed a hundred operations, didn't you?
WG: Yes, I think so. Something like that. Yeah, well two and a half tours.
BW: And what happened after that? When you, when the war ended, and you stayed in service, but you went out to India and the Far East.
WG: Oh yes, I did, yes, Yes, I went out to, I went out to Delhi, and Calcutta, and Bangalore. Erm. I wasn't instructing. I can't think what I was doing. I wasn't lecturing. Well, I was lecturing in Bangalore, but not for very long. I asked to be taken off because I wasn't any good at it. I was, you know, if the blokes you were instructing weren't sort of, didn't cotton on, I used to get bad tempered, so it was no good [long pause]. Yes, looking back, they were good days. When you're there, they're not, really. You wonder, why did I do it? [pause]
BW: And when the war ended, and you'd been in India, what then happened? You came back and you left the Air Force at some stage, did you?
WG: Yes. I came back from India. I was, where was I, I think I was in Calcutta then. Oh yes, that's what annoyed me, was that when I went out there, I flew out there and was there a fortnight, and when I came back, I didn't come back quickly in an aircraft, I came back on a boat, and that took about three to four weeks to get back to the country, which I thought was rather bad. Because they flew me out there quickly, and then it took a long time to get me back home.
BW: They wanted you out there quickly, but didn't want you back home so fast [chuckles]. And did you come home to get married, and raise a family after that?
WG: Yes, I came home and, I don't know, yes, I came home, what did I do [pause], I don't know where I met Betty. Oh, we met, yes, I was with a group of blokes somewhere, and we saw a group of WAAFs, and we teamed up with these WAAFs, and I went off with mine. I don't know what happened to the others, but I never met them again, but I went off. I forget where we went, and we stayed together for some time. She was , she was a plotter. She used to plot enemy aircraft, and that sort of thing. In Bomber Command. And, I went to Bomber Command for a while, and asked to be taken away, but until then, that was where we met each other [Pause].
BW: And when did you get married?
WG: That's a point [pause].
BW: Was it soon after the war? Or was it a few years after?
WG: No, the war was still on, I think. Is my log book here? Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know if it tells me in here. I don't know, I must, I don't know when I got married [pause and paper rustling]. 'Slightly above average', and, 'above average'. That's slightly above. No, I don't know. [More paper rustling]. What was I looking for? 'Screen, after twenty sorties, second tour.'
Laura: Pops. I think you got married on the thirteenth of April, it was a Friday, and I think it was nineteen forty five. Would it be?
WG: Oh, nineteen forty five.
Laura: I think. It was forty four or forty five, I think. Before you went to India.
WG: Oh, that's right, before I went to India, wasn't it.
Laura: Yes
WG: Yes [pause]. November forty four, Bokum. Oh yes. Oh, I don't know [pause].
BW: When you left the service, what did you go on to do then?
WG; Well I, er, before the war I joined the firm that my father was the secretary for, at Kings Lynn. A timber importing firm, Patrick and Thompson’s. And I was going out to, I was going out to India. We had a branch in India. In, where was it, Bangalore, no, not Bangalore, oh I don't remember now. And I don't quite know what I did. I didn't do what I expected to do, or what they said I was going to do and I think that the way the war was going, it was felt that soon it going to end, so it was a pretty cushy time for us all. Because we weren't, there wasn't very much to do really, and I didn't know whether to stay in or not, and I wasn't keen on going back to my father, to the firm where my father was, so I stayed in. And I was going to get, I hadn't got a permanent commission then. I was on, not a part-time commission, I forget what the word was for it, but it wasn't a regular commission, and I thought, well, if I'm going to stay in the service, I must get a regular commission, or else they can get me out any time. But with a regular commission, provided I'm playing it straight, I haven't got to bother about a job, because I'd got a job. And it was quite well paid. I was a Flight Lieutenant then. And when I went to Bangalore, I was promoted to Squadron Leader, and then when I came back, when I came back, I was demoted to my previous regular engagement commission. It wasn’t an active one. But then I decided that with how things were going, I wasn't very keen. I was getting into spots of bother, and that sort of thing. I was made a personal assistant to an Air Vice Marshall, which was a bit of a bind because you're always on duty, you know. You could suddenly be in bed, and your batman would come in, and give you a shake, and say,' the old man wants you’, and you could get up at any time of the day. Yes, at any time of the day and night. Because if you'd been flying at night, you'd be asleep during the day, and you'd have to go down to see what he wanted, and all that sort of thing. And his wife would, many times when I was in their house, she would come in and say, 'Geoffrey, just nip down to the butchers will you, and get so and so’, that sort of thing, you know. That wasn't my cup of tea, really, not what I'd joined to do [laughs]. Walking back with strings of sausages round me neck [laughs].
BW: Well, I think you've been very open, and it's been a great pleasure to listen to you, sir, and to all your experiences, so I want to thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre for doing that, and it's probably an appropriate place to leave your reminiscences, with a string of sausages round your neck [laughs]
WG: Thank you very much indeed.
BW: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Geoff Green
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-11
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGreenWG150911
Format
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01:34:43 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Description
An account of the resource
William Green was born in Kings Lynn in Norfolk and joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of war, when he was 17 and a half, becoming a rear gunner on Lancasters and eventually rising to the rank of squadron leader. He tells about going to help form 625 Squadron at RAF Kelstern and his training for rear gunner, which included some navigation and aircraft recognition. William tells of how he was sent on an instructor course to train new recruits however he admits he did not have the temperament to do this for very long. In 1944 he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for shooting down the first Me 262 aircraft, whilst coming home from an operation to Mannheim. It was the first confirmed shooting down of this particular aircraft and it was during a night operation. William tells about a particularly bad operation to Mannheim, when he helped with a badly injured bomb aimer, being coned by searchlights and coping with anti-aircraft fire. He also recalls a flight where the aircraft was hit and flying controls to the ailerons were severed, meaning the pilot had trouble controlling the aircraft. The flight engineer picked up a toolbox and acted on the starboard trim control cables with a penknife, allowing the pilot to land. William completed two full tours with Bomber Command, flying over 100 operations, including 55 bombing operations on Germany alone, and his aircraft was nicknamed ‘Phantom of the Ruhr’. He tells the story of how he helped with the painting of the nose art. Towards the end of war, William was in India with Transport Command, particularly in Delhi and Calcutta.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Mannheim
India
India--Kolkata
India--New Delhi
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
100 Squadron
1656 HCU
28 OTU
625 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
coping mechanism
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 262
military service conditions
nose art
Operational Training Unit
operations room
pilot
RAF Kelstern
searchlight
superstition
training
Whitley
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1701.2.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Payne, Geoff
Geoffrey Albert Payne
G A Payne
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Payne (b. 1924, 1584931 Royal Air Force) and his memoir. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 115 and 514 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Geoff Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Payne, G
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BJ: So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The person being interviewed is Geoffrey Payne. The interview is taking place in Mr. Payne’s home in Cumbernauld on the 28th of May 2017. Mr. Payne, thank you for agreeing to talk to me today. Could you tell me about your life before you joined the RAF?
GP: Well, my life was a bit raggedy, I was an apprentice to Sheet Metal Work and worked in a company in the centre of Birmingham and we were manufacturing spats for Lysander aircraft and making fire pumps, things like that and more interested in sports than anything else [laughs].
BJ: And how did you come to join the RAF?
GP: Well, I joined the Air Training Corps, which I was one of the original members and it was the Air Training Corps was at Birmingham was the Austin Motor Company Squadron which was 480 and 479, there were two squadrons in the, ATC squadrons, and that’s why I started to get involved with the, with the Air Force, thinking a lot about the Air Force at the time. We went to camp to RAF Weeton, which was a Pathfinder Squadron, 7 Squadron, which were flying Stirlings and the most funniest part about us, we wanted to go into St Yves for the evening and we had to know a password to go out of the place because there was operations on that night and they said the password was WATER, which was this, I think they were pulling our legs or something like that, they said because the Germans can’t sound the w’s is wasser, so that was the sort of thing, that gave me a great interest in the Air Force.
BJ: OK. And when did you come to join the Air Force?
GP: I joined when I was seventeen and a half and I went to Vishyde Close in Birmingham to get assessed and I was assessed as a pilot and I was given a number and then sent back to work again because they wouldn’t call me up until I was eighteen but in the meantime I had a letter from them saying that it would possibly take far too long for me to become a pilot and that they’d had other vacancies in the Air Force which was an air gunner so I decided to do that.
BJ: And what year was this?
GP: 1943, yes.
BJ: And what happened when you started with the RAF?
GP: What happened?
BJ: Yes, what did your training involve?
GP: The training, we went to London, to Lord’s Cricket Ground and then we were put into high-rise flats and then we had our meals at the London zoo and used to march there every, for breakfast those [unclear] and tea and there’s one occasion there when there was a heavy air raid and at Lord’s Cricket Ground there’s the Regent’s Park and [unclear] anti-aircraft comes and we had to move out and go to another set of flats which was a hospital, which the RAF hospital, and carry all the patients down from the high floors cause they wouldn’t, couldn’t go down in the lifts and carry the, down in stretchers into the basement and back up then and then after that initial training, I went to Bridlington for ITW and that’s a nice seaside place, enjoyed it there and then off we went to Air Gunners School which was in the Isle of Man, just outside Ramsey, a place called Andreas and then, after three months of training, we were sent to an ITW, which was in Banbury where we were crewed up and flew in Wellingtons and from then we, we had to go to Heavy Conversion Unit which was a Stirling set-up, a place called Wratting Common in Cambridgeshire and we did that and then also we moved to, did an escape course at Feltwell and which was hilarious and then.
BJ: What did they teach you there about escaping?
GP: Unarmed combat and this sort of thing but it was, it just became a laugh actually [laughs] so, but we were there for the week and then we went back onto Wratting Common on Stirlings but at that time the Stirlings was being phased out from operations in the, for the main force in Bomber Command and we were transferred to, onto Lancasters which were radial engines Mark II, Hercules engines and from then we did a couple of weeks training there before we were put onto the squadron.
BJ: How did you find the Lancasters compared to the Stirlings?
GP: I didn’t like the Stirlings at all.
BJ: Ah!
GP: No, they frightened me because whilst I was converting onto Stirlings, I had to go to Newmarket to do a short gunnery course there and in the meantime my crew then crashed one of the Stirlings at [unclear] market so and but I, they phased these Stirlings out and that’s why I went on to Lancasters and then from Lancasters on Waterbeach we moved to a squadron which was RAF Witchford.
BJ: Ok. What happened when you got to Witchford?
GP: [laughs] We arrived at Witchford and then the following day we had to go round, signing in, which is a normal thing, you go to all the various sections and sign in and so forth like that and you get your billets and that and I went to the gunnery leaders office to sign in there and he says, ah yes, he says, you’re on tonight and that was the second day I was there [laughs] and I was, I said, what for? He says, well, there’s a rear gunner taken ill and you’ll have to, you’ll be flying with Lieutenant Speelenburg who was South African.
BJ: How did you feel about that?
GP: Terrible, it was, it was, to do a first op with a sprog crew which, the crew was a, they hadn’t done any operations before anyway and I hadn’t done any operations so they obviously bloodied with a new crew and that was one of the most horrendous air raids I’ve been on and that was to Augsburg, in southern Germany which was an eight hour journey, it was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life so.
BJ: What happened on the mission?
GP: Oh, we got attacked over the target by a, by two Messerschmitt 109s, well, we got through that alright but it was, I never in my life would have expected to witness such a melee which was over the target, and I thought to myself I’m not coming out through this loss.
BJ: Do you remember what the target was?
GP: Augsburg.
BJ: Yes.
GP: It was the MAN works.
BJ: Ok.
GP: So that was, it was a night trip, eight-hour trip.
BJ: And did you stay with that crew then after?
GP: No, no.
BJ: No. So, how did you get assigned to a crew?
GP: I’d already got my crew,
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: From, from Banbury, from Chipping Warden. I’d already got my crew, my crew were there but they were doing cross country south. So that was me doing me first op and I thought, I’ll never gonna get through this. So, that was my first operation and in the morning I couldn’t get off to sleep so I decided to, I walked into Ely and the Oxford and Cambridge boat race was on there so that was the, because they didn’t have the boat races in London because of the bombings, so I saw the boat race there.
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: And came back, that’s it, so I said, no, that’s it, you can’t, you got to, maybe get through this alright but just forget about it and take it as it comes.
BJ: Ok. So, what, what was, can you tell me a bit more about some of the other missions you flew from Witchford?
GP: Well, I only did, I only did five operations from Witchford and I got frostbite, because we got attacked by a night fighter which destroyed all the communications and heating in the aircraft, but we managed to get back ok. So, that was alright and that was me put away from frostbite to Ely hospital for some time and then I was transferred to Waterbeach for recuperation and then I picked up another crew at Waterbeach which is Ted Cousins’s and I finished my tour of operations at Waterbeach with that crew.
BJ: What were you flying in at Waterbeach?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What planes were you flying in from Waterbeach?
GP: Lancaster IIs.
BJ: Lancaster IIs. Ok, right, and can you tell me as what it was like on the base there, day to day life?
GP: Base was good because Witchford was a wartime place and everything was so dispersed you could walk miles for meals and things like that. But Waterbeach was a pre-war station and everything was on tap and there were nice billets and cosy, not like the Nissen huts that we did have, so these were brick-built, brick-built buildings and quite comfortable in a way.
BJ: And what did you do in your time off?
GP: Just going home [laughs].
BJ: Really? Aha.
GP: If you could get home. [unclear] the time off just mainly drinking [laughs].
BJ: What was it like coming home after being on operations?
GP: It was very strange and it’s a funny thing, I haven’t been away from home until I went in the Air Force. It’s a very strange feeling when you come back home and see that, it was a good feeling, but it didn’t last long so I had to go back again and that was it.
BJ: And what did you tell your mum and dad about your life in the RAF?
GP: I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t think it was fair.
BJ: Ah.
GP: Because my brother, my brother was a navigator wireless operator on Mosquitoes, he was out in Burma so there’s both of us, there were three boys in the family and just my elder brother and myself were in the Air Force and the younger brother, he went in the army, just after the war. It was, it was quite strange because all your friends were away and we just had to nosy around, just going to the pictures or something like that. It wasn’t all that pleasant, it’s nice to see your family but as I say, it was quite boring.
BJ: And what sort of missions were you involved in, when you were at Waterbeach? Where were the targets?
GP: The targets, Witchford was, the targets were German targets, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg and one or two others. From Waterbeach there was quite a variety of targets which are sometimes daylight raids and night raids, sometimes were French targets, and then all of a sudden you’d be onto a German target at night, which is [unclear] sorted it out.
BJ: What did you have a preference for daytime or nighttime missions?
GP: I used to like to rather go at night time, I didn’t like daytime [laughs]. You could see too much.
BJ: Right. Were there any particularly memorable missions that you flew on?
GP: Actually, most of them were quite memorable, we did a raid to Beckdiames which was in Southern France and that was an eight hour trip and this was a daylight raid and we went out at under a thousand feet all the way and until we got to the target, the target was a port actually and we climbed up to the bombing height, bombed and dropped down to, under a thousand feet again because of the radar, that was the idea of it but it was a long trip, it was an eight hour trip and it was quite a dangerous trip because the Bay of Biscay it was the, the Junkers 88 used to wonder around there quite a lot, you know, so. And then, there was another one which was to Stettin which was in Poland and that was another long trip, under a thousand feet all the way, this was a night time raid and we flew over Denmark and we could see the lights of Sweden and the anti-aircraft fire was coming up from Sweden, things like that [laughs] and then we went to, got to Stettin which we got to the bombing height and came back down again and what [unclear], we just lost one, one squadron, one aircraft on that squadron. So, and there was, there’s quite a few things which, one of the most scary attacks that we had was my last operation really to Duisburg. And that was the, the squadron went out early to bomb Duisburg, there was over a thousand aircraft to do it, and then, as soon as we got back, over the target the air was black with flak and it was the most frightening experience, I was in daylight did not expect to go to a German target in daylight and then it gradually settled down then but when we got back, we were sent down to, the air gunners were sent down to the bomb disposal place to help to load bombs up again for the same target and then the following day the German, the Americans bombed the same place, that was a disastrous place, terrible. That was about it, you know, but most of the trips were rather scary cause you never knew what was gonna happen there [unclear], you could be attacked by fighters any time.
BJ: What was it like being up in the turret?
GP: Very cold. Very cold [unclear] with ice all the way down there because we didn’t have any Perspex in the turret, we had it taken out because you can just imagine if you are flying at night and you can get attacked by a fighter and if you get any dirt on your Perspex you wouldn’t, it would be a, you wouldn’t know whether you got a fighter coming through, you see but where I got frostbite was around about forty degrees below but you see, your oxygen mask you had a lot of breath dripping down you know, froze up and all that.
BJ: What were you wearing to keep warm then?
GP: Well, I had a heated suit actually, the first time was one of these urban jackets and trousers which were all [unclear] and things like that. Eventually they got full heated suits which you’d plug into your boots and plug into your gloves, they heated up all over so you, you weren’t so cumbersome in the turret so, so that wasn’t too bad. It was when, the one time I said when the, the heating got shot up but it was cold.
BJ: Ok. And anything else that you remember about your time in the two squadrons?
GP: I’m just trying to think about it now. I was involved in athletics with the squadron so I did [unclear] got plenty of time off, things like that, apart from my flying, I was excused duties because I was, I got involved in football and things like that, I didn’t have to do any guard duties and things like that so.
BJ: Ok. Did that involve you going around to other bases?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: Did you go to other bases doing that?
GP: It was just the odd at lib sort of things, you know, you compete against the Americans or something like that, you know and,
BJ: Ok, how did you get on?
GP: We weren’t as good as the Americans, I tell you.
BJ: [laughs]
GP: No, we weren’t as good as the Americans, no, they got far greater facilities and that sort of things like that, you know.
BJ: Ok, and what did you do at the end of the war? What, you know, how did you get demobbed and that sort of thing?
GP: Well, when the, as I finished mature, I was sent up to a place in Northern Scotland, place called Bracla and that was for time expired men, aircrew you see, had [unclear] virtually offices and things like that, and my, my flight commander was up there as well, Lord Mackie, he ended up as Lord Mackie and we just had to march about and things like that and then we were selected for ordinary jobs in the Air Force you see and I wanted to become a PTI which is a Physical Training Instructor because I would’ve had the opportunity to go through to Loughborough and take sports right the way through and then that’s what I wanted to go for but they put me down as a driver [laughs]. So I moved from there and went to driving school at Weeton in Blackpool which was quite good actually, it was quite enjoyable and then from then I was, I went to various camps in this country and then my final camp was in Germany where I was with a microfilm unit taking microfilm documents of all the machine tool drawings and things like that and that’s,
BJ: Where was that?
GP: That was at Frankfurt, Frankfurt but we wondered around Stuttgart and other places, went round all these factories and taking these microfilms of these documents and things like that, that was the, that was my end, I ended and came back to Weeton where I was demobbed.
BJ: So, what was it like being in Germany, down on the ground, this time?
GP: It was, it wasn’t too bad, we weren’t allowed to fraternise at all, you know, we did play football against the Germans and things like that and got thrushed.
BJ: Oh, alright [laughs]
GP: So, I played for the army when we were in Frankfurt and we played a game against the Germans, select team which is if we really got thrushed and that was the first time we realised what sort of football the continentals played as compared with our football but anyway that was, I enjoyed my time in Germany and I learned to speak German quite fluently and which stood me in good sted with my civilian job so that was good and
BJ: How did you learn to speak German?
GP: Well, I had to speak German [laughs].
BJ: Yeah?
GP: Well, I mean, if you were driving around and things like that and you lost your way, you had to talk and things like that so that’s how it went [unclear] I wish I had kept it up actually, which it would have been useful to me but it was useful anyway because I dealt with the Germans, a German company in me civilian life more so than anything and of course was a strange thing that the fellow that I dealt with in Germany, he was a Luftwaffe pilot [unclear] [laughs] and something I know quite well actually.
BJ: Did you tell him you’d been in the RAF?
GP: Yes, yeah. So, I mean it was no end to the, not at all, not with service people [unclear] so they got a job to do, we got a job to do and that was it but
BJ: So what did you do after you were demobbed then?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What did you do after the RAF? After you left?
GP: I went back to my old company and I gradually progressed there, we were manufacturing cars, Standard, the Triumph and the Triumph Spitfires and these sort of things, and but there was so much, so many problems down in the Midlands with the car industry of strikes and all that sort of thing and I just got married and we bought a new house and things like that, it’s becoming very difficult because we’re going on short time, even when you’re on staff you’re on short time so, I decided to make a move and come up here and that was that.
BJ: What did you do up here, in Scotland?
GP: I ended up as a production director at Carron company in Falkirk and but I set up a, came up and set up a plant for manufacturing steel bars and that sort of thing and then I did twenty-three years there and that’s it.
BJ: Ok, and how do you think being in Bomber Command affected the rest of your life?
GP: It did affect me because the, the people, the people that you met in Bomber Command, they were virtually like your brothers, a wonderful set up, it was great and as I say, it was still, we’re still getting involved with reunions and one of the addresses, the two addresses that I gave you, these are the people that I flew with, so, it was, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Really.
BJ: Ok. Alright, anything else you’d like to add, Mr. Payne?
GP: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s about all, that’s, I summarised quite a bit.
BJ: Alright. Thank you very much.
GP: Ok, thank you. [file continued] I’m trying to fill it all in you, you can’t.
US: I know you can’t [unclear], I just.
BJ: Right, this is the interview with Mr. Payne continuing.
GP: Right, one of the most horrendous trips that I did was to Frankfurt. And after the target, we were coming back, we were about half an hour away back from the target when I spotted a aircraft with about four hundred meters behind below and it turned out to be a Messerschmitt 109 and I wanted, I tried to warn the, I tried to warn the pilot but the intercom had frozen up, my mouthpiece had frozen up and I tried to Morse coding with the emergency light and the emergency light wasn’t working so that was it, there was actually nothing I could do about it and as the aircraft came closer to me, which was below at about a hundred meters, I opened fire on it and the guns jammed so therefore I was completely at a loss, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t warn the captain or anything about cause I’ve no intercom and no emergency lighting so I just had to hang on a bit and then after a minute the aircraft came underneath us and opened fire and blasted all the centre of the aircraft and the smell of cordite was amazing and then the aircraft started to manoeuvre all over the sky doing very violent evasive action or I thought that we were out of control, completely out of control so I got out of my turret and walked back and found that the main door was swinging open and then I got up to the mid upper turret and the mid upper gunner had gone, he’d bailed out and there was all cannon shell holes all around his turret there, so eventually I thought, that so quiet I thought the rest of the crew had gone, now I walked up, gradually I got through into the main cabin and found the rest of the crew were ok and so forth and that we went back to the sit in the turret, well, I couldn’t do anything anyway, so we were coming in to land, but we got back home ok, coming in to land and I started to smell cordite and I, I looked about at the back in the, in the ammunition panniers and there was a fire in there which must have got hit by an incendiary bullet and we had to land, emergency land and it was, it was an incendiary bullet, that was wedged in the bullets, so [laughs], that was that day but there was also another one, no, I don’t think I will talk about that, just [unclear].
BJ: Ok, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Geoff Payne
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brenda Jones
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APayneGA170528, PPayneG1702, PPayneG1701
Format
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00:32:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
United States Army Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff Payne has his first experience of the Royal Air Force with the Air Training Corps, at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, where he had one of his first experiences of military humour. He joined in 1943 at the age of 17 and a half hoping to become a pilot - he took the faster option because of his young age and trained as an air gunner.
Basic training was carried out at Lords Cricket ground in London. One clear memory is helping to carry patients down several flights of stairs from a nearby hospital during an air raid.
Time was spent at RAF Bridlington on Initial Training Wing before attending Air Gunnery School in the Isle of Man. Further training was undertaken at RAF Banbury where he was crewed up on Wellingtons, before moving to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wratting Common to convert to Stirlings. During his time here he attended an escape course at RAF Feltwell and was instructed in unarmed combat, which he dismissed as pitiful.
He and his crew were posted to RAF Witchford, Cambridgeshire, where he flew his first operation in February 1944 replacing an ill air gunner. He later discovered this was an inexperienced crew. He remembers the target was around Osnabrück in Germany and it was a melee over the target where they were attacked by two Me 109s, which they successfully shook off. On his return, he remembers being unable to sleep and went for a walk into Ely. There he discovered the Oxford Cambridge boat race was being held and watched it
Target areas of Germany included Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg. On his 5th operation, the aircraft was attacked, and the aircraft lost its heating and communications. He suffered frostbite and spent several months recovering in Ely hospital.
On regaining fitness, he was transferred to RAF Waterbeach and was allocated to a crew led by Ted Cousins. Waterbeach was a pre-war airfield with comfortable facilities. Time off was spent competing in athletics and football along with drinking at the local public houses.
When time allowed, he went home, but found the experience boring: all his friends were serving away, and there was little to do except drink or go to the cinema. His elder brother was serving as a navigator in the Far East, and he felt it unfair to talk about his experiences with his family.
At RAF Waterbeach there was a greater variety of operations. Targets varied from Germany to Southern France. He also remembers one trip to Poland. This entailed flying over Denmark and they could see the lights from Sweden and anti-aircraft fire.
He has a clear memory of most of his operations but does not wish to dwell on some. On one occasion he spotted a Me 109, he tried to warn the pilot but his intercom had frozen and emergency light was inoperative. He tried to open fire but his guns jammed – the night fighter opened fire and hit the centre of the aircraft. The aircraft began violently manoeuvring and he wasn’t sure if this was deliberate evasive manoeuvres or if they were out of control. He made his way forward and discovered the aircraft door open and the mid upper gunner missing. There were cannon holes all around the centre of the aircraft. He still wasn’t sure if he was the only one on board until he reached the main cabin and found the rest of the crew in position. They made it back home where they realised an incendiary bullet was lodged in the ammunition pannier.
His last operation was one of the thousand-bomber operations in Germany, the air black with anti-aircraft fire. On his return, the air gunners went sent to the bomb dump to assist the armourers in preparing the bombs for the following days attack which was carried out by the United States Army Air Forces.
After completing his tour of operation, he was posted to RAF Brackla, hoping to be retained as physical training instructor, but ended up at RAF Weeton near Blackpool to be trained as a driver.
He served at several locations across Southern England before his final posting which was with a microfilm unit in Frankfurt. Fraternising with locals was not allowed, but he did manage to learn German. He played in a football match against a much better German select team.
After demob, he returned home and was involved in the manufacturing of cars at the Triumph factory. He married, and because of unrest and strikes in the car industry, he moved to Scotland and was employed at the Carron company in Falkirk as a production director manufacturing steel bars, where his ability to speak German became an advantage in his dealings with foreign companies. He met an ex Luftwaffe pilot and experiences were exchanged - there was no animosity whatsoever and it was accepted they both had been carrying out their duty.
Geoff looks back on his time in Bomber Command with great fondness. It was like a big family. He still has contact with surviving crew members, and still attends reunions.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Ely
England--Lancashire
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France
Germany
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Stuttgart
Denmark
Sweden
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland
Scotland--Falkirk
Scotland--Nairnshire
Scotland--Stirlingshire
Germany--Osnabrück
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
115 Squadron
514 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Me 109
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Brackla
RAF Bridlington
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Feltwell
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
RAF Wyton
sport
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/888/11127/AHughesWH151021.1.mp3
33613f53da69484a983e122f2ed1e463
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hughes, Harry
William Henry Hughes
W H Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM (- 2023, 159079 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron and then with a Mosquito Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-21
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
Hughes, WH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HH: It’s all in the book, I think, mainly, isn’t it?
AS: Most of it is, but we need to get it on tape. I think. This is an interview with Harry Hughes, flight lieutenant Harry Hughes DFC DFM, a navigator in wartime Bomber Command on 102 Squadron and then later on Mosquitos. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Harry’s home in St Ives. Harry, thank you ever so much for agreeing to this interview. Perhaps we can start by going over a little your early days. I believe, you were born in Dorset.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. Did you have brothers and sisters?
HH: A sister, yeah. But I went to school in Sherborne, the Grammar School in Sherborne not the big school, not the public school. And, it was a good school but there we are, I think it was a good school anyway but they’ve, in their wisdom they’ve closed it down now and they amalgamated with the Lord Digby school, ‘cause the Lord Digby school is gonna cost too much to repair or something and I think some builder wanted to get hold of their building anyway and make flats out of it. You know, usual thing.
AS: Yeah. How did you get on at school? What were your subjects? What did you do well at in school?
HH: Mainly in maths. I got a distinction in Maths and a distinction in Physics and Chemistry. Otherwise I got all passes except English language in which I got, I didn’t fail, I got a pass, just got a pass so I didn’t get my ‘tric. Did so⸻
AS: Sorry.
HH: Anyway that’s beside the point. Anyway I left there in 1940 and my very first job was a night watchman for some lady at Lewisham Manor near Sherborne, who lost all her staff and she wanted somebody to be in the house at night and to patrol the grounds. While I went round the grounds once, no, never again, it was too bloody scary [laughs].
AS: Things that go bump in the night.
HH: Yeah, there was hooting and things [laughs]. Anyway that’s beside the point.
AS: But this was 1940. Was this, was the Battle of Britain going on over your head or had that finished?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: What, was that what pushed you towards the air force or?
HH: No. Well, I think. Well, what pushed me towards the air force was the fact that I went, my father wanted me to join the navy and I, I went down to Portsmouth to sit an exam to be a writer or a supply probationer [unclear] his own clerk, and I didn’t fancy that, but anyway they gave you twelve blocks of pounds, shillings and pence to add up that way and then you had to add up that way and then you had to add them all up across and then the figure you got down here and the figure you got down here should have been the same. Mine was nowhere near. Anyway.
AS: But your maths were good so, you threw it really, didn’t you?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Did you deliberately mess up, because your maths were good.
HH: Yeah. Yes, I know, but not the accountancy type [laughs]. Anyway, we then, coming back on the train, I was pretty certain I’d failed, so, coming back on the train, I had to change at Salisbury and I had about an hour to waste, wait at Salisbury so I went in the town and I saw an RAF recruiting office. So I went in there and saw a sergeant there and I signed on for aircrew.
AS: Just like that?
HH: Yeah. And they took me on as a pilot or navigator and then I had to go to Oxford for attestation and I went there and with all the gunners from South Wales and what have you became gunners rather, from the mines, you know, and so that’s how I came to be in the air force.
AS: Okay. Did you go through the aircrew recruiting centres in London at Lord’s and?
HH: Yes, I was the first one there.
AS: Really?
HH: Very first one to go there, I think. In July ‘41, I suppose, yeah.
AS: That’s pretty early. What, what happened then? They’ve taken you into the air force at that stage, I suppose, you didn’t know what you were going to do.
HH: Well, we went to ITW and⸻
AS: Where was that?
HH: Down Torquay, which is very nice and, I’ve got my bloody reading glasses on, no wonder I can’t see, and then I was sent down to America to train.
AS: Okay.
HH: In the United States Air Force.
AS: Straight from Initial Training Wing.
HH: Yes. Straight from ITW. We didn’t get a chance. Later on they used to, they did a little course on Tiger Moths up on somewhere in the world, somewhere up that way.
AS: So, you hadn’t actually flown in an aircraft when you went to.
HH: No.
AS: How did you, obviously they wouldn’t fly you over, but how did you get across the Atlantic, in a convoy or?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. What was that called?
HH: I went out on a ship called the Highland Princess, which I ended up selling. I sold the Highland Princess, the Highland Brigade and the Highland Monarch.
AS: Presumably not during the war when you got there.
HH: No. Four of them, I sold them in about ’51, or ’52, something like that
AS: Okay. So, you’re going across the Atlantic in convoy. Was the ship crowded? What was the conditions like?
HH: Well, we were in hammocks, you know, on meat hooks in the, you hung your hammock on meat hooks in the lower hold, you know?
AS: Gosh.
HH: And we are right up on the stern of the ship because every time the, I think she was twin screwer if I remember rightly, because every time the ship rolled the prop shoot [mimics a sound] [laughs].
AS: Is that the prop coming out of the water?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh! Gosh, and so, there must have been hundreds of men on the ship with you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: All [unclear]
HH: The one thing you found out, you had to hang on to your four and a half hat because one went missing, what did he do? Go and pinch another one. So, it went all round the ship [laughs]. [unclear]
AS: Like measles, isn’t it? Yes, yeah, absolutely.
HH: Yeah, I remember that so, I hid mine, anyway.
AS: So, you went across in uniform with
HH: Yeah.
AS: Hundreds of other people.
HH: No, when we got to, we were being issued with, at Wilmslow I think it was in Cheshire, we’d been issued with a grey flannel suit to wear in America, ‘cause we all had to go down grey worsted suits, you know.
AS: Ah, ‘cause America wasn’t in the war then.
HH: ‘Cause they weren’t in the war then, yeah.
AS: Right.
HH: So, and so we went down to Maxwell Field in Alabama first of all for acclimatization.
AS: Wait, where did the ship come in?
HH: Halifax.
AS: Oh, so you landed in Canada.
HH: Went to Canada first, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: And then, I think, yes I think we were there, we were trained down to Toronto, I think, and then we went from Toronto down to Alabama, to Maxwell Field, to Montgomery, Alabama.
AS: Okay. Was the whole journey really well organised⸻
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: Or was is the usual service mess up?
HH: No.
AS: No. It was good?
HH: It was good, yeah, everything seemed to go to plan I think, pretty well.
AS: How were you received at Montgomery, at Maxwell Air Force base?
HH: Oh, pretty well. In fact, the very first Sunday we were there, first weekend we were there, the American officer came round and, when we were having lunch, and he said, there’s a fair in town at the moment and they’ve heard that you boys are here, so we’d like you, they’d like you to come along and be their guest. So we thought we were going there but no, it was a scam, we were all scammed out of our money. Yeah, so we woke up in the morning, everybody had lost all their money, it was a real American type scam you know and I saw a coach loading up with American service people all in uniform. So I said, ‘Where is this coach going?’ ‘Oh’, he said, one of them said, ‘We are going to a little village called Prattville just outside of Montgomery and we’re going to church and if we’re lucky we will get invited out for lunch afterwards.’ So, I said, ‘Can we come along?’ Then the three of us got on board anyway. And we went in and sang all the hymns [laughs] and, real gospel stuff too it was, yeah.
AS: Deep South, isn’t it?
HH: You know, happy happy-clappy type of fellows, kind of stuff, you know, and anyway afterwards all the American were all invited out to lunch and we were there, standing there, wondering what the hell to do, because it was a long walk back to Maxwell from Prattville ‘bout twelve miles I should think and then suddenly this lovely blonde comes up, she says, ‘You all from Maxwell?’ I said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, we are.’ ‘Oh’, she says, ‘Matter of fact what sort of language is that?’ she says. ‘Well’, I says, ‘Well, you probably wouldn’t understand but we are English’ [laughs]. ‘Oh’, she says, ‘English, you are English?’ And she rushed around and she got all the Americans to cancel so that we were all invited to and she was a daughter of a, she collared me anyway and the other two were taken off somewhere else, I don’t know where. And then, we had lunch and her father was the local judge and he said afterwards, after we had lunch, he said, ‘I guess you would like to take my daughter out for a drive, would you? We gotta a nice Buick in the back. Buick with a steering column for your change’ and I didn’t even have a licence [unclear] never mind [laughs]. Never mind, and I got in anyway and I drove her out, bit of snogging and came back. And that was that and I never saw her again, she, I heard later she married an American navy pilot, who got killed in the Pacific. Yeah. So I could have followed it up if I wanted to but I didn’t but by that time I was back in Canada anyway.
AS: So when did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When did the serious business of learning to fly start and how did that go?
HH: Well, when I go to, we went down to, we were posted from Maxwell Field down to Albany in Georgia to an aerodrome called Darr Aero Tech, that was the owner of the aerodrome, I think, Darr Aero Tech. And it’s still there, I was there not long ago. And so, I suddenly had to do a flight commander’s check and he decided, he decided to wash me out so I went back up to Canada and trained as a navigator.
AS: On the flying piece, how much flying did you do? Do you think it was fair that you got washed out?
HH: No.
AS: How did that come about?
HH: Well, they wanted, they, the Air Ministry wanted as many people washed out as possible who could train as navigators, bomb aimers and gunners and what have you. They weren’t too short of gunners but they.
AS: I believe you had an instructor with a German sounding name.
HH: Oh yeah. Schmidt.
AS: Schmidt.
HH: Yeah, that was a joke really. That was in the book, wasn’t it? Yeah.
AS: So maybe he sabotaged your flying career, your piloting career. So, I presume that a lot of people were washed out at this stage.
HH: They were, but [unclear] was never washed out.
AS: Wow.
HH: Over eighty percent. I know it was a whole lot of us came back. And on Pearl Harbour, the day of Pearl Harbour we were giving an exhibition rugby match in the town. And suddenly over the tannoy came an announcement that Pearl Harbour had been attacked by the Japanese and so everybody went home, they all packed up and went home. So we went home as well. And that night, I had a place I used to get under the wire and go into town at night, you know [laughs] and when I came back to get under the wire there was a man there with a gun [laughs]. And he was trying to shoot me because he thought I was a Japanese. He said, look mate, I don’t like your look, you look like a bloody Japanese [laughs].
AS: Did you go out of through the gate after that?
HH: No. Well, I didn’t bother after that.
AS: So.
HH: I went back, well, the following day we were on the train to go back up to Canada.
AS: Is that quick?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Flight commander’s test and then pack your kit and off you go.
HH: About for, about a week later I suppose I was back, I was on the train going back up to Canada. And it’s quite an experience travelling by train out in America, isn’t it? In those days with the dining cars and everything, and the bars and but we had to change, we were on what was called the Chattanooga Choo Choo, but going the wrong way [laughs]. We were going there, were going north but the Chattanooga Choo Choo goes, comes south, doesn’t it? But we were on that line anyway. And I remember we stopped off in Boston and we had a bit of a wait there so we decided to go into town, we never did see Boston because we got on the way into town, we got attacked by these Irish Americans.
AS: For being British?
HH: We had taken them into the war.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s our fault but [laughs]. And they were at war now. And they’d be getting called up and be killed. And then anyway we got away with that alright.
AS: You were physically attacked?
HH: Yeah, yeah. They had knives and God knows what. They weren’t very nice people. Anyway, I say Irish American but I imagine they were Irish Americans, being in Boston, wouldn’t you?
AS: Big population there, isn’t it?
HH: So, then I went to Trenton where I was interviewed by a group captain and he was Raymond Mass‘s brother.
AS: God lord, Raymond Mass of the Agfa?
HH: Yeah. It was his brother. He looked just like him too. Yeah. And.
AS: Was that a sympathetic interview?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: You wanted to be a pilot and then suddenly that stopped. Was the system generally sympathetic to you?
HH: Oh yes. So they were quite keen to take me on as a navigator. And so then I went from there to Quebec City, L’Ancienne-Lorette. And from there up to Rivers in Manitoba. Which was a dry town, that was, Prohibition there.
AS: Oh dear. Good lord.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Were you in uniform by this time? RAF uniform?
HH: Yeah. Wearing a Canadian uniform in fact [laughs]. They issued us with a Canadian uniform, which were quite smart actually. And they were very similar to ours but the cloth is a little kinder, shall we say?
AS: So, you’re in Prohibition and you went out, presumably looking for a drink, do you?
HH: Well, we knew that Mont-Joli was dry but there was a little, there was a port just down the river called Rimouski, which was a timber port mainly. I remember when I took my Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers exams, one of the questions was, could you explain what were the, how many and what sort of cargo was exported from Rimouski, well everybody else thought it was in Russia, didn’t’ they? [laughs]
AS: But you had a clear mental picture.
HH: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Anyway, we were trying to, we were drinking some, we went to a bar and we were drinking this clear liquid, we had asked for whiskey but they served us up with this clear whiskey, clear liquid and when we were coming back in a taxi we were, we’d had about two each of these, we were all very sick we had to stop the taxi we were really sick and we saw afterwards that [unclear] don’t drink anything that is given to you because there is a stuff called alcool which is made from wood alcohol and it’s can make you blind.
AS: It’s like drinking anti-freeze, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Gosh, lucky escape!
HH: And so that was that. So then from Mont-Joli we went to the staff end course at Rivers in Manitoba which was astronavigation, advanced navigations course it was.
AS: What was the basic navigation course? What was your basic navigation training like? Was it mostly classroom or?
HH: A lot of in the air.
AS: What were you flying in?
HH: Ansons. Yeah. Mark 1 Ansons you had to wind up the undercarriage, you remember?
AS: Yeah. Did you take to it easily, to the navigation, because of your maths proficiency or?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: And you found it easy to be an accurate navigator?
HH: Yes, I mean, you’re training all the time of course and right the way through when I came home from Rivers, came home over on the Union-Castle ship, called the Cape Town Castle, which I didn’t sell. And, what’s the time?
AS: Now.
HH: [alarm clock rings] The taxi, yeah.
AS: Okay. We’ll pause at there, shall we? [recording paused]
HH: Yeah. Astronavigation course A and it was mainly a flying by using star shots yeah. But when I got on the squadron, I mean you had to carry about three sets of books, you know, and a naval almanac as well. Had to work out your star shots. But when I got to the squadron they had a marvellous bit of equipment, a little projector over the navigator’s tail [unclear], which about that high off the table and you had to measure it up with a special stick to make certain it was in focus and on this astrograph there was three stars you could use and, two stars rather, two stars plus Polaris you use to get a three star fix, and you worked out a datum point for the time before you, before you got airborne and drew it on your chart and then you lay your chart down on the table and lined it up with the astrograph and then this projected the position lines of these stars onto your chart. So all, so, the bomb aimer, all the bomb aimer had to do was to take the star charts, he was, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator anyway and I think he’s still alive, I’m not sure, and.
AS: So it was very much team work.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Between you and the bomb aimer but actually on astros. So, you, we jumped straight on to being on the squadron. Did you know, as soon as you started navigator training, that you would be going to Bomber Command?
HH: Well, it’s pretty obvious I would be. Yeah.
AS; Okay. And, so, you finished your training in Canada, came back to the UK by ship, and what happened next before you got on to the squadron?
HH: I went to [unclear], is it Cumberland?
AS: I think Scotland.
HH: Up near Carlisle, north of Carlisle then, between Carlisle and Keswick I suppose. And a little aerodrome there and we learned to fly in wartime conditions, you know, where the balloon barrages were et cetera. Where to avoid them.
AS: And is this when you stepped up from Ansons to bombers?
HH: No, no, this is still on Ansons. And then from there we went down to Hampstead Norris still on Ansons and then we went to Harwell, Hampstead Norris was a satellite of Harwell at the time and then we crewed up with our pilot and wireless operator, I think we already had a wireless operator and we crewed up with bomb aimer and engineer, no, no, we didn’t have an engineer at that time, this is on Wellingtons and.
AS: What were they like the training Wellingtons, were they in good nick, were they ropey old kites or?
HH: No, no, pretty ropey, they were draughty as hell, oh God they were draughty. The wind used to whistle through that fabric, you know. [unclear] construction, wasn’t it?
AS: What was, was there a step up in gear going on to heavier airplanes and operational tactics?
HH: Oh yeah, yeah.
AS: You are moving much more quickly in your calculations and navigation than perhaps when you were training?
HH: We did quite a lot of cross countries and Bullseyes we did in OTU.
AS: What’s Bullseye?
HH: Bullseyes we did down, we’d go down to, say the Channel Islands and experience a little bit of flak there and then we’d come back up again and fly across to Portsmouth or somewhere and fly across the coast there or else we’d fly, out to the North Sea towards Denmark and come back into Hull.
AS: So this was almost a simulated bombing mission, was that?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Training, for training. Okay.
HH: They were called Bullseyes anyway in cooperation with the army, I suppose, with the the ack-ack.
AS: So, when you’re at OTU, you’re on Wellingtons.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Then we went up to a place called Riccall in Yorkshire, near Selby, and we had to, we trained, we converted onto Halifaxes.
AS: What, can you remember what year, what month this would be when you?
HH: Well, that would be about Christmas of, just around Christmas in ’42, I suppose.
AS: Wow, so what type of Halifax would this be? The Merlin one or the?
HH: The Merlin one, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yes, so the Hali, Hali 1, what’s his name? Not Gibson, what the hell was his name?
AS: Cheshire?
HH: No. Gus Walker.
AS: Gus, oh yeah, yeah.
HH: He was a lovely man, Gus was, and he’d taken out, all the mid upper turret and the front nose cone as well, there is a very big heavy turret in the front nose and like the Lanc was, you know. And then, it’s pretty useless that front turret was but anyway. Then, eventually we got the Hali II.1 A which had a four gun [unclear] turret on the top, yes, same as on the Hali 3.
AS: So your mid upper then got his job back.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, Gus Walker he took these turrets out to save weight, to carry more bombs?
HH: To save weight, yeah. Just to save weight, to make it improve performance a bit. And get a better height. I better ring up my taxi.
AS: So, by taking the turrets off, Gus Water was giving his aircrews more of a chance really, wasn’t he?
HH: Yeah, but then later on they improved the, we still had the Merlin 22s, same as the Lanc had, you know. Merlin 22s, but the Mark II.1 A was a much better aircraft, you could get up to, you know, eighteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two thousand.
AS: Loaded?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Which is, you were at the same height as the Lancs. And the Lancs had the habit of dropping their bombs on you. Which happened on our very first trip. We went to, we were waiting to have a nice easy trip but no, we got Essen. And then, when we were over the, when we were over the target on our bombing run but a whole lot of bombs dropped on us, a whole lot of incendiaries dropped on us and the engineer and myself had to go back and kick them out the door [laughs] and which is good practice actually, because it happened to us again over Wuppertal.
AS: Really?
HH: But that time there was a, I think it was a two thousand pounder or a thousand pounder, I don’t know, and it came and took our port rudder right off, and the port tail and the port tail blade yeah.
AS: And what sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Mh?
AS: What sort of problems did that give the pilot?
HH: Well, we found, she was, it was still flying alright but I found that we were crabbing a bit. And I remember seeing a light below and I said, take a drift on that, would you? And anyway we found that we were crabbing quite about ten degrees to port, I think, yeah.
AS: So you do all your sums again and take that out by adjusting the.
HH: No, I just took ten degrees off every course [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: That must have been quite a hairy landing I would think.
HH: No, [unclear], yeah. I can’t remember it being anything but normal.
AS: Wow.
HH: And when we got back, the little corporal in charge of our ground crew, he came out, what the bloody hell have you done to my aircraft! [laughs] as if it was our fault, you know.
AS: Did you fly your own regular aircraft that you got attached to?
HH: Yes, yeah. D, we always flew in D, until one time we let, we were on leave and I think it was an Australian pilot took it and he was very conscious of saving fuel. So he throttled right back coming back and the result was that the, when we went to run the engine up the following day, the engine started to shake, port engine started to shake and suddenly the prop came off and went right through where I’d be normally sitting and sliced my table in half, but I was in the rest position now for take-off you know.
AS: Wow. So that was one of your nine lives gone?
HH: Yeah. I tell that story I say, as you can see I’m still here [laughs]. I wasn’t sitting there at the time.
AS: So, did they repair the aeroplane or was that the demise of D-Dog?
HH: But that was it finished, D-Dog was finished then and we got the Mark 2.1 A then.
AS: Still as D-Dog or was there a superstition about that?
HH: No. We were still with D, yeah. But, Jackie Miles, he was our mid upper gunner, he was really pleased to get that. We got four guns, he was really happy [laughs]. But it was much safer to have somebody in a blister looking down underneath.
AS: Is that what he used to do before he got the target?
HH: Yeah. Yes, and he used to put it in his log book, duty, rear gunner’s me [laughs].
AS: Yeah. On, when you were on ops, had the idea of the bomber stream come in by then?
HH: Oh yes. Yes, we were on the very first time they dropped, the Pathfinders used Oboe on the Essen raids. I think it was first used on the 5th of March, wasn’t it?
AS: I don’t know, 1943. This was.
HH: Yeah, ’43, ’43 by this time, yeah.
AS: So, it was quite early on in the idea of the Pathfinders.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, you went on ops just as the stream and the concentration were starting to take place. I know you were deep in the bowels of the aeroplane at your navigation table. Did you, did the crew see other aircraft around them, feel the other aircraft around them?
HH: No, you are in the slipstream the whole time. Especially when you got near the target, when you’re on your final run, you sort of you feel the slipstream and you have got to remember that five percent of our losses were due to collisions, it has been estimated.
AS: That’s a high percentage.
HH: I think we were told that at the time to be extra vigiliant, you know.
AS: Against the dangers of collision. What about enemy aircraft on your first tour? Did you have any encounters with the German night fighters?
HH: Oh yeah. [unclear], he shot down two, he shot down a Ju 88 and an Me 110 I think it was, yeah.
AS: And this, this was your rear gunner.
HH: And he had a problem as well. A lot of Battle of Britain pilots would have given their eye tooth for a score like that. Probably would have gotten a DSO and a DFC.
AS: [laughs] there are a lot of unsung deeds in Bomber Command.
HH: Anyway then we finished up in October ’43 and I got sent up to 6 Group, it was a Canadian crew.
AS: With the Canadians. How did you?
HH: And they wanted everybody to be Canadians, you know. They didn’t want an English instructor so I got, I quickly got posted down to 3 Group. And
AS: Somewhere along the way you, you picked up the DFM. Was that during your first tour?
HH: Yes, was the first tour.
AS: And what was the story behind your DFM?
HH: I don’t know really. It’s not in the book even, not even in the, my citation is not there, there’s a book of DFMs in the RAF, book of DFCs and DFMs. And I think there was an Australian, called Cameron, he found this book of DFMs but I don’t know, I think Gus Walker probably. You see, I’d broken my left foot, I’d broken a bone in my left foot and what with having leave, we were due for leave I went on leave on with my foot in plaster, came back and had the plaster taken off and then I fell off my bicycle [laughs]. Didn’t help. So, the doc said, ‘Right, I’m going to keep you in hospital until your foot’s cured. I don’t want any arguments.’ And the following day Sam came in, he said, we are on tonight, [unclear] and they want me to take a spare navigator and I said, ‘No way, Sam, let’s go and see the doc.’ The doc was in a good mood ‘cause he was going on leave. So, have you read all this before?
AS: No.
HH: So, [pause] he said, ‘Alright you, you can go this time, but’, he says, ‘Provided you come back into hospital as soon as you get back. If you get back’, he said, ‘If you get back.’ So, he then went on leave. Anyway, I duly arrived at main briefing, done my navigation briefing, I think we came at main briefing and Gus Walker was on the door. And Gus said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m on crutches you see. I’m going on ops.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t where my crew is going, I don’t want them to go without me.’ ‘Well, oh alright then.’ So I went in and we went to Berlin that night. And when I got back, Gus was still on the station. ‘Cause he was in charge of three squadrons, wasn’t he? Up there. And he said, ‘Right, young Hughes,’ he says, ‘I’ve been hearing all about you, he says, ‘It’s alright, I’ll take you back to the hospital myself.’ And then I got in his car and he tore me off a bit of a mild strip for being irresponsible and some of that and then as I got out, he said, ‘Bloody good show anyway, Hughes.’ And I think it was he who recommended me for a DFM, I don’t know, probably.
AS: Excellent. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story. What happened, you said, you tried the book in the RAF club to find your citation. Have you explored anywhere else, to try and find the DFM citation?
HH: I did write to some time ago, I don’t know, I think they did, you get from RAF records I think.
AS: Okay.
HH: Because I wrote to them the other day and asked them if, ‘cause I had a letter from them to say that I could retain the rank, substantive rank of flight lieutenant when I finished in the reserve and use the courtesy rank of squadron leader. But I’ve never used it. So I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my tombstone, so I wrote and asked them if that still pertained, shall we say.
AS: And you are still waiting for a reply.
HH: Well, they wrote back to me and said that I’d have to give them some more proof of who I was, you know, passports, et cetera so I sent them up a copy of my, one of my utility bills and my council tax demand.
AS: Well, hopefully that’s good enough.
HH: It only went off last week, so we will have to wait and see.
AS: You mentioned briefings. I know the targets were different and the weather was different, but could you give me some idea of an average preparation for a mission from waking up in the morning to taking off. Is that possible, that sort of things that?
HH: Yeah, because you went down to the, you went down to the flights and you stood in the apron outside the squadron offices and at ten to ten on the dot, if you were on that night, the phone would ring. You knew you were on that night then and then, but if you waited and waited until ten past ten the phone would ring again to say the squadron’s stood down by which time we had all disappeared ‘cause we’d all. Didn’t want to go to on a bloody route march or something [unclear].
AS: So it was all incredibly secret but the routine gave it away.
HH: Yeah [laughs].
AS: So if the phone call came at ten to ten, you knew you were on ops that night, what would happen then?
HH: Well I did, we’d go down to our aircraft and check all the equipment in it and then if necessary you take it up on an air test and then you were back on the ground again by, about eleven, eleven thirty, and then you’d either come back and go to lunch and or else you’d and then after you’d had lunch you’d go on for navigation briefing at about two o’clock.
AS: So the navigator was the first person in the crew to know where you were going, what timing was.
HH: Yes, we knew where we were going, yeah.
AS: Was that a very full briefing, with weather? Is this when you drew up your courses, you got your turning points and what not?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Was this a very full briefing?
HH: Oh yeah, well, the navigation briefing, yes, you got your various tracks you had to go on to and hopefully they’re taking you around the defended areas you know.
AS: The flak and the searchlights, yeah. Was there a lot of work involved for you to prepare your charts?
HH: Yes, it took quite a time. You were mainly with your bomb aimer to help you, you know. Harry Hoover, my bomb aimer was a trained navigator, he trained in South Africa I think.
AS: So, you two were the only ones that knew at the navigation briefing the target. Was it difficult to keep it secret from your skipper and your crew?
HH: Oh no, you didn’t have to keep it secret but you just told the rest of the crew where we’re going so all this business about being a gasp when they, when the curtains were pulled across from the map.
AS: Probably you already knew.
HH: We all knew where we were going by that time, at least my crew did.
AS: So, you’ve done your navigation briefing and what happened then? Just sit around waiting for the main crew briefing or did you have duties to do?
HH: No, we just, by the time you finished doing the nav, it’s about time for the main briefing and then having done the main briefing you then went for an ops breakfast. The ops breakfast, which was bacon and eggs, baked beans, all the things you shouldn’t eat.
AS: Baked beans?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’re flying at twenty thousand feet.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Oh, that could have been interesting. What was the atmosphere like? Was there a lot of tension? Was there a lot of horseplay? Was there a lot of fear? What was the atmosphere like?
HH: I don’t know, I can’t remember now, there was a feeling of are we gonna make it or not, you know.
AS: Was that a personal thing or something that you talked about with the crew?
HH: I would never, never, never, never, my mid upper gunner, he, one day, we were in our room, I shared a room with him and he packed up all his biscuits on his bed and folded up all the blankets and sheets. What are you doing that for? And he said, ‘I don’t think we are gonna come back. So I’m putting the things in order now.’ And he got all his paperwork out and everything, letters and everything to his wife and things.
AS: What did that do to your morale?
HH: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t very happy about it but it was a scrub that night anyway. Then he said, afterwards he said, ‘God, good job we didn’t go to [unclear] because we weren’t going to come back.’ He knew.
AS: But after that on future trips he was fine.
HH: Well, I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again, Jackie, I said, ‘You never do a thing like that again.’
AS: Tempting fate. What about off duty, what sort of things did you, you guys get up to that you can talk about?
HH: Sorry?
AS: Off duty, did you get much time off to yourself? Or to yourselves as a crew?
HH: Yeah. We, I used to go out with, mainly with another crew ‘cause all our crew, our skipper was commissioned, so we were all and the rest of them, Jackie Miles he lived in Leeds so when he had an evening off, he went back to Leeds and the rear gunner was the same, he was somewhere just outside Leeds. Sam was from Leeds as well, the pilot, so it was only the engineer and myself.
AS: So you latched onto another crew for the,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The social element.
HH: Yes, [unclear] crew, yeah. I was pretty friendly with his navigator but he got killed.
AS: And did the rest of the crew come back?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And brought him back?
HH: They brought him back, yeah.
AS: Your, we were talking about your navigation training and astro, during your time, your first tour on ops, did you start to get Gee in the aeroplane or any other navigational aids that you used?
HH: We had Gee.
AS: You had Gee.
HH: Right from the start, yeah. We had the Mark 1 Gee which was, used to have to tune it, the narrow knobs on the side and you had to tune it to get a signal and it’s like tuning one of those. Televisions, you know.
AS: Keep wandering off. Did you, was it as a big revolution in navigation as people say?
HH: The Gee was, yeah.
AS: The Gee was, it really did make a difference.
HH: Yeah, well, it did make a difference because, but you didn’t get it beyond the Dutch coast, it wouldn’t work beyond the Dutch coast but you had we, well, you had LORAN later, in Mosquitos we had Gee and LORAN. In fact, it really annoys me now to hear the met men talking about the jet stream because we found the very first jet stream. I found a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots at thirty thousand feet.
AS: Tailwind.
HH: Hundred and ninety five knots and when we got back, I told the met man, I said, ‘I got a wind of a hundred and ninety five knots and you were forecasting forty five to fifty knots.’ He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!’ So he went to Group headquarters and the Group headquarters said we don’t believe it. They went to Command headquarters and the met people up there said they didn’t believe it either. But then everybody else came back with these winds and they suddenly realised what was called jet streams but now they talk about jet streams all the time. And what they mean is where the warm front, the warm tropical front meets the polar maritime front and all the way along that you get depressions form and then, and with it you get this so-called jet stream would form as well. Ah, so which comes first? The frontal systems or the jet stream?
AS: Must be the fronts, must be the fronts. So, when you are doing your tour, you’d had the nasty experience of being bombed twice by your own people, probably 5 Group above you.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Was that the limit of the difficulties you had? Was the aeroplane mechanically reliable or did you suffer?
HH: Oh, we, came back on three engines more times than we came back on four.
AS: Really?
HH: Yeah. I think we came back on three engines eleven times out of our tour.
AS: And what did your ground crew chief say to that?
HH: Well, it wasn’t their fault, necessarily, well, he didn’t think it was anyway.
AS: It’s just overstraining them, is it, full fuel, full bombload climb to heights. Coming back from the raids, what was your pilot like? Was he one of those that, wanted to pour on the coal and get home early or did he stick to heights and courses as briefed or?
HH: Well, he couldn’t do much else with a Halifax. But when I was on Mosquitos, with our New Zealand pilot, we were always first back [laughs]. Yeah.
AS: Becomes a matter of pride. On your first tour still perhaps we can talk a bit more about that. As you got towards the end, did the, you knew presumably you were going to stop on, what, thirty trips?
HH: Well, I did twenty six in fact.
AS: Okay.
HH: Which we were screened two trips early. I would have done twenty eight for my first tour, ‘cause the pilot had already done two second Dickey trips to start with. [door bell rings] That’s my taxi now.
AS: Okay.
HH: So I’ll just pause this. [recording paused] We were just talking about your tour length. The question I was going to ask is did you feel a real rising tension as you got towards the end of your tour?
HH: But we didn’t know we were towards the end, we thought we had another two trips to do.
AS: Okay.
HH: But, I remember Sam coming in and he says, ‘I have some good news for you, we’re screens and you’re off on leave from tomorrow. You are all going on leave tomorrow.’
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Mh?
AS: What did that feel like?
HH: Ah, it was good feeling but I forget what happened now. When I was on Mosquitos I think when I was doing my last trip on Mosquitos ‘cause you had to do fifty on Mosquitos you see for a tour.
AS: So, you finished on 102 Squadron and were there many crews that went all the way through like yours did?
HH: No, not a great deal, I wish I had the [unclear] I’ve got it somewhere, might be in that case there, book of all the losses, you know. 102 Squadron losses.
AS: Oh, perhaps we can look at that tomorrow or now if you like.
HH: Well I, it might be in that case, I’m not sure.
AS: Let’s pause this and we’ll go and have a look. [recording paused]
AS: Harry, good morning, it’s day two of our interview sessions. It’s very good of you to agree to this interview. Can we start by going back to your first tour of operations during the Battle of the Ruhr on Halifaxes. Were you conscious at the time that this was a major battle or was it just one job after another?
HH: We were trying to hit Germany where it hurt, ‘cause we didn’t only go to the Ruhr and we went to places like Pilsen, and then we did Nuremberg and Munich and.
AS: Were you briefed on specific targets in these cities and told what you were going after?
HH: Oh, we knew that Essen was the Krupp works, yeah, and we were given a good, pretty good briefing by the intelligence officer what we were gonna hit because one time we went, we were going to. There was almost a mutiny one day because they were sending to some place I forget, Gelsenkirchen or somewhere, I forget where it was now, and [pause]
AS: What happened then? What was the mutiny all about?
HH: Well, the intelligence officer said that he didn’t know why we were going there, there was nothing there, there was just a spa town that we were going to hit but what we didn’t know, of course, it was a leave centre for the Gestapo and the place was full of the Gestapo officers and but you know initially we said, no, why are we going there, you know? And there was almost not exactly a mutiny but it was a fear of you know, why are we bombing this place, we probably would just hit a lot of women and children.
AS: So, this was 1943. So even at that stage.
HH: This is ’45. ‘43 rather.
AS: So, even at that stage there were some concerns amongst the crews about what you were doing and where you were going.
HH: Yeah, we didn’t, the Hamburg raids for example. That’s the first time there was a real firestorm and we went on three or four of those raids, I forget now, it’s in the book, Hamburg in July ’43. That book is falling to bits, isn’t it?
AS: Well, it happens to all of us, doesn’t it? As we get older. Here we go, 24th of July ’43 and the 27th of July ‘43. Ops Hamburg, yeah. And then the 2nd of August.
HH: Yeah, the 2nd of August when we, we’d already realised that the firestorms, you know, in then, we were dropping our incendiaries first and setting fire to places and then dropping four thousand pounders, two and four thousand pounders on top of the fires which, that’s why it’s called the firestorm, the blast from the comparatively thin-cased two thousand pounders and what have you, would suck in the air and the oxygen, you know, and cause these firestorms.
AS: So, the thin-cased bombs would blow the roofs off and then the incendiaries would go inside and.
HH: Well, you know, in that, wish I could find that, you could sit and watch that, the CD I’ve got somewhere in there of.
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Is it of a Hamburg raid?
HH: Yes, the first or second of the Hamburg raids which caused the firestorm. And I remember watching this from over the bomb aimer’s shoulder and watching these fires spreading and I remember saying, I felt very sorry for the people down there.
AS: At that time.
HH: At that time, yeah. In fact I said a little prayer for them.
AS: Is this something you discussed with the crew or any of your friends?
HH: Not really, no. I just said a prayer to myself, yeah.
AS: And was that really specific to Hamburg or to?
HH: Just to Hamburg, yeah. ‘Cause that was where the firestorms first started. Well, it was worst then Dresden actually.
AS: I believe so in the numbers lost. So, your first tour was absolutely in the thick of what we call the Battle of the Ruhr and extremely, extremely difficult and dangerous missions.
HH: The people who came after me, they’d done Hamburg and the Battle of the Ruhr, and then they had to follow on doing the Battle of Berlin. You can find my very last trip was to Berlin I think, no, it was Hanover. It was one of my last trips was to Berlin, that’s when I went on crutches, yeah.
AS: Home on three engines, that one?
HH: Was that Berlin?
AS: Yes, 23rd of August. And then you did a Munich and a Hanover. What was Berlin like? Was it special, was it the
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was Berlin perhaps the best defended target? What was Berlin like?
HH: It was the length of the trip really. You know, on heavies, on Lancs and heavies it took us eight and a half hours there and back. What’s it say there? [paper rustling]
AS: Seven hours fifteen, that’s still an incredible time. People talk about eight hour days, and that was a full day’s work at night.
HH: Was a full day’s work was being shot at too.
AS: And, I mean, was Berlin the best defended target, do you think or was that the Ruhr, perhaps?
HH: No, I think, I don’t think it was as bad as the Ruhr but it was, there was plenty of activity there but mainly a lot of fighter activity there over the target, over Berlin.
AS: And you, you could see the enemy?
HH: Oh yeah. They were coned and searchlights one time I was on Mosquitos, there was two Mosquitos, an Fw 190, and an Me 109, all on the same cone.
AS: Wow!
HH: And there is a painting of that somewhere. I described it, you know. And there is a painting somewhere that is called Berlin Express. And [unclear] have got the original.
AS: Okay, I’ll look for that.
HH: [unclear] then.
AS: Okay. Some trips to France as well. Le Creusot. You weren’t after a saucepan factory there were you, what was, can you remember what that trip was about?
HH: Oh yes, that was, they were manufacturing parts for tanks and things, I think.
AS: Gosh, here, after Le Creusot, Muhlheim, home on two engines.
HH: Yeah [laughs]
AS: What’s the story behind that? Did they just pack up or was it flak or?
HH: Yeah, they just packed up on us yeah, these Merlins were you know they were way overstressed on the Halifax and we came back on two on that occasion, yeah.
AS: After a lot of, after the Hamburgs that we talked about and Berlin, Munich. Now, can you remember that trip? September ’43 to Munich.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First off, first back, in your log book, eight hours, fifty five minutes. Did the stream hold together, the bomber stream hold together over these long distances?
HH: Yeah, you we were all given certain times, you know, you had to be at certain times on all the way along the track, at the various turning points, you know. And I think it did help, you know, no doubt about it and then with the advent of Window of course, it just threw their ground tracking, we had a little device, did I tell you, a little device called Boozer in Mosquitos.
AS: No, you didn’t, no.
HH: We had a little device which, when they were tracking you from the ground, a little yellow light used to glow. But when they were tracking from the air, a red light used to glow. And one night, we were coming back, and somewhere around about the Hamburg, sorry the Bremen Hanover gap, and this red light came on very bright and we knew the red light meant we were being tracked from the air you see. And then suddenly over the top of us, about the height of this building, just came two, I think they were Me 263s,
AS: The jets?
HH: The jets, yeah. Right over the top of us. And they didn’t see us. I got a photograph of a Mosquito somewhere I don’t know what she’s done with it now. I meant to ask her that when she was in last night.
AS: No worries, maybe today. So, this, the 262s had the speed, they were the only ones with the speed to catch you, really.
HH: Yes. They were doing about a hundred knots faster than us. Fifty to a hundred knots faster than us. And they just sailed over the top of us and disappeared in the distance. There were four jets, two of them.
AS: So they had radar airborne in the jets.
HH: Yes.
AS: That is a pretty dangerous development, isn’t it? That was another one of your nine lives gone, really, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Your slices of luck. Back to your first tour, you, when did you come off ops?
HH: I went to a conversion unit, at a place called Wombleton.
AS: Okay, was that Stirlings?
HH: No, it was Halifaxes actually but.
AS: Okay.
HH: Canadian group, they are mainly on Halifaxes.
AS: In 6 Group, how did you get on with the Canadians?
HH: Not very well.
AS: Really?
HH: No. They are very, they didn’t want to know us, you know, they just wanted to get rid of us as quickly as they could.
AS: I’ve heard this that they were running,
HH: They wanted to run their own show.
AS: [unclear] as part of the Canadian.
HH: I remember getting one crew and I said, I wanted to send them back for further training because the navigator was absolutely hopeless. He really was, he couldn’t, it was like putting, I don’t know, he was thick as two planks, he couldn’t. So, I said if you’re sending this crew with this navigator they don’t stand a chance of getting through, not a chance at all. They’ll be shot down on, within their first five operations, they’ll be shot down.
AS: And do you know whether that came to pass?
HH: No. They didn’t like this, you know, the fact that I’d criticised one of their Canadian crews and I was posted down to 3 Group and, which suited me, and the crew got to squadron, got to a squadron and they did one trip and got hopelessly lost and I heard it afterwards that the CO of the, I think it was Lane, what was his name? Lane. He said, what the hell are you doing sending us crews that are, they should have been send back for further training. And I had recommended that.
AS: Had you been commissioned by this point?
HH: Yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: I was commissioned at the end of my first tour, I think.
AS: What sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: Pardon?
AS: How did, what sort of process what that? How did that take place?
HH: I just had an interview, I don’t know, who I had an interview with now, I can’t remember. And I mean after the interview I was then a pilot officer but I was a flight sergeant before and my pay was sixteen shillings a day as a flight sergeant but as a pilot officer I was only going to get fourteen and four pence a day. So they said, oh, we can’t have that so they gave me a six pence rise, six pence a day rise so I was getting fourteen and six a day as a pilot officer. And then eventually when I was a flight lieutenant after a couple of years, I was out in India by that time, and I got, well I was on Indian rates of pay anyway so, it didn’t factor.
AS: Back to the instructing. You finished an operational tour, had some leave and presumably your crew dispersed.
HH: Yeah. Pilot went to Rufforth converting many French Canadians and to go to Elvington, French, I mean French crews rather, French crews to go to Elvington, to 77 Squadron.
AS: Did you keep in touch with any of your crew members after?
HH: I came up to York a couple of times and met Sam, Jackie Miles I used to see and my gunner and Harry [unclear] the, the last time I’ve heard from him, he was up at near Shrewsbury.
AS: You all went to instructors jobs, do you?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did they teach how to be an instructor or did they just send you off?
HH: No, I just went in and just talked to them and told them where they were going wrong, you know, and how to waste time and things like that.
AS: In the air this is.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, did you do any formal classroom training of these chaps or was it just, what, supervising in the air and on the ground?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Supervising?
HH: Yeah, just going through their logs and charts individually with them and showing them where they’d gone wrong.
AS: And I believe the same sort of thing used to happen on ops, that when you came back your nav leader would go through your charts, is that right?
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: They’d assess your, that’s the assessment on each one there.
AS: That we saw before.
HH: The little design on his wall, Charlie had, he had sort of a little square beside each one of you and you had two dots for very good, one dot for reasonably good, no dots at all for
AS: Average.
HH: Just average. Yeah.
AS: That’s his way of keeping track. So, on 3 Group, is this when you went to Stirlings? When you were training?
HH: Pardon?
AS: When you left the Canadians and went to 3 Group, that was, what was that, Stirlings, was that the Conversion Unit there?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: Yeah, it’s down at Chedburgh.
AS: Okay.
HH: And, yeah, Chedburgh, near Bury St Edmunds. There was a beer drought down at that time and we used to cycle miles to find a pub with beer [laughs]. Then we’d keep very quiet about it [laughs].
AS: It’s not too bad.
HH: Me and a Canadian called Connors and we wanted to, we’d heard about that 8 Group wanted Mosquito pilots and navigators, so, we both applied to go, we both applied to go back on ops together. So, our first application, we were turned down because, being in 3 Group on Stirlings, you know, they were rather short of crews, and so we were turned down anyway. So we waited a couple of weeks and we applied again and we got turned down again. So that night, I got a tin of black paint from the stores and I wrote a message, a letter on the ceiling of the mess to the group captain, quite a polite letter, would you kindly pull your finger out and get us posted back on ops. We’re fed up with this instructing so could we please get back in so and so and signed it Connor and Hughes. The following day we were up in front of the old man and he said, ‘Right, you’re both going back, no way you’re going on the same crew or on the same squadron. In fact, you go back first, Hughes. Connor will follow you in about two- or three-weeks’ time.’ And this is what happened.
AS: It’s amazing. So you weren’t actually instructing for very long, were you?
HH: No, from October until July, so I suppose six months.
AS: Okay.
HH: And you’re supposed to have six months, at least six months rest, you know? From operations. Between tours.
AS: Okay. And then, in July having arranged your own posting really, you arrive at 1655 MCU. What’s MCU?
HH: Mosquito conversion unit.
AS: Okay.
HH: At Warboys, yeah, and Weston [?].
AS: I imagine this must have been a completely different sort of navigating. Was it?
HH: Oh, just very quick, but you, you wouldn’t think it now but I was very, very neat and tidy in what I did. I knew exactly, I used to keep my pencils in my flying boots, my dividers as well, [unclear] my Douglas protractor I kept in my hat with my dividers, which was behind me and my Dalton and, and then we used to take as your [unclear] fix, as soon as you got airborne, you got to operational high I’d take fix, fix, fix, every three minutes, then work out a tracking ground speed wind velocity and then another three minutes later another fix, a nine minute tracking ground velocity plus the sixth, the latest sixth one and another one, further on, six, and I can tell you exactly which way the wind was going, how far out the met was on their winds.
AS: And these fixes would be visual fixes or Gee fixes or both?
HH: Gee fixes.
AS: Gee fixes.
HH: So I’d take fix, fix, fix, you worked really hard to get the timing, you know, of the.
AS: Whereabouts was the Gee screen in the aeroplane? You were sitting on the right in the [unclear]
HH: I was sitting on the right and the Gee was behind me and LORAN as well.
AS: Okay. So.
HH: Gee and LORAN which was behind me.
AS: So, could you operate the equipment with your harnesses done up?
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: ‘Cause you just turned your head and⸻
HH: I just turned my head. It was just like there, behind me, there, but I could turn easier then and it was there, you know, just behind about there, about that angle to me.
AS: And it is just, as you say, second nature, three minutes, three minutes.
HH: It didn’t take long to take the fix but it took a long time but we, we had charts with the letters, lines of the Gee chart superimposed on top of it. So, this really worked very well.
AS: So, what came up on the Gee screen? What allowed you to compare the screen to the map?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the presentation on the Gee screen? What actually came up? Was it numbers or?
HH: Yeah. Well, you just, you could, you worked out, you knew what, you strobed the whichever signal you wanted to take, you know, and then you, you strobed the two of them and then fix and then you just read it off.
AS: I guess it’s, so you gotta an alphanumerical printout did you virtually.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Wow. So that could be done quickly.
HH: It’s quite, it’s very quick to work it all out, yeah, to work it out to get, to actually calculate the winds on your Dalton.
AS: How did you operate at night, because I imagine you had no lights in the cockpit?
HH: Well, we had enough.
AS: Okay.
HH: We had a red light and then, what’s his name? Anderson, our group navigation officer, he found that red, you couldn’t see the red markings on your chart. So, that was all orange and green.
AS: Which was easier to see.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Okay. So, when you’d done your Mosquito conversion unit or at the Mosquito conversion unit, you must have crewed up with a pilot, how did that go?
HH: Well, I had already wanted to fly with this Australian so, when this New Zealander came along, I thought, he’ll do, I crewed up with him.
AS: As simple as that. And did you do, did the aeroplane Mosquito take some getting used to it, so different from a heavy bomber, with different performance and.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: What was she like to fly in?
HH: It was nice and reasonably fast. And I don’t think you really noticed it until you were doing some low flying.
AS: Shall we take a pause there? Okay. [recording paused]
HH: The Mosquito was, it was terribly difficult for a navigator to get out of.
AS: Why was that?
HH: Well, you had to, first of all you had to get hold of your chute and you kept that on, then you had to jettison two hatches to get out,
AS: Underneath.
HH: Underneath, yeah. Slightly forward towards the nose, yeah. And but by which time your pilot probably gone out of the top and you were spiralling down and the chance of you getting out was pretty slim.
AS: This hatch underneath must have been very close to the starboard propeller.
HH: Yes, we, yeah. Yes, it was quite close, yeah.
AS: Did you practice this on the ground a lot?
HH: No. I don’t think they thought you were, it was worth the risk. But the, a friend of mine used to fly with a man called Gill and he went down, got killed, Ronnie Knaith went down with his aircraft, and Gill got out and came home and he went to see Ronnie’s parents and they just slammed the door in his face, they wouldn’t talk to him. ‘Cause they had thought that he’d should have stayed onto the controls until Ronnie got out. Which is really what one was supposed to do.
AS: I hadn’t realised that the drill for the pilot was to go out of the top.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Because there’s a tailfin behind.
HH: Yeah, you jettison, you jettison the hood I think, the whole hood went. And theoretically the navigator could’ve gone out after him, I suppose, but.
AS: I think overall the losses were less on the Mosquito.
HH: Oh yeah.
AS: I think you were safer flying in a Mozzie than in a Halifax.
HH: Yes, I mean, there’s somewhere I got the losses in Hamish’s book, in Hamish Mahaddie’s book, all the losses in 8 Group and you will see that 692 do feature quite regularly, you know.
AS: Yeah, so you were posted to 692 Squadron after the conversion unit. You’d had, I suppose, eight months away from ops by then, ten months, had things changed a lot in that time?
HH: I don’t think they’d changed all that much for the heavies, no. And we operated separately and we used to do Window opening for the heavies, we used to do, we used to fly out with the heavies and used to meet up with them at Reading, they’d all congregated there, what’s that? There is something squeaking, did you hear?
AS: I don’t know, let’s pause the tape.[recording paused] Well, Harry, we discovered what the squeak was, it was the smoke alarm. We were talking about Window opening and you meeting the heavies over Reading.
HH: Yeah. We used to fly down with the and meet up with the heavies and then we’d weave in and out of them, stream, you know, and you could see the strength of the stream then because, you know, there was just a whole block of them all over the horizon.
AS: And these are daylights.
HH: Yeah, in daylight, yeah, it would be. And then somebody in one of the heavies would be signalling to us, you lucky bastards or words to that effect. So I was sent back, been there, done that [laughs].
AS: Fair do’s. Because you could fly a lot faster and a lot higher than they could.
HH: Well, we used to be, weave in and out of them, you see. And then, then when you got to the coast, you climbed very rapidly above and you got to your operational height. If we were going to say, if we were Window opening say for Stuttgart, we’d probably do a, you go to Cologne first and drop a few bundles of Window there making them, making them think that was the target, you see. And then we’d go along to wherever, Stuttgart, and where the main force were going, and we’d, we’d do Window opening for the first wave of Pathfinders going in.
AS: Okay. This was the, was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Pardon?
AS: Was this the main role of 692 Squadron?
HH: Yeah, well, we were the light night striking force, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: But our main role was to bomb Berlin every night.
AS: Oh, you were involved in this Berlin shuttle?
HH: Yes. So, we used to drop our cookie, we used to drop Window for the heavies and then we’d go along to Berlin and drop our four thousand pounders, keep them awake.
AS: Ah, so, did you have those special Mosquitos then?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Those with the pregnant bomb bay?
HH: That one there, isn’t it?
AS: Yes. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So, who got to drop the bomb? Was it you or the driver?
HH: Me.
AS: You.
HH: Yeah. Unless we were doing low level. And even then it was me up on the front, up in the nose.
AS: How did you, how did you drop Window from a tiny little aeroplane like Mosquito?
HH: We had a chute, little wooden chute which used to go through the two doors and we just dropped bundles of Window through that. Remember to grab the string as it went down, otherwise you’d just drop bundles [laughs].
AS: You don’t want them falling on someone’s head and hurting them, do you?
HH: No [laughs]. So, it’s a nice day now, isn’t it?
AS: It’s wonderful out there. It’s great. So, sometimes you were operating with the main bomber stream and sometimes as 8 Group by yourself or squadron by yourself?
HH: Individually, yeah.
AS: Individually too?
HH: We used to fly, we used to sing, I made up, there was a song going round at that time sung by Hildegard, I walk alone, to tell you the truth I’ll be lonely, I don’t mind being lonely, when my heart tells me you are lonely too. So, I made up the words for our squadron, we fly alone, when all the heavies are grounded and dining, 692 will be climbing, we still press on, it’s every night, though they never will give us a French route, for the honour of 8 Group, we’ll still press on.
AS: That’s fantastic.
HH: It’s always a [unclear] no matter how far, one bomb is slung beneath, it’s twelve degrees east, one engine at least [laughs]. It’s a pretty horrible little song.
AS: it’s brilliant. It sums up what you felt.
HH: Not as good as some of the songs, you see, erks used to make up in India and down in Burma, you know. One they used to sing, rotting in the jungle, on a [unclear] marshy shores, dysentery, malaria and bags of jungle sores, living around in a bloody great heap, our beds are damp, we cannot sleep, we’re going round the corner, we’re going round the bend, two trips to Meiktila, maybe three or four, AOL’s a keen type, he thinks we’re doing more. When we get back as you can guess, we’ll put this effing kite US [laughs] and we’re going round the, and there’s about two more verses to that, I can’t remember, that’s when the mail arrives, and there’s two for you and f.a. for me you know [laughs].
AS: I think we will have to try and get you a recording contract. This could be an excellent CD on the wireless.
HH: I don’t think they’d allow it to be broadcast.
AS: Probably not, probably not. But see, you, it sounds as you had very high morale on the squadron.
HH: Oh yeah. But, yes, this was when I was on ferrying.
AS: And on 692, as you say, opening with Window and then lots and lots of trips to
HH: Berlin.
AS: To Berlin. Did you ever get involved in a double trip, I believe some people, some crews did two trips to Berlin in one night.
HH: Yeah, we did, on one occasion we did. I think we did Duisburg in the morning and Berlin that night. Came back, and refuelled and bombed up again and we were away again.
AS: There must have been, I would expect, a cumulative tiredness at that level of operations. I’ve seen your ops on your second tour are very close together.
HH: Yeah.
AS: First of October, third, fourth, fifth, two on the fifth, very, very very close together and then Berlin followed the next night by Cologne. Did you, were you conscious of getting tired?
HH: Well, no, because when you’re off, you went into town and into Cambridge and I met up with my girlfriend and she was lovely, my girlfriend, I must have a picture of her, I did have a picture. She was beautiful, she was lovely red hair and creamy skin, you know, and green eyes, oh, she was beautiful. I used to walk down the street with her and everybody would stop and stare, at her, not at me [laughs].
AS: I was going to ask that. And you met her when you joined the squadron?
HH: When I joined 692, yeah. Yeah, we were walking, you remember, do you remember the Red Lion in Cambridge?
AS: I don’t know Cambridge well. I know where the airfield is.
HH: There used to be a passage where you could go through, you’d start off in the Baron of Beef, down by the river there and, and then you go from there to the Bun Shop and to get to the Bun Shop you have to walk through the Red Lion right, right the way through there, the foyer, there is a bar, two bars there and when I walked through there one night, there was Red sitting there with two of her friends and as I walked through, I said, ‘Cor’ to who I was with and I caught red hair and no drawers, and I said, ‘I’m in’ [laughs]. And she followed me through to the Bun Shop and that’s how I met up with her [laughs].
AS: Excellent. Probably best not pursue that story too much further, I think. So, you’ve got here on a trip to Berlin, landed Woodbridge. Now⸻
HH: Yeah.
AS: I know that Woodbridge is one of the emergency landing grounds.
HH: Yeah, well we, very often we had to land, when we took S-Sugar, which is a bloody awful aircraft with a terrible fuel consumption, if we took that to Berlin, we would end up, always end up landing short of fuel at Woodbridge. In fact, one night, when Harris was on this station, we were the only squadron operating that night, so he came to our briefing. [phone ringing]
AS: I’ll pause there. So, after the phone call, we were talking about S-Sugar and its ability to drink fuel.
HH: Yeah, on this night Harris was at the and [unclear] Northrop, our CO was reading out the battle order, you know, and he said, came to, flying officer Mormo, S-Sugar, ‘S-Sugar?’ said Roy, ‘What’s wrong with our Robert?’ ‘Well, that’s got a mark drop on the starboard engine, you’re going to have to take the spare.’ ‘But S f for Sugar, sir, that bloody kite flies like a brick shithouse!’ [laughs] and old Harris was standing there, and he was trying his best not to laugh, you know, his moustache had a twitch and [laughs] you could he’s gonna laugh every minute, you know. But he didn’t, he held it in [laughs]
AS: What was Woodbridge like? Is an emergency landing ground very different from a normal airfield?
HH: Oh yeah, you, huts with the roof off, you know, half off and snow would come in, on a snowy night, yeah.
AS: Not finished?
HH: No, they had just blown off. That’s a nuisance that thing, isn’t it?
AS: Your smoke alarm, yeah. As we got to this time or you got to this time in the war, this was late 1944.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Had the scene changed in terms of aids to navigation, things like Sandra lights and Darky and ground organisation, was there a lot to help you?
HH: [unclear] Much on the ground I think, mainly H2S, Oboe, things like that, you know. And G8, wasn’t it? G8.
AS: G-H, yeah. I didn’t, I don’t know how that worked, I never had that but we were quite content with LORAN. In fact, I got a wind over, going down to, I forget where I was going, Berlin I suppose, but yeah, we were going over to Berlin I think and I got a wind just north of the Ruhr, a hundred and ninety five knots.
AS: Wow!
HH: And what we’d done, we hit a jet stream, you see, and but when I came back, I said to the met man, I got a wind of a hundred, impossible, impossible, impossible, and it went to Group and Group said impossible as well, went to Command and Command said impossible well then when everybody started to get them, they suddenly realised there was something in this jet stream. Now they talk about nothing else but the bloody jet stream and it annoys me that because they ignored their existence during the war, the met people did and we kept telling them, look there is something up there and it didn’t last very long, you see, you were in it and then you were out of it, you know. So you couldn’t use it as a general wind to carry on to Berlin, shall we say for example, and nor could you use it when you were coming back. You might hit it again but it’d be in a different place slightly and.
AS: It must have meant that you had to be on your toes with your fixes all the time.
HH: Yeah. Anyway we,
AS: In your logbook, it suddenly goes from duty as nav to duty nav b. What was the significance of?
HH: Well, I stood in as bomb aimer as well.
AS: Ah, okay, that’s what it was. Tremendous number of operations over the winter of ’44-’45.
HH: Yeah.
AS: So I presume you must have flown in most weather with the nav aids that you had.
HH: Oh yeah, I remember one night, I don’t know if I should say this because it’s a bit derogatory to somebody who’s now dead, and that’s to Don Bennett. He was in the control tower on this particular night and we were getting hoarfrost all along the wings of our, as we taxied out we were getting hoarfrost develop all along the wings, so Roy got onto control and he says, ‘Could we have the de-icing bowsers out, please?’ And Bennett said, ‘Never mind about the de-icing bowser, just get off the deck.’ Well, we didn’t go, we said, ‘No, no. It’s too dangerous.’ Anyway, another aircraft came after us and they ploughed into the end of the runway and they were both killed of course when their bomb blew up. And Bennett never said a word to us afterwards, he was, we came back for briefing that night and he’d left the station. We came back and got the de-icing bowser and got cleared of the hoarfrost. He literally left, you see. And then we went to Berlin that night, I think.
AS: I should think, with fuel and a four thousand pounder you must have needed all the runway to get off.
HH: Yeah, well, there is another tale attached to that, the, you see, we started off with four thousand pounders, I think we were the first squadron to have four thousand pounders, and then they put fifty gallon drop tanks on each wing which were increased eventually to seventy five and then a hundred and then, and then we ran out of four thousand pounders and we had to borrow four thousand pounders from the Americans, which were four and a half thousand pounds. So another five hundred pounds to get off the deck. But the old Mozzie just used to take it all in its stride. No bother.
AS: You had no concerns.
HH: No, and I remember one day when I’d finished tour. I was sitting in the crew room minding my own business and the CO, a Canadian called Bob Grant came in and he said, ‘You doing anything Hughes?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Grab yourself a ‘chute would you and I’ll see you out at the aircraft.’ I said, ‘What do you⸻’ ‘Just bring a local Gee chart and local maps, would you?’ So when I got out to the bay, they were loading a four thousand pounder and I said, ‘Well, what fuel have we got?’ ‘You’ve a got full load of fuel and two hundred gallon drop tanks.’ And there’s a wind blowing right the way down the 330 runway which was fourteen hundred feet or something compared with two thousand feet on the main runway. I said, ‘What are we gonna do then?’ He said, ‘We’re gonna see if we can get off with this wind, the scale blowing, see if we can get off on this, on the fifteen hundred runway.’ So, we got to the end of the runway, and he waited until there was a gust of wind blowing, until the airspeed indicator was indicating about fifty or sixty knots. And we went. And I dropped the cookie on the live bomb target in the Wash and then we came back. And he got a report and said it wasn’t possible. I said, ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’ [laughs] it wasn’t possible. And he said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘I don’t think the crew, you could expect the whole crew to wait’, the whole squadron rather to wait until there was a lull, that’s turned till there was a gust of wind which would get them off the deck.
AS: It’s a good example of leading from the front though, isn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Doing the test himself.
HH: It was old Bob Grant, he’s dead now, he married a Yorkshire, he was CO of 105 Squadron, amongst other things and he was, when he got back to Canada, of course he was made up to brigadier, I think. He was a group captain here, so he was a brigadier. That was equivalent to air commodore, wasn’t it?
AS: I think so, yeah, yeah.
HH: I don’t know.
AS: And, ah, there it is Group Captain Grant, 19th of March 1945, bombload take off fourteen hundred yards. That was pretty much the end of your operational flying, I think, wasn’t it?
HH: Yeah.
AS: On the Mosquito. Last trip, February, February ’45.
HH: Hanover, wasn’t it? Or Hamburg, Hanover.
AS: Frankfurt, I think, Frankfurt in your log. And did you know that that would be your last trip or you’re just told you’re screened?
HH: Yeah. You knew you had to do fifty on Mosquitos. So.
AS: And what did happened after that? Did you go back instructing or?
HH: No, no, we were sent on leave and when we came back, we’d been posted, several crews had been posted down to Pershore to ferry Canadian built Mosquitos across the Atlantic. And I crewed up with a different, Lloyd had gone back to New Zealand and he used to fly with Air New Zealand after the war. And thanks to me, because someone had put a bottle through his hand and all the tendons had gone. And so he couldn’t, when we were taking off at Whiten once doing a cross country, we got airborne and suddenly the throttle went back and he grabbed hold of them and held it with his hand and because you had to keep the throttle up so loose ‘cause of this weakness in his left hand. So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Roy, from now on I’ll tighten the throttle knot for you when you’re ready. As soon as you want, you just say, throttle knob and I will reach through and grab the throttle knob and turn it and tighten it for you.’ And we did that every trip. And but I, ‘cause I had to reach over, I couldn’t strap in, so I did all my trips without strapping in [laughs]. I never strapped in again, not with Roy flying. So he’d of never, I mean, he was flying with Air New Zealand afterwards he’d never have passed their medical if he’d of disclosed it, you know.
AS: But eventually, not in a Mosquito, but he’d be flying with throttles on the other hand, wouldn’t he? So the problem,
HH: Yeah.
AS: The problem would go away. So you’d had some leave, you were posted to fly to Pershore to fly Mosquitos.
H: Yeah. And we were sent on indefinite leave, Pershore sent us on indefinite leave. And I thought, oh God, I’ll be grounded for sure. So, I got on a train and went up to Air Ministry and saw a wing commander there and I said, look, there is a war going in in the Far East [unclear] aircraft ferried out there, coming back for maintenance and what have you. And he said, what a good idea, you know, come back in the morning, will you? And I got the whole lot posted out to the Far East. Fifteen or eighteen, I think I told you this before, didn’t I?
AS: I think so but we didn’t get in on the tape, I don’t think, no.
HH: No.
AS: I bet you were popular.
HH: Fifteen, oh God, when I got down to Lyneham they were moaning, ‘I’m just due for demob for God’s sake, why the heck do I have to, due for demob any day now.’
AS: I bet you kept quiet.
HH: And here I am, so I kept very quiet. And so, I mean I wasn’t due for demob for some time.
AS: So here we are, Lyneham in July ’45. A huge trip as a passenger on a deck. Thirty two hours flying.
HH: Yeah, back to Karachi, yeah.
AS: So by going, going East, you, did you, before you went, did you see, did you go on any of these trips over, over Germany to see all the destruction?
HH: No, no.
AS: Okay.
HH: I missed all that.
AS: You’d said earlier that you said a prayer for the people of Hamburg. What, at the end of the war, did you reflect at all on the, or during that, on the bombing? And what were your feelings about being involved in it in the war?
HH: Well, I’ve spoken to our vicar about it, you know, and said, do you think Saint Peter’s gonna let me through the gates? Or not. So she sat and he said a prayer for me. Lady vicar of course. Anyway, but I was invited out to Hanover as a guest of the mayor and the local newspaper to commemorate the 60th anniversary of when we bombed them.
AS: And you went?
HH: So I went over, yeah, well, I was asked to volunteer and I remember, at the Bomber Command meeting they said, did anybody go to Hanover, I said, well, I did. When I got home, I found out I’d been to Hanover about eleven times and [laughs] so I was well qualified.
AS: And are you pleased you went, did it turn out well?
HH: Yes, they were very, very, very nice, I like German people.
AS: So do I.
HH: I got two of them coming over now. Here any day now. I think. They stay up at [unclear] castle, ‘cause he’s paraplegic, he can’t get down my steps.
AS: Yeah.
HH: He’s, he had polio when he was a youngster. But they come over by air this time so he couldn’t bring his invalid scooter with him so I don’t know whether he’s gonna hire one when they’re here or not, I don’t know what they’re gonna do to get around.
AS: That should be possible, I think.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And these are friends you made when you went to Hanover?
HH: Yeah. Well, they were both reporters with the Hamburger Allgemeine. And anyway I was, the last day I was there in Hanover I was there for about three or four days, I had to attend a meeting of all the survivors from the raids and all the students from university there and the colleges and what have you and a little girl gets up and question time you see and she gets up and says, can I please explain what was the duty of the navigator? Well if you ask me a stupid question like that, I’m gonna give you a stupid answer, for sure. So I said, ‘Well, the reason why we carried a navigator, because we had to have someone on board who could read and write’ [laughs] and their mouths fell open, he went like this, everybody, so I said to my interpreter, I said, ‘Tell them, it was a joke, will you?’ ‘Ah, a joke, yeah, we got no sense of humour, we Germans, we’ve got no sense of humour at all.’ [unclear] So then, later on somebody, one of the survivors said, ‘Why did you bomb the city?’ So I said, ‘To be perfectly honest, we couldn’t hit anything smaller but just remember this,’ I said, ‘Right in the centre, almost within half a mile from the centre of Hanover there was the biggest rubber factory in Germany, so it made Hanover a very legitimate target.’ ‘Yes’, this man says, ‘But you didn’t hit it, did you? ‘Cause it’s still there!’ [laughs]. I said, ‘Well, and you tried to tell me that the Germans got no sense of humour?’ [laughs] And then I was on their side from then on.
AS: I’ve lived there for eleven years. I’m with you. I’ve lived there for eleven years.
HH: Have you?
AS: Yeah. They’re great people, great people. I think.
HH: In which part were you?
AS: I was in Munich for five years.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And then in Bonn and Cologne, in the Rhineland for about six altogether. Some of the places you visited by air, in fact. That’s the feelings of the Germans. How, there’s been a lot of controversy about how Bomber Command were treated after the war. Have you got any views on that?
HH: Well, I think, first of all, we should never, never have bombed Dresden, I think that was the biggest mistake we made. And Portal should have stood up and said, no! But he didn’t have the guts to do it, he didn’t have the guts to stand up to Churchill and it was Churchill who, on his way to Yalta, he stopped off at Malta, And they’d agreed to bomb five cities within reach of the Russian lines, you know, and I think Dresden was one and what’s that? And Leipzig and one other I think. Anyway he sent back this signal to Portal saying, from Malta saying, where is my spectacular, get on with it. So, Portal looked at the charts and he consulted the Met people and the only target available that night was Dresden. I didn’t go to Dresden, I went to Magdeburg, Magdeburg that night, you can see it on there, in that book there.
AS: You believe it was, that Dresden was the turning point and that?
HH: Mh?
AS: You believe that Dresden was some sort of turning point?
HH: Yeah.
AS: How Bomber Command were treated?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you, do you feel now that it’s changed with the memorials and the clasp?
HH: Yeah, I think so. I think, there was a time just after the war, when the people who were against us were the people who were in the Air Force or in one of the forces and they felt that we were, they didn’t want us to have any publicity, you know.
AS: After the war.
HH: Yeah. And then, and then since then, they’ve suddenly realised that you know, we had the highest losses of any unit in the, our forces, fifty five thousand killed, which is quite a lot, wasn’t it?
AS: Yeah. Fifty five thousand, five hundred and seventy three.
HH: Yeah.
AS: And you’ve seen a, well, or you see a change in attitudes now.
HH: Yes, I think, younger people are much more inclined to want to hear about it and talk about it and understand why we did it and there is no good saying, well, we were under orders to do it, because that’s what the Germans excuses were, you know, for their treatment of the in the concentration camps. We were under orders.
AS: And you did it because it was right?
HH: Well, we did it because we thought we were, ‘cause we were shortening the war and therefore less people would be killed.
AS: Is it, I agree, you say, that now people want to hear about it, is it good for you and other veterans to be able to talk about it after all this time?
HH: It’s getting more and more difficult, there’s so many books have been written on there, now.
AS: And you are actually in one of the books.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Steve Darlow’s book. How did all that come about? Did you get involved with him?
HH: I don’t know. He wanted, I think I was recommended by probably Bomber Command, you know, Dougie Radcliffe.
AS: Oh, the Bomber Command Association.
HH: Yeah.
AS: Have you always played a big part in that?
HH: No, no, I was mainly in the Pathfinders Association.
AS: Oh, okay.
HH: We were separate from, we were separate from the Bomber Command Association, but I’d already joined the Bomber Command Association when we disbanded. I’d already been a member for several years.
AS: And do you belong to your squadron or 102 Squadron association as well?
HH: Yeah. Yes, it’s, I’ve written a letter to, when I went to the VJ-Day celebrations⸻
AS: Yes.
HH: We had to fill out a form travelling expenses and I got three hundred pounds from the Lottery Fund.
AS: Excellent.
HH: And my son Jeremy, who’d driven me up there and then he got three hundred pounds as well. And I don’t, I hope he hasn’t. So I wrote a letter to the Big Lottery and said, thanking them for their, I said, so, twice a year I’ve got to go to, up to Pocklington in Yorkshire, which is rather expensive for me now ‘cause you got to go up Virgin cross country you know, right the way up to York and it’s a long journey that. It’s an interesting journey but there’s no, there was a little old lady pushing the tray along, pushing the trolley along, you know, that’s all that you get to eat with some coffee and a fruitcake or something.
AS: It’s not the same as a full dining car.
HH: I like the dining cars on, I’m going up on the 22nd of October I think, coming back on the 23rd, I always travel back down on the dining car which, on a train with a dining car which leaves at seven o’clock in the evening.
AS: Do you still have wartime comrades that you’ll meet in Pocklington?
HH: Oh yes, yeah. Most of them are dead now but.
AS: So, a lot of reminiscing and’
HH: Yeah. There’s a friend of mine, who was a previous chairman, Tom Wingate, who, he wrote a book called Halifax Down, ‘cause he was shot down on his second tour, and I used to have a copy but I can’t find it now. I don’t know what I have done with it, I lose things all the time now.
AS: I have a copy at home, I can send you one.
HH: Pardon?
AS: I have a copy, I can send you one.
HH: You got a copy of that?
AS: Yeah, I have.
HH: Halifax Down, yes, it’s not a bad book, actually. Except that he joined the squadron the same time as I did, his crew did. And he’s quoted in his book, as if he was there three or four months before me. He’s quoted various trips and he’s got these out of those old war diaries, wish I could find that. I wonder where I put it?
AS: Well, you’ll have to take your logbook the next time you meet him.
HH: Oh no, he’s dead now.
AS: Okay.
HH: That’s why I’ve taken over as chairman.
AS: After you came off ops, you did this trip out to the Far East, did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: In what?
AS: Did you then get involved in ferrying aeroplanes?
HH: Oh yes, yeah.
AS: Okay.
HH: It’s quite a lot really. My very first trip was down to Akyab, on the Arakan coast. I think I told you, didn’t I?
AS: Yes, but not into the tape. So, what happened on that trip?
HH: I don’t think that particular trip’s in there, actually, I looked for it the other day and I can’t find it. I must have left it out for some reason.
AS: This was the trip with the Japanese.
HH: Yes, all the way around us were Zeros, you know. We could hear them yacketing away and then this Indian crew comes on with their Hurricanes and the Japanese just disappeared.
AS: What was the radio conversation about with these Indian squadrons, red flight?
HH: Pardon?
AS: What was the radio conversation story about the?
HH: Oh, well, the Indian crews? ‘Yes, red leader to yellow leader, how do you read me, over? Yellow leader to green, you are not red, you are green, you know? Red leader to yellow leader, I am not green, I am red. And this Aussie voice comes up by the blue, you are black, you bastard’ [laughs].
AS: So, it’s still a combat area that you’re flying replacement aircraft I suppose in to the squadrons?
HH: Yeah.
AS: Did you get involved in flying damaged aircraft for repair?
HH: Oh, I used to fly back from say Kamila or with two Pratt & Whitney’s engines in the back and a load of ENSA girls as well amongst them [laughs], sitting where they could and trying not to get greasy, ‘cause these, and yeah.
AS: Yeah. Shall we, pause there I think?
HH: Yeah.
AS: And wind it up. Thank you that, It’s been absolutely wonderful to hear.
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Interview with Harry Hughes
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Adam Sutch
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-10-21
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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AHughesWH151021
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02:28:15 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Harry Hughes volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940 and trained in America, where he was washed out as a pilot and then retrained as a navigator in Canada, flying Ansons and Wellingtons. In 1942 he converted to Halifaxes and flew operations with 102 Squadron over Germany, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying an operation to Berlin whilst on crutches. He recounts the routines of preparing to go on operations and his use of navigation aids including Gee, LORAN and later, Boozer in Mosquitos. He was bombstruck twice during operations. He completed 26 operations including the bombing of Hamburg which he describes as a firestorm and recalls saying a private prayer for the people of Hamburg below. After his tour finished, he then instructed before applying to go back on operations with 8 Group, flying Mosquitos with 692 Squadron and dropping Window for Pathfinder forces in 1944/45. In 2004 he visited Hanover and discussed the raids with survivors of the war. He was a member of a number of post war service associations and kept in contact with his crewmates.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Southeast Asia
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
United States
Alabama--Montgomery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1944
1945
102 Squadron
3 Group
6 Group
692 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Anson
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
faith
Fw 190
Gee
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
incendiary device
Ju 88
Me 109
Me 110
Me 262
medical officer
meteorological officer
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
promotion
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Harwell
RAF Riccall
RAF Wombleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
Window
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/129/40/AFlowersHJ150602.2.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Flowers, James
H J Flowers
Horrace James Flowers
Harry James Flowers
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. The collection concerns the wartime experiences of Flight Sergeant Horace James Flowers, a rear gunner with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe. The collection consists of one oral history interview, a propaganda leaflet and nine photographs. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by James Flowers and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Flowers, HJ
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HJF: My name is Horace James Flowers. I’m known as James. I am recording my, I served in the RAF for four and a half years from 1944 until 1947. I attained the rank of flight sergeant and flew, and served with 50 squadron and 44 squadron, 50 squadron at Skellingthorpe and 40 squadron, 44 squadron in Tiger Force at a number of squads, at a number centres, stations. I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 2nd of June, er, 2nd of June 2015 in, at xxxxx Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. Yeah. I was born on the 9th of 10th, 9th of the 10th 1924 in a small village called Huthwaite in Nottinghamshire. I remained in Huthwaite, remained in Huthwaite during my education which was only secondary modern. Secondary modern. I then left school at fourteen, 1939. That sounds bad doesn’t it?
MJ: That’s alright.
HJF: I left school, I left school when I was fourteen. That was 1939. I became an apprentice butcher and loved the job. I absolutely loved it and if it hadn’t have been, hadn’t have been for the war, I’m certain I would have remained in that trade for the rest of my working life. However, Sutton in Ashfield area, Huthwaite and Sutton in Ashfield area rapidly became an area, a training area for a battalion of troops. And also there were Yanks at er, at Kingsmill Hospital and there were the paratroopers at Hardwick Hall five miles away. They was the elite and they used to come in at night time and the village had, all the village halls had been turned into dance halls so the town was thriving at night time, with hundreds probably thousands of, of soldiers coming in to be entertained for the night. It was so exciting. Now, the paratroopers were special. They were elite and when they used to come in they used to create skirmishes in the, you know, to a teenager it was so exciting and at the same time my brother had joined the navy and he was he was in, in, he was stationed at Brightlingsea at what they called [unclear] sorry [unclear]
[pause]. Yes.
HJF: German U-boats used to, used to speed in and torpedo any, any ship that was in the area. At the same time, at this particular time I had a girlfriend whose brother was in aircrew and he was a wireless operator and he used to come home at the weekends and I used to listen to his stories about his fly, what was happening while he was flying. This really stimulated my interest so I just had to get to it, get involved. Now, on the 18th of February 1943 I attended the, enlistment section-
[pause]
On the 18th of February 1943 I attended the recruitment section, recruitment place at Mansfield to be given a medical for aircrew which I passed A1. How excited I was when the medical officer told me that I’d passed A1. Not that my excitement was allowed to last long because shortly after the recruiting officer called me in to his office to give me the bad news. Now then, this is, ‘I’m very sorry to tell you, you can’t be accepted. We can’t accept anyone who is in a reserved occupation.’ I was completely devastated because I’d took a year to get in. I pleaded for them to change their mind, ‘Sorry you can only be accepted if the authorities release you from your reserved occupation.’ To a teenager desperate to volunteer this was terrible news. It felt as if a bomb had been dropped on me by the recruiting officer. My factory manager showed no sympathy at all. He firmly informed me that unless I was medically released I would have to remain with them until the end of the war. The problem was that I needed to be A1 to be accepted for air crew and unfit to be released from the reserved occupation. How do I get around that? Continuously I racked my brain to try and think of a way that I could overcome this problem. Months went by and I began to despair. It seemed as if my chance of joining the RAF had gone forever. At last I had an idea. I wondered, will it work? No matter whether it did or not I just had to try something. So with my heart in my mouth I arranged an appointment with my factory doctor. Attending the appointment I showed the doctor all the spots on my face, and telling him that I considered that the heavy fumes of the machine grinder on which, on which I was working was giving me dermatitis. I then requested that I should be released from this work. My case was so thin and I knew it but I had to try something. I then had to listen to the doctor giving me a real dressing down. How awful he made me feel. He ended his lecture by saying, ‘You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. Men are dying for the likes of you.’ Feeling very subdued I then quietly said, ‘But doctor, I only want releasing from munitions because I volunteered and been accepted for air crew. The RAF won’t take me if you don’t release me.’ With my heart in my mouth I waited as he fixed his gaze on me for what seemed an eternity. He looked me straight in the eye. Then without another word he reached for his pen and signed my release. As I got up to leave the surgery he leaned forward and shook my hand and wished me luck. All these problems had taken a year to resolve. Is that?
MJ: Yes
HJF: Now, having reached my ninetieth year I can’t help thinking how much slimmer my chances of surviving this terrible war would have been if I’d been allowed to leave my reserved occupation in 1943. Although I knew that being a rear gunner was a very dangerous job with a very high casualty rate, so much so that rear gunners were named Charlies and that’s another name for stupid fool, it didn’t matter to me what others thought. This was the way I wished to serve my country. Yeah, so that goes on to my “Tail End Charlie’s Story”.
MJ: Ahum
HJF: This was the title I gave to my book which I’ve, which I’ve had produced, “A Tail End Charlie’s Story” ‘cause I think that fits the bill. Right, on the 6th of March 1944 I reported to the induction centre at Lords Cricket Ground, London along with hundreds more recruits for entry to the RAF. Lords Cricket Ground was used during the 1939 ‘45 war as an induction centre for air crew. A roll call, a roll call was made during which, to my astonishment, a second HJ Flowers’ name was called out. It was then that I first met Henry James Flowers. Henry told me that he came from a village called Bargoed in South Wales. From then onwards we became constant companions. We remained together during basic training at RAF Bridgnorth after which we were posted to RAF Stormy Down for air gunnery training. Fortunately, we were kept together during flying training and in actual fact ended up serving on both 50 and 44 squadron, squadrons. Now, ok, recruitment before I get on to?
MJ: You can put it whatever way you like.
HJF: Does that sound alright?
MJ: Yes it’s fine. It’s superb. I mean I know exactly what you mean when you said that London had had a right bash of it.
HJF: Yeah.
MJ: I mean, my nan got bombed out twice. You know, nothing left.
HJF: We got friends, we’ve got a friend that lost everything twice. Absolutely everything.
MJ: Yeah, yeah.
HJF: She lived near where I was stationed yeah.
MJ: ‘Cause the road that they lived in doesn’t exist.
HJF: Yeah.
MJ: And so on. You know people don’t-
HJF: Yeah.
MJ: Realise this sort of thing. Are you ready?
HJF: Yeah ok. After disembarking from the troop train at Bridgnorth railway station we formed up in threes. Shouldering our heavy kit bags we began the long march to camp. The last mile was up a steep hill. As new recruits, unfit, with no marching experience at all, all carrying a heavy kit bag the formation rapidly turned into a gaggle. By the time we reached the camp everyone was on the point of collapse. Next morning, after the recruits had been formed up on the parade ground the NCO in charge of the parade informed us that we’d be confined to barracks for the entire six weeks - square bashing, ‘You will not be allowed in public until you can be a credit to your uniform.’ From that moment on we spent every minute of every day drilling and exercising. My muscles screamed out from the strains. The course seemed never ending. Much to my surprise the strain became less. I was obviously getting fitter. Not content with keeping us hard all day we were also given guard duty at night. On Saturday and Sunday a percentage of recruits were picked out to stand guard throughout the weekend. It was just the luck of the draw as to whether your name would come out. By the end of the fourth week I was badly missing my girlfriend Eunice so despite the ban on boots, new boots, new recruits leaving camp I began to make plans. Now, having been on guard duty at a sentry box on the edge of the wood at the rear of the camp I knew there was a way in and out. Those on guard duty were given instructions to arrest anyone there but be that it may I let loads of them through expecting them to make the, make the favour, if I, if I needed it. I noticed. Now desperate to return home I was willing to risk anything. So after duty on the fourth Friday I slipped out of camp by the back way and began thumbing lifts. In uniform they came very easily and with a matter of hours I was back home again. Early next day I walked the two miles to my girlfriend’s house. This was the first time that Eunice had seen me in uniform and I knew that I’d created a good impression. We had a lovely day and a half together. I can still remember going for a walk that Sunday morning along a very attractive country walk known locally as Skegby Bottoms. The sun shone brightly as we sat there. I was at peace with the world. I wanted it to go on and on and on. Late Sunday night I successfully re-entered the camp through the back. Through the woods. In no time I was back in my billet. The moment Taffy saw me he exclaimed, ‘Your name was called out several times for guard duty over the weekend.’ ‘Oh dear,’ I thought, ‘Blimey I shall be on a charge on Monday morning’. Sure enough I was called off the parade ground and told to report to the commanding officer. Shaking like a leaf I stood to attention in front of him. ‘Sorry. I didn’t hear my name called out.’ Not impressed, he said ‘Fourteen days jankers and do it again and I’ll throw the book at you.’ Next day I reported to the cookhouse in full pike. Just my luck to be the only one on jankers, jankers at the time to peel the thousands and thousands of potatoes needed to feed a camp full of hungry airmen and then to wash the pots that had to be used for meals. Gosh it was hard work. You may have thought that all this effort made my weekend worthwhile. I’m in no doubt at all. It was.
Now then, what did I get to? 3rd of, 3rd of June 1944 see us arrive at Bridgnorth for flying training. Now this training was on Avro Ansons. It had one mid upper turret and we used to fire at drogues that used to come by with a, with a Spitfire travelling a drogue alongside us. And quite honestly, quite honestly it was I think, I think the pilot was, of the Spitfire, was in more danger of us hitting him than us hitting the drogue. Anyway, when, when we finished this course, at the end of this course I managed to get a day’s, a weekend off so I travelled home to see Eunice. She was in the Land Army near Grimley and I remember as I arrived at the, at the hostel, at the hostel Eunice was telling me about the, about someone who was getting married. One of the Land Army girls getting married. And I could feel that this was the, that there seemed to be a longing in her voice which suggested to me that this was the right time to once again, for the hundredth time ask her if she’d marry me. And so as she turned to me I said, ‘Well shall we get married then?’ and she said, ‘Yes, let’s.’ I’m not joking with you I could have fallen through the floor. Anyway, we decided there and then. She said, ‘What are you doing now?’ I said well I’m going now to Husbands Bosworth for a ten week course on OTU training and she says, ‘Ok when will that finish?’ Well we calculated it out that it would finish about October the 14th. She says, ‘Ok we’ll add a week to that. We’ll add a week to that. We’ll get married on the 21st of October.’ Not for one minute did we think the things that could happen in a flying training. So naïve we were. Anyway, a week before, two weeks before the October the 21st flying training, all flying training was cancelled through bad weather. We didn’t fly for nearly eight days. Comes the 20th, comes the 20th of, of October and I’m getting married the next day. I’d still got four hours flying to do that morning. Anyway, by sheer luck we got the flying training finished, finished by dinnertime. We then needed to, to get cleared from the station, and of course collect all our gear because we’re moving to another, another station. And, and we’d got, in those days, today if you wanted to get cleared from a section they do it on computer, can do it in five minutes. In our day we used to have to go to every section to get our chitty signed, mainly on foot. Fortunately, Taffy managed to borrow a couple, a couple of bikes. He was going to be my best man so he’s coming with me. We circulated and of course there’s a tremendous area in, in, on an RAF aerodrome and we circulated the area on these cycles and I’m certain that everybody, every section knew we were getting married because as we were, the next day every section and as we, the next day, and as we came in they immediately signed my chit. Bless them all. Anyway the admin section was closing at 5 o’clock. We arrived there at five minutes to five. The admin, the officer then cleared us from the section and, and he says, ‘Ok, right, you can go now. Report to RAF Wigsley on Monday the 23rd.’ I thought, bloody hell, two days. We then had to start [laughs] we then had to start our journey. Now in those days, in those days there was very little transport. We had to, we had to cadge lifts we had to catch buses, local buses, train journeys, local train journeys. It took us all night. We didn’t arrive in Sutton in Ashfield until half past eight on the Saturday the 21st. Having been awake all night I was absolutely shattered. Anyway we walked out of Sutton in Ashfield railway station and Eunice lived a mile to the right and I, and I lived two miles to the left. Taffy walked to tell Eunice we’d arrived. I walked the two miles to Huthwaite to, to my parent’s home. Now there was so much happening. The wedding was planned for 2.30. There was so much happening I never got any rest. I was absolutely cream crackered. By, I remember, I remember we were in, as we got in, as we got in to the taxi turned up to St Mary’s Church at Sutton in Ashfield and I says to my mum ‘Oh I can’t.’ ‘Go on, go on, ‘she said, ‘Oh no. You’re here now. Go on. Get going.’ Anyway we got into the church and I’m not joking I stood at the altar and I was absolutely asleep on my feet. I can’t explain how tired I was. Anyway, after a while suddenly there was a thump in my ribs and I opened my eyes and said. ‘I will’ and it was back to sleep again and quite honestly that’s all I remember of my, of my, of my wedding. And then photographs. The photographer wouldn’t take any photographs at the church. He insisted that we went down to his studio which was a couple of miles away and then he only took, would agree to take two photographs. One of Eunice and I and the wedding group. How different it is these days. Wedding photographers dominate the wedding and take millions of photographs and charge a tremendous amount of money. They do, don’t they? Anyway, Eunice was late when she arrived at the, at the church. She told me later, she said as the taxi drew away from her house a funeral appeared. Now it’s bad luck for you to go past a funeral. That’s what they said. So, quickly the taxi driver changed direction, changed direction to, to avoid it. Lo and behold they were just about to turn up the drive to the, to the church it was quite a long drive two or three hundred yards long and another, another funeral appeared so quickly he turns around and went back again and made another deviation. Well, she says she thought this a sign our wedding wouldn’t last. Well sixty nine years, seventy years later I think probably her premonition was a little bit wrong.
[laughs].
Fortunately, the Sunday, Sunday, a telegram arrived at my home to tell me that I’d been given eight days leave. So, so we didn’t have to report to Wigsley until eight days later but I want to go back a little bit now to my flying training because quite honestly flying training on Wellington bombers, it was a marvellous experience. Dangerous. Always exciting. Mostly enjoyable but quite honestly we were like kids playing with big new toys and we couldn’t get enough of it. Now, many things happened, happened, that quite honestly, that could, we could have bought it there and then. I remember one instant. One instant comes to, comes to mind. This was a training flight up to the north of Scotland and, and this was one for the first night trips that we had. Now, navigation in those days was very, very difficult because they didn’t have radar, the navigator didn’t have radar. He had to use his maps and they used to even use the stars and, and even used to ask us, ask us for things on the ground so that was how primitive it was. Anyway, we flew up to the north of Scotland. It was six and half hour trip and when we got to the north of Scotland we were due to turn, to turn starboard to come down the North Sea but instead of telling us to turn starboard the navigator told Skip to turn port so instead of travelling down the North Sea we were travelling down the Irish Sea. In fact we were rapidly going towards bloody America [laughs] and extended the flight trip quite a long way. He said the reason why this happened was because he accidently pulled his, we were flying above twelve thousand feet and he accidently pulled his, his oxygen cylinder thing out, connection out so he, but that was his story. Anyway, we goes down the North Sea. I remember we got back to, we got back to the Husbands Bosworth area and I remember looking down. It was absolutely, early hours of the morning, it was absolutely pitch dark. You could not see a thing on the ground and Jack the navigator says, ‘Ok Skip. We’re over base.’ Skip says, ‘Can’t see anything.’ So he says, ‘Ok, dog leg.’ so he does a five minute dog leg, comes back again and he says, ‘Right Skip. We’re over base.’ And when he says that there’s a chorus of voices says, ‘You’re up the spout, you’re bloody up the spout we can’t see anything.’ Ok, another dog leg. We did another dog leg and another dog leg and then when we gets to the fourth one there’s a voice, the flight engineer butts in and says, ‘Hey. Hey, we’ve only got, you’d better pull your fingers out, we’ve only got four minutes of fuel left.’ I was sitting, I was in the rear turret listening to all this going and quite honestly my ring was beginning to twitch. I thought to myself, ‘bloody hell if they don’t do something about it we’re going to crash’. So I switched it on. I say, ‘Skip why don’t you call somebody up?’ He says, ‘Oh yes.’ He then calls out the base. The base called in the, the aircraft codes, signs and immediately lights, the aerodrome lights flicked on straight beneath us. Navigator, nav, had been right all the time. We made an emergency landing. We taxied around this, we taxied round, around the perimeter. We turns in to, turns into our bay and as we turned into the bay, before we were in, the engines stopped. That’s how close we were. Ok now then. I’ll go forward now to after my wedding ok.
MJ: Yeah.
HJF: Are we still going?
MJ: Yeah.
HJF: After, after the wedding I reported to, to Wiglsey. Now, once again we, one, one time comes to mind we had a complete and utter cock up on Stirlings. I remember we were corkscrewing, corkscrew starboard, corkscrew port and the Skipper was saying to me diving starboard, diving starboard, climbing port, climbing starboard, rolling port, so on. The corkscrew. And in the middle of this cork, and this Spitfire was attacking us, was attacking us from behind and I was giving a running commentary on, on him coming in and all of a sudden the aircraft levelled out and a panicked voice came over the, came over the intercom, ‘Put on parachutes, jump, jump, jump.’ And I thought, ‘bloody hell, I can’t believe this’. The next second, ‘Put on parachute. Jump, jump, jump. I can’t hold it, I can’t hold it, I can’t hold it.’ I thought to myself ‘bloody hell there’s something happening I can’t see’ and I thought to myself, I thought ‘I’ll have a go’. So I drags the turret around to the beam, pulls on my slider, green as grass I was at the time. Now with experience I’d have opened the door and just flopped back outwards but green as grass I dragged myself out of the turret outside and I was standing outside and the wind was terrible. You can imagine. We were twelve thousand feet, travelling two hundred miles an hour and I’m looking down. I remember standing there with one, with my feet on the edge of the turret, one arm’s holding the top of the turret and I looked down and cows in fields looked, looked like flies. I thought, ‘Bloody hell I wonder if my parachute will open.’ Anyway, I thought to myself I’ll have a go. So therefore, I thought, I started, I released one hand and took, took, began to take my helmet off and quite honestly it was, there was so much noise outside I could hardly hear anything. All of a sudden I heard a faint voice and I didn’t care what it was it I thought, that’s somebody shouting something. It took me twenty minutes to get out but five seconds to get back in. I was back in like a bloody flash and I held my hands to my ears and it was the flight engineer. We’d got a, we’d got a extra member of the crew that time, he was a tour expired extra flight engineer and he was shouting, ‘Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.’ So, right, well what happened? When we got down as we came down to land I was so stressed up with this thing as I climbed, as I came out of the turret into the fuselage I just asked myself, I just had to know whether my chute would have opened. So I immediately, I pulled the rip cord and my parachute spilled out into the fuselage. It cost me two and six pence to have it, now that’s a lot of money. When you think it’s only two pounds a week for me and I was giving a pound to my Mrs that was a lot of money to me but I didn’t care. It gave me the confidence that at least, at least it opened. Now, when we got out, when we got out I say, I says, I says to Skip, ‘What happened?’ He says, ‘Well’ he says, ‘We were diving,’ he says, ‘We were diving and climbing and rolling in the what do you call it,’ he says, ‘And all of a sudden a window just at the back of my head, unbeknown to me, flew out.’ The window had got, on the inside, had got a lead weighted curtain and as it, as the window blew out it sucked this lead weighted curtain out and he says it just started banging on the side of the fuselage bang, bang, bang, bang he says, ‘I suddenly heard this bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang tremendous noise’ he says, and at that precise moment by sheer coincidence the instructor, flight engineer, the bloody fool, sitting at the side of me, the starboard outer oversped. Now, the standard procedure is to pull the nose of the aircraft like climbing a hill to steady it down. Now, instead of just poking the Skipper or, or switching his intercom on which was at his mouth and saying what was happening he immediately dragged on, dragged as hard as he could on the controls to lift. Now, the Skipper at the time because he was hearing this banging noise was trying to keep the aircraft straight and level and at the same time the flight engineer, and they were pulling against each other and I’m not joking it was a complete and utter cock up but I’ve often thought to myself what did that bloody Spitfire driver think of me when he saw me standing outside, climbing out, he must have thought I were doolally.
[laughs]
Another thing happened whilst we were in flying training. We were doing the corkscrewing. All of a sudden all four engines cut out. Quick as a flash Skipper slammed the aircraft in to a vertical dive and kick-started the engine. Fortunately got them going, fortunately we got plenty of height, kick-started them. By golly that did make your heart flutter [laughs] and then our final training, training trip with, on Stirlings we had an emergency landing and we had, we had to make an emergency landing at Woodhall Spa, the home of 617 of all places, and as we, as we touched down all of a sudden the Stirling swung off, swung off the runway and headed straight for flying control. Now the Stirling was a massive aircraft and, and the cockpit, when the cockpit, when it was stopped, when it was stationery the cockpit was level with the windows in flying control and we, we careered across the, across the, the grass and stopped about a couple of foot from the, from the flying control windows and Skip said he could see flying control people running away from the windows in panic and when we stopped he says, he switches on, he says, ‘Flying control, ‘he says, ‘Can you see where we are?’ and a droll voice, a dry voice came over, ‘Yes’.[laughs] Anyway, the bonus for this was we spent the night at Woodhall Spa and we were, we were able to spend the night in the mess and we were able to mix with those elite airmen, the 617 people. It was absolutely wonderful. Anyway, the next morning we flew the thirty five minutes back, back, back to base at Wigsley and that was our last training trip, flying training trip. The next day we went to, we transferred to RAF Syerston for Lanc finish school which we spent two weeks there. At the end of the two weeks we were being moved to squadron. We were now fully trained. Now, for some reason we, on the 24th of January 1945 we, we boarded a RAF transport to take us from there to squadron. For some reason and I don’t know why we were taken to RAF Balderton for the night. Now, we were absolutely dead beat when we got there. It’s a bit sexy.
[laughs]
Absolutely dead beat so we went to bed very early. Now, we were in a Nissen hut with about twenty beds and there was entrances both sides. Now, fast asleep, late on, I don’t know, about midnight, all of a sudden there was a door opened the other end and a couple, excited couple came in and they obviously didn’t know there was anybody there. Short time later the excited talk, sexual. [laughs] and this went on and on and on and on. Anyway satisfaction came in time and they crept out laughingly and after they’d gone a quiet voice says, ‘Did you hear all that?’ [laughs] It goes without saying that fit aircrew fully trained wouldn’t miss a thing like that. It certainly brightened my night up. The next day we were a, to 50 squadron Skellingthorpe. We arrived at RAF Skellingthorpe on the 25th of January 1945. Now, the atmosphere, there was quite an atmosphere on training, training, on training stations but it was nothing like this. There was that feeling like an electric feeling. There was so much bustle and things going off, watching, actually we were nearly month before we did our first operation but we, all right? Seeing aircraft take off, disappearing, new aircraft coming in, the wild, wild parties that were in the mess. The atmosphere was absolutely wonderful. Now as I said we were a month, we were doing training during the time and I remember wonder, wonder if, if I’m going to be up to it because you never know do you? Anyway, it was the 5th of March, the 5th of March by the time we, we did our first operation and what an operation. What an eye opener. Now, I remember we walked into the, we walked into the briefing room, and The excited chatter and then all of a sudden the briefing officer came in quite pleased and deathly silence instantly. Your target for tonight will be Bohlen. Bohlen. Apparently, I found out, it was going to be a ten hour trip. Your, your route will be passing the Ruhr, in the Ruhr, in the Ruhr 3 Group will be attacking the Ruhr. In that area expect to see enemy fighters attacking in pairs. One from above and one below. If one gets above, if one gets beneath you they will shoot you to pieces. So be careful. Beware. Anyway, briefing finished and we’re standing outside. They’re all chatting all excitedly together and I’m talking to Flight Lieutenant Ling’s rear gunner and I can’t remember his name but I knew that he’d been, he was getting towards the end of his tour. I says to him how are things going, what was the flight like? Obviously, obviously I was quite uptight and he said, ‘Oh don’t worry, there’s nothing to it. Nothing to it. And I said something to him which I’m not going to tell you about which made me think, made me think ‘You’re not taking it seriously enough.’ He said, ‘Oh’ he says, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve never seen, I’ve never seen a fighter at all.’ Unbelievably, we came, we came across our first Messerschmitt less than four hours later. He say, ‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing to it’ and I thought, anyway they got the chop on the next trip, the next what do you call it, you see. Anyway, I remember going out to the aircraft at Skellingthorpe and the tension in me was absolutely sky high and I remember it didn’t seem to take us long, didn’t seem to take us long before we were taxiing out and as we were taxiing out I was looking around and there was all, I’m certain as I remember 61 squadron were also going that night and there were all these aircraft taxiing around the perimeter. The atmosphere was absolutely electric and all above, above, above all above us we could see the Lincoln cathedral in front of us and all above we could see heavily laden bombers gradually circling up, circling around. The tension inside me just went just like that. I was ready for it. Anyway, we turns on to the peri track, taxies up to the runway, waits our turn, turns on to, turns on to the, turns on to the, on to the runway. Skip calls, ‘Brakes on. Full power.’ And then, ‘Right, brakes off’ and, and we began to surge forward and alongside the, alongside the runway was a line of ground staff waving us off. What a wonderful take off. What a wonderful send off. Anyway, this was the first time that we’d been in a, in a Lancaster with a full bomb load. We’d got fourteen thousand pounds of bombs on and two thousand two hundred gallons of fuel. It was as much as any aircraft, Lancaster aircraft could carry in those days. I remember we were surging along, we were surging along, the vibration, this was the first time I’d heard the engines on full throttle right through the gate. The aircraft was absolutely, all the fuselage was vibrating with the tension of it. Anyway, as I, as I remember one two five was the one, was about the speed that you used to take off. I remember engineers started to call out one twenty, one twenty one, one twenty two, one twenty four, one twenty five and then Skip dragged the aircraft and you could feel the fuselage vibrating as he was fighting to get the aircraft into the air and then we had another problem. The Skellingthorpe runway was aimed straight at Lincoln Cathedral on top of that hill. Now that’s like a pimple today but to us in, in 1945 it was a terrible object to get over and we used to have to be banking while still at stalling speed. We used to be banking to miss that, well, I say ‘bloody cathedral, oh God’ and then when we got to a thousand feet it was such a relief. Anyway, I remember, I remember gradually climbed up. Our operation height was twelve thousand feet. I remember circling around. There were hundreds of aircraft. I think there were about two hundred and fifty aircraft involved in that operation. They were oh wonderful sight, wonderful sight gradually, circling around getting up to height and then a green light, Very light came from came out of one of the, the leading aircraft and we immediately began into a bomb, into a stream and we started to head out for Germany over the North Sea. Now, gradually, we’d set off at half past five at night, March and it was getting dark, getting quite dusk and as we set out, as we set out over the, over the North Sea gradually the light disappeared and so the aircraft, the aircraft, gradually, my night vision was developed. It used to take you twenty minutes for your night vision to develop and, and gradually all you could see was just, you could see Lancasters when they were the image of them when they were very close and you could see the sparks of the engine and we used to, we used to, we’d been told, warned about these twin fighters so we were swaying from side to side so we could look straight beneath us so we wouldn’t be caught out and I remember we’d been flying over the North Sea and were now entering, entering, enemy territory for the first time. The tension built up in, the adrenalin. I should say adrenalin building up inside me and I remember I was looking, it was now almost pitch dark, although it was a moonlit night it was still dark and I remember watching this, watching this Lancaster drift slowly underneath us, about twenty or thirty feet beneath us and it had just drifted underneath us. I could just see the sparks from its engines and just as he drifted there was a tremendous explosion just a short distance behind us and the explosion, the light split in half, then the next second, two, two seconds later there were two tremendous explosions. Two Lancasters rammed each other and both exploded in mid-air and then it was back to complete darkness. It hadn’t, the shock, the shock it hadn’t taken me long to realise the difficulties of being on operational active service but you know sadly fourteen air crew, airmen had lost their lives in that second but the shockwave was, it was so close to us the shockwave came right through our aircraft, violently vibrated us and quite honestly I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had blown us down. Anyway, we carried on. We climbed up to twelve thousand feet. Now, it was a moonlit night, a moonlit night and the clouds, the clouds looked like a rolling sea. It was so picturesque. The clouds were up to ten thousand feet, we were two thousand feet above and it looked so picturesque. It was lovely and I remember my concentration was absolutely sky high and all of a sudden I saw something which could have been a fly on a window, it was just a slight movement right down deep, deep on, on the starboard side and I thought to myself, bloody hell a fighter. Can’t be. Who said he’d never seen a fighter? Yeah, I thought, anyway it was at that moment that I made, through inexperience, something which could have been, could have been fatal to us because I should, all my, all my training, I should have in actual fact immediately called and, and warned the crew what was happening. Nevertheless, despite this mistake I automatically aimed my guns at it. Gradually this object moved gradually astern and when it was dead astern at ten thousand feet gradually it started coming up. Now when it got to, when it got level with us the image of the aircraft filled my, filled the ring on my gun sight and it was at that moment that the hundreds of hours that I’d spent viewing, viewing pictures, silhouettes of, of fighter, of enemy fighters, fighters on screens in training paid off because I recognised it a Messerschmitt 109. Immediately, without, without a second thought I pressed my, pressed my button and gave it a prolonged burst straight at the fighter and I watched my, I watched my tracers go straight in it. At this fraction of a second I immediately switched on and shouted, ‘Fighter. Fighter. Dive, dive, dive.’ And the Skipper slammed the aircraft straight into a, into a vertical dive and he’s shouting me, ‘You mean corkscrew. You mean corkscrew.’ But I didn’t. I meant dive because there was no deflection required because he was absolutely dead astern. Anyway, I watched my tracers go straight into it, straight into it and the fighter immediately went straight down as if out of control straight into the cloud. I’m convinced now that I shot it down but of course rules do not allow you to claim anything when you don’t see the ground and we were at ten thousand, the clouds at ten thousand feet so therefore that’s but I’m convinced that I got him. Anyway, we carried on to the target, this was another couple of hours RT silence and all of a sudden, all of a sudden a voice, RT silence was broken. Now, a voice came over as calm as I’m talking to you, ‘Control to Link One how do you read me?’ And it was the, it was the voice of the controller who I feel certain was Wing Commander Stubbs, a man I had a great respect for. ‘Link One to control. Loud and clear. Control to Link One go in and mark the target.’ Ok. Right, carry,’ I listened to this conversation. We’re gradually, now we’re quite some distance from the target but gradually now the pathfinders are now beginning to drop their flares so the sky’s beginning to light up so I’m beginning to see lights in, lights in the sky and gradually as we are approaching as we are getting nearer and nearer the target. I’m listening to the conversation of the controller and the Link One now when everything was done and everything had been marked with satisfaction controller says, ‘Ok. Ok Link One, go home, go home.’ Then he called out which I’m certain was Bandwagon. They called the bomber stream Bandwagon, ‘Hello Bandwagon,’ and that was our call sign, ‘Hello Bandwagon. Come in and bomb the target. Bomb red flares,’ and he was giving instruction to which flares to bomb and when he’d finished all that he says, he says, now, ‘No flak. Watch out for fighters.’ So, anyway, we approach the target and just before the target, just before we reach the target all of a sudden a single engine fighter which I’m certain was a Messerschmitt 109 suddenly made a run at us. I immediately, now I was listening to the bomb aimer and Skipper beginning to give instructions for our bombing run and our instructions was that you should not corkscrew during that time. We were taught to be quiet so immediately I aimed and fired. Calamity. The back of my gun sight dropped out and a white light there, I’d been five hours in pitch darkness, and this white light bomb sight bulb was right in front of me. Now, it only took me seconds to put it together but twenty minutes for my, for my night vision to come back and during that time anything could have happened. I couldn’t have done a thing. I could hear what was happening and all the talk and I couldn’t see a thing. What happened to that fighter I will never know. Anyway, we went on our bomber run and, and I could hear the bomb aimer saying, ‘Left, left, steady, steady, steady. Ok bombs gone.’ Now, the bombs used to drop at about a thousand feet per second. We were twelve thousand feet so twelve seconds later he says, ‘Photograph taken.’ Now, immediately Skipper slammed the nose of the aircraft right down. We went straight down a couple of thousand feet straight into the cloud and we stayed in those clouds for hours. Anyway, we came out of the clouds eventually and then lo and behold as we came out of the cloud over to our, over to our side I can’t remember if it was port or starboard there was a bloody Lancaster flying on with all its lights on. The stupid buggers. With all his lights on. We scooted away from it as quick as we could. So anyway we got back to our area where the cathedral, over the cathedral. Now, Skellingthorpe, Scampton and Waddingon, their circuits almost intertwined around the cathedral, more or less. Now, when we used to come over the cathedral you can- now you can imagine everything was visual so therefore there were loyal scores of very, very tired, tired aircrew so all, all desperate to get home, desperate to get home so there was a tremendous danger of collision and another thing, another thing, the night before this, the night of the 4th , 4th of March, three intruders had shot three Lancasters down in the circuit at Waddington and one at Fulbeck so this had immediately filtered through us so instead of relaxing as one do after, after being in the turret for nigh on ten, eleven hours my concentration as we switched our landing lights on, we just used to have landing lights while we were in the circuit, and I remember as we switched our landing lights on about, about twenty aircraft close by and they must have been in different circuits switched their lights on. Now, I remember I was, my concentration was sky high and I remember thinking Skip calls twenty degrees of flap, a hundred degree of flap and I was all the time searching all the way around thinking to myself I’m not going to be caught out by an intruder because this was the dangerous, you’re like a sitting duck then. We came in to land we stopped in dispersal all the twelve hours of tension drained out of me. I thought to myself ‘bloody hell and this is only the first one’. And that was my first operation. Yeah. Another interesting operation was the one to Lutzkendorf which was on the 14th of March 1945. There were two hundred and forty five Lancasters involved and eleven Mosquitos. Eighteen aircraft failed to return. Never even reported in the paper and that’s nearly two hundred people it’s just, yeah, anyway. Anyway, took off about ten minutes to five. I remember we, we flew past the Ruhr and once again rear group, 3 Group were attacking the Ruhr and I remember as we passed by I could see the fight that was going on. I could see flak shells bursting in the air. Tremendous. I could see air to air tracer bullets from, from bomber to fighter. I could see bombs dropping and I thought bloody hell we’ve got another, we’ve got another two hours to go yet and then we continued a short distance away and now there was another problem. We’d been warned that there was a fighter, a fighter aerodrome, a night fighter ‘drome in this area which had a light shining from its roof, from the top of flying control so that, so that we knew from one that there would be, there would be fighters, night fighters in strength in this area and this light was on specifically so they could stay in the air until the last minute, down, refuel and be up again. Now, I remember I suddenly saw this and the adrenalin was such, I thought to myself God the night fighter are bound. All of a sudden I saw the airfield had been strafed. The light disappeared. Obviously, it must have been one of our aircraft. One of our aircraft. I know full well that putting the light out didn’t, didn’t make much difference to the fact that fighters were around but boy it did relieve me. Anyway, we carried on to the, we carried on to the target and once again, once again, I can’t remember the controller it might have been Wing Commander Stubbs but he went through the same procedure, went through the same procedure. I remember him saying at the end, ‘No flak. Look out for fighters. Watch out for fighters’. This was our fourth trip and the tension was beginning to build up in me as we were going through the target and I remember without me intercom switched on I was listening to the, I was listening to the bomb aimer saying, ‘Left, left, left, steady’ and I was shouting, I was shouting in a loud voice, ‘Drop the bloody thing. Drop the bloody thing and let’s get out of here.’ Anyway, after what seemed an interminable length of time he said ‘Bombs gone.’ Skip immediately slammed the aircraft down into a dive and disappeared from the, and as we as we left the target I thought to myself, ‘thank God, we got away with it’. Little did I know. Now, I remember we’d left the target, we’d been gone probably ten and fifteen minutes and I could still hear that controller over the target. ‘Bomb green, the green flare,’ do this, undershoot it, do this, do that. It was absolutely inspirational. He must have been, he seemed to have been over the target hours. Anyway as I’m listening to this left from the target about approximately fifteen minutes when all of a sudden a fighter flare burst straight above us. From complete darkness it was like switching the light on, an electric light on in a pitch dark room. The shock of it made me sink deep in, deep in to my, in to my turret. My seat. Mind you, immediately my mind started working like lightning and I, looking out of the, looking out of, I searched the area. I searched the area all the way, all the way. I searched the area all over and sure enough high on the starboard side I could my left I could see an FW190 coming in fast dragging all I’d been looking I hadn’t been turning my turret around so as quick as I can I’m dragging my turret around. I didn’t have time to aim. So, immediately I got anywhere near I pressed my, I starts firing, my gun starts rattling away I’m dragging, trying to drag my tracer, tracer bullets into it and I’m watching it. Then all of a sudden with this, this aircraft coming in fast I felt rather than saw something on my, deep on the starboard side and forcing myself to take my eyes off this aircraft I had a quick glance to the right, to the right, and there deep down, deep down on the port side. It’s my right but it’s the port side of the aircraft, deep down on the port side was a JU88 almost underneath us and I thought, bloody hell. Immediately I realised that if he could get underneath us he was going to shoot us to pieces so I stopped firing at him, drags my turret around and as soon as I can, as soon as I can I began firing at this JU88 and immediately, immediately they both of them broke away. Now, they played cat and mouse with us for twenty six minutes. Now, that might not seem a long, a long time but as each, each attack only lasted about ten seconds. How many times they came in I don’t know but anyway Lancasters, Lancasters didn’t have any power assisted controls. The Skipper was corkscrewing continuously for forty minutes. The physical effort on him must have been absolutely terrific. Anyway, the tension inside me remained after. I didn’t realise they were twenty six minutes. After a time, after a long time with my tension, with my concentration, still sky high they disappeared. They must have decided that, that, you know, either run out of fuel or they realised they might as well go for an easier target. Anyway, the navigator, I only know it was twenty six minutes because the navigator told me later but when we got back I remember the relief as we passed over the English coast. It was absolutely fantastic. I know we weren’t safe but the relief to be over. It seemed so much comfort to be coming over, over this country. Now, when we, when we, after we came in to land I found out that all ten thousand rounds that I’d supplied to my rear turret - I’d fired every one. There wasn’t one left. So if we’d have had another attack by one of those fighters I couldn’t have done anything about it. That was as close we were to disaster. Phew. And sadly, sadly Flight Lieutenant Ling and crew did not return from this, from this operation and I’m not surprised. Well I shouldn’t say this but, no I won’t say any further. I did think that the rear gunner was getting a bit blasé and probably he wasn’t doing what he should have been doing but I don’t know. I can’t say anything more about that. But that was my fourth operation.
Another interesting operation was a daylight operation to Nordhausen. There were two hundred and forty Lancasters involved. Now during briefing we’d been told that the SS troops had been transferred to Nordhausen to protect Hitler. Now, this was what made it interesting with thoughts that we might be bombing Hitler. Now, we didn’t have any flak or fighters to contend with but all we had was problems. Now, I remember we took off. Generally speaking most of my operations in fact all of the other operations we used to take off from, from Skellingthorpe and go straight out to the North Sea. On this occasion we were going to travel south, south and meet up with 3 group aircraft and, and, and travel to Nordhausen with them, you see, which, which meant we were going to drive past the London area. Now, we’d been warned at briefing be careful near the London area. Their ack ack gunners don’t like strangers, unidentified aircraft flying over. They will fire first and ask second so beware. Anyway, having taken off in the early hours of the morning it was still absolutely pitch. 2.30 we took off. It was still pitch dark as we went by, went by the London area and I remember as we arrived there, there were absolutely hundreds and hundreds of searchlights shining up and quite honestly we were so close to them I thought, I was really on tenterhooks, because I thought bloody hell, thinking about the fourteen thousand pound of bombs underneath us and those, those twitchy ack ack gunners. Anyway, I was looking down, all of a sudden Skip slammed the aircraft in to a vertical drive. Now the g-force on me was tremendous. It drew me, stretched my body up and my body, my head hit the top of the fuselage with a bang, the top of the turret rather with a bang and just at that precise second, now you’ve got to remember that I had no perspex at all in front of me, so, therefore, therefore the open air was just there and just as that happened a Lancaster aircraft flew just over and I swear to this day that if I’d have put my hand out I could have touched that aircraft. Another one of our nine lives. Anyway we carried on. We met with up 3 Group, over Reading it was, and we drifted out over the, over the, on to enemy territory. I remember we were so widely spaced out well, we were used to flying at night-time, we didn’t need to be in a gaggle when all of a sudden there was a voice came up, RT silence broken and it was obviously the fighter leader controller, fighter leader and he shouts up ‘Close up. Close up. How do you expect me to bloody protect you?’ Anyway, we got to Nordhausen and boy did we close up. Our operational height was about twelve thousand feet as far as I could remember. I can’t remember. Somewhere in that region. But two hundred and fifty aircraft then from being miles apart suddenly homed in together in to a thin line and I remember there was aircraft all the way around us, almost touching us. Now, I didn’t mind the ones at the side or the ones below or the ones straight above us but I was leaning forward in my turret and looking up. The ones I was concerned of one above in front that I couldn’t see because I thought to myself they’ll be dropping bloody bombs on us and I’m looking at them when all of a sudden, all of a sudden a full load of bombs missed the back of my turret with this, with a fraction. Almost touching us. Ten, ten one thousand pound bombs and a cookie. Now, they go down like lightning. Fifty foot beneath us was a Lancaster. The first, the first thousand pounder hit this fuselage right in the middle, right, just at the back of the mid upper turret. I cringed, expecting it to explode but lo and behold the bomb went straight through the fuselage and disappeared, continued down. The next, the next thousand pounder hit the middle of the wing and I still couldn’t believe it. I’m still cringing again and it bounced back and bounced off. Now the cookie, which was a contact bomb, they must have had err, you know biometric things that didn’t explode above five hundred feet or something but the cookie was a contact bomb. It missed the side of the fuselage by a skin of paint. Anyway, I remember the, the aircraft disappeared and there was a lot, there was a lot happening. I forgot about it. Anyway, by sheer chance at the end of the war I was listening to Canadian troops embarking on to the ship to go home and, and the person being interviewed was a pilot and it was an interesting story and do you know he went through what I’ve just told you. It was the, it was the pilot of this aircraft and he said, he said, and it was so pleasing to know, that they’d staggered back to the North Sea and dropped their bombs and got, and they survived the war. Anyway, anyway we were coming over the North Sea about, about ten thousand feet and all of a sudden I saw two Lancasters drop right down to zero feet and I thought bloody hell they’re going in. They’re going in. And all of a sudden from the back of one of them I suddenly saw foam appear and it was like watching a motorboat swing, speeding along and this foam behind, I can’t remember, two engines, two of the engines, this foam was behind it for about four hundred yards when gradually it picked up, climbed up and I thought to myself, ‘oh they’re ok. They’re alright’. Anyway, by sheer coincidence four days later when we returned from an operation we were diverted to Spilsby of all places, 44 squadron which I eventually finished up on and we were able to get out of the aircraft to have a walk you know and have a stretch and I was walking by this aircraft which had got props bent and all the props on one side. I think it was just on one side [laughs] I think it was just on one side. They were bent almost double and I, and there was a ground staff working on it and I said, ‘God, what happened to that aircraft?’ He said, ‘The silly buggers,’ he says, ‘This bloke and another bloke coming from an operation a few days ago, they were playing about to find which one could get closer to the sea. This silly bugger dragged his props in the water. Nearly drowned his rear gunner.’ I thought to myself, ‘God, how did they manage to keep the aircraft flying with damage like that?’ Anyway, he said they were being court martialled. I don’t know. Anyway, and that was that.
[laughs]
Another very interesting operation was a daylight operation to Hamburg oil installations, Germany on the 9th of April 1945. During this operation twenty five jet fighters ME262s attacked the bomber force. This was, I believe, the first time that any fighters were ever used during any war, first attack. Anyway, there were, there were, there were fifty seven bombers involved. 50 squadron, 61 squadron I think we got twelve and something like that, 61 squadron and 617 and 9 squadron. We were to, we were to drop, we were to drop thousand pounders on the oil installations and 617 and 9 squadron were to drop a tall boy. I can’t remember if eight thousand or twelve thousand pound bombs on the, on the submarine pens. Now, the thing was that because of the weight of the Tall Boy they’d taken out of the Lancasters, 617 and 9 squadrons they’d taken away the bomb doors and had actually taken off the mid upper turret to lighten the aircraft so to be able to carry it ready to take off and because of this we were, we were instructed that we were to fly in a gaggle and fly as quick, as close as possible to support them. Now another thing the apparently 309 squadron, a Polish squadron flying mustangs, would escort us and 65 squadron were also taking part. Now, we took off at about well 14.48 I believe it was. The weather was perfect and I remember our operational height was twelve thousand feet. Now, I remember we were passing over, we were passed quickly, over, over the, over the North Sea and I’m thinking to myself now Hamburg was a very, very dangerous place. A very important place to Germany. Still is. Still is. But because of this over the war, during the war they’d built up a tremendous defence and if you had any aircraft attacking there we could have heavy losses so we knew that we were in for a difficult time when we got there. I remember passing over, over Germany and all of a sudden every so often the flak was bursting, shells were bursting shells were bursting around us but quite honestly I never gave them a thought. You know I was used to night, night bombing where the flak was a bright light but I never gave as I say, probably I should have done. Anyway we got to, got to Hamburg, near to Hamburg and I rotated my turret. I can’t remember port or starboard side but we were coming up and turned square to the right over Hamburg.
Other: Can somebody come in here?
Going back a little bit I remember as we were going over the, going over the North Sea it was a completely cloudless sky, brilliant sun and I remember thinking to myself where are those bloody fighters supposed to be, that are supposed to be protecting us? Three squadrons were supposed to be protecting us but every so often, every so often we saw right in the distance swirling around oh I thought, ‘Oh lovely. There they are.’ Anyway we carried on. I remember as we, as we, as we entered, got over mainland Europe gradually every so often we’d hear the phuf phuf of flak shells at the side of us which I just ignored. I don’t know a bit complacent probably but I just didn’t care about them. Didn’t take any, anyway we gets to Hamburg and Hamburg, I’m just, I’m repeating myself now. Hamburg was a very special place. Was then. Is now. And during the war years they’d built up a tremendous, tremendous defensive force. They, they could send up a box barrage of flak in an instant and I remember we were approaching, approaching Hamburg and I can’t remember which side we were. Left or right. But I leaned forward, leaned forward and I looked and turned my turret to the beam and leaned forward to look forward and I could almost see in front of us and I could see the target as we were approaching her and I’m not joking I have never seen flak like it. We were, we were, I think we, I think we were, our height was we bombed from about sixteen thousand feet but up to around our bombing height there was a complete black cloud of flak shells bursting out and I remember thinking to myself, bloody hell we’re never going to get through that. Now I’m just going to divert a little bit because we were at the back of the fifty seven aircraft and a friend of mine on 61 squadron, Ted Beswick, he was in the front aircraft and he was telling me later he says they were watching this predict, this flak. I forget what you call it. Predicted flak. It gradually approaching him and he said until one burst right in front of the nose and he says and, and, and parts flew through the front through the bomb aimers position and, and, and badly injured the engine, the bomb aimer. Anyway, we carried on to the target. We turned on to the target and we, I’m not joking with you, I can’t describe what it was like going through the flak. It was absolutely frightening you. I was thinking, I say, frightening. Anyway, believe it or not we went, we got through the target unscathed. We dropped our bombs and I understand it was a successful bombing. Anyway, we left the target and I could see aircraft. I feel certain I could see aircraft around, some damaged but nobody shot down. Anyway we’d left the target and we’d been left a few minutes. I then turned my turret around and I thought to myself, bloody hell, we’re back marker. Sitting duck for any fighters. So immediately I switched on. I said, ‘Skip, Skip we’re back marker. Sitting duck for any fighters.’ He says, ‘Ok. Ok.’ So he immediately shoves full throttle on and gradually, gradually we moved forward so we could see aircraft behind me. That made me feel a bit better. Now, a short time later and I can’t remember how long, all of a sudden twenty five ME262s attacked the formation. I only saw five but I know from later reports it was twenty five but I saw five aircraft coming along the, coming along the ground level and I, I called, ‘Skip Skip I can see, I can see five small aircraft on almost at ground level.’ God, I’ve never seen aircraft travelling so fast. They, they, they began to climb. I says, ‘God they’re climbing faster than I’ve ever seen any aircraft dive.’ Within seconds they were up to our operational height. They levelled out and came straight at us canons blazing. Canons blazing’s straight through us like a dose of salts. Now, one of them come straight at us and I’m firing as hard trying, trying as hard as I could ‘cause it’s like lightning is happening, trying to drag my tracer bullets into it and it came so close I thought to myself it’s going to ram us and I’m not joking he then swung in between us and another Lancaster by my side, by our side and, and I could see the, I could see fighter, I could see the fighter pilot as close as I can see you now. Anyway, I’m swinging and firing my turret and all of a sudden I realised that I’m firin my, still firing my bullets straight through this Lancaster at the side of me. I lifted my arms like lightning off, off my, off my off my controls and, and, and I thought to myself bloody hell, I thought to myself might have shot down my, the aircraft but of course you can’t shoot an aircraft down by firing straight at it you have to fire in front of them but that was fortunate because it was a 617 aircraft. I don’t know what would have been said. Anyway, we, we’d left the target, we left the target and only a few seconds later after they’d attacked us all of a sudden by the side of us the aircraft, the back marker aircraft exploded, broke in half and began to drop straight down. Now, when it had dropped about a thousand feet I saw although the rear turret would immediately lose, as it broke in half, lose, lose any control we had we had a handle which we could turn and swing the turret around. Anyway, after about a thousand feet I saw the, this is another story I’ll tell you in a bit which I’d forgotten to tell you. Forgotten to tell you. I watched this rear gunner drag himself out of the, out of the turret and fall away and I thought to myself oh thank God, he’s, thank God he’s, going to get away with it. He was a friend of mine. Anyway, the parachute opened and a few seconds puff it exploded in flames and then I had to watch this friend of mine, friend of mine struggling, drop away, gradually drop away to his death. Now, I’ll tell you a little, I’d forgotten to tell you but when we went out to the aircraft, when we went out to the aircraft after we’d had the briefing you all race out and you all try to get on to the buses as there were buses and lorries. Now, the buses were a lot of comfort so therefore you raced to get in those. Now we raced in and I sat in the front seat and, and sitting at the side of me was Norman, Norman Garfield Fenton. Friend of mine. I say he’s a friend, he was a squadron friend not that I knew much about his private life other than that he was from Kettering. But I says to him, ‘What aircraft are you in? He says, ‘Fred. F Freddy.’ Now F Freddy, we did four ops in there so it gave us, gave us chat, you know, something to talk about. Anyway we got to the dispersal area and, and climbs out. All of us rush to our aircraft and climbed aboard and did our pre-start checks and afterwards there was still an hour or so to go. We climb out of the fuselage and, and, and went Taffy and I went, went and sat down, sat down on the grass and a few seconds later Norman walks across and we sat down and there we are. I think we took off at 2.30 so it was quite warm and where we sat there chatting away talking about what we were going to do. I remember I do believe he said he’d got a little child. I can’t remember but I think he said he had a young family but we were chatting about what we were doing and four hours later I watched him die. You know, it really did affect me. I mean, at night time you just disappeared, didn’t have the same effect on you but knowing, I recognised the aircraft as it dropped away as V and F. I could see it clearly so I knew this was Dennis, Dennis struggling and nearly got out and I had to watch him fall and it did affect me for quite a long time and poor Dennis and Flying Officer [Berryman] who was his Skipper and, and one of the other crew are buried in, in Hamburg but oh dear it did affect me for quite a long time that. Ok. Now one thing I’ve got when we got back to briefing. When we got back to briefing we turned around and told the briefing officers we’d been attacked by jets and they says not possible. Not possible. Not possible. There’s no, there’s no airfields around Hamburg for jets but little did we know, little did we know that jets, the Germans were taking off from motorways. Ten out of ten for them for innovation. But apparently the, the powers that be killed the story because they were so fearful of the effect it might on morale, of morale of our aircrew. But then I want to go back a little bit now to Ted Beswick. He saw all, I only saw five but he saw all twenty five. Now, one of them came at us came at them and he shouts port corkscrew, corkscrew, go, go but of course they couldn’t because they were in gaggle. Anyway when the, when the ME262s had attacked they began to swung around and began to go around to reposition they could only do one or two attacks because of limited fuel but one drew up by accident right on, right on their starboard side I can’t remember starboard or port side. Anyway he immediately fired and saw his tracer bullets go straight into it, straight into it and immediately, immediately the aircraft went straight down as if out of control and he watched it spiral down. Ted is convinced that he made a kill, he made a kill. Of course he couldn’t claim it because once again he didn’t see the ground. But they had another incident they did. They had a hang-up bomb. They couldn’t get rid of it and try as they might they couldn’t get rid of it so they started to go back and try to get rid of it in the, in the North Sea. They still couldn’t get rid of it so they decided to bring it back, bring it back to Skelly. Now as they came in, in to land there was a bang as they touched down and the bomb dropped on to the bomb doors. Now, they pulled up immediately at the end of runway, got out of the aircraft, scooted away from the aircraft called up and a short time later, a short time later well some time later along comes the ground staff, gingerly opens up the, opens up the, winds open the, the bomb doors, bomb doors. Two of them stands there, catches a thousand pounder and then, you know, we have got a lot to thank those air crew people, ground staff people for. Wonderful, wonderful unsung heroes. One, one interesting operation was to [?] in Norway. I remember there was, I can’t remember how many aircraft, several hundred aircraft involved. But we’d been in we’d been told that we were to fly at zero level up the North Sea and I remember in the half-light seeing probably a couple of hundred Lancasters flying, almost touching, almost touching the waves. It was so exciting. I loved it I did. And I’m certain Skip enjoyed it just as a much as I did. Anyway, we got to the, we got to the, got to Norway and, I can’t remember how long it took us. Anyway, we climbed up to bombing height which would be, it would have been about ten to twelve thousand feet. Now, I seemed to remember one gun, one heavy gun but if I’m to believe records, records say there was no, no flak but I seem to remember one gun as we approached. One heavy gun. Anyway, we came in, we came in to bomb and, and we’re virtually on our bombing run and I’m listening to the Skip and the bomb aimer conversing when all of a sudden, now, always before when the Skip had had to dive the aircraft had to change direction of the aircraft it had always been a dive. On this occasion it was different all together. All of a sudden the aircraft reared straight up. Now, I remember I’m clinging on to my controls and I was transfixed. I was transfixed and even though my head still thumped the top of the turret because of the reaction of the aircraft swinging and at the same time we used to carry our flasks and sweets and chocolates given to people, aircrew and I remember them coming straight up in the air, straight up in the air and as the aircraft, aircraft levelled they all went straight out of the window and I said oh sod it. I was saving those for the return. But another thing happened. Ass this was happening. I’m hearing a swirl, a swirling noise of machine gun noise coming into my turret. Thousands of bullets was coming along the ducts into the aircraft. Now, I didn’t realise this was what happened but they came in and completely jammed the turret. Anyway, we levelled out. We crept back over the sea and got back home but if anything had happened we couldn’t have done a thing about that. Now, the thing is when I was on that operation, in our billet, in our billet was another crew err if you just give me a second I’ll remember his name. I’ll just get, now this operation was on the 25th, 26th of April 1945. Now, in my billet, in my billet was another crew. Now this crew, they disappeared and I didn’t know what happened so I just, this is when people got the chop things, just used to take there was usually two crews to a Nissan but when they got the chop they used to take, just take their things out. They disappeared. Never heard anything about them. Anyway, last year, last year at our reunion, our reunion a fellow approaches near our memorial. He says, ‘Hello James. Do you remember me? And I says to him, ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember.’ Well, he says ‘You were in the next bed to me on 1945. January 1945.’ I says, ‘Oh yes.’ I said ‘What happened to you then?’ I said, ‘You disappeared didn’t you?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ He says, he said, ‘When you were going on [?] we were on Exodus.’ Exodus operation. Fetching prisoners back from, from Europe, probably Brussels. Anyway, he says, ‘We dropped the prisoners, the POWs, ex-POWs down he said and headed for home and on the way back we crashed.’ He said, the, the ‘We had problems, engine problems and in trying to avoid these houses the wing tip hit the ground and, he says, ‘And it slewed into the ground. My turret was thrown off into, into a field.’ He said, ‘My guns were buried in the ground.’ He said, ‘I was in hospital for a week.’ He said the mid upper turret, the mid upper gunner got away with it he got a broken leg but the rest of the crew were all killed. I said, ‘Oh good God.’ I says, ‘I wondered what happened.’ They just disappeared. So there you are. Made contact all those years later but how did he finally manage? Probably he managed to find me because with me doing so much on our website. I’m better known. More people know me then I remember them. That’s probably it isn’t it. Could be couldn’t it? But an interesting story that isn’t it? There you are.
MJ: Ahum
HJF: Now then. I want to carry on. On the 1st of June, is it on? Switch her on.
MJ: It is on.
HJF: Yeah. On the 1st of June ‘45 we were transferred from 50 squadron to 44 squadron to be part of, to be part of Tiger Force. The intention was to, to, to fly us straight out, quickly out to the Far East. As a matter of fact Okinawa was going to be our base. So we, we went, we transferred to Spilsby. Now, from day one we started doing high level training. Anyway, I can’t remember but it was a few days after we got, one of our trips, it was only one and three quarter hour trips I think it was just about the worst one of all. I remember we’d got fourteen thousand pounds of bombs we were going to drop into dispersal area in the North Sea and as we taxied around all of a sudden, the port, the port inner set on fire. Now, the smoke was coming and filling my turret and I thought to myself silly bugger put your oxygen mask on, puthering in to me. Anyway, rapidly the, the engine was feathered and after a few minutes the Skip calls up flying control and tells them, ‘Engine fire. Waiting for instructions.’ We waited for instructions and a few minutes later the flying control calls, ‘Right, start the engine up. Give it a run up. Take off when you’re ready.’ When he switched off there was a chorus of voices, ‘We’re not bloody going, the stupid buggers, that engine wants checking. We’re not bloody going.’
MJ: Ahum
HJF: ‘We’re not bloody going.’ Anyway, Skipper in the meantime started the engine up. He revs it up, he says, ‘It seems ok to me. We’ve got to go.’ And we kept saying, ‘We’re not bloody going.’ Anyway, we turns on to the, and eventually gets and I’m not joking I was full of trepidation. I could feel in my water that something else was going to happen. Now, anyway we’d just got our wheels off the deck and the starboard outer seized. Now, let’s just think about it. We’ve got a dicky port inner and we got a, a seized starboard outer and we’ve got fourteen thousand pound of bomb. I’m not, that’s as much as an aircraft immediately started to vibrate telling me, telling me she’s going to stall. She’s going to stall. Now, quick as that I thought, my apprehension just disappeared. I thought to myself I’m going to, I’m going to jump no matter what the height. So, quick as lightning I swings my turret to beams, pulls open the doors. like a flash I was sitting outside and there I sat outside listening to, feeling the violent vibrations of the, of the aircraft as it gradually gained speed and height. It took us about thirty minutes to get up to about two thousand feet and while I’m sitting there just thinking about myself there our poor old Skipper was at the front fighting to keep this aircraft in the air. What a brilliant, brilliant Skipper. Anyway, we eventually get, gradually the vibration stopped. We got to the dispersal area, drops the bombs as near, as near as we could and returned. That, that trip took an hour and a quarter and it seemed the longest one of all. Good God we were so close and then what turned out to be our final trip, final flight actually for seventy, nearly seventy years as far as I was concerned. We were taking part in a dodge operation. Which, Dodge Operations were returning, returning British soldiers, taking, taking Italian troops back to Italy, to Bari in Italy and bringing British soldiers home. Now, we’d been so many times we used to fly visual. We used to go down to Marseilles, turn left over Marseilles, out over, out over the North Sea to the tip of Corsica and, and, and then make for Rome and over Rome straight for Bari. Now we were so casual about this we used to fly you know, anyway as it turns out the engineer, the engineer used to do a bit of piloting every so often. They used to keep their hand in. Anyway, fortunately the engineer had strapped himself in. Now we were carrying twenty one, twenty one Italians and I was sitting in the fuselage, in the fuselage. I was more or less a steward. Now, we were climbing, we were climbing up to ten tenths cloud. Now it was a very, very stormy day. Very, very hot day. Tropical storms everywhere and as it turned out we were the only aircraft only two of us arrived at Bari. Aircraft were diverted all different places. Anyway, we were climbing up through ten tenths cloud at ten thousand feet when all of a sudden cause safety height over, to cross the tip of Corsica, safety height being eleven thousand feet when all of a sudden the aircraft veered straight up, straight up and we flew slap bang into the centre of cunim, Now the tremendous upward force hit the belly of the, hit the aircraft and flung it straight up in the air. She stalled, dropped on her back and started to vertically drop down. Now, the Skipper standing by the side of the engineer as I say he was, he was, he was piloting was thrown up to the roof and he dragged himself around the, and for a time he thought to himself bloody hell we’re going. I’m going to drag myself back. Then he realised that the flight engineer was beginning to get a bit of joy so he drags himself around the fuselage, the side of the fuselage to a standing position alongside him and there was only single controls in a Lancaster. He then grabs hold of the controls and the two of them used all their strength to pull the aircraft out, out of its vertical dive. Now, as I told you I was in the back of the aircraft looking after these, looking after the Italians. I was thrown up to the ceiling and a water tank that was there for them floated up in the air, floated up in the air and were virtually trapped beyond the fuselage and as I looked, I could look at the back and there was, we’d got a Lancaster wheel in in the back, in the back which we were taking. Probably somebody had a burst tire. They’d left it loose. The silly buggers had left it loose. I watched this, watched this Lancaster wheel do a full circle of the fuselage. It smashed the auto gyro and it went around and it hit the machine gun ducts and right to the side of the ducts were the, were the rudder bar controls and I thought to myself, I was praying that it wouldn’t come rolling towards us when the next second, the next second with a slam I was banged down, banged down on to the floor, banged down on to the floor and I dragged myself up. All the Italians were in a complete panic and without thinking I just slotted the bloke at the side of me, slotted him, knocked him down and said, ‘Lie down.’ I made him lie down. Anyway, then I thought to myself, I thought as I’m standing there I thought to myself, actually I called Skip up. I said oh I think one of these, one of these Italians had pulled the [aerial] controls and we knew we’d lost an aircraft through somebody pulled themselves, their all external inside the aircraft and pulled them up and it had caused the aircraft to crash because it was almost you know in a position where they couldn’t change so I thought that’s what had happened, Anyway, as I’m standing looking all of a sudden the aircraft reared up again but not quite as bad. So I thought sod it I’ll have a look at this. Now our mid upper gunner had been transferred because of the end of the war you see, had transferred so I climbed into his turret and I was amazed. We should have been at eleven thousand feet to cross over safely over the tip of Corsica. We were then travelling along the coastline on the edge of the mountains, parallel. Somehow or other in the process of diving vertically we’d changed direction. Now, I don’t know whether it were luck or whether it was the skill of our pilot but anyway we turned, we were flying along the coast of, coast, coastline. Now then we came into land. Now at Bari, at Bari there was only one single runway. One single runway. And, and aircraft were, aircraft were positioned, were parked either side of the runway. Yanks on the left, yanks on one side and all Lancasters on the other. Now, as we came in to land, another thing, just at the end of the runway was a, was a large quarry and on very hot days, on very hot days used to cause an air pocket above the, right above the end of the runway. Now Skipper might have forgotten that or it might have been just because let’s face it I was stressed up and I was only looking after them, so God only knows how he was feeling but anyway as we came in to land we dropped from about sixty foot straight down. We hit the ground, we hit the tarmac with such a bang and the aircraft reared off, reared off, slewed to, slewed to port and, and coming, taxiing right down, right down just in front of us was a, was a flying fortress. We were heading straight for it. Skip immediately slams port throttle, full port throttle on, slews the aircraft and I could feel the undercarriage bending. Why it didn’t break I don’t know and there we are slewing across to the other side and going straight for the Lancs and he shoved full throttle on the other side and we straightened out and that was it and we levelled out. Now, you might have thought that was enough trouble for one thing but when we were coming up, we stayed there four days and I remember I was standing, we were waiting to return and we were standing about halfway along the runway and there were thousands of troops, thousands. There were hundreds of aircraft and thousands of troops, American and British, and we were watching the first Lancaster to take off and it came by us and it was almost as it came flashing by us it was almost at take-off speed when all of a sudden it turned completely ninety degrees. Now there were four line I think, I can’t remember whether it was three line or four lines but it went through the first ones, first ones, missed all the aircraft but hit another one in the line absolutely broadside and just as it hit its undercarriage collapsed but when it hit it’s props were churning into the side of the aircraft churning, churning. Now, thousands of us ran across thinking to ourself, expecting that there would be many many fatalities, many many fatalities but when we got to the aircraft, when we got to the aircraft there was a great big hole in the nose of the aircraft. Three, three, three soldiers climbed out of the front of the nose and do you know and people were pouring out of all sides of the engine. All sides of the aircraft. Do you know there were thousands of people out but do you know to my knowledge there was only one person, there were nobody killed and one person injured and that was he was injured through flying glass. Absolutely fantastic. I thought to myself this is a bloody mugs game. It’s time I pack this game up. Well I’ll tell you now it was an uneventful trip back to the, back to the, back to England but that was the last time I flew in any aircraft until about 2012.
[laughs] 1.38.08
Now, at the, I now over the years, over the years over the last, nearly twenty years I’ve been involved with the 50 and 61 Squadron Association website. Now, quite honestly I never, until, until I was in my seventies I’d never used a computer. But anyway, anyway I was instrumental in helping, helping, eventually, not for a start in helping to start up our website 50 and 61 Squadron Association websites. Now, I have a veteran’s album. I don’t do hardly anything these days Mike [Connock] does it but until, at our reunion 209 Air Vice Marshall Nigel Baldwin came up to me and says, ‘James, I’ve got a story here, an interesting story which would be good for your veterans album.’ Now, it was then I was interested to, I was then introduced to a person called Chris Keltie. Now -
Other: I don’t want to hear your secrets.
HJF: Yeah Chris Keltie. He then, Chris told me a story which at the time -
Other: Make him at least give you a drink.
HJF: No. No. You’re alright.
Other: At least make him. Now I’m telling you. Go on.
HJF: Oh did, did we bring that cup of coffee in? Did we leave that coffee in there? I don’t think we did did we?
MJ: No.
HJF: Oh bloody hell we forgot. Oh sorry.
HJF: As I say. Chris Keltie. Chris Keltie. He told me a story which at the time I just didn’t believe. I couldn’t believe that anybody, because of my experiences, I couldn’t believe that anybody could do what I was being told but he was telling me that a pilot whilst severely injured and weakened by loss of blood had regained control of an earthbound Lancaster and, and in pitch darkness brought the thing in to land and thereby saved the lives of, as it turned out, three of his crew members. For this he got nothing. Not even get, now I’ll tell you the full story. On the, it’s Victoria stuff. Victoria Cross stuff. I’m not joking with you. It was in July 1944 I can’t quite remember exact date. It might have been the 4th or 5th. Anyway, they successfully, they were bombing a V1 bomb site. It was 61 squadron aircraft. QR D Dog was the aircraft. Bill North was, Bill North, flight lieutenant. He was the flying officer at the time but it was Bill North, Bill North was the pilot and his aircraft was QR Dog. Now they were to, from thirteen thousand feet they were going to bomb the V1 sites. Now, which they were the first aircraft to bomb it and after, as they left the target an FW190 sprayed their aircraft. It blew away the fin, the port fin. It blew away the port fin. Blew away the port outer engine and fuel tank and it also it splattered the middle of the turret. Now, the mid upper gunner, now I used to say it was either between six and eight bullets, non life saving bullets in his body. Unbelievable. Splattered the turret. Anyway, it splattered all the Perspex, the cockpit Perspex and, and the pilot screamed out in agony as four bullets hit him. Two in his thigh and two in his left arm. Now, his left arm one of them hit the nerve and it paralysed his arm so his arm was flailing there. Now, immediately and the aircraft immediately begins, it’s earthbound screaming towards the earth. He immediately gives instructions to bail out and begins to drag himself out to go to the escape hatch. Now, as he drags himself out of the seat the flight engineer who is sitting by his side reaches back. Now, as the pilot had sat on his parachute. Now, but the, but the flight engineer and the rest most of the crew, the rear turret and rear gunner all had clip on chutes now his was clipped on the fuselage. Now, he reaches back to unclip his, his ‘chute off the fuselage, the side of the fuselage and as he pulls it off it’s been shot to pieces by bullets. It’s just at that point Bill was about to drop out of the escape hatch. Quickly he grabs hold of his shoulder and shouts my parachutes gone, my parachutes gone. Now, nobody would have blamed Bill North If he’d have thought to himself nothing I can do. I’m badly injured myself and just to have gone just to continue to drop out but without one second thought he made a conscious decision to drag himself back into his to his controls. Now, the, the landing an aircraft, a Lancaster is a two man job. You need, you need the help of the flight engineer. The flight engineer was frozen with fear. Couldn’t do anything. Now, Bill North, with one hand, his adrenalin must have been five hundred percent I have no idea how he did it but unbelievably with the aircraft screaming earthbound he regains control and in pitch darkness not only did he regain control but in this very heavily wooded area he found, he found a clearing, brought the aircraft in to land from an impossible height at an impossible speed. No, no flaps involved because the bloke couldn’t, the flight engineer couldn’t do anything. Had the presence of mind as he brought the aircraft in to land it tail down so there would be less danger of fuel tank, of fuel explosion and landed and when it became stationery he was so weak from the loss of blood that he slipped into unconsciousness. Now then, as it turned out not only had he saved the life of the flight engineer alongside him but apparently the mid upper gunner and another person, I think wireless operator, were both trapped in the fuselage because their turret ‘chutes had been shot to pieces, so they, as I say he slipped into unconsciousness so they had to carry, carry him, they had to carry him out of the aircraft and as they laid him on the grass at the side of the plane he slipped into unconsciousness and they thought he was dying. Anyway, time went by. The French were involved but I can’t remember who else was involved but in time the Germans came, whisked him into a hospital and he remained in hospital for several months after which he was, he was transferred to a concentration camp and he finished the war, and finished the war in a concentration camp. For this he didn’t get any mention in despatches. Not even a mention in despatches. Absolutely disgraceful. This is, this is, this is VC stuff. Now when Mr Ball when, when Nigel Ball contacted me I, I wrote this story, this was several years before, I wrote his story on my website. Now last year, October during last year the, the sons of, of Bill North, he’d passed away the year before, wrote to David Cameron to thank him for what he’d to done to get the air crew their memorial in London and thanked him for getting the clasp. Bloody clasp. Ridiculous. Anyway, anyway out of the blue, credit to David Cameron. David Cameron phoned them personally. No wrote to them personally and invited to them to come and see him at the, at the House of Commons. Now, they decided that what a golden opportunity this to try and get a posthumous award for their father. So they put together a delegation of about ten people and they wanted a representative of the squadron association to be, to be, to be with them. Now, as to whether I was the only one or not I’ve no idea but I was the person that was invited to go. Now, I travelled down to London and I remember, I remember we, we, David Cameron was wonderful actually. I remember he took us and we were chatting to him in his office and he was chatting to all the party and I couldn’t hear him he was right at the far end of the room and I says, ‘I can’t hear.’ And he says, ‘ok’ and got, upped sticks and came and sat right to the side of me and I’m listening to them talking. Now, quite honestly as I was listening to him you know how people are when they’re talking to someone of higher authority? They, they become meek and mild don’t they? And I’m listening and I don’t hear very well. After they’d been going on for quite some time I thought to myself they’re missing the point so in actual fact I had spoken to him and told him that why I was there to represent the association and I, I interceded. I said, ‘But sir, we’re missing the point of our visit.’ and I says and I then went into detail of this, of what Bill North had done and I says to him this is bloody Victoria Cross stuff and for this he gets nothing. Not even a mention in despatches. This is a complete disgrace and I remember, I remember David Cameron looked set aback and he looks at me and says, ‘Well I don’t know. All the hassle I’m getting here.’ He said in a friendly way. It wasn’t nasty. ‘All the hassle I’m getting here and he says the hassle I’ve had in question time today and he says and it’s my birthday today.’ And I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ He said, ‘It’s my birthday today.’ I says, ‘It’s mine as well’ and he reached over and he said, ‘Birthday boys.’ [laughs]
[laugh]
There you are but do you know something we had, we had a celebration last year for my ninetieth birthday and, and, and seventieth wedding anniversary and last year. It was in October. October. And last year, about three weeks before our, before our party a friend of ours and I don’t know how he got this phone number my friend answers the phone and this voice says, ‘Hello, this is David Cameron here’ and she says, ‘Oh don’t – tell me another one.’ And he said, ‘No. This is David Cameron ringing from the House of Commons. Can you give me the details of Mr and Mrs Flowers celebrations’ on the, and you know he said, ‘Because I want to send them a letter’ and lo and behold lo and behold on the, on the, my birthday arrives a letter comes, ‘Dear Mr Flowers,’ from the House of Commons ‘I’m writing to you wish you a very happy ninetieth birthday. This is a marvellous occasion and I’m sure you will use this opportunity to celebrate all your many achievements and all you have seen and experienced. I would like to send you, Samantha and my best wishes for a wonderful birthday.’ That was on the 9th of October. On the 21st of October we gets another one. ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Flowers I am delighted to send my congratulations to you both on your seventieth wedding anniversary. It’s a huge achievement to celebrate such a long and happy marriage. A great example to family and friends and your local community. Samantha and I would like to wish you all the best on your anniversary. We very much hope you enjoy your celebrations. Have a lovely day. David Cameron.’ We of course did have the letter from the queen we all know the queen the queen had millions. She can’t do it personally do it you know that’s a secretary but to think that David Cameron made the effort during such political time to ring my friend up to find out details of our celebrations and then to ring us up and send this. As a matter of fact I sent him a Christmas card and he sent me a Christmas card back.
[laughs]
There you are, now, that’s different isn’t it? In conclusion I would like to go back to the time in 1941/2, I can’t remember the exact date, my first sighting of my dear wife. Of my Eunice. I remember at the time I was working on munitions twelve hour shifts a day, week about and I was on daylight day shifts this time and I’d finished at 7 o’clock, cycled home and, and home and quick change and cycled back two miles to Sutton in Ashfield baths which had been converted to a dance hall and as I went in it had a balcony. I went in about 9 o’clock. I climbed the stairs to the balcony and I remember looking down and it was a teeming mass of dancing local people, RAF, navy all having an absolute, and a wonderful band with all the top, all having, and the RAC band was there. It had top musicians in it and I remember I was looking down and I saw right beneath me I saw this beautiful young lady in a yellow and white check dress. I’m not saying anything wrong but she was flitting from one male to, from one friend to another. She was obviously the life and soul of the party and I thought to myself God what a cracker. So, quick as lightning I rushed downstairs and I stood in the background until the opportunity came and I tapped her on the shoulder and I said to her, ‘Can I have a dance please?’ and ‘ Yes.’ And the first time I held her in my arms oh she didn’t have make me quiver and it was the first time that I met my dear wife. [laughs] How I ended up with her I will never know. She was so beautiful and so energetic. She was out every night dancing. There were thousands of soldiers all around training all on the lookout, all on the lookout for, for, for as beautiful women and here I was just working on munitions. Nothing going for me. My chances of making a go with her were very very slim. Anyway, gradually I became a friends. It was two years before she’d call me a friend. But there you are. That’s how I met my dear wife and there we are seventy years later. Love of my life. Still feel as we did as all those years ago. Beautiful woman. Still beautiful woman still beautiful in my eyes. How’s that. As I say I’m in my ninetieth year and I can’t help thinking of my family. Thinking of the time on the 25th October when our first son Ian was born and when he was accidently deaf when he was only thirteen and a half you never get over it, time never heals it. The birth of my second son Richard and when he was accidentally shot in the head by his wife. He was so lucky to have survived. Then my third Phillip born ‘68, ‘58 and to his lovely daughter. She was absolutely beautiful. Passed away when she was two years and nine months. Then there was my fourth son was a whopper when he was born and the, and the midwife says to my he’s the biggest baby I’ve ever had and she said ironically he’s the biggest baby I’ve had as well. Then I think to the stresses and strains and excitement I felt during my aircrew years and the thirty two years as a driving examiner and to the pleasure we felt on the birth of two granddaughters, eight grandsons, fourteen great grandchildren and finally I recall the seventy years that I’ve been married to my dear wife Eunice. I can’t help thinking of all the times I felt like throwing her in the bloody river or burying her with the plants in the garden yet despite all this she still remains the love of my life. Such wonderful memories.
I would like to end by saying that during the time that we, as a crew, were involved in bomber operations we were attacked by ME109s, JU88s, FW190s, ME262s jet fighters, passed through flak you could have walked on, almost touched passing aircraft, almost crashed through fuel shortage and fell vertically from eleven thousand to five hundred feet. Nothing special. Just the normal sort of thing that most Bomber Command aircrew had to put up with during World War 2. Happy days.
MJ: On behalf of the Bomber Command I’d like to thank James Flowers for his interview on the 2nd of June 2015. This is Michael Jeffries, recordist.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with James Flowers
Subject
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World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Horace James Flowers was born and grew up in Huthwaite, Nottinghamshire. He became an apprentice butcher before being released to volunteer for the Royal Air Force in 1944. He trained as an air gunner at RAF Bridgnorth, RAF Wigsley and RAF Syerston and attained the rank of flight sergeant, serving largely with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe. He recounts his experiences on several operations, including Bohlen, Nordhausen, Lutzendorf and Hamburg. He was transferred to 44 squadron in June 1945 as part of the intended Tiger Force and also took part in Operation Dodge. He also discusses how he met his wife, Eunice, and their marriage in 1944, his role with the 50/61 Squadron Association after the war, authorship of a memoir ‘A Tail End Charlie’s Story’ and the occasion of his ninetieth birthday when he received a call from the Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Creator
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Michael Jeffries
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-02
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Heather Hughes
Format
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01:58:11 audio recording
Language
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eng
Identifier
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AFlowersHJ150602, PFlowersHJ1501, PFlowersHJ1502
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Böhlen
Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia)
Germany--Lutzendorf
Germany--Hamburg
Germany
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944
1945
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
44 Squadron
50 Squadron
617 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
fear
final resting place
Fw 190
Ju 88
love and romance
Master Bomber
Me 109
Me 262
military discipline
military ethos
military service conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
P-51
Pathfinders
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
recruitment
Spitfire
Stirling
Tallboy
target indicator
Tiger force
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/709/10107/ABirchallJW170816.1.mp3
ea889d81b3af8f15e94dfed07b1db474
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
Birchall, James William
J W Birchall
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with James Birchall (b. 1923, 16062 Royal Air Force). He was shot down and became a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-16
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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Birchall, JW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: This interview is with James William Birchall and it’s on the 16th of August 2017 at 15.50 hours. Also present in the room is Mr Brian Keen. James — or apologies, Jimmy.
JB: Thank you.
DB: Tell me a little bit about your life before you joined the RAF.
JB: The RAF. If I start reading. I left grammar school at sixteen which was the usual time then. I went into a solicitor’s office. At eighteen I wanted to volunteer for the RAF and I was in the Air Training Corps. My older colleagues were volunteering but at that time there were too many volunteers so they put us on what they called deferred service. ‘We’ll call you back in another six months to start your training for air crew.’ I thought if I go in December they’ll call me back in June which would be about the right time to start. But on the 7th December 1941, I remember that date because it was Pearl Harbour, I went to RAF Cardington for medicals. The warrant officer said, ‘You’re one of the lucky ones. Down for immediate service.’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want to come in the middle. I want to come in the middle of the year.’ And he said, ‘Oh, you’ll have to explain that to the group captain and it’s Friday afternoon and he’s gone playing golf. You can’t see him ‘til Monday.’ So, I stayed in this empty camp. Everyone had gone off for the weekend. The warrant officer on Monday said, ‘Write out why you should be given this deferred service.’ He underlined various sentences in red pencil, went into the group captain, came out and said, ‘The group captain’s considered your case and you’re still on immediate service.’ I went to the Aircrew Receiving Centre and that’s ACRC at St Johns Wood. Spent Christmas there on picket duty. Then finally went for the Initial Training Wing at Stratford on Avon where you did initial training. Square bashing, learning aviation law and things like that. Then you did what was called a grading course flying Tiger Moths to see if you had an aptitude because most of the flying training at that time was done in South Africa or Canada or America. Our weather was too bad. Anyhow, I soloed in eight and a half hours. If you hadn’t soloed by ten hours then you were out. I soloed in eight and a half hours. The instant I’d done this I was shipped off to Calgary in Alberta, Canada. It’s rather a coincidence that my son who is a medical consultant he got a scholarship to Stow and then on to Cambridge to study medicine. He’s there now. I won’t carry on about him. He is married and has three daughters. Flying training. I did my elementary flying training in Calgary in PT17s which were like biplanes made by Boeings. They’re still using them today for wing walking. Single-engined. Very good for aerobatics. Very good for training. From there they assessed your aptitude for fighter aircraft or multi-engined aircraft. Bombers. I thoroughly enjoyed instrument flying. We did some instrument flying in the PT17s with the hood up. Then I, we were then moved to Service Flying Training School which was at a place called Penhold, flying Oxfords. And it was parallel to the Rockies. I got my wings on the 18th of December 1942, exactly a year from my start. Sailed back from New York in the Queen Elizabeth carrying fifteen thousand troops. Mostly American. Crossing the Atlantic at the height of the U-boat packs. There were too many of us but at that time the RAF had units that would absorb you. So they gave us a commando course at Whitley Bay. Swimming in the North Sea in January and February wasn’t fun. To assimilate us back in to flying we went on a refresher course and then we did a lot of beam approach flying and then from there on we progressed to OTUs. Operational Training Units where we flew heavy twins. Wellingtons. Lovely aircraft. The pilot had a cushioned leather seat instead of just a metal bucket seat where you sat on your parachute. Wellingtons are much heavier, much bigger than Oxfords. We did a course of about fifty hours flying Wellingtons from Seighford near Stafford. And then here in a big hangar at Stafford men were gathered in groups of aircrew. Navigators, bomb aimers, radio operators and rear gunners. ‘Go and pick your crew.’ That’s how it was done. We then trained as a crew on Wellingtons. Did one or two operational flights at the end of our training over North France. From there we progressed to a Lancaster Finishing School. LFS at Lindholme near Doncaster flying Halifaxes and Lancasters. About the same size as Lancasters Halifaxes were much heavier to fly with a very strong undercarriage. I’ve got here built like a brick shithouse but I don’t know whether you [laughs] Lancasters were a delight to fly. Beautifully balanced. More delicate. But you had to be careful on take-off. If we opened up and then it goes on to say that they would normally swing to the left and you’d got to be ready to correct it. After Lancaster, Lanc Finishing School I went to 12 Squadron in 1 Group at Wickenby near Lincoln. I did three or four bombing trips there. One was to Hanover. And then it’s here where we were shot up by a Messerschmitt 109 and we got the impression, it felt like a bucket of hot coals had been thrown over us because it was a tracer hitting us. I felt a kick in my back and nothing else. And then we were — we lost our mid-upper gunner. He was, his Perspex turret had splintered and part had gone in his eye and he lost his eye. At the time I got — I then went with him to the Medical Centre. We were x-rayed and they found that I’d got a bullet in my back, and a couple of — I’m getting [pause] Then I, when I was in hospital at Rauceby for three months when I was fit again I was a head without a crew because my crew had been cannibalised while I was away. But there was another crew without a head in 103 Squadron. Their captain had gone on a flight as a second pilot with another crew to get experience and he’d been shot down. So, here was a headless crew and here was a head without a crew. That crew had been trained together from the beginning. They were all NCOs, and ultimately when we were shot down they were sent to an NCO POW camp all together. So, I never really saw them again until after the war. Another trip of interest was to Nuremberg on the 30th of March 1944. I think everyone knows that date. And the briefing we got from Bomber Harris said, ‘Very shortly Bomber Command will be called upon to support the invasion of Europe.’ And Sir Arthur Harris is anxious to strike at one last target before this happens. It’s a target he knows is very dear to Churchill’s heart. Nuremberg deserves a maximum effort and that is what it’ll get. Then there will be ten squadrons in one group, eight squadrons 3 Group. Etcetera. In addition there are fifteen Mosquitoes adopting an intruder role. So you will have lots of company but keep a good look out at turning points. And then it says Pilot Officer JW Birchall, Captain, Lancaster ND700 which took off at 22.10, landed at 06.46. Coming back of interest he coasted in at Selsey Bill. We were based south of the Humber. Ninety six aircraft were lost and a further ten were damaged on landing and were written off. I think I’ve got further details separately. The type of German night fighter technique, it was called schrage musik which apparently means slanting music which means jazz. It’s the German for jazz. The twin engine night fighters mounted four twenty millimetre cannon behind the pilot, sticking out of the cockpit at an angle. The ground radar monitored these night fighters in to the bomber stream and using his airborne radar the navigator could direct his pilot towards the target. When he got about two miles away the night fighter could duck down and come up underneath the bomber. We didn’t even rumble it. We couldn’t see underneath in Lancasters. He could then almost read the registration of the aircraft fifty feet above him. They then had the gunsight arranged so they didn’t aim at the middle of the aircraft to kill the crew. They were like ourself. He just wanted to knock out the aircraft. And — no I won’t. So, I think this is getting a bit laboured isn’t it? The next one was Dusseldorf on the 22nd of April. I think I’ll probably try and summarise that. They were, on our squadron there were fifteen aircraft detailed to go to Dusseldorf and we lined up each side of the runway and the aircraft ahead of us, we were still waiting, took off and on take-off he swung off the runway into the soft ground. Undercarriage collapsed. His bomb load exploded and we could see the crew evacuating, rushing off. But instead of cancelling operations the tower said, ‘We’ll change to runway — ’ I think it was runway 22. So it meant that all the ones behind me had all got to turn around with their bomb load on on the perimeter track. And some got off and some didn’t. And we had just got to the stage where we were lined up and then the tower said, ‘Aircraft not airborne return to dispersal.’ Now, at that time we were conscious that the set course time had been and gone about twenty minutes before. So we were going to be twenty minutes late even if — so I said to the chaps, ‘What shall we do? Shall we do as we are told and go back to dispersal or shall we go?’ So, we all said, ‘Oh, let’s go.’ So we all went and tried to catch them up. I asked the navigator to give me a straighter course. He did this, which took us right through the Ruhr up to Dusseldorf and so we, we got hammered going through the Ruhr and by the time we could see the fire of Dusseldorf ahead of us we were still about thirty miles below it err before it so we carried on. We dropped our bombs. And then we turned for home and suddenly something hit us. Just about knocked us on our back. And it must have been one of these night fighters with its four twenty millimetre cannon. It had formated underneath us and bingo. The number three engine, the starboard inner engine was on fire. We put out the fire. The engineer put out the fire with the extinguisher and we feathered the engine and we were going to hope to get home on three engines. But then we saw the fire come back again and it was really burning very intensely and getting very close to our number one tank which I remember was five hundred and eighty gallons. It got to the stage where we couldn’t do anything about it. We used the fire extinguisher. So I had to, told the crew to abandon the aircraft. Well, to abandon aircraft in Lancasters you have got to be dominated by that big spar which goes right across. So, people like the wireless operator, the rear gunner, the mid-upper gunner who were behind, aft of that big spar could go out through the main back door. The people who were in front of that would never stand a chance with parachutes on and all the rest of it so they would go out through a small hatch underneath the chin of the aircraft. It was a padded seat that the bomb aimer used to lie on while he was lining up his sights. So the place was blazing. I was holding it as fast as I could while the other ones got out. I could see the flight engineer went out, the bomb aimer went out. And I managed to see the navigator and he went out but I had a, an impression that his flying boots were on fire somehow. And he was interested in knocking flames out when he went out. And unfortunately the bomb aimer, whose job was to jettison that hatch before he went out he brought it indoor and he’d left it inside. And with the motion and the suction this I could see as the navigator went out wedged cornerways in the hatch. I couldn’t get out myself there. So the only way I thought was to get out through the roof. Now, I wasn’t thinking rightly because the little exit in the glass panelling we used in practices for dinghy drill with the aircraft supposedly floating on the water so we had to get out above it. But if you’ve got a parachute on and your flying gear to get out so I remember I panicked. I tried to rip this metal canopy apart. Couldn’t do that. So then I hit on the idea unhook my parachute, push it through still holding the rip cord and then I could follow it out. And it pulled me out so I was lucky to get out. So, that was how I made my entrance into Germany. Now, I I think I’m, that was a photo, a squadron photograph we had taken. I’ve got an arrow here with me. In the original which the wireless operator got he’d got a little arrow on this side but it’s chopped off a bit so we couldn’t see. So I put a ring around it. But it shows how big a Lancaster was when you see the whole squadron including the bull dog which was the mascot. But then you have the WAAF drivers. You have all the ground crew and it’s a lot of people to man fifteen aircraft. I think that was just on the official records of this ME 741 in 103 Squadron. It was built in April ’44 and it was lost over Dusseldorf on the 23rd of April having only flown thirty one hours. My capture — well I don’t think that’s [pause] I landed. Well, in your battledress you had a kit which gave you foreign currency and of maps of Europe so you could escape. And as was coming down I got all this out and I thought oh, this is alright. I can make a trip now through Germany and Spain. I also noticed that I heard the German all clear because we were so far behind the rest of them once they shot me down there was nothing [laughs] That made sense because we were the last aircraft over the Ruhr and we’d been shot down. So they sounded the all clear and I remember thinking the German all clear is the same as ours. I started to concentrate on where I was going. It was a moonlight night. I could see the River Rhine and thought I was going to land in it. And I could see I was drifting away from the Rhine so I was alright. Then I could see something round coming up in the moonlight and I thought that’s either a round greenhouse or a summer house. I couldn’t make out what it was I was aiming for. And I plonked down and found it was an ack-ack gun emplacement and these were all the sandbags around it. There was only one Luftwaffe man guarding it. The rest had all gone back to their billets having heard the all clear. He was surprised and he called an officer who attempted to interrogate me. He spoke, ‘Some German?’ I said, ‘No,’ I said, ‘English?’ He said, ‘No.’ So we had a bit of French and didn’t get very far. A train took us. We got a train the following day to Krefeld where we were to be taken to a Luftwaffe collection point for shot down POWs. At that time there were a lot of Americans because every time a Flying Fortress got shot down there was a ten strong crew. We got off the train and we walked. Walked to the town centre where a tram car would take us to the collection place. I was with this corporal who made me carry my parachute. I’d landed heavily so my knees were very painful. On the way to the square we made to turn up a little side street when he hesitated and walked past it. I thought oh he doesn’t know his way. But as I walked past that little street I had a glance up there and saw four RAF sergeants hanging from lampposts. Krefeld was part of the Ruhr which had taken an enormous pounding. And I thought this is real, this is happening. When we got to the Square and waited for the tram car people gathered around to see one of the terror fliegers carrying his parachute. They were very volatile. Surged in. Kicked me. Hit me. I remember one big plump fellow with a walking stick shouting that I’d, ‘Bomben my kinder and frau in Dusseldorf.’ He walloped into me. Knocked me down, kicked me, jumped on me. I was losing consciousness when I heard a pistol shot. I think it must have been the guard whose responsibility I was. Four SS men arrived which terrified me even more in their black uniforms with skull, silver skull and crossbone badges. But they held the crowd back ‘til the tram came along. Two of them came on the tram with the guard and for once in my life I was grateful to the SS for saving me from being hung up on that next lamp post. That was a bit of the parachute which I got the crew to sign after the war. I’ll just rabbit on. I don’t want to. Yes? The interrogation — we were at this collection point for a couple of days when they took us, a group of us, mostly Americans to the main flyer’s interrogation centre at Oberursel near Frankfurt. Built specifically for interrogating prisoners. I was in a solitary cell, eight by six. I paced up and down. The walls were all lined with some sort of thick absorbent cardboard and the window had bars on it. It was hot in Frankfurt in April and in the daytime they would switch on a big radiator in each room and close the shutters from the outside so you really cooked. At night the radiators went cold and the shutters were opened so you were exposed to the night and got very cold. That was the only form of torture I suffered. They fed us much the same blah blah blah. After about a week I was taken to a big interrogation office where a Luftwaffe major who spoke excellent English did the interrogating. He was very friendly. He said, ‘I’ve told the German High Command that you are a shot down British airman but they don’t believe me. You are a spy.’ I said, ‘No. I’m not a spy. I’m wearing my uniform. I’ve got my dog tags for identification.’ He said, ‘Yes. But all spies, not knowing where they are going to land put on a uniform so they, they’d be helped by the Geneva Convention. Dog tags. they’re no proof.’ He said, ‘Well, tell me about your aeroplane. If you are a shot down British airman we’ll have the wreckage of your plane with its registration on. Tell us that.’ I said, ‘No. All I can tell you is name, rank and number.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Tell us some members of your crew because we will have caught those. That will confirm you are a shot down British airman.’ ‘No. Name, rank and number.’ So, he said, ‘Well, I’m sorry. I can’t convince them that you’re not a spy.’ And then, well they, which is the German High Command I think, ‘You’re not a spy and that orders are that at 8 o’clock tomorrow you will be shot.’ I didn’t sleep much that night. 8 o’clock still no jack boots down the corridor outside my bell. Breakfast came at the usual time. I was there for another week thinking that if they ask me again I’ll tell them anything they want to know to prove that I was a shot down airman and not a spy. Well, it just goes on. But anyhow the next time he interviewed me he had, it was in the same briefing room but he’d got a large map on the back wall and a lot of these manilla folders with the squadron crest on the front. And he thumbed through these and he had his pink tape on the map behind him but he didn’t have our base on it. The tape was just from the English coast. They could monitor where the bomber stream was on the radar. He was thumbing through some brown manilla files on his desk. Each one with the squadron crest on. ‘Oh yes. 103 Squadron. Recently you’ve had quite a few losses on your squadron.’ On such a night so and so was shot down. He had three or four of these but thinking about it they had been shot down. They’d have been interrogated so he'd have got their details. Then he said, ‘Did you know your squadron commander had been recommended for his DSO?’ We didn’t. I didn’t know if it was true. He was looking to see my reaction each time to confirm if what he was saying was correct. I asked him about one of my chums who was shot down and hadn’t come back. ‘No. He probably had to ditch in the North Sea so we wouldn’t have any details of him.’ All very plausible. So, he asked me one question about the funnel. The leading light funnel leading to the runway. And he called this, he says, ‘Out of interest what’s this Christmas tree you have at night along your runway? A series of lights you call a Christmas tree.’ Did he mean the six mile funnel of lead in lights? One aircraft was coming in to the land and unknown to us a night fighter infiltrated. Coming in behind him on final approach. Positioned under him and shot him, shot. The aircraft crashed and they were all killed. This must have been what he was talking about. So it was a different form of interrogation he made. Confirmation of known facts and the Christmas tree question. But he did give me the consolation, ‘We’ve established you’re a shot down airman.’ Can we have a break now?
[recording paused]
After the interrogation they took us by train to Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan in Silesia. The notorious camp of the Great Escape where seventy six officers escaped on the night of March the 24th ’44. Only three got back to England. The rest were re-captured and on Hitler’s express orders fifty were shot. I arrived in the camp before this fact was known. The senior British officer, Group Captain Massey demanded of the German commandant that their bodies should be returned for a decent internment and perhaps a monument. And although told that they had been shot while escaping the bodies came back to indicate that they had not been shot in the back but in the front. It looks like a firing squad. We tried to find things to do. I read the whole of Charles Dickens. We had one navigator and he set off to run a navigation course up to the standard of the Civil Navigator’s Licence Second Class. You could get documents through the Red Cross and do the final exam through them. It was something constructive to do and I got my licence. We had lots of theatres. There were, there were POWs who enjoyed training for theatre work and they used to put on a play for us every week or two. We, the audience dressed in our best blue which we’d sent from home. I remember Blythe Spirit. And Messaline, which was written in the camp about a Greek prostitute, I think. There was Pud Davies, that was Rupert Davies who later played Maigret on television. Then there was Commander John Casson RN. He was the son of Dame Sybil Thorndike. He worked in the management side of theatre. There was Talbot Rothwell as was known. We knew him as Tolley. Another expert thespian who now produces the Carry On films. And also Peter Butterworth who was also on the Carry On team. There was one effeminate Squadron Leader, Bobby Lomas who always played the female. And the whole camp, starved of female fancied him. There was no rapport with the German guards with strict rules, but when we had a theatre show we invited the commandant and the senior guards to come and gave them the front seat. And we of course dressed in our best blue. So, all very prim and proper. We were still tunnelling. There was one under the theatre hut. And you — the tunnels dug through sandy soil required to be shored up by slats from bed boards, and each bed had eight slats. And when you were called to surrender one slat for shoring up the tunnel you took the biggest slat and split it in two so you gave one to the tunnel but you still had eight. You could see the Germans doing inspections through the windows as you were lined up outside counting the slats. But the slats were getting thinner and thinner and eventually a bed would collapse. If it was the top one of three tiers it would come crashing down on the two beneath. No more tunnels were successful while I was there. Then we met the winter, the bitter winter and the Russians started their offensive across Poland, and they had liberated Warsaw. And at Sagan we heard rumours that we POWs were either going to be shot or taken on a trek. Hitler wanted to hang on to POW officers for possible bargaining at the war’s end. They could let the Russians take other ranks from their camps to Odessa and ship them back to England. The week before we’d seen horses and trailers with big boilers and chimneys. One or two people had been in Belsen or Buchenwald and had even seen these Death Camps. So we started to get a bit twitchy when a dozen of these boilers were lined up outside. Were they going to incinerate us? We decided that if they did we’d make a mad rush for the wire and try to climb over. We’d all be shot but it was better than being cooked. Anyhow, the following morning it had all gone. It was a German field kitchen. On the 27th of January, about 10.30pm we got the call, ‘We are marching out in one hour’s time. Take a blanket, take your overcoat, your greatcoat and gloves if you’ve got any.’ And we left at midnight on that date, the 27th of January where snow had been snowing for the past three weeks. And we marched for two or three weeks in the snow from then. The Germans didn’t know where we were going. We were just wandering aimlessly about. It got really cold and we had one instance where we were sleeping just outside the, on a barn, outside a barn. And in the morning the Germans came, prodded three officers but they had frozen to death during the night. One was Pop Green. He was quite an old one. I was marching on the side when I, with German tanks going past I collapsed having been struck by a tank and I was just hauled out by my buddies. We all pulled together. We marched almost to Hanover where they took us by train. Locked us in cattle trucks labelled forty hommes or eight chevaux. They packed us in as tight as they could and we travelled about Germany for two or three days. Those with dysentery were crowded into one corner and the rest took turns sleeping. Half lying down while the others half stood up. We were occasionally given rations when a field kitchen caught us up. It was barley glop. Boiled up barley but it was nice and hot. We drank rusty water from the tap on the side of the engine. When the train stopped we were allowed to walk about with the guards all around. The spring weather came and we were met very often by Typhoons or Tempests, some of which came out of from Selsey. The — that time they had they, they thought that we were German troops evacuating so they would take pot shots at us. And on one occasion towards dusk we were parked in a field with guards all around and we heard Merlin engines. A Mosquito doing a reccy had spotted a field full of troops so soon, the next thing a Typhoon came and had a go at us. One or two people got injured. Part of our walk finished up in a field by a German autobahn with a bridge nearby. Under it for safety were four or five German horse drawn carts. A couple of Typhoons spotted them and started shooting, annoyingly killing the poor old horses. We felt very sorry about that. As we crossed the Elbe some more Typhoons or Tempests had a go at the ferry. Wasn’t very successful. Nobody was hit. We then stayed at a place near Lubeck and we were told that we need not stay in Lubeck because they had typhus or, or typhoid. Instead we were permitted, we got the German commandant to agree to take over a large estate and he was very cooperative then because he knew the end of the war was in sight and he hoped we would speak up for him afterwards. Anyhow, we persuaded the troops, the German troops to throw hand grenades into the lake. The fish floated to the top and we swam in and got them. We dined well from there. When we got back to England they expected us to be skin and bone but we were fine and fit from living in the open. The, the Germans surrendered on May the 8th. We were, on May the 2nd we were liberated by a jeep with a driver and a British army corporal who stumbled across us. ‘You’re all liberated now. Stay here. Don’t try and wander. We’ll arrange transport to take you back to England,’ So, they took us to a Luftwaffe station called Diepholz where Dakotas or Lancasters took us back to England where we arrived in the afternoon and interrogated to find out what we’d seen in Germany that might be of interest. Any secret weapons or whatever. They gave us money, identity papers, clothing, railway warrants. So, on the 8th of May, VE Day we worked right through the night and I was given a train pass and arrived home the next morning in South Lancashire. No one was at home. They were all at church celebrating VE day. When they came back what a surprise. They’d heard nothing from me since September the previous year.
[recording paused]
My trip back from Germany was from a place, a German Luftwaffe station called Diepholz and we came back in a Dakota to one of the OTUs, in Oxfordshire I suppose, called Wing. It so happened that my future wife was in air traffic control at a place called [pause] it was at Westcott where the — no. My mind’s gone. Hut in Stalag Luft 3. We had fifteen of us in three tier bunks and in the top bunk there was a New Zealand squadron leader called Len Trent. And he was, used to be sleeping there in the afternoon and we had nothing else to talk about so we used to spend hours arguing who would win the war. Would it be fighters or bombers? And then we heard his voice, ‘For Christ sake shut up. I want to get some sleep.’ And we all stayed together where ever we went. We all stayed together. And we finished up by being interrogated in England. And there was Len and the other fourteen of us and we were all wanting to get cracking so we could get off home but Len was still being interrogated and talked. And we said, ‘Come on Len. Come on. You’re holding us up.’ But, ‘No. No. No. Shut up. No.’ And it was then, just after VJ day that word came out that Leonard Trent, New Zealand Air Force had just got the VC. And he hadn’t mentioned it of course to us. Well, he didn’t know at that time. So, that was Len Trent. I think it was three trips at 12 Squadron at Wickenby and then I got this bullet in my back. So, of course that was, although my crew then, we’d all been trained together I lost them at that time when I had to go in to hospital. They’d been cannibalised and so as I said I had then to take over a new crew on 103 Squadron and we didn’t do very many trips there. Altogether I think it was about twelve, thirteen but this was the time in April ’44 when the Germans had really organised themselves with these four cannon. And they would see where the bomber stream was going. They would then direct the night fighters into the bomber stream. The navigator in that night fighter could see his echoes and he would then direct his pilot on to the targets there. And when he got within two miles they’d duck down underneath and from then on [pause] And I spoke afterwards. Went to a place in London. There was some discussion I vaguely remember. Lord Tedder was there. But this fellow was a night fighter pilot and he said that it was, he regularly shot down four or five Lancasters every trip he did. And the average tour length at that time was about seven because you didn’t stand a chance. Yes. When I was shot down the team at the back got the mid-upper gunner, who was unconscious having had his face shot up. And they hooked his parachute hand over the ripcord which was the you know, the silver thing on the side which, and he was unconscious but they turfed him out thinking well that was the best they could do for him. And apparently he woke up the following day in a cabbage field. Blood all over himself and the parachute there. So he must have automatically pulled his parachute. So, I met them all afterwards and he’d lost his eye so coincidence that I had two mid-upper gunners lost their eye. But there are bits when you’re sitting on top there. There’s any, I’ve got the strip. These were reflections. We were all very young. Initially it was a game. I’ve got the parachute of the trip I was shot down in. I got the crew to sign it. The camp we were in. Fifteen sleeping in three tier bunks. Well, this was on the top bunk was Len Trent, New Zealand accent said, ‘For Christ sake.’ During that week in solitary in the beginning I thought I must think of something. Today, I will think entirely for the whole of the day on my mother, tomorrow my father, then my brother. Dragging up everything I could think about them to keep my mind occupied. How people survive in solitary for months I don’t know. I didn’t have a girlfriend at that time. I didn’t meet Heather ‘til after the war. So, I don’t think — these are just reflections. Then I think you’ve seen this one about when I went from RAF Feltwell. I’d been a little time when I was promoted to fill the squadron leader. Yes. This is about posting Heather to RAF Mildenhall ten miles away. She used to cycle over to see me and we carried on. Feltwell closed and was taken over by the Americans to store Polaris. I was then posted to Mildenhall because the squadron leader was demobbed. Then the group captain came. So I think that is that now. One — and that is in the camp I’d forgotten that I kept a diary. It was on a very thin flimsy paper and it was written in pencil and my mother must have been, at the end of the war she got hold of it. And this then came to my cousin and she said, ‘Oh, this is wonderful. You must make a record of it.’ So, what she did. Well, she wrote to, to the Bodleian Library in Oxford to see how you could preserve these things and what he should do. And then they contacted the RAF Museum at Hendon who were very interested and they have now been given, I think most of these books. But I’ll show you. I won’t go through them because it’s going to take you too long. I can say on this march, this long march we had the guards marching alongside us to see that we didn’t escape, although no one would want to escape in those conditions. But the guards were very old men and they got further and further behind. So they were moving slower than we were and they finished up at the back of the column. So then the guards had vehicles to collect them, take them to the front of the column, put them down and they started on the front of the column and gradually drifted back to the [pause ] but they were very, very old. This June ’46. On the 22nd of June Heather and I were married in Pinner Church after Heather’s demob in May. I applied for a vacancy in Civil Air Traffic Control having had my military experience. When they interviewed me the minimum recruiting age at that time was twenty five. However, when they saw me they reduced the age to twenty three and I was in. I landed up, they posted you nearest your home. I landed up at Speke Airport, Liverpool. Now, I think it’s called John Lennon Airport isn’t it? While there I did a month’s leave relief for a controller at Ronaldsway which was at Douglas Isle Of Man. Both Heather and I enjoyed the holiday although it was so cold that we ironed the sheets to warm them up before getting into bed. In 1947 I volunteered to open up Belfast Civil Airport. At the former RAF airfield called Nutts Corner. I soon devised a new routing coming and going from the Isle of Man direction. At that time the inbound and the departures all followed a common routing between Belfast and the Isle of Man and then further down to Manchester or Liverpool or, or London. So, we had to devise some way of separating them because if you had one aircraft coming in and another one going out you couldn’t climb one and descend one through the other. So, I hit upon the idea that I would, I went to see the Belfast BBC transmitter site which was well south of the inbound route. And departing aircraft then took off and turned south homing on the BBC beacon, and the, my efforts were approved. We had two separate routes and I was rewarded. Some, something else I did on the radar I became fifty pound richer. So, anyhow I must have impressed someone because in 1950 I was transferred to open up the Air Traffic Control Experimental Unit based in the north west corner of Heathrow, and with access to a radar installation. The ATCEU was a small unit. Just four controllers. Two operation officers and a team of radar radio staff at our disposal. The projects in which I was most involved was the use of a third parallel runway for Heathrow. We decided that the introduction of a third runway was not feasible or cost effective and to have a second runway at Gatwick at a later date would be more feasible. Sixty years later, well it’s now about seventy years later the government is still undecided. Another project I had was to visit manufacturers who were providing radars. There was Cossors, Deccas, Marconis and Plesseys. And the three of us enjoyed that project which determined, it was to determine the gappiness, the cover of any new radars coming by using one of our Civil Aviation Flying Unit’s aircraft from Stansted. We could fly slices through radar beams at various heights and thus determine whether a particular envelope was reliable. Then there was another project of new procedures for increasing the landing rate at Heathrow. And that got rather complicated. It involved the use of two radar talk down systems. In fact, later on we tried putting a trial. We arranged to close Heathrow for one night between midnight and 5 am. We borrowed four aircraft from the Civil Aviation Flying Unit plus four aircraft from the Empire Test Pilot’s School at Farnborough and invited any scheduled aircraft to participate if they wished. The second GCA unit was provided and we were all set to go when the minimum weather conditions we’d agreed were right on the lower limits. As half of headquarters had come to watch and Heathrow had been notified as closed and the aircraft and the aircrews were standing by I said, ‘Ok. We’ll go.’ It worked out a marginal success although one Farnborough Canberra aircraft on being guided back to the holding stack for another go, he lost himself and he declared Mayday and we spent some half an hour looking for him. We found him over Manston in Kent. In all it wasn’t a great success but once or twice when conditions were right and I was the watch manager at Heathrow I initiated a system but really it wasn’t a resounding success. There were too many variables which could fail. The other thing which was interesting, a possible high level holding procedure for the newly introduced family of jet aircraft. The Comet was the first jet aircraft coming along and with the Comet of, with the introduction of the Comet as the first commercial jet we worked closely with two BOAC pilots, Captain Rodley DSO DFC, and Captain Majendie DFC MA, ex-Cambridge and he was very much a boffin. And they were taking over the Comet from the manufacturers at Hatfield and they were evaluating it. One of the things we were rather concerned about was how much fuel they would use if they got to hold over Heathrow. And the favourite suggestion was for the Comet to reserve a slot but to hold at high level. When its approach time came the Comet would make a high descent in to the approach phase. I made many Comet flights at the time before the demise of that first and the British passenger jet aircraft. And in 1954 we moved into a newly built house at 40 Gatehill Road, Northwood where Ian was born. Two years later it was decided that I should get more experience in Air Traffic Control Centre work along the airways. And I became the watch deputy supervisor to facilitate travel to watchkeeping hours. We had to buy a three quarter acre plot on prestigious Stoke Park Avenue, Farnham Royal so we could get there by public transport at the later hours. Three years later, 1959 I was promoted to a grade one and transferred to become the D Watch manager at Heathrow. One of five watches. Each with some eighty controllers and twenty assistants. On one occasion and probably from my experience at the EU I was co-opted into the accident investigation branch to help concerning an aircraft crash at Gatwick. I left watch-keeping and became assistant chief controller at Heathrow with operational responsibilities and contact with companies. Ian was just starting at Stow and Heather, having refreshed her secretarial skills had become PA to Mr Robbins, European manager of Johnson and Johnson and then when they moved to South Wales she left there and became PA to Mr Bales, training manager at International Computers Limited at Windsor. And then a memory from my Bomber Command days. Our friend and neighbour at Stoke Park Avenue was Robin Mobbs, widow of Sir Richard Mobbs whose father had founded the Slough Trading Estate after World War One. She invited Heather and me to lunch with a friend of hers who lived about a mile away. That was Don Bennett. Air Vice Marshall Donald Bennett CB CBE DSO and the Chief Executive and founder of British South American Airways flying Lancastrians. We both enjoyed that lunch with that distinguished guest. Concorde was the only regular supersonic commercial flight which caught my interest. The Russian Concordski, roughly modelled on Concorde was briefly operational but sadly came to a tragic end at the Paris Airshow. As the Americans never did develop a supersonic airliner they had a jealous admiration for us Brits. Yet having spoken with various British Airways Concorde crews a common theme arose. Concorde, departing from Kennedy would sometimes be shuffled towards the back of the queue awaiting departure thus burning fuel which may have been critical when it arrived at Heathrow. Another instance — to obtain the maximum arrival rate the radar director was positioned inbound aircraft of various approach speeds at different distances to ensure that the second aircraft would be about two miles out when the first one had landed and cleared the runway. We found that for no obvious reason the runway had not been cleared on one occasion and Concorde had thus to make a missed approach and re-position for other, for another try. The puzzled radar director assured me that they had left adequate spacing when turning Concorde on to final approach. After several of these instances I looked back through the records and found that frequently aircraft ahead of Concorde, having landed were slow to clear the runway. They were often Pan American or Transworld Boeing 707s or 747s. Coincidence? Again, when I was assistant chief ATCO there was one instance where Speedbird 02 had been well placed behind a British Midland prop jet which, having landed and missed its turn off point, was continuing slowly to the next. At six miles out, ‘Speedbird 02 request landing clearance.’ From the tower, ‘Negative 02. Continue your approach. There’s traffic clearing the runway.’ At four miles out ‘Speedbird 02 requests landing clearance.’ ‘Negative 02. Continue your approach. The traffic is still clearing the runway.’ Then at two miles out, ‘Speedbird 02, I’m landing on this approach and if the other buggers are still on the runway I shall spear him.’ ‘Traffic just clearing 02. You’re now clear to land.’ I didn’t put this word on it. I said, ‘If the other aircraft is still on the runway,’ [laughs] but it was obvious that he was getting a bit — Later an apologetic Brian Walpole who was the Concorde flight captain he phoned me to explain that 02 had been much delayed when taxiing out for take-off at Kennedy. Consequently, was very low on fuel. If he couldn’t land off that approach he would have needed to fly to his nominated alternate, Gatwick and land there. Surprised, I asked him why he didn’t declare an emergency as he would have then ensured and we would have then ensured the runway was clear for his approach. He replied that knowing transmissions galvanised the press who monitored our frequencies if Concorde had declared an emergency it would have been headline news. When Brian Walpole invited me to his office upstairs for lunch I was surprised to find that the flight manager of British Airways top flight lived in a small cramped corner office with walls plastered with photographs of prominent people on Concorde flight deck. Each of them had been given a speech bubble with amusing comment. The Queen Mother was saying, ‘I could take to this. It’s much quicker than by train.’ He invited me to join him on a crew training flight in Concorde the next day. We were off just before 8am. Landed at Gander in Newfoundland, refuelled, filed a flight plan and were back at Heathrow a little after 6 pm having spent an hour in Canada. 1970, I was elected to go to the Joint Services Staff College. I became the second controller only to be accepted on to the JSSC course at Latimer which was composed of middle rank officers from the three services plus ten Commonwealth high rankers and a handful of American officers from all services. There were also three civilians. A nautical architect, a Hong Kong police superintendent and myself. Having been security cleared, vetted by two admirals and an air marshal at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. I enjoyed that fascinating six months course involving high level lectures from all walks of life. Government, cabinet ministers, diplomats, service chiefs, scientists, heads of security as well as military exercises including Cold War and nuclear exchanges. Being a joint service course we had the choice of outside attachments to each of the services to see how the other service worked. At that point [pause] where are we? Our — for my army visit I opted to go to Berlin which was the prize place, this was when the Wall was still there, because I was interested in their airway system and their traffic sequencing. More like Heathrow. A dozen of us in the team were housed in the brigadier’s residence overlooking the Berlin Lake which had supposedly belonged to Herman Goering, where we were briefed on the interaction with the Russians during the Cold War and the Berlin Wall. As military personnel we were allowed through Checkpoint Charlie to tour East Berlin. We found the methods used by the intelligence services most interesting. Our air force options covered a choice of a week on the Scottish RAF station where their involvement with flights in Nimrods proved very popular with our Naval members. These aircraft flew long range air sea rescues acting as command and control centres. Our Army members seemed to favour attachments to the newer Avenger and Phantom fighter units. I opted for a visit to Brize Norton to see the RAF troop handling which was coupled with a visit to RAF Valley in Anglesey to see pilot training. In Valley I was invited to fly in a Folland Gnat which brings Red Arrows fame, flown by the chief flying instructor Wing Commander Max Bacon. It was fascinating how tiny and so very light on the controls after Lancasters. Having been shown all its capabilities we did some very low flying in the designated low flying area of Snowdonia and we scared all the cattle underneath us too. Wonderful course. I remember one of our social gatherings at Pleasant Corners. Heather pulling out all the stops and Ian, back from Stow was helping. Amongst the sixteen officers at that party were Colonel Nigel Bagnall who became later chief of the general staff, an American commander in the Royal Marines who was OC flying on the American aircraft carrier Nimitz which was, I think the biggest American jet aircraft carrier they had. On which I believe he said they had seventy Phantoms. And the other member was Wing Commander Peter Harding. He was a great friend of mine. Largely of course because he was on this, on the RAF side and who later rose to the dizzy heights of Chief of the Defence Staff. So he was above the military. The lot. I also remember a Group Captain Beausoliel, who was head of Ghana. Now, it turned out that Wing Commander Peter Harding later came to grief. Do you remember his case? You probably wouldn’t. Well, he had a strong liaison with some woman who also was associated with a Russian and she said, ‘No. They couldn’t carry on their alliance.’ So, she said, ‘Well, let’s just have one meal in the Savoy.’ And as they came out she bent over and kissed him and she’d tipped off the press. And from then on that day he gave up his post. Not only as the supreme of all the armed forces but as the RAF. So, I’m sorry for Peter. But then this was the critical bit. Later in 1970, on completion of that Joint Services Staff College Course I was transferred to the Southern Division Headquarters at Heston. They felt that I was more a boffin now rather than just a practicing controller. Under a deputy director one section covered the airways and the other section covered the airfields. I became in charge of airfields and maintaining the level of air traffic control at various units. I was responsible for maintaining that and it includes non-civil aviation units in the southern part of England from — we had to look at the Scilly Isles, the Channel Isles, Bristol, Gloucester, Northampton and Norwich. Across that. And all airfields south. Along the south coast we covered Ashford, Shoreham, Goodwood, Southampton, Hamble, Leigh on Solent, Bournemouth, Exeter, Plymouth, Jersey and Guernsey. So, we had a twin Commanche at our call and what we had to do was when a new controller went to his unit, until he was valid he got his basic driving licence but he had to be checked out. So before he was validated he’d got to be checked by us and then we could sign his licence and then he could go solo. And so we had this twin Commanche and one of us would fly. I didn’t do any flying because I didn’t keep my licence going. But one of our team of four would fly and say, ‘I’ve got — lost an engine. I can’t maintain height.’ Or, ‘I have lost my RT,’ and you’d have to go to a system of one click for yes. Two clicks for no. All that sort of stuff. So —
[pause]
Test. And Ian had left Stow and was reading for his medical degree at Clare College, Cambridge. I had to occasionally fit in just to sort of keep Ian in the picture. I moved back to Heathrow as the deputy chief, acting as a stand in for the chief controller. Amongst other tasks I covered the oversight of our Radar Training Unit and including the Validation Board. As the Chairman of the Health and Safety Committee I remember we were — on the same floor as my office was the Civil Aviation Medical Centre where pilots were expected to make the grade once a year. And as such I could sometimes see them when they came past my door on the way in or out. And one or two, one I recognised as Douglas Bader whom I had seen very shortly in the POW camp. But then because he was such a naughty boy what with him always wanted to escape they sent him to Colditz. So, we had a talk and I’d got a big conference table, a big mahogany conference table in my office and it didn’t have four corner legs but it had two central legs. And he came in, having a chat and he jumped on the table to sit on the table and of course the thing upended. And I rushed around and I just caught him in time and pushed. Otherwise he’d have been a goner. So, then I said, ‘Would you like to have a look around air traffic control?’ So he said yes. So, I took him and when it came to the very steep steps up to the glasshouse I suddenly realised what a faux pas I’d made because he couldn’t have any legs to walk up there. So I said, ‘Oh, last week the Queen Mother visited us and she walked up those steps.’ So, he said, ‘Well, of course anything she can do I can do.’ Typical Douglas Bader. And he did. He pulled himself up with his arms, trailing his legs behind. And when they got on the next step off he’d go again. So, and the next time I met him was when I had a phone call from the personnel manager of [pause] I’m thinking. Shell Mex, one of the big petrol station. And they had just taken over an HS125 which is a small fast twin jet aircraft and they’d take that over for use by the board when they were going. So, he said, ‘Oh, we’re just doing a route flying stretching this out. We’re doing longer and longer legs to see what the aircraft capability is and tomorrow we’re going to Milan. Would you like to come with us?’ So, ‘Yes, please.’ So we went out there on to the tarmac and who was there to meet us was the flying, the pilot, Douglas Bader. So we recognised each other then. Anyhow, he flew us down to Milan. We stayed in the aircraft. He re-fuelled. He filed his flight plan for the return trip and on the way back this personnel manager for Shell Aviation said, ‘Oh, well let’s sample the [pause] the dish, the spread that they’ve given us.’ They’d got a refrigeration and all the rest of it so out came this on this little table and just the three of us sat down. So, halfway through or toward the end he said, ‘Well, is there anything you can think of that’s missing?’ So I jokingly said, ‘Well the wine you gave us. Those was wine glasses when they’d been used there’s no place to put them again.’ ‘Oh, quite right. The trip’s been worthwhile,’ [laughs] So, he was grateful that I’d found nowhere to store used glasses. So, that was random. There was one occasion where since I’ve often been asked whether I’ve ever needed to make instant life-saving decisions. I had one such memory. As a watch manager at Heathrow I arrived to take over the afternoon watch at 13.00 hours. I checked with my approach control supervisor that his full team had arrived and I went up to the aerodrome control. The glasshouse. One team member from my team had not arrived. And the off-going man was still on duty. Now, partly to retain the respect of my team members and partly to maintain my own validation I periodically took over an operational position. Although I was aware of the other managers policies of why keep a dog and bark yourself. At that time, with an easterly wind Heathrow was landing from the west over Windsor Castle and departures took off to the east over London. Northolt had also been required to take off in the same direction. And if they were routing going south after take-off they’d make a left turn and route around north of Heathrow and down to the west. So, I took over the [pause] the, I let the landing, the last departing man go. I took over his air departure position with six aircraft at the holding point. There was a Turkish Airline Boeing 727 who had just lined up and I had given him clearance to take off and he started to roll. He was halfway along the runway when I heard someone behind me shout, ‘Christ. The Northolt one’s turned right.’ Well, immediately, in a flash I visualised two heavily laden aircraft colliding and crashing right over London. Although almost too late I instructed my aircraft, then close to flying speed, ‘Cancel take-off. Cancel take-off.’ Thank goodness he reacted immediately. Finally stopping at the upwind end of the runway. I thanked him and asked that he clear the runway to his left. He replied, ‘Negative. Can’t move. My brakes are red hot. I require ten, twenty minutes for them to cool down.’ Another occasion the chief and I visited Chicago because they were supposed to have more aircraft flying than we did. We found the reason was that they just packed them in and expecting that they would, some, a lot of them would not make the landing. Would have to overshoot. Well, we took a pride in getting most of them down. And it turned out the, the pilot on that VC10 was, had been in A flight 103 Squadron while I’d been in B Flight. Here we are. Incidentally, in my report I included the fact that on our return Heathrow was landing on westerlies. That is aircraft arriving from the west were required to fly past the airport turning back on to the final approach at about seven or eight miles. I heard the captain, because I was on the jump seat, I heard the captain ask his first officer if he would like to have a go at final approach and landing. Even to my inexperienced eye I thought his turn on in a heavy aircraft would position us on about a two or a three mile final approach. However, he made a turn on whilst still doing his landing checks. Yet he made a spot on landing. In my report I noted his name. First Officer N Tebbit. Norman Tebbit. Barcelona — we went to Barcelona. Shell Aviation. Milan and that I’ve already told you about. The personnel manager. I recognised Douglas Bader, Chopper blades. I don’t think you’d be interested in the chopper blades. Perhaps I, as inspector of Air Traffic Control Standards for the South of England I visited Netheravon one of the several military and Naval units which operated to civil ATC standards. As they had six helicopters on a night cross country when we were there soon after they were due to return we visited their control room. Now, unbeknown to Netheravon, RAF Lyneham were practicing night parachute jumps over Salisbury Plain using C130 Hercules. As it happened the two exercises coincided. The helicopters with downward facing landing lights appeared as did the higher flying Hercules. The paras were dropped about two or three miles away. Visions of paras carving up chopper blades. Being carved up by chopper blades. So I enquired why there wasn’t any coordination. They thought it more really approached military operational standards. I got the system changed. Netheravon or, if closed Middle Wallop would coordinate movements over Salisbury Plain. Another one, Sir Laurence Whistler. He, it appeared that some industrial group were making a royal presentation of a cut glass bowl engraved by Sir Laurence Whistler. It would show Windsor Castle with the City of London and Heathrow Airport in the background. This was required by the company to present to the Queen. He said that he would need to get a perspective involving the use of a helicopter positioned over Windsor Castle. Now, I considered this would need coordination between the helicopter, departing aircraft and that I should fly in the royal helicopter to reflect the coordination. I was suitably impressed by the interior walls and ceilings of quilted with cream plastic insulation. The tables and chairs and book racks had holding copies of London Life, Illustrated London News, Tatler and Vogue. It did however have the characteristic of a helicopter vibratory flight. He was pleased with the sketches and later sent me a photo of the finished engraved bowl. I won’t go on about the time when we’ve argued with the Duke of Edinburgh. So, I could go on but it’s taking too much time. So, that was my civil one. I can’t go on about this. I think I’ve probably have mentioned this diary which I kept. We’ve got mice [laughs] This was a entry from the Royal Air Force Museum. An entry to this it was probably a thing I would get from you isn’t it? It’s 125 towing a small glider. Now, we didn’t know what the glider was. At that time it was secret and it turned out to be a Messerschmitt 163 and it was towed up into the American formations. It only had ten minutes endurance and it would decimate the Americans. And then of course it would glide down. So this was this. We didn’t know what it was. And this was a Messerschmitt 110 towing a very small tubby glider. The wingspan of ten to twelve feet. I don’t know what that was. It was some memorial with a swastika underneath. Well, I was next on the list to get a new aircraft and the fellow ahead, who’d had the last one he was shot down so I got the new one. And I went into the control tower to watch it arriving and out of that when it landed, a lovely landing, came someone in a white overall with a helmet on and then a second person. So, I was waiting for the rest of the crew but there was just these two. They came over to the control tower, came up and then the pilot then took off his helmet and it was a woman. See, we’d never heard of, and beyond that she had no navigator, no radio. She’d just ferried this. And I’ve got the book about, “The Female Few,” and there are pages and pages. And she was quite a bright girl. She went to Oxford. She was head of Somerville College and obviously did a lot of and she did learn to fly before the war. And when I met her again when I was at this Experimental Unit and we were working to see how you could increase movement rates at Heathrow. So we borrowed some civil aviation. Two of them, or four of them, I think for that. And we had a break for lunch and who should one of them? Lettice Curtis.
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Title
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Interview with James William Birchall
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Denise Boneham
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-16
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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ABirchallJW170816
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Pending review
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01:33:02 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
James Burchill was in the ATC before he volunteered for aircrew training. He was expected to be deferred but was told he had been chosen for immediate service. On one operation he was injured and by the time he was ready for operational duties again he had lost his crew. He reformed with a crew who had lost their pilot on his second dickie flight. His aircraft was shot down and the crew became prisoners of war. While being walked to the collection point under guard he saw four RAF crew hanging from lampposts. When he was seen by the civilian population they set on him and he was rescued by members of the SS. Jim took part in the Long March and saw the bodies of men who had frozen to death. After the war Jim had an interesting career in civil aviation and became involved in the Joint Services Staff College courses and the Air Traffic Control Experimental Unit.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland--Żagań
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Diepholz
Temporal Coverage
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1941-12-07
1942-12-18
1944-03-30
103 Squadron
12 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
crewing up
Dulag Luft
entertainment
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
lynching
Me 109
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF hospital Rauceby
RAF Lindholme
RAF Seighford
RAF Wickenby
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
strafing
the long march
training
Typhoon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/658/8931/AWrightJDFC150608.1.mp3
2c2065e5f04be44ec28cab39fdb0646c
Dublin Core
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Title
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Wright, James
Albert James Wright DFC
A J Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Wright, JDFC
Description
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An oral history interview with Jim Wright DFC (- 2022, 134563, 1503927 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as navigator with 61, 97 and 630 Squadrons.
Date
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2015-06-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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SB: This is Sheila Bibb interviewing Jim Wright at his home in Abingdon on the 8th of June 2015. Jim, you say you were born in Creswell in Nottinghamshire. Could you tell me a little about your childhood? Your family.
JW: Yes. I can. I was born in Creswell Model Village which is a mining village in Nottinghamshire quite close to Worksop. My father had been a miner before the war. He and my mother were born in the Victorian age. My father was born in 1894. My mother 1896. They met whilst my father was a private soldier having volunteered like Kitchener in the First World War. And in the process of that with all his mates, mostly miners, in the Sherwood Foresters and the battalion known as the Notts and Derby’s and they went for training in Northumberland to Tynemouth, just north of the River Tyne. I remember my, my father’s headquarters was based in the Grand Hotel, a rather nice hotel in Tynemouth beach and here his mates would do their training along the beaches of Tynemouth and Whitley Bay and they would use the firing ranges alongside St Marys Lighthouse in Whitley Bay. A very prominent feature all together. During that training he met, as was quite normal in war with a young man aged twenty one, twenty two, a couple of Tyneside lasses down for the weekend or something like that. And my mother came from a little village on the River Tyne called Point Pleasant. Her father was an engine man at a port. I think he handled trains and fork lift trucks and things like that on the quayside in a shipbuilding area. But it was no trouble for young ladies in those days to travel to the seafront at Tynemouth or Whitley Bay. It was a day out, I suppose. It weren’t very far away, a few miles, and there she met my father. This would be about 1915 I think just before they went to the trenches for the first time. In 1916 my father had already had several Blighty wounds as they called it. Had been brought back to the UK, patched up and sent back again but in 1916 and I think it was on Boxing Day 1916 he and his, my mother decided to get married by special licence and they did this on the coast. Somewhere near Redcar I think. In Yorkshire is it? Or Durham? I’m not sure. They got married and off he went to the trenches without any honeymoon or anything. That was the way in those days. The next time she saw him he was only a year older but he had a military medal for gallantry and he had no left arm. What a difference that left arm made. Anyway, they eventually finished the war and they had five children. A boy, my eldest brother. A girl, my eldest sister. I was the third member and then two younger sisters. The boy and the eldest girl have passed away now. I’m still alive and so are my two younger sisters but they’re getting on. I think they’re eighty eight, eighty nine. In fact I’m not sure. And one of them is ninety now and another close by eighty seven, eighty eight. We lived initially in Creswell Model Village in Nottinghamshire but my mother never ever got used to being a miners wife and of course when my father came back to live in Creswell Model Village where I was born [pause] he could not because he had no left arm. He couldn’t work at the coal face as they used to call it and he had disappointing jobs to start with in the Creswell Colliery which was very close by the model village. And then of course they had the Great Strike didn’t they in 1926 and I can remember vividly my father with his one arm tucking me up on a cushion on the [Boss farthing bicycle?] and going out in to the woods and so forth to find branches of wood that he could carry back on a bicycle because in those days the miners stopped delivering their free coal and they were unemployed and they were out for many months. I’ve never forgotten the sight of my father when I was about three years old I suppose going out to get fuel because we had no coal. I’ve never forgotten that. My mother was a Tynesider. She came from Scottish parents up in Aberdeen somewhere but she had married in to this Tyneside family and she said, ‘I will never accept that my sons will become miners or that my daughters will become perhaps married to miners.’ There were too many accidents in the coalmining business. It was a very hazardous occupation. And sure enough she took the smaller children with her for a holiday to Whitley Bay, Tynemouth area about 1928/29 and she came back and she persuaded her husband, who was unemployed, ‘Why don’t we move to the north? We can always make a living doing bed and breakfast at the seaside.’ ‘Ok,’ says dad. My mother was the brains behind the family. Anyway, when I was about eight years old, seven maybe, we moved first of all to Cullercoats. A lovely little fishing village, a marvellous little holiday place just temporarily while they looked for somewhere better and then they ended up renting a house in Whitley Bay and then eventually they, with great courage in those days I think since they were literally destitute people they managed to buy a house in what we call North Parade very close to the seafront in Whitley Bay and my mother started with her dream of making a home for her family using bed and breakfast for holidaymakers mostly from the Glasgow area, in Whitley bay. The five children developed there. They were educated. At that time of course I was the only one, in the middle of the family, to gain entrance to the high school. A grammar school type in Whitley. Monkseaton High School. It had been built in ’14, 1914 as a grammar school and they were very proud of it in Whitley Bay but my brother and my sisters all ended up leaving school at fourteen and their main object was to get a living anywhere, butcher’s boys, dress shops, whatever. I was lucky. I managed to get a scholarship to the grammar school, the high school as they called it. And when I was sixteen I suppose, late 1938, I matriculated. I was very fortunate. I had a classics master there who gave me a [Latin?] in that year, 1938. And he said to my parents quietly, ‘Your son could do worse than go to Durham University with the intent to get a Classics degree like mine.’ He was a Northumbrian and he spoke their language. Tyneside. My parents looked at each other and they said, ‘Sorry. The two older ones are leaving the nest but the two younger ones have yet to finish, they have yet to go to school and I’m afraid we need income rather than the possibilities for the future.’ So I never did get the Classics education. I would have liked to have tried.
SB: Yes.
Instead of that, after matriculation I went for the civil service examination. A quite common thing to do with young people who were seventeen, eighteen, and I ended up, in 1939 by being a house captain, a prefect, and the school were very kind. They let me stay on in the sixth form whilst I completed these exams in January ‘39 and I ended up in April as a young civil servant, as an employment clerk. In the, what do they call it, Ministry of Labour and National Service. It’s a long time ago. And I spent, I think it was three months, at a school in Newcastle in New Bridge Street which was the headquarters of a very large employment exchange and we had a special teacher. They used to call them Third Class Officers I remember and we had about ten or twelve people from throughout Durham, Tyneside who had joined up in this Ministry of Labour and National Service as young employment clerks like me. We went to school every day. We found out what we had to do and eventually we passed our course and we started work and I remember we found out how to do it at New Bridge Street, how to do our work. And then I was posted to Ashington, a mining village and I used to commute from Whitley Bay and Monkseaton to Ashington via a little proper steam railway and then I was posted from there to Walker on Tyne and I carried on my job until, after a series of incidents, I joined the Royal Air Force. I had tried to join the Fleet Air Arm first, when I was eighteen and I had failed on eyesight tests because I wanted to be a pilot. Like all the young men in 1940. I was so impressed with Spitfires and Hurricanes but I failed in the medical test for pilot and the Board of Admiralty in London sent me away for three months and said, ‘Your eyesight is not good but it may be something that will recover. Come back.’ And in December ‘40 I went back to London and I met a lot of very impressive medical officers with lots of gold braid and things and they said, ‘Jim, I’m sorry to say that your eyesight still remains below par for pilot training but,’ they said, ‘You know you are educationally qualified to become an officer as an observer in the Navy and we need observers. Pilots are ten a penny. You can train them, you know, you just have to run around. The observer is the brains in the outfit. Would you like to be commissioned and join us?’ ‘No.’ I didn’t think I would. I was still full of aspirations to be a Spitfire pilot so I went back to my job as an employment clerk but in May ‘41 in company with two of my old schoolmates we decided we would all join the Royal Air Force and we went back to Newcastle upon Tyne to the recruiting office there and the sergeant who looked at us and said, ‘Are you interested in applying?’ ‘Yes.’ We were. ‘Ok. Well this is what you do. First of all the medical.’ I passed my medical but the other two didn’t. One whom I’d grown up with and he was my close schoolmate was a diabetic and didn’t think about it. Eventually he became the best man at my marriage later, two years later. And he died. He became blind and then died. The other one had flat feet and was called up eventually by the army and within six weeks of being posted to York I think, he died during a route march. Some mysterious heart complaint. I went to see him when I happened to be on holiday after being sick for a while. I had ten days sick leave. I went back to Whitley Bay. Still was an airman under training. I met his parents and his body was lying in there in their, in the sitting room and his mother said, ‘Would you like to see Duncan?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I’d never seen a dead person before. Anyway, that was my introduction. By this time I was, although I was fit for pilot training in the RAF, where my eyes suddenly seemed to have mysteriously got better or something but by this time the RAF said, ‘Well I’m sorry but we’ve got thousands of pilots but we’re desperately short of navigators. If you like you can do a tour on navigation and when you’re finished you can convert to pilot training.’ So I said, ‘Ok.’ That’s my early life. Should I carry on from there?
SB: Why not?
Why not.
SB: Yes.
Well from May 1941 we had to wait. We had been accepted for training as a navigator but it wasn’t until September that year that we were called up and we went to Regents Park in London and we spent a fortnight there getting uniform, learning how to march, going for medicals of all sorts. I remember everyone laughed about at the time but I remember being in a long line of young men and they were tall, fat, thin, short. All kinds of people. But they were generally speaking physically fit. Generally speaking. They needed putting into shape but medically they were fit. A long line of them and a young medical officer would come with a stick and, ‘Drop your trousers, the whole lot.’ Free from infection they called it. Everyone remembers this. It was the same for them all. Anyway, after a fortnight we were posted to Catterick in Yorkshire for what they called initial training wing. Catterick was interesting because it was also the home of army training at a very big army depot at Catterick but sixty of us ended up at RAF Catterick in a special little, what do they call it, unit of its own with its own squadron leader, education officer and flight sergeant who was a disciplinarian and maybe a couple of teachers to teach the basics of flying and so on but we got to a separate unit. We were sent to live in a country house which had been specially requisitioned for the purpose and we slept there and our flight sergeant would march us every morning four miles there. Good for you those were the terms. Smarten up. And then four miles back again. We did everything on the camp. We just slept there. But of course it was that time of year. Wintertime. And apart from an army Lysander unit, that’s an army air corp, they had a Beaufighter unit, night fighters, there and one day the station commander said to the station warrant officer, ‘I want you to organise snow clearance tonight.’ Big forecast. Snow. ‘I want the airfield swept so that the Beaufighters can operate.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ But the station warrant officer was a busy man. In RAF terms he was a very important man. He commanded all the people in the manpower department of the station. He was the boss. The station commander knew it, the station warrant officer knew it, everybody else knew it and the station warrant officer came to my squadron leader in the Initial Training Wing Department and he said, ‘Sir, with great respect, my chaps work night and day doing their ordinary work on the airfield. I can’t really expect them all to turn out to do snow clearing initially until I have to.’ But, ‘Sir, with respect your chaps are just [?]. They are, to some extent, surplus at the moment for the next few days so I’m going to ask you if you wouldn’t mind I want your fifty trainees to start the snow clearing tonight.’ So we did. So we all got our brooms and our shuttles and of course it snowed and snowed and we got soaking wet but we still had to march because we had nowhere else to sleep. After two or three days of this I got a cold. It was a nasty cold. I was used to getting colds in the northeast but this was a bad one because we were literally walking with wet clothes, no heat, no nothing and one of my mates in the morning time said to me, ‘Jim, you don’t look very good.’ I said, ‘No, I feel awful.’ He said, ‘I’ll go and have a word with the flight sergeant.’ He went to the flight sergeant who had a little room all of his own and we used to sleep up and down in great big rooms and things and he said to the flight sergeant, ‘Jim Wright’s not very well.’ ‘So what,’ said the flight sergeant? ‘Well, could you fix transport or something for him?’ ‘I aint got any transport.’ he said. ‘We walk. I’m sorry. If he can walk he will.’ And we marched four miles back. Of course I reported to sick quarters and the Doc took one look at me and he said, ‘You’ve got a temperature of a hundred and four young man.’ ‘Oh yes?’ I said. ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Awful.’ He said, ‘I’m sending you to Catterick army camp hospital immediately. I think you’ve got bronchial pneumonia.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ So I ended up in the army hospital. I never saw anything but the hospital beds. And after ten days I think they used to have something called [metacreme?] but nothing like penicillin or anything antibiotics. It was some awful thing that turns you yellow I think. But in the end I got better and they said, ‘We’re going to send you off on ten days sick leave. Get all railway warrants and rations and things.’ Well I’d only been in the air force for two or three months and I didn’t really know anything about anything but I was so pleased with the railway warrant to go home in comfort rather than hitching or anything like that and my mother was so grateful to get the rations. Butter and things like that. Not important to me but important to her. Anyway, I recovered, finished our ITW training and we went off to Eastbourne College on the south coast at Eastbourne and we, we stayed at this famous Grand Hotel. I’d heard radio programmes, I knew, on Sunday afternoons I think but for the first time I was introduced to what it was like to actually live in a great big hotel on the seafront at Eastbourne. It was very interesting. Can we just stop? Stop for a minute.
[pause]
JW: Can we just have the last sentence about Eastbourne? Eastbourne College we were going to.
SB: Hang on. Ok.
JW: We were accommodated.
SB: Yeah you were accommodated.
JW: Yeah.
SB: It’s alright
JW: Ok.
SB: That’s it.
JW: Ready. When you are
SB: Yeah. Ok.
JW: Eastbourne was very interesting. I’d never been to the south coast before. It would seem that at this time in 1941 a lot of the holiday areas on the south coast within ten miles had been more or less taken over by the government. The hotels had been taken over for army, navy, air force units quite often. The basic residents could stay. But it was, it had an awful lot of armed forces in it. Anyway, in Eastbourne, Eastbourne College was a recognised independent school and the government had taken it over. It had moved somewhere else. And they used it for what we call elementary air navigation school training. This was a three month course. Longer than the ITW one. And I remember some of my mates being desperate for cigarettes. People, I don’t think people today realise the extent to which smoking cigarettes, pipe smoking had taken over the nation. People In films were smoking. Everybody thought it was normal to smoke but if they were addicts as some of our young men were this was a very sad thing for them because they couldn’t get cigarettes that they used to be able to buy twenty whenever they wanted. At this time one of my young friends he was desperate for cigarettes and so I used to join the queue with him when he went hunting for cigarette shops, for rations and things and I said to Nobby, ‘Why don’t you just give up?’ ‘Can’t,’ he said. So I would go and buy the ration that was there. It may be ten cigarettes sometimes. They were just goose woodbines in a house and I’d hand them to Nobby and that would keep him happy for a while until the next lot. Cigarette smoking became a problem in the world. It still is. Anyway, we would do, the fifty of us, we would do our training within the Eastbourne College. Tailor made for the job really. Just like school. It was just like school. And they taught us the basics of navigation from the air. They gave us sextants and we said, ‘What do we do with these?’ ‘Ah well,’ they said, ‘When you go home tonight we would like you to practice taking shots of the moon if it’s there. The stars if you can find them.’ This was later on in the course when it developed and we found out what a sextant was, how to use it, air almanacs and things like that all concerned with navigation when you were high up, couldn’t see the ground and your only means of navigation were astro-navigation. Anyway, we used at night time to take our sextants home to the Grand Hotel with us and then operate in pairs in a backstreet just off the seafront and we would, one of us would take notes while the other one actually located the star and took a shot and if you were within a hundred miles of Eastbourne you were doing very well [laughs]. It was a very good training which you had to fall on later but whilst we were there it was beginning spring and the weather was improving and on Wednesday afternoons we were told to go and get fit. Cross country runs, play football, play tennis or skive as they used to call it if you wanted to by saying, ‘I’m a golfer. I’ll go on the golf course.’ ‘Well yes that’s a sport. Yes. Yes you can do that.’ And this man for whom I used to get cigarettes, Nobby, we borrowed, from the professional at the club, some old clubs and a few old balls and we enjoyed the fresh air at the top of the cliff on Eastbourne Golf Course. And while we were pottering about on the very first day I remember it was a lovely summer day. Nice to be alive. It was lovely. Sunshine and blue sky. I remember Nobby saying, ‘Jim, look.’ And there were a pair of ME109s. We knew they were ME109s because we’d done aircraft recognition and we knew. What’s more you could see the Nazi cross on the side of the aeroplane and they were carefree, the pair of them. You could see them. They were only fifteen minutes away from France at the most. From their airfields. And they came over our heads. We said, ‘That won’t bother us. They’re not going to shoot us. They’re wasting their time.’ Well, they turned around and they headed for Eastbourne Railway Station and with their rockets, machine gun fire, cannon fire raked the station and having done a fair bit of damage they disappeared. Nobody came from anywhere to help them or shoot them down or anything. They quite calmly trundled off back to their base in France. That was our very first introduction to ME109s. I’ve never forgotten it. At the end of the course the fifty of us were all posted to Heaton Park in Manchester I think it was. It was a kind of a settling in place for trainee pilots, navigators and so on whilst they waited for the next step in their training. All these people at Heaton Park were going overseas. They could go, some to Rhodesia, they could go to Canada. Some of them even went to Florida to fly with Pan America airfield, Pan America Airways. Anyway, we used to, we used to report every morning at 8 o’clock to see if any of us were wanted to go on convoys or anything like that and every day no news for us so we just idled away again and we got fed up with this. We got tired of waiting and hanging around and one of my friend’s, a chap called Mike Ward said, ‘Jim, would you like to nip into York to see my folks?’ So I said, ‘What’s the plan?’ He said, ‘Well we’ll check up on the Friday morning and if there’s no call out for anywhere we could quietly nip in and get a ticket to York on the railway and we’ll be back by Sunday, by Sunday night ready for Monday morning.’ ‘Sounds good to me.’ I said. So we stuck our necks out and we did this and we got to York and I met Spike’s family. His father owned a garage and Mike was one of these chaps who knew about motorcars. How to drive them. And he also had farmer relatives with farms and he was also familiar too with 22 rifles and shotguns and things. He was way ahead of me. I enjoyed meeting his family. It was nice. But on the way back we got to Crewe Station I think it was. I think we had to change at Crewe and a couple of innocent looking young RAF special police, corporals. Corporal was a powerful man in the RAF when you were just an airman. They sauntered up to us looked us up and down. They always work in pairs these people. But Mike and I were, were happy. We said, ‘Yes, I’m afraid, yeah s we are travelling. We’re going back to base.’ ‘Where’s that?’ They said. ‘Oh Heaton Park.’ ‘Oh. What are you doing now then?’ ‘Oh well we’ve just been to see.’ ‘I see. Have you got your pass?’ ‘Well no.’ ‘Well I’m sorry,’ they said, ‘But that means you’re absent without leave.’ AWL. Mike and I have always had in our service record absent without leave. One day’s pay forfeit. We’ve never forgotten it. Never forgotten it. Anyway, we eventually were sent off. Some of us, we didn’t all go to Canada. Several of us were sent to Pan American Airways in Florida. And we envied them. Oh that must be nice. Florida. Lovely. We’d heard of Florida and we had visions of summer holidays on the beach. Anyway, we didn’t hear any more about those chaps. They disappeared. And we went in turn, I think about twenty five of us, I’m not sure we were posted to Number 13 Air Navigation School at a place called Port Albert near Goderich near on the coast of Lake Huron in Ontario. We sailed in a convoy. I remember the name of the boat it was the SS Letitia. Other people met Letitia at different times during the war as a troopship but for seven days we went up and down and we were seasick just like everybody else because we were not sailors but we made it. We made it to Halifax in Nova Scotia and from there we went on by train and it seemed to be forever. I don’t know how long it was. Two or three days I think. But we ended up anyway at this navigation training school. I think it lasted from about May or June or July I’m not sure until November so there was a time when we were there when we were taken away from our RAF blue as we called the field dress and we were put into the tropical khaki uniform. Shorts and things like that. To cut a long story short I became top of the course and Mike my friend became second. And we had a young Scotsman friend called Scotty Turner who came third and a much more mature chap called Williamson with a moustache. A family man. He must have been in his thirties. You have to remember that most of us were just twenty, twenty one. Which was the about the average age for, for the time. Anyway we also had a group of free French on our course attached. They spoke English when they had to but they spoke their own natural language French when they were off duty. But I don’t know whatever happened to those six free French. Two of them were commissioned. One was a captain and the other one was I think a sub lieutenant. I’m not sure what. Whether they were air force or navy I can’t remember now and the other four were non-commissioned people. Petty officers or something like that. I never saw or heard of them again. Anyway, we had a party at the end of the course and we were given sergeant’s stripes and we pinned them on using our little machinery. We all had our needles and threads and things so we could pin them on and we had a party at the hotel and the next day we were put on a train and all the way up through Ontario, through Quebec, through New Brunswick and we should have gone to Nova Scotia to Halifax but when we got to Moncton on the railway line, it was a stop of some sort there anyway, and we had a couple of Royal Canadian Air Force sergeants approach our party and they said, ‘Are you just coming from, from your training at Goderich?’ ‘Yes,’ we said. ‘What do you want to know for?’ We thought we might have done something wrong. ‘Oh, it’s nothing wrong,’ they said, ‘But, I need these four people. I need these four. Wright, Ward, Williamson, Turner.’ ‘What do you want them for?’ ‘You lucky chaps are going to be commissioned. You can throw away your sergeant’s stripes.’ ‘Oh yeah, that’s very interesting.’ ‘You will be taken by transport to the Royal Canadian Air Force station at Moncton,’ which is just on the outskirts, ‘And there you will go through commissioning procedure. The rest of them are on the way to Halifax. And home.’ We were very pleased about this of course but we had to hang about a bit. I think it was, this was sometime, somewhere in early November and I think it was in early December when we finally were kitted out, uniforms, and were sent on our way to Halifax. For starters of course we were commissioned and that made a tremendous difference. Life as an airman whether you’re UT aircrew or just newly promoted to sergeant was an entirely different matter than if you were pilot officer. Life changed. And so we found that we had better facilities on the train. And when we got to Halifax they said, ‘Oh yes. You’ve got to report to the troop ship and it happens to be the Queen Elizabeth.’ We were overjoyed. We’ll never forget, well I will never forget that four day journey at top speed, without convoys, too fast for the submarines and we got back home to the UK in four days. It was a marvellous experience. I’ve still got copies of the ship’s newspaper, “The Convoy,” now but I’ve had them in an old scrapbook for seventy five years or something. They used to print a daily account in the, in this marvellous liner the Queen Elizabeth which carried thousands of people of course and they would give a daily account of what was happening in the world in the desert, and the Atlantic and the wherever and of course it was important because if I’ve got it right America had just had Pearl Harbour in December ‘41 and this was a year later so the fact that the Americans were in the war made a great difference and this would be reported in those newspapers. Anyway, we had disembarkation leave. I think we all went home for ten days or seven days leave I think. And we were sent to Harrogate in Yorkshire. All of us were sent to Harrogate. It’s a big resettlement unit in a lovely market town miles from London and we were very lucky because not only was it a relatively peaceful place Harrogate but it had it had swimming pools, dance halls, it had beautiful music halls and excellent gardens and a lovely location for walking in the countryside. We were so lucky. The important thing of course for most young twenty one, twenty two year olds was that there were a lot of girls there. The girls came because the government had decided, just before the war, to send a lot of their civil servants from London to a more peaceful place where they could get on with the work in Harrogate and a lot of these girls were civil servants just like I used to be and the same kind of age group. Clerks in the air ministry, contract farms was where I met them and Mike Ward and I were I think on our first day. We were staying in the Queen Hotel just off the Stray in Harrogate. A lovely hotel. The sergeants were in a different hotels, Imperial and places like that but we had an invitation from reception of the Queen Hotel with the Women’s Voluntary Service accept some of you to come and have a cup and a bit of cake, that sort of thing, in a local church hall and we said, ‘Well, why not.’ And the first girl I met was the one I married over two years later. A blond, blue eyed girl who was a little older than I was. Just a little. Her landlady, ‘cause by this time a lot of the girls had moved from being residents in a lady’s college to being shipped out into the local community where they were divided into local houses and looked after themselves in ordinary houses and my future wife’s landlady was also a member of the WVS Women’s Voluntary Service and they were forever giving me cups of tea and cakes and things to soldiers, sailors and airmen. Whoever they were. On this occasion she had taken my future wife with her to this church hall and when, when David Mike Ward and I arrived this WVS lady said, ‘I’d like you to meet a couple of young ladies.’ You’ll do. And Mike and I met these two young ladies. I don’t know if Mike was that interested but I was and I stayed interested for two years. But of course I was a very straightforward young, naïve young man. I believed in marriage. I also believed that it was a sheer waste of time to contemplate marriage in a Lancaster or a Wellington and that was firmly understood. So we’d keep in touch by letter wherever I was and when the adjutant of the squadron, my last squadron called me in and said, ‘Jim. You’re finished.’ And I said [laughs], ‘What do you mean finished?’ He said, ‘Your days of operational flying are over young man.’ I communicated this to my girlfriend. I went to see her, sought her hand in marriage and she agreed. So that was the picture. Now my friend Mike Ward had been lucky enough to meet a charming young lady during our three months in Canada. We had, we had been allowed to hitch to Detroit at weekends. And on our very first visit we met some people of Scottish origin who had friends. They were all concerned with motoring I think because Detroit was a fabulous manufacturing of cars place. They had problems of course because black people were not allowed to mix in transport or accommodation. And you had to be very careful of this in Detroit in 1942. Anyway, one of their Scottish friends would put up Mike and I. They lived in a great big apartment block and the man involved was the manager of this block. He and his wife supervised all the arrangements for car parking and renting apartments and so on and their family lived in quite a spacious apartment and we met a girl there called Jeanette McDonald. A familiar name because Jeanette McDonald happened to be the name of a singing star at the time. Nelson Eddie was her partner. I remember her very well. The young Jeanette McDonald, the American girl was some kind of a Scottish dancing champion. You know used to twiddle about in the way that people with these Scottish views people do. In America they were very keen on this and would have state championships and things like that and young Jeanette was one of these. They were a very charming family and we got to know them very well during our three months there. But some of their American friends that we also would stay with and have breakfast with introduced us to pancakes and syrup and things like that. They had another young lass and she was rather like the American Doris Day. The girl next door. Bubbly. Mike fell for this girl in a big way and I often wonder, wondered because we got split up eventually and I, I lost touch with Mike and I often used to wonder whether he was going to go back to America for this girl. She was a lovely lass. Very much like Doris Day. Bubbly. Anyway, Jeanette McDonald was not for me but Mike I thought might have been very interested in this young lass who lived at some address in Bueno Vista Drive, Detroit. I’ve never forgotten the name. It was an interesting one. An enormous number like eleven hundred and twenty two. When we, when we finished our course we were presented with our observer badge. That was like a little O observer badge. They don’t use them anymore. It was replaced eventually by a bomb aimer or a navigator. When, when we were trained in Canada we did both jobs. We could choose either. I always stayed with the navigation side and so did Mike. Unfortunately, Mike and his crew were killed in 1944. He had started off doing navigation training. We’d flown in little Tiger Moths really just to get acclimatised to British weather really. I think in January ‘43 that was our first course. A month at Scone in Scotland where pilots just with their fresh pilot wings up would sit in the front cockpit and the navigators would sit in the back cockpit. The pilots of course would say, ‘If you want to play with this thing you’re welcome. Off you go.’ And so we would play [?] and we got a lot of fun. And at the end I remember, after about half an hour I would say to my pilot on this little Gosport tube communication system they had there. I’d say, ‘I think we ought to go back home now don’t you?’ ‘Oh I suppose so. Where are we?’ And I’d say, ‘Don’t you know?’ ‘Well, no. I thought you were the navigator, you’d know where we were.’ I thought he must be joking. I’d been playing with the aeroplane for half an hour and I thoroughly enjoyed it but I’d no idea where we are and it was a bit late to find out. It was quite amusing. I remember he, this particular pilot, made an emergency landing at an airfield. Not ours. Got some fuel in it and then we flew it back and this time I made sure I knew where I was. But having done that month on Tiger Moths in January we then went back to Harrogate where we met with old girlfriends or whatever and we waited for the next course. And then we’d go, have a month, at Skegness I think it was. Butlin’s holiday camp on the Yorkshire coast. They had accommodation of course. It was a holiday camp area. There were golf courses. And we wore army uniform and big boots and we had 303 rifles and they would take us out at night and throw thunder flashers at us to get us used to being possibly escape and evasion on the continent. It was all carefully planned. They knew what they were doing. Anyway, a month in army uniform made us fit and after that we went and did some Anson flying at Barrow in Furness. Very useful because the weather in the Irish Sea was notorious. Thunder storms, rain, snow, so we did more flying and a bit more navigation training and got used to flying in Ansons. Not in blue sky conditions but in United Kingdom weather conditions and that was different. But eventually our navigation training was finished and we were all posted to our, what we called an Operational Training Unit. In my case Mike and I went to Upper Heyford just not far north of Oxford. And when we arrived because we were commissioned we went to the officers mess and we met a bunch of fairly fresh flying officer ranked commissioned pilots who had also arrived for the their Operational Training Unit and for the first time they stopped being individual pilots and individual navigators, wireless operators, gunners and their purpose at Upper Heyford was to learn to fly as a Wellington bomber crew and that took ten weeks. It was a different way of life. We stopped being under training as navigators and we learned to become an operational bomber crew. Five of us, pilot, navigator no we didn’t have a flight engineer and we didn’t have a, ah pilot, navigator, wireless operator and bomb aimer and rear gunner. We didn’t need a mid-upper gunner and we didn’t need a flight engineer to fly the Wellington. But we certainly learned the rudiments of how to operate a bomber crew. For the first time in our lives we lived as a crew. Relaxed together. We tried, we tried as far as we could to live together. With the pilot and navigator both commissioned we could do that and the others were all sergeants. The bomb aimer, the wireless operator and the gunner but they, they gelled together. The NCOs stuck together. They ate together, they went to the same billet, sergeant’s mess. Ken Ames and I became firm friends. It was the way that it was in those days. There was a loyalty between individual crew members. It was a most unusual way to become a bomber crew because what happened was I teamed up with my pilot Ken Ames in the officer’s mess the night before. We all met in a big hangar. Mike did exactly the same. He met a northern Irishman called Derek [Wray] I remember. The following morning we were all there at 8 o’clock in the morning and wing commander flying said, ‘Gentlemen,’ there were hundreds of people in this hangar. He said, ‘You are going to find your own crews. I want every pilot to come back to me at the end of the day and tell me the names, ranks and numbers of his crew. That’s a job for all the pilots but how you sort yourselves out is a matter for you.’ We got some surprise because we’d never seen this before. This was quite new. Ok. So we got our brief, we got our marching orders, go away, ‘Find yourselves crew members. We don’t care how you do it. All I want by 4 o’clock today is a crew with a pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and rear gunner.’ Ken, Ken Ames said, ‘Well you and I are the core.’ ‘Yeah. That’s right.’ ‘I will go and find a rear gunner. You go and find a bomb aimer.’ And I did that. I found an old man aged thirty two with ruddy cheeks and grey hair and I liked the look of him and I chatted him up and said, ‘Well I’ve got a pilot. I’m a navigator,’ and I said, ‘Would you like to be our bomb aimer?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’d like to meet the pilot of course but otherwise that’s fine.’ And Ken went and he found a rear gunner and he found he was an ex Irish Guardsman. As a soldier used to guns, used to being told what to do and so on but this man had been asked by the army if they would volunteer to become a gunner in the air force. And they jumped at it because it was much better pay. They would become sergeants straight away instead of privates in the army and they would get flying [fame] There was an element of flying [fame] when you were a sergeant in the flying business. So Paddy became our rear gunner. Paddy Paul. My, my selection as bomb aimer had been an insurance agent for many years and was married and had two children. He was ten years older than we were but he was also a crossword fiend which I found out and he was also a very keen rock climber using fingers and toes. He was also a very keen bird watcher. And he had patience and a lovely smile. We were sold. We were very happy. We found, we found a wireless operator but I think for some reason we had to change him. We did start flying with him and I remember saying, this man was called Jim, I said, well, no he was called Albert and I said, ‘Well I’m called Albert as well but if you like I will change my name to Jim.’ I never really liked being Albert really. It was my old man’s best man in the, in the trenches that had made me called Albert but I’ve got James and I’m quite happy to be Jim. And so I settled to Jim. And we ended up with an Australian wireless operator from Toowoomba in Queensland who had been around a long time because he was already a flight sergeant. That made a lot of difference of a year. He’d been around somewhere. Tex we called him because his first name was called Harvey. And we said, ‘We can’t call you Harvey.’ ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘Tex.’ But when you’re on intercom you don’t want fancy names, you want short, sharp ones and we, we soon learned of course that this idea that some people in the photography film world had that you would say on intercom, ‘Pilot from mid-upper gunner,’ or ‘wireless operator from navigator.’ You haven’t got time for all that. It’s Ken, Jim, Paddy. That’s it. You soon got to know the names and you soon knew who was who ‘cause all the names were different. So Ken was the pilot, Jim was the navigator, Tom was the bomb aimer, Paddy was the rear gunner and Tex was the wireless operator. Five people. We were very lucky I suppose because four of those five people survived till the end. Tex unfortunately, our wireless operator from Toowoomba, decided after getting a DFC and having done a whole first tour decided on our last squadron, 97, the Pathfinders, that on a particular day when a daylight operation was scheduled and our crew were not on it, not on the ops order, he said, ‘Oh I’d like to go. I’ll go with a skipper called Baker, Flight Lieutenant Baker. One of my Australian mates as a squadron leader he’d want to go as well,’ so on that aircraft there were nine people instead of seven which seemed to happen sometimes and because it was a daylight trip Tex decided that this was a bit of war that he would like to have a look at. Doing it in daylight. When he was not a wireless operator he was going to man a gun. And of course on that particular aircraft was shot down and I think some of the people escaped and became prisoners of war but Tex was killed and that was in July ‘44. I never did find out whether Tex had got a pathfinder badge. Didn’t make any difference anyway. He was dead. He’s buried in Bayeux War Cemetery. But Paddy the rear gunner did all the trips. Completed a second tour. Was commissioned. He had a DFM. He was commissioned at the end of it all and he went to the Far East to take part in what they called Tiger Force. I never saw him again. Tom Savage the bomb aimer had a DFM at the end of the first tour. When it was all over he was commissioned as well but stayed on at Coningsby to help the station armaments officer with the problems that they had at that time and he stayed until demob. I saw him again later. He met my wife. He was a cricket man as well and we used to meet up in the years after the war, many years, when I was stationed somewhere in the north like Middleton St George or Ouston in Northumberland, we would contact Tom and his family. By that time we had three [more families. Three more.] and his family and we would walk on Hadrian’s Wall. We would meet halfway and meet and have a, have a party. The last time I saw Tom would be about 1990 I think. It was a day when he was watching the cricket in the kitchen and the England test team were playing Australia and the English captain, what was his name? I can’t remember for the moment. The English captain scored three hundred and thirty three not out. I remember. And Tom was listening with delight to all this on the radio or the television I can’t remember now and he died. He was a lovely man. Yes. So, Tex had died. The young engineer and the young mid upper gunner who came to us especially when we became a Lancaster crew for the first time they, they both disappeared. I don’t know what happened to them. I think, one I know was invalided out in to civvy street and I met or contacted his widow eventually many years later and I discovered that yes the head wounds that he had got during a trip to [Castellon] on 61 squadron which kept me in hospital for two months brought home the results that he was found unfit to fly and he went back to civvy street and when he was in civvy street during the war he used to work on aircraft engines at some, nearby. We never did find where he came from. He’d been a garage mechanic you see. He was only eighteen. Ans he was only eighteen when he joined us but he was only with us for a few weeks and we never saw him again but I, I tracked him down long, long after the war and his widow told me that yes they’d got married, he’d earned a living as a ground engineer during the war and after the war he managed to get his medical back again and had a job, taken a job at Stansted flying Yorks all over the world. Thousands of miles of flying, fitting new aircraft engines to Yorks and Lancastrians wherever they needed them and he had three children I think it was but I never found any more about him. I have no idea what happened to the mid-upper gunner. I know he never flew with us again so presumably he had disappeared from active service. I’ve no idea. Now what else was I going to tell you?
SB: Do you want to tell me a little about some of your operations?
JW: About the operations. Yes.
SB: Yes.
JW: Well after we’d finished at Upper Heyford on the Wellingtons we had become a very efficient bomber crew. It was the little things like taking a little racing pigeon in a little cardboard box and we would sometimes do what we called nickel flights. That’s when we went very close to the French coast where we could get shot down by Germans but you were still on your training flight and you’d note the actual position that you had worked out where you were and you would write it down on a little bit of special paper which you’d put on to the pigeon’s leg. Elastic held there a little capsule and you would take the pigeon gingerly down to the back end of the Wellington and you’d get Paddy to turn his guns away and you would throw the pigeon out and the pigeon in the dark would sort itself out and by a miracle of bird navigation would get back to Upper Heyford long before we did [laughs]. And the purpose of that was to make sure that if the aircraft was shot down the pigeon would get back and that would be the last known position of that Wellington before it disappeared. That was the whole point. Of course we never did it in Lancasters. I never saw that again. But we did, we did manage to gel as a crew because we could talk to each other. We developed our own technique of how we could fly this crew together. I would tell the pilot that in certain circumstances if anything went wrong he should always bear in mind that if he could see the sky he could see the Great Bear and he’d say, ‘What’s the Great Bear?’ And I would explain. And I’d say find Polaris the Pole star. The Great Bear will wonder around different regions at different time but the Pole star once you found it it was a very good thing. It was north. And I’d explain to the pilot that wherever you were in Germany you had to come back on a westerly heading to get back to the UK and the best way you could do that was to keep the pole star on the right. He never faltered and there was one occasion when we went to Castle when he found it very useful ‘cause he remembered it. Pilots quite often leave it to the navigator completely but I used to talk to Ken. We were the same age. We liked the same things. And I used to say that there were some things that were important and I used to talk to him about the necessity for every pair of eyes in the aircraft to come back to where it all happened on the navigators brief on his board. I used to explain to everyone how important it was that if they saw a coastline, a bridge, an important navigation feature on the ground they should tell me. They should tell me in time for me to make use of it exactly when it happened so I could check. Crossing a beach, crossing a railway line, a bridge, whatever you could see. I said, ‘I know I’ve Gee and I’ve got H2S, I’ve got radar. Yes I’ve got all these things but they don’t always work and they are sometimes out of range,’ and so I used to explain. I used to explain to our wireless operator how important it was that when I wanted bearings from the radio why I wanted them, when I wanted them and I wanted them at a precise time. I wanted, I explained why these things were important to the navigator. And everyone in the crew, my crew anyway because every crew was different. I wanted everyone to know that every bit of information that they could see was vital as far as I was concerned if it had anything to do with the navigation of the aircraft, the Lancaster, the Wellington, whatever it was. We got on fine. I remember one occasion when we were doing a long ten hour cross country in a Wellington from Upper Heyford and the weather was filthy. It was nothing like what had been forecast. I remember half way through the trip, about four or five hours I said to them on the intercom chaps you might be interested to know that we should be turning from Carlisle onto another heading but I said I can’t tell you why but right now we’re over Bristol. You could hear a penny drop in all the ears. ‘What’s Jim talking about?’ I said, ‘The weather forecast was rubbish. I now want Tex to give me a QDM for Upper Heyford and we’re going to fly back to base. We’re going to forget the rest of the trip because the weather is so bad and the winds are so hard to find that that’s the only thing we can do.’ I think my crew discovered that they had a navigator who was honest and was telling them what the truth of the matter was. A lot of other aircraft that night would have ended up in being diverted, got, they’d got just as lost as we were. This sort of thing used to happen but I think that that crew as a Wellington crew decided that Jim Wright was the man that they wanted to stay with and that’s why later on in life when we were a Lancaster crew they decided that if Jim Wright was needing hospital treatment but if it was possible they would wait for him to come back. Being what happened. Not every navigator was as lucky as that. I was lucky. And in the end so were they. We finished. We managed to finish. We lost a few of ours but you see navigation to me was a puzzle like a crossword puzzle. You had the clues but you needed to make use of everything you could to solve problems and that’s what navigation was. I also remember one occasion when we went to Nuremberg. Now, Nuremberg is famous for being one operation in which we lost a hundred aircraft and the reason for it was straightforward. The Jetstream that people talk about in the weather forecast today as a casual thing that means something and they explain the weather forecast, tries to explain what a Jetstream is but in 1943/44 no one had heard about a Jetstream. They didn’t know what it was. But as a wind finder on 630 squadron when we went to Nuremberg my job was to find the winds and send them back through the wireless operator to Group so that they could marshal the latest thing that they’d found Instead of guessing what the winds were they would find what the real winds were and I was finding winds at one stage that I couldn’t believe but I had enough faith in my ability to say to my wireless operator, ‘I know that these are astonishing winds. Don’t be surprised but they’re right.’ The winds were from the northeast at about a hundred and forty five knots at twenty thousand feet and I sent these winds back and the boys back at base and at Group, the weather chaps, they looked at all the winds that were coming. Now, half of the wind finders, these are all specially chosen navigators would look at the winds they were finding and said, ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I’ll halve it. I’ll go as far as eighty.’ They didn’t have enough courage to tell the truth but we lost a hundred aeroplanes. Quite often the four engine ones because at that time most of the guys were in four engined guys, Halifax’s. I think we’d already thrown away the Stirlings so all, all four engined guys on Nuremberg were in the same boat. When the winds were sorted out at base and they sent back a revised lot of winds they were nowhere near the real ones and so not only did the searchlights, the ackack and the night fighters do their normal thirty or forty aircraft shot down but the other sixty aircraft found that because they’d run out of fuel they ditched in the North Sea, they ditched in the Baltic, they ditched everywhere. Quite often these were the people whose names ended up on Runnymede Memorial, missing, but their aircraft were never heard of again. Navigation was so important and the scientists did their best but the German scientists were also very clever. So I’m afraid quite often the Germans made use of the navigational equipment that we did have and they took it. They found out how it worked and they used it to their advantage to warn their night fighters. So that some of the equipment that we thought were being useful to RAF bombers turned out in fact to be more useful to the enemy. They used to track, using our equipment in our aircraft, so that their night fighters could latch on to us. We didn’t know about that at the time and I don’t think Butch Harris was initially aware about it but when he did find out he had to do some serious thinking. How much risk can you take with your bomber force? It was a very difficult world. The men who flew in bombers in Bomber Command trusted Bomber Harris. They knew he had a difficult job to do. They knew that their chances of survival were less than one in two. They knew that. But they also knew that if you had to win the war you had to do it. You had to do what he wanted to do and I don’t remember anyone in any of the squadrons I flew with who argued with Bomber Harris. They knew. They knew that the only way to win was to win the war. It was them or us. It was all out war. Anyway, that was the end of my operational flying on three squadrons and when it was over and the adjutant said, ‘You’re finished.’ He sent me to a place called Brackla in Scotland and I was there with Paddy the rear gunner. It was the Redistributional Resettlement Unit. Ken Ames was sent to be an instructor on a Lancaster Finishing School at Wickenby. Tom, the bomb aimer ended up at, on the ground but commissioned and quite happy and he survived the war. Paddy ended up commissioned as a gunner and went to the Far East and he survived that. He died later on, in Nottingham I think. I never saw him again. Tex, the wireless operator had been killed in ‘44. But I, I remember being in the 97 squadron adjutant’s office when he said I was finished with operational flying and there was a little card on his desk and it said if you are tired and would like a rest why don’t you come and have a week or ten days in a [Lastrian?] house in Scotland. It’s peaceful and it’s quiet. And I made a note of the telephone number [Talland 35?]. Miles from anywhere, he said. And I said to the adjutant, ‘How do you think this place is?’ ‘Don’t know.’ he said. ‘All the information I’ve got’s on the card. It’s for chaps who need a rest from operations.’ And I remember looking up this man. He was a retired air commodore and I said, ‘I’ve just been told that I’m finished with operational flying.’ ‘Oh well done,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of getting married.’ ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Come back and talk to me when you’ve made the arrangements. You can have the honeymoon up there.’ ‘Good thinking,’ I said. So I talked to my wife about it about this. I talked to her before she were married. And we agreed. Family friends said, ‘But Jim, Aberdeenshire is a hell of a long way away from Whitley Bay which is because your wife’s in a V1, V2 area she can’t get married down there. You’re going to have to get married in Whitley Bay. And when you get married by the time it’s all over you won’t be able to get to [?]. So, we happen to know of a little hotel in Edinburgh that we met years ago and I’m sure you’ll be alright there for your first night and then you could carry on to Aberdeenshire afterwards for your honeymoon.’ And that’s what we did. That’s what we did. Later on I met up with Ken Ames and his wife after the war and we had a holiday together up there. The four of us. The war was over and poor Ken he’d married three times in the end and he died at the age of fifty five. Fifty five. I’m ninety, nearly ninety three now. What a waste. He was a nice man. Eight years later I’d lost touch with him completely. I’d finished my, my war, I’d finished my post-war service and I was interested in a campaign medal for Bomber Command. And in 2008 the Editor of the Sunday Express was running a series of articles about Bomber Command and he called them heroes. And he got ten thousand letters from people into his office as Editor saying, ‘We agree with you.’ And he sent this parcels of letters and things to 10 Downing Street, to Gordon Brown, on the 2nd of July 2008. They took photographs of people. I remember having my own photograph taken next to the policeman at Number 10. I’d never been anywhere near Downing Street. I didn’t know anything about it but I went to attend this petition. And there were, there was another Bomber Command man there who had been a prisoner of war in Stalag III. The one where fifty chaps had been shot. He was interested in a campaign medal as well. I wonder what happened to him. I’ve no idea. But some of the other people who were photographed there as a party not only the, Townsend, I think the name of the editor was but there were some members of parliament particularly a member of parliament who has just left us. Austin. Austin - I can’t remember his name. Anyway, this particular MP, his name will come to me, on the 13th of November 2007 before the petition, Mitchell, Austin Mitchell, that was his name, he was the MP for North Grimsby I think it was and he with a friend of mine Douglas Hudson DFC had done a programme on the Look North programme I remember in which they had been advocating the award of a campaign medal for Bomber Command. Doug Hudson had been a, had been a prisoner of war in Africa. His pilot had been shot down on the beaches heading for Malta I think in a Blenheim and he’d been captured by, I think, the Vichy French and put in to a prisoner of war camp somewhere in [Libya?] or somewhere like that. And they had been rescued when they had, when the Americans invaded and he’d been repatriated. This is Douglas Hurd and he’d done a conversion back on to navigation and he’d been serving with a Lancaster squadron and he had said to all the members of his Lancaster crew he said, ‘Now, look. I don’t intend to become another prisoner of war in Germany. I’ve had enough. So my position is quite clear.’ Anyway, he survived the tour and he wrote a book and he called it, “A Navigator’s Story: There and Back Again.” And he contacted, he lived somewhere near Lincoln, on the outskirts of Lincoln with his family, and he met Austin Mitchell and he persuaded him to do this Look North programme looking for a campaign medal. He died of course. His wife died first. I still, I’m still in touch with his daughter who still lives there and I keep her in touch with my puny efforts to get a campaign medal. This girl, Yvonne, Yvonne [Puncher?] married another navigator but a Canberra navigator after the war and they lived just around the corner from where Douglas and his wife lived. And she joined the air force to become an air traffic control officer and that’s where we, we joined up again in a different way and I was able to talk to her about life in the air traffic control world.
SB: What did you do after you left the air force?
JW: I’m sorry?
SB: What did you do after you left the air force?
Well that’s a very interesting story because after I went to the resettlement unit at Brackla with Paddy he went off to the Tiger Force and they said, ‘Now Jim. What are we going to do with you? You’ve done a double tour. You deserve a rest. Would you like to be RTO at Euston Station?’ And I said, ‘What does that mean? What’s RTO?’ ‘Rail Travel Officer,’ they said. ‘What did he do?’ ‘Ah well you see it’s nothing to do with flying. I’m afraid you’re now a flight lieutenant and as such you can do a lot of work. You might be very helpful as an RTO because an RTO at Euston station is a busy job you know and we need people with wartime experience used to handling men, army, navy, air force and we move them around in hundreds every day of the week. Moving them from this camp to that camp and so.’ And I said, ‘Well ok. It sound a little bit boring but, and I don’t really like London as a place to live. What else can you think of?’ ‘Well,’ they said, ‘What about a job with BOAC?’ And I said, ‘What is BOAC?’ ‘British Overseas Airways Corporation.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Civil flying?’ ‘Yes, that’s right.’ They said. ‘I’ll buy that one,’ I said. ‘I’ll try that. Can’t do any harm.’ ‘You’re on,’ he said. ‘We’ll send you warrants and things like that to Bristol and you can talk to the people down there’. Ostensibly of course it was to fly so I said, ‘Yeah, but civil flying.’ ‘That’s right,’ they said. ‘It won’t be in a war zone.’ So, we got married and we went to, it was nearly Christmas time I remember and I think by the time I got down to Bristol to make an appointment they said, ‘Jim, we would be delighted for you to fly but we’re snowed under with navigators. What we really want in BOAC at the moment are ground operations officers to make the whole system work better.’ ‘Ok,’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know much about it but where would it be?’ ‘Ah well we’d like you to go Hurn, near Bournemouth.’ Now, an operations officer down there would handle Dakotas, Lancastrians and things like that and it’s an important job.’ So I said, ‘Ok. My flying days are over, I’m married. I’m free and I survived and the war’s still on. I’ll do it.’ So I told my wife on our honeymoon. I said, ‘I’m not going to fly anymore. I’m going to be an operations officer.’ ‘Oh, well Bournemouth sounds very interesting,’ she said. So I stayed for another eighteen months at Hurn doing this operation officer’s job and of course the Royal Air Force were still paying me. I was still in flight lieutenant’s uniform and I could wear a flight lieutenant’s uniform any time I liked but during the day BOAC would give me an operations officer uniform. It was a different kind of uniform. But it was quite interesting work and I found I met a lot of interesting people. I met a lot of ex Bomber Command people who were also seconded. The war was still on but they were seconded to BOAC to help them fly Lancastrians because they were familiar with the Lancaster and a lot of the people that I used to work with as an operations officer would be flying Dakotas. Now they were just the same as the military Charlie 47 that a lot of our people flew during the war on Transport Command. And very interesting, I used to meet, I used to meet the skippers and I met people like O. P. Jones at Hurn. He was a very well-known civil aviation pilot. [? ] And of course the same station manager for BOAC in Bournemouth was also responsible for the flying boat operation at Poole Harbour, just down the road from the other side from the land airfield at Hurn to the seaplane base at Poole. It was all very interesting stuff and whilst the war was still on. But in nineteen forty, when would it be, I couldn’t get demobbed until October ‘46 and sometime in early ‘46 whilst I was still an operations officer Mr Horton, I remember his name, the station manager, he came and he said, ‘Jim I know you’re in the air force but,’ he said, ‘But I’m about to become station manager in London for BOAC because we’re opening up at Heathrow.’ And I said, ‘Fine.’ He said, ‘Mr Carter,’ I think that was his name, who was a senior operations man at Hurn, ‘Is nearly at retirement age and he doesn’t want to go to Heathrow. Would you like the job of station operations officer at Heathrow?’ I said, ‘Yes. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m quite happy. It’s a challenge. I’d like to do it.’, ‘Ok,’ he says, ‘So, it means living a bit rough for a while because we’ve got a house at the end of the runway and we’ve got to literally build SECO huts alongside the A4 road, the Bath Road. We’ve got to do all this sort of stuff and it takes time to organise it. It will be tough for a time.’ I said, ‘Fine. I’m quite happy to do that.’ So I became the station operations officer for London Airport for BOAC but they had Pan America and they had [Lufthansa] they had other people but as far as BOAC were concerned they wanted me to do this job. He said, Mr Horton says, ‘Incidentally, we also would also like you to do an air traffic control course. I know it’s a joint military civil service job at Watchfield.’ I said, ‘Fine. I don’t mind doing that and I’ll meet lots of interesting people there.’ So I went to Watchfield and I did the course and I passed it and I went back to Heathrow and then I took some of my other operations officers and sent them off to do air traffic control officer’s job as well. There was meaning for this of course because when the war ended in ’45, on May, on May the 8th the civil flying business took off in a big way. A lot of the seconded RAF officers both flying and ground would carry on doing civil contracts with BOAC and I was one of them. I was demobbed in October ‘46 and on the 20th of October I went to Gambia in British West Africa as an operations officer but this time I think they’d regraded me as an operations officer grade one. It was a better kind of job and paid a bit better than the routine BOAC operations officer grade 2 did. Anyway, my wife and I were quite happy and she, by this time was living with her parents in Ilford. The war was over. We were married. We had no children. She was looking forward to being a wife overseas and eventually after six months she followed me out to Bathurst and we lived in married quarters there. Lived in nissen huts accommodation but Fujara was the place where we lived and worked and I used to operate by transport by car to the airfield at [Yangden?], would go down to the flying boat base in Bathurst. That became Banthul. I think B A N T H U L, was the new name that they invented for Bathurst. Now, there had been Royal Air Force during the war at Bathurst at [Yangden?] and the flying boat base at Bathurst. They had used air sea rescue and things like that but all the people that were wartime at Bathurst and similar places overseas had to be brought back for demob and that’s where the air traffic control came in because the ministry of civil aviation were quite interested to get BOAC to organise this on their behalf because they wanted the routes to be kept up without, without halt whilst the transfer from wartime to civil took place. I quite enjoyed doing the job in Gambia. I quite enjoyed it but whilst we were there BOAC contacted all the air traffic control officers they had overseas and they said, ‘Would you like to become a flight operations officer? If you do and if you have the qualification and if you are willing we will train you at Aldermaston in England for three months course and you will cease to be operations officer grade 1 and if you succeed as part of the course you will be posted as flight operations officers.’ Now they don’t wear uniform. It’s not a uniform job. It was a very important job because you’d got to do all the flight planning for the civil airliners at Heathrow, at Prestwick and all these places and you’re going to save time, effort and money by shift working, in your case at Prestwick because in 19, what would it be? 1946 we left, ’48, December we came back. In ’49. In ‘49 I became a flight operations officer working for BOAC as a civilian. Nothing to do with the air force. I worked at er, as a flight operations officer for BOAC at Prestwick and I was posted then from Prestwick to Heathrow. But in September ’50, in September ’50, I remember very well all the flight operations officers throughout BOAC would become redundant and they had three months’ pay which lasted until December of that year. And the reason for it was that in the previous financial year in spring of ‘50 BOAC made an eight million pound loss which upset them. And they found that the new chairman, who was a city man, didn’t know anything about flying and he said to his board of directors, ‘Right. I’m your new boss. Tell me what the facts are. I suppose we need air crew. We couldn’t fly without them.’ ‘That’s right,’ they said. ‘And they’re very expensive.’ ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘Well, who are the next expensive people?’ ‘Well, we think the flight operations officers are.’ ‘Tell me what they do,’ he said. ‘Oh the flight operations officers throughout the world take the incoming air crew and in advance they do meteorological analysis of the future flights and when the incoming crew arrive they can just have a meal, accept what the flight operations officers has decided is the best time track for the next stage. Sign and off they go.’ ‘I see,’ said the new chairman. ‘Well, the answer simply, really to save money is to stop paying all these flight operations officers and let the air crew do their own flight planning. There’s a captain, a navigator a wireless operator why can’t they do it themselves. They’re qualified to do it.’
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with James Wright
Creator
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Sheila Bibb
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-08
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWrightJDFC150608
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Description
An account of the resource
James Wright was born in Nottinghamshire and worked as a civil servant before he joined the Air Force. After training in Canada he flew on operations as a navigator with 61, 97 and 630 Squadrons. He recalls the occasion when Eastbourne Railway Station was attacked by Me 109s. He discusses the difficulties and importance of navigation by describing events at Nuremberg. After the war he became a flight operations manager at Heathrow and in Gambia an air traffic controller.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
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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
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
Germany--Nuremberg
Heathrow Airport (London, England)
England--Sussex
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
Format
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02:15:12 audio recording
61 Squadron
630 Squadron
97 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
aircrew
animal
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
crewing up
final resting place
ground personnel
Lancaster
Me 109
medical officer
memorial
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Pathfinders
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Upper Heyford
strafing
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/333/3494/PStangryciukBlackJ1701.2.jpg
7833673268b4133cfbed42ada1200c7c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/333/3494/AStangrycuikBlackJ160710.1.mp3
8d572e5a9ef203e919c42aa93a627b9b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Black, Jan
Jan Stangryciuk-Black
Jan Stangryciuk
J Black
J Stangryciuk-Black
J Stangryciuk
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Jan Black (formerly Stangryciuk)(1922 - 2023, 794829 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-10
2017-03-14
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.
Identifier
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StangryciukBlack, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TO: Right. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever the case is. This interview is being filmed for the International Bomber Command Centre and the gentleman I’m interviewing is Jan Black. My name is Thomas Ozel. And also in the room we have —
DB: Danuta Bildziuk.
AB: And Artur Bildziuk.
TO: And we’re recording this interview at the Polish Centre in Hammersmith on the 10th of July 2016. Now, could you please tell me what year you were born?
JSB: Yes. I was born 18-4-1922 in Eastern Poland. Chelm Lubelskie. And after having fourteen years my father emigrated to South America. To Argentine. When we arrived in South America my father bought land and started a plantation. I went to school in Argentine to learn English and the rest of my education. After five years the Second War started in 1939. September. After hearing the destruction in my country and the suffering which my country was involved I was very, very upset because I had very patriotic feeling for my country and my people. In English newspapers in Buenos Aires were advertisement want some volunteers can join and enter into British armed forces. I applied to such invitation and I was asked to come over to Buenos Aires, to the capital city to have interview. I did travel to the capital city. Had interview. And after the interview I was asked when would I like to be ready for my, for my, for my journey to join the armed forces in Great Britain? I told them what that’s after arrangement what they could provide. After two weeks I received a letter and they told me, you know I can come to the capital city and I will have accommodation provided before the boat which will be sailing back to England. I arrived in mentioned location in Buenos Aires and had accommodation in hotel as it was arranged but we never knew when the boat would be sailing as it was strict secret but we’d been told we must be ready on short notice. And we received that notice that in four hours we must be ready and we would get transportation from the hotel to the very big boat called Highland Monarch. That boat was twenty six thousand tonner. Big one. And the most of his supply to England was meat for the nation in England. When we start our voyage our boat, to avoid German location of German submarine was not going on the straight course. He was doing zig zagging to avoid German’s location of German submarine. That journey took us much longer to enter Belfast in Northern Ireland because the boat was always in danger to come to the main ports of England. So the location between Argentine and Belfast was arranged for those four big liners which were doing the important supply of food between England and Argentine. The name of those boats was Highland Chieftain, Highland Monarch, Highland Princess. The fourth one I don’t remember. And after arriving in Belfast we’d been arranged — arranged accommodation in hotel for two nights. And afterwards we’d been, at night shipped to Scotland and we found ourself in some military barracks. After one week we had to pass medical board. And we’d been asked in what unit of armed forces we would like to serve. Of course I was young and I thought the most exciting unit I wanted to join — the Royal Air Force. During that time Polish Air Force start to be formed in England and I asked the commanding officer in English station if it is possible for me to be serve in the Polish Air Force. And I received permission and I had ticket arranged for me to travel to Blackpool. In Blackpool it was the first Polish Centre where the Polish Air Ministry was based. In Blackpool after having another interview about what profession I would like to serve in the Polish Air Force once again I wanted to fly. And they told me the only, at that time vacancy for training would be as a air gunner because to have a, have a permission to train as a pilot would be taking much longer time as we had special amount of people who only they could afford to train at such time. I accept my position as a rear gunner. After finishing all my training I had posting arranged for me to go to the 18 OTU. operational [unclear] where we start to be trained flying and having different night flights and earning more experience about future commitments which we will be engaged. Beginning of such training we had training to drop leaflets. Propaganda leaflets over Vichy France to promise French people what liberation will be coming for them in near future. During my return from such a mission our Wellington bomber received defect and we crash landed before we reached the aerodrome. During that impact in the crash I lost consciousness. When I recovered my consciousness I knew what I must try to get out of my crashed plane. But I, before deciding to look exit out I decided to try to see what’s happening to my pilot. From the rear turret I crawl to the front of the plane where the pilot was sitting. I tried to, to get him out of the burning plane but I couldn’t untie his belt what he was tied with it and the plane was increasing of the burning. I covered my left side of my face with my left hand and with my right hand I looked for the exit from my burning plane. Then I noticed skylight exit. As my plane was broken in two pieces, during that exit I scrambled to get out of the plane with burning my kombinezon flying suit as the petrol was already, already full of petrol. During my crawling and from the plane I received help from local farmers when they came and took my burning kombinezon out of me. But I was already very badly burned. My face and my hands. Ambulance came and been notified of the accident in about half an hour. And I was taken to Cosford Hospital. RAF hospital near Wolverhampton. During that hospital, receiving first treatments for one week I had a chance to meet very famous doctor. Doctor who came and inspect the RAF hospital in Cosford. The name of that doctor was Sir Archibald McIndoe. He was one of the great plastic surgeon doctor based in Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, Sussex. He told me he was going to transfer me to his hospital and asked me if I will be happy to go there. I told him what I leave the decision to him as he was the person knowing better my situation. On the next day the ambulance took me to East Grinstead Hospital and in that hospital I found lots of, lots of different, my friends from the RAF. They were Canadians, Poles, Czechs, English and I felt I found myself like in a big family. I started my treatment under that plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe. He was to us airmen what from different accident, from different type of injury what we receive we treat him he was not only our big doctor but he was our friend. And we could not give them the greatest recognition how he try to do whatever possible to bring our disfigurement back to better future. After spending four months in East Grinstead I received quite a good improvement of my recovery and the hospital was very under big pressure. New cases were arriving day and night. Hospital for giving some burning airmen quite [pause] quite bigger recovery had to send them back to their units as they were short of beds. I receive that notice what I will be sent back to my station. When I received that notice and when I had my ticket, train ticket provided I arrived at my station and I had to report to my commanding officer. When my commanding officer saw me he asked me what I want to do. I looked at my commanding officer and I said to him, ‘Sir. What I want to do. I want to do what I’ve been trained to do. I want to fly.’ He looked at me and he said, ‘Warrant officer, in case you ever will be involved in some, in some type of possibility shot down over Germany you will be very unwelcome with your profile.’ I turned to my commanding officer and I replied, ‘Sir, maybe my future flying will not always be such an unfateful.’ Then I had to pass certain tests if I was fit enough to fulfil my professional responsibility in flying. And I was sent for two hour test with two doctors onboard on my plane. After having two hours flying we returned to base and the doctors told me what they will leave. They will leave the rest of the, of the, my experience and test of my flying with my commanding officer. On, after two days my commanding officer met me again and he said after seeing the report from my flying he said he has full confidence of giving me to continue my duty. I received my job as a, flying as a spare gunner in my station. And I continued to fly. I made eighteen operation over Germany and I was recalled to hospital to finish my treatment. When I returned to hospital, after three days my crew what I was flying went on bombing mission and were shot down. The pilot what I remember his name he was Squadron Leader Jan Konarzewski was killed and the navigator was killed. So many years I cannot remember the navigator name. The rest of the crew escaped from the German concentration camps. I’ve heard two of them, after when war finished they went to Canada. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the crew. When I finished my treatment in East Grinstead war ended. I was transferred to still serve in my service in station — Royal Air Force Station Andover in Hampshire. I was there on responsible duty to keep the aerodrome not be some time taken for training courses as local training courses some time were coming to the aerodrome and they were problem for the landing planes. We’d been doing, as I say guarding the aerodrome in Andover. So the aerodrome was always free for any landing plane. After three years I’d been asked to return to Dunholme Lodge Discharging Centre. I went to Dunholme Lodge from Andover Station and after two weeks I received my discharge. My demob suit, my demob shoes, two shirts and some compensation money. And that’s how I ended my service in the Royal Air Force in 1948. That’s about the end of my story.
TO: Is it ok if we just pause there for a moment?
DB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
TO: When you were growing up in Poland were people quite afraid of Russia?
JSB: Yes. The people were in Russia yes. Will you ask me, tell me again please?
TO: Were people worried about Russia and Stalin?
JSB: Yes. Very much so because Stalin and Hitler made treaty between themselves and they arrange already partition of my country between Germany and Russia. So the Russia really was beginning cooperating with German when war started in Poland. Afterwards it ended quite different because instead of keeping such a friendship between those two countries they start to fight between themself because they knew sooner or later they are danger one to another. And we became also big saviour for the Russians when the Russians were invaded by the Germans. We gave them all our help to stop German such a big advance overrunning that big territory. Thanks to our supply with whatever armament we’ve been able to do it that stopped the German’s big blitzkrieg to make Russia become their occupation big land. Winter also came at the right time when the German advancement not succeeded as were planned. Russia, after the war received big recognition for in the end fighting on our side. But it also, they also should be thankful what they received. Very big help from us. And that’s why today are such a big nation with such a future ahead of them. We still feel now what the Russia could be much more helpful with us. Remembering the days when we all save big danger to overtake that burden. We succeeded together and the Russians should also remember what they must remember and be with us not against us. Yes.
TO: And when you were at school had you been taught about the Polish War of Independence?
JSB: Yes. Very much so. I’d been taught and I had very big patriotism for my country as my country being occupied by, for so long by the three superpower Germany, Russia and Austria. When we regained our independence after the First War we had only twenty years freedom time to rebuild our almost zero economy. War came too soon and we were grateful to have ally like England and France far away because we’d been surrounded by very unfriendly neighbours. Russia. Germany. That’s why today we Poles remember that England was one country when in the end they decided to tell Germans what if they invade Poland the war will be declared against them. That’s what England did and I think what England and Poles took that difficult decision to fight together and we today change Europe for the example to the rest of the world. I hope the people should remember the difficult days and try to remember how Europe today benefitting from our freedom and prosperity for seventy six years. Whatever young generation decide from now on that will be their decision. But I think they are capable more to continue to go in the same direction as we left after 1945.
TO: And what was your favourite plane in the RAF?
JSB: Yeah. My two favourite planes I think up to today, in early day, the Wellington was super bomber. But afterwards we’d been able to build much bigger, much more faster, much more superior plane, Lancaster — and I think Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane they were the planes that should be remembered for a long, long time to come.
TO: Could you tell me about the conditions aboard a Wellington?
JSB: Yeah. Wellington had the same, I would say a good name because the structure of a Wellington was very practicable, what — it was very outstanding to certain damage to it because the aluminium structure what was built in the Wellington structure was very practicable. And I think as the war started the Wellington will also leave good history for himself.
TO: Yeah. Could you tell me about the, what it was like inside a Lancaster?
JSB: Yeah. Lancaster was very manoeuvrable fast plane and had three gunners. Germans knew what he had quite a good defence for himself. They always knew to attack Lancaster it was also a risk to themself and the Lancaster was our saviour I think. And we had confidence in him what he always took us over the German sky and always we been happy when he brought us back.
TO: And could you — what was the first ever mission you did over Europe?
JSB: Yeah. The first mission what I made it was the most diverse experience what I had over the Gelsenkirchen because in our briefing we’d been told that the Germans had big factories what were producing lots of military hardware in that place. That was my first bombing mission and I had to face my first [pause] first my lesson how it look to be over enemy territory.
TO: Can you tell me what you saw?
JSB: Yeah. I saw lots of explosion. Lots of burning down below. Lots of searchlights. And it was hell. I was happy when we returned over the Channel. I felt it was like halfway to be home. Yeah.
TO: And I’m sorry to ask this but did you ever find out what the defect was in that Wellington that caused the crash?
JSB: Just, I don’t know but I know the one thing what during the early days sometime our planes were not hundred percent to be airworthy. But we could not always make complaints because if we complain sometime for some small what it was defect we be probably be treated as we are not happy to continue our responsible mission. Yeah. You see from in early day sometimes plane because it was such a big demand in continue training and the plane probably didn’t receive a hundred percent service capable under the pressure. But we did fly them because it was such a situation what we had not enough time to keep this plane in a hundred, hundred percent. And planes were under continuous very big pressure and small repairs and defects needed to be done. It was not to blame the people who serviced the plane but it was only because it was in such a hurry time that we had to do everything in short time. Yes.
TO: I’m sorry. I know you’ve told me this before but there was a lot of background noise at the time. Could you, could you please give me the full description — like what target you were going to on the mission where the crash happened.
JSB: Yeah. Just before we went over the leaflets it was just normal briefing we received to drop these leaflets over the France. And the different people were probably reading these leaflets and hoping their liberation will come soon. But defect what was in the plane — no. We had not notice no defect before we took off. It just happened as we’d been returning to base.
TO: And I’m sorry again but could you please tell me again what happened during the crash? Was the — please.
JSB: Yeah. When before we crashed the pilot give us signal what the one engine receiving defect and we must prepare for crash landing. We, being near the aerodrome and we had not altitude to bale out but we had to crash. And during that crash that’s what happened. I came out and my crew was killed.
TO: And other than the pilot who else was aboard the plane? Who else was aboard the plane other than you and the pilot?
JSB: The pilot notify us on intercom what we will be committed to crash land. And that’s what happened. We’d be near to the base but we could not reach the aerodrome and we crashed before the aerodrome.
TO: And how did you feel when you woke up? You regained consciousness —
JSB: Yeah. When I recovered the consciousness I was still dazed. Yes. After that terrific impact you know what we receive. But I quickly came to [pause] to break my memory what we have to get out of that burning plane as soon as possible. And myself, instead of looking for exit I went to save the pilot hoping that he was still alive. I don’t know if he was still alive or he was half dead but I couldn’t take him from his seat because I think he was still tied up with the belt. Yes. I could not see it because you know I had to cover my face with my hand because the flame was all over it. The plane was engulfed in the fire and when I found that exit, the broken exit I was already my kombinezon was burning and the people who came because we’d been near the aerodrome and those people were professional because they always been expecting sooner or later some crashes do happen. You know what I mean. When they live close by. They had courage to come quite close and help to undo my burning, you know, flying suit. Yes. But I was already then my helmet was thrown out you see during the impact and I was already all my hair, my head was badly burned. And my hands up to, up to here you see were all badly burned, yes.
TO: When did the ambulance arrive?
JSB: In about half an hour. An ambulance took me to RAF Hospital Cosford near Wolverhampton, but I was in terrific pains. And thanks to the different morphine what I was given to ease my pains I was put to sleep but the pain continue for many, many days. But after each day I notice that I was recovering slightly and we were given from the hospital staff always their great encouragement what you will in the end become as more as we were before. Probably we make improvement but the small marks always will be left for the rest of the life. Yes.
[recording paused]
TO: And did the plane actually explode?
JSB: Yes. After the still petrol what was inside plane did explode and I was lucky to be little distance from the plane because if I would be still inside that was the end. So they got me still on my side after the crash. Yes.
TO: And when did you first meet McIndoe?
JSB: Yeah. The doctor McIndoe, he used to inspect different hospitals in different parts in England. And at one time he visit RAF hospital in Cosford. When he saw me he told me he will ask for my transfer to his hospital in East Grinstead, Sussex because he told me in that hospital they have much bigger, much better facilities for big burns and big damages to different parts of the corpse. And he asked me will I like to go to that hospital. I told him, ‘Dr McIndoe, I leave it to you. And I hope your advice will be more than me deciding what to do.’ And I was very happy when I arrived in East Grinstead Hospital because I met so many boys with the same. With the same burns and different damages in our life. I was feeling like I am in big family. And the people in that town, East Grinstead, they were so friendly to us what we are always we remember that town as it is our very friendly town when people never stare at us no matter in what condition we did look they accept us. And we will be grateful to them what they treat us as we were part of that little town.
TO: Did you have a girlfriend during the war?
JSB: Yes. Yes. I did meet a girlfriend. And after some few days during my holiday when I met her we became friends. And she asked me what happen to me when war ends. I told her this is big story. I cannot tell her. If I can tell her because I told her the war always bring very unexpectedly changes. But then were small question. If ever war end if we will continue our friendship. I had no alternative. Only thinking what such a promise probably can be given. And when war ended and my wife in the end came to visit me when I was in hospital I was so grateful because I had no family, no really friends to come and see me in that hospital. And when she came and visit me in hospital I was so proud of myself and of her what I had somebody who came to see me. At one time I asked her, I said to her, ‘Look. You came from London to see me in East Grinstead. I said that was lots of problem for you to came that distance.’ She looked at me and she told me if I want to listen to her why she came to see me. I said, ‘Yes. Do tell me.’ She said, ‘Look. On your next bed you have your friend also. English pilot. He has his father and mother with him.’ She said, ‘There further on you see another, your friend have some other friends.’ And she said, ‘You are in your bed. You have nobody.’ And she said, ‘That’s why I felt I must come and see you because probably your family is far away. And that’s what made me to come and see you.’ Those words I will remember for the rest of my life. Now, I’m old man. I can’t go to Poland. I can’t go to my sister in Argentine. But I bury my wife in Gunnersbury Cemetery, west of London and I promised her if ever anything happened to me I will be buried with her. And that’s why I’m living in London. Because I know my history is here. What we did during the war. How we fought the war. How we ended the war. And I think for that reason I call England as my most, most, the first place where I want to end my life. That’s really truth you know because that’s I buried my wife and I promised her I would be buried with her and that’s what it will be because I think if I go nobody will look her grave or nobody will bother. You see that was during the war. How it brings people sort of together you see. But people today war long time gone and don’t remember those days. Yes.
TO: When you’d come back from a bombing mission did you ever find out how successful your mission had been?
JSB: Yes. Yeah. Because we had to take photo during the mission. From beginning it was not such a demanding responsibility. But as war start to continue we had to bring much more, much more improvement in our missions. What we had to bring better results of our bombing and we had to bring the photographs. Where we bombed and how near we’d been able to bomb the targets what it was in demand. So, it was very, very important what to drop whatever our mission was to do it the most effectively. In the right spot. And that’s where in the end we were so proud what we’d been making such a great bigger direct hits in the spots what needed to be destroyed. Thanks to the new improvement in our recognition and in our new invention of bombing.
TO: And were you ever involved in attacks on Hamburg?
JSB: No. No. I never. I’d been on Essen, Dusseldorf, Gelsenkirchen and many others what I probably now don’t remember you see after so many years. But we had different targets and different targets we knew were much more heavily defended. So we always during the briefing we knew what targets were more difficult than the other ones. They were all always danger because, because the Germans had very superior defence you know and they always, always been trying to give us very hectic time over their sky, over their city and over their land. But whatever they did they never could close door against us. We’d been always telling them whatever superiorities they had in the past but we will be still coming over their sky, over their city and over their land and they were not able to stop us.
TO: Did you ever see any night fighters?
JSB: Yes. I saw once and I thought he was going to attack us. Yes. And I was giving pilot instruction what the German Messerschmitt 109 is probably trying to shoot us down. I don’t know for what reason he kept certain distance as I kept him in my sight. And I was thinking when he come closer I will give pilot instruction to make different movements to get off his gunsight because as he was following us I knew he would try to catch us in his gunsight. But the distance was still far. We continued the flight and I was hoping what probably soon I would have to give pilot my instruction. I don’t know for what reason he didn’t commit his attack. Maybe, I don’t know, he felt or he had certain also risk to do it. I don’t know. Or maybe he wanted to return to base because sometimes they were short of fuel you see. And that’s also probably you saw but they were probably already thinking how to come back to base. So the fighters, not all the time they come and determined to shoot you down. You see probably, probably they think what they also taking certain risk when they come because whatever defence you had you always had also difference you see. They had superior because they had much longer distance to open the fire and what would be effective. And they were much more manoeuvrable. Yes. But also depends. You don’t know who was flying in them. Because some were more determined to do, proceed with their action. Some probably thought they already made enough, you know, success during that night. That’s difficult to be sure you know what some but they also had pilot more determined to do their duty and they had some pilot probably who thought different way.
TO: And what kind of anti Aircraft guns were the Germans using?
JSB: Oh they were bad. They were bad. They, they used to catch us in the searchlight and when they catch you in searchlight you have so difficult to get out of them you see because they catch you from different direction. And when they catch you in you are blind you see, in it. So what you do? You do whatever manoeuvre you do. You turn your plane left, right just to get out of escape from those and during that time the fighters if they are in the near area they also see you from the distance. So they at the same time have terrific advantage to come and finish you off you see. When even you escape from the searchlights you see they afterwards will continue their attack. Searchlights was very, the very ones they catch you, you be really in trouble to get out of the searchlights and many times, many times you you’ve been tried to avoid when you saw them on the sky. You’ve been always trying somehow to dodge them but not every time, you know you’ve been able to dodge them. And some targets were much more equipped with the defence of searchlights than the other. We’d been usually try to avoid on going on bombing mission because we had good knowledge different places what had bigger defence than the other places and sometime we been even changing courses you know [pause] our journey so put the Germans always more uncertain of our direction of our mission. Yes. Yeah.
TO: Could you see anti Aircraft shells exploding?
JSB: Anti Aircraft — ?
TO: Shells exploding.
JSB: Oh yes. Yes. I, I have had sometime, or brought small shrapnel holes when they explode in the air. Yes. Many times we almost, when we came and saw the shrapnel just damage in certain parts of the plane we were almost kissing the plane what he was able to bring us down and still capable to come back. And they were soon quickly repaired if the damage wasn’t too serious here. Sometimes you see when this, they explode they will touch with big force and do big damage. Sometimes smaller shrapnel explode it will make hole but luckily depends where it touch you see. One sometimes it make hole but not manage to damage your fuel supply or something you see. The plane will continue [unclear] Yes. It depends. Sometimes they explode. When they explode in bigger, bigger say pieces and such a big piece you know when he hit you it almost you have nothing else. If you have chance to bale out or sometime the plane is going without any chance to survive. Yes. But the Germans had very strong defence because they had for so many years of well train the people you see because the bombing was continue night after night and during all those nights of experiences it gives much capability to be such effective. Yes. Yes.
TO: And what was the procedure for when you reached the target and bombs were dropped?
JSB: You just, when you drop your bomb you think you are half home because there’s nothing more danger when you are going on the target with full load. Because even if you are attacked by fighter during that time you cannot do sharp manoeuvring with your plane because your plane is very heavy when loaded. So when you go to the target is always the most danger journey. Once you drop over target you just put full throttle and get far from the target as possible and afterwards hoping for the best. Yes. To your way home.
TO: And what did you think of the RAF leaders?
JSB: I think what our Bomber Harris, the leader from the Bomber Command I think he did the most recognition for succeeding. Such an effective bombing as he taught to us what all will be one of the most destructive weapon to make German to surrender. Because from beginning the Germans had always better equipment. Better [pause] I don’t know better, always system what we could not face to their superiority but the Bomber Command always dictated the terms. And whatever Germans did against us they never could stop us going over their sky, over their cities, over their other well defended parts of the country. And Bomber Command, without Bomber Command there would be very difficult to win the war. We did the biggest damage to their industry. To whatever defence they thrown against us. They couldn’t stop us to succeed. Our superiority.
TO: And what year or what years were you doing bombing raids?
JSB: 1943. Yes. ’43. That was some time in, in November. November. Yes.
TO: Do you want to take a break for lunch at all?
JSB: No. No. No. No.
DB: How much longer do you want to —
TO: Well, I’m really enjoying this so —
DB: [laughs]
TO: I have about another half an hour left of battery on here so —
DB: Ok. So shall we just —
TO: If I have more questions after that would it be ok to take a lunch break and then have another chat this afternoon.
DB: That’s up to —
TO: Would that —
JSB: Yeah.
TO: We have another half an hour on here.
JSB: Yes. That’s alright.
TO: Would it be ok if I have more questions to speak to you after lunch?
JSB: Yes. Yes.
TO: Ok. Did you, did you hear about the Holocaust?
JSB: Yes. Yes. I did hear about the Holocaust because it was obvious what Hitler regained his super power in Germany and we knew by always telling to the German people what in the First War the Germans lost the war because the very rich Americans industries was Jewish big people — involve America in defeating the Germans in the First War. And he, after the war always blamed what the rich American big Jewish businessmen were the one who made that decision to defeat the Germans because they already notice what in Germany was certain building anti, anti-Jewish feeling. And he continue with that always. I would say complaints. What the Germans should never accept the defeat in the Second War and by doing so he gained very big popularity. And that’s how he start to build his recognition in Germany. What he will try to do something that just would never happen again. And after such a lot of promises what he start giving to the German people he was heading for the second preparing German nation for the Second War. Yes. And as he did prepare the German people they refused to pay their compensation for the, whatever was enforced on them after the First War. The German anti-Semitism start increasing. They start doing lots of unnecessary damage to lots of Jewish population in Germany. And of course it was obvious what those anti-Semitism was increasing. Poland received before the war certain amount of Jewish population what had been forced to leave the Germany. And we received lots of Jewish population because they were very helpful to my country. They were business people. They brought economy quicker recovery. And we knew what in Germany before the war anti-semity start to increase. So I did believe in Holocaust during the war because I start somehow getting information from Poland what’s happening. Not only to the Jewish people and to the Polish people and we had sympathy. We Poles had sympathy for the Jewish people and Polish people in reverse you see. So I didn’t from beginning never thought of gas chambers when they start to modernise such a barbaric destruction. But I knew what the Germany anti-Semitism did exist. I was young going to school. In my school in Poland we had different nation. We had German. We had Ukrainian. We had Polish. We had Jewish. But at school in my days there was very strong discipline. I could not be unfriendly to any of those different nation because it was severe punishment for it. And I thought whatever in Poland in short years freedom we had very strong democratic system. And I’m only sorry that that freedom didn’t lasted longer. But still Hitler was very unfriendly man and he is to blame for the suffering what he give to so many people. What today the Europe should remember and never go back to those days again.
TO: Did you hear about the uprising in Warsaw?
JSB: Yes. Yes. I’ve heard. I’ve heard you know what was there was Jewish people whatever they had they’d been defending themself because they knew what they had to unite themself. And how bravely they did unite and start doing their uprising and what, what consequences they paid for it. But they knew they had no alternative. Only the last resort it was to fight. Whatever they had to arm to fight with. The Jewish people should never because they in every country they helpful because they are business people. They bring business and help to the economy and I’m I, I think in Poland if we today would have more Jewish population my country probably would make better prospect. But still so many Jewish people from Eastern Europe being murdered and small amount what survived went back to liberate their country.
TO: Did you hear in 1944 when the Polish Resistance took over Warsaw?
JSB: Yeah. Yes. I remember that time. And I knew already what that resistance, what had happened would be no good to the Polish nation. But it was too late to stop the people because they went under so much hatred towards the Germans and they wanted to be liberated after so many years occupation destruction. But we already we could have won the War without uprising in Warsaw but the people were prepared to liberate themself soon as possible. They just couldn’t wait no longer. And they paid heavy price for it. And that’s how some time when people take decision what it doesn’t bring much success but probably oppression what they suffer for so long they had to as they started they decided to go and they not receive from our ally — Russians at that time, help, you know, what should have been given to those poor people what fought same as people fought in Stalingrad. Yes.
TO: And what do you think was the most important battle of the war?
JSB: Yes. Most important battle of the war. I think the most important battle of the war it was Battle of Britain because that was our first big success. But it wasn’t a victory in my, as a military man I knew what the Germans still had so much power. And they really from my, whatever little knowledge I had what the Germans always wanted somehow to pressurise England to come to some treaty because they knew if they would invade England they would involve themself in very, very serious occupation. And they knew that that occupation probably will destroy their victory. They were going different turnings against England somehow. Not to invade because invasion would put so much responsibility of keeping, you know the victory over England. So I would say the biggest, our victory in battle it was to stop invasion of this country. But the Germans had many other plans still in their pocket. Blockading what was very effective. On the same sort America was involved in conflict. But it became our great help to win the war. So I think the Japanese forced America to come to war what helped us a lot to win the war. And I think we must remember that from the beginning we fought alone and it was very difficult war. And we must always still remember what Europe always been fighting and even we don’t know what if we are not continue our peace as we up to now holding. What could happen afterwards. Because you see I really think what America probably in the First War came to help us to win the First War because it was also very difficult war. We remember how many people we lost in the first war. In the Second War American people been warning President Roosevelt they don’t want to be involved in the European war and America been supplying us with lots of essential help what we needed. Yes. That’s true. Because that was great also help to us. But without America we would probably found it very difficult to continue. And I think the Japan who attacked America that’s when the victory start slowly to change on our side because Americans give us lots of things what we’d been needing to continue the war and to gain the victory.
TO: Shall we pause there for a while?
DB: Yeah.
TO: Yeah.
[recording paused]
TO: How did you feel when you feel about Chamberlain signing the Munich Agreement?
JSB: I felt what Mr Chamberlain was very badly always promised by Hitler during the previous meetings. And in the end Mr Chamberlain, our prime minister noticed that Hitler was not fulfilling his promises as it started. And in the end I must give the prime minister my full recognition what he did the right decision what, knowing what he no longer believed Hitler future promises. And in the end when England, France and Poland had not aggression treaty arranged Mr Chamberlain, Prime Minister of England decided what he would no longer will believe and tolerate the German expansion. And when the Germans attacked Poland in 1939 Mr Chamberlain had promised Polish people if such thing happened then England, France and Poland will enter into the conflict with Germany. He did. And whatever may be certain mistakes were done before the invasion I’m grateful what Mr Chamberlain made promises, kept his promises and took those very big, big decision to don’t believe Germans no longer and only declare the war on Germany. I think that was the right decision in the right time. Without those decision we probably would be not in the same Europe as we are now.
TO: And how did you feel when you heard about the Yalta Agreement?
JSB: Yes. Thank you. Yes. Yalta Agreement. I give full recognition for Mr Churchill plan and decision but I think during the Yalta meetings the Americans and the Russians play bigger parts of the deciding how Europe should be divided. I think England in those days should have had much bigger saying in that decision. But the Russians was already made big European power. Stalin demanded very big concession in Europe and Mr Churchill was incapable to be against those Yalta plans as they were mostly decided by the America, Russia and England. That’s why lots of Eastern European countries instead of being free and maybe much sooner in the part of Europe they been given to the Russian domination, Russian exploitation for more than forty years after the war. That’s why Europe is still today not united probably. Not more prosperous as it should have been if the Yalta Agreement was not made with some mistakes. But during those big decision which took part in Yalta the Americans thought they were still playing the biggest part in the world decision by having already super superpower in their atomic weapon and hoping that with that weapon they will be able to continue the future superpower in the world without believing what soon or later the Russians will be able also to get closer to that super atomic power. And this happened. When this did happen Europe was still under big military threat from the Russians part. And it took so many years to pay heavily for mistake what been committed in Yalta Agreement.
TO: When you were, first came to Britain from Argentina did most of the Poles you were with already speak English?
JSB: No. During that time I had little edge over my countrymen because as we were sailing towards Argentine and I was young at that time we’d been told that if we speak English when we arrive in Argentine it will be quite the bigger help for the future to have better jobs and to have some better position in life. I started to learn English on my voyage toward the Argentine because I was young and I knew the time was changing and I have to learn the new life in the new world. So when I came to England beginning of the war I was lived more advanced in my English than lots of my countrymen who start arriving from different parts of Europe to this country.
TO: Can you tell me about the training that you went through to be a gunner?
JSB: My training started in Blackpool. That was our Polish RAF centre. First we learned recognition of different German planes during at night on the cinema screens. Knowing when sometime we will be bombing Germany, flying over Germany not to shoot down our planes because sometime at night is very difficult to recognise the aircraft between British aircraft and German aircraft. But we’d been specially trained at cinemas at night so we always could recognise the shape of the plane. How the shapes of the planes look of the German construction and how the shapes looked of the English construction. And in the end, even at night we learned those thing. How to be careful sometimes. Not to shoot on our planes.
TO: Did you ever have to fire the guns during a mission?
JSB: Did I fire the gun?
TO: Fire the guns during a mission.
JSB: I, no I never, never had the chance of shooting down German aircraft because during my eighteen operation we passed through lots of difficult times of searchlights, shell exploding from anti-aircraft. Many other incidents. But I never had chance to opening the fire on none of the German planes because I was lucky probably. But during my operational tours we not had that engagement with the Germans night fighters.
TO: And how do you feel about the bombing of Dresden?
JSB: Yes. Dresden was bombed in two nights in succession and during the day by the, also American they bomb it. I think Dresden was bombed because in Dresden the Germans had still big amount concentration of German special units which were very bad. Very much, very much prepared to take part in contra-Russian advance and I think that’s was probably the reason why Dresden was so badly bombed and destroyed. Because the Germans concentrated in that part of the country still unexpected big amount of military units which were endangering — endangering our, our advancement in our [pause] our entering into lots of territories in Germany. Without destroying the Dresden Germany still had very big unexpected for us probably their plan which we destroyed those reserve what they had this plan before the Germans could draw them into the action.
TO: Could you please tell me about the medals that you have there?
JSB: Yes. Medals what I have. First is Polish Cross of Valour. Second is Polish Air Force medal. Third is Aircrew over Europe. Fourth is King George. Sixth is Lancaster Bomber medal what was awarded to us after the war.
TO: Were you given the Cross of Valour for the Wellington bomber crash? Why were you given the Cross for Valour?
JSB: Because that Polish is when you prove that you committed some great honour defending your country and your own honour.
TO: Could you describe the procedure for taking off in the bomber?
JSB: Procedure?
TO: Taking off procedure.
JSB: Yeah. Taking off, it was always the most danger part of our, of our journey. The pilot will come to the starting point, test for the last minute all his four engines and getting permission to start from flying control. During that time if any defect could happen the plane is almost in the most dangerous situation what you could find yourself. After take-off, once you regained certain height, altitude, you feel the pilot can lower the throttle of his engine because the plane already give the big strength to lift the load what we had to take to our destination.
TO: Can you tell me about the landing procedure?
JSB: Landing procedure was always the happiest point of our journey because we were believing that whatever happened in those times we are in our home close to our accommodation. And that was the happiest part of our journey and happy to come and talk about our mission what we went through that night.
TO: Can you tell me about the briefings? The briefings you would have.
JSB: The briefing always was to us very partly scary because we’d been always told what journey is ahead of us and we always knew that during that journey anything could happen. So before we took off we always give ourselves hand. Whatever happened we will always remember each other. But the biggest happiness always happened when we returned and talk of our successes. Returned home.
TO: How would you describe morale amongst the crew?
JSB: Morale with the crew was always high because we knew that we were making progress in closer to our victory. But sometime when we returned from our mission and sometime we lost almost one or two crews it was very depressing days for few days. Seeing the tables when previously people sat having their food. Lunches or dinners. And that depressing mood sometime lasted for the quite a few days. But that was the war. We’d been prepared to have and face happier days and much more depressing days.
TO: And what did you do to entertain yourselves?
JSB: Yes. Thank you. Entertaining days always were happier when sometimes we could not take off because it was foggy or sometime the meteorological weather not possible for continue to do our missions. Some of us were playing bridge, some of us were playing snooker, some of us were having nice happy pint of beer discussing the past experience that we had. And hoping what we achieve soon victory and we would be able to celebrate the victory and sometime visit our families at home and tell them about our past what we had to serve during the war.
TO: And what’s your happiest memory of the war?
JSB: The happiest memory of the war. It was in May when it was declared of the German surrender. During that night I got myself so drunk that I don’t remember how I got home but I was brought by my friends. My friends were older than me so they could withstand the more spirit which they drank. I was younger and not such experience. I got myself so badly drunk I don’t remember how I got home. But the next day I got so happy with very, very sore head. And I only drank cup of tea the next day. That was the truth.
TO: Were there any particularly popular songs that you liked?
JSB: The most popular song we had a lovely girl who sang to us this song that, “One sunny day we will meet again.” And that song when I hear even now it bring me back. And I, I am old now but I still feel that I am young because that song gave us so much spirit. The beautiful memory, melody and the beautiful words that were in that song.
TO: On board the, when you were on a mission did you speak to each other in Polish?
JSB: Yes. Yes. We spoke completely in our Polish. We were under British command but the crew were all briefed in Polish and we had better, better understanding speaking our own language than probably not a hundred percent what we could speak English in those days.
TO: How did you feel when you heard about the D-Day landings?
JSB: D-Day. D-Day. I land myself outside Buckingham Palace. And I will remember those days also to my dying days because the crowd was so much outside Buckingham Palace. The King George, the Queen Mother and the rest of the royal family had to come on balcony and also show people that they still with the crowd outside. This happened in my memory about four times. What they used to come on balcony and wave to us. Go back inside in to palace and the crowd was still without moving from outside the palace. Then again people start to demand what they want to see the royal family. Again the doors on balcony were opened and the royal family will come on balcony. Acknowledge that they were still with the crowd. That would continue to the very early hours of the morning. That live, memory also for the rest of my life. Yes.
TO: What films did you watch during the war?
JSB: Film. I watch. The most film what I will remember when I land myself in RAF Hospital Cosford and film was Bing Crosby, “White Christmas.” It was Christmas Eve and I was in, in a small room in that hospital with dim light. And it, that memory overcame and I start to cry. And two nurses came and they talked to me and I was feeling ashamed that I cry because that song overtook me for some reason. Maybe because I was far away from home. I don’t know. But that song I will remember also for a long time to come.
TO: Was it very cold aboard the bombers? Was it cold aboard the bombers?
JSB: Yes. It was cold before the bombing but we’d been always dressed up to stand up the cold high altitude. But we could plug our electric contacts what we were connected to our flying suits. So we’d be more, more always warm from be prepare for what we meet over enemy territory and not thinking much about the cold. But the cold always was on high altitude. If anything could have gone wrong with the heating would have been very severe danger to the human life.
TO: Could you see much on the ground when you were on a bombing mission?
JSB: Yes. At night when we used to fly over enemy territory when it was moonlight it was mostly danger nights what we had to face. We always knew that during those nights we face much more danger than in some nights when they were slightly over clouded. So we always, in case of emergency having unexpected meeting with the Germans fighters we could without hesitating hide ourselves inside. Into the cloud when even the Germans will avoid to follow us because they knew they would face just as much danger themselves as they could inflict on us.
TO: And on missions were you part of a bomber stream? Were you in a bomber stream on a mission?
TO: Was I in the mission on a bomb —
TO: Were you with a lot of other bombers when you were flying? Were there other bombers around you on a mission?
JSB: Yeah. Oh yes thank you. Yes, yes thank you ask me that question. The most danger part was when we’d been approaching the bombing target and the bomb airman was directing pilot right on the target. During that time some time were incidents when the close one of our plane was approaching slightly from small different direction. And you had to avoid. Continue straight course and release your bomb because it would involve you in collision with near approaching our own plane. So what you do? You making the turning and during that turning you lose lots of distance to turn back and do return approach to the target. During that time is most dangerous to collide with another approaching aircrafts coming on the same target. Or delaying your return from the target when lots of German fighters during that time hunting for last returning plane. This is the most danger part. If during your approach on target something happen what probably you have to turn and make second approach because you’re losing your return home. And during that time lots of Germans fighters still in the area what you are victim of return.
TO: And did you ever feel any animosity towards Germany?
JSB: Yes. Yes. Yes. I felt very much so. Because not only because I disliked the Germans but I didn’t like their new approach. What they felt, that they had superiority over the other people. I thought we were, whatever nationality we all were able to do the same as the Germans did. And for that reason because the Germans they inflicted in your generation that they were superior to the other nation. This I didn’t believe and this I didn’t like. And I thought what they must never think for the future of the same superiority than the other nation.
TO: And how do you think today about Germany?
JSB: Thank you. Yes. Today I think the Germany change. Very much so because in the last two wars they knew what the military, military involvements never bring good result. I think Germany pass lots of changes since the old days. They had much more understanding leaders since. They have, I would say the most outstanding chancellor lady Merkel recently and I think also having their [pause] their Pope in Rome what brought to Germany more recognition of the Catholic religion. Germany make terrific understanding that Europe is more united today and more friendly as it was in the past.
TO: And do you think Bomber Command was treated unfairly?
JSB: No. I think Bomber Command we partly adopted the lessons from the Germans. What they badly used about some very incapable countries of self defence. And in the end we learn those tactics that they were brutal and very effective on to destroy people morale and destruction but we used them not starting those methods. We use them as a self defence because we learn from the Germans. But in the end we had superiority of that most super power of Bomber Command because we built more planes for the right time and we used those bombing because by using that strength we speed up the end of the war. Without having Bomber Command I think the war would continue for many years to come.
TO: And how did you feel when you heard that Russia had occupied Poland?
JSB: Yes. I thought to myself, I felt to myself when the Germans invade Poland how the Russians stabbed my country in the back. If the Russians would invade Poland soon after the Germans invaded we probably still fought Germans for longer time because eastern part of Poland there were more difficult for German blitzkrieg armed division to move forward. We’d been capable to defend the rest of our country for quite a few more weeks to come. But the Russians came and helped them. So we had no chance to fight against two superpower. And the Russians been always to Poland same unfriendly nation as the Germans.
TO: Is there anything else about your time in the air force which was important to you which you’ve not told me about which you would like to say?
JSB: If —
TO: Anything important that you’ve not mentioned that you want to talk about.
JSB: No. I think that’s all that I could tell and what I experienced and remember from the war. I think when I joined as a volunteer I’m happy what, how I started and how I ended because my country today is free and I’m happy that my country have recognition and the honour in the world. Thanks for England what England had courage to have treaty with Poland and during, at such danger days the England came in defence of the Poland with France and I think that’s why today we have free Europe and the rest of the world. So Europe is example to other nation what they must live in peace and to do the same as Europe did in 1939.
TO: Thank you very much. It was fantastic hearing about your story.
JSB: Thank you. What I’ve been able I’m not politician. Only part of military men. I’ve been trying, you know to tell you that.
TO: Thank you.
JSB: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AStangryciukBlackJ160710, PStangryciukBlackJ1701
Title
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Interview with Jan Black. One
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:31:57 audio recording
Creator
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Tom Ozel
Date
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2016-07-10
Description
An account of the resource
Jan Black flew operations as an air gunner with 300 Squadron. He was badly burned when his aircraft crashed on a training flight and he became a member of the Guinea Pig Club. He underwent ten operations at East Grinstead Hospital. He describes his early life in Poland and Argentina; enlisting; training as an Air Gunner and being was posted to 18 OTU, RAF Bramcote; his plane crash and being burned. Whilst on a return stay at hospital, the crew he had flown with were shot down on a bombing operation. After the end of the War, he spent three years at RAF Andover and then was demobbed at RAF Dunholme Lodge. He talks about the relationships between Poland, Russia, Germany, Austria and England before, during and after the War. He talks about his opinions of Wellingtons and Lancasters and describes his first operation over Europe. He describes his crash landing again. He talks again about his treatment and time in hospital and about his plane crash and mentions Archibald McIndoe. He describes taking photographs of aerial bombings; the German defence of targets and night fighting against Messerschmitt 109s. He talks about shrapnel damage to aircraft; bomb drops; ‘Bomber Harris’; the Holocaust; anti-Semitism; the ‘Uprising in Warsaw’ and the Battle of Britain. He talks about the Munich Agreement and the Yalta Agreement; learning English; his training in identifying aircraft; the bombing of Dresden; his medals; take offs and landings; briefings and morale. He talks about the entertainment they devised, the popular songs, speaking Polish on the intercom when on ops. On D Day was outside Buckingham Palace, dangers over the target, Bomber Commands bombing campaign.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Argentina
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Temporal Coverage
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1942-10
1943
1944
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
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Julie Williams
18 OTU
300 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-Semitism
crash
demobilisation
fear
final resting place
Guinea Pig Club
Holocaust
killed in action
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Me 109
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Andover
RAF Cosford
searchlight
training
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/PLancasterJ1501.1.jpg
794d475655253509adf90821a41de268
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8814/ALancasterJO150406.2.mp3
5eafd09ebb3a1d2459a7b55f8591b8a7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
2017-03-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Andrew Panton. The interviewee is Jo Lancaster. Mr Lancaster was a pilot in various aircraft during World War Two and the interview is taking place at xxxx on April the 6th 2015. Apologies for the poor sound quality during various sections of this interview due to static on a tie clip microphone. Talk a little bit about that raid July the 24th 1941.
JL: Well at the time the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were in the harbour at Brest. On that day the Scharnhorst made a run for it down the coast to La Pallice but the Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were still in Brest and a number of Wellingtons, I think of 3 Group were ordered to carry out a daylight bombing raid on the harbour there. We were at Alcon, operating from Alconbury at the time. Near Huntingdon. And we were routed right down to the Scilly Isles. Then doubled back towards Brest and you could see a black cloud of flak smoke from quite a distance away. It was a beautiful, a beautiful clear day and we just had to barge straight in. There was, we only saw two ME109s, one of which went right through the middle and got severely shot up by everybody and the pilots baled out. Everybody claimed it of course but nobody knows who did it. But, anyway, we were in two vics of three. We [weren’t in company?] but our trio sailed through without too much damage. A piece of flak came through the windscreen alongside me and dropped on the floor which I still have and we’d used up a lot of fuel trying to keep formation with constantly altering the engine settings. And so, having, as I say, got away again out over back over the channel we and several others headed for St Eval in Cornwall and quite a number landed there. Many of them in various stages of damage. We’d had our hydraulic system knocked out but apart from flak holes we were intact.
AP: Did the searchlights sort of —?
JL: Well when that happened you were singled out for particular attention by the flak which happened to me several times. On one occasion it was right over the middle of Essen and did some violent evasive action and lost a lot of height and gained a lot of speed and finally outflew the searchlights.
AP: What was the evasive action? Did you corkscrew or did you dive?
JL: Well just various. Mainly sort of spiral diving but keep trying to keep a heading away from the searchlights all the time.
AP: And flying through the flak and the anti-aircraft again.
JL: Well there was nothing we could about that. We heard it and smelled it and when you got back you found lots of holes.
AP: Right. One of the things she was asking about was what it was like when you’re coming in on the final approach to your bomb run. You as the pilot. What are you doing? What’s the crew doing?
JL: I think you made yourself as small as possible. I just used to [unclear] and went in.
AP: So you were just taking orders from the bomb aimer. He was in control. Not the pilot.
JL: Yes. He would take over and he’d say. ‘Steady. Left. Left’ or ‘Right,’ and we would keep laterally level and try and make these small adjustments in heading until he was satisfied and then eventually he would say, ‘Bombs gone.’
AP: And then what?
JL: You felt the thud as they left and usually we had a camera aboard so they had to hold, hold the heading for a few, well about thirty seconds or more. I forget now. Until a camera had, the camera had flashed, had gone off, and then we were free to leave. On the Lancaster we had, usually had cookies and incendiaries. With the Wellingtons the target was usually the Ruhr. That was standard nine, five hundred pounders.
AP: Right. And what was the age? How old were you when you were flying? Can you say a little bit about how old you were? And your crew?
JL: In 1941 I was twenty two.
AP: And your crew. Could you say?
JL: Well, all much the same. I had a Canadian navigator, a Welsh wireless operator, a Canadian front gunner and a New Zealand rear gunner. The navigator, in the Wellingtons the navigator went forward to do the bomb aiming. Later on of course we had the bomb aimers on this, on the way back from Berlin. In a Wellington. And we were rather taken by surprise because you come down with the change in the wind over ten tenths cloud and we adjusted north and we came, we were flying back over Wihelmshaven and Emden and were getting shot at all the way through the clouds and then eventually there was a gap in the clouds and I could see, see through the clouds, the clouds across the causeway across the mouth of the Zuiderzee. And I think we were probably all looking at that and then an ME110 shot overhead and circled around and went into them and I went into a deep spiral dive and he tried to collar us and showed us a bit of [unclear] and I think he should have [unclear] went into the cloud and we never saw each other again so we don’t know what happened to him. In 1941, on a Wellington squadron such as 40 Squadron, each Wellington had its own ground crew. There was a fitter for each engine. That was his engine. And then there were two airframe fitters. And they were more or less permanently with the aircraft so we became very friendly with them. And on operational days they would do what they called an NFT — Night Flying Test and some of the guys would always come with us on that. They were very industrious and proud of their aeroplane.
AP: And other? Other people that you had to rely on? Was there? Can you say, talk about, some other people?
JL: The only people I can think of were the [lovely ladies?] in the parachute section which, on 40 Squadron our parachutes went to [unclear] RAF Alconbury had virtually no buildings at all. A couple of wooden huts and that was about all so all the things like parachutes and things were at Wyton which was our base station. I never went to the parachute section there but at Wickenby on 12 Squadron we had a parachute section there and it was always WAAFs who looked after the parachutes.
AP: OK. Any, any —?
JL: And we had WAAF drivers of course.
AP: Yeah. Ok. Any thoughts about the aeroplanes that you flew like the Wellington or Lancaster? A favourite or, you used to fly? Or —
JL: The Wellington is a well-designed aeroplane but it is grossly underpowered. When they finally put in decent engines in her. The Hercules instead of the Pegasus. It was a very good operational aeroplane.
AP: Right.
JL: But I think everybody loved a Lancaster.
AP: What was so special about it?
JL: I don’t know. It was viceless. It was doing, carried a big load, doing a good job and with the Wellingtons I had two complete engine failures and by the grace of God we were within easy distance of an airfield. On one occasion we took off on operations and the port engine started — oil started pouring out of it and eventually it stopped and we were able to, it was still fairly light and we just lobbed down into nearby Wyton. And the other one I was on in the, actually in the circuit at Wymeswold when I was an instructor at OTU and we were just able to go straight in from there because on the —
[Recording paused]
JL: Oh well. Yes. Well. I was, before the war I’d served an apprenticeship in Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft at Coventry and after the war I went to join Saunders Roe at Cowes but they didn’t have very much going on and I got a bit fed up with that and re-joined Armstrong Whitworth as a test pilot. There were three of us there Eric Frenton was a test pilot and another one — Bill Else, and they had, there was a lot of work going on. Amongst other things we had the AW52G which was a glider, a tail-less glider. Two thirds scale of the bigger versions of the AW52. There was two of those. One with Nene engines. One with Derwent engines. The Nene were more powerful. And the Nene engine one, when I went there, was out of action having the structure stiffened. And then it came out and had the limited speed increased by quite an amount and I was only on my third flight with it and the job was to explore the higher ranges, speed ranges and it’s rather difficult to explain technically but the controls were called elevons. They were combined elevators and ailerons. And in order to get them light enough for the pilot to control them manually they had what they called spring tabs which meant that the connection from the pilot’s control was actually, to the flying control was actually through a spring. And what happened was that while I was doing something like three hundred and twenty miles an hour, we didn’t use knots in those days and a flutter, what they called flutter set in and it became very very violent. Very very noisy. I anxiously estimated the frequency as one and a half cycles per second. The amplitude we don’t know. You could only guess at. It was probably six or eight feet as I was going up and down at that rate and I was rapidly disorientated and I thought the thing was going to break up anyway. But if it didn’t break up I was going to be unconscious so I decided to eject. A thing I’d never even anticipated before and I wasn’t in a very good state by then so I didn’t do the drill properly. I managed to jettison the canopy and I pulled the overhead blind down over my face which fired the seat. I should have put my heels on the, on the rest on the front of the seat which I didn’t do. I just was very lucky I did that because the aircraft had sort of spectacle controls and I think, as an afterthought, they realised that wasn’t very good combined with an ejection seat so they put in another system which jettisoned the hood and fired some cutters which, which disconnected the controls from the stick and I think you was just supposed to push the stick forward too. It was a bit of Heath Robinson system but I couldn’t do that because it was wired off anyway. Anyway, I got away with it with a lot of bruises on my shoulders and on my knees. I landed very badly. I thought I was going to land in a canal and tried to remember the drill we’d been given in the RAF but I only succeeded in making the descent worse by swinging. And when I landed I broke a chip off my shoulder bone and they took me away and x-rayed me and they said that I’d sustained a compression fracture of the first and second along the vertebrae and they said, ‘Not only have you done that but it’s been done before.’ And I have to say that it was in, I don’t remember the date. The 1st of January 1947. We had the SRA1 — that was at Saunders Roe — which has an ejection seat and we went up to Martin-Baker’s and went up on the test rig and after that I had a rather sore tail for a while. That must have been what it was. 30th of May 1949. And after all the kafuffle had died down on it I wrote to Sir James Martin. He wasn’t Sir James then. He was just James Martin to thank him and got a very nice letter in reply and also a custom made little wooden box which came through the post marked, “Explosives — danger” [laughs] which was delivered to Armstrong Whitworth. To me at Armstrong Whitworth. It contained a very nicely inscribed Rolex gold watch and [pause] I’m sorry am I —?
AP: That’s alright. No. That’s alright. Got to watch the microphone. Yeah. The watch. Yes.
JL: [unclear] In 1975 when I was living in the South. In West Sussex. I had a little bungalow with casement windows and some, one of the local villains I think, got in and took that watch and another one and several other small valuables and I presume that both watches had gone straight down to The Lanes in Brighton and by now would probably be melted down but — and just two years ago I was invited to go up to Martin-Baker’s and they showed me around, gave me lunch and I wondered what it was all about. Then they started asking me about my ejection and finally got on to the watch and eventually Andrew Martin produced from his pocket my watch. And the story is that they’d had an email from somebody in New York who had read the — it had my name on it and James Martin and somehow or other they put it together and connected it with Martin-Baker. Whatever company, I don’t know who it was in New York who went over or whoever it was contacted this chap who they said was a very shifty character and they bought the watch back. I don’t know for how much and they gave it back to me.
AP: That’s an amazing story.
JL: What happened then was that I didn’t really want the watch so I asked them to auction it but then they said instead of auctioning it we’ll put it in our company museum and we’ll put five thousand pounds in to the Bomber Command Memorial Trust. It applies to almost everybody. We usually crewed up completely at random and almost always within twenty four hours we were as thick as thieves.
AP: You relied on each other didn’t you?
JL: Loyalty all down the way.
AP: Strong teamwork and trust.
JL: Yes. I was with these two Canadians and a New Zealander. Yes. The two Canadians. I’d never met a Canadian before and I was mildly surprised that they sounded like the Americans I’d seen on the films. And I hardly knew where New Zealand was. But —
AP: I think it’s good to mention that it was an international crew wasn’t it? That they were from all over the Commonwealth.
JL: Yes.
AP: You had Canadians, British.
JL: Yes. And later on on the Lancaster squadron I had an Australian navigator.
[Recording paused]
JL: In the Wellington was to Stettin. That was a nine hours something. And the longest in the Lancaster was to La Spezia which is about sixty miles south of Genoa. A sea port. And that was, that was about nine and a half hours I think.
AP: You were the only pilot. Right?
JL: Yes. We did, we did carry a second pilot but he was just supernumerary. Usually he just stayed back in the astrodome helping to keep the, keep a lookout.
AP: Can you talk a bit about what it was like to fly so long? I mean did you eat anything? Drink. How did you survive on those hours?
JL: I don’t think I ever ate or drank anything until back in, back in safe area. In a safe area. I think most of us were the same. In those days everybody smoked and we sometimes smoked when we were below oxygen level which was ten thousand feet but we probably weren’t supposed to. We didn’t on operations anyway. Once again that would be when we were safe and nearly home.
[Recording paused]
JL: One long drag over France. And we had a thing called Mandrel which was a microphone in one of the engines to the wireless operator and he had, the wireless operators were given a recording of German night fighter RT traffic and they didn’t understand it but they could recognise it and I had a Canadian wireless op, Jordan Fisher, at that time and he was listening out on Mandrel and he was highly excited. He was apparently getting very good results. He could, he could tune in to one of these frequencies where the night fighters were operating and he was doing his Mandrel trick and they get very annoyed [laughs] Shouting.
AP: How did he use it? Did he block their signal? Or reduce it.
JL: Yes. Yes having identified the frequency he transferred the engine noise on that frequency.
AP: I see. So he could block their frequency.
JL: He was having the time of his life apparently [laughs]. Mandrel was a microphone mounted in to, actually in the port inner engine, the [strength of it?] the wireless operator, the wireless operators had been given some training to identify but not necessarily understand German night fighter RT traffic and they would listen out, looking for this RT traffic and when they found it they would tune in the transmitters to that frequency and then transfer the engine noise which blotted out everything and frequently made the night fighter pilots very cross.
[Recording paused]
Having completed a tour you then became a screened aircrew and you went to an OTU where you became an instructor in your particular aircrew job. As a pilot I went to Wellesbourne Mountford OTU and my job was conversion on to Wellingtons which are just circuits and landings, circuits and landings and not only in daytime but at night. And in the winter when I was there the night flying programme was divided into four three hours stints 6-9, 9 to12, 12 to 3 and 3 to 6 and you can imagine what it was like having to get up or be prepared to go down and be ready to start doing circuits and bumps at 3 o’clock in the morning.
AP: Yeah.
JL: It was bad enough at 12 o’clock. So I hated it. I wasn’t a very good instructor anyway. And then they started with these two one thousand bomber raids I was on. They started doing quite regular operations with screened, so-called screened aircrew at OTUs and I thought it was far better to be on a squadron if I had to do all that.
AP: Were you on, did you say a two thousand bomber raid?
JL: I was on the first two.
AP: Two thousand bombers in one raid? Or one thousand bombers?
JL: There were two one thousand bomber raids.
AP: Two one thousand bomber raids.
JL: May the, May the 30th and June the, June the 2nd I think.
AP: Could you say a little bit about what happened? I mean, was that Cologne?
JL: The first one was Cologne. The second one was Essen.
AP: Essen. And so you were flying Wellingtons.
JL: Yes. Wellesbourne Mountford OTU put up about twenty aircraft that night and we lost four. My aircraft still had the dual control in which made it very very difficult to get in and out because the entry was via a hatch under the nose. So in a hurry it would have been very awkward. And the aircraft were generally fairly clapped out. And on the way back I had a screened navigator and a screened wireless operator. And on the way back, when we got back over England the wireless operator came. Came up front and sat beside me. I think together we saw the oil pressure on the port engine just drop off to nothing and fortunately the wireless operator, he was familiar with Wellingtons, knew what had happened. It had run out of oil. We had a reserve oil tank down in the fuselage with a hand pump and he knew what to do immediately. He went scuttling back down. Started hand-pumping oil back in to the engine.
AP: That’s before you got to it.
JL: No. This was on the way back.
AP: On the way back.
JL: What I didn’t say — over Cologne we were quite high and I had two Canadian gunners. You know, they were students and they got very excited and wanted to spray their guns around [laughs]. I told them to sit quiet and keep a good lookout.
AP: What was the weather like on that night?
JL: Clear.
AP: So you had a good shot at them.
JL: Oh yes we could. We were late. Late on target and we could see it from miles away.
AP: It was already lit up.
JL: We were, we were more or less unmolested I think.
AP: A thousand bombers. Did you see the other ones around you?
JL: Oh yes.
AP: Can you say a little bit about what it was like?
JL: Yes. I saw them. Quite a lot. Yes.
AP: There were Lancasters, Halifaxes. Stirlings.
JL: Everything. Most of the ones I saw were Wellingtons.
AP: But you’re not in formation.
JL: No. No.
AP: Loose formation.
JL: Completely random.
AP: But you’re on your course and you’ve got aeroplanes.
JL: Yes. Had to try and keep an eye open. Very occasionally you’d hit the slipstream of one of them [laughs]. There’s one not very far away in front.
AP: So you had to keep a constant picture of that.
JL: Oh yes. There must have been hundreds of collisions we never heard about. Fatal ones.
AP: So when you arrived it was well and truly lit up. .
JL: Yes.
AP: Yeah.
JL: I don’t, I don’t remember actually being shot at.
AP: No? And then the other one was Essen.
JL: Yes. And that was a complete disaster because there was thick haze over the whole area and we just couldn’t see anything so I think we just let them go and came home.
AP: Right. Yes.
JL: Stood down for six weeks to convert. We were operational again on Lancasters on the 1st of January 1943.
AP: The operations that you did then. Can you say a bit about what you did?
JL: I think I did three mining operations. My first operation on a Lancaster was to Norway, to Haugesundfjord, and dropped, I think it was four, fifteen hundred pound mines in the fjord there. When we got caught out by searchlights and the gunners were able to reply and they, they won. Off Emden and the islands. We put a stick of mines there. And another one was at the entrance to St Nazaire harbour.
AP: Oh yeah. That was in France.
JL: Yes. That’s where we did, there’s an island, I think it’s called Belle ile and we had to do a timed run from Belle Ile. Went right up the estuary and let them go. I think the load was four, fifteen hundred pound mines. Parachute mines.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Jo Lancaster. One
Creator
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Andrew Panton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-04-06
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALancasterJO150406
PLancasterJO1501
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
After leaving school, Jo Lancaster was an aircraft apprentice with Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company in Coventry. After volunteering for the Air Force, he trained as a pilot and completed a tour on Wellingtons with 40 Squadron from RAF Alconbury. Following a period as an instructor at an operational training unit, he flew another tour of operations. After the war Jo became a test pilot and was the first man to eject from an aircraft in danger using a Martin-Baker ejection seat.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Italy--La Spezia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1943
Format
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00:30:15 audio recording
12 Squadron
3 Group
40 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
fitter airframe
fitter engine
Gneisenau
ground crew
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 110
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Alconbury
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wyton
Scharnhorst
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8815/PLancasterJ1501.2.jpg
794d475655253509adf90821a41de268
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/551/8815/ALancasterJO170308.1.mp3
0854aad26e9a380b5f2a5cc40af42a9a
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
Lancaster, Jo
John Oliver Lancaster
J O Lancaster
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lancaster, JO
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. Two oral history interviews with John Oliver 'Jo' Lancaster DFC (1919 - 2019, 948392, 103509 Royal Air Force), photographs and six of his log books. Jo Lancaster completed 54 operations as a pilot with in Wellingtons with 40 Squadron, and after a period of instructing, in Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He became test pilot after the war and was the first person to use a Martin-Baker ejection seat in an emergency.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jo Lancaster and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
2017-03-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 8th of March 2017 and I’m in Hassocks with John Lancaster. Jo Lancaster. To talk about his long career in the RAF and as a test pilot afterwards. So, Jo, what are the earliest recollections of life that you have in the family?
JL: I was born in Penrith in Cumberland. In the Lake District. I was very lucky really. I didn’t realise it much at the time. And my first ideas of aeroplanes were drawn entirely from, from books. They were very rarely seen over Cumberland. If they were they were just a spot in the sky making a humming noise but I became very interested in aeroplanes and made models out of the rough materials I could find to hand. I eventually had a flying model with an elastic band which gave me great, great fun but I never actually saw an aeroplane close to until I was about aged sixteen when a Gypsy Moth made a landing due to bad weather in the, in the area. I left school in 1935 aged sixteen and it was during that summer that Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus visited Penrith and I had my first flight in an Avro 504. I remember that well. There was a bench seat going forward and aft of the rear cockpit on which you sat astride and a young lady who I didn’t know was my co-passenger and she just put her head down in the cockpit and screamed throughout the whole flight. [laughs] But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I could see the engine with the tapits, with the bells going up and down. The exposed bells. And it was on that flight that the pilot had a piece of piano wire on the wing tip and picked up bits of cloth from the ground with it. I was completely bitten by flying then but there was little chance of it in the, in the near future. I left school at sixteen and I didn’t want to go to university. In point of fact I couldn’t really because my father’s business had a bad time during the recession and there wasn’t any money left in the kitty but I didn’t mind that. I didn’t want to go to university. I wanted to go out and get amongst mechanical things and an aircraft apprenticeship seemed to be the answer. We considered the RAF apprenticeship scheme, I forget where now. Henlow. Not Henlow.
CB: Halton.
JL: Halton. Considered the RAF apprenticeship scheme at Halton but I wanted to be in the start of the aeroplane flight and not, not the sort of maintenance of it and so I, somehow or other, got a list of aircraft manufacturers in Britain who were offering apprenticeships. Some of them wanted premiums so that put them out but Armstrong Whitworth sounded the best and in due course my father accompanied me down to Coventry for an interview. And I was accepted and joined Armstrong Whitworth in October 1935 starting a five year apprenticeship. The apprenticeship was very good. We had pay and we had one morning and one afternoon off paid time for, to attend the local technical college. [Cough] Can we have a pause?
CB: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: So you’re at Coventry.
JL: The apprenticeship.
CB: And you’re just on the apprenticeship.
JL: Yes. When I — I went down to Coventry to take up my apprenticeship having negotiated some digs through the local paper. I didn’t like the digs we had, I had but [pause - interference] but when I first started there [I feel sure?] it was at the airfield at Wheatley, an old World War One airfield with still the original hangars. I first of all went to, as a stop-gap to the final assembly unit where they were building Hawker Hart trainers. I found everybody very very friendly and one of the almost time expired apprentices, expired apprentices asked me about my digs and I said I didn’t like them and he said there was a vacancy at his digs so I was very glad to go there and I, I was there for over three years. Nearly four years in fact. In, in the original interview it was, it was stressed that there would be no flying involved in the apprenticeship but I had ideas that I would join the, what was then the RAF Class F Reserve which operated very similarly to the Territorial Army. Consisted mostly of a two week summer camp. But on reaching the age of eighteen that coincided with the start of the RAF Volunteer Reserve and I joined straight away and followed that up with the full time ab initio training course at Sywell in July of 1937. Having done that I went back to, to my apprenticeship of course and attended the local RAF, [pause] oh dear. Elementary Reserve Training School at Ansty. That was local to Coventry. During the day, during the weekdays the instructors there were instructing a course of short service, short service commission pilots and at evenings or other times when convenient as at weekends they were training the volunteer reservists. There instead of Tiger Moths as at Sywell we had Avro Cadets with Armstrong Siddeley Genet engines and I converted on to Cadets and then converted on to Hawker Harts. When I was still eighteen I was flying solo on Hawker Harts which was a beautiful aeroplane.
[pause]
JL: I don’t know how to continue.
CB: We’ll stop just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: You mentioned digs. People don’t seem to have digs now so what were they and how did it work?
JL: Well my first digs, which were arranged through the local, by post through the local paper, when I got there I didn’t know the people. I didn’t care for them very much. I was there for really just over a week I think and I was happy to leave when my new acquaintance apprentice, Tony Carpenter suggested I join him in his digs. There I was with a family, or we were with a family. Mrs Hinder who was a widow, widow of a parson and her two children Ruby and Percy. So there were five of us in the house and Mrs Hinder provided us with breakfast, a packed lunch, an evening meal five days a week and breakfast and all the other meals during the weekend at the princely sum of twenty five shillings a week.
CB: Brilliant. Yes. And what about your washing?
JL: I can’t remember. I didn’t do it. They must. It probably went to, I don’t know. I don’t suppose she did it. I don’t remember.
CB: What sort of hours did you work in those days?
JL: We had to be there at 8 o’clock in the morning. We had a half hour’s break for lunch and left at 5 o’clock four days of the week and half past five on Thursdays. And Saturday morning it was 8 o’clock till twelve [cough] I shall have to go and get another drink.
CB: Ok.
[Recording paused]
CB: That’s really useful so when we have the time to talk about the apprenticeship how did the apprenticeship work?
JL: Well as I said I actually started in final assembly but I was only there a couple of weeks. That was a stop-gap and then I was moved to what they called a detailed fitting shop where all the various parts of the aircraft were made using hand tools. And I was there for probably nine months and then I moved to the milling machine shop. Learned how to work a milling machine and then moved on from that to working a, working on a lathe. Learned all about lathe work. Then I went to sub-assembly where units of the aircraft were assembled. The aircraft going through at this time was the Whitley. And then eventually I went on to, moved up to Baginton. The new airfield and the new factory on final assembly and I was there until the — when the war started. I was, I was held back until I joined the — the RAF decided to have me back in January 1940. But I wasn’t actually called up until June of 1940. Incidentally there was a rather amusing episode in May of 1939. Shortly before the war. Everybody knew the war was coming. They had to re-introduce conscription and I was a bullseye for the first age group and I had to go and have an interview with a little [petrie?] army major so I lost no time in telling him I didn’t want to join his army and I was a trained engineer and a trained pilot and he said, ‘Well you’ll be, you’ll be a dead cert for the Royal Army Ordinance Corps.’ And why he said that and not the Royal Engineers I don’t know. But anyway the war started and in no time at all I received a letter containing a traveling warrant to Budbrooke Barracks and a postal order for the four shillings in advance of pay to join the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
CB: Oh.
JL: So I dashed down to, and by this time they had a combined recruiting centre in Coventry. They’d taken over a skating rink, a roller skating rink. And the air force recruiting officer was no help at all but the naval recruiting officer was a Chief Petty Officer Brown and I went and told him my problem and he said, ‘Well we’ll get you out of that,’ and he took me on for the navy on, on deferred service. So I then got a letter saying please return the travelling warrant and postal order. You need not now apply, attend Budbrooke Barracks. So whilst, whilst I was on deferred service for the navy the RAF changed their mind and decided to have me back and, but I didn’t actually re-join until about June of 1940 starting with a six weeks course at ITW Initial Training Wing at Paignton in Devon. And then we were all disbursed to [pause] God. [pause] Sorry, this is my brain. [pause]
CB: From ITW you went to Initial Training Wing.
JL: Well it was Flying Training School.
CB: Yes but at Sywell again.
JL: The first one was Sywell.
CB: Yes.
JL: But this time, after the war started it was Desford near Leicester
CB: Oh yes.
WT: Yes. Desford. Yes.
JO: Yes. Yes. We were, we were all divided up. I went, I went to Desford with some others. During the, during this ab initio course the Battle of Britain was in full swing and of course we all wanted to be fighter pilots and I was in fact selected to be a fighter pilot and sent to number five elementary flying, 5 Flying Training School at Sealand which had Miles Masters and there I was going to be a fighter pilot. I trained on Miles Masters. Later — later in the — we were down, we moved from Sealand down to Ternhill in Shropshire and continued training there but the, during the winter ‘40/41 it was very bad. The training — some of us got well behind and I was on a course of about forty eight divided into four flights of twelve and our flight was the only one, was the only one who succeeded in doing the night flying part of the syllabus on Masters and at the end of the course the whole flight was posted to bomber OTUs whilst the rest went to fighters. And I went to Lossiemouth, 20 OTU as I remember and was converted on to Wellingtons. I was very cross about this at the time but in the event I think it was the right thing to do. When I got to Lossiemouth we were next door to [pause] oh dear [pause] sorry. A Whitley OTU.
WT: Wycombe?
JL: Hmmn?
WT: Wycombe
JL: No. A Whitley OTU up in Scotland. Oh God. I’m sorry.
CB: Was it on, was it a coastal OTU or was it a Bomber Command OTU?
JL: It was a bombing.
CB: Whitleys. Yes.
JL: I was at Lossiemouth converting on to Wellingtons.
CB: Yes.
JL: At 20 OTU.
CB: Yes.
JL: And there was another OTU only about ten miles away with Whitleys. It was well known. It’s still open.
CB: Yes. Kinloss.
JL: Kinloss. Yes.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
JL: Sorry. Thank you.
CB: It’s ok.
JL: I got an interview with the group captain of Lossiemouth called Group Captain Smyth-Piggott and told him that I had been building Whitleys and knew all about them and that I’d like to convert. To transfer to Whitleys. And he wouldn’t have it so I was stuck with Wellingtons. And so we were paired off as pilots with first and second pilot. I was the first pilot and my second pilot was Derek Townsend and having done our conversion training we then had to be crewed up and we were all ushered into a hangar with the right proportions of pilots, navigators, wireless operators and air gunners. And Derek and I wandered around looking at people we’d never seen before and we eventually finished up with a Canadian navigator Glen Leach, a very Welsh wireless operator called Jack Crowther, another Canadian front gunner and a New Zealand rear gunner. Now, at that time I’d never met a Canadian before and I was just, I was surprised they spoke like people we saw in the cinema. But I hardly knew where New Zealand was. Anyway, we went down to that, to the pub in Lossiemouth that night and we were blood brothers from then for the rest of our lives.
[pause]
CB: Right. Stop there for a mo.
[Recording paused]
JL: What had happened.
CB: At Desford. Yeah.
JL: At Desford. We did a — went off and did a flight. When we landed he said, ‘You haven’t forgotten how to fly.’
CB: But you still had to go through.
JL: I still had to do the whole thing through.
CB: The whole thing.
JL: Yes.
CB: Because that’s the way the process ran. Can we just go back to your VR time because you might have continued with that but how long were you in the VR, flying and what caused you to cease?
JL: Well I as I say I was being converted on to — [pause] Oh God.
CB: On to the Hart. Yeah.
JL: Cadets.
CB: Oh the Cadet. Yes.
JL: And Harts. I was flying Harts at a very tender age and I was the ace. I thought I was the ace of the base. And one Sunday after a very bad period of weather where there was no flying we had a very fine Sunday morning in April 1938 and I dashed out to Ansty. There were no Harts available but I was given a, alloted a Cadet to go and do aerobatics and off I went. There was something wrong with the engine actually. It tended to choke and had to be re-started. I wasn’t even bothered with that. I went off and I did some aerobatics. I got doing a slow roll. There was a fire extinguisher under the dashboard and the instrument panel and on the final turn with full top rudder the fire extinguisher fell out and got behind the rudder bar so when I got right way up I got a whole lot of left rudder on. I managed to sort of kick it halfway through the fabric so that I could get steering rudder and instead of going back to Ansty as I should have done I became insane and landed at Wheatley. Well it was a Sunday so there was only a sort of a maintenance man there. When he walked up I gave him the fire extinguisher and took off again. And then, then I, my fellow digs chap, Tony Carpenter, he couldn’t join the VR because of his eyesight but he bought all sort of what we would call a microlight called a dart splitter mouse and he had it at a field near Kenilworth and I then went over to him and did a few aerobatics there. Then I did what was actually a perfectly legal exercise. A simulated forced landing where you from two thousand feet or whatever you throttle the engine back and did an approach on to a suitable field, opened it up and go around again at the end. I did what the, I opened up and the engines stopped and I went through a hedge so that’s rather spoiled things and I was thrown out. You’ll find it in there.
WT: Gosh.
JL: I wasn’t thrown out for going through the hedge. I was thrown out for doing low level aerobatics.
CB: Ah
JL: That was because very very close by was Kenilworth Golf Club and playing golf that morning was a chap called Tom Chapman who was a director of Armstrong Siddeley’s who was hand in glove with Armstrong Whitworth’s and he, he reported it. [laughs] Tom Chapman. Bless his heart.
CB: You never became friends.
JL: I never met him.
[pause]
CB: Right. So we’ve got to the stage that you’re at Lossiemouth and you’ve crewed up. This crewing up — could you just explain how it actually happened? The process.
JL: Well Derek and I just wandered around looking at people’s brevets and we got together a navigator. We found this Canadian with a, he had the O brevet.
CB: Yeah.
JL: He was very proud of that. The Observer. Asked him and he came along and we continued the process till we got the full crew. And we all, we all agreed to meet in the pub that night and we were thick as thieves from that time on.
CB: So how long were you together for?
JL: Well from Lossiemouth, when we were crewed up we did a number of cross country exercises [cough] oh dear. To finish the course. Air firing and practice bombing and then we were posted as a crew to 40 Squadron at Wyton. So we all went off on leave and we all arrived at Wyton on the appointed day only to be told that we weren’t supposed to be at Wyton. We were supposed to be at Alconbury. The satellite. And so we got a service bus from Wyton to Alconbury and signed in there and we were promptly all put on a charge for arriving late. And we were, what are the — ? [pause] I forget the expression was. The lowest. The lowest telling off. So that wasn’t a very good start because we didn’t like the WingCo much anyway. He wasn’t a very popular chap. A [jock?]. Wing Commander Davey. Anyway, we were, then Derek, Derek left us to join another crew and we were given a captain in the form of a Jim Taylor who — he’d already done a lot of ops and he took us on our first eight ops and then he left us. He was, he was screened and I took over as captain and we were given a series of second pilots from then on. And we succeeded in surviving thirty operations including a daylight on Brest. And then we, then we all split up.
CB: So this is in a Wellington.
JL: Yes. And I was posted to a Wellington OTU as a, as an instructor [coughs] oh dear. I’m sorry about this.
CB: Ok. Would you like to stop for a mo?
[Recording paused]
CB: So can we just talk about the tour? The aircraft was a Wellington. Which model?
JL: Yes. Throughout this period all my flying was on Wellington 1Cs which was powered by Bristol Pegasus Mark xviii and with these it was very very underpowered. It was supposed to be able to fly on one engine but in fact it couldn’t because it had non-feathering propellers.
CB: Oh.
JL: Fortunately the engines were fairly reliable. The most common problem would be that one of the rocker boxes would break loose from the cylinder head which introduced, which put that cylinder out of use and caused it to be, to vibrate rather a lot. That happened from time to time. But at least you had the use of most of the engine.
CB: So you couldn’t really feather. You couldn’t feather the prop.
JL: No. No.
CB: So you kept it running did you or you stopped it? The drag was huge.
JL: Well if you lost the engine it just, just windmilled.
CB: Yeah. Right.
JL: Caused a lot of drag.
CB: So of the ops, one of them was to Brest. What was that like?
JL: There was one occasion when we went off. Actually it was fortunately in daylight and when we got up to about seventeen hundred feet and the oil, the oil pressure on one engine dropped to zero. I looked out and there was oil all over the engine but fortunately we were just within a mile or so of Wyton and I was able to drop straight down and land in Wyton complete with a full load of petrol and bombs. But had, had it been dark the situation would have been very different. It was too late to bale out and we had a full load of bombs and it was dark.
CB: In circumstances where you’re still, you’ve still got your full load of bombs what was the proper procedure?
JL: Sorry?
CB: In the circumstances where there was difficulty with the aircraft and you had a full load of bombs what was the proper procedure as far as the bomb load was concerned? Were you supposed to jettison or keep them?
JL: Well normally only jettison over the sea.
CB: Right.
JL: But of course you had to be in full control of the aircraft. If you lost an engine and you weren’t able to, to maintain flight you’d probably leave them where they were.
CB: So thinking of the rest of the tour how did the ops go on that? You had a bit of variety. They were all at night were they?
JL: All except one. The 24th of July 1941 there was a major daylight operation on Brest in which we were involved. The squadron sent six aircraft in two lots of three. The other three lost, lost one aircraft in a direct hit but our three all survived. Knocked about but still working.
CB: So the other one was lost to flak.
JL: Yes.
CB: What operating height were you using then?
JL: Twelve and a half thousand feet.
CB: And what bomb load were you carrying?
JL: Probably five. I can’t tell you. I didn’t record these. Probably five hundred pound armour piercing but it was all a waste of time as I discovered later. Much later. I visited Lorient after the war and went and saw the U-boat pens there and none of our bombs would ever do anything to them. They had a huge roof about two metres thick and then a false roof on top of that. You could see where bombs had hit it. There was just a little pock mark. That’s all. We were all wasting our time. I don’t know what our intelligence people were doing. Thinking about.
CB: So for the other ops then. These were at night. Where? Where were they going? Where were the targets?
JL: Mostly in Germany but we did one to [pause] oh Christ, I’m sorry.
CB: Was it a port?
JL: On the Baltic.
CB: Right. Kiel or Wilhelmshaven. Bremen.
JL: Further east.
CB: Ah.
JL: Poland.
CB: Oh. Danzig.
JL: Oh God. I’m sorry. My brain’s going on strike.
CB: Stettin.
JL: Stettin. Thank you.
CB: Right. So that was a port. And what were you after there? The shipping. Were you?
JL: The port. Yes. That was a long one. That’s well over nine hours. We had overload tanks.
CB: The overload tanks were jettisonable or were they inside the aircraft?
JL: Oh no. They were, they were in the bomb bay.
CB: Oh right.
JL: So we had a reduced bomb load.
CB: And this is the early part of the war so how were you getting on in terms of navigation and pinpointing the target?
JL: There was very little to help us with navigation. We had a choice of dead reckoning and any pinpointing we could get. At night, providing there was no cloud, water could usually be seen. The River Rhine. We used to get quite a bit of haze over the Ruhr but you could usually pick out the Rhine. All the coastlines and harbours. We did have Hamburg two or three times. Bremen. Wilhelmshaven. Berlin. Most of them were to the Ruhr though. I think we did [pause], oh God my brain.
CB: So there was flak all the time but to what extent were there —?
JL: Nearly all the time. Yes.
CB: What about night fighters? Were they?
JL: We were attacked. Yes. On the way back from Berlin actually. We were. Berlin was clear but there was, on the way back we encountered cloud and we were being shot at through the cloud pretty well continuously. And we couldn’t understand this because we shouldn’t have been but what had happened was that the forecast wind which was all we had had changed and they’d taken us north and we were actually going down via Hamburg, Bremen, Emden but eventually there was a break in the clouds and as I looked down I could see the causeway across the mouth of the Zuiderzee and as I reported this and obviously everybody, including the rear gunner, was looking down and it was just at that moment that a burst of fire went right over the top of us followed by an ME110. And we didn’t see it. We were lucky. But anyway, anyway we went down a very steep spiral and this 110 tried to follow us and Keith Coleman, our New Zealand rear gunner got a good shot at it and we both went into cloud and we never knew what happened to it but after the war some people checked up on it and there were no night fighters shot down that night but one inexplicably crashed on landing and it’s just possible it might have been the one.
CB: Because you’d damaged it. Yeah. Now, in those days had the corkscrew evasion system operated or did you make up your own technique for avoiding a fighter?
JL: Well, only, only did corkscrewing if you were, if you were attacked. In my second tour actually it was different. It was my own idea. I kept changing course and height. Five hundred feet up. Five hundred feet up. Turned left, then right. Pretty well all the time because the eighty eight millimetre guns were radar controlled and they were bloody good. So by doing that we were never actually seriously shot at. Not enroute.
CB: You mentioned that you had various co-pilots. Why was that? Were they being prepared for captaincy themselves or what?
JL: Yes. They were doing their training before taking over their own crew. I’m very sorry.
[Recording paused]
JL: That was the daylight raid on, on Brest I think.
CB: Oh. We talked about the 110 just now but what, on what other occasion were you attacked by a fighter?
JL: On the daylight raid on Brest in July there were several 110s about. Sorry. Correction. 109s about.
CB: Yes.
JL: But there were a lot of Wellingtons about and they were all, they were all firing at these 109s and one went, certainly went down because the pilot baled out but all the others tend to claim it. [laughs]
CB: Right. Is that your —
JL: In retrospect it’s impossible to say who hit it.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
JL: We had, we had beam guns but both my gunners, front and rear were blasting away and we had two beam gunners with Vickers, Vickers VJOs fitted up and the second, our second pilot and the wireless op were blasting away with theirs as well and of course all the Wellingtons were probably doing the same thing so the sky was absolutely full of CO3.
CB: Right. So in your flying training at Ternhill what sort of people were there?
JL: We had two American air force officers. Sam Morinello and the other one was called Galbraith. But of course they left us to join their Eagle Squadrons. We also had Neville Duke.
CB: Oh right.
JL: And we had David. Oh God, here we go again [pause] oh I’m sorry. My brain’s —
CB: It’s alright. That’s interesting Neville Duke because he took the world speed record in the Hunter.
JL: Yes.
CB: Didn’t he? In the fifties.
JL: He was also on the same course at ITW.
CB: Was he? Yeah. What about these Americans then. What were they like? Because they weren’t in the war and they’d volunteered to join?
JL: Yes. Well most Americans joined the Royal Canadian Air Force but these two didn’t. Sam Morinello had done a lot of parachute jumps. Just what he’d, they’d been doing. I think they both had pilot training. Why they didn’t join the Canadian Air Force I don’t know but I suppose this was the — they wanted to be certain to get to the American squadrons.
CB: So they were posted to the Eagle Squadrons.
JL: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yes. They were. I think they distinguished themselves fairly well later on.
CB: And how did they fit into the general way of things because they were a different culture?
JL: Oh well. Very well. I’m trying to think of the name of this. His father was chief. Well his father was a pre-war, a World War One pilot. He became a chief designer at Bristol and he had four sons. He was killed in 1938 flying one of his own design and the [pause] and the three sons, I think it was three sons. Might have been more. So, anyway, two of them were killed early in the war and this David. He was just one of the boys. Happy. We knew nothing at all about his background at all.
CB: Oh dear.
JL: But he, unfortunately he was killed as well. Oh God. The name, name, name. [I must have written it?] I bet it’s in there.
CB: Ok. Right. We’ll stop just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: So going back to the time when you finished at 40 Squadron. Where were posted and why?
JL: I was posted to Wellesbourne Mountford for instructional duties. Wellesbourne Mountford being Number 22 OTU. Operational Training Unit. Still with Wellington 1Cs. I was attached to the conversion flight. I was converting them to fly the Wellington after which they did their navigational exercises. I didn’t like the job at all. I’m not born, I wasn’t born to be an instructor and I was very unhappy about it. Not only that but it involved night flying details and in the winter the night flying practice was divided up into four sessions being 6 till 9, 9 till 12, 12 till 3 and 3 till 6 and if you were on a late show you know you had to be out at 3 o’clock on a cold, miserable morning and go and do three hours circuits and landings and that was not very funny. I discovered that there was, at Central Flying School, they ran a course for OTU instructors so I asked to go on that which I did but it didn’t help. It didn’t help me much. When I went back to Wellesbourne I was still doing conversion training. Then in July another OTU opened at what is now East Midlands Airport.
CB: Castle Donington.
JL: Castle Donington. That had just opened and I was posted there. When I got there there were four or five other people there and no aeroplanes. So we had a nice time for a while. Then we collected some aeroplanes and started training. Right. Now we start. Originally I was on conversion training but then I went on to the navigation side and I was sent on a cross country with a, a five hour cross country, with a pupil crew and when I got — this was in October ‘42 and when I got back I found I was rostered to go on what they called a bullseye that night which is an exercise cooperating with the Observer Corps and the ground defences. I went to the mess and there was no food and there was no option but to go back down to the flight and took over yet another pupil crew I’d never met before. We went off on this bullseye. We got, we got over the Solway Firth, we were actually going to North Wales but via the Solway Firth and we hit icy conditions. Ice was [cough] ice was banging away on the side. I discovered that the wireless operator had declared his apparatus unserviceable. I’d no idea what the navigator was like. I was frozen stiff so I decided to go home. We were over ten tenths cloud as they called it and so I flew east for a long long long way before letting down safely and then found my way back to, to the airfield. The next day I was on the carpet for abandoning the bullseye. I explained everything but it didn’t cut any ice. This wing commander who hadn’t done a thing I think for himself demanded to see my logbook and in my logbook I’d cut out a little comic thing from a flight magazine where the caption was, “All the way from Hamburg on one engine,” and of course it was a chap sitting astride just an engine and this wing commander took exception to this and told me to take it off. By this time I told him I didn’t want to take it out. And we departed. We departed the worst of friends and very shortly after that a posting came through for me to 150 Squadron at Snaith which I quite welcomed because I was absolutely sick of OTUs. When I got to Snaith the wing commander said, ‘Who are you and what have you come for?’ So I said, ‘I don’t know why I’ve come, sir. [laughs] I’ve just been posted.’ And he said, ‘Well what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go on a Lancaster squadron.’ And so I did about three flights in their aircraft. 150 Squadron’s. They had Wellingtons 3s by then with a Hercules. And then I was posted to, [cough] oh dear. I’m sorry. 12 Squadron at Wickenby. Just outside Lincoln. When I got to Wickenby they still had Wellingtons but they were scheduled to train on to Lancs. I did three operations with Wellingtons. Then we were stood down for six weeks to transfer. Convert on to Lancasters.
CB: We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
JL: And I think a couple of squadrons in 5 Group. That’s all there were at that time.
CB: So how did the conversion process operate? Bearing in mind there were no HCUs.
JL: Conversion on to Lancasters? Well we had a couple of pilots seconded to us. [coughs] I’m so sorry. Let me take a cough pill.
CB: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
JL: Between the Frisian Islands and the mainland.
CB: We’re just talking about your ops on the Wellington before you moved to Lancaster. So one was Hamburg.
JL: Not many on 40 Squadron.
CB: No.
JL: Nor at the OTU.
CB: No.
JL: But when I went back to 12 Squadron as I say we still had Wellingtons and I took over the flight commander’s crew as a going concern. We did one mining operation between Terschelling Island and the mainland and one on the approach to St Nazaire. In the estuary. That was a timed run for an island. I think in between was Hamburg. Bombing.
CB: And with mines you couldn’t drop from too great a height because it would shatter the mine so what height did you go?
JL: I think it was five hundred feet and a hundred and sixty miles an hour.
[pause]
CB: And you operated in miles an hour rather than knots did you?
JL: Yes. Incidentally on that run when I went to St Nazaire I decided to go across Brittany. Low down. It was dark but it was clear enough to fly at two or three hundred feet and I saw quite clearly somebody on the ground with a lantern and they swung it around in a circle as we went past.
CB: Exhilarating at low level at night was it?
JL: Well I think I probably thought it was safer than going higher because the guns couldn’t get at you.
CB: So that was a lone sortie. You weren’t going out as a squadron at the same time.
JL: Oh no. They were all lone sorties.
CB: Right.
JL: Except the, except the daylight on Brest.
CB: Right. So after those three then you do the conversion on to the Lancasters. So what was the process there?
JL: We spent quite a little time learning about the Lancaster on the ground and then we had two pilots from 460 Squadron attached to us and they quite quickly converted us. It didn’t take very long. A Lancaster was quite easy to fly and then we took over our crews and spent some time.
CB: So when you moved to Lancasters the four engines all had an engineer. How did that selection work? Did you have all the crew with you?
JL: Well we had, oh a suitable number of mid-upper gunners and engineers arrived and we didn’t choose them. They were just allocated.
CB: So —
JL: And with a full crew then we started doing navigation exercises, a lot of which, much to our concern, were low level formation.
CB: Daylight or night?
JL: Daylight. We didn’t like the idea very much. In the end we didn’t do any daylights.
CB: So what time are we talking about now? 1942.
JL: 1942. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JL: My first operation on Lancs was a mining operation. To Norway. Haugesundfjord fjord
[pause]
CB: What was the, that was just in the fjord. Just in the entrance was it? Or close to the shipping?
JL: It was more or less parallel to the coast as I remember.
CB: Right.
JL: It wasn’t, it wasn’t very well defended at all. Searchlights came up and a bit of light flak and my gunners responded quickly and, and they put the lights out again.
CB: What sort of height were you doing your mining?
JL: Five hundred feet.
CB: That was also five hundred was it? Right. Ok. And then the rest of the ops. On that tour how many did you do? With 12 squadron?
JL: I think I did twenty two [pause] on Lancasters. Did thirty on Wellingtons. I did the two thousand bomber raids. And then another twenty two [coughs], another twenty two on Lancs which made fifty four I think.
CB: So that normal tour would be thirty. So why did you stop at twenty two?
JL: Oh well I’d done, I did the fifty fourth operation which was to La Spezia in Italy. And the next morning I was called in by the wing commander. And wondering what I’d done wrong, and he said that a new edict had come through that a second tour was now twenty operations. Not twenty. And as I’d done twenty I was finished as of then.
CB: Right. Not thirty. Yeah.
JL: So I finished very suddenly at fifty four.
CB: So what was the next move from there?
JL: Well I wanted to be a test pilot and I thought the best way of starting was getting a posting to a maintenance unit. The wing commander. Wing commander. [pause] Oh dear. Wood. Wing Commander Wood was very very helpful because my first posting after having finished the second tour was back to Wellington 1Cs at Harwell.
CB: Oh right.
JL: And I complained very very loudly about that so WinCo Wood took me off that and made me sort of supernumerary on the squadron. I was talking to new crews and doing odd jobs and then I couldn’t go on forever so they gave me a posting to the Group Gunnery Flight at Binbrook. 1481 flight. I was, they had a Wellington flight and a Martinet flight — the target towers. I was in charge of the Wellington flight and I had a right royal time there. I was my own boss and we did as we liked. But then a posting came through for me to Boscombe Down. A&AEE which I was rather frightened about that. I wasn’t sure if I was up to it. In the end it was fine. Incidentally, the posting to Harwell, another second tour pilot finished shortly after me [pause] Once again his name’s gone. But he took it because his wife lived near Harwell and within about six weeks he was dead. The engine caught fire and the thing folded. What was his name? All these names are in there.
CB: Yeah.
JL: In ten minutes time I can tell you.
CB: Ok. We can pick it up. So now you’re on the way to Boscombe Down.
JL: Yes. I went to Boscombe Down. I was posted to, there was an armament flight and a performance testing flight. I went to the armament flight and the flight commander gave me a ride in a B, oh dear, B25.
CB: Mitchell.
JL: Mitchell. Mitchell. And that was it. I didn’t have any dual. You just got in to an aeroplane and flew it.
CB: Right.
JL: And that’s just, just what happened. And I amassed a total of, I think eventually a hundred and forty four types.
CB: Really. So what formal process did they have for introducing you to test flying?
JL: None at all then. I was just posted in, as I said given a ride in a Mitchell because I’d never been in an American aircraft before. And that was it. I flew them all. Liberators, Fortresses. What was the, was it a B26?
CB: Marauder.
JL: Marauder. That was a bit of a handful.
CB: Was it?
JL: Very high wing loading.
CB: And when you were doing the flying did you have people with you on instruments? Who were monitoring instruments? What was actually happening at Boscombe Down?
JL: Most of my flying was done for armament purposes and we had armament technical officers. Sort of bombing and gunning and we were supervising the tests. We were just drivers really.
CB: Yeah.
JL: My first job, my very first job when I got down there was to drop a four thousand pounder from fifteen hundred feet. Well in the, in Bomber Command the quoted safety height for dropping a four thousand pounder is six thousand feet. Really it was nothing. You felt, well you heard and felt just a little bump. And all this was, they were doing a lot of tests in preparation for what they called second TAF. Second Technical Airforce for the invasion.
CB: So this is army support effectively. So the four thousand pounder’s the cookie which is just a barrel.
JL: Oh yes.
CB: And did you feel there was some danger in doing that? Or did you prove there wasn’t?
JL: Well as I say we’d been told the safety height was six thousand feet and we were sent off to do it at fifteen hundred but I had no problem.
CB: Which was what they wanted to know.
JL: They were measuring it.
CB: Where would you, where was the range where you dropped those?
JL: Lyme Bay. Just off Lyme Regis.
CB: Yeah. What other things were you dropping? Or was there a lot of gunnery involved as well with the fifty seven millimetre.
JL: A bit of both. I had another job with a Mosquito. Oh incidentally. Mosquito. This was typical Boscombe at the time. There was quite a lot of social drinking went on in the evenings and one of the chaps who was, I was very fond of as an armament officer called Shepherd. He was a school master in civil life but he was involved with the rocket. RPs rocket projectiles which was flown by the [pause] oh God.
CB: The Mosquitos and the Beaufighters.
JL: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Anyway, one night he said, ’Would you like to fly a Mosquito?’ So I said, ‘Yes please.’ And the next day we just walked out to this Mosquito. Let’s say 8RPs. Four under each wing. And I got in. He got in behind me and we went off. That was literally true.
CB: And you’d never flown a two engine.
JL: I’d never flown a Mosquito before.
CB: No.
JL: And I’d certainly never fired rockets but there was quite an art in that because he was telling me what to do all the time. And then another job I had with the Mosquito was — I think they were probably four thousand pound casings filled with [pause] oh dear my brain. Flammable stuff.
CB: Oh yes. Napalm.
JL: What?
CB: Napalm.
JL: Napalm. Yes and this was, this was done we had a range at Crichel Down which, which was, I guess, sometime after the war and low level and so I went off and dropped one of these things at low level. Went back and landed and they phoned up and said, ‘You’re too high.’ So I had another one. I think we did this four times. Eventually I was flying just as low as I possibly dare.
CB: Was this in a Mosquito again?
JL: Yes. And then I saw some cine film of it afterwards but to see this Mosquito scuttling along just above the treetops and a great flame drops the, a great flame went up like a clutching hand way up above the Mosquito. Came down just missing its tail. It was quite frightening to watch and I did that four times.
CB: Blimey. This is using the four thousand pounder casing.
JL: That’s what it looked like. Yes.
CB: When you were doing your four thousand pounder at fifteen hundred feet what plane were you using to drop?
JL: The Lanc.
CB: That was the Lanc. Right. Ok. What other exciting planes? Did you fly single seaters at Boscombe Down?
JL: Oh yes. You could fly anything you wanted. Just go along and say, ‘Please can I have a go at this.’ And you did. There were, well I’d already flown Spitfires. I don’t know where they got that from but I pinched a Spitfire.
CB: Oh did you?
JL: At Binbrook.
CB: You felt it needed exercising.
JL: Yes. You haven’t, you haven’t got on to this one.
CB: No. Go on.
JL: Well —
CB: Right.
JL: 1 Group. They had a, I think he was a New Zealander with a Spitfire. He used to go around all the squadrons doing fighter affiliation. He came. He used to come to Binbrook about once a week I should think. Every time he came I used to say, ‘Give us a go in your Spitfire.’ And eventually he said, ‘Well I’m going to lunch. I know nothing about it.’ So I took that as a have a go.
CB: Have a go.
JL: Yeah. So I went off and did fifteen minutes in this Spitfire and the station commander was Hughie Edwards.
CB: Oh right. [laughs]
JL: Well actually I got on well with him and just a couple of days later, I can’t remember what he said but it was just a very few words just to let me know that he knew about it and having done that I thought well I’ll have another go. So the next time this chap came in I had another go. And then at Kirton Lindsey, not very far away there was a Spitfire OTU. So I went off in — Hughie Edwards used to have a Tiger Moth. He used to let me fly that and I just introduced an Aussie, Aussie wireless op of 460 Squadron. So we went over to Kirton Lindsey and said we wanted to fly Spitfires and they said, ‘Well you’ll have to use Hibaldstow. Our satellite.’ So I went over to Hibaldstow. Now. I can’t for the life of me think how this ever happened but I walked in there and said, ‘Please sir, I have flown a Spitfire before. Can I have another go?’ And then he gave me a Spitfire and I went off for forty five minutes. They’d never seen me before. I’d never seen them before. But this is true. It’s true.
CB: Was this the OTU for the Eagle Squadron?
JL: No. I don’t think so.
CB: No.
JL: I don’t know what it was. It was just a Spitfire OTU.
CB: Yeah. Right. Amazing.
JL: I mean authorising. Who the hell would authorise a flight in a Spitfire from somebody they’d never seen before?
CB: What rank were you at that time?
JL: Flight lieutenant. [pause] Yeah. Lots of things like that happened to me. It’s hard to believe them now.
CB: Yeah.
JL: I guarantee it. I don’t know how you would ever prove it now but [poor old Max Kiddie?] the Aussies. He died. Well most Aussies seem to die young. Most of the ones I knew did.
CB: Yeah. Back at —
JL: Hughie Edwards only made sixty eight.
CB: Yes. Back at Boscombe Down you’ve got all these variety of planes and you’re in the armament flight. So on the single engine planes what are you testing?
JL: Mostly guns. Things like the Avenger I remember, which was quite a nice aeroplane. We didn’t have many single engines. Only for our own test purposes but I used to go around and fly other people’s.
CB: So the Grumman Avenger was — you were doing that for the navy were you?
JL: Yes.
CB: Right.
JL: Yes I remember the Avenger. The Avenger, I think, yes. I can’t remember what. We did anything. And we were all much the same. We were entitled to one day off a week but nobody ever took it. All that happened when there was a non-flying day we all went into Salisbury. Otherwise every day was the same.
CB: Yeah. What other twin-engined aircraft did you fly at Boscombe Down?
JL: I don’t know.
CB: Did you have a Whirlwind for instance?
JL: No. No. Unfortunately not. I liked the look of a Whirlwind. They had the, they had the Wyvern there but it never went into production. It was a sort of larger, uglier looking one.
CB: Wellington.
JL: I’ve made a list somewhere of what I’ve flown.
CB: Ok. So after Boscombe Down. Then what? We’re now getting to what? What time of the war?
JL: Well the Empire Test Pilot School had started and had number one course for only about eight or ten people on that. And they had number two course. That was going on during the time I was there. They were based at Boscombe. I applied for number three course which began on the 13th March 1945 and actually I’d been, I was scheduled to drop the, I can’t remember whether it was the Tallboy or the Grand Slam but the weather had been duff and the 13th of March came up and that was the date of DPDS started so I had to give up that and a chap called Steve Dawson did the dropping of it. But of course 514. Oh my brain. Come on. The Dambusters.
CB: Yeah. 617.
JL: 617. That’s better. They already had them of course.
CB: So talking about Tallboy and Grand Slam. How were you testing those and where?
JL: Dropping them on Ashley Walk in the New Forest.
CB: So did they, they were looking for penetration were they? Or accuracy of flight? What were they looking at?
JL: I can’t remember.
CB: Because they were pinpoint delivery bombs.
JL: Probably the mechanics of dropping it. Yes that would be it. No point in dropping it on Ashley Walk except to make a big hole.
CB: Were they testing the ability of the two bombs to penetrate concrete?
JL: I don’t think so. I think 617 squadron were already doing that. They did the Tirpitz and that thing in France.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Coupole or whatever they called it.
CB: Coupole. Yes. They did a good job on that.
JL: Did a good job of the Tirpitz too.
CB: Yeah. And V3. Tallboys. The guns. The guns in the hillside. So did you, after doing your dropping did they ask you to look at the result of what you’d done?
JL: I can’t remember that. No.
[pause]
JL: I had a wonderful time at Boscombe. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
CB: I bet. So you talked about ETPS the Test Pilot School so what happened there. Number three course.
JL: I was on number three course. Yes. And of course the end of the war came. Chief test pilots round the industry had a habit of coming down and taking lunch with the senior officers and Cyril Feather who was the chief test pilot at Boulton Paul wanted a pilot and somebody suggested me. And I was a bit flattered and thought it would be a good idea so I accepted. And at the end of the course actually we were all being, getting the future sorted out. I had applied for a permanent commission. In the event they didn’t issue permanent commissions immediately. They did what amounted to short service. They didn’t call it short service. Four year contracts.
CB: Yeah. Just Short Service Commissions.
JL: It was a short service commission but they called it something else.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Extended Service Commission
CB: Oh right.
JL: In the event they only issued Extended Service Commissions and I took this offer of Boulton Paul’s but when I got there the chief test pilot engineer was there. He didn’t know I was coming. He was a bit put out understandably. Anyway, we got on alright but there was nothing to do there and I went to ETPS course dinner and we had a number four course I suppose which at this time it was [pause] oh dear [pause] somewhere near Milton Keynes
CB: Oh Cranfield.
JL: Cranfield. Thank you. I’m sorry about this.
CB: That’s alright.
JL: And the Groupie — I can’t think of his name now. A little chap. Said, ‘Are you happy where you are?’ I said, ‘No sir.’ He said, ‘Well, Saunders Roe are looking for somebody. Well, Saunders Roe suited me very well because apart from being on the Isle of Wight my wife lived near Winchester and so I I left Baulton Paul and went to Saunders Roe and [cough] oh dear. I don’t know why my throat’s doing this.
CB: Do you want a break? We’ll just stop for a mo?
[Recording paused]
CB: Now, one thing I didn’t ask you about the Boscombe Down range was you were actually testing American aircraft as well as British.
JL: Oh yes.
CB: One of the night fighters, American night fighters was called Black Widow.
JL: Yes. Flew that.
CB: What was that like?
JL: It was not a very pleasant aircraft to fly really. I think it had remote controlled guns for even firing. It was alright but not a, not a very brilliant aircraft. Yes. The P51.
[pause]
CB: Right. Thank you. So we’re now at Saunders Roe. So what was the task there?
JL: Well they didn’t have a proper pilot there but chief designers [unclear] had been at the fleet air arm. He was doing a little bit. There were, at the time they were building Sea Otters and refurbishing Walruses, the jet flying boat fighter was on the docks. The SRA1. And in the distance was the Princess.
CB: Right.
JL: And so I just joined in flying the Walruses and the Sea Otters and then they, they sent me on a Sunderland conversion course to Pembroke Dock which was very nice. So I had the full OTU course on the Sunderland. Now what had happened at Saunders Roe was that Short Brothers — where did they used to be? On the Thames.
CB: At Chatham. Rochester.
JL: Rochester. Stafford Cripps, who was a trade minister or something, nationalised Short’s and sent them to Belfast. They never did like that including the chairman Sir Arthur Gouge. So he carried these down to Saunders Roe and he was, he was followed by a whole lot of other people including a general manager, Browning and a whole lot and they just didn’t want to be at Belfast. And whilst I was away at Pembroke Dock I got a letter from the managing director [laughs] Captain Clark saying that Geoffrey Tyson would be joining the company as chief test pilot. Well he was one of the Short’s. Well he was chief test pilot at Short’s. I thought well that’s fair enough. He knows his stuff. I don’t. And so I wrote back and said, “Yes, that’s fine by me sir.” And when I got back I met Geoffrey. He was the most peculiar chap. He wasn’t the least interested in me, my background. He didn’t want to see my logbooks. Nothing. He knew nothing about me. And I found it very hard to get on with him. He hadn’t any sense of humour, he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke. But we staggered along and he did the first few flights on the SRA1 and then he let me have a go. Well then, well we, we didn’t get on at all. Face it. We shared the same birthday but he was twelve years older than me.
CB: Right.
JL: And —
CB: In flying boat terms he was a cold fish.
JL: Then he, he told me one day that John Booth, who was another Short pilot was going to join as his number two so obviously that was my invitation to leave. So I rang up Eric Franklin at Armstrong Whitworth and got a job back there straight away and that was, that was the end of the things. I flew the SRA1 at Farnborough along with several other do’s.
CB: Just to put this —
JL: He was a most peculiar fellow.
CB: To put this into a context if I may. The SRA1 was the first jet powered Flying Boat.
JL: Yes.
CB: So what was the concept and what was it like?
JL: I think the idea was it would be handy in the Pacific area where they wouldn’t have to have a runway. It was quite a powerful machine with four twenty millimetre cannon.
CB: It was a fighter.
JL: It was a fighter. Yes. And although it was a bit bulky for a fighter it was quite lively but of course the Pacific war ended and there was no more call for it. Three were completed and two were crashed. One by Winkle Brown and one by a [Pete Major?] at Felixstowe. Another one is at Southampton.
CB: So you did the course on the Sunderland at Pembroke. That set you up.
JL: Pembroke Dock.
CB: Pembroke dock. That set you up in anticipation of flying the SRA1 did it? Was that the idea?
JL: Yes. That was the Flying Boats in general.
CB: And you were flying the Walruses and the Otters
JL: Yes. The Walruses and the Sea Otter you could taxi on the slipway.
CB: Yeah.
JL: The others needed mooring.
CB: So, what, how did it feel flying a jet flying boat? Because compared with flying a piston engine it was quite different.
JL: Well I had flown jets before. I flew the Vampire and the Meteor.
CB: At Boscombe Down.
JL: Yeah. [pause] I don’t know. Didn’t feel particularly different.
CB: Did you have to have particularly unusual handling techniques because of being a jet engine and getting water in it?
JL: Well they had designed in an extended snout but it was never necessary. It was never used because the spray was always well clear of the intake. I’ve got to have another.
CB: That’s alright.
[Recording pause]
JL: At that time the Isle of Wight was bristling with retired naval captains.
CB: Oh.
JL: Actually I thought he was one of those.
CB: Right.
JL: It turned out to be a captain in the Royal Flying Corps and equivalent of a flight lieutenant.
CB: But he called himself Captain Clark.
JL: Oh he was very fussy about the captain bit.
CB: Yeah. How interesting. What was he like as a personality? As the chairman.
JL: He was a bit peculiar. He had very little technical knowledge. How he came to be managing director I don’t know.
CB: Of an aviation company.
JL: Finance I suppose. But he was a bit of an oddball.
CB: Now after the Saunders Roe situation changing you went back to Armstrong Whitworth.
JL: Yes.
CB: So how did that come about? You just made direct contact or how did it work?
JL: Well when Geoffrey told me John Booth was joining as his number two that was obviously my cue to go so I immediately phoned Eric Franklin who — he’d been an apprentice with me at Armstrong Whitworth and he was then chief test pilot and he offered me a job straight away. So I was on my way within a very few days.
CB: So what was Armstrong Whitworth working on then? We’re talking about 1946 now are we?
JL: ‘49
CB: ‘49. Right.
JL: When I, when went back there the bread and butter was the production of Mark iv Meteors which became Mark viii Meteors. Simultaneously we had the Apollo which was a heap of rubbish.
CB: An airliner.
JL: Yes.
CB: An imitation air liner.
JL: It was supposed to be in competition with the Vickers Viscount. That was because it had to have Armstrong Siddeley engines, which were rubbish so it was never made anywhere. They were very [pause] well, a child of ten could have designed it.
CB: Oh.
JL: We had the 52. The 52 glider.
CB: So how, the AW52 was a flying wing.
JL: Yes.
CB: So could you just explain what the concept there was and the use of the glider first?
JL: Well, one of the purposes of it was to try to develop laminar flow over the wing.
CB: Right.
JL: But it wasn’t very successful because it’s impossible to keep the wind surface clear of squashed flies and things but actually it was a very experimental aircraft. I suppose they had ideas of building a massive passenger aircraft in that form but in this case it was just a two seater but they, it only had twenty six degrees of sweepback which was not nearly enough. And on controls they had several choices. What they chose was an elavon — a combined elevator and aileron. They could have split them and had separate ailerons and elevators or power controls were coming along although they hadn’t reached it yet. Well they wrongly decided on the elavons which meant that fore and aft was a very short lever balance, was very vert sensitive fore and aft, very very heavy laterally and they had a compromise and the compromise was through a spring tab. Are you familiar with a spring tab?
CB: Yeah.
JL: On a spring tab the spring had to be very very weak so that your controls are connected to a very floppy spring and my problem was exceeding the [pause] exploring the higher speed range before flutter set in. I was completely disorientated and I believe that I would have passed out very quickly so instead of that I pulled the blind down. I didn’t do anything properly in the ejection. You were supposed to put your heels on the footrest. I didn’t do that. I just didn’t do it. That’s all. And it had spectacle controls. Somehow or other my knees missed that. They were bruised but otherwise, otherwise ok. So once again I was very very very lucky.
CB: What height were you flying?
JL: About three thousand feet.
CB: And what speed?
JL: Three hundred. About three hundred and fifty. The limiting speed had just been increased and that’s what I was doing.
CB: So it’s the —
JL: Exploring that.
CB: Right. And theoretically what was the maximum speed? Fairly low was it?
JL: Oh I expect so. Yes. Yes not much performance testing was done. It was all sort of handling. Trying to get the controls right.
CB: So you’re at three thousand. Three thousand feet. What sort of speed were you actually flying at at that moment?
JL: Well the last I remember was about three fifty.
CB: It was at three fifty. Right.
JL: We were still at miles an hour.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JL: And —
CB: The parachute automatically deployed.
JL: No. No.
CB: You had to do it.
JL: I had to do the whole thing.
CB: Yeah.
JL: I had to release the Sutton harness and pull the rip cord.
CB: Right.
JL: I made a very bad landing and hurt my shoulder a bit. Still hurts.
CB: Where? Where did this take place?
JL: A place called little Long Itchington.
CB: I know it. Yes.
JL: Do you know it? South of Coventry.
CB: Yes. Good pub there.
JL: Yes. I’ve been there.
CB: The Blue Light.
JL: The Blue Light.
CB: Yes.
JL: Used to kept by Wing Commander Sandy Powell.
CB: Oh.
JL: Who had been at Boscombe Down. In charge of C flight.
CB: And he he became a Comet test pilot and that blew his mind.
JL: Hmmn?
CB: He had been a Comet test pilot as well hadn’t he?
JL: Sandy?
CB: Yeah.
JL: Well he’d flown all sorts of things.
CB: Yeah. Right. So that’s where you came down. And the plane came down somewhere. Where?
JL: About two miles further on.
CB: Yeah. What? How did you start off with the gliders? The Glider. How did that handle? You were towed up by something and then —
JL: [laughs]. Not exactly. They had, they had a Whitley to tow it off first of all but when I got there they’d just been allocated a Lancaster. That Whitley was the last off the production line and they took it away and broke it up. There was no Whitley any more. But we had a Lancaster which was much better getting the glider up to a decent height. Used to take it up and then do tests on the way down.
CB: So how manoeuvrable was the glider?
JL: Well it was much better. It was two thirds the size of a big one and it was not metal? It was plywood construction which made it much more rigid and the controls were much better. Still a bit odd.
CB: And what sort of test envelope would you be exploring in that?
JL: Oh I don’t know. I don’t remember.
CB: Then you moved to the AW52.
JL: Yes. I only did two and a half flights in the AW52.
CB: Right.
JL: And the other one was grounded. Then they did some vibration tests with it at very slow speeds. When they sent it to Farnborough where it was regarded as a curiosity. I think they tried to resurrect the laminar flow test but it was no good and it finished up as a curiosity and was eventually broken up.
CB: What was the engine power on that? Was it twin engine?
JL: Yes. Two Nenes. Yes. One had two Nenes. One had two Derwents.
CB: Right. So this was a government contract.
JL: Yes.
CB: To examine laminar flows.
JL: A research. A government supported.
CB: So after that you get out. You’re the first person to use an ejector seat in serious operation.
JL: Yes. The Germans had got on of course during the war. They weren’t as good of course. I think they were operated by compressed air. But I think there were a quite a lot of German ejections.
CB: Were there?
JL: And I was the first of the allied side shall we say.
CB: In peacetime. So you injured your shoulder. What did you do after that?
JL: I was off flying for about a month and then I went to central, CME Central Medical Establishment in London and they gave me a going over and sent me home with a little piece of paper which said, “Fits, fits civilian MOS pilot but not to be exposed to the hazards of the Martin-Baker ejection seat.” And so shrieks of laughter at that. Still are. [laughs]
CB: An interesting point though in practical terms the seat is operated by a cartridge. What was the affect? The seat is operated by an explosive cartridge so what did the ejection itself do to your spine?
JL: Well I had already gone up to [Denham?] and got on the test rig and following that I had a little bit of pain in my tail. I mentioned this to my GP and explained what had happened. He said, ‘Well, I expect you bruised it a bit.’ But the pain didn’t go away. It wasn’t constant and so I ignored it. Then when I ejected they x-rayed me and they said that I’d suffered a compression fracture of the first and second vertebrae and what’s more this was the second time this has happened. So the same thing happened both times.
CB: Right.
JL: I think it’s quite common actually.
CB: Yes. It’s just the modern seats are rocket and they still have a sharp acceleration don’t they?
JL: Yes.
CB: So, ok. What did you do next then? Did you return to flying?
JL: Oh yes. I went to Armstrong Whitworth and started again. And well we went through a lot of productions the Sea Hawk, the Hunter 2 and 5, Hunter 7. We had [pause] God. Come on brain. Javelin.
CB: Oh yes. ‘Cause they were building all of these. Some contractors were they?
JL: Yes. I mean we took over. We took over the Sea Hawk complete. Design and everything.
CB: Oh right.
JL: But the others were just sub-contracts. The Hunter 2 and the 5 had Sapphire engines. We built all those.
CB: How long did all that go on?
JL: Well the Argosy came along 1959. And I participated in that for a while which wasn’t a very good aircraft at all. Didn’t have enough range for the RAF to start with. But Glosters closed down. Who else closed down? Avro. Avro’s closed down [pause] No they didn’t. Glosters closed down. Somebody else closed down and the Hawker Siddeley Group was sort of imploding rapidly and so I thought it time to go rather than just sit about and wait to be picked to be sacked. And so I went to the managing director and said I’d be happy to leave and that I had a suggestion that they see me through the necessary, considerable training to obtain an airline transport pilot’s licence and they happily agreed to that. They paid all my expenses. In all for about three months. I got that licence and they gave me a year’s salary and said thank you very much. And unfortunately I was, met another chap who’d got into crop spraying in Africa. Made a lot of money. And he talked me into joining him in the business but unfortunately he had a wife too many and he bought a house out of the business and things were going very wrong and I lost a lot of money and pulled out. And I needed a job and there was a job down here at Shoreham regional air maps. Doing air survey photography and map making. So I took that job to give me, keep me sane while I looked around for an airline job but the only airline job that came my way was flying a Dakota to Dusseldorf at night with the papers. I didn’t fancy that at all. I was well placed because the crewing manager at British United was a chap who’d been at Boscombe Down, Charles Moss and he was looking out for me. And nothing came along. This was in 1964. So I took this job and I got engrossed in the air survey business anyway and passed the point of no return age wise I think and I stayed there until I was sixty five.
CB: So looking back on your RAF career what was the most memorable point, would you say, of your activities?
JL: I think my first tour with that motley crew I had.
CB: In what way?
JL: Well we went everywhere together. Did everything together.
CB: Yeah.
JL: It was rather different with the second tour. We didn’t sort of mix socially so much.
CB: Didn’t you?
JL: Well I had good happy times but —
CB: When were you commissioned? In the first tour.
JL: In my first tour. Yeah. August 1941.
CB: Right.
JL: This was another little story. I was down in the dispersal one day and an airman came down and said, ‘Here. You’ve got to fill this in.’ [laughs] And it was an application form for a commission. So I thought I’d better fill it in which I did and I had to go to London for an interview and my crew, I went down by train late at night. My crew duly saw my off via the George Hotel and I was in a pretty fair state when I got on the train. Got to London in the blackouts. There was an air raid warning on. I had nowhere to go. I eventually found a dim light which was the Church Army or Salvation Army or something. A little hostel. So I went in there and they gave me a bed for the night. In the morning I never saw the proper toilet facilities. I just got, I just got dressed. I had a terrible hangover and went for my interview. I think it was actually Adastral House in Kingsway. Then went back to the squadron and carried on. And then we went on leave and I still had my car. If you had a car and you went on leave you had petrol coupons for the place you were going so obviously the best thing is to have a destination as far away as possible to get the most petrol. So I had the address of a friend in Shrewsbury and I just gave that as my address whilst on leave. Whilst I was on leave they sent a telegram to this address saying commission granted and never to return as pilot officer so I turned up not knowing a thing about this so I had to rush into Cambridge and get myself fitted for a uniform and rushed in again to put it on and went in as a sergeant and came back as a pilot officer. And my crew all came with me as usual and they marched in front demanding that everybody saluted me. [laughs]
CB: Sounds like a riot.
JL: Yeah.
CB: Didn’t work the same way with the Lancaster crew. Is that because you had two people join later?
JL: Well I had a ready-made crew. The commanding officer had gone off sick. He needed some surgery and I took over his crew which was a Wellington crew. And the navigator was a ex-Exeter prison jailer and he had, he had funny ideas. He used to take a .38 revolver with him on ops. Yeah. The wireless operator was, came from Dublin and surprisingly he was a teetotal. The original wireless op and the rear gunner both changed quite quickly having finished whatever they were on and so I had a sort of a scratch crew to start with and when we changed we changed on to Lancs we had two new members and we were all on happy good terms but we didn’t sort of go down the the pub as a gang as we did on the first tour.
CB: How many other officers in your crew? In that case. On the Lancasters.
JL: There were no officers except me in the first crew. The second crew [pause] I had two changes of navigator and they were both commissioned. The rear gunner in both cases both were commissioned. Just in the last legs I had a commissioned wireless op. A Canadian. Gordon Fisher. The rest were all sergeants.
CB: You had an unusually broad experience because you started early and did various other things. To what extent did you come across LMF?
JL: On 40 Squadron we had a chap. I can tell you his name can I?
CB: Ahum.
JL: [Hesketh?]
CB: Yeah.
JL: And all sorts of things kept going wrong with him. He did a lot of second pilot trips. I had my [unclear] [serves me right?] one time prior to going out on ops he retracted the undercarriage. Almost anything to stop him and he was eventually flying second pilot with the flight commander and that aircraft was seen circling on a point on the East Anglian coast well north off the point where we were supposed to stage through and it spun in and crashed and they were all killed including the flight commander. Creegan was it? And this chap Hesketh. You can’t help but think that Hesketh had something to do with that but why they were, they were about fifty miles north of where they should have been. The other one I only know by hearsay which was 12 Squadron. A crew ditched in the North Sea. The dinghy was upside down and they had to sit on the upturned dinghy for three days and they were rescued and of course they were hospital cases. Apparently for days afterwards when they squeezed [the flesh?] water came out. The wireless op I believe, this was all hearsay Flight Sergeant Rose and he was put back on ops far too soon. He wasn’t ready for it and he was whisked off. Presumably pronounced LMF. Which was very very very unkind. My experience of the RAF was that they were always very kind and compassionate to me.
CB: Well.
JL: Particularly Wing Commander Wood.
CB: Jo thank you very much indeed for a fascinating interview.
JL: I don’t think it was very good.
[Recording paused]
JL: One incident at 12 Squadron again. Lancs. We were right over the top of Hamburg a Junkers 88 went. We heard his engines.
CB: Did you?
JL: Straight over the top of us. Missed us by about ten feet I think.
CB: In the dark.
JL: In the dark.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Well in the dark but you could see quite a lot.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Quite a shock.
JL: Yes [laughs] if he’s close enough to hear the engines he’s too bloody near.
CB: Yeah. And you thanked your lucky stars.
JL: I had another one. I had a very good Australian navigator on 12 Squadron. Anyway, he had to miss an op for some reason or other and we were given a Canadian. A chap called Abrahamson. I’d never sort of met him till we got in the aircraft and the target was Essen. And we went off and by the time we got to the Dutch coast he wasn’t making any sense at all but fortunately the PFF were putting down markers at a couple of turning points and the night was absolutely gin clear. You could see everything. You could see the coast and rivers and I didn’t want to take issue with this Mr Abrahamson so I just carried on and we duly, I made the markers that PFF had put down. You couldn’t miss the target because they were marking that as well. Some duly did deliver the bombs and just flew home. Didn’t need any help flying home. We could see everything and of course when we got back we had to report everything to the squadron navigation officer. Mr Abrahamson was never seen again. By the time we got up in the morning he wasn’t there.
CB: Was he —
JL: Off the station. Where he went? Don’t know.
CB: Did you put that down to stress or just as an incompetent navigator?
JL: I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea. I didn’t know the chap. I hadn’t spoken to him.
CB: Right. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: Wife died.
JL: Well [unclear]
CB: Right.
JL: Very sad. That’s right. We had a legal separation and she wanted to marry again so we did the divorce and then she died 1977.
CB: Right.
JL: I remarried and this wife went a bit berserk. I think she was almost certainly she was got onto drugs. She had her own car. Used to disappear into Brighton for days but she had her father who was a mouse living there and looked after my daughter Jenny and eventually she, well I divorced her and the next thing I knew she’d developed cirrhosis of the liver.
CB: Oh.
JL: And due to her very very peculiar behaviour she hadn’t any friends left at all. She was a very very sad case and she committed suicide.
CB: Right.
JL: In 1964. I’d just retired.
CB: A big strain.
JL: I was left with a daughter sixteen. Just doing her O Levels.
CB: Oh were you really.
JL: Fortunately she’s turned out absolute trumps.
WT: Good. Good.
CB: Excellent.
JL: And the son is fine too. So I have a son of seventy and a daughter forty nine and a loving and loyal family.
CB: Is Jenny married?
JL: She should be.
CB: Oh.
JL: I said, ‘Why don’t you get married?’ ‘What’s the point?’
CB: Oh right.
JL: One of those.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Jo Lancaster. Two
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-08
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALancasterJO170308
PLancasterJO1501
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
Jo Lancaster grew up in Cumbria and joined the Air Force as soon as he was able. After training as a pilot he flew a tour of operations with 40 Squadron from RAF Alconbury. He then became an instructor before his second tour flying Lancasters with 12 Squadron from RAF Wickenby. He then became a test pilot at RAF Boscombe Down. He continued to be a test pilot after the war and was the first person to eject from an aircraft in danger using a Martin-Baker ejector seat. In all he flew a total of more than 144 aircraft types.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Coventry
France--Brest
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Hamburg
Scotland--Lossiemouth
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Warwickshire
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1945
Format
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02:00:18 audio recording
12 Squadron
150 Squadron
20 OTU
22 OTU
40 Squadron
aircrew
B-25
B-26
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
crewing up
Grand Slam
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 110
Meteor
mine laying
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Alconbury
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wyton
recruitment
Spitfire
Tallboy
training
Walrus
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/751/10750/PCookJH1701.1.jpg
81323cdafc31bb66e836e5b0ba2201ff
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/751/10750/ACookJH170118.2.mp3
85280a29406287aa006ef455c66449b1
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
Cook, Joseph Henry
J H Cook
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer (1925 - 2018, 1894875 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a n air gunner with 630 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Joseph Cook and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-18
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
Cook, JH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CJ: We’re on. Ok. This is Chris Johnson and I’m interviewing Joe Cook today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at Joe’s home in Kent and it’s Wednesday 18th of January 2017. Thank you, Joe for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present at the interview are Vi Jarmin, Joe’s partner. Joe’s daughter Beverley Maltby and her husband Michael. So Joe, thanks very much for talking to us today. Perhaps you could start by telling us about your early life and where and when you were born and your family background.
JC: Very, very simple. I was born in Sidcup in Kent on the 2nd of June 1925. I’m, I’m living with my grandparents for a little while and my mother and father and then we moved. And we moved to Brockley and more or less orientated around Brockley. My early life. I went to school at Blackfen. And then of course I went to the, what do they call it? Basic school. Elementary school. And, and then I got a scholarship for going to Brockley Central School. Brockley Central School was a marvellous school because we took the Oxford General School Certificate and we took the London Chamber of Commerce Certificate of which I’m proud to say I got the Oxford Certificate and I got the forces of it with the London Chamber of Commerce with a Book Keeping Distinction. That was my basic education. Because of the background I was able to go straight into a job. And I went to, oh [pause] I went in to a solicitors I think it was. Something like that. I was only there a couple of days and it fizzled out. Something went wrong. I then ended up in Twentieth Century Fox Films. I found my own job because it paid twice the money that the others did. So, at Twentieth Century Fox Films I was working in the assistant, whatever, I forget what they call it now. Anyway, it was logging films and how much they would produce and etcetera. I was there until I went in the services. I met my first wife, my wife there and we were married obviously in 1945. I wouldn’t marry her until I finished flying because I said, ‘You can’t get married to a cinder.’ Because all aircrew got terribly burned. So therefore I married in 1945. 20th of October. And I produced eventually [laughs] a long time my daughter who is over there. And that is all I’ve produced because my wife had trouble with TB etcetera. So I wouldn’t let her have another child. My fault. I wouldn’t let her have another child. And I was married for forty six years. My partner over there God bless her heart. I’ve been with her for twenty five years. I’m sorry. And I’m still with her.
[recording paused]
CJ: So, Joe. You were working at Twentieth Century Fox after leaving school. So how did you come to join the RAF and when was that?
JC: Well, after leaving school I was conned into the war because I was a fire watcher etcetera. And every night I had to sit up all night fire watching. And then, and what did I do then? How did I, you said how did I come to get in the Air Force? Well, it’s quite simple really. I didn’t want to go in the Army. Quite simple. But I always fancied flying. I wanted to fly. But I, at that time there was no vehicle to take me flying so I joined the RAF. Now, I had to volunteer for aircrew. As you know they were all volunteers. I volunteered and they accepted me straightaway because of my education. And I had no problem with that. My three days medical at Euston House went through ok. Fine. No problem. So there I am. I am sent to St John’s Wood, in the recently completed flats as, as a base. And I did my three weeks square bashing and knocking me into making me. They knocked you down so that you [pause] sort of thing was you’d clean your shoes. By the way aircrew always wore shoes. You’d clean your shoes and they were, oh you know you’d bone them and all the rest of it. And then the corporal would come in in the morning and inspect. ‘They’re bloody filthy your shoes. Get them cleaned.’ They, it was there to break you. Right. Then you want me to carry on now? From St John’s Wood I went up to Bridgnorth. Initial training. Which was square bashing and all sorts of funny things. From Bridgnorth I went to Bridlington where I did such things as Morse Code. I had to send and receive Morse Code at ten words a minute. Then Bridlington was a learning base for the, as I said Morse Code and other attributes for the Air Force. I then went from Bridlington. Remember that? Where did I go from Bridlington? Oh, I know. Bridgnorth. Not Bridgnorth. I can’t quite get it.
CJ: Was it Evanton?
JC: Huh?
CJ: Evanton in Scotland. Was that it?
JC: No. No. I went to Scotland for my AGS. I’m just trying to think where I went.
[recording paused]
CJ: So you did your basic training in Bridgnorth, Joe.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: And then Bridlington.
JC: Yes.
CJ: So, how did the training go from there and how were you picked for a particular role?
JC: Well, I wasn’t, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But what I wanted to do was kick Jerry up the rear. And the only way to do it was get in the Air Force and get flying. Well, as I say I went to 8 AGS near Evanton. I was trained as an AG. I was flying in Ansons and then, I always remember flying in the Anson. The first flight I ever made they lined us up. Sprogs. Right. There’s a few of us. Eight of us, I think. We were going to fly that morning. ‘Right. You. You. You and you,’ and then it came, ‘You.’ Me. They gave me a handle. And I looked at it and I said, ‘What’s it?’ He said, ‘Up on the wing.’ I had to get up on the wing. Put this handle in the socket and turn it around to start the engine [laughs] Oh dear. And of course once you got one going on an Anson you can get the other one going. But I was sliding about on the wing because it was frosty that morning. You know what Scotland’s like early morning.
CJ: So how did you come to be selected as an air gunner rather than any other role?
JC: Ah. That was at Euston House.
CJ: Ok.
JC: You were in front of a load of gold braid and he, he said to me, ‘Right. We’ve assessed you. You’ve got everything. We have decided that you will be pilot, navigator or bomb aimer.’ And I said to him, ‘I don’t want it.’ He looked at me. He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I don’t want it. I want to kick Jerry up the rear,’ as I said. So, he said, ‘Well, we’re losing so many AGs.’ I said, ‘I’ll have it.’ So that’s how I became an air gunner. I had all the qualifications to be a pilot but I didn’t want it. And I said, ‘It will take at least nearly a year to train me as a pilot. It’s too late. The war will be over.’ That was the reason. And he looked at me, the groupie and he said, ‘You silly little sod,’ because at that rate they were losing them, losing them so rapid. Anyway, I decided that I would do that.
CJ: So you were training on Ansons in Scotland. And how long was the training for?
JC: Oh. I got up there in [pause] oh around about Christmas time. And then I was trained at D-Day. Now, I’ve got a little story I can tell you about that. I got my AG brevet. Very proud of it. Parade. Get your brevet. And then we were posted to Operational Training Unit, Silverstone. We got on the train but we didn’t go to Silverstone. The bloody thing kept, sorry it kept going and going and we ended up at Tarrant Rushton in Devon. When we got there they said, ‘You are not allowed to go outside the camp. You are confined to camp. You cannot write any letters. You cannot use the telephone. You cannot do anything.’ Everything hush hush. Of course, we didn’t know. We didn’t realise what was going on. They didn’t tell you, did they? They didn’t tell you anything. Why I was sitting on the train suddenly, oh stay on the train because you’re carrying on. And so therefore what we didn’t know was this, that it was about oh a few days, quite a few days before D-Day. Why were we sent to Tarrant Rushton? It was quite simple. This. They gathered together all the people who had just been, got their wings. Pilots and all the rest of it and they’d sent us to Tarrant Rushton and they sent us to fly clapped out bloody Stirlings. And they were clapped. And when we got there we said, ‘What’s all this? Why are we doing this?’ They said, ‘You’ll find out.’ Wouldn’t say a thing. They found, we found out alright because we had to load these Stirlings up with leaflets. Fly over to Calais. Drop them on Calais and Boulogne etcetera and we were chucking these bales of leaflets out and one bloke said to me, ‘What’s all this about? What are these leaflets saying?’ He said, ‘It’s in French.’ I said, ‘That’s alright. I’ll read it to you.’ And what it was saying, “Get out of Calais. Get out of Boulogne because we are invading and we are going to bomb like hell.” So please, Froggies get out. ‘Get out of Calais,’ etcetera. That’s what it was all about because you know as well as I do it was a spoof. Well, we were chucking these leaflets out and it counted as an op because we were going over, over enemy territory really. That was the first four. And chucking these leaflets out and on the way back of course this bloody old Stirling packed up. One engine packed up. And then we thought well blow this. Nursed it back over the peninsula. The Devon Peninsula. And then another one went. And on a Stirling no chance. Got to get out of it. Got to jump. Which I had to do. So I jumped out of it and come down on a tree. With a Land Girl with a pitch fork at the base of the tree to ram it in me. Wouldn’t believe that I was English. Got the, they sent, a lorry came around and there was the rest of the bods in it. And they took us to the farmhouse and obviously then to the station. But that, that was my initiation. That’s what D-Day was to me. Dropping leaflets for four days on Calais, Boulogne, Liege etcetera. So I had only just been trained. And it was so daft that when D-Day had been going for about a week or two we were posted and we were posted to the Operational Training Unit to be trained [laughs] You know. And went there and went on to Wellingtons. The old Wimpy. God bless her. And I did my training on that. We did cross countries. We did ten hour trips. Not ten hour trips. Eight hour trips etcetera. And I finished my OTU and how did we get crewed up? Easy. Big hangar. Type 2 hangar. Right. A hundred engineers. A hundred AGs, a hundred pilots all in this hangar and then the group captain gets up, gives a little speech and then says, ‘Right. Form yourselves into crews.’ He said, ‘Mingle amongst each other, walk around, pick who you think would be a good one.’ So I, I had a friend with me and I said to him, ‘It seems to me that the tall ones, the pilots, are bloody good. They seem to survive.’ So we looked for a tall pilot. And it happened to be a Canadian. And Mac, so we looked up at him and said, ‘Oi. You got two gunners?’ So he said, ‘No.’ ‘Do you want two?’ He said, ‘How good are you?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I got eighty four percent on my passing out.’ He said, ‘Oh. I’ll have you.’ So, that’s how it was done. In this big hangar. Then you walked out of there and you were a crew and you were brothers together and just went through it all. You were so close. I can’t explain it. Closer than brothers. The sort of thing was we were booked for ops and then all of a sudden our engineer went sick and he went, turned around to the flight commander and said, ‘I’m not flying.’ He said, ‘No?’ ‘No. Mitch has gone sick. Won’t fly without him.’ ‘Oh. Alright,’ He said, ‘We’ll put a spare crew on.’ That’s how it was.
[recording paused]
CJ: So Joe, you tell me how you were all in a hangar together and sorted yourselves out as a six man crew. So where did you go from there?
JC: Well, this was done at Silverstone. Silverstone in [pause] where was it? I’ve forgotten the name of the county. Anyway, it was at Silverstone. The race track then as it was. And we were flying Wellingtons. As I said a six man crew because it didn’t have a mid-upper turret so you just, you carried the other bloke but you were the one in the turret. Then we, we did all the usual things. Training. Long trips. High level bombing. Gunnery. Etcetera etcetera. And finally you were posted to a squadron and — no. Sorry. Missed a bit. From Silverstone you went to Wigsley. Wigsley was a Conversion Unit. You went from two engines to four. To Wigsley, flying Stirlings. I hate the things. And then from Wigsley you went to a Lancaster Finishing School. And then and at that point we knew we were going on Lancasters. We dreaded the thought of going on Stirlings or Halifax. Halifaxes. So we went to Number 5 Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston. All around Lincolnshire. And then from there we were posted to the squadron. And that’s when I went to East Kirkby. I did all my operations, well twenty six of them. I think, I don’t know. I think it was twenty six from East Kirkby. But I’d already done four from Tarrant Rushton so I’d done my thirty. We were now a fully-fledged crew on a squadron. And on my first trip we’re getting on to this are we? My first trip was the Dortmund Ems Canal. The dear old Dortmund Ems Canal. We used to come up time and time. As fast as they built it up we knocked it down. That was my first trip. You’ll find it in my diary that I wrote. Every time I came back from a trip I sat with pen and ink. Where is it? I sat with pen and ink and wrote down how I felt and all the rest of it. I can’t see it. Oh.
[pause]
JC: There it is. One diary. Now, there’s I’ve lost the other book so there’s only twenty trips in here. I don’t know where it went to. It’s the last one. Last twenty. As I said, Dortmund Ems Canal was five and a half hours. “I felt nervous but got on ok. Saw a Lanc go down and burst into flames in the ground. We did not get coned by tracer or searchlights. I felt pretty fatigued when we got back.” Now, I won’t go right through this because there is too much of it. Now, people say to me, ‘What were the fascinating ones that I did?’ Well, there weren’t really. There was only one target that I personally thought I’d got my lot and that was Politz. Now, Politz is an oil manufacturing conversion place near the Russian border. I went to Politz twice. The second time, and it was a long trip. Ten hours. The second time on the run up to bomb we were running up, steady, steady and all the rest of it and all of a sudden out, a bloody ME Messerschmitt 262 jet came for us and he was putting shells through the top of my turret. He didn’t, he missed us because I had already given Mac evasive action. And as you probably know once you’re attacked the tail gunner takes control of the aircraft and he has to do what he was told. And I gave him a corkscrew and we were lucky there. He went over the top. I’m watching this bloke and it was fifty nine degrees below zero that night. So I’m watching him and let him come in and then I went to open fire and all my four guns were frozen. The oil on the breech blocks, very thin bit of oil had frozen and not one breech block went forward so the guns didn’t fire. And I yelled out to Mac, I said, ‘I can’t fire. I can’t fire. The gun’s useless.’ And he said, ‘Oh. Oh. What’s he doing?’ I said, ‘He’s wheeling around. Wheeling around. He’s coming in for the kill now because he knows that we’re defenceless. My turret has no defensive fire.’ So, I said, ‘That’s it.’ And Mac said, ‘Right. Prepare to abandon aircraft.’ I can remember his words today. So I went to open my turret doors and they’d jammed. I thought. That’s it. This is it. I’m stuck in here. I’ve got an ME262 wheeling around, coming in for the kill. It’s my lot. This is death. This is what death is all about. And then all of a sudden there was a bloody great explosion. We were splattered with bits. What had happened the rear gunner and I didn’t even know the Lanc was there. He got him in his fuel tanks and up he went. And we were splattered with debris. And I yelled out to Mac, ‘Enemy aircraft destroyed. Enemy aircraft destroyed.’ These are my actual words because I can remember them as if it was yesterday. And he said. ‘Right. Resume stations.’ Thank Christ for that otherwise I’d still be up there. And that’s my worst trip. Politz. I had others. Now, in, in here you will see that Heimbach Dam. Even, we went to a dam to blow it up which we were a success at blowing up. In my diary I say, “ME109 sighted just before target. Focke Wulf 190 passed underneath at two hundred feet. Attacked another aircraft to starboard.” Then as we, once again we used bombs on this. Not the bouncing bomb. Heimbach Dam. We ran up to the dam and there was a bloke, well a kite further down. We were on the run up. And they’d got two blooming great guns on the ramparts and they were pointing at a set point of our, where would go in for a run up. So that bloke I said was ahead of us. They got him. Blew him to bits. I thought ooh. But they couldn’t reload the guns quick enough because they were a heavy gun. We went over the top. We dropped our bombs and I saw the dam go. I saw it break and go. We, we got a direct hit fortunately and it was well worth it to see that dam go. But then people would say, ‘Oh, you were a Dambuster.’ No. I was not. I was not a Dambuster. Yes, I went and blew a dam up yeah but that doesn’t make me a Dambuster. When you think of a Dambuster you think of 617 squadron and nothing else.
CJ: So what was it like on the station for — perhaps you can take us through when you knew when you were going on ops. What was the atmosphere like? And what sort of preparation did you do before you went out on a trip?
JC: Before you went out on a trip if you were billed for ops that night then you went to the crew room and your flight commander of each section like gunnery, like engineering, like w/ops etcetera. You were all [pause] what’s the word? You were, you were given all the, all the gen and all the griff and the big map on the wall and that was the first time that you knew where you were going. There’s a sequel to that because we never knew where we were going. Blooming ground staff did. Because we used to go up to the ground staff and say, ‘Oi. What’s the petrol load?’ And he’d turn around and he’d say, ‘Sixteen eighty.’ Oh, got a short trip tonight. Oh, lovely. But if he turned around and he said, ‘Twenty one fifty four.’ That’s two thousand one hundred and fifty four gallons of fuel. That is a long trip. You’re going to be up there just over ten hours. And in the cold, I mean I below zero all the time virtually. Thirty below zero. But you wore an electrically heated suit. The trouble was typical of a lot of equipment your right hand would burn, your left hand would freeze. Your right foot would be [laughs] the same conditions sort of thing. And in the end you used to switch if off. But you had another suit under it. And under that you had silk underwear etcetera. And a naval white sweater. So it was just about tolerable. I never got frostbite fortunately but I had five pairs of gloves on. You’d wonder how I pulled the triggers but I did. It was the cold that used to get you. Now, when you look at the turret the one I used to fly in anyway, you will see that all the Perspex has been taken out. There’s nothing there. It’s to open air. Completely. Now, why did we do that? Simple. If you got a tiny mark on that Perspex, just a little mark or whatever you’d be there. So took all the Perspex out for clear vision and you were to open air.
CJ: And this was the mid-upper turret you were in.
JC: No. The rear gunner.
CJ: The rear. I beg your pardon.
JC: I had four Browning machine guns. Just to sequel that I had four Browning machine guns. I had five thousand rounds per gun. I had twenty thousand rounds of ammunition and I could only fire a few seconds. Otherwise they get red hot.
CJ: So you were saying about the briefings and when the curtain was pulled back —
JC: Yeah.
CJ: You knew where you were going.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: Do I assume that some places were considered easier targets than others?
JC: Oh yes. Yeah. Because you sort of think the tape, the red tape would be going across the map and it would end at Chemnitz. And you’d hear the blokes go ahh. Or Berlin again. Because this friend of mine, Johnny Chatterton, he went to Berlin so many times that they gave him a season ticket. Oh dear.
CJ: So that, are there any other notable raids that you remember? Any notable trips?
JC: Any notable trips?
CJ: Trips that you went on that stood out there.
JC: Yes. There’s another one in here. I went to Rositz. Synthetic oil. I went to Politz. I went to a lot of them. Now, at Politz where I nearly copped my lot and I really did. Now, I’m saying there if I may just briefly read this, “Target Politz oil installation. Flak fairly heavy. Red cannon fire continuous over Sweden. Searchlights. Some in target area and over Denmark. Fighters. Two JU88s seen over target. JU88 shot down and destroyed by us.” What really happened was that the JU88, he came up and I said to the skipper, ‘Whatever he does, you do.’ And if he, in other words if he dives you dive with him and keep him in the sights all the time. So mid-upper gunner and myself I raked the canopy. Killed the crew instantly. And that was it. Down she went.
CJ: Ok.
JC: That was a JU88, and that was at Politz.
CJ: So then you, you said you finished your thirtieth op with that squadron because you’d already done four before.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: So, how did it feel when you’d all done your thirtieth?
JC: Well, I can’t explain it because you see we were so used to expecting to die. You didn’t expect to come back. You didn’t expect to do thirty. You were elated. Yeah. Obviously you went in the mess and got a few sherbets down [laughs] Oh, what was I going to say? [pause] There’s little incidents that happened all the time. Such as crew bus. Two crews in the bus. The old crew bus. And it just started going around the perimeter track and one crew their bomb aimer more or less, I don’t know what he was doing. Ah. So he ran after the bus and tried to jump on it. He didn’t. He missed. Cracked his skull. That was it. And of course you’d the sequel of the egg. You know about the egg. Of course you do. When you came back from an op you got an egg. You didn’t get bacon. You got an egg. And it was looked forward to. ‘Cor, crikey I’ve got an egg tonight [laughs] you know, when you got back. But the jokey, jokey thing is that this actually happened. The bloke next to you and he says, ‘Eh mate,’ he said, ‘If you don’t get back tonight can I have your egg?’ And then another thing that happened which aircrew were very boisterous. One bloke went round the back of the servery and he pulled the string of the WAAF’s overall. Well, it was so hot in the mess the overall opened, didn’t it? And she’s leaning forward putting an egg with a slice. You can imagine can’t you. Plop. Now, the other thing concerning WAAFs was we were always playing tricks. One bloke had the brilliant idea he got a bit of wood square and in every hut there was an iron, oh what do you call it? Fire.
CJ: Stove.
JC: Stove. Yeah. So what does he do? He climbs up on to the roof. It was a flat roof for the WAAF quarters. He climbs up on the roof. He gets this bit of wood and puts it on the chimney and holds it down. Then he [laughs] after a few minutes the doors fly open and all the WAAFs come charging out in their underwear. And it was, it was funny you know because they’d got their civvy underwear on.
CJ: How did you feel Joe when you had, when you came back and there were empty tables?
JC: Well —
BM: He didn’t think about it.
JC: I didn’t think about it. I’ll give you an instance of it. Two crews to a hut virtually. Then two crews to a hut. You come back after an op. You’re dead tired. You’d had your egg. You’d gone up the road to the hut, get in the hut, get in the pit as we used to call bed and put your head down and you’d sleep. And then all of a sudden there’s a noise. Clank bang bang bong. You put your head up and there’s a whole bunch of SPs. You could always tell because of the arm bands. You’d look up and you’d say, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ ‘Oh, won’t be long. Won’t be long, chiefy.’ That’s what a flight sergeant was called. ‘Won’t be long chiefy. Just taking the other crew’s gear out.’ This is 3 o’clock in the morning. ‘Well, what’s happened?’ ‘Oh. Well, they got the chop last night.’ Put your head down and go to sleep again.
CJ: So, you finished your thirty ops. And what did you do after that? After you’d over your sherbets.
JC: Well, I wanted a job obviously. I applied to Cossor to Lissen, all, all the old radio manufacturers because of, that’s another thing you didn’t know. I was a radio amateur as well and I had a radio amateur’s licence. So I applied and I thought I’d be in there. Didn’t want to know. ‘Sorry. Can’t give you the job.’ Well, what’s wrong?’ You know, ‘I’ve got City and Guilds in radio.’ ‘What’s — ’ ‘Sorry can’t give you. The reason being. You’re ex-aircrew.’ That was the reason. You were a bloody pariah. You’d been killing people sort of thing. Of course, they’d been over here killing us. I mean I used to say to them, ‘Exeter, Plymouth, Hull,’ etcetera. Shall I go on?’ But of course that [pause] funny us English.
CJ: So after your thirty ops you were demobbed then, were you?
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
CJ: Ok. And then you were looking for a job.
JC: Yeah. And I couldn’t get one. So there was, friends of mine had come out of the Army. A couple of them. They were in to radio and whatnot and we discovered that radiograms as we used to call them or if you could get a radiogram so we said there’s a market here. We’re in. What we did we got hold of all the old turntables. Plenty of them about. And then we built the radio part and the amplifier and we had, knew a bloke who made cabinets. So wooden cabinets to house the radiogram and we were making a damned good business out of it. And then what happened then? Oh yeah. [pause] Because of the radio business a firm down in Barking, Essex they’d heard of me because a, once again a friend of a friend and they said, ‘Well, would you come and set up our radio equipment?’ Which I did. Then I thought to myself well I don’t know. I can do better than this really. Because I’d got the, what do you call it the [pause] the knowledge as well as being able to make the radios and all the rest of it. I got all that so we, I decided I could do better. And I just put a word around and before I knew it Vidor at Vidor at Erith came after me and said, we want you sort of thing. And I went to Erith, Vidor as a buyer. Because of my knowledge and because of my mechanical aptitude I became a technical buyer at Vidor when they were making the little portables. And then while I was there I was head hunted by Decca. And Decca came after me and said, ‘We’ve heard all about you. We know what you do and you know, makes you tick,’ and I became the, in the Decca radio and television side I became the chief buyer for the bits and pieces. And then to finish the story I, I was there, oh quite got a long time. And then once again a friend of mine I worked with at Vidor he wanted to come and see me. He did and he stayed until about midnight and I wondered what the hell was going on. And then I said, ‘Hey Jim, what are you up to?’ So he said, ‘I’m offering you a job ain’t I?’ And I said, ‘But you can’t match what Decca’s giving me at the moment.’ He said, ‘Try me.’ And I did. And he said, ‘Right. I want you. I want you to set up a company with departments and all the rest of it because we have a device which we — ’ A device which they’d patented. How to measure or weigh by means of air pressure. Not electric but air pressure. Now, this was a good thing. I saw the potential because all the big manufacturers of, that were using, making things which were explosive. That was the answer. So we got going into a very good business and it, it really went well until, until twenty years later. The electronic boys found out how to do it. Make it spark. Spark positive. Whatever you’d like to call it. In other words if there was a spark there wouldn’t be an explosion. So they were beating us then at our own game and unfortunately we went down this pan. Or the company did. By that time I was a director of that company. I was also a director of five others. So I took their little engraving, well part it we owned was an engraving company. So I took that and I went up to Leicester. That’s where it was based. There was only two people. I made the third. And I worked away and I got contracts for BBC. People like that. Big contracts. And once again I was doing all right. So I worked away there and sort of set myself up for a pension by an annuity which I’ve still got today. And then of course time to retire. There you have it.
CJ: There you go. And I think you said earlier that you, you didn’t marry until the war was over. Was that right?
JC: That’s right. I said to my late wife, ‘I will not marry you. Not until I finish flying because I don’t want you to be left with a cinder.’ Because aircrew used to get horribly burned and I wasn’t going to have that. That’s why I didn’t. So October ’45 we were married. And that’s the bit. Married. The vicar was available. Just got hold of him. It was the big church in Brixton. Acre Lane where the big church was and we were married in that church. Now, we managed to get the vicar but we didn’t have a choir, we didn’t have anything like that. We didn’t, we didn’t even have a car to take us. We had a car but halfway there because of the war and bald tyres it got a puncture and we had to walk the rest of the way to the church. And we got married the 20th of October 1945. And I was married for forty six years. Forty seven years. Then you know this. I’ve told you the story about Vi and I and the motorbikes.
CJ: So I think you said you had a common love of motorbikes.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: And Vi lost her husband as well.
JC: Yeah. What I did, when we said oh well we’ll get together we did. But to get married was such a mishmash I can’t, I don’t, I won’t explain it now but it caused a lot of problems or would have done. So we became partners. And I said to Vi, ‘We’re going to have a look at the world.’ And she’d not, so she’d been to Israel. Where else did you go love? You went to Israel. Where else?
VJ: Everywhere that we could.
JC: Eh?
VJ: Everywhere that we possibly could get.
JC: Well, yeah that’s when I said to her, ‘Right. Well, we’re going to see as much of the world as we can,’ and we did. And we went, that’s why we’ve been to Canada, the states. You name it.
CJ: And did you carry on biking on after the war?
JC: Oh yeah, yeah. Carried on biking. After the war. You see because my friend Stanley was Vi’s husband.
CJ: So what was your favourite bike?
JC: Hmmn?
CJ: What was your favourite bike?
JC: Well, my favourite bike was a Vinny. A Vincent. But my wife wouldn’t let me. They had them. They had one. They had a Vincent. Look. There’s one on the wall up there. They had them. But my wife said, ‘No. No. It’s too fast. No. No,’ she said, ‘I’ll leave you if you get one of those.’ No. I didn’t have one. I had a Triumph. A Triumph 650. Which wasn’t bad. I used to get a fair old speed out of it.
CJ: And coming back to the RAF did you keep in touch with the rest of the crew after the war?
JC: Oh yeah. Yes. I did. But gradually, unfortunately the engineer died of [pause] Oh dear. Cancer. It was cancer, wasn’t it?
VJ: Yeah.
JC: He died. And then I lost touch because well a lot of them disappeared. I’ve since discovered that I’m the only one alive. The rest have gone.
MM: When did Mac die?
JC: Eh?
MM: When did Mac die?
JC: I can’t remember.
VJ: About three or four years.
JC: When was it?
VJ: About four years ago.
JC: Eh?
VJ: Four. Four years.
CJ: Four years ago.
JC: Four years ago. Yeah.
CJ: So I gather you went up to East Kirkby for Mac. Is that correct?
CJ: Yes.
CJ: What was that all about?
JC: Well, his daughter was scattering his ashes in the little field of Remembrance up there. That’s why I went up there. We all went up there. There was a gang of us. Of course, scattered his ashes. I simply broke down.
CJ: And were you in a Squadron Association?
JC: Oh yes. It’s in this. Plenty of them. I’m in the Squadron Association and I still get a newsletter every year. I used to go up to the dinner and dance and whatnot. I used to. Now, I couldn’t. So —
MM: You tell him about Johnny Chatterton and Mike Chatterton.
JC: Well, Johnny Chatterton was the test pilot 630 Squadron. He’d just finished his second tour. He was looking for a crew. We’d finished ours and he said, ‘I’m going to take you over pro tem.’ And he did. He took us over for [pause] oh, I don’t know. About a year. Something like that. And finished our time at 630. Disbanded in July. July ’45. So when we disbanded that was it. Johnny tried to get the rest of the crew to go with him but they wouldn’t have it. They wouldn’t have it.
MM: But his son flew the Memorial Flight, didn’t he?
JC: Oh yeah. Mike Chatterton was, was also in the flying game if you like and he, he used to fly the Lanc. Not fly it. Well, he did but —
CJ: This was the BBMF Lancaster.
JC: Yeah. He flew that but the one at East Kirkby when they first got it running, the four engines and he did the first taxi run. When he finished the taxi run he said, ‘I had a bloody hard job to hold it down,’ he said, ‘It wanted to get in the air. Wanted to take off. I had to hold it down.’ Now, Mike Chatterton, he became a wing commander I think. He’s retired now, of course. The Chattertons own the farm which is near East Kirkby actually. Now, that’s a funny thing you see because Johnny Chatterton was born in a little house which is in, was in the middle of East Kirkby.
CJ: What a coincidence.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: Now, have you anything else you’d like to tell us, Joe?
JC: I’m just having a think. What I’m me and my, my beloved partner are carrying on. We’re still together and we don’t know how long because she’s eighty seven. Aren’t you?
VJ: Six.
JC: Eighty six.
MM: She’ll kill you if you don’t know.
JC: And of course I’m ninety one. You had to be that age to do what we’d done because it was at the end of the war. I can add, people say, ‘Well, were you frightened?’ Etcetera. No. Not a bit.
MM: Would you do it again, Joe?
JC: Oh, of course not. I’ve got more sense.
CJ: Well, thanks very much for talking to us today, Joe. That was brilliant. Thank you very much indeed.
JC: Yeah. Right.
[recording paused]
CJ: So, tell me Joe did you ever get wounded when you were flying on ops?
JC: Very slightly. I wouldn’t say I really got wounded. What happened was that the flak that came up, came through the turret and caught my right outer gun. In doing so it knocked the back plate off which has the return spring etcetera. And it’s the buffer plate for the [pause] oh dear. I’ve forgotten the name of the —
CJ: The breech.
JC: Eh?
CJ: The breech.
JC: No. It goes backwards and forwards.
CJ: The bolt.
JC: At a fast rate.
CJ: Ok. The firing pin.
JC: Eh?
CJ: The firing pin.
JC: No. No. No. It’s the breech block.
CJ: Ok.
JC: And the breach block came back and came straight out and landed in my lap actually after it had hit the side of my head. Taken my helmet. It took, you know the helmet round bit. The telephones, if you like. Took that off and creased the side of my head and when we went to get debriefed chappy there said, ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, ‘Debrief quick,’ he said, ‘You’ve got to, better go up sick quarters because you’re bleeding.’ I went up sick quarters and the, I don’t know who it was in charge. I can’t remember. But they cleaned up the, where the wound if you like. Cleaned it up and then looked at it and he put an adhesive plaster or a tape on it. Took one step back and said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Fit for flying tomorrow.’
CJ: Well, thank you for that Joe.
[recording paused]
CJ: So, Joe would you like to tell us about any incident when you actually shot an aircraft down?
JC: Yes. I can because I have my diary which I wrote in. Every time I came back I wrote what it was like. So I can tell you that on the 8th and 9th of February ’45 the target was Politz which was an oil installation north of Stettin. And I go on to say, “The flak was fairly heavy. Red cannon fire continuous over Sweden. Searchlights, some in target area and over Denmark. Two Junkers 88s seen over target. Then Junkers 88 shot down and destroyed by the mid-upper gunner and myself and the bomb aimer two minutes before bombs gone. This was a very tiring trip being airborne for nine hours forty five minutes. Flown over for, eighteen hundred miles. Crossing Sweden and Denmark and the Baltic. The Swedish AA fire was very accurate and a lot of ‘dive ports’ had to be given to avoid it. That was two minutes from the run up to the bombing run. Then the mid-upper sighted a Junkers 88 on port beam level. The mid-upper and bomb aimer opened fire. The 88 tried to drop behind. I yelled out to the skipper, ‘Throttle back. Whatever he does you do. Don’t let don’t let him go up or down or sideways or anything.’ And then at approximately range is seventy five yards I fired in to the canopy and killed the crew. Both the gunners, the other two other than myself kept firing and strikes observed on both engines and it eventually broke away and the bomb aimer saw it crash in the target area. And it was reported also by other crews. Numerous explosions and thick black smoke with flames intermingled came up from the target. Visibility was very good. No cloud. And marking was bang on. No doubt Politz was well and truly pranged this time. It seemed ages in the air. Especially on the return across the North Sea. There was not much AA fire over Denmark but Swedish gunners were very active. No fighters were, were observed after the 88. This provided enjoyment of aerial warfare.”
Well, thanks very much Joe.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Joseph Henry Cook
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
2017-01-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACookJH170118, PCookJH1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:04:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Completing school and moving on to work at 20th Century Fox Films, he worked as a fire watcher at the beginning of the war before joining the Royal Air Force. He states that he did that because he always wanted to fly and didn’t want to join the Army. He was sent to St. John’s Woods, for square bashing, which he thought was to ‘break’ the aircrews, before completing his initial training at RAF Bridgnorth and then onto RAF Bridlington to learn Morse code. He turned down being a bomb aimer in Anson and trained as an air gunner instead, after being told that they had the highest loss rate. He eventually travelled to RAF Tarrant Rushton just before the D-Day landings, being sent to drop leaflets over France in old Stirlings. Upon completing one of his first four operations, he baled out and landed in a tree. Joe was transferred to Wellingtons, flying training eight-hour trips. Joe also recounts several experiences on operations, including two near misses and flying at low temperatures. He didn’t think about losses, purely as they were so tired. Decommissioned in July 1945, Joe struggled to find work following the war, with people not hiring him as they believed he had killed people. He remained in touch with his crew and he also joined the squadron association. He states that he was never frightened throughout the war, but that he wouldn’t do it again, as he has more sense now.
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
Germany
Poland
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Urft Dam
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-07
630 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crewing up
fear
Fw 190
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Me 109
Me 262
military ethos
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
propaganda
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Silverstone
RAF Syerston
RAF Tarrant Rushton
RAF Wigsley
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/258/3405/PGanneyK1714.2.jpg
6fb1840bce686f93c05487b2d52af5e7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/258/3405/AGanneyK170301.2.mp3
36f95d68dd3df62895cef4b33b9aef33
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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Ganney, Keith
Keith Ganney
K Ganney
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Keith Ganney (b. 1922, 1324929 Royal Air Force), his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 57 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Keith Ganney and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Ganney, K
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview with Keith Ganney, flying officer with 57 squadron whose date of birth is 10th of November 1922. His service number was 1324929. Interview is taking place at ****. Interviewer is Harry Bartlett, a volunteer with the International Bomber Command Centre. Good morning Mr Ganney.
KG: Good morning.
HB: Perhaps you could just give us an idea of what you were doing prior to the war starting.
KG: Yes, well, are we recording now?
HB: Yes. Yes. We are on recording.
KG: Do what Max Bygraves used to say, ‘I’m going to tell you a story.’
HB: You carry on.
KG: I’m going to start at the beginning. I met my wife when she was not quite seventeen in 19, early 1942. Her birthday is the 6th of February 1942 and I’d met her through going on a fairly regular basis to a bank on behalf of the company I worked for and I then decided I ought to take her out to lunch because I really fancied her. Is this all right?
HB: Yeah. This is your interview.
KG: I really fancied her so I took her out to lunch and it cost me a small fortune in so far as she said she wasn’t hungry and she had a bowl of soup which would cost about one and a half pence in today’s money. I don’t know what I had. And then a week or so after that I took her to the pictures and we saw a film called, “Ships with Wings,” and she was most impressed with me because I had been given a nice wallet by my parents when I was nineteen in the previous November, November 1941 and I pulled out a shiny, five, a pound note and that seemed to impress her. So obviously at that time she was after my money.
HB: [laughs] A man of substance.
KG: Yeah. Anyhow, we dated then for a few weeks until I joined and I’d already enlisted in the December 1941, the RAF and I was called up in, I think it was February ’42 and we went to St John ’s Wood and crossed Abbey Road long before the Beatles were even born. So we we went there for kitting out and whatever. Make sure we were still alive I guess. From there we went down to Brighton for marching and learning how to salute which is obviously a pre-requisite if you’re flying on Lancasters. So we stayed at Brighton for about a few weeks at the Metropole Hotel in Brighton and from there we moved to Scarborough and at Scarborough, in Scarborough one afternoon I was called out with about four others, my name was first on the list, to be guard commander for the officer, officer inspecting because we were guarding the Grand Hotel in Scarborough which is a grand hotel or was and I said, ‘Well I know nothing about rifles or anything like that,’ and this sergeant, I should think he was the 1914/18 sergeant, he said, ‘Weren’t you in the ATC?’ So I said, ‘No.’ ‘Or the air training corps or cadet corps?’ So I said, ‘No. I don’t even know which side of the shoulder you put your rifle on.’ So he said, ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘Well in that case, number two you’d better be guard commander. You’d better be guard commander until the inspection and then you can take over as guard commander,’ which is what we did. I think there were about four or five of us. There wasn’t a bullet amongst us. If a German had come up we would have surrendered Scarborough plus the Grand Hotel without any trouble at all. So that was a little escapade in Scarborough. From Scarborough we moved to Brough just outside Hull for initial training on flying Tiger Moths and I qualified for flying Tiger Moths after, I think about ten hours and from then on we got shuttled off to Canada. We went out on the Queen Mary, the old Queen Mary and eventually when we came back we came back on the old Queen Elizabeth. And then we went to New York. From New York we went by train to New Brunswick to a town called Moncton where, I don’t know what we did there, we just festered around I think until such time as we were allotted to various places around Canada. It so happened that myself together with I think three or four other blokes were sent to Saskatchewan. A little place called Davidson of about five hundred people right in the middle of the prairies. Nice flat area for flying in and it was lovely going from Moncton out to Saskatchewan by train, one of these big Canadian type trains. I think it took us about two or three nights to get there. Am I doing to much?
HB: Absolutely spot on.
KG: Is it?
HB: Yeah. Absolutely super.
KG: We then went, got to Davidson. There were only about five hundred people, as far as I can remember, in this town, inverted commas and the girls there had never seen an English person because it was way out in the, in the sticks. The thing was, ‘Say something. We think you’re cute.’ So we, I started to fly Cornells there. A two seater aeroplane. A little bit up from a Tiger Moth. A single, single plane and during one of those escapades I was sitting in the parachute room and an instructor came in, I didn’t know who he was, and he said, ‘Where’s your instructor?’ I said, ‘He’s got the day off.’ So he said, ‘Have you, have you done aerobatics?’ So I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well get your chute on. We’ll do some aerobatics.’ Well it so happened that I’d been gorging myself on peanuts so you can imagine what happened when I, when we were doing loops and God knows what and he said when I coughed up, he said ‘Tastes better the first time doesn’t it?’ So anyhow I spent Christmas of 1942 it would be because at this time of year it was around about December and the Christmas 1942 with some people who had asked to take on a couple of RAF people and eventually I went solo on Cornells and did quite a lot of trips on them as my logbook will show you. From there we went to a place called Dauphin, D A U P H I N. Dauphin in Manitoba to fly on Cessna Cranes, twin engines Cessna Cranes. Like a downmarket version of an Anson. So I flew those and, sorry, my train of thought’s going. So after, after that they tested me after I’d done a lot of flying. My log book will tell you how many hours I did there but did a lot of flying, they tested me and found me wanting.
HB: Oh dear.
KG: Which I was, on hindsight I was very, very pleased about. I was kicked off the pilot’s course and because they didn’t think I’d make a very good pilot although I’d done a lot of cross countries by myself and if if they hadn’t had kicked me, if they had kept me going it’s almost certain I would be dead because I would have entered flying a lot earlier than I ultimately did. So I then had to re-muster and I decided well the quickest way to get back home was a short course as opposed to navigation which was a bit of a longer course, I enrolled as a bomb aimer and I went to a place called Paulsen I think it was. Paulsen. And qualified as a bomb aimer there in about 19, early 1943. Perhaps you can tell.
HB: I’ve just come to, in your Canadian logbook.
KG: Yeah.
HB: April 1943 you’re flying a Crane and it’s a progress check.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And then this -
KG: That was in April.
HB: Yeah. And this, this logbook then finishes. I’m sure. Yes. There’s no other entries in there and we move to your smaller A5 size Canadian logbook and that starts May 29th 1943 and you’re on an Anson.
KG: Yes, that’s right.
HB: 8603
KG: We -
HB: With Sergeant Sagar.
KG: We came, we came back, as I say on the Queen Elizabeth and we were posted to Penrhos in North Wales where we did further training at AFU, Advanced Flying Unit practicing bomb aiming with twenty two pound smoke bombs and things like that and the pilots were also practicing. From there we went, from there where did we go?
HB: Well that was, that was, the AFU was number 9 AFU at Penrhos.
KG: Penrhos that’s right.
HB: Penrhos. And so you then went to the 17 OTU at Silverstone.
KG: OTU.
HB: March.
KG: Operational Training Unit and we -
HB: March 1944.
KG: I think it was before that. We flew on, we got allocated to the various crews and there again your life depended on who chose you. It was just like picking up a football team in the playground when you were about ten years old. I’ll have him, I’ll have him and there was no question of what were your abilities or anything. It was just by chance.
HB: Where did you do that Keith? Was that in a sort of like a big hangar or -
KG: I can’t remember where we actually did the selection but it was just a very much of a random selection of a whole swarm of people saying, ‘Well I’ll have him and I’ll have him,’ until you’ve got the seven bods that you need. Then we flew there. I think it, wasn’t it the Advanced Flying Unit? AFU, as I say.
HB: I’m just looking at your logbook here and it’s got you, you’re at the AFU until mid-February
KG: Yeah.
HB: ‘43, sorry ’44.
KG: Yeah on the AFU we, we were flying Wellingtons, this was for the pilot’s benefit, Wellingtons and Stirlings.
HB: Oh right.
KG: Until we, from there we graduated on flying the bigger stuff until we went to the OTU and Operational Training Unit and eventually we went on to what they called the LFS. Lancaster Finishing School.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So by that time I think we were in 1944, early 1944 maybe the end of ‘43.
HB: I’ve got, I’ve got in your logbook here if it helps June the 16th 1944. Conversion Unit Wigsley.
KG: Wigsley yeah.
HB: And it starts, that starts off with Stirlings.
KG: Yeah. That was June ’44 was it?
HB: That was in June ’44.
KG: Then you go on to the LFS I think.
HB: Yeah and then we’ve the LFS up the road at Nottingham at Syerston there.
KG: Syerston, yeah.
HB: July 28th
KG: So that’s where we went first on to Lancasters. Then we got posted. Then we got posted to East Kirkby, to the squadron.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And the skipper was a Geordie lad from around the Houghton le Spring area of Durham and he seemed very keen to get on to operations. I wasn’t all that keen ’cause I thought you could be killed.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So eventually he kept on going to the squadron leader and the squadron leader, ‘No. You can’t go on this one. You haven’t done any daylight trips yet. You can’t go on that one because it’s too far. And it was typical RAF one of the first two trips that we went on Konigsberg.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Which was about eleven.
HB: Eleven hours.
KG: Eleven hours, eleven and a quarter hours and we got caught in the searchlights there. We weaved our way out of them and we had to divert when we got back to the UK. I think we landed somewhere up in Scotland somewhere and had to stay there the night because of bad weather and the next day which was a Sunday we took off to go back to our own base and he was determined to fly over his house because he was more or less enroute so he flew over his house and revved up these four Lancaster engines vroom vroom so you can imagine the noise.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They make and eventually of course his family came out and he did some sneak turns and he could see his family house and his parents apparently. So that was Konigsberg. First trip. Then the following Saturday we went to Konigsberg again.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: We obviously hadn’t done a very good job.
HB: Oh dear.
KG: Not done a very good job. So that was two very long trips.
HB: Can I just ask you something Keith? I’m just looking at your logbook here and you’ve got two night time operations 16th and 18th of August. One is called bullseye.
KG: Oh well those are -
HB: The Hague.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And bullseye. What were the bullseye operations?
KG: Bullseye was a sort of a training flight.
HB: Right.
KG: A pseudo operation. And sometimes when you went on a bullseye you’d, you know, a crowd of you, various aircraft from other squadrons or other parts of 5 group would go out in to the North Sea and whatever as if it was going to be a raid so that was a bullseye.
HB: Right.
KG: But it wasn’t an operation as such.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I think, I think after that what have we got as the next one?
HB: Yeah. You’ve done the two Konigsberg and then you do a daytime raid.
KG: Yeah. That’s right.
HB: To Burgainsville.
KG: Yeah. That was for, that was for these flying bomb sites.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
KG: All the night flights are in red.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And the green flights are day flights. We then carried on. I don’t think there was anything particularly exciting.
HB: Well you did, well you did Boulogne. That, that could be a bit hairy I think.
KG: Yeah.
HB: I’ve been told.
KG: Boulogne. I don’t remember -
HB: Bremerhaven.
KG: Bremerhaven. Yeah, we went to Bremerhaven. I mean we got shot at obviously and, just turn off the tape a minute will you.
HB: Yeah. No problem.
KG: Please. Just a second.
[machine paused]
HB: Interview recommenced just while Mr Ganney had a little cough. Well you had number 6 operation was Bremerhaven.
KG: Yeah.
HB: But then number twelve which would make you fairly experienced then because you’d done quite a few daytime ops, that was Bremen.
KG: I think it was probably Bremen.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Anyhow, when, shall I repeat - ?
HB: Yes. Yes please. Yeah.
KG: We were instructed bomb Bremen docks I suppose and the town and we were told to run up on a single marker on the ground laid by the master bomber and each aircraft was given a different angle to come in at and a different time delay. So the thing was that you do saturate the bombing and because we were an experienced crew at that time we had, I think it was a twenty eight seconds delay and as bomb aimer I lined everything up and I had to shout out, ‘Now,’ when we got exactly on the marker and the navigator was supposed to count twenty eight seconds and tell me when effectively to release the bombs. So after flying through loads of flak and God knows what, the fighters as well I suppose he, I said, ‘Isn’t it that time?’ ‘Oh my God,’ he said, ‘I’ve forgotten to count.’ So immediately I let the bombs go. Where they finished up I don’t know and the, when I went for a commission this matter was raised with the commanding officer as to why my picture, ‘cause you always took photographs, why my picture was so far away from the centre so I had to tell him what had happened. So that was a silly situation. So -
HB: It obviously didn’t affect the, the inevitable promotion.
KG: Well no. I mean getting a commission in those days was like going up for a NAAFI ration.
HB: Oh
KG: You know.
HB: Yeah.
KG: If your face fitted you’d be in.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So that was Bremen I think.
HB: You’ve got an entry in here for November. November the 1st, daytime operation against Homberg which was oil.
KG: That was oil.
HB: And all you’ve written in your log, this is what amazes me about these log books, you’ve just written flak hold and then brackets sixteen.
KG: I can’t remember that.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I can’t remember.
HB: But the next one was a night one at Dusseldorf.
KG: Dusseldorf is, is a story in itself.
HB: Yeah.
KG: We went out to bomb Dusseldorf on an absolutely perfect moonlight night. Not a cloud in the sky. We bombed Dusseldorf as an experienced crew for a fairly low level. That was thirteen thousand feet if I remember rightly and we went through the target area, bombed and immediately we came out of the target area we were attacked by an ME109 and with his first burst he wounded, severely wounded the rear gunner so we hadn’t got him firing back and then the mid-upper gunner’s guns weren’t operating correctly and all we had was the mid-upper gunner on the top of the aircraft telling us where this fighter was. Now when you are being attacked by a fighter the thing is to do is what they call corkscrews and it’s up to the mid-upper gunner to tell the pilot when to corkscrew because you know he comes in the rear and you turn and he turns and he’s got to turn a lot more and then you roll and then he comes back in again and this went on. I think it’s somewhere in the archives it was about fifteen minutes ‘cause this bloke obviously knew he wasn’t going to get anybody firing back at him and I couldn’t fire anything from the front turret because I never even saw the chap ‘cause he came in, dived away, came around again and eventually this, according to the mid-upper gunner and I’ve got no support for this thing, he said the ME109 came in quite close, he said, ‘I could see the bloke and he waggled his wings and dived away.’ That was the end of the attack. Possibly he was out of range for operations or he’d run out of ammunition. I don’t know. So we flew on and I think by this time we were down to about five thousand feet and the mid-upper gunner called out, ‘Somebody had better come back and see if Vic’s alright because we can’t get him on the intercom.’ So being the most useless person in the aircraft I was told to go back and climb over everything, over the main spar and whatever. Go back and see what was happening and the mid-upper gunner also gave me great confidence because he said, ‘You’d better put your parachute on because there’s a bloody great hole in the side of this aircraft somewhere,’ and so I said, ‘Well perhaps somebody had better come with me.’ So the flight engineer, all he does really is sit alongside the pilot and look at the instruments so he came with me and he was a nineteen year old lad and he came back with me ‘cause I was, what shall we say, a coward. Right. I didn’t want to go back by myself in case anything happened and when we got back over the main spar there was the rear gunner lying in what I thought was a load of blood. It turned out it was sort of a pinky oil but you know, in the light there you can’t tell which was which. So we tried to give him some morphia which I don’t think we succeeded in doing because I don’t think we did it properly and we actually gave him a cigarette and I was told to stay with him all the way back to base so I sat there and of course when I’m sitting there you could look out the side of the aircraft. There was a big big hole. You could practically walk through it.
HB: Right.
KG: And you could see the tail fins waving a bit in the breeze and so we flew back. We flew back to Woodbridge. American. Do you know Woodbridge?
HB: I’ve heard of Woodbridge. Yeah.
KG: Well Woodbridge was an American base basically and just had one very long runway and all these flying fortress and it they had trouble they just came in depended which way the wind was blown they just came in and landed so we came in to Woodbridge and we’d obviously radioed ahead and the, my memory’s going, so when we landed, just were running down the runway the starboard tyre burst and we tipped over a bit on to one wing. Anyhow, the blood wagon and the fire engine and the doctor and God knows who came out and took us into the medical bay and gave us tots of rum. Well I don’t drink and I can’t stand the taste of rum and I just took one sip of this rum and I said, ‘Oh God I can’t drink that,’ and the wireless operator was a nineteen, twenty year old, again a Geordie who liked his booze. He said, ‘Wahay man,’ he said, ‘I’ll have it.’ So he he took this thing and we were obviously there for the night. The next morning, the next morning we went out to have a look at the aircraft which was semi riddled with holes. Why it hadn’t burst into flames God only knows and there was the tail fin all flapping in the breeze. Just walking around there and I said to the mid-upper gunner, ‘Have you seen your whistle George?’ Well there’s a picture of it in there. There was a big indent in this whistle where I imagine it was the shape of a bullet.
HB: Right.
KG: And of course you wear it around your throat.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And George Hillier realised what that meant. That if it hadn’t hit the whistle he would have been a goner even if it was only a piece of shrapnel it was certainly you could see the picture in there and when he eventually came to leave the RAF at the end of his flying career they had to hand in all their gear, boots and everything they charged him threepence for his whistle ‘cause he kept it. Charged him threepence for his whistle. So that was, that was Dusseldorf and we went a week, or two or three weeks later to the hospital where the chap was and saw him there but if, the thing is, if he, if the mid-upper gunner had been killed and if that whistle hadn’t, shall we say, effectively saved his life then we would never have known where this fighter was and we would have been dead as mutton.
HB: Oh dear.
KG: Anyhow, the skipper, he got the DFC and the mid-upper gunner, because of his commentary he got the DFM and people say to me, ‘What did you get?’ I said I got the screaming abdabs. Yeah so –
HB: Absolutely. Your rear gunner. Did you say his name was Vic?
KG: Vic. Vic Lewell.
HB: Yeah. And did he, did he recover?
KG: He recovered and he died some, oh many years later really but he showed us all the shrapnel they’d taken out of him. There was the nose of a canon shell in amongst his souvenirs.
HB: Blimey.
KG: Yeah.
HB: So, but obviously to carry on you would have had another rear gunner join you.
KG: No. Yes. We did. We had another rear, rear gunner. The other, the other thing is it comes on to the next story. Am I doing too much?
HB: No. No. You’re doing great.
KG: The next story. We went to Trondheim. You’ll see it in there.
HB: I’ve got, I’ve got one marked Trondheim abortive.
KG: That’s right.
HB: That’s 22nd of November.
KG: 22nd of November. Anyhow, we went to Trondheim to bomb the U-boat pens and docks and God knows what and we were then told to abort the raid because the master bomber couldn’t mark the target accurately enough to avoid killing a load of Norwegians so we were instructed to fly back home. I don’t know how many aircraft, we often used to have a hundred, two hundred from 5 Group. So, as I said in that thing there, coming back over the North Sea at the end of November there aint a lot to see. You don’t see any lights. You’re not going to get any fighters around there. There was no flak. So I don’t know whether I dozed off or not, I don’t know but we were flying quite steadily and all of a sudden George Hillier who was the mid-upper gunner called out, ‘For Christ’s sake pull up Jack. We’re hitting the sea,’ and we were literally hitting the sea. You know how when you’re a kid you skim a stone -
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: Over the sea. Well we must have been doing that without, without knowing it so we must have been flying a couple of inches I should think.
HB: Blimey.
KG: So he immediately pulls up and flew up to about five thousand feet and as the bomb aimer I said to the skipper, ‘You ought to jettison these bombs.’ You know you don’t normally want to land with a load of bombs on board or it might not be loads. So he said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘At the briefing we were told that if we didn’t bomb we were to bring them back ‘cause they were getting scarce,’ and I said to him at the time, ‘And so are people like me getting scarce.’ So we, we flew back, we flew back and I said, ‘I bet you’ve lost your tail wheel’. I don’t know what he said to that and so we flew, flew back and as we landed of course, with a Lanc you, or with a lot of aircraft you land on the front two wheels and slow down and the back drops down doesn’t it?
HB: Yes. Yeah.
KG: Well, we slowed down on the runway and of course the rear turret gets dragged along the runway. We had a Canadian rear gunner at that time because, because -
HB: Do you want me, do you want me to just give you a break a minute?
[machine paused]
HB: Right. We’ve all had a cough and we’ve ordered our coffees.
KG: We’ve got the new rear gunner because ours had been wounded a few weeks previously and we had a Canadian at the time and I remember this Canadian calling out, ‘What the hell goes on here? My goddamn ass is on fire,’ because his rear turret was being dragged along the runway, the fins of the aircraft had been cut down to ground level I suppose.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And he’d got all these sparks coming up the aircraft. So we pulled on to the grass and stepped out of the aircraft ‘cause you didn’t have to get the ladder out. You were on the, practically on the ground already.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And the skipper calls down to his drinking partner from the Durham area, George called, ‘Is there much damage George?’ ‘Away man,’ he said, ‘You’ll hardly notice it.’ And of course the instrument bulge underneath, that had gone. The fins had cut down to sort of ground level, the rear turret was a bit of a mess and he said you’d hardly notice it. Well a few days, two or three days later he was told to report to the CO with his logbook and he thought he was going to get a brownie point.
HB: This was the pilot.
KG: The pilot. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
KG: He thought he was going to get a brownie point for bringing the aircraft back after hitting the sea. Instead of that he got a red endorsement. It’s in there, in that folder somewhere, the actual endorsement.
HB: Blimey.
KG: You can, you can have those.
HB: Yeah.
KG: If you’d like to take them with you you can.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Have a look through them if you want to. So where was I?
HB: He’d just had his red endorsement.
KG: Yeah, he -
HB: He was -
KG: He’d got this red endorsement and he got a red endorsement for not flying at the correct height, disobeying, was it disobeying instruction? Not flying at the correct height. Hitting, allowing his aircraft to hit the sea. So it’s not me making up my mind or making a story.
HB: No.
KG: It’s there in sort of, I was going to say black and white, it’s in red and white.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So that was, that was a bit hair raising.
HB: I can imagine. I can imagine. But that, but that, that pilot what was his name? Vasey.
KG: Vasey.
HB: That, that pilot at that time he’s already got the DFC, he’s on his, you’re on your twenty first, twenty second -
KG: Yeah.
HB: Mission. Operation, sorry and he’s got a red endorsement.
KG: Yeah, doesn’t affect him. Didn’t sort of say, in that case you can’t fly.
HB: No. No.
KG: Not like a driving licence if you get a red endorsement they might ban you from driving. They can’t ban you from flying really.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So -
HB: I notice in here you’ve got one of the operations, Keith is December the 8th and it’s Heimbach Dam.
KG: Yeah. I don’t remember much about it. It was -
HB: Oh right.
KG: A standard raid as far as I can remember.
HB: Oh right it’s nothing, nothing special.
KG: Nothing exciting.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: The next thing that happened I think was on our last trip which was to a place called Siegen I think you’ll find.
HB: Yes. I’ve got Siegen that was February the 1st 1945.
KG: That’s right. And we were flying across something like Holland or somewhere like that and this, the navigator, he was pretty old, he was twenty eight. The rest of us were all twenty two and under and we, he said, ‘We’ll have to go back to base because my navigation things have gone haywire,’ so Jack Vasey said, ‘I’m not bloody going back to base,’ he said, ‘We haven’t returned to base yet on any trip,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to do this on our last trip,’ and he said -
HB: Just pausing the tape.
[machine paused]
HB: Right. Coffee having arrived we can restart.
KG: I think it was what they called the Gee and something else, the H2S, I’m not quite sure and he said, ‘Well give it a kick.’ Whether he did give it a kick or not I don’t know but anyhow he said, ‘Keith can map read us from the front turret, from the front nose. Keith can map read us until the, until it gets dark and then we’ll follow the searchlights.’ That just shows you how navigation has changed.
HB: Yeah. Just a bit.
KG: Well today you could put a bomb up a bloke’s exhaust pipe practically.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And blow him up. Yeah. So, we we bombed [Seagan?] and that was our last trip.
HB: Yeah. I’ve just noticed, I’ve just noticed on this one, that’s six hours twenty minutes to [Seagan?].
KG: Yeah.
HB: But you had, you had some very long flights didn’t you? Eleven hours, ten hours.
KG: Yeah.
HB: Munich was ten and a half hours.
KG: Munich. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
KG: We bombed, we did bomb Munich. It was lovely going over the mountains just inside Switzerland.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Really. They didn’t fire at us.
HB: Didn’t they?
KG: No. I don’t suppose they have a gun in Switzerland did they? So we bombed bombed Munich. It was very awe inspiring to see the Alps. I mean we were flying at about seventeen thousand I suppose, the Alps were about eighteen thousand.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Or thereabouts.
HB: Yeah. Not something you want to bump into. So that’s, you’ve got in your book here, finished first tour February 1st 1944. Sorry 1945.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And you’d flown -
KG: I don’t know that.
HB: Two hundred and fifty eighty hours and forty minutes daytime flying.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And two hundred and sixty six hours fifteen minutes night flying.
KG: Oh right. I didn’t know that.
HB: That’s quite a few, quite a few hours that is and then you only get, you must have only, I suppose you had a little bit of leave and then you went off to Swinderby.
KG: That’s right. I went as a so called bombing instructor at Swinderby.
HB: Right.
KG: And that was fine because I got my commission so I was in the posh mess and I festered around Swinderby for some little while I guess and then it all finished and they more or less said, ‘Well where would you like to go?’ So I thought to myself Australia. I think I’ll go to Australia. It’s a nice long way away and I’m not likely to go there again so of course typical RAF where did I finish up? In the Sudan. Khartoum. But that was -
HB: That’s when you left Swinderby.
KG: That’s when I left Swinderby.
HB: Just looking in your logbook here Keith you’ve got one 24th of March 1945 you’ve got an entry here X VX 9 which I presume is exercise and it’s got France X C T Y and H L B I presume that’s -
KG: High level bombing.
HB: That’s high level bombing yeah.
KG: High level bombing.
HB: Yeah.
KG: That would be practice.
HB: Oh right. Right. And then on the next page in July this is just something I don’t know if you can remember about it, the 24th of July 1945 you got yourself with, the pilot is somebody called Daggett, you’re in a Lancaster and you’re going on a Cook’s Tour.
KG: Oh yeah. A Cook’s Tour. At the end of the war they took you around to show you what damage you’d done, you know. Have a look at the mess you made. So we flew around the Ruhr just having a look, a Cook’s Tour of -
HB: Yeah.
KG: Of the damage.
HB: You’ve even written down what you flew over. You flew over [Valkerin?].
KG: [Valkerin?] Yeah.
HB: Krefeld, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Ham and then etcetera. Blimey. Oh that’s a bit cutting. [laughs].
KG: What’s that?
HB: You’ve got August 23rd with a pilot called Enoch.
KG: Oh yeah.
HB: And you’ve got your duties as air bomber and it just says, Eric brackets waste of time.
KG: Most likely a code name for a practice flight I should think. I don’t know what Eric -
HB: Yeah. Yeah. I just wondered, just wondered if you could remember what X C T Y meant? Is that -
KG: Cross country.
HB: Oh right. Cross country. Right. That makes sense now.
KG: We often did that.
HB: Yeah.
KG: When we got nothing better to do we often do a cross country.
HB: So, so when did you go to the Sudan?
KG: Oh hell. Latish 1945 I suppose.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And I was out there for about six months swimming and playing tennis and I was supposed to be the air traffic officer.
HB: Right.
KG: But it was a little bit of a relaxation and a bit of a jolly really.
HB: Right. So that -
KG: A good experience to go somewhere like the Sudan.
HB: Yeah. So you sort of came to the Sudan and then you’re obviously on the down slope.
KG: Yeah.
HB: Heading towards -
KG: Demob.
HB: Demob. What, what was that sort of process like Keith?
KG: I don’t remember much about the demob process. I must have come back here and reported somewhere. They give you a suit and that’s you out of the air force so to speak and I went back to my old job which was, you see when I enlisted I was nineteen.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Nineteen. Well I wasn’t frightfully academic at the best of times but I did quite well with what nouse that I’d got and sorry my train of thoughts gone, and so I went back and having been a somebody -
HB: Yeah.
KG: I went back to this company where I was, in the eyes of the managing director, a nobody and I stayed with them until such time as the company was taken over by Plessey. Remember Plessey.
HB: Yes. Yes I do.
KG: They took us over and the, instead of us taking them over they took us over and they wanted me to go to Nottingham and offered me more money to go to Nottingham and I didn’t want to go because the kids were in grammar school in Enfield at the time so I then decided to make myself redundant and I was paid redundancy money because they were moving the company.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And I had already been invited by some people that I knew in STC to go and join them.
HB: Right. This is, this is all in the electronics industry.
KG: Well the telephone industry.
HB: Telephone industry. Yeah.
KG: I wasn’t a telephone engineer. I mean I wouldn’t, I know how to pick up a telephone and that’s about all but I became sales manager of a division where they sold the earpieces and mouthpieces, the microphone and the ear piece you know and I did quite well at that and I then retired from there in 1984. Yeah, about ‘84 on the grounds that I didn’t like the set up. It had all changed because people had been coming in and taking over this, taking over that and I thought to myself I don’t really want to stay here so I’ll take redundancy money and I left them.
HB: When did, when did you actually get married then Keith?
KG: 1947
HB: Right.
KG: So -
HB: And that was to your wife obviously.
KG: Peggy.
HB: Peggy
KG: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So but if you asked her now who she married she most likely wouldn’t know.
HB: No.
KG: Wouldn’t know when she was married. As I say she’s upstairs in bed I imagine.
HB: So how, and how many children did you have?
KG: Two. Jane.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Who’s around here somewhere.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And Ian who was a solicitor and then he set up his own business in the holiday world. Timeshare. Made a lot of money and he now plays a lot of golf.
HB: Right.
KG: Does odd jobs up in London for a company but hasn’t got to work.
HB: No.
KG: He come up here last Wednesday and he said, ‘Oh I’ve told you I’m going to America haven’t I?’ So I said, ‘No.’ I mean he’s like that. ‘I told you.’ ‘No.’ I said, ‘What are you going to America for? Because I can afford it,’ he said.
HB: Lovely.
KG: And for the last –
HB: Lovely.
KG: And for the last three years he’s been with his wife, who’s a West Indian girl, pleasant girl and they go, they fly to Florida, get on a ship, one of these bloody great ships.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And they do a seven days, ten days or whatever it is. I said, ‘Which islands are you going to?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘They’re all the bloody same these islands.’ He said, ‘They’re all full of people trying to flog you things,’ you know.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. I can imagine. Keith can I just, can I just ask you, can I just something that’s comes to my mind while we’ve been, you know we’ve been chatting and what not I don’t think, I’m just going back over your log. I don’t think we actually know who your crew were. We know the pilot was Vasey.
KG: Oh yeah. I can tell you who the crew were. I’ve got a, I’ve got a lovely big photo, painting and you’ve, if you’d like to take those papers with you -
HB: Well we, what I’m, what I’m thinking we’ll do because there’s some in there, yes I can but what I just wanted to make some enquiries about some of the bits and pieces ‘cause I mean like you’ve got the usual things we all do. You’ve got some photographs but there’s nothing written on the back.
KG: Yeah.
HB: So we don’t quite know who’s who.
KG: Yeah.
HB: But having said that that’s that’s something we can address but no it was just, it was just the names of the crew.
KG: I’ll go through them for you if you’d like to jot them down.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Jack Vasey.
HB: That’s the pilot.
KG: V A S E Y.
HB: Ray Miller, flight engineer.
KG: So he’s the FE. Ray Miller.
HB: Oh dear. I’ll have to think a bit.
KG: That’s alright.
HB: George. George, God, George Hillier, mid-upper gunner.
KG: George Hillier.
HB: Vic Lewell L E W E L L.
KG: Hang on he was rear gunner. Sorry Vic Lewell.
HB: L E W E L L.
KG: Who haven’t, we haven’t got the –
HB: Navigator.
KG: I always remember he said, ‘It’s Edward to my better class friends.’
HB: Yeah.
KG: I’ll have to, I’ll have to look in there.
HB: That’s alright. That’s alright. That’s Edward.
KG: Crowley. I think he name was Crowley. Ted Crowley. C R O W L E Y.
HB: That’s brilliant. So that’s the pilot, the flight engineer, the navigator and can you remember who your wireless op was?
KG: George Hardy.
HB: George Hardy.
KG: From, from Houghton le Spring.
HB: Right. George Hardy, wireless op. That’s great. Yeah. It’s, it’s, did you after, after the war did you keep in contact with your crew.
KG: Well that’s something I’ve forgotten to tell you. We didn’t keep in touch with each other but about -, This is my daughter.
JT: Hello Harry, you must be Harry. Hi I’m Jane.
KG: Right. Just bear with me a second.
[machine pause]
HB: Right. Just turned the tape back on.
KG: About twenty five years after we had been demobbed I don’t know the exact date my wife had a phone call and the person said, ‘Is that Mrs Ganney?’ ‘Yes.’ Was your husband in 57 squadron?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘My name is George Hillier,’ the chap I was telling you about here, he said, ‘We’ve found out that the skipper, Jack Vasey is seriously ill,’ and George Hillier and Vic Lewell were going up to Newcastle or in that area to see him. Would we like to go as well? So we all trooped off to Newcastle or wherever it was and went in to see Jack Vasey and he was so thin. So he was in his dressing gown. It was one Sunday lunchtime and he was so thin and I was talking to him and I said to him, ‘What were you doing the night we hit the sea Jack?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know man but not many people have done it.’
HB: Yeah. That’s true.
KG: Yeah. And he died. He died a week later.
HB: Oh.
KG: With cancer.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But his family were so thrilled that we’d gone up there.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But other than that we haven’t been in touch with each other.
HB: So had you, had you, had you been in contact through perhaps associations reunions or -
KG: No. We hadn’t.
HB: You didn’t do much of that.
KG: No. We weren’t, we didn’t get involved in reunions at that time.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But then I joined the 57/630 Squadron Association because 57 squadron and 630 squadron shared East Kirkby.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They were both on the, on the aerodrome and we joined the Association. We did attend one or two dinners and reunions. We may manage to get to the next one which is something like the 3rd of July at East Kirkby.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Have you ever been there?
HB: I’ve been to Kirkby, East Kirkby, yeah.
KG: And have you seen the aircraft there haven’t you?
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: Because it’s called Just Jane.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And so we may try and make it there depending on how I feel and how everybody else feels.
HB: Yeah.
KG: You know, just to go over there for the, for the day.
HB: Yeah.
KG: With my wife, as you see getting her up in the morning is difficult.
HB: Yeah.
KG: You know, she’ll be alright -
HB: What was, what was, I mean I’ve spoken to one or two people who were at east Kirby but what was your abiding memory of being at East Kirby cause there’s -
KG: East Kirkby.
HB: Sorry yeah.
KG: East Kirkby.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Abiding memory. Well let me just explain it. We joined the squadron and started flying August.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And we’d finished by February.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So we weren’t there for very, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the name of any member of East Kirkby at that time because people regrettably used to come and go. They would come in one day and two or three days later on a trip they’ve been shot down or whatever so you didn’t, you didn’t have any friends in other crews.
[ringtone]
HB: Sorry about this. I thought I’d turned it off. I have now. That’s it. Sorry I do apologise for that.
KG: That’s all right.
Jane: Nice bit of music though.
KG: You didn’t, you didn’t make friends outside of your own crew because you know, it was a bit without being over dramatic it was here today gone tomorrow.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: So the, we were in nissen huts with a stove in the middle and a pipe going up through the roof but it wasn’t the most ideal place to stay.
HB: I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it described as cold and windy and draughty.
KG: That’s it. That’s it. Yeah.
HB: It seems to be a recurring theme.
KG: But as I say we weren’t there all that long.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Came in something like July. We’d be gone by February.
HB: Yeah. The, at the end of the war obviously a lot of people have got views on how Bomber Command were treated or viewed at the end of the war.
KG: Yeah.
HB: I just wondered if you’d got a view on that yourself.
KG: Yes. I have really. I can to a degree understand it in so far as fighter planes were there to shoot down the enemy planes and it was very flamboyant and they were quite rightly famous for what they, what they did whereas we were there to bomb them into submission effectively.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And I think at the end of the war Montgomery, Alexander, various other people in charge were all made lords and what’s the name was not offered a peerage.
HB: Harris.
KG: Butch. What’s his name? Butch Harris. So I think Bomber Command got treated very badly but of course they, as it was then we were at peace they didn’t want to upset the Germans any more.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And say, you know well we came and bombed all your places.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But I’m sure in my own mind that Bomber Command were, it was very significant of bombing Germany into submission.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I’m not saying the army wouldn’t, they would have to have done it eventually but no I think they got the thin edge of the wedge.
HB: Yeah.
KG: The only medals I got and I couldn’t care less about bloody medals, they’re surplus and stuck indoors. If I’d have stabbed myself with a pen in Whitehall I would have got the same medals.
HB: Yeah.
KG: As I got on Bomber Command.
HB: Yeah. What medals did you get Keith? Do you know?
KG: Oh. The usual Naafi lot. I think it was the victory medal you’d get.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They defence medal.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I honestly -
HB: Aircrew?
KG: No. No. We didn’t get aircrew medals. I mean I wouldn’t have minded an aircrew medal. If you’d flown before D-Day you would have got the air crew Europe.
HB: Yeah.
KG: After D-Day you all had the same medal which was, I don’t know, was it called the European star? I don’t know.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So all all they gave us eventually after kicking up a stink and of course the person who kicked up a lot of the stink was one of the Bee Gees.
HB: Oh right.
KG: Did you know that?
HB: No. No, I didn’t know that.
KG: You look it up. The Bee Gees. He’s died now. He was instrumental in putting the muck up. I’m not on tape am I? For putting the muck in the fan and stirring it all up.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And got that lovely memorial down at Piccadilly.
HB: Yeah. At Green Park. Yeah.
KG: Yeah. You’ve you seen it have you?
HB: Yes. I’ve been there.
KG: Yeah. It’s a good memorial.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So he was one of the main people getting involved with with that. But all we got was the soppy little clasp.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They call it the air crew clasp or something.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Well, I mean it’s like somebody’s put a little mark on your arm thing.
HB: Yeah.
KG: It’s a pretty pathetic sort of a gesture.
HB: Well I think, I think what we’ll do Keith is, I thank you for very much for that. It’s really, really interesting history of what you did. If we can I’ll turn the tape off. It’s a quarter to twelve now.
KG: Yeah.
HB: So you, I think, I think you’ve done marvellously to get, to get through all that. What we’ll do if you like I’ll turn the tape off. We’ll go through some of this paperwork and I’ll just make a few notes about some of the photographs.
KG: Yeah. If you go through -
HB: And then I’m just down the road so what I can I’ll I can do the copying so I’m going to terminate the interview at 11.45.
KG: Ok. We’re going into South Lodge.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AGanneyK170301
PGanneyK1714
Title
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Interview with Keith Ganney
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:05:18 audio recording
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
Date
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2017-03-01
Description
An account of the resource
Keith was called up in February 1942 and after basic training learned to fly in the Tiger Moth and then sent to Davidson in Canada for further training in Cornells and Cranes. He failed a flying test and was remustered as a bomb aimer and sent back to England to 9 AFU at RAF Penrhos and then to RAF Silverstone to carry out crew training on Wellington and Stirling aircraft.
After attending the Lancaster finishing school at RAF Syerston, Keith and his crew were posted to RAF East Kirby. Their first operation was to Konigsberg, an eleven-hour trip but had to divert to Scotland because of bad weather. Several ‘bullseye’ feint operations were next before a raid on Bremen Docks was a failure due to navigator error.
Another operation was to Dusseldorf, carried out on a perfect moonlit night. An attack by a Me109, left the rear gunner severely wounded and the mid upper turret out of action. After fifteen minutes of corkscrew evasive action, the enemy fighter flew alongside, waggled his wings and flew off. Keith comforted the rear gunner until they made an emergency landing in England. Examination of the damaged aircraft revealed the emergency whistle of the mid upper gunner had deflected a bullet and saved his life. On an operation to Trondheim, the crew were unable to bomb so returned but had a lucky escape when they flew too low and hit the sea, tearing off the tail wheel and causing a crash landing for which the pilot received a red endorsement
Their last operation was to Siegen and in mid flight the navigator wanted to turn back so the pilot ordered Keith to map read the route from the nose of the aircraft and so he finished his first tour on 1st February 1945.
After time as a bombing instructor at RAF Swinderby, Keith was posted to Sudan as an air traffic controller from where he was demobbed.
He worked as a salesman until 1984, during which time he joined 57/630 Squadron association.
Keith feels angry at the treatment of Arthur Harris and considers the aircrew clasp as a pathetic gesture.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Newark (Nottinghamshire)
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Gwynedd
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Siegen
Norway--Trondheim
Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ)
Canada
Saskatchewan
Sudan
Germany
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-02-01
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Terry Holmes
17 OTU
57 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
entertainment
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
love and romance
Me 109
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Penrhos
RAF Silverstone
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/254/3401/AFisherLS150814.1.mp3
92f6b8ab71b7b2ca626a670b285dd0e0
Dublin Core
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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
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Laurence Sidney Fisher (1091186 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-08-14
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.
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.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AFisherLS150814
Title
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Interview with Laurence Sidney Fisher
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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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00:50:01 audio recording
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Sheila Bibb
Date
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2015-08-14
Description
An account of the resource
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.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Egypt
Italy
South Africa
North Africa
Egypt--Sidi Barrani
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Contributor
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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
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d8ea507c92b2911874f3a4250ee60fa2
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/516/8748/AHatchM150730.1.mp3
22d3ce0e673b6b1303951b257282fcc8
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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Hatch, Maurice
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hatch
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Maurice Hatch (137372 Royal Air Force). He served with 97 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MJ: It's on now.
MH: My name is Hatch, Maurice Edward Hatch. My rank in the RAF at the end of the war was a squadron leader. [background noise] I was seventeen when war broke out and I volunteered for air service with the RAF and when I went before the committee who considered these things, I was asked what was my position in civil life and I said that I was an article clerk training to be a chartered accountant, whereupon I was immediately designated potentially as a navigator. I never had the chance as being trained as a pilot. On the whole, I think probably in the long run I didn't regret it. I actually went into the air force in about October of 1941 and after initial period of square bashing in some of the delightful holiday resorts of this country like Torquay, Brighton and Eastbourne I went on my flying training in South Africa. I sailed from Liverpool and I sailed in great luxury in a converted Dutch meat ship, from which the covers over the holds had been removed and down which a rickety wooden staircase had been mounted down which we all came. Then, of course, having the exalted rank lowest form of animal life and ordinary airmen and with a pack on my chest, a steel helmet on the back and the big pack on the on the back and you went down until my steel helmet was touching the back of the man in front until effectively the hold of that meat was a mash of human beings. Having got to the point where you couldn't get another mouse in, they said that was enough. They then tried to sort out the sleeping accommodation which was hammocks from the ceiling, so close together that they were touching and I never did get one. The trip took six and a half weeks, I spent that six and a half weeks sleeping on a straw palliasse under the mess table, and life was hard to say the least of it. We were three days stationary, moored outside Freetown in the hot season which was almost unbearable and we eventually landed in Durban. I won't tell you all the details of the journey because they are sordid in the extreme, suffice to say that I hope I never get nearer to hell than that! For two or three days we were under canvas on Durban racecourse and then we went to East London on the east coast of South Africa, south of Durban. And I was there for almost a year doing my initial navigational training. We were very lucky, myself and two other people with, with whom I'd joined up, we were, if you like, befriended by a family of Scottish origin who lived in East London and the husband was in fact the Union Castle representative in East London, Union Castle being the most powerful body in South Africa at that time, they ran the weekly ship to Cape Town before the war and owned most of the principal hotels including, of course, the famous Mount Nelson in Cape Town. The training period in South Africa from a flying viewpoint was not really particularly noteworthy, what was more noteworthy was the ability to live on fruit and food which we hadn't seen in this country for a long time, and also, not quite so fortunately, the rather strong but extremely cheap South African brandy. I eventually finished the training after about a year and went to Cape Town to board a ship home. In the interim whilst I was there, the husband of the family who had befriended us had been promoted and had become the Union Castle's principal agent [background noise] in Cape Town and was therefore in Cape Town finding a house to which he could move his family. He was staying at the Mount Nelson Hotel and therefore my last night before going home, I went to dinner in the famous Mount Nelson Hotel which was a fairly unforgettable experience, particularly at that time going back as I was to wartime rationing. I was lucky in that on the return I was on an American trooper which was not in convoy and so went very much faster and we we got home in about two and a half weeks, and the only misfortune was that for some administrative reason which I have never understood, the fact that I had been commissioned had not reached South Africa and I therefore went home as a sergeant and regretted the fact that I didn't have the officer's quarters. However, that was rectified when I got home and I went to Harrogate which was the usual place where aircrew were accommodated on their return from Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia, as it then was, and the very few from the United States, where effectively all of this flying training had been carried out. After some leave, I started on the further long process in the training channel which included, of course, the crewing up and we formed into a crew. Strangely enough, that was done largely by us ourselves rather than by any officials. We sort of went around and tried to decide people with whom we thought we might get on and in effect established a crew ourselves, and this we did. I was in fact the only commissioned officer in the crew; all the others were sergeants or flight sergeants. We went through the various stages, going from Wellingtons after a short period, we were onto Stirlings and then eventually onto Lancasters, and my first posting to a squadron, an operating squadron, was to 630 Squadron which was at East Kirby in Lincolnshire, and it was a very sudden and very marked experience of the reality of war after the joy of South Africa, where, frankly, the war seemed a long way away. And we finished up playing tennis and swimming rather than worrying too much about flying. On arrival at 630 Squadron, it was at the time when the raids in Berlin were going on almost nightly, and at that time, and maybe at all times I don't know but certainly at that time, it had become the practise that when a new crew, a sprog crew arrived on the squadron with no experience, the captain of the crew, the pilot, went first as a second dicky with an experienced crew, and we had arrived on the squadron at about ten-thirty in the morning, by mid-afternoon ops had been announced and we subsequently discovered it was on Berlin. My pilot was assigned as a second dicky to an experienced crew and off he went and did not return. He must have had the shortest tour of operations of anybody, one take off and one landing, the landing being by parachute. I'm delighted to say he survived the war and came through but he was of course a prisoner of war in that intermediate period. I was therefore left with the remainder of my crew within twenty-four hours of having arrived on the squadron of going away again with a delightful RAF expressions being the head of a headless crew which always struck me as an oddish [?] phrase. We went back to conversion unit, and this I suppose was one of my lucky periods during my life, I always find it slightly guilty or referring to another man's misfortune as being one of my luckies, but we linked up on our return to conversion unit to an experienced New Zealand pilot. If my memory's right, he was then a flight lieutenant, he had done a tour earlier in the war and had been instructing and had now come back for a second tour and we had no captain, he had no crew, and so the obvious thing was to put us together, and this was very lucky. The strange part about this was that he was a tough, back-woods, New Zealander whose language was frequently fairly colourful, but he had a strangely sentimental streak because his first tour had been on 97 Squadron, he was desperately anxious that this second tour should also be on 97 Squadron. The only problem was that in between the two dates, the Pathfinder Force had been formed and 97 Squadron had become one of the Pathfinder squadrons. Generally speaking, people, in quotes, volunteered to go on the Pathfinder Force, although I think frequently it was a form of volunteering which usually involved the twisting of an arm or two. But it was after seven or eight operations had been successfully completed and the crew had broadly shown itself as being competent. This, of course, was not the case; my New Zealand captain’s name was Smith, and he was always called Smithy by us, and he, of course, was an experienced pilot, but he had a crew who had never done an operation in their lives, and particularly a navigator, i.e. me, who had never been on an operation in his life. Somehow, he succeeded in getting us onto 97 Squadron; how he did it, whose arm he twisted, I have never known, but the fact remains that we did. Accordingly, I started once again by going then for, I think it was four or five weeks’ intensive Pathfinder navigation training at the PFF headquarters, PFF had become 8 Group, and the headquarters were outside Huntingdon, and for the moment I’ve forgotten its name.
MJ: Wyton.
MH: Wyton. And, well, I, I obviously successfully dealt with the specialist training because, at the end of the period, we were appointed, we were posted to 97 Squadron, which had just about turned up at Coningsby, having previously been somewhere else which I’ve moment forgotten, and I suppose the good fortune of that alignment with Smithy very quickly showed itself, because our very first operational trip as a new crew, we were attacked by two ME-109s, and I hate to think what, with an entirely inexperienced pilot and crew, might have happened. As it was, Smithy put us into a power dive and we successfully escaped, and I always remember, as we, nose went down and, of course, everything, the charts, the protractors, the dividers, the pencils, everything went all over the place, and all I remember was Smithy shouting ‘Never mind about the bloody charts, tell me if there are any hills around here!’ I don’t know how he thought I was going to do that, because of course the, the map showing such things as hills had gone with all the rest. However, eventually I did find it and told him that there were no hills, but by then it was too late, because fortunately there was none, and we were on our way home, fairly low, waking up a few French along the way. Well, after that, we had a comparatively inexperienced and exciting time, fortunately, the usual little problems of sometimes getting splattered by shrapnel from bombs exploding around one, but nothing really terrible except, I suppose, we, one, one, one night, a hydraulic pipeline was severed, and it wasn’t quite known whether or not the undercarriage was going to lock down, and so we were diverted to the diversionary airport at Manston in Kent, which, strangely enough, was a place to which I became quite attached and very accustomed later after the war. Smith finished his tour, his second tour, after twenty ops, and we were still there. The usual arrangement in the Pathfinder Force was that, instead of doing the normal stint of thirty ops in a first tour, then a period off and twenty on a second tour, one was encouraged to do forty-five ops through immediately, one, ah, all in one go, on Pathfinder Force, presumably because of the additional training and experience which one had gained in Pathfinder operations. I had by then become reasonably accustomed to my duties with H2S as it was then, the early form of radar, I suppose the predecessor of many of the systems with which we are accustomed now in our motorcars or boats or anything like that. By today’s standards, it was fairly primitive, but on the whole, it worked, and I effectively did forty-four operations, finishing my forty-fourth just about at the end of the war, and I think I’m right in saying that I failed to find the target first time only once in those forty-four operations. Again, we had one or two bits of excitement; by then, I was flying with the squadron commander because, when Smithy had finished his second tour, once again, we found ourselves as a crew without a pilot, and the squadron commander had just completed a tour and had gone, and he, his successor, a group captain, Group Captain Peter Johnson, the Pathfinder Force generally had ranks which were one up from the general Bomber Command so that, whereas most bomber squadrons were commanded by wing commander, Pathfinder squadrons generally commanded by a group captain, the flight commanders were wing commanders whereas usually they were squadron leaders, and leaders (wireless, navigation, gunnery and so on) were usually squadron leaders instead of flight lieutenants. And, of course, with the passage of time and people finishing their tours and, sadly, finishing their tours in other ways, meant that promotion was fairly quick and eventually found myself as a squadron leader, acting squadron leader, anyway. And I suppose at the age of twenty-three, briefing Pathfinder squadrons, it was good experience which has stood one good in civil life after the war. Only one thing, well, I suppose two things, really, stick in my mind: one is that we were coming back one evening from very long flight, somewhere way over in, I, Stet – somewhere in Poland, we’d been airborne for about nine hours and were running really rather short of fuel, and it was foggy, good old Lincolnshire fog, and we couldn’t get in at Coningsby. At Metheringham, which was close by, there had been installed a system which was called FIDO, which took the form of a, a channel being put alongside the runway and filled with aircraft spirit of some sort, and which I, in foggy conditions, it was lit, the idea being that the heat generated would disperse the fog. Unfortunately, the people who did it forgot the fact that the, the fire itself would have created more smoke, and we had problems. We went ‘round twice and couldn’t find the, the, the ‘drome, the –
MJ: Flare path?
MH: [background noises] I was saying that my captain had considerable experience in finding the flight path, we went ‘round twice and by then the fuel was running dangerously slow, ah, short, and fortunately, we turned on a third time and both the pilot and the flight engineer, more or less at the same time, just got a glimpsed, glimpse of the flight path and Peter Johnson very cleverly (not easy on a Lancaster) effectively side-slipped onto the air, airfield. We had a very bumpy landing but at any rate, we did get down in one piece. We subsequently discovered that part of the difficulty was not only the smoke created by FIDO itself but the plane that had come in immediately before us, or had tried to come in, had failed and had crashed right through the woodland alongside the, the aerodrome and all members of the crew were killed. So that was not a – it wasn’t the best of evenings when we got back in, in the mess that evening. My, my skipper, my pilot, Group Captain Peter Johnson, with typical sort of British stiff upper lip, when I think one member of my crew said to him as we were getting out, ‘Well, that was a bit dicey,’ and he said [blustering received-pronunciation] ‘Oh, it was alright, you know,’ and, but in fact, subsequently back in the mess, he did tell me, tell me that he was pretty worried and that, had we not seen the runway on that particular moment, he was seriously considering turning out to sea and trying to land in the shallows of the sea, so I’m, I’m glad the smoke cleared enough for us to get by. Apart from that, there were very few moments of great excitement. One memorable moment, not really a moment of excitement is that, in the Pathfinder operations, the Lancasters, the Lancaster Pathfinders were equipped with RT and WT; the main force was equipped only with WT. The master bombers, who were in Mosquitoes, they had only RT, and they were people like Cheshire and Tate and Gibson and names such as that, and on this particular night, we – one of the Lancaster Pathfinders was doing the job as link aircraft (this was passing on WT the RT instructions received from the master bomber), and the Pathfinder Lancasters used to take it in turn to be the link aircraft, in effect flying ‘round and ‘round the target passing the messages from the master bomber. Not the most popular of tasks, needless to say, but on this particular night, we were, well, my skipper was, in effect, the, the second string, which was the man who was the link, was very often, or very often at any rate, the senior officer in the Lancasters who was on the raid was the deputy commander, just in case the master bomber had mechanical trouble and had to turn back or had been shot down en route, and we were the, the second string, if you like, and, and we had a message from the master bomber saying that the raid was successful, radio home and go home, and go home we did, only to find out later that the master bomber had not got home, and the master bomber was no less than Guy Gibson. So it’s not exactly a claim to fame, it’s the most inappropriate form of words, but I suppose it is true to say that I and the other six members of the crew were the last seven people to hear Guy Gibson speak. I’ve never really, I don’t think most people have ever really fully satisfied themselves as to what happened to him; various rumours, most of them silly, but I’m, I’ve always been told (I can’t prove this), I’ve always been told that it was a complete wreck, the aircraft was on fire and everything was burned, and that the only recognition was that a sock was found with a laundry mark on it and this was Gibson’s. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but that was the story I’d always been told. So, that more or less finished my flying career. I, I went on a couple of daylight raids which I didn’t much enjoy; somehow, I didn’t think the Lancaster was, was fitted for formation flying as were the Americans. And I, I don’t, I don’t think they were terribly successful and they weren’t particularly enjoyable. At the, the days immediately on the end of the war, most of us were, to some extent, occupied in bringing back prisoners of war from airfields in Belgium and Holland, poor devils had been up to several years in prisoner of war camps and had been brought out to the coast and were being picked up. Two things remind me of that always: my good skipper, the group captain, who I may say was a first class man (he finished the war DSO, DFC, AFC and thoroughly deserved it all), we didn’t see each other after the war for almost forty years, and then by pure accident, I was, I’d been a member of the MCC for a great many years, and was one night at home looking through the annual accounts of the MCC, and there was a list of people who had been members of the MCC for fifty years and who were now called life members and no longer had a subscription to pay, and about the third in the list was Group Captain P.W. Johnson, DSO, DFC, AFC, and I said to my wife, ‘Well, there can only be one member like that!’ And at that time, my firm, I was of course by then a, a qualified chartered accountant and a partner in my firm, and we were then acting auditors of the MCC, so I said to my partner, who dealt with the MCC problems, would he let me know next time he went to Lords [?] for anything, would he go into the office and see if he could find the address of Group Captain Johnson, which he did, and a week or two later, I found out and got back in touch with Peter Johnson and we thereafter saw each other roughly every six or seven weeks. He was a good deal older, he was fourteen years older than me, and by then he was therefore he was eighty or eighty-ish, and we used to take him out. He was, he was on his own, he’d lost his wife, he was a rather lonely old man in many ways. My wife, I had met during the war, she was a WAF, a Scots girl, and we met, strangely, I think immediate, immediately after the war in Europe finished, because very quickly, the operational squadrons were being disbanded, people were being sent away and all sorts of things. Peter Johnson was sent almost immediately to join a party which was being put together by Bomber Harris to go to Germany and inspect at first hand the damage which Bomber Command had done, and so he left the squadron very quickly, and I didn’t then see anything of him for forty years. I greatly regret it, actually, the loss of that forty years ‘cause he was such a first-class chap, and we had many a happy meeting in the years between our meeting up again and when he, he died. He died in a way which suited him well, because he was then living in an old people’s home not very far from where we live, and so we, we were able to see him fairly frequently. He had always had a, an eye for the girls; it was well known in Coningsby that he had a girlfriend in Newark and another one in Boston, and his son had been married about five times, and I remember him telling me once that, after the fifth marriage, that if he, if he got rid of that wife, Peter Johnson was going to marry her himself ‘cause she was jolly nice, and she had actually come to visit him in the old people’s home. He was still driving, he’d taken her back to the station to catch the train back to where they were living, he parked his car outside the, the place where he was living, he had a long-ish walk into the front door, he collapsed halfway on that walk, and before anybody could really do anything about it, he was dead. So it was a suitable and fitting end, I don’t think he would have regretted it. But that ended, substantially ended, my air force career, because I still had a fairly high demob number and because I was fairly experienced with forty-four ops behind me with Pathfinder Force, I was allocated to a thing called Tiger Force, which some bright spark at the Air Ministry had decided that we should go to assist our brave allies, the Americans, in the Far East, and that we should try to operate the successful Pathfinder technique which had been operated in Europe. I mean, it was a crazy idea ‘cause it was quite impossible doing the thing; it one thing being on a, a pre-war, tarmacadamed airfield with permanent buildings and every sort of electronic communication then available. It was a little different being stuck in Okinawa or somewhere like that. However, that was, I was to be so-called wing navigation officer and was actually on leave when the Japanese war ended, and so I phoned the Air Ministry and said, ‘Well, you don’t really, seriously mean to go ahead with this, do you?’ And there was a bit of umming and ahing at the other end, but I did eventually – I was told that they would be in touch with me and a couple of days later, there was a telephone call to say that the thing was off but I was to report back to Coningsby, and I spent the rest of my time as station navigation officer at Coningsby, and I left the, the squadrons left Coningsby about a fortnight before I was demobbed, they’ve were moved to Hemswell in order that the runways at Coningsby could be lengthened for the V Bombers which were then coming on stream. I got in touch and said, ‘Look, I’ve been in Coningsby two and a half years, you’re surely not gonna send me away to Hemswell, I have another fortnight to go,’ so again, there was umming and ahing and said ‘No,’ but I had to stay at Coningsby the other fortnight, they didn’t let me go a fortnight early, but that ended my work, wartime career, if ‘career’ is the right word. Terrible, war’s a terrible thing, awful, awful times one remembers. One remembers times of great strain, times of danger, but equally times when, very often before leaving for a flight, the, the, the whole feeling oneself was flowing, there was a, there was a, a scare, I suppose a scare, a fright; on the other hand, there was a feeling of something quite exciting was going to happen. It was a strange feeling and it was very different when you came back, I think feelings there differed very much from person to person, and I think I’d – probably as good a note to end on, end on as any is that I think that it’s amply demonstrated why the men who did the sculpture in the Bomber Command memorial in Green Park, where he has the sculpture of a crew of Lancasters coming in after the end of an operation, and, whilst my eyesight, I’m afraid, these days is far from good, and I, I really was not able to recognise it, my wife always tells me that the expressions on the face of the seven people were quite remarkable and that the, the sculptor had really done a marvellous job. And it is a marvellous, marvellous memorial; I was lucky to be one of those still alive and able to attend its opening by the Queen, and those of us who were there and who had actually operated during the war were asked to line up at the end along the, effectively, the edge of the Green Park parallel with Piccadilly, and the Prince of Wales and his wife came along and shook hands with all of us individually, one by one. I think he missed his lunch in consequence, but I imagine he didn’t mind. I think that hopefully is, in brief, my story. I hope it may be of use and interest to somebody in the future.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command, I’d like to thank Squadron Leader Hatch, at his home in Croydon, for his recording on the date of the 30th July 2015. I thank you very much. Bye-bye.
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Title
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Interview with Maurice Hatch
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-30
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Sound
Identifier
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AHatchM150730
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:38:07 audio recording
Description
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Maurice Hatch was training as a chartered accountant when volunteered for pilot but was instead enlisted as a navigator. After initial training at Torquay, Brighton and Eastbourne he went to South Africa for a year. Upon returning he crewed up at Harrogate followed to a post at RAF East Kirby (630 Squadron) flying Wellingtons, Stirlings and Lancasters, mainly on operations to Berlin. Then he went on a five-week intensive Pathfinder navigation training at 8 Group headquarters, followed by a post with 97 Squadron at RAF Coningsby where he flew 44 operations. After the end of the war in Europe he was sent to the Far East with the Tiger Force as wing navigation officer, but the war ended before he started operational duties. Maurice returned at RAF Coningsby as station navigation officer until demobbed. He then became a qualified chartered accountant and a partner of his firm. Maurice talks about military ethos, prisoner of war, bailing out, operations, anti-aircraft fire, evasive manoeuvres, Guy Gibson, reunions, the Bomber Command memorial in Green Park, meeting the Queen and other dignitaries.
Spatial Coverage
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South Africa
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Devon
England--Sussex
England--Torquay
England--Brighton
England--Harrogate
Germany
Germany--Berlin
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
630 Squadron
8 Group
97 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (1926 - 2022)
FIDO
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Lancaster
Me 109
memorial
navigator
Pathfinders
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Coningsby
Stirling
Tiger force
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/582/8851/PHillR1502.2.jpg
e2ce69320fb234668aa6f55c6f445996
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/582/8851/AHillR150707.1.mp3
18183987a7f123d61da22888e1f0bd0b
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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Hill, Roy
R Hill
Roy Ernest Hill
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hill, R
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Roy Hill (Royal Air Force). He served as a wireless operator / air gunner with 207 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RH: My name is Roy Hill and I was, erm, I’m aged 92, rather ancient for air crew [laughs] but, oh dear, I’ve lost it.
Other: In 1941, when was it?
RH: 1941 I joined up yeah [laughs] and, er, and oh crikey [pause] I was a wireless operator, air gunner on Lancasters and we were shot down over the Ruhr by a German night fighter. It’s rather unusual in as much as I know the name of the chap who shot us down. It was Karl Friedrich Mueller, that was the name of the chap who shot us down flying an ME 109 G, that was the type of aircraft he flew in and but unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting him because he died in in 1989 I think, yeah [pause].
MJ: Roy can you tell us who you are.
RH: My name is Roy Hill.
MJ: Yeah.
RH: And, er, I was in the RAF throughout the war.
MJ: Right.
RH: And er, I, I joined up when I was eighteen years old and I was in the RAF right through the war and, er, when we were shot down by Germans and incarcerated in Stalag Luft 1 in Germany. But at the end of the war I was very, very lucky in that so much as I was repatriated to England.
MJ: So Roy you got caught up in a prisoner of war camp, what was that like?
RH: [pause] [laughs] well it’s not a very good subject for conversation is it, because it was, I mean your, your freedom is taken from you and, er, you have to make the best of things while you’re there, but I was lucky because I was only there about six months and then we were, actually we were flown home by the Americans in their Flying Fortresses that’s what the chaps who flew us back and, er, that was of course the beginnings of a new life for me after the war.
MJ: Roy, you were, which squadron were you put into and how did it work through to when you got shot down, did you do long sorties, short ones or
RH: Mostly long.
MJ: And er, did you get to fly with the same crew or?
RJ: Always, yeah.
MJ: So, erm, how did that work, I mean I don’t know anything about this?
RH: No.
MJ: So if you could explain how.
RH: Well we were so very, very fortunate, we had, we got on very well as a crew. I’ll show you pictures. We were a band of brothers really, we er, some of us very young, two, two of the crew were only aged eighteen and I was only nineteen and at the time, of course and we had three of the chaps were in their thirties so we had a quite a wide [pause]
Other: Age range.
RH: age range [laughs].
Other: Then you’ve got Australians as part of the crew?
RH: Yeah we had three Australians in the crew and er I took them all home to see my folks and it was a great, a great occasion.
MJ: So you did everything, dancing, fire-fighting?
RH: Yeah, yeah we did yeah, we lived together, we were
Other: A crew.
RH: A crew, yeah [long pause]
MJ: Roy could you tell me who you are please.
RH: My name is Roy Hill [laughs]
MJ: Yeah
RH: I’m 86 [laughs] get it right. I was a flight lieutenant in the RAF during the war where I was a wireless operator air gunner and we flew in Lancaster’s and we were shot down on our eighteenth mission.
MJ: So how did you get into the RAF in the first place, did you -
RH: Volunteered, yes. When war, when war came I had the option of going flying in the air force so I applied to go in the air force and I was one of a group of four we all tried together to get into the air force and I’m the only survivor of those four. The other three were all killed subsequently.
MJ: Right, erm, did you plan to be a wireless operator or did you want -
RH: No, I, you see this was, this was all in 1941, the year after the Battle of Britain. Of course I wanted to be a pilot, everyone did, but in my case when I volunteered for air crew the only thing I was, I could qualify for was wireless operator air gunner and er that’s what I eventually became.
MJ: Did you erm meet your crew at the squadron or did you….
RH: No, no we got together at a place called Silverstone, that’s where they have the car racing now. It was when we all got together as a crew. It was wonderful really because the RAF they used to put you in an enormous hangar, hundreds of you, hundreds of you, all mixed up and they used they said ‘here we are form yourselves into crews of seven’ and er it’s amazing really it worked, it really worked, we were volunteers all of us and we got together as a team and it was one of those magic moments really.
MJ: So, erm, how many missions did you say you flew together?
RH: Oh well [unclear] we were shot down on our eighteenth mission, yeah.
MJ: So can you remember your first one?
RH: Very well, yeah.
MJ: Could you tell me a little bit about it?
RH: [laughs]
MJ: Because this was your first flight with your own crew I just wondered if you could sort of tell us what it was like please.
RH: It was a very hair-raising, hair-raising experience to be flying towards Germany with a full load of bombs for the first time and er, it was quite something, [laughs] but er, we were. We flew to, the target was Brest in France for that particular mission, and were bombing two battle ships which were there at the time in dock and I mean we obviously we survived much to our own relief [laughs] and er we took it from there. That was our first trip, mmm [pause]. At the end of the war I was a photographer and I was stationed at Farnborough where they have a school of photography. While I was there I had the job of giving orders to no less than a hundred and fifty chaps who were all NCO crew members, who’d, who’d, they’d all ended the war in on the squadrons and they were, all they wanted to do was go home, I’m talking about a hundred and fifty NCO’s and I was the chap in charge of them.
MJ: Yeah.
RH: And er all they wanted to do was, it was demob, they wanted to go home and I had to make it easy for them, which was a heck of a job [laughs]
MJ: So how did you do that?
RH: [laughs] Well, I had to organise games and things, anything that would, to keep them occupied and er it’s not a, it sounds easy but it wasn’t [laughs] when you’ve got a hundred and fifty blokes to please and all they had on their minds was they wanted to go home because their war was all finished and they were ready to, they had been repatriated.
MJ: Why did you have to send them back in sections?
RH: No I had to send them home to their various homes [sighs] not a nice job [laughs] [pause] Home! They wanted to go home, they were, the war was finished and all they wanted to do was go home and that applied to all a hundred and fifty blokes, they were all NCO’s, they had all completed a tour of operations and all wanted, for them the war was over.
MJ: So what did you have to sort out for them so they could go home?
RH: That’s right.
MJ: So what, what sort of things did you have to sort out apart from keeping them happy?
RH: No that was it.
MJ: That was your job, to make sure they -
RH: To keep them occupied until they could go home virtually, yeah, so I did that for some time and er course eventually I finished up at the school of geography and er that was it. My home was Leat [?] so I was able to live at home and er go to work at Farnborough, it was wonderful [laughs] There you go. [pause]
MJ: So you’ve been a prisoner of war?
RH: Yeah, in Germany, Stalag Luft 1, mmm.
MJ: Did you get caught straight away or did you have a bit of a run around first?
RH: No I was, I was free for a couple of days that’s all, then they caught up with me [pause]
MJ: How did they catch up with you, just in the wrong place at the right time or
RH: Me I was sitting in the forest going along and then all of a sudden a chap said halt, halt as the Germans do [laughs] and that was when my war ended virtually. [pause] mmm.
MJ: Were any of your other crew caught with you or?
RH: Yeah they were, no they were, we were all separated, we all went out various ways, I did, I did meet the pilot and the bomb aimer and the navigator in the Stalag, they finished up there in, in in the Stalag and others who were killed.
MJ: Oh.
RH: Mmm.
MJ: When you were incarcerated how did you keep yourself busy, like you said when the crews were demobbed you had to keep them busy, how did you keep yourself busy while you were incarcerated?
Other: Writing poetry.
RH: Ah, you see in those days I could write, I used to love to write, wrote all sorts of stuff but it’s all gone I can no longer write.
Other: It’s only because of his hand, I’ve just thought, in the book isn’t there some of your poems in it?
RH: No, that’s
Other: Towards the end [pause] everything’s in here really what you want to know about Roy, there he is prisoner of war with his number on him and everything. Would you like your cup of tea now? [pause]
RH: Hello my name is Roy Hill, I was a flight lieutenant in the RAF during the war and er I joined up in 1941. I had hoped to fly in the Battle of Britain but that was all over then. It, the Battle of Britain was fought in 1940 and I was, I just missed out on that one, and I joined up in 1941 the year after and er, of course I had subsequently had quite a long time in the Air Force right through the war until the end of the war when I was a photographic officer in the at the school of photography in Farnborough in Hampshire and it was, there, it was, sorry.
Other: That’s alright.
MJ: On behalf of International Bomber Command Digital Archive Unit, I would like to thank Roy Hill at his home at Woodpecker Cottage, for his recording on the 7th July 2015. Many thanks.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Roy Hill
Creator
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Mick Jeffery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-07
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Sound
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AHillR150707
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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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00:19:28 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Roy Hill joined the RAF wanting to be a pilot but became a wireless operator air gunner. On his eighteenth operation in a Lancaster flying over the Ruhr he was shot down by a German night fighter. He was captured and incarcerated in Stalag Luft 1 for about six months. He wrote poetry whilst he was a prisoner of war. He was repatriated by Americans and flown home in a Flying Fortress. At the end of the war he served as a photographic officer and was in charge of NCOs waiting to be demobbed.
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Carron Moss
Carolyn Emery
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1944
1945
aircrew
crewing up
Lancaster
Me 109
prisoner of war
RAF Silverstone
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/348/3517/PWaughmanR1501.1.jpg
ea7d7d15f3b9f96826258b16ff6e1ae6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/348/3517/AWaughmanR150803.1.mp3
4b20ad44c8f089eeec0544eae42cc539
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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Waughman, Rusty
Russell Reay Waughman
Russell R Waughman
Russell Waughman
R R Waughman
R Waughman
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Russell Reay "Rusty" Waughman (1923 - 2023, 1499239 and 171904 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 101 Squadron.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-04-01
2015-08-03
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Waughman, R
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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RW: All wrote a little letter and signed it and sent it to the station commander who interviewed us and said, ‘This constitutes mutiny.’ So, with all our explanations of what went on he accepted that the fact that we’d been left off the draft and the corporal [?] corporal from West Kirby was actually charged for taking bribes to take, put people on, take people off drafts and put friends on. So, there we are. There we are. We’ve got no records, no kit, no nothing so we had to start again. So we didn’t do the, so we went and did our IT, initial training, again at Stratford on Avon which was rather nice, very fine. Nice place Stratford. I think I had my first girlfriend at Stratford. She was a very, she was a nice little girl. I often whatever happened to all these creatures looking back on all these times but there we are. We did our initial training again and from there of course we had to learn to start playing with aeroplanes and to start with we had to make sure that we were alright and worth sending overseas. We had to go to Codsall at Wolverhampton and er on a Tiger Moth just go solo. As soon as you got, went solo that was it finished until you were posted overseas and we went, went over to Canada on the Empire Training Scheme on the little ship called The Battery a converted Polish ship which was very comfortable, very nice. Very congested of course. And we landed at St John’s in Canada, down to Moncton which was the holding unit and then we travelled all across Canada on a public train to Calgary and the little aerodrome there was called Dewinton, which was just south of Calgary. We’d been there, back there since and Dewinton is now a suburb of Calgary which is incredible when you think of it. And that was nice and we were learning to fly on Tiger Moths and the Stearman. The Americans, the Boeing people had sent up sixty Stearman to the air force for people to learn to fly on. So we trained on both the Stearman and Tiger Moths and of course having finished the course I was a bit slow learning so I was, I think they were a little concerned about what the state of flying was. I was, I’ve always been a slow learner and I had a wash out check with the CGI on the station who very kindly allowed me to carry on and really from that time I never really looked back. It was really quite remarkable. And for some reason, I don’t know why, looking back I don’t know why they ever asked it but they said, ‘What do you want to become? What do you want to join? Fighter Command or Bomber Command?’ And you can imagine about ninety nine percent of us said Fighter Command so I was sent to Bomber Command which meant going down, back down on to the prairies to Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw learning to fly on the Airspeed Oxford and we had great times there. One thing we learned there which helped us later on in flying experience was the fact that we used to go off on a cross country with two pilots, no navigator, just one acting as pilot and one acting as navigator and switched over halfway through and we saw on a lake, which looked rather nice, we said, ‘Let’s low fly over this lake,’ which we weren’t allowed to do of course, which we did. Little did we know that there were ducks on the lake which rose up and we clattered through these ducks. I ended up with a duck wrapped around my face. We had six duck in the aircraft. Fortunately, they ended up in the engines nacelles, they didn’t damage the engines and of course when we got back we had a right old rocket from the, from the boss but the fact that we got the aircraft back between us and landed they allowed us to carry on. But I had to go to the dentist the next day on camp and the dentist said, ‘Oh you were the bloke who flew that aeroplane.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘We had duck for dinner.’ And then I sat back. And of course that was sort of an experience which helped us much, much later in life, in flying life, which was quite remarkable. And so of course having finished that course you took the little white flash out of your cap which was indicated that you were UT aircrew and took that out and you sewed on your wings in and then, oh, you were a pilot which was quite, which was quite remarkable. And of course you had to get back home so we forgot all about aeroplanes for quite a little while, travelled right back across Canada down to New York where we joined the Queen, Queen Elizabeth to come back home on the Queen Elizabeth and that was, wasn’t in convoy. We just pointed east and set off. It was quite, so new to us. We were so naïve and that was just a wonderful experience except on the Queen Elizabeth there were seventeen thousand others and we had a first class cabin along with eight other people which, you were sleeping in bunks with a chappie’s bottom above you rubbing on your nose, you know. But it was a wonderful experience. Two meals a day and it was wonderful. We lost two people overboard er but the boat didn’t stop they just threw life belts over and, poor souls. But there were Americans, nurses, Americans, Canadians, all coming back, back to the UK. Got back to Gourock up on the Clyde and then of course we had to find somewhere to go and be rehabilitated. We went first of all to Harrogate and then down to Whitley Bay and then back down to Oxford where we had a little rehab course on Oxfords just to get your hand back in again on Oxfords. That was at Kidlington, at Croughton, just outside Oxford. And the course, then of course you had to go to OTU Operational Training Unit and that was an amazing experience when we were flying the Vickers Wellington, the old Wimpy. When we got there of course you had to get a crew. You had a get a five man crew for the Wimpy and the system as I’m sure everybody knows was the fact that they got all the pilots, all the navigators, all the wireless operators a gunner and no engineer at the time and but the, and the navigator and put everybody into this big room and said, ‘Sort yourselves out into crews.’ And they used to go around and say, ‘I haven’t got a navigator. Are you a navigator? Can you fly? Do you want to fly with me?’ and this sort of system is amazing and the system worked. It really was incredible. And my crew had, you had no idea of the background of these people and my crew turned out to be the most wonderful collection of blokes and we flew really as a crew and not just a skipper and bods behind we just, and it worked out wonderfully well. Just to give an idea what they were my bomb aimer up front he was, had a little gypsy existence over in Manchester, a dapper little man, he used to come on operations with a crease in his trousers which was unheard of. My engineer, we had two engineers, I’ll relay about that a little bit when we come to flying. Les, my, I shan’t give his name because it so happened that he couldn’t cope on operations. He was just more or less a young lad working in an office. My navigator Alec, Alec Cowan, he was a real, he was a wonderful navigator, wonderful navigator. He lied about his age to join up. He joined up when he was sixteen and he was operational flying with us at eighteen. We didn’t know at the time. We didn’t find this out until sixty years later which was just as well. We were sitting in the pub at, at Lincoln at our reunion and we were saying, we had just had our eightieth birthdays and we said. ‘Oh we just had our, when’s your eightieth birthday Alec?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s not for another two years yet.’ So that was the first time we, we found out what he was and he was just really more or less straight from school but he really was a most wonderful navigator. Taffy, a little wireless operator, he was a character. Oh, he was a mad little nut he was. We tried to find out where he was after the war and we discovered that his background was in Aberdare and his uncle had a pub and I think he was helping out in his uncle’s pub and I think he took that up for the rest of his life and I wouldn’t say he was a rebel, he was a wonderful character. His mischief, terribly mischievous bloke and we still keep in touch now. He’s a very, very close friend. A lovely little friend, Taffy. My engineer, I eventually had another engineer. A chap called Curly, Curly Ormerod and he was on the situation where he didn’t fly with his skipper who was shot down and killed and he didn’t fly that night he, because I had to get rid of my first engineer Curly was a spare engineer and he joined us and he was a, worked for the council in Oldham I think it was where he was a trainee engineer and just, only a young lad, he was twenty and my special duty operator because of the special duties he was my special duty operator, he was an Austin apprentice and he wanted to join the air force as a pilot but the waiting list for the pilot training then was quite long and he couldn’t wait that long so he volunteered to join as a gunner. We’ll explain a little more about Ted when we come to what they did in the aeroplane. Tommy, my mid upper gunner, he was a council worker in Rotherham and he was the old man of the crew. He was twenty six. The next one down was twenty. I was twenty at the time which was incredible when you think of our kids at twenty. You know, I’m sure if the same thing happened again now I’m sure the responses from the children, the young youth, would be the same but he was, he was married and he had a bit of leave on the station because his wife produced a baby. So, poor old Tommy, he had rather a tragic death after the war but still that Tommy. And my rear gunner, he was a Canadian. His father, an Englishman who had a funeral service, funeral service which he developed in Vancouver in America and Harry through his father’s English experience although he joined the RCAF he came over and joined the RAF as a Canadian. Again, these lads, you know although these vast different backgrounds we all gelled and we all worked together wonderfully well and what they did with us they kept us alive, you know and it really was wonderful. And I, myself, I couldn’t, I didn’t have any education at all. I went to school but because of my illnesses I went to school to start with at the age of five in Newcastle and then I became desperately ill and I was in bed for six months as a young teenager with TB so I couldn’t take place in sport or anything like that so when they came to doing exams when they did the scholarship in those days I went to school just before I was due to take the scholarship and of course I didn’t pass. So there I was. I was, I couldn’t go to a secondary school so I was sent to what they called a training school for the shipyards and it was a sort of engineering training school where at the age sixteen I started to learn about art and drawing, machine drawing and this sort of thing. It was, I enjoyed the school. It was nice but I had no exam, no exams at the end of it so when I, when I joined up I had no matric, no school cert, no exams at all. So how on earth I was ever passed. The only thing that helped I think when they were testing for the attestation was the fact that I became, I started off on the stage at the Newcastle Rep Theatre for a, for a year a bit while I got a position as a pupil surveyor at an architect surveyors office in Newcastle and there I used to do a lot of surveying work using angles and trade vectors and things which helped in the navigation exams and I think that helped me to pass the attestation exams in London. So there we are. There, you’ve got a crew. But we mentioned Ted, the special duty chap, Ted Manners, but he didn’t join the crew at OTU at all because we only had the five man crew and we didn’t know about, anything about special squadrons then of course and of course having finished at Operational Training Unit on Wimpies we were posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit which was at 1662 Conversion Unit at Blyton and of course with the demand for Lancaster aircraft and operational aircraft they had very few Lancasters available. The ones they had available were really the ones that weren’t fit for operational flying so we started to learn to fly four engine aircraft on Halifaxes, on ‘Halibags.’ A nice aeroplane to fly but not quite as amenable as the Lancaster from our experience later on but that was, that was nice, that was fine and of course on the station, on the same station they had what they called an LFS a Lancaster Finishing School so when we’d gone solo on the Halibag we went on to join this LFS, the Lancaster Finishing School and this was on Lancasters and they were a different aeroplane all together. It was a wonderful experience and experience we never expected to have in my life. But I had a little problem. Although my height was right I’ve got little short legs and when you’ve got twelve, four engines of twelve eighty horsepower all taking off with each engine, each propeller going around with three thousand revs you get a lot of torque, a lot of swing on take-off and with my little short legs I was having a hell of a job keeping these bloody black things straight down the runway on take-off so I was a little bit later finishing my training conversion than my friend Paul [Zaggy] who I’d trained with, been in parallel with for many, many months. And when we finished, when he’d finished his course he was posted to 101 squadron and when my turn came about two or three days later I asked the flight commander, ‘Can I go and join my friend Paul on 101 squadron because we’d been friends for a long, long time?’ And his response was, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s a special duty squadron and we only send the best ones there.’ And I said Oh God that was a bit of a comedown. Anyway, a couple of days later he said, ‘Right, Waughman, 101 squadron. Off you go.’ And I said, ‘Well what’s this special duties thing?’ He said, ‘Oh you’ll find out when you get there.’ He didn’t know actually from what we found out later. And when we got to the squadron the day we arrived on the squadron my friend Paul had been killed the night before. And that, you suddenly begin to realise this is serious stuff, you know and you didn’t really think about it beforehand but then it became realistic. You did a couple of cross countries to get your hand in on the squadron experience and then we were given a special duty operator. An eighth member of the crew who spoke German, a German speaker operator and he was flying, was using this equipment called ABC. This ABC equipment started down on the south of England where there were fifteen stations with very fluent German speaking operators who could talk to the German night fighter controllers and jam their signals to their fighters, instructions to their fighters but it only had a range of a hundred and forty miles so that didn’t cover the deep penetration raids in to eastern Europe. So, Sydney Bufton, one of the air ministry boffins said well let’s put it in an aeroplane so they put, started putting them in. It took about three thousand hours to fit this equipment in to an aeroplane and quite an expense and this was allocated to 100 squadron. Now, 100 squadron were also having H2S which was a ground scanning radar and the power unit on the Lancaster mean you couldn’t cope with the ABC and the H2S so they chose the next squadron down which was 101 squadron. So 101 squadron became the special duty squadron flying this ABC and what they called the stuff on the ground station was called Jostle and it had a code name of Corona. Hence it became the Cigar and it was known as ground Cigar and of course when they got it stuck into an aeroplane it became ABC which was Airborne Cigar and Bufton wrote to the air ministry saying that in future correspondence all reference to Airborne Cigar aircraft will be known as ABC in future correspondence so hence 101 squadron became the ABC of the RAF which is remarkable. What Ted had, he had a little three inch cathode ray tube where he could pick up the frequency of the night fighter controllers and lock a little strobe on these, on these, on his screen, cover that with the aircraft’s, aircraft strobe, lock that on and he’d locked on to the frequency of the German night fighter controller’s instructions to the fighters. Having decided that on another little switch where there was German speaking because there were Poles, Czechs and things, once he’d decided that he pressed another little button which blasted engine noise out on that frequency and jammed the signals. And it was a wigwog noise woooooo oooo oooo and the Germans called that, they had a name for this and it was called dudelsack and I think it’s quite an appropriate little description ‘cause dudelsack means bagpipes. And so we had this ABC equipment which is wonderful stuff and this started operating in September, in ‘43. We didn’t join the squadron until November ‘43 and on the first raid the first, one of the first instructions that the special duty operator received from the German signals was, ‘Achtung. Achtung. English bastards coming.’ And that was one of the first instructions they had but sadly, one of our aircraft on that first raid was shot down and the Germans had the system right from the beginning but even the [telephones] people knew of the system but they couldn’t really work out all the technology of it at all so that was quite the thing. That was one of the things that added to the attrition rate on our squadron, the fact that the German night fighters could home on to our transmissions ‘cause we were using their frequencies so they could home on to us and the ABC aircraft were used on every major bombing raid that went out and the idea was that our aircraft were staggered every ten miles through the whole bomber stream. We acted as a normal bomber aircraft with a reduced bomb load, only slightly, well I suppose so I don’t think it ever happened actually but the equipment weighed something like [six or seven hundred pounds] plus another operator so it knocked our bomb load down a little bit and we had three enormous aerials transmitters on the aircraft. Two on the top and one under the nose and these were nearly seven foot long. It didn’t affect the aerodynamics of the aircraft whatsoever. We didn’t, we wouldn’t have realised they were there and we just there we were and our first raid, when we went off on our first raid my little engineer, there was something strange about him he didn’t seem really with it at all. Anyway, so we found we were getting in a bit of a mess and got in the way so, with experience I think we could have carried on but being so inexperienced we came back, we aborted the trip. So, we were, this was just at the very start in November of the Battle of Berlin and this was a trip to Berlin and the WingCo wasn’t too happy about it, WingCo Alexander. And our next operation a couple of nights later again was to Berlin and Les, my little engineer, nineteen year old, we had an engine on fire, a starboard outer went on fire and he just couldn’t do anything he just sat on the floor and just shiver and shake he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t do any of his work at all and I had to, the graviner button on the Lancaster is down on the right hand side of the instrument panel and I had to half get out of the seat to cover all this lot. He couldn’t do any of the fuel control systems at all. So, anyway when we got back I reported this to the wing commander who said, ‘Well you know I suppose you’ve done the right thing,’ and Les, this, my little engineer left the squadron that day, that afternoon. Whether he was made LMF which they usually do in those days we never did find out but he never should have been because he never refused to fly and this is what happened to a lot of Bomber Command aircrew who were literally shit scared. They really were and that was really a physical thing as well and these lads who knew what the conditions was never, they’d rather face the guns of Germany rather than have the stigma of LMF stamped on their documents and this LMF stamped on their documents followed them wherever they went afterwards and this information is kept by the record office and isn’t being released until 2035 so by that time none of the people will be alive to get any slur on their character. So we lost our little Les and this is when we got Curly who didn’t fly with Les the night he was shot down so we acquired Curly as an engineer. Wonderful character. Again, another great tease at the, he was a nice man though but we gelled as a crew and really in those days you did become slightly insular because you worked as a crew and trained as a crew and you played as a crew and I must admit we, we drank a lot. Eight pints a night wasn’t out of the way you know and this was part of the relaxation system for the, for the air force. Because of this Harris wrote to all station commanders, again we found out this much, much later, only fairly recently, the fact that a directive had been sent to the station commanders saying that no Bomber Command aircrew must be used on station duties unless it affected the running of the station and intimated that the relaxation activities must be condoned. Which, as far as that was concerned, was young lads full of testosterone was beer and women and it sounds a bit crude but the girls and boys on the station were really wonderful. They were really good companions. They knew what the system was and they complied and they were really lovely. We had one little girl who used to look after us in our little hut, in our little nissen hut which was, which was just a corrugated iron nissen hut and she was a little Welsh girl with a little doggie and she was known as the camp bicycle ‘cause everybody rode it, you know and these are the sort of the things that went but it wasn’t pornography it was just an accepted way of release of stress and one of my friends who I knew very well he used to say, ‘Well, thank God for sex. It’s kept me sane.’ And this was just a means of release of stress on the aircraft. And a lot of it did happen in Bomber Command sadly and it caused people to lose their lives which is rather a shame but you know those lads who flew and knowing their condition like that they were really the bravest of the brave, you know. They really were. Wonderful. And it kept Bomber Command going. But LMF, they didn’t have so many LMF. I think there weren’t a huge number cases of LMF but it was a rotten stigma and of course then having been on the on the, on the squadron with our ABC equipment we were involved very much with the German night fighter system and this was organised by a chap called, oh I’ve forgotten what they called him now, I’ll think of it in minute but he organised that the, all of eastern Europe, western Europe would be split in to five boxes. The Kammhuber. Kammhuber, the Kammhuber Line and this in each box each controller had control of their fighter system and they had a couple of systems there where they had, called Wilde Sau and Zahme Sau which is Wild Boar and Tame Boar and with the Wurzburg radar they could direct a fighter in to the bomber stream and nearly always ME109s and they were the Wild Boar who could go and find their own aircraft to attack and the Tame Boar was with Wurzburg and Freya aircraft systems whereby they could direct an aircraft almost on to an individual aircraft which was quite alarming as it turned out. We had experience of that and they developed a system called Lichtenstein whereby you see these aircraft with German aircraft they nearly all the ME109s with an array of aerials around the nose and they could actually home onto an individual aircraft and because of our ABC equipment we were very, very vulnerable. They could home on to the ABC equipment and the H2S and they developed the system called Naxos and SN2 which was very, very effective indeed and they could home directly on to aircraft and counter, counter measures for our broadcast so we had, they had a system where they could home on to our aircraft. We had a system where we would counter measure their counter measures, counter measure their receptions and they developed a [Frensburg] which counter measured our counter measures and we developed counter measures that would counter measured their counter measures and so on and the electronic wall we learned afterwards really was quite terrific but the German night fighter system was, really was very good. And they had with their, with their Wurzburg searchlights, radar controlled searchlights, radar controlled guns they had what they called predicted flak and predicted searchlights and when you were flying along you’d see this characteristic big blue searchlight appear which would wave backwards and forwards and as soon as it picked you up on the radar it flicked on to you and you were flying in their searchlights and all the searchlights roundabout would come on. You’d have perhaps forty, fifty, sixty searchlights flying with you and you were flying in daylight and of course the night fighters used to get in amongst you then but we had systems of flying. We flew the corkscrew pattern which flying a corkscrew pattern more or less like a horizontal corkscrew. It was bloody hard work when you’ve got a fully loaded aircraft. You lost a little bit of height doing it but it was really effective and the sad thing is when gunners, some gunners saw these things and gave instructions like say, ‘Dive starboard go’ and something like this some of the captains said, well, ‘Why?’ And of course by that time it was far too late but this corkscrew pattern did help enormously to evade the things and on the predicted flak it was quite a characteristic burst of flak. They usually put out a box system of flak where they just covered this area completely with anti-aircraft fire and you had to fly through this box of fire but they had this predicted flak whereby they could send up the shell which would burst in the characteristic sort of development and if you saw this behind you, if you were lucky enough, you knew this was predicted flak so, and you knew it’d take forty five seconds for the Germans to reload their guns, fire their shells and for the shell to burst so you turned off forty five degrees, and flew for about forty seconds then turned back ninety degrees and hope the next one burst behind you. This happened to us once and we nearly ended up in the system for twenty five, twenty minutes just doing this evasion all the time. Similarly with the searchlights, the searchlights I caused a bit of hilarity one night when we got back to debriefing saying that we were attacked by searchlights over Hanover but we were in searchlights for nearly half an hour trying to get out of them which, but with these sort of things happened on raids and so of course there we are we are flying on a squadron and it was daily life of being on the squadron. When you woke up in the morning usually late, after breakfast or early after lunch you went up to flights and on the wall you saw a battle order and could see your name on the battle order and all the battle order told you was A) you were flying, the crew you were flying with, the aircraft you were flying in, and the time of briefing, and the time of meal and when you saw that the first thing you did was go and change your underwear which is, which is, it really was. To say that you weren’t fearful, you know, it was very, it was very anxious, became very anxious because you had no idea where you were going. It was just you were on the battle order that night. So we used to go up to flights and check the aircraft, the serviceability of the aircraft, meet the ground crew, wonderful ground crew I had, and there you’d ask what the petrol load was and what the bomb load was and if you had lots of petrol, not so many bombs you knew you were going a long way. Vice versa if you had lots of bombs and not so much petrol you weren’t going so far so you had some idea what the thing was going to, what the raid was going to be about and then at briefing of course, on the wall, we were all in nissen huts by the way, little tin huts, on the wall they had a big map of Europe covered by a map, a curtain and when you all sat down and all got collected together they drew the curtain back and there was the red line which was a tape showing the route to and from the target and if it was a long distance target, Berlin, Munich, these groans used to go up right through the briefing and then you were briefed by the various section leaders, the met officer, the armament officer, navigation officer and there of course then you had to get out to the aircraft so we went in to the crew room, got our kit on and the girls in the parachute section, [collect your] parachute section, they were great. One little girl one day said, ‘Let me have your battle dress.’ And she took my battle dress off, took my wings off and sewed a lucky three penny piece under my wing. And these are the sort of things that went on. Wonderful characters. And you had a locker where you kept your kit in the locker and when you were flying the rear gunner had what they called a Sidcot suit which was an electrically heated suit but the rest of the crew you could really manage with just a thick jumper and battle dress. Some wore some form of overall but the costumes were really quite, quite ordinary. You had flying boots. We had, originally we had the brown fur lined flying boots and after that we had the escape boots, black escape boots, whereby they had a little knife concealed in the boot where you could cut the top off and leave a little, like a pair of shoes when you got shot down. There we are. We’ve got our kit, we’ve got our kit we’ve got to get out the aircraft so the crew buses arrived and we had to get out in to the, in to the aircraft but the atmosphere was quite electric, you know. They had sort of two sort or reactions. Some people were verbose and talked and over talked which was out of characteristic and some were just clammed up and just didn’t talk at all. So, when you got to out to the aircraft you just checked and went around and did a normal flight check for the aircraft, waiting for the signal to taxi out and of course once you got there, once you got in the aircraft there was no outside communication whatsoever ‘cause the Germans could pick up. In fact with their radar system they knew that the raid was going to take place and they knew the height you were going to fly at, they knew the course you were going to fly and the speed you were flying at but they didn’t know where you were going. So, we were waiting at the aircraft for the verilight to tell us to go and taxi out and of course the other little superstitions, you know the old tale of just a bit of luck you wee’d on the tail wheel. The lads used to wee on the tail wheel. We never did of course but er [laughs]. My rear gunner Harry, being stuck at the back he didn’t feel a part of this the bombing lark at all so he used to take a couple of empty beer bottles with him and when we were over the target his contribution to the bombing was to throw out a couple of empty beer bottles. This, this on one occasion when we were waiting to get on the aircraft the station commander, Group Captain King used to come around and just say, ‘Hello lads.’ Wished them all best of luck. Thinking of a man like that knowing, sending all these lads you know that a third of them aren’t going to come back, you know. What went through their mind must be, must be awful. Anyway, when the group captain saw Harry without his beer bottles Harry explained. ‘Oh I haven’t got my bloody beer bottles.’ He said, ‘Right. Get in the car.’ Dashed down to the mess, got a couple of beer bottles and drove him back again so Harry had them. Whether he drank them or threw them out full we never did find out but Harry had his beer bottles. I had a little, I wasn’t superstitious, touch wood but my cousin Mary, I’m very fond of Mary I think our parents were getting a little bit worried but Mary she gave me a silk scarf, a little RAF silk scarf which I wore on every operation I went on and I wore long johns, used to wear the long johns on the flying and I thought well if I change my long johns I’ll, you know, I’ll change my luck. We had two pairs. One for wearing and one for washing. I never had mine washed and I wore the same pair of long johns for thirty operations and the lads used to say, ‘Well you took them off and stood them up in your locker’ and you can imagine the odour on the aircraft with all this sort of thing going on must have been pretty awful. You didn’t notice it at the time. But another thing I had was my dad, one of the talismans for naval people was a caul and the caul is a sack a baby is born in and my dad was given one of these when he, when he first joined, when he started operations in the navy in the First World War and I was on leave just before I was joining the squadron. They knew I was going to go on an operational squadron and I was standing, I was standing by the stove in the kitchen and my dad came up and he wasn’t a very effusive man and he said, ‘Here’s this,’ and he gave me his caul in a little tin box which I’ve still got and that’s over a hundred years old and he said, ‘There you are. Good luck. I love you.’ And that was really a three hankie job, you know. A wonderful little man. But there we are I had my caul and I didn’t take it on operations but it kept me alive and these are the sort of superstitions you had but we weren’t on because of the job we were doing we weren’t allowed to take any sort of document, photographs or anything at all because of the very secret nature of our, with the work we doing. It was treated very, we weren’t allowed to take any photographs on the squadron at all. We did. And everything was kept very, we weren’t allowed to discuss it anywhere outside but A) our aircraft was parked at dispersal, we were W which was far end of dispersal just by a fence and the main road was just outside and I don’t know what guarding they had on the aircraft but anyway part of the secrecy thing was not having to take any documentation. When we got our sandwiches they were wrapped up in newspaper so they had a good, they could have had a good idea what was going on. So there we were, off on operations and operational flying became to start with you were so inexperienced that you didn’t really realise what was going on and the casualty rate in the first five operations was something like forty percent which was as high as that and it really was. It became quite an alarming thing. We didn’t realise at the time. We only found out this many years afterwards. So our squadron were very vulnerable and once we got past the five operations squadrons, five operations you really became quite fatalistic. You just, you were doing a job and accepted what you had to do and you expected you were going to die and it was quite a strange relationship that you had and you had a bit, a little bit of sick humour and I’m sure folk know of the grim reaper, the old skeletal figure with his scythe and with his scythe you got the chop and we used to say, when you were talking, standing by somebody, put your hand on his shoulder and you said, ‘Death put his bony hand on your shoulder and [live] chap I’m coming,’ you know and if you were in the mess and one of your comrades has been killed and gone you used to drink his health and you used to say, ‘Here’s to good old,’ so and so, ‘And here’s the next one to die.’ So this sort of atmosphere existed. Some people had premonitions you know and my mother, my mother was an old witch really she used to have dreams and things and she had a dream one night that things weren’t going to go right and she tried to contact the station to see what was going on and of course she couldn’t because the station was completely isolated and that was a night when we had an awful lot of trouble. But she had this idea. And one of the girls on the squadron one of the little WAAF officers, on the Nuremberg raid, said to her fiancé Jimmy [Batten] Smith she said, ‘You’ll be over the target about ten minutes past midnight.’ She said, ‘Right, I’ll set my alarm clock and I’ll think of you when you’re over the target.’ She woke up about 11 o’clock, half past ten, 11 o’clock and knew something wasn’t right and she switched on her light and listened and couldn’t find anything, anything about it at all and Jimmy, over the target, as soon as he left the target, just at the time, he was shot down and killed so he never got back. There’s another, our Flight Commander, Squadron Leader Robinson he was a wonderful, he had very, very rapid promotion because our previous flight commander was killed and he was promoted from flight lieutenant up to, straight up to squadron leader within a matter of weeks and he became our squadron commander er flight commander. Wonderful little man. And he had a rear gunner who was seconded from the American air force and this American chappie still had his brown overalls and American flying kit and they were in the mess and the lads were playing crib and poker and he, this Jones a chap called Jones, won the, won the kitty and I can see it now a little pile of ten shilling notes which he won which he when he picked it up he said, ‘Shan’t be needing this.’ And gave it all away. That night, on the raid, on the twenty ninth raid they were all killed. So whether they had these sort of premonitions, you know, it was quite remarkable and one of the bomb, when I came off leave one occasion we only had a short, a few days leave the bombing, the armament officer, only a young lad, he looked strange and I said, ‘Are you alright, Geoff?’ And he said, ‘Well, funny thing happened,’ an aircraft had crashed on take-off and hit part of the bomb dump and he jumped in his little wagon to go out and see what he could do out there and when he got on the perimeter track near where the bomb dump was there was a chap waiting and saying, ‘Don’t go down in there. They’re all dead.’ This chap was covered in blood and whatever. He said, ‘Don’t go down in there. They’re all dead.’ But he said, ‘I must.’ So when he went down to see the, what was going on he found the body of the man he’d been talking to on the perimeter track dead in the hut. So, and within a few weeks he was white haired. And these sorts of strange things happened you know it’s a, it’s a, you didn’t realise at the time all the significance of all these things but there we are. One of the things that happened, on one of the early raids when we went and poor old Bomber Harris, he didn’t like the idea at all but they developed what they called the transport plan whereby they were bombing railway martialling yards, [tank?] depots, station er station signal boxes and train stations to stop goods going down for the pre-invasion, for the German pre- invasion and so this was the transport plan and Harris didn’t like this but we went off on one raid to a place called Hasselt which was on the Belgian/German border, railway martialling yards and we got within about ten minutes of the target. This was all at night. This was all night flying of course in cloud, mainly in cloud and my engineer who was looking out the window said a very rude word, something about fornicating in hades and the next thing we knew this other aircraft hit us slap on the side and we just crashed into this, the two aircraft just crashed together and we were, he was slightly underneath us and his propellers cut through our bomb aimer’s compartment, just behind Norman’s feet. He was lying down ready to bomb. His mid upper, his canopy, the other aircraft canopy took off our starboard tyre, his turret, which was sticking up at the top of his aeroplane carved through our fuselage at the back, left a big hole in the back. We lost part of the tale plane. Lost all our electrics. Harry, the rear gunner was knocked unconscious, only temporary and we were a bit of a mess and thereby we, we were sitting, I didn’t see all this going on but the crew saw what was going on and when we hit this aircraft we were literally sitting on top of it and his propellers were churning through our little bits and pieces and we were in a bit of a mess and afterwards I was asked to write a little resume of what happened in the collision just for purely records sake and to give it a title of the most significant thing that happened, you remembered, on the trip and the most significant bit was sitting on top of this other aircraft with no control over your aircraft whatsoever. All the controls were just limp and wobbly. So, nothing. So, I called this the title of this thing, ‘It went limp in my hand,’ which was highly censored. I wasn’t allowed to do that. So this report went through and in consequence we had to do, coming back, we had to do a crash landing. We had Fido on the station and the Fido system was a sort of a little triangular system with the fuel pipe on the top and the gaps of about ten metre gaps within each section and unfortunately our dud wheel skidded between the gap and the thing and the other one bounced over the top of the pipes and just put a little dent in the top and there was a casualty that night sadly. We were skidding towards the control tower in the dark and we were getting very close to the control tower and all the staff on the control or most of the staff on the control tower and the little girls, came out to watch this idiot bend his aeroplane and as we were skidding towards it one of these girls jumped back and sprained her ankle and that was the only casualty that night but there were sort of talks of decorations and things but it never happened so I was very kindly given a green endorsement in my logbook and mentioned in despatches. That’s in the logbook now still but if it had been a red one it would have been an adverse report but a green one was a pat on the back sort of thing so that was, that was quite nice but there of course that aircraft was written off. As far as the squadron it was written off it had to be repaired and rebuilt but we discovered that two main longerons going along the back of the aircraft were badly damaged and had we to have taken evasive action no doubt the aircraft would have broken up and we realised that a lot of damage at the back because we had a big hole in the floor and I told Harry, the rear gunner, I said, ‘Harry, pick up your parachute, come up front just in case anything else happens.’ And he said, ‘No. I’ll stay here and keep a look out.’ And these are the characters that they were. Wonderful characters. And that wasn’t the only thing that Harry did. We went on one long trip and his electrically heated Sidcot suit failed. He never said a peep, never said a word and when we got back seven and a half, eight hours later getting out the aircraft they said. ‘Where’s Harry?’ ‘Oh he must still be there.’ So I popped into the aircraft, opened his door and there he was sitting with an icicle from his face mask as thick as my wrist down between his legs. He couldn’t move and he’d never said a peep he just kept on doing his job. He was in sick quarters for nearly three weeks and that affected him for the rest of his life. And this is what these poor lads got up to. It really was wonderful. I was so lucky with the lads I had as a crew. Wonderful and very conscientious lads. So there we are. We got back and of course the aircraft had to be taken away and we had to get a new aircraft. Our first aircraft was W with the squadron letters were SR and we had a W, W ABC all the way through. We had W, so we had W and there was a song of the day called. “Coming in on a wing and a prayer.” So I thought. ‘Oh lets,’ and there’s a P O Prune character so I painted on the front of the aircraft this P O Prune character with wings and “On a wing and a prayer” coming underneath and of course that was the one that we crash landed. That disappeared. That went. And we get a new aircraft almost immediately. Well, they got another aircraft almost immediately straight from MU and, ‘What are we going to put on the nose. What nose art were we going to have?’ And when we got out of dispersal to see the new aircraft Jock Steadman or Willy Steadman, Willy Steadman our Scottish in charge, NCO in charge of the aircraft he’d already painted on the aircraft Oor Wullie and Oor Wullie was the cartoon character from the Glasgow Sunday Post and that was the aircraft which gets all the publicity now and we did more operations in the other one than we did than we did in this one but they were wonderful aeroplanes to fly. Really, really were. So, anyway, there we are. We’ve got a new aeroplane and another operation we went on was to Hasselt which was another transport plant target whereby 5 group and 1 group were involved. A hundred and seventy three aircraft from each group. We were scattered all the way through the raid, just our squadron, so we were going to Hasselt which was French had been French military base which was the biggest military base in Europe at the time right on the edge of the village of Mailly and we were briefed to bomb very, very strictly. We didn’t want to kill anybody in the village so we had to be very precise, we were told to be very precise with our bombing so, and we were to assemble at a point just north of Mailly called Chalon whereby you waited there to get instructions from the master bomber, Cheshire who was the master bomber to go and bomb. He was really being very precise as well and he wasn’t satisfied with the marking so when the first group of a hundred and seventy three aircraft from 5 group arrived at Chalon, encircling the beacon, circling the area, it wasn’t a beacon as such but circling the area and being, the aircraft being delayed and delayed and delayed this second group caught up with the first group so there was something like nearly four hundred aircraft milling around waiting for instructions to go in and there just happened to be three German night fighter stations handy and they got in amongst us and it really was chaotic. There really were all sorts of awful things going on. The result of the raid was a very successful raid but the loss was over eleven percent. They sent just under four hundred aircraft and we lost forty two but there was only one aircraft crashed in the village where a French man were killed so that was compensation in a way. So when we were circling this beacon the RT discipline disappeared. You weren’t supposed to talk outside because the Germans knew where you were going, where you were coming from but the RT discipline just went that night and a voice came over the air to the pathfinders, ‘Pathfinders. For God’s sake pull your fingers out. I’m on fire. I’m being been shot at.’ And a very broad Australian voice came over the air, ‘If you’re going to die, die like a man.’ And this was the sort of thing that went on. The problem was that the American force [AFM?]were broadcasting on a similar frequency and it was the signals weren’t getting through as well as they ought to but anyway of course, when we got the order to go in and bomb it was just like Derby Day. All these aircraft ploughing down on the target. It was successful but we had a problem. We’d just dropped our bombs and we’d had an aircraft, something rattle us about with an updraft coming up and that. It was a bit rough but we’d just dropped our bombs and Norman, the bomb aimer, lying down in the front, he didn’t have time to say anything he just said, ‘Oh Christ’ and an aircraft blew up underneath us and turned us over. We were upside down and I can say I half rolled a Lanc [laughs]. So there we were, upside down at eight thousand feet and coming out you just couldn’t pull it out like that because the high speed stalled the aircraft so it took us a little while to come out and we were down to about a thousand feet by the time we sorted things out. Going very, very fast way beyond the [all up] speed of a Lancaster. We were doing nearly four hundred miles an hour. Four hundred knots as it was in those days and, but the aircraft just had scorch marks and a little bit of creaky stuff but there we are. Once you got sorted out you checked on the crew. ‘Alright, Harry?’ The rear gunner. ‘Yes skip.’ ‘Alright, Tommy?’ ‘Yes.’ Wireless op. ‘Alright, Taffy?’ And the response I got was, ‘Blood. Blood,’ and I thought, ‘Oh Christ, what’s happened?’ So I pulled the curtain back and there’s Taffy wiping his head and that’s all we knew and, ‘Oh God, what’s happened to Taffy,’ and Taffy, what happens when you’re flying at those, those temperatures, those heights, temperatures, the lowest temperature we had was minus forty seven and you had an elsan at the back of the aircraft which if you went and used that if you sat down on the elsan like that and you left a bit of your behind, behind ‘cause it was like you’d have an ice cube sticking on your fingers. You couldn’t do that so what the lads had they had a large [fuel] tin with the top cut off which they passed around the aircraft as a pee can and this pee can was kept down by the wireless operator which was the warmest place ‘cause it didn’t freeze when it was down there. And Taffy said now you can still see this pee can arriving with negative gravity and tipping all over him. When we were falling, coming out, recovering from the dive which we got in to and of course when you got back there was no question of going to get cleaned up. You had to go straight to be debriefed and of course he wasn’t exactly flavour of, flavour of the month which was, which was poor old Taffy. Still gets his leg pulled unmercifuly about that.
CB: I’m going to suggest we have a break.
RW: Yes fine.
CB: For a moment. So thank you very –
[pause]
CB: What it’s doing? We’re now recording again.
RW: Yeah.
CB: I’ve tried to do the playback but that didn’t work so we’re recording again now and I’m just hoping everything’s worked because it’s so good and I’m just looking at the numbers.
[pause]
CB: Right. So we’ve come to the point where you were inverted.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Would you just like to describe before we go on to other things just how did you get the aircraft upright?
RW: Well -
CB: Because you can’t turn, roll it. Can you?
RW: Well we had to, to a certain extent with being upside down. You just imagine an aircraft being upside down you had to get it the right way up and the only thing you can do is turn it around so while we were plummeting, plummeting downwards and getting rather fast we sort of half rolled the thing out. Sort of almost like a very poor barrel roll that we flew. So, we were upside down and you turned over and came out sort of in that direction so you didn’t do a full roll. It was sort of almost like a half roll like almost like a half missing out the last bit of a barrel roll.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Coming out but because of the weight it was hard work but you didn’t think of it as hard, you didn’t think of it as work at the time you just sort of had to get out of it. Get it back.
CB: Yes, of course.
RW: Flying again but, and you just couldn’t pull the stick back and get the aircraft flying again because you could develop what they called a high speed stall cause the wing stalls at fourteen degrees and if you’re mushing down it increases the angle of attack very rapidly and you get what was called a high speed stall so this is where the training came in with these other flying, these little experiences we had in training. So, we just really tried to come, come out as gently as we possibly could. You certainly had to pull back on the stick to get control but trying not to mush it down so you really tried to fly it out which we did in the end, going very, very fast.
CB: You say we. Was the engineer helping you?
RW: Yes, well all he could do was pull the throttles back or push the throttles forward apart from being spread, spread across the floor. You know, the poor navigators instruments are all over the place. In that respect think of the navigators instruments all over the place my little wireless op oh he was a little terror and my navigator and he were chalk and cheese, vastly different characters and one occasion my navigator asked for a QDM from the wireless operator and Taffy said a very rude word telling him to go away and Alec looked back and found there was Taffy with his radio set, the old 1154 55 bits of the set on the floor trying to repair it and he couldn’t give him a QDM but he said [?] [laughs] so that was the atmosphere but they were a great crew, great crew. But there you are. We pulled ourselves out and we got ourselves out and we got back with having done the crash landing as I say. But the raid that I think affected us more than anything was the Nuremberg raid. The raid on Nuremberg. It was the raid that really should never have happened but we just discovered this afterwards reading books and things the fact that the, the uncertainty in Bomber Command headquarters about whether it should go on or shouldn’t go.
CB: It was to do with the fog, wasn’t it?
RW: Pardon?
CB: It was to do with the fog.
RW: Yeah. Yeah, well apparently there was a front coming up over Germany and the idea was that the route was going to be clear and the target was going to be er the route was going to be cloud covered and the target was going to be clear but the movement of the front wasn’t right and of course the, all the route was clear and the cloud over the target and the winds were wrong, all wrong.
CB: Oh.
RW: And all the hundred odd mile winds and this sort of thing were going on and nearly all in the wrong direction. Even the pathfinders, even the wind finders didn’t get the right places for the right system for the wind and so some of the pathfinders were marking Schweinfurt and different targets and Alec, my navigator, who was insistent on being a very precise little man he got us to the target and we actually flew to the target but by the time we were flying out the operation was delayed. Put back, put back and put back twice. So, we were going to bomb about five past twelve sort of thing like this. And we went off, a little bit in daylight taking off and we got, when we got to the French German border we’d seen sixteen aircraft shot down and to do what you used to do you used to report this to the navigator and he’d log it so they could get a record of where the aircraft went down and when he got to sixteen Alec said, ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’ So, we didn’t tell him anymore but we saw no end of stuff and coming across we were supposed to come south of the Ruhr which we did but a lot of people went straight over the top of the Ruhr and the carnage there. And just on the controversial long leg, what they called the long leg which was from the French from France right across to northern, north of the target, north of Nuremberg there was a two hundred and sixty five mile leg which was unusual ‘cause you usually had diversions and that sort of thing and it just so happened that there were two German night fighter beacons on the route Ider and Otto and it just so happened that their night fighters were assembling at the beacons all at the right time for them. So, there we were, we were ploughing along. We were very, very fortunate. We managed to keep out of trouble. We did have trouble but nothing drastic so we carried on and what we saw over the beacons was quite considerable. Lots of aircraft being shot at. We could see the tracers, German tracers going on, and this was a raid where the Germans first used the system called schragemusik whereby instead of having guns firing directly at the rear gunner they knew that there was no ventral armament on the Lancaster at all so this very astute German chap said, ‘Well, let’s have the guns pointing upwards,’ so they had two 20mm cannons pointing up, about sixty degrees. So, they used to fly underneath you and you knew nothing. You didn’t know they were there at all until the shells started to fly past. We, we were lucky. On one occasion we saw the shells coming upwards to us just on our starboard side so we managed to take evasive action but we didn’t know what it was, we didn’t know why they were coming up that way until many years later when we discovered they had this schragemusik and one German shot down forty two aircraft using that equipment. He did five in one night which was amazing so this added to the attrition rate of the raid at all. We were very, very fortunate. Alec, the navigation was spot on and we passed a target which we saw in the distance Schweinfurt which was being bombed which we didn’t know it was Schweinfurt then but we said, Alec said, ‘That can’t be right.’ So we carried on and actually arrived at Nuremberg which was cloud covered and we just, Norman had just happened to see a break in the little clouds so we bombed there. I think we bombed Nuremberg. We were certainly over Nuremberg. Whether we actually bombed Nuremberg you can’t really say because we couldn’t take a photograph because of the photoflood. It wouldn’t show anything on the photo apart from cloud but there was a massive explosion on our, on our left hand side which apparently somebody had hit a munition train just outside Nuremberg and this had this enormous explosion so we knew something had happened. And of course we had to come back when it was a long leg. There was some fighter activity on the way back but it was such and the lads when they used to go on these raids the lads, I didn’t get involved but the lads used to have a kitty. They put some pennies in this kitty and the ones who guessed the most number of aircraft shot down or most accurate number of aircraft shot down got the kitty and Curly my engineer got it that night because he said a hundred. He estimated a hundred and when we got back for debriefing the intelligence people were very sceptical about the thing. Oh it couldn’t have happened no its near going to happen but when our squadron records came in we sent twenty six aircraft that night and we lost seven which was nearly a third of the squadron that night. Sixty people, you know, all gone that night and it left it was really strange. It was. We were like zombies, you know. We just walked around. Not upset. Just mind blown and we went back we couldn’t sleep. We just walked around until daylight and the squadron didn’t operate for a little while after that. But what happened with the, when we got back used to go for a flying meal when we, when we got back and when we got back to the mess there were no waitresses there at all. All the meals were left on the counter and a little notice on the wall saying, ‘Please help yourselves.’ And all these girls had gone into the restroom and they were crying their eyes out ‘cause of the losses on the squadron. You know, they really felt the effect of that. Moreso than we did in many respects. Norman, my bomb aimer, who was always girl mad for the ladies wanted to go and console them but the WAAF officers said. ‘No. Leave them to it.’ And so we had to help ourselves to the meal and this was the atmospheres they had on the squadrons you know. The thoughts of the people working. When you think of a squadron where you’ve got something like anything a hundred and eighty, two hundred aircrew you’ve got something like two thousand, two and a half thousand ground staff who without them we couldn’t have kept flying, you know. So they, and they don’t get the credit that they justly deserve and our ground crew were wonderful. Little Willy [Severn] and Nobby Burke and they were part of the aircraft, they were part of the aircrew and I kept in touch with them for many, many years until he died just a few years ago at the age of ninety seven.
CB: Really.
RW: Lived up in Glasgow and Perth, near Perth and when I visited him and his lovely wife Annie he used to sit in his room all by himself just looking out the window and saying, ‘Aye. Och aye. Aye. Och aye,’ and remembering all the things that were going on. We were very, very fortunate on the squadron he was on the squadron for many, many months. He joined the squadron up at Holme on Spalding Moor and he only ever lost two aircraft so we so lucky to be with him. Mind you, we lost an aircraft for him which was, didn’t go down very well. So, but again, again these characters you’d come back with holes and bits missing and they’d be waiting for you when you got back and they’d get these things sorted out and repaired more or less for the, for the next night so, in all sorts of weathers. The, being a dispersed camp we didn’t have any hangars to work in. All the aircraft were stacked outside and, you know, in February ‘44 we had something like three foot of snow and sixteen foot snowdrifts and the station was cut off completely and these lads were working on the aircraft changing plugs, doing servicing on the aircraft. They worked, Willy said they worked in pairs. When one was working and his hands got frozen he went and warmed up. Another chap took over so they were working outside in all these sorts of conditions.
CB: There were hangars but they couldn’t put the aircraft in was it?
RW: Well, there were hangars when they had major things to do. Engine changes -
CB: Right.
RW: And these sort of things. They would take them in for major servicing. [Eight star] servicing, for a major servicing but apart from that they were just kept outside in the cold and the wet and in the war it could be anything.
CB: I’m going to stop there again because we are going to have a cup of tea.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Thank you.
RW: Oh lovely.
[pause]
CB: Right, so we’re back on again now.
RW: Yeah.
CB: And we’re just doing the -
RW: You finished the -
CB: Rerun of the Mailly but I think it’s useful because I’ve heard this, somebody mentioned before.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Of the attrition -
RW: Yeah.
CB: And because of the milling around -
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So why was it that the marking was so delayed causing the traffic jam?
RW: Well the again Cheshire was a brilliant pilot and a brilliant pathfinder and he was a perfectionist and again, forgive me if I’ve mentioned but the briefing that we had as the ordinary aircrew main force was to be very precise with the bombing because we didn’t want to hit any of the village. The village next door to the target. And he was being the same and he wasn’t satisfied with the markers that were going down and he said, ‘Well, don’t come in. We’re remarking.’ So he was re-marking the target to get in to the correct position for, for the [Mailly] raid and because of this it was delaying. It was, saying delayed you’re only talking about minutes. You’re not talking about hours, you know, but five minutes, ten minutes. An awful lot can happen in five, ten minutes and he was waiting until the markers got, really got them organised because there were two marking spots. One east and one west. One on the railway. One on the barracks because it was timed for midnight because this was the time when the people were coming back to their billets and were getting their, and they [wanted to kill the] troops.
CB: Yeah, of course.
RW: Troop concentrations so he was being as perfect as he possibly could and in consequence with the markers not being as accurate as he liked he stopped it and said we’ll remark again.
CB: Because it’s a French target?
RW: Because, well, not so much a French target. The target which was right next door to the French village.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And he didn’t want to kill -
CB: That’s what I meant. Yes.
RW: Didn’t want to kill, bomb the village. So, we were briefed and presumably they must have been briefed as well to be as perfect as they possibly could on their marking so as not to kill French people.
CB: Course.
RW: So this, and this came to light too, many, many years later here, by a little girl who was doing her degree at the Sorbonne in Paris relating to British and American efforts during the war and she came here and interviewed me here and stopped here for quite a little while and had a little chat about the Mailly raid and this sort of thing and she was quite concerned, you know. She was only what twenty, twenty one year old but she was only concerned about the fact that that attitude was taken to stop people, French people being killed. She got a first degree anyway which was rather nice.
CB: You obviously briefed her well.
RW: Yes, we still send Christmas cards to each other. I haven’t seen her for years and years and years. I wonder what she is doing now, whether she is married or what. But she was a nice little girl and I’ve got some pictures of her somewhere in there.
CB: Yeah.
RW: So, yes, so the, that was the result of the Mailly raid and the Nuremberg of course, raid, as well of course had although we’d had a lot of damage on other raids and quite traumatic things on other raids the Nuremberg raid left the biggest scar than any, mental scars was far, far greater than the physical scar and that really got sunk home when you realise what the attrition rates was. And the reports I think say there was ninety six, ninety seven aircraft shot down over the target but there were over a hundred wrecked completed so there must have been about a hundred and sixteen, a hundred and twenty aircraft written off altogether with all those, not all those aircrew but I think there was something like five hundred and sixty five, five hundred and five hundred and fifty aircrew killed that night, one night. The Nuremberg raid. And there were more aircrew killed on that one night then there was in the whole of the month of the Battle of Britain, which, you can’t compare the sort of flying that we were doing but the figures are quite remarkable when you think of what was going on. But being thickies as we were we knew it went on and we didn’t realise the implications of what was going on. We just got on with and had to do a job. But again, we had the trip, we had a little experience which was a trip to Munich. We were briefed for nine hours twenty five minutes petrol and we were given nine hours forty odd minutes petrol to fly on with instructions to land in the south of England if we had problems with getting back with the fuel consumption and it was again the weather wasn’t as forecast so we chugged off to Munich. Rather a long haul. A very long haul. Beautiful scenery over the Alps. We cross the Alps three times it was wonderful. Twice because it was twice the target and coming back we had problems. We lost part of a port wing, part of the leading edge of the port wing, we lost instruments, lost the pitot heads so that caused us little problems. Not exactly flying by the seat of our pants but -
CB: But you had no air speed indicator.
RW: So we were chugging back and as we say the leading edge of the port wing had disappeared somewhere and we’d had icing on the props. That was the amazing, we used to get icing on the propellers. And these were flying, the icing used to fly off and rattle against the side of the aircraft. It was just like flak for hitting the side of the aircraft and I’ve still got a bit of flak that came into my aeroplane. It’s on the table over there. Yes, so coming back it took a lot, lot longer than we anticipated and we were rather slow coming back to the extent that we were coming back over France in daylight and we were getting halfway across France and we saw these two little specks appearing flashing towards us and, ‘Oh Christ, what’s this going on?’ A couple of spitfires. They had been sent out to escort us back. So we were escorted back but with the engineers and navigation and fuel conservation we got back to Ludford having flown for ten and a quarter hours.
CB: Wow.
RW: But again the ground crew had that aircraft ready again for the next night which is, which is, what they get up to is wonderful. So they’re the sort of things that happened on raids. Another story, we came over Stettin one night. We lost two engines, two starboard engines. We managed to get one going half again so we came back from Stettin on two and a half engines.
CB: Was that flak damage?
RW: Yeah. Yeah. That was flak damage yes and when we got back Curly, he was a dreadful tease, he used to tease the WAAFs dreadfully and this poor little girl he teased her so much that when he was having his meal, operational meal she said, ‘I’m not going to serve you with your meal, cheeky bugger. I’m not going to serve your meal.’ He did get his meal of course but she wouldn’t serve him. And coming back off this trip we were so late we were, everybody, the committee of adjustment had been in and started to take our kit away. They didn’t think we were coming back but when we got back we got to the mess and this poor little kid was in tears, ‘Oh I shall never do that again.’ This was the atmosphere of these kids and girls. Wonderful. They were the sorts of things that happened. My last, very last operation was to again a transport plant target which was the original D-Day which was on the 4th 5th of June and like on the briefing we knew we were on the battle order but we had no idea where we were going and when we got out to the dispersal and asked what we were, what the petrol load and bomb load was Willy said, ‘Eeh,’ he said, ‘You’ve got full tanks and overloads and no bombs.’ And you were thinking, ‘Oh God. What’s going on? Are we going to Italy, Russia, whatever.’ No. What was happening we were flying a square circle around the invasion beaches giving false instructions to some of the shipping people imitate a convoy and also reporting on the fighter activity, German fighter activity to report back to help with the invasion and of course the invasion was put back twenty four hours because of the weather. So they took our overload tanks on, put a few bombs on board and we went off and we bombed Sangatte. Didn’t do a very good job obviously. So, that was our very last trip, Sangatte, and when we got back, because of the weather, very adverse weather we were diverted to Faldingworth which is only about thirty odd miles from Ludford, our base and we slept on a chair in the mess for the rest of the night and when we got up in the morning and having breakfast the station commander, Group Captain King arrived and he said, ‘Come on. I’m taking you back.’ I said, ‘Well I’ve got an aeroplane outside you know.’ And he said ‘You’re not touching another aircraft on the squadron. That was your last operation.’ So we just left the aircraft. How they got it back I don’t know but he took us back in his little hut, little, his little van. We went back and that was my last operation and mentioning our attrition rate on the squadron, in early 1944 our attrition rate was something like sixty two percent.
CB: Gee.
RW: Which was, you know, it’s unbelievable when you look.
CB: This is because they were targeted specifically.
RW: Yeah. Targeted. Very vulnerable. A) Because they could home onto our frequencies and B) Because we were on every bombing raid that went out. So there we are. The next morning I had to go and have a little interview with the station commander to give a pat on the back. He was a lovely chap Group Captain King. Curly, my engineer had finished because he’d done an operation with his previous crew he was finished the night before and he’d been out on the booze. Went down in to Ludford on the booze and when I had the interview with Group Captain King the following morning he said, ‘Your bloody crew.’ And, ‘Oh God. What’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Your engineer was down in the pub last night spouting about what he got up to and whatever and there just happened to be an intelligence officer there.’ And he just, no he was just pulling my leg really in a way but he said yes thank you very much for what you’ve done and I was given my green endorsement for the Mailly, for the raid where we had the mid-air collision and he had a curtain covering a chart on the wall which gave the crew statistics on the wall and he pulled the curtain back and he said, ‘There you are. You are the first crew that has finished as a crew for over six months’. Yeah.
CB: Amazing.
RW: And you didn’t even realise then. Appreciate what you -
CB: Yeah.
RW: What the attitude was but it really was remarkable and then of course I wasn’t allowed to touch a Lancaster again ever. Until 1977. Until the 101 squadron had a 60th anniversary of the formation of the squadron and they tried to get, I was asked. Martin Middlebrook was involved and he wrote a book and he was, he used to live not far away and then he was trying to get all of our crew together again and did I know where they were. And I had a few addresses so we managed to find 5 of us and we couldn’t find Taffy, could never find Taffy and we tried to find Taffy and we got in to contact with the people of his uncle who ran a pub and he wouldn’t tell us where he was and we assumed he was either in jail or in hospital but there, he’s still about but he never knew anything about it. But anyway, we had this meeting with five of my crew were there in 1977 in Waddington at 101. The Lancaster was there and at the dinner the previous night the PMC stood up and gave a little chat and said, ‘You’ve got the Lancaster here. It’s had an oil leak it needs an air test in the morning. We’ve got a crew here.’ So we flew in the Battle of Britain Lanc and did about a twenty, twenty five minute air test.
CB: Fantastic.
RW: In the Battle of Britain Lanc which was quite a thrill, quite a thrill.
CB: Amazing.
RW: And it’s wonderful that they’ve kept the thing going.
CB: Yes.
RW: It’s great. So after the war, I stayed in the air force after the war.
CB: Yes excuse me for interrupting but after the ops what did you do then because we’re not at the end of the war?
RW: Oh no. Yes. Yes.
CB: We’re still a year away.
RW: Yes. After the operations, yes normally you were, your crew tended to try and keep as much of the crew together and were posted away and most of the crew were posted to 28 OTU. And I was sent to 82 OTU. I never knew why or found out why. Typing error? Whatever. Anyway, I arrived at 82 OTU which was all Australian station and I was one of the very few Englishmen there as aircrew. One of the only aircrew there as an examiner, screen pilot, and they didn’t think much of this pommie bastard arrived in their midst and it wasn’t exactly a comfortable place to be but I’d only been there a couple of weeks when I had a bit of a problem, a symptom from the flying in the war. I had a perforated ulcer. Again, attributed to stress, whatever. So anyway, I had this haemorrhaging and I went sick, reported to the Australian doc, went sick and he didn’t think much of this whinging pommie bastard so medicine on duty. That was, that was, that was it. We just, and very shortly after that I was posted to Gamston where, which was a Wimpy OTU so I was flying in Wimpies there. Met my first fiancé there which was a lovely little WAAF in the camp. Audrey, Audrey Simms. Again, my luck held out, a lot of luck was involved on the squadron, tremendous lot of luck on the squadron and again my luck held out. My friend, Tommy Thompson, who’d been on operations, same as myself, screened and I was also the sports officer on the squadron and I had to do an air test as well and Tommy said, ‘Well you go and get the sports kit.’ On Wednesday afternoon the whole place shut down in those days for sport so I went to get the sports equipment and Tommy did my air test in a Wimpy and the Wimpy blew up and he was killed. Poor chap. Poor Tommy. And the only way we could recognise him when we found him was his ring on his finger. And he was a Geordie like myself and I was given the task of organising his funeral, went up to his funeral and because he didn’t get married during the war he got married very shortly after the end of his tour. He didn’t get married until after he’d finished his tour and his wife was expecting a baby, lived at Wallsend near Newcastle and of course I had to go to the funeral and there was this poor lass and it was rather sad. Yeah. So, these are the sort of things that happened and the luck you can achieve on these sort of things. So, anyway, because of my sins and flying I was due to go back on a second tour, supposedly on Mosquitoes, in early ‘45 but the attrition rate had dropped considerably at that time and there was a glut of aircrew coming though so they said, ‘Don’t come back on operations.’ So I was sent down to Lulsgate Bottom which was an instructor’s school. So I went down to the instructor’s school at Lulsgate Bottom which is now Bristol airport and I had a nice time down there learning to drink scrumpy which was, which was great. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely place down there. I enjoyed it very much. Again had little problems with the instructing. Flying with the instructor one night and the radial engine, the pot burst and the pistons were coming out through the through the canopy around the engine. So we had a little single engine landing there but that was fine. I ended up there and became an instructor. So the instructing I was sent to be a place called Desborough. I had the choice of going to Carlisle or Northampton so I chose Desborough and I was stationed there as a screen pilot and flying instructor, Wimpies. This story extends a little bit. A very good friend of mine who became my first fiancé her friend she was stationed, became stationed at Wyton, Cambridge and my friend and I used to go and visit her and he, Jock Murray, he was a married man. He had a girlfriend as well, a WAAF at Wyton so we used to go and stay at the George hotel at Huntingdon when she was there but sadly we were sitting on the banks of the river at Earith. I’d already bought the engagement ring and whatever and she said, ‘I’m sorry but that’s it’ and she went off with a married pilot on Wyton, pilot and that was it. I came back to Desborough rather tail, my tail between my legs sort of thing and my squadron commander, he knew what the situation, we were very good friends and he knew what was going on and one of the pilots who had been at Wyton on big stuff he was converting on to Dakotas and that’s what we were doing in Desborough and he came to Desborough to be converted on to Dakotas. He didn’t, I knew him but he didn’t know me and my flight commander, Lofty [Loader] he said, ‘You have him as a pupil.’ So I had this poor soul as a pupil. All the first details in the morning and all the last details at night. He complained to the boss and he said, ‘Nothing to do with me. Get on with it.’ But he was brilliant. He was a good pilot but he didn’t know anything about that at all. And again strange things happened at Desborough. When I was there another crew came through at, which er, yes this other crew came through whereby the pilot had a wireless operator who eventually joined the company I joined after, after the war as a wireless operator and I had to screen the crew on a cross country out over Wales. A claggy night. Not a very nice night at all and his skipper didn’t say, ‘I don’t think we ought to go. The weather.’ ‘Oh it’s all right,’ Well the weather we flew in the war we flew in all sorts of weather. They said, ‘Oh no it’s alright Alfie,’ So, off we went and coming back they asked to get a QDM and he couldn’t on his little set. He couldn’t get a QDM and fortunately I had been to the Empire Radio School and, and, and knew a little about electrics so I went back, got this bearing, give it to the skipper and when we let down there was Desborough the identification lights DE flashing, I said, ‘There you are. That’s how it’s done.’ And I had to give this wireless operator an adverse, not exactly an adverse report but not a very favourable one. He eventually became a director of the company I was working for and he didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t like me very much at all because I was one of the lower minions in the works and he was a director of purchasing. Not a nice, not a very nice chap. Anyway, there we are so that was, that was little situation but Desborough from there I went and was posted to Transport Command, had to go into Transport Command and there I was flying Dakotas and doing mainly conversion work flying Dakotas. I had some very nice jobs to do and stationed at Oakington. This was in 1947 when I first went to work in Oakington and I was the flying wing training officer for four squadrons 10, 27, 30 and 46 squadrons and this was early ‘48 when the thought of the airlift came into being and this was quite an amazing situation because the squadron as I say had this four, the unit had the four squadrons on board and I was working with all the four squadrons. Then when you are going on the airlift all the aircrew had to be completely categorised and had to have a current incident rating so I was kept very, very busy. One night well one month one day I did something like ten and a half hours flying testing just to get them ready to go on the airlift. So, there we went and when we got them all, got them all off we, the WingCo said, ‘Right have a few days left, go on the airlift for a month and have a rest.’ So that was fine so I thought now do I go home and see my mum and dad or do I go and see my fiancé. I was getting married in October. And I said, ‘Hmmn I’ll go and see my fiancé,’ which I obviously did. Went back on the airlift and when I got to [Rumsdorf] which we were then I went to see the flight commander chappie in charge of the flying and I said, ‘Where do I go for briefing?’ And he said, ‘You don’t.’ He gave me a piece of, a sheet of A4, ten sheets of A4 with all the instructions on and said, ‘Go away and read those, inwardly digest. You’re flying in the morning.’ And that was it. That was it. And it was strange how the flying did, is it alright talking about the airlift?
CB: Absolutely. Yes. Yes.
RW: Yeah, because this is forty, a long time after the war but there we are. How the airlift came about was the fact that the Russians had taken over Berlin and they wouldn’t allow any people into Berlin for about eight weeks. So nobody was going in and they really split Berlin in half. They took over the east sector but they had to keep the airlift going, had to keep the situation going because the embassies of the French, British and American embassies there so they had to keep flying going in. They couldn’t stop the flying but they could affect the roads. There were originally six corridors going in but the Russians said you don’t need six. So they cut out, cut the north one out and the south one out and the east one out so they only had three corridors going in. The Americans were doing the, the southern one and we were doing the north one and we all came out on the centre one. But when they started the airlift all this happened in a very, very short period of time. The Americans, a chap called Lucius Clay was in charge of the system flying then in Berlin and he called every possible aircraft back from the states, even from Alaska, to come down to [?] which was the southern part of Germany and, to organise the thing properly he asked a chap called [Tupper, Tupper?] who was in charge of the Burma hump flying over the hump in Burma and he was asked to organise that. The first trip he went on, this was the very, very beginning all, all the Americans were there first and they’d gone off he went off on one of these very first trips and when he got to, got to Berlin there they were going to land at Tempelhof. He found there were aircraft stacked from five hundred feet to five thousand feet and everybody, all the Americans, were clamouring like mad to get permission to land and there was very little organisation at all. Two aircraft, two of the American aircraft had crashed on the runway. One crashed on the runway and was being repaired, and went on the fire and the other crashed and gone over the end of the runway. Nobody was killed but [Tupper Tupper] realised what was going on. He sent all the aircraft back to base even with their loads and got landed himself at Gatow at er [Wunsdorf] and at Tempelhof, landed at Tempelhof and he wrote out orders and all regulations for all flying on the Berlin airlift. Each aircraft had a different speed, different height to fly and all, all went, all went off and when we were at [Wunsdorf] at the time and when you went off you flew to a beacon north of Ber, we flew to a beacon at [?] just north of Berlin where you, when you arrive there you gave instructions, or you were given instructions of how to land and what your load off and we flew in everything. Literally everything in to Berlin because when the Russians took over they closed their frontier and they closed the, all the rail, road and water transport into Berlin and there was something like two million two hundred thousand West Berliners with twenty seven days rations of everything they’d left and they’d taken the generators from the power stations away, they’d taken the gas and that was all rationed and these poor Berliners were left with twenty seven days of nothing. I was very fortunate. I gave a little talk to some aircrew at Leamington and one of the chaps brought along a German lady who had been a little girl, a young little at the time the Russians took over and she was, she spoke English quite well but a very, very strong German accent and she of course she was quite an elderly lady then and she said she and her elder sister, she was young teenager and her sister was seventeen, eighteen and they were walking through Berlin and the Russians came along, a group of Russians came along and they herded all the girls and women they could possibly find into this building. The older sister knew what was going to happen and she hid this young lady, was a young lady, hid her and all the rest were gang raped for the rest of the day and she said, she was telling me that her sister never ever spoke of that again. She couldn’t talk about it. There was something like two million women raped. Two thousand committed suicide. You know, and these figures you know and the Berliners were so appreciative of what we did. We literally flew in everything. Naughty story. When we were on taking a few coal fuel and flour everything in and when you got to the beacon as I say you had to call to get landing instructions and declare what your load was so you could be directed to the correct unloading bay when you landed and the Germans were doing this and they could turn an aircraft around in eight minutes you know. Incredible. So there we were we were going towards this beacon and I said to the wireless op cause I didn’t have a crew I had the nav leader and the signals and I said to Jacko, ‘Call up and get us instructions.’ So he gave instructions and they said, ‘What is your load?’ And he said, ‘Medical supplies. Mainly manhole covers,’ and they were all sanitary towels. It didn’t end there because when we landed we were directed to the heavy unloading bay and we weren’t exactly flavour of the month. We didn’t half get a rocket but there again when you were flying in there was no question of doing an overshoot and going around again. If you couldn’t land you just had to go back to base and start again.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And when you were there they had all your aircraft lined up. Your day was split into three eight hour shifts and you were doing as many raids, as many sorties as you could in eight hours and then you had the next 8 hours off and then you flew in the next 8 hours and this went on seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Day and night. There was only one day it never happened and that was through extensive fog. So, and when the aircraft were lined up the ground crew had to do a pre-flight test on every aircraft and part of their equipment the wireless operators, wireless, ground wireless operators were a pair of bellows and when they got on the aircraft they used the bellows to blow this, the flour and coal dust off the instruments so they could check them. So this was the sort of thing that was going on. When we were at [Rumsdorf] they also had the York there and the payload of the York was something like what fifteen thousand pounds and the Dakota’s about seven and a half and one of our skippers said, Flight Lieutenant Sheehan, he went off in the Dakota and he said, ‘It’s like a brick. It’s like flying a brick.’ And he had an awful job getting it off the ground, an awful job getting it there, an awful job landing it and when they landed it they found they’d put a York load on the Dakota so he was flying at double his all up weight.
CB: Gee.
RW: And it says a lot for the skipper and the aircraft you know.
CB: Absolutely.
RW: You know, these sort of things went on. Amazing. But that was a long time after, after the squadron. And on the squadron looking back and talking to people on the squadron about the squadron about the air force in general they said, ‘Well you know in our group, in one group we were losing seventy aircraft a month.’ Every Bomber Command station lost nine hundred aircrew. You know, it’s amazing the figures that went on like that and a gentleman did some statistics working out how it affected a hundred air crew and of the hundred aircrew fifty one were killed. Twelve were shot down and badly injured, five were badly injured so they couldn’t fly again, three were, so three were killed on landings back at base, twelve became prisoners of war and one escaped to come back and of the remaining of that hundred aircrew only twenty four remained. Nearly all with some medical problem afterwards which, is you know, is -, I had my share. The sort of things that happened they said personally the sort of things that happened to me afterwards apart from this ulcer which affected me for most of my life until I was here at Desborough, at er Kenilworth when I moved in here and one night I had a massive haemorrhage. I couldn’t get upstairs and the doc came and it was a peculiar system he had. I was not allowed food, I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed, I wasn’t allowed to do anything with work and I lived on an ounce of milk and water for six weeks. Couldn’t do anything and I remember sitting down where we are now sitting now watching the television, watching the cricket with the doctor, chatting about what was going on and it was amazing. In consequence I can eat anything, anything at all doesn’t bother me but alcohol doesn’t like me. I can drink it but I can enjoy it for about a week afterwards so you know I don’t drink very much now. I’ve had my share. But this is the sort of thing that happened and what still happens now. One operation we were on going on to the Ruhr and the Ruhr, the old Happy Valley and we were approaching the Ruhr and it really it looked deadly and the flak, there was an old saying, the flak was so thick you could get out and walk on it and it was like that searchlights, fighters going on and the first time I ever experienced terror and it was most peculiar. I’d heard about it but I’d never experienced it and I literally was shaking and really I couldn’t do what I was supposed to do so I dropped my seat so I couldn’t see outside and funnily enough I said a little prayer that I hadn’t said since I was about six years old. Mum and dad used to sit by the side of my bed and say this little prayer which ended up, ‘If I die before I wake I pray the lord my soul will take.’ Why I said it I don’t know, no idea but I said this little prayer and the terror disappeared and I raised my seat and I could just carry on. You’re still frightened of course but all the terror disappeared. And we had similar situations again afterwards but no terror so whether the power of prayer you know whether this happens or not. Some of the lads we used to take the mickey a bit ‘cause they used to kneel down by their beds and say their prayers or kneel down by the aircraft before they got on and said their prayers and thought they were a bit sissy until you had this sort of experience yourself and then you realise there’s something in it. It’s all, I’m sure it was all mental you know. Some of these sort of things happened. When I laid my head down on the pillow even now, not every, if I’ve been reading a books like some of the air force books and service books that come out now, if I’ve been reading these books about aeroplanes and I put my head down on the pillow I can see flak bursting and little sparks flying about. It doesn’t affect me. I’m fine. No problem at all and this sort of thing, you know, just reminds you of the old days and now talking about it so much now it’s almost like a myth, you know. As if you’re telling fairy stories. Did I really do it, you know but yes it does once you’ve experienced those sorts of things you never forget them. They’re always there. And some, some fixed more than others. We had one navigator who, they were badly shot up and some of the, a lot of the crew were injured. The aircraft was on fire and he got out of his seat to walk back to the, the aircraft was still flying, he walked to the back of the aircraft to jump out the back. No parachute. Some of the crew stopped him and said, ‘No. Don’t.’ He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t speak. He was just a zombie completely. Couldn’t speak and when he got back, they got back alright he never spoke. Never spoke at all. Went to the sick quarters for a couple of weeks. Never spoke, could understand a thing and he was sent to the service hospital at Matlock, the psychological hospital at Matlock and he was there for several, a couple of weeks and he never spoke until one of the nurses dropped an instruments in a tin tray and he woke up. He said, ‘Oh Christ, they’re on fire. They’re on fire.’ And he got his speech back again. He was invalided out of the service as you know unfit for flying. He was alright but that experience he had of these weeks of not talking you know and this is the sort of thing that happened to these sort of folks and, you know, when you think of the experiences you had and how bloody lucky you’d been all these whiles. And, your luck. Yes, I think you bought yourself your own luck to a certain extent. In my crew, were such that although vastly different characters, we were all great comrades and great friends. Great friends. And you know this helped enormously the operational flying, in my instructing and examining after the war when Oakington was closed down and all the four squadrons dispersed 30 squadron was posted to Abingdon and having, me being flying wing training, I thought I was out of a job. 30 squadron had taken over a VIP element from 24 squadron and for my sins I was posted to 30 squadron at Abingdon to become the training officer on 30 squadron and to get our qualifications, to get my, I had to go to Central Flying School to be examined and that was quite the thing. The fact that I had an instrument rating and the fact that I had done something like fifteen hundred hours instrument flying I was allocated a master green instrument rating and I became examiner and when I went down to the Central Flying School to become an examiner and a tester, an instructor, the instructor there, Flight Lieutenant Walker, a lovely man, when we finished the [CGI], said ‘There is a book. Take it away. Read the chapters about training and it’s all about what you learn about.’ And it was a book called the “Psychological Disorders of Flying Personnel” and the chapter on training illustrated the fact that you know even experienced people when being examined had a little bit of panic. It’s a bit of the white coat syndrome of the doctor with his stethoscope and things and you couldn’t really operate as you normally could and this was a chapter about that sort of thing. And this psychological business he gave me this book to take back home. And when I got back of course I used to examine all the crews but each crew had to be examined completely once a month. They had to do certain training exercises. One per month and the VIP pilots had to do the same as well but the VIP pilots were like a class apart. They wouldn’t have a, they insisted on having a separate crew room from us roughies and strange things happened with them. One occasion one of the pilots a chap called Van Reinfeld had to do a VIP trip the following day and he hadn’t done a little night, night flying exercise and I said, ‘Well it’s alright. I’ve got a spare navigator. You can do your little trip tonight. I’ll put you on early, you’ll be alright for tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘Well I can’t do it.’ He says, ‘My navigator has gone in to Abingdon and I don’t know where he is.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a spare navigator. It’s alright. It’s only a training trip. It’s not a VIP trip.’ And this chap, the replacement, a chap called Baxter who was a coloured boy wouldn’t fly with him. Refused to fly with him and I said, ‘Well you don’t, if you don’t fly with him you don’t get your trip tomorrow.’ He went to see Squadron Leader Reese the squadron commander and he said, ‘It’s nothing to do with me it’s to do with the training.’ And he went back and I said, ‘Well if you don’t do it. You don’t fly.’ And he went into Abingdon and scoured all the clubs and pubs, found his navigator, came back, flew late in the morning, early in the morning the next day and went off to do his trip the next day and that’s the sort of atmosphere they were. And the principal job of the Transport Command at 30 squadron were again, like all transport was glider towing and paratrooping and there was a big operation called Operation Longstop which was going on at Old Sarum and all the crews had to go down and join in the exercise and of course every pilot had to have an aeroplane. There wasn’t enough aeroplanes to go around and I was given an aeroplane and a pilot to fly with me who was a VIP pilot called [Ria.] He said, ‘I’m a VIP pilot. I don’t fly second dicky.’ And he wouldn’t fly. Refused to fly with me. Again, he saw the flight commander down at Old Sarum and the boss said. ‘Well if you don’t fly you don’t fly at all. Go back to base. Get back to base.’ He sent him back to base and these sort of characters they were an elite apart, you know. Brilliant fliers no doubt about it brilliant fliers and as I say we had to go down to Central Flying School to be examined and when you’re examined if anything went wrong and you didn’t fail any one part of the exercise two of the exams you had to write, reply a hundred percent. Safety and regulations, these sort of things and when you were, one of the exercises you had it do you were given all the met readings from various stations and you had to plot a synoptic chart and give a forecast for the next day, until midnight the next day, which I did and I said possibly get some rain by lunchtime tomorrow and whatever down the south of England and he called a Met man in and he said, ‘Oh that’s not going to happen. That’ll never happen.’ So I didn’t pass that exam so I had to go back, wait another month before I was going to be examined again. Blow me, the next day it started to rain so I rang up old Walker at Central Flying School and said, ‘Have you looked out the window?’ And he said, ‘You jammy bugger,’ he said, ‘I’ll put it in the post.’ So it was a great atmosphere. A wonderful atmosphere and 30 squadron had a wonderful atmosphere. Still has now. Still does wonderful work now. But the flying it left a great character in my life but I was married by then of course and we had a wonderful life with my wife in peacetime air force. Sadly, she became terribly ill when we were at Oakington and she started having terrible haemorrhages and this sort of thing and the, our local doc said, ‘You’d better take her home’ so we took her to her home in Desborough near Kettering and my mother who was a state certified midwife, she’d nursed all her life said, ‘You know the prognosis of this isn’t very great,’ you know and discovered that she had what they called a [? deformed] mole which is a pregnancy like a bunch of grapes and indicative of cancer. And they did scrapes they didn’t do scrapes in those days but they couldn’t find it and it was the cancer was deep seated in the womb and my mum said, you know ‘She can’t live very long.’ She was only about six months, nine months perhaps at the most so I resigned my commission to come out to look after her. Haven’t been, my last posting just about this the time this happened found was AOC far east to go VIP pilot, the AOC in the far east which I had to keep delaying, delaying, delaying because of Pat’s illness and eventually that was cancelled completely so I didn’t go. So, I resigned to come out on the condition that I renewed my qualifications every year and stayed on the reserve until I was, 1960 um and came out and poor old Pat died about ten months afterwards and with my lack of education I couldn’t get a grant to do any, I was hoping for a grant to go teaching but I couldn’t get a grant because I had no certificates or educational certificates. Fortunately, Pat, my wife’s father owned a factory. A packaging factory. So he said, ‘Come and work for me.’ So I went and worked in his factory on the marketing and sales. I can say for twenty seven years I travelled in cardboard boxes which was very kind of him. I got along very well with the old man. He was quite an eminent military man himself. Thinking of that sort of thing when I was at Abingdon, Oakington, I was going to get married and I was told I had to get permission to get married otherwise I wouldn’t get my marriage allowance ‘cause I was a little bit too young. So I was told I had to have an interview with the station commander which a chap called group captain [Byte Seagal] so I went and had an interview with him and my dad because of his health couldn’t do any serious work and he used to work for the Coop looking after the horses for the Coop stables so when we went for the interview with group captain [Byte Seagall], a peacetime group captain trying to get everything back to a peacetime protocol he said, ‘Who are you marrying?’ I said, ‘Well, Pat.’ ‘What does she do?’ And I said, ‘Well she does typing and bit of filing in an office.’ ‘Oh that’s interesting.’ ‘What does your father do?’ And I said, ‘He looks after horses.’ He said, ‘Newmarket?’ I said, ‘No. Coop.’ And this didn’t go down very well at all. And he said, ‘What about your father in law then?’ And I said, ‘Well he was colonel in chief of the Northamptonshire regiment. He got the MC in Gallipoli.’ ‘Ah now isn’t that interesting.’ I said. ‘My mother, my dad was in the navy. He got the DSM in the navy. My mother got the Royal Red Cross.’ ‘Now isn’t that interesting.’ Yes, I can get married. So I got permission to get married. And they were trying to get things back to peacetime protocol but after the war people like myself were asked to go up to Cranwell which was a training, a major training school then for aircrew and just to meet the people, not to meet, just to chat to the students and pupils and met one young man called, oh dear [pause] His dad was the president of the Nuremberg raids. Oh, what did they call him? Anyway, he was, he was his dad was this very eminent gentleman. Martin, [pause] oh dear, old age and memory don’t go very well together. Anyway, this gentleman he was on the Nuremberg trials. He organised the Nuremberg trials for the post war Germans and his son was on the Cranwell course and he eventually came down to 30 squadron and I said to him, you know, ‘What’s the last thing they taught you at Cranwell then?’ And they said, he said, ‘Don’t get associated with wartime commissioned officers.’ Because, in February ‘44 the directive came about saying all captains of heavy bombers had to be commissioned and my commissioning interview was with the accountant who gave me a cheque for ninety quid to go and buy a uniform with. Yeah. What do they call the chappie on the Nuremberg trials? Very eminent man. Very eminent barrister.
CB: Yeah. I can’t remember.
RW: Pardon?
CB: I can’t remember.
RW: No. Can’t remember. Anyway Martin didn’t like this system in the air force at all so he resigned and came out. But that was the sort of thing that was going on in those days and I was very, very fortunate to be able to have a job to work. I stayed and played with cardboard boxes. For two years I had to go to Marshals and be re-examined for, just to keep your hand in that all it was part of the condition for resigning. I did that for two years and the first time I went the instructor there said. ‘Well go on and do the exams and, what did you do?’ I told him what I did. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Bugger it. Go on. Take a little chipmunk and take off. So I used to fly over Desborough and around the school where I was teaching and [laughs] no that, and I started learning, I taught myself aerobatics because the transport flying which is dead straight and level sort of stuff and I’d never flown aerobatics at all apart from slow rolling the Lancaster. It was great fun. Great fun. But they only did that for two years because they said it’s getting expensive and we’ve got squirty things now and so -
CB: Yeah.
RW: Just keep on the register.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And I was in the reserve until 1960 so really I had a wonderful career.
CB: Yeah, brilliant.
RW: Wonderful -
CB: Can I -
RW: Experiences I’ll never be forgetting and played an awful lot of luck and met some wonderful people and wonderful friends and with my crew when the squadron formed the association from flying together in 1977 the squadron chappie called Goodliffe formed the squadron association and from then on we found all eight of my crew and all eight of us used to meet every year.
CB: Fantastic.
RW: Until 1990 when we all met at Ludford in 1990 and the Coningsby, the Battle of Britain Flight said, ‘Would you come down and do a little exercise down here with a full crew.’ And Tommy, my mid upper gunner, wouldn’t go so we never went and a couple of months later he died so whether he had some sort of premonition, you know.
CB: Extraordinary.
RW: But anyway nevertheless all 7 of used to meet until, and then the rear gunner dies and all eight of us, all six of us used to meet and a couple of years ago my special duty operator died so all five of us -
CB: All five.
RW: Are still round about and very, very different states of health and all creaking a bit. I was being very lucky. I had open heart surgery.
CB: Oh, did you really?
RW: It was only three years ago and got a zip fastener up the front but if it hadn’t have been for again like the services, like with family if it hadn’t have been for family and my mum looking after me with diphtheria when I was a little boy and my daughters and family looking after me afterwards when, when I had when I had the operation for the heart I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat and my daughter Catherine who is, she is now the ward manager sister at the coronary care unit at Warwick Hospital she took me into hospital on her day off and did an ECG and a blood test and the cardiologist just happened to be walking past and he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ You know, and he took the blood away and came back and he said your bloods alright but it’s not, you’re not going anywhere. Don’t go home. So within just over a week I’d had open heart surgery.
CB: Gee.
RW: And I was back home again.
CB: Amazing.
RW: Yeah, it’s amazing.
CB: I’m going to stop you there.
RW: Yes, that’s about it I think, Ok.
CB: Because we both need a – [pause] right we’re restarting again after a brief comfort break and the bits I just want to ask you about, Rusty is first of all the ranking system. So you went in as an aircraftsman second class.
RW: I went in as an AC2.
CB: And how did the promotion system work until you were –
RW: Yeah. Well, usually after about six months you were promoted an AC1 and then after another short period of time you became an LAC, leading aircraftman. And I was a leading aircraftman when I went and did my flying in Canada and it was from then after you’d finished and completed your training successfully that was when you were ordered your flying brevvy and you became whatever grant, whatever grade you were going in to. Fortunately, and with a lot of luck involved I became a pilot. And having, became a sergeant pilot. Some, about three or four of the course that we were on we lost about forty percent of the course on washouts. You know, it was incredible because the training was very, very precise. I must say it was very, very good. Looking back it was remarkable. So there I was a sergeant pilot and promotion as an NCO was roughly six months and you got an increase and promotions so by the time I was, got on the squadron I was a sergeant pilot and then I very soon became a flight sergeant pilot and that was in ’43. End of ’43. And in early ‘44 the directive came from the air ministry that all captains of heavy bombers had to be commissioned so I was given the cheque for ninety quid by the accountant and told to go and buy a uniform so there was no formal interview at all. It was just a thing that happened. In consequence, the social class, in a sense, disappeared because there were people commissioned from training and they tended to be a little bit elitist and some of the crews had done previous tours and tended to be all commissioned and usually flight lieutenants and all this sort of thing so they were nearly all a little bit aloof but we were just the roughs. Not like the pathfinders. Gibson and the pathfinder force really didn’t socialise with the NCOs at all. Didn’t speak to them, didn’t talk to them but it wasn’t like that on the squadron. Really, apart from doing your job you were all the same. And the, the, our WingCo was a wonderful man in that respect. He knew everybody’s name on the squadron. Ground crew and air crew. Wonderful man. Old Alexander. Wingco Alexander.
CB: What sort of age was he?
RW: He, he’d be getting on about. He’d be early 30s I think [laughs] so. He died not such a long time ago. A little story about Wingco Alexander which, of course, a little bit about the war. His batman, Ward, a little chap called Ward turned out to be a homosexual and he was sacked from the service because in those days homosexuality was virtually a crime and he was sacked from the service and when I used to go home on leave and my brother was being in the army my mum was nursing a very eminent north country barrister called Lambert, Pop Lambert. Mum used to, got the job to nurse him because she could swear as much to him as he swore at her when she put him to bed and he used to love my, my brother and I and my mum to go down and have dinner with him and it was finger bowls and butlers and things like this so it really was quite out of our class altogether and when we were sitting down having dinner this night and the butler came in with the finger bowls and he looked at me and said, ‘Hello Waughman.’ And I said, ‘My God. Ward. What are you doing here? You were Alexander’s batman.’ And that went on, he went out and Pop said, ‘How the hell do you know him?’ And I said, ‘He was our WingCo’s batman. He was sacked because he was homosexual.’ And the poor soul. Pop gave him the sack a week later. He just wouldn’t have him around and this was the attitude about homosexuality -
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
RW: In those days. The lads used to go out queer bashing. You know.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Yeah. There was no gay business in those days at all, sort of thing. But that’s the sort of thing that happened. So, anyway, I was flying, became pilot officer and on the squadron I became towards the end of my tour I got promotion to flying officer and ended my tour as a flying officer and subsequently with the jobs I got as the training officer, again it was timed promotion really in a way. I became a flight lieutenant and most of the screening and examining and training I did then was as a flight lieutenant until I was posted to Singapore and never got there, flying as a VIP pilot AOC Far East. I never got there. Had I, had I gone I would have been promoted to squadron leader. No. I would have got the rank of squadron leader. Which would be temporary acting unpaid. So when I left that job I reverted to my previous rank again so that would be a rank mainly because you were socialising with VIPs but that never came about. So whether I don’t think I would have advanced very far in the air force at that time because I was a Geordie like, you know from up north, a very uneducated man, and I don’t think I would have advanced too far in the service.
CB: Ok.
RW: Although I got on very, very well with the people.
CB: Yeah.
RW: It was great but I think the social side, the social class system would have meant that I’d perhaps have made wing commander but I don’t think I would have got any great senior rank. Again, partly that’s my thought. Whether it would have happened or not. My navigator, he was an educated lad and very good lad you see he lied about his age to join up, operational at eighteen. He stayed in the air force after the war, did very, very well indeed did all sorts of very important flying. He ended up as a squadron leader and stayed in the air force after the war and he was very well thought of in the service. Most of the other lads left the service. Except Taffy. He stayed in the service. He became, he stayed as a sergeant I think all his life and I think he drank his way through the service but er -
CB: And he was always on the ground.
RW: Always on the ground, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yes he did, he did fly a second tour. Some of the crews did second tours. He was on the second tour and he was on the last bombing raid that went to the Nuremberg and the Buchenwald raids. And Manna, Operation Manna. Norman, my bomb aimer, he stayed in the air force. He stayed although he had some elevating jobs he never rose above the rank of flight lieutenant because he was out in Burma and he was on the squadron in Burma. This was very shortly after the end of the war and the war was still going on in Burma and he was duty officer one weekend and the Scotch troop was getting knocked about in the jungle so he laid on a strike which was successful and got back. I think they only lost a couple of blokes which was really remarkable. Got everything back and he had to see the CO the next day who said, ‘You don’t, you didn’t have the authority to lay that on’ and he was court martialled and in the, in the court martialling that was it you know but he went on and he eventually when he got back to the UK, got sent back to the UK and he didn’t have a job and he had a friend who knew somebody who knew somebody and he went to work down at, down in Halfpenny Green down Pershore way working on TSR2 and he did some work on TSR2 and then did an awful lot of flying in Buccaneers, err Buccaneers um Canberra’s flying all over America doing line over mapping and this sort of thing. Got himself an MBE. So Norman who now lives in the tax haven Andorra is MBE DFC AFC, yeah. But lovely guy.
CB: Ok so that’s a good intro thank you -
RW: Yeah.
CB: To the awards.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So how did that come about for you and for him as well? How many of the crew were decorated?
RW: Well the sad thing is I’ve still got it but thinking about the decorations for crews and that sort of thing I’ve still got a got a bit of a conscience about the DFC because at the end of the tour of operations nearly every skipper got a decoration and I got a DFC but the crew didn’t get anything and the crew were doing half the work. They kept me alive, they kept us all alive they were doing exactly the same job as I was doing, under the same circumstances. Same risks. The same with all the Bomber Command crew but none of them got a decoration. My engineer Curly did eventually get a DFM.
CB: On the second tour -
RW: But none of the -
CB: Was it?
RW: None of the crew got any recognition whatsoever I think what Harry did was the rear turret and think what rear gunners did sitting watching shells flying at you having a little 303 gun to fire back at a 20 millimetre shell you know um and the casualty rate for rear gunners was, really was something and there was a lot of decorations which should have been. We had one crew which were very, very badly knocked about and from what I gather afterwards the station commander recommended the skipper for a VC which, and the crew did all sorts of wonderful things the skipper was hit three times and all sorts of things went wrong and got the aircraft back but this was turned down and we gather that the reason was that he wasn’t just getting the crew and the aircraft back he was getting himself back as well. So five of the crew got CGMs that night so the decorations system I’m sure it’s the same in all the wars that a lot of people who deserved them didn’t get them because it was unknown. One, one situation whereby unless an action was seen by an officer it didn’t count.
CB: Right.
RW: So -
CB: So the Queens Gallantry Medal.
RW: Yeah.
CB: The CGM.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Was a pretty good award.
RW: Well it’s the next one down from the VC.
CB: Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. The whole crew got it.
RW: Yeah. Yeah. Five of the crew got it.
CB: Yeah.
RW: So you know the awards system obviously they have to have some rules and regulations, you know. I was told by, the by people afterwards after my crash landing getting the aircraft back the thought was the immediate award of the DFC but that didn’t come about.
CB: So when did it happen?
RW: That was in May, March
CB: When you came to the end of your tour.
RW: Oh, it was the end of the tour.
CB: Was it?
RW: Not at the time. Not immediately at the time. It wasn’t until anyway there we are. My DFC was given to me by the postman and there’s a nice little letter in there from King George saying I’m sorry, implying that he’s too busy too busy to see I’m sending it through the post but thank you very much. So, so that was given to me by the postman.
CB: Extraordinary.
RW: Subsequently, when I got I was very fortunate after the war I was awarded the MBE and -
CB: But you got the AFC. So what was that -
RW: I got the AFC.
CB: So what -
RW: I didn’t get the MBE I got the AFC.
CB: The AFC, yes.
RW: Yes, the AFC.
CB: So what was the circumstance of that?
RW: I’ve no idea. I’ve tried to find out but the only thing I’ve ever, people have been able to say meritorious service but I’ve no idea why. I think it was a brown nose job really you know, being in the right place at the right time. I can just imagine from what I’ve seen afterwards the air ministry would be issued so many medals to be issued to the command. Got down to group. Group allocated the medals out. Group was passed out to stations, stations allocated medals out, passed down to the squadrons and what was left for the squadron they had to find someone to give them to and I think I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So, no reason why I -
CB: No specific event that you can -
RW: No specific event. Nothing -
CB: No.
RW: At all. No. So, it was again poor luck.
CB: What about this other man you talked about who’d been in your crew before who got DFC, AFC?
RW: Oh, Norman. The bomb aimer.
CB: Yes how did he get those?
RW: Well.
CB: Did he get the DFC at the end of the tour?
RW: Afterwards he, he -
CB: Was he commissioned by then?
RW: He eventually ended up on pathfinders.
CB: Oh right.
RW: Yeah, he did a second tour.
CB: Ahh.
RW: Didn’t do a full second tour but he did a lot of second tour on pathfinders and he got his DFC for that and he got his AFC for what he was doing in research down at Pershore down there and his MBE was for the work he did on TSR2 and the, and the work he was doing with the, with the Canberras.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Yeah and Curly my engineer he eventually got the DFM just after -
CB: On his second tour.
RW: After he left us he got the DFM and he from a very lowly back, we’re all from very lowly backgrounds, working class backgrounds his son Paul was at grammar school and there was a thing, a big trip they were going to do, which he could do which would have affected his career quite considerably from the school and Curly couldn’t afford it so he sold his medal.
CB: Right.
RW: To pay for his son to go through school. His son ended up as a very eminent statistician broadcasting, writing articles, touring the world doing this sort of thing and he still brings Curly to the reunions.
CB: Oh does he? So he feels that’s good value.
RW: Yeah. Yes, Yeah but poor old Curly he missed his medal a lot and a chappie called [?] it’s in there he bought Curlys medal.
CB: Oh.
RW: And there you are. He bought Curly’s medal. He was a medal collector and he also involved with [?] he’s a Frenchman working, working with the [6th airborne div] on the invasion things and he bought Curly’s medal and through the squadron he found out that Curly was on the squadron cause he got in touch trying to find out who’s it was and he invited Curly over for several years, every year to get his medal. Well the first year well he couldn’t get his medals back, well he didn’t, he was allowed to wear it but he very kindly let him wear his medal and showed him where his medal was and that’s the sort of thing, the sort of the lads they were. But -
CB: Can I go back to a particular experience -
RW: Yes.
CB: You describe -
RW: Yes, certainly.
CB: And that was the collision.
RW: Yes.
CB: So you’re on top of another Lancaster.
RW: Yeah. Yes.
CB: What happened to that aircraft?
RW: Well I didn’t see it at all. ‘Cause I was -
CB: No.
RW: A little busy keeping flying but apparently his propellers, as I said, chopped through our, just behind the bomb aimer’s feet and the bombing compartment up front. His mid upper, his canopy over the cockpit carved through our wheels and tore the canopy off.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And his mid upper gunner, his mid-upper turret was torn off as well and the boys said they saw Taffy who was looking out of his little window saw the aircraft falling away with the canopy falling off and the aircraft falling to bits so you can’t imagine what happened to the crew in the cockpit and the mid upper gunner sitting on top of the aircraft and they saw the aircraft falling away with no parachutes coming out. Of course it disappeared in cloud.
CB: Ah.
RW: And we were two thousand feet and then they saw the explosion on the ground.
CB: Oh.
RW: They found out afterwards that it was another Lancaster.
CB: Right.
RW: And they were able to identify what Lancaster it was and they were all killed of course. Unfortunately. How lucky can you be?
CB: Yeah and none of your boys saw it coming because you hadn’t got any view of it of underneath.
RW: No. Well the engineer was standing at his little window on the starboard side said he just saw it as it appeared and he didn’t see it at all.
CB: So you were flying straight and level.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And this came up from underneath you.
RW: Yeah. Hit sort of sideways.
CB: Oh sideways.
RW: Sideways underneath.
CB: Which is why you can’t -
RW: Yeah and that’s why he cut across us and we sat on top of him. And that was, and you never thought about it you never thought about disaster at the time you were thinking preservation.
CB: No.
RW: And keeping the aircraft flying. We’ve got to fly. Yeah. Which fortunately it did.
CB: And a different question each of the crew has a different recollection of what was going on because they had different jobs.
RW: Yeah.
CB: You’ve already mentioned the danger of being the rear gunner.
RW: Yeah.
CB: How many times did your gunners shoot at other aircraft? Attacking aircraft in other words.
RW: In a way not as many as the attacks that we had because the idea was you didn’t use your guns unless you had to because it gave away your position so about what a half a dozen times, perhaps.
CB: Yeah.
RW: On one occasion we in the going over Germany we had [five] fighter attacks almost one after the other and if it hadn’t been for the diligence of the gunners we wouldn’t have escaped out of it, you know.
CB: You did corkscrews to get away from it.
RW: Corkscrewed out of it. And once you’ve started corkscrewing it’s no good, no point flying firing your guns.
CB: No.
RW: What did happen I was very fortunate I flew in both the, two of the aircraft who did the, the ton up aircraft who did over a hundred operations. One was in H How which was one of our squadron aircraft and the reason why I flew it was because our squadron was allocated the first two Rolls Royce turrets with the 2.5 guns in the back instead of the four 303s mainly we were the first one of the earliest ones to get it because of the attrition rate on the squadron we were given this the 2.5 and we were, WingCo asked us, well he didn’t ask us he told us to go on this operation and get into a position where the special duty operator could attract the fighter to us.
CB: Right.
RW: So we could try the guns out so we’re stooging along and there we are and Harry called up, he said, ‘Attack starboard quarter coming up.’ So we waited there and he got, when he got in the position where he pressed the guns, pressed the tits to fire the gun it didn’t operate. It didn’t go and we saw sparks flying past but fortunately there were lots of contrails around about so we nipped into the contrails and got rid, got corkscrewing and got rid of the fighter but when we got back the old boss was a bit concerned.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And he said, ‘We’ve got to have to find out what’s going on here,’ he said. And they discovered that they’d changed the anti-freeze grease on the guns and because of that we were told to go out the next night and try them out the next night. Which we did and unfortunately there were ten tenths cloud all over the place but we fired the guns and they worked alright. So that we flew and that was one of the reasons why we had the .5 guns. Because of the attrition rate on the squadron.
CB: Were they also on the mid upper?
RW: No. No, just the 2.5s in the mid upper gunner.
CB: Yeah.
RW: But again you don’t hear much about the mid upper gunners.
CB: No.
RW: But they were just as vulnerable as the others really. They were attacked from behind.
CB: They were an important lookout.
RW: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We were so lucky the diligence of my crew and we were good pals. It wasn’t the skipper sitting up front dictating things. They were telling you what to do.
CB: Yeah.
RW: You had to make the final decision obviously but you were just a crew.
CB: What was the, what was the signaller doing?
RW: [laughs] As little as possible [laughs] he was a wonderful character, very mischievous and he always swore he was going to come on operations drunk and towards one of our last operations we were in the crew room and we were talking and he crept up behind me and patted me on the shoulder [drunken talk imitation] and I turned around. He disappeared and I turned around and I said, ‘You bugger.’ And he’d left a couple of WAAFs standing behind me. [laughs] This is the sort of character he was.
CB: This is an eighteen year old lad was he?
RW: Nineteen.
CB: Nineteen.
RW: He was nineteen. No. He was twenty.
CB: Oh was he?
RW: Around then yeah and this was the sort of character he was and he used to get bearings when nobody else could and he when the skipper wanted a bearing, a particular bearing, he’d get one and there’s an emergency frequency which you had to keep off and he used to get right on the edge of this frequency and pick up bearings that you weren’t supposed to have.
CB: So in practical terms.
RW: Yes.
CB: He was giving bearings all the time.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Was he?
RW: Yeah and again very different from, very different from the navigator and mischievous little devil and I always remember one of the occasions which we remember very vividly was at Waddington after the war when we had our squadron reunion and we’d all had quite a lot to drink and we were getting back into our taxi and we were going to drop him off at his pub, the Wheatsheaf in Lincoln and on the way back he was relating in his very drunken manner how Norman, my bomb aimer lost his virginity to Luscious Lill in Grimsby and there was a policeman walking past the car and wanted to know why. This was the sort of character he was. He drank like a fish and on one occasion we went into Louth to have drink and they used to run a crew bus to run us into Louth and pick us up at half past eleven when the pubs closed and we were coming back and Taffy disappeared. He didn’t know where it was until we had a call from the police station saying we have a wireless operator from your station. A chap called Arndale. He’s in prison. And what he did, he had a skinful, gone down a lane to have a wee and there just happened to be a policeman there and half wee’d on the policeman so they took him in. We were on operations that, had to be on operations that night so I had to into Louth and pay ten shillings to bail him out from the police station to get him back. This was the sort of, wonderful characters and we used to go down the pub and drink enormously playing Moriarty and again, it was a form of relaxation.
CB: Yes sure.
RW: Getting rid of stress.
CB: Just a couple of things about the flying, excuse me.
RW: Yes that’s -
CB: What were you doing when you weren’t on operations?
RW: Well occasionally you did an air test. And perhaps did a little bit fighter affiliation practice being attacked by a fighter but generally your, you were completely relaxed to do whatever you wanted. There was no, no station duties whatsoever. You’d perhaps go up to flight and see what was going on with the others. Down the pub.
CB: But were you doing bombing practice in The Wash?
RW: Yes, there were -
CB: Were you doing circuits and bumps?
RW: I think, I think it was a place called Wainfleet.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Somewhere about The Wash where we used to do practice bombing little eleven and half pound practice bombs you know, practice bombs. Used to drop those.
CB: What height would you be flying when you dropped those?
RW: Oh about eight, ten thousand feet. You weren’t flying at twenty odd thousand feet.
CB: No.
RW: In those days and yes we used to do little air tests and things.
CB: Cross countries?
RW: Pardon?
CB: Cross country for navigation practice.
RW: Err not so much. You did those when you first got on the squadron and you, when you got the feel of the squadron you did a couple of cross countries then but after that no we didn’t have to do any cross countries at all and your relaxation was really resting and down the boozer, down the pub and I used to get into trouble. When we used to live in a nissen hut, little corrugated iron nissen hut and when the condensation, used to get the condensation inside used to run down the ridges and in the winter used to form icicles.
CB: Cause there’s no insulation.
RW: Yeah. No.
CB: No insulation.
RW: No insulation. No.
CB: No.
RW: And all we had was a pot stove in the middle of the room a little cylindrical pot stove which we used to go and try and rob people of their ration of fuel and burn furniture and all sorts of silly things and of course there were no ablutions or watering inside. The ablutions were outside in another hut with a concrete bench with taps on and that was all you had. It wasn’t a, Wimpy built the station in eighty days completely and there were a main roads. There was a main road into the station, a main road with flights, a perimeter track and a runway and that’s about it. And all the rest we were walking around on grass and mud as a matter of fact being called Ludford Magna they nicknamed the place as Mudford which is a -
CB: It was that bad was it?
RW: It was that bad.
CB: Right.
RW: But it was, basically apart from the stress of what was going on it was a happy station and this was reflected on the senior staff. The group captain and the WingCos in that place.
CB: But with the high attrition rate -
RW: Yeah.
CB: How, the senior officers would get shot down as well.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So how did the replacements work? Would it be somebody from the squadron already or would they post in a squadron leader or wing commander?
RW: I think it depended on who was available. Perhaps one of the flight commanders would be promoted or could be promoted and our flight commander, Squadron Leader Robinson he was a fortnight before he was a flight lieutenant but the flight commander was killed and with rapid promotion he is made squadron leader. So he became a squadron leader and it has happened that when a station commander who’d gone on operations, well WingCo Alexander a wonderful man, he used to come and take on a crew that had just arrive on the squadron. Take them on operations. So if there were lost they’d perhaps try and promote somebody on the squadron, from the flight to become station commander or bring somebody in with experience.
CB: Squadron commander you mean.
RW: Yes, squadron leader.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Bring in one of the senior officers to take over the station which didn’t happen on our lot. I know it did, it has happened but then rapid promotion for whoever is on the flight.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Which Robinson was. He became from the -
CB: Yeah. So -
RW: Yeah so this rapid promotion business was well deserved but Robinson became the, the flight commander when he was twenty five, twenty six. Yeah. Well, look at Gibson. He was twenty six, he was a group captain and the group -
CB: Yeah.
RW: Group captain in the service, yeah.
CB: Well did sometimes the station commanders fly on raids?
RW: Not the station commander. I know some of them did. Ours didn’t. Old Group Captain King. As far as we know he didn’t because we didn’t know everything that was going on but the Wing Commander Alexander who was in charge of all the flying as I say a new crew would come on the squadron and he’d take that squadron, take that crew that night. Normally, he did a second dicky trip which was an experienced to get experience on flying but when we started at the end, end of of ‘43 started the Battle of Berlin when the operations were called Gomorrah which was maximum effort err old Squadron Leader Robinson flight commander called me in and said. ‘Right you’re flying tonight.’ I didn’t get a second dicky trip but thinking of that sort of thing we used to have jinx. People in the squadron. Used to have WAAFs, you know, somebody little transport driver if they’d been out with this particular WAAF nearly everybody who’d been out with her got killed so she became a jinx, you know.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
RW: And we became a jinxed crew.
CB: Yeah.
RW: We took three different pilots on experience operations and all of them were killed.
CB: Were they?
RW: So they wouldn’t send any more people with us.
CB: No.
RW: Yes. Which is remarkable. So these jinx things did happen.
CB: How many hours did you fly in your thirty by the time you’d finished your tour of thirty ops?
RW: Something like a hundred and eighty three. Something like that.
CB: On, on ops.
RW: On ops.
CB: Ok.
RW: Do you want to see my logbook?
CB: I do. Please.
RW: Yes. When –
CB: We’ll do that in a minute but overall how many by the time you left the RAF how many hours had you flown?
RW: Oh that’s getting on a bit. I did something like two and half thousand hours.
CB: Did you really?
RW: Which, when you compare people flying now are talking about thousands of hours. Thirty, forty, fifty thousand hours. No, two and a half thousand hours I ended up with which was quite a long bit for, for the -
CB: When the Canadian Lancaster came over last year -
RW: Yeah.
CB: The senior pilot there, he’s on airlines, had done twenty seven thousand five hundred -
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Hours.
RW: Yeah. Amazing, yeah.
CB: I’m going to stop there for a moment. Thank you.
[Pause]
CB: Right we’re starting again.
RW: Right from the beginning.
CB: And what I’d like to do is to ask Rusty just to talk about the time from his birth really to a point at West Kirby.
RW: Yeah thank you. Gosh. That’s, well at ninety two it’s a long story. No, it’s not really but I was very fortunate in my bringing up. I was born in a place called Shotley Bridge in County Durham and my dad worked as a handyman on a colliery owner’s estate and there I don’t know whether it was because of the situation or what was going on we lived in a tied cottage and I got diphtheria. I was, I had mucous diphtheria quite a chronic illness in those days and my mum who’d been a nurse in a military hospital nursed me at home with that and mum and dad had quite different careers. My dad was in the navy. He was orphaned as a boy, a two year old boy and brought up by an elder sister who when he got a bit older didn’t want them so he was put in the navy in 1905 as a boy entry and he went through and became a naval diver. And my mum who was a nurse in the, a sister, a matron, assistant matron at a military hospital in Darlington. Went through the war and got herself a Royal Red Cross, Associated Red Cross which was one down from the nursing VC which was a considerable award. She was a wonderful lady. And dad with his naval experience on the Q ships got himself a DFM and he is a leading seaman which was rather unusual in those days ‘cause not very many lower rank NCOs, he wasn’t even an NCO, got a decoration. He got a DFM.
CB: A DSM.
RW: Yes a DSM. DSM, yes.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Distinguished Service Medal and he, having been orphaned, he didn’t have a home to go to and my uncle Stanley was in the navy as well and he brought dad home on leave up north to Newcastle and there he met my mum and my auntie and he married my mum which is, which is lovely but because of his health he couldn’t do any really serious work and he used to do handyman work on the colliery owner’s estate and eventually when he moved in to Newcastle he used to do shift work looking after the stable and the horses for the Coop and in those day they had something like four hundred and sixty horses in the stables. And the nostalgic smell of all that leather was, when I used to go to night schools to try and get some education his stables were just a bit up the road and I used to go and meet him at, class would finish at 9 o’clock, the stables used to finish at half nine. I used to go and meet him at the stables and have a cup of tea by the big stove in the kit room. Smelled wonderfully. Wonderful. And then we had to walk home two and a half miles. No question of buses. Walk home. And dad was, really was a very quiet, unassuming man. Mum was a nurse all her life stayed nursing as her career all her life and she really saved my life on more than one occasion. Nursing me at home with diphtheria and typhoid and then the consequence because we, because we lived in, had no inside toilet, it was only a cold tap and no electricity, gas, paraffin lamps. We had communal toilets outside on The Green at the back I obviously picked up the typhoid from there so my mum went out and set them on fire and burned them down. So there we are. I came back to Newcastle and lived in the city for a wee while and then as a young teenager then I got TB, I had a TB [?] and that kept me down very much so and I was in a wheelchair when I was twelve so my mum nursed me at home with the TB and in consequence my health suffered to the extent that I wasn’t allowed to play sport, I wasn’t allowed to go swimming, couldn’t do all the exercises that my brother used to do and because of the family teeth which weren’t very good and because of the medication I was taking my teeth were in a very poor state so I had all my teeth out when I was sixteen and in those days they didn’t put teeth straight back in away again they waited until your gums got hard and then they put some china teeth in in those days. China porcelain things and that ruined my early love life that did. Mind you I didn’t know what girls were anyway. As far as I was concerned they were the ones that danced backwards, you know, so my upbringing in that respect was very, very sheltered. In consequence I started to go to school when I was about four and a half in Newcastle on the City Road but soon becoming ill I had to stop school and when I did go back to school I was just, just under eleven when you took the scholarship exam at twelve and of course I didn’t pass the scholarship and I didn’t, my brother went to a grammar school. I couldn’t go to a grammar school. I went to a school where you learnt ship working and work on the, work with the prospect of going perhaps in to the drawing offices of the shipyard. All the local stuff. But there again I wasn’t allowed to join the scouts or play sports and yet and yet my dad used to love watching football and we used to go to Newcastle United and watch the football there from an early age, from about eight, so I got quite a bit of fondness for Newcastle United. So, there we are I was a very sickly child with very little education and of course in those days to join the services at the age of eighteen you were called up and you were directed into any of the services that they needed. Even go down the mines and become a Bevan boy which I didn’t relish so I told mum and dad my friend he was going to join up at seventeen and have some sort of choice of services you went into and dad having been in the navy I said to mum and dad I said, ‘I’m going to volunteer and I’m going to join the navy. Volunteer to join the navy’ And they said, ‘Yeah. With your health record you’ll never get in.’ So off I went down to the recruiting centre which was a school and in the navy classroom there was the navy recruiting officer and my own doctor, Doctor Wright and I thought. ‘If I go in there I’ll never get in.’ So, I went next door and joined the air force. And really they were very hard up. This poor chap with no teeth and a heart murmur and varicose veins and covered in psoriasis and I think the air force must have been very, very hard up and much to my amazement after going to West Kirby to sign on where you were attested and signed on and joined the air force at seventeen. And poor old mum wept buckets her poor little lad, her poor little innocent lad going to play soldiers um and of course from then you had to go down to London to ACRC, St Johns Wood to be attestation and see what air crew you were going to be. When you were first signed up and joined up I was told I could train as air crew which was amazing ‘cause, in view of my health. Anyway after being signed on and got the kings shilling, not that I got a shilling but had to swear on the bible down to ACRC where you had attestation where you had medicals and exams. The medicals we used to have were in the Lords Cricket Ground and used to line up just with your underpants on and arms akimbo with your hands on your hips and they were at the side with the hypodermic syringe and pumping this stuff into you and the doc used to come and do what they called an FFI, free from infection, whereby you walked down the front, dropped your trousers and they used to go down and examine you with a little stick and the back, they went around the back, they went around the back and said bend over and made me wonder what on earth was going to happen but there you are if anyone collapsed when you were there or fainted there they just produced all the work on the ground. They just gave the injections on the ground. So we being, being at the Lords Cricket Ground you know and of course the result of that, much to my amazement, I was told I could train as a pilot because when you first went there you were trained as aircrew UT aircrew with a little white flash in your cap to show you were aircrew, trainee aircrew. So there we are I was told I could train as a pilot. And of course from there you had to start learning about the air force so I was posted to Newquay down in Cornwall at the ITW Initial Training Wing where you learned about the air force, square bashing, how to salute and all these sort of things. The admin side of the air force. So having completed that we were posted to, I was posted to South Africa and issued with the tropical kit and off to East Kirby, West, West Kirby at Manchester er at Liverpool to catch the boat to go out to South Africa. And in the billets there when the time came all the people left except eleven of us who were left in the room all Ws. All Walls, Walkers all the Ws left behind and we were left there and the camp disappeared. They took all the men off the camp, all the operating men off the camp and there were just the eleven, we lived off the NAAFI for a week and not knowing what on earth was going on until the next posting that came in and they were all WAAFs. All the WAAFs came in and seeing eleven blokes in their billet you know wondering what on earth was going on. So did we. Then the WAAF officer said, you know, ‘What are you doing?’ Well. ‘We were posted to South Africa and we didn’t go.’ Ah draft dodging. So we were posted down to the B course at Brighton. The bad boys course at Brighton because of the because we were accused of draft dodging and down there we were up very early in the morning and booking in at half past eight at night which we didn’t take very much enjoyment out of this sort of thing and the parades were very, very strict and doubling and running everywhere and we complained to the orderly officer one day at a mealtime telling him, you know we shouldn’t be here. We haven’t done anything wrong and he didn’t believe it and he said, ‘Oh you carry on.’ So the eleven of us, we wrote a letter and we all signed it and sent it to the station commander who had us in his office and he said. ‘This constitutes mutiny,’ which is a court martial offence and when we’d explained to him what had happened he did a bit of an investigation, he said, ‘Oh that’s alright he said, ‘Alright just book in in the morning and come in at night time.’ So we had a few days, four or five day holidaying in Brighton just walking about and spending all our time in [Sherry’s] Bar I think it was and of course then we had to start again. And when we were posted we were posted to another ITW at Stratford on Avon but all our kit and all our records had been sent out to South Africa so nobody knew anything about us so we had to start again so we did all our ITW again at Stratford on Avon and that was very pleasant. We took over most of the hotels for lectures and bedding and I can say I was on the stage in Stratford on Avon which is quite a, quite a thrill mainly as we used the theatre as aircraft recognition. We had to go on stage to point out aeroplanes but that was quite an experience and of course having completed the course successfully there you had to go and prove that we could fly and go overseas so we were posted to a place called Codsall, just north of Wolverhampton where there was a civilian aerodrome where we were, had to go flying Tiger Moths and once we’d gone solo that was it, forgot about aeroplanes. Some of the poor souls couldn’t go solo and they were re-posted. So, fortunately, I managed it and on the Empire Training Scheme where they used to send trainees to South Africa, some to Australia even, some to Arnold Scheme in America. I was posted to Canada on the Empire Training Scheme and this was at a place called Dewinton which is just south of Calgary.
CB: So this is, what date are we talking about here?
RW: This, this was in early ’42.
CB: Right.
RW: Early ’42.
CB: Can I just go back to what you said earlier?
RW: Yeah.
CB: You were selected for aircrew.
RW: Yeah.
CB: But you must have gone through some kind of process that suggested you were suitable for aircrew rather than -
RW: Yeah.
CB: A ground crew job.
RW: Yeah.
CB: So what was that?
RW: Yes. When you were first signed on, volunteered as air crew, when you went to Padgate to be officially sworn in to the service you did some testing there. You did some examinations there and with, fortunately with my experience as a pupil surveyor doing vectors and things on the ground is a similar sort of thing they did in the air with wind resistance and this sort of thing and that helped me enormously to pass the ground exams and having done that minor exams there you were then told you could train as UT aircrew.
CB: Right.
RW: Becoming UT aircrew PNB.
CB: Yeah.
RW: If you couldn’t succeed as a pilot you could perhaps become a navigator or a bomb aimer PNB.
CB: Yeah.
RW: And I was fortunate to say I could train as a pilot. So we -
CB: Just, just to put that into context. Earlier you talked about your experience of then getting to leave school.
RW: Yeah.
CB: How did you get in to bring the surveyor?
RW: Ah the well I -
CB: Which was the basis for your selection.
RW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: For aircrew.
RW: I had, the school I went to was a training establishment more than a school. Learning about draughtsmanship and this sort of thing -
CB: Yeah.
RW: To go on the shipyards and you had to leave there when you were fifteen, sixteen. So I left school, no idea of what sort of job I could get whatsoever. So my brother who was, he was a grammar school boy and very highly educated, a very clever lad, he used to work in his spare time at the Newcastle repertory theatre and this Christmas they were putting on a play called “The Circus Girl” and they were short of somebody to take the part of the monkey in the play and my brother said I’ve got a brother who is doing nothing maybe he’d be it so I became a monkey in the Christmas pantomime at the Newcastle rep which was great fun. The devils, they wore a uniform, skin monkey skin with not much else really. The devils used to put itching powder inside that actually. Not very nice. And of course then when the pantomime was finished they said, ‘What are you doing now?’ and I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ve got to look for a job.’ They said, ‘Would you like to stop on?’ So I stayed on the Newcastle rep for nearly a year as an assistant assistant assistant stage manager and with the girls doing quick changes at the side of the theatre you learned an awful lot about life but my aunt who had a very good friend who was, worked, had another friend who owned and ran an architect’s surveyors office said would I like to go and work for them. So I went and worked at the architect surveyor’s office and became a pupil surveyor. I was doing the exams for the Institute of Surveying, ISF, and I passed their preliminary exams but they didn’t count because I didn’t have a matriculation or school cert so I was going to night school four nights a week learning about mathematics and history and I wasn’t getting on terribly well. I don’t think I would have ever qualified completely but very fortunately the war came along and having volunteered to join up I left surveying and became, and joined the air force.
CB: So that’s how you effectively qualified for being air crew.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RW: Yeah.
CB: Ok. Yeah.
RW: So the fact that I qualified for air crew, the fact that, not so much my health record although the medicals I had were very comprehensive medicals the fact that the mathematics I was doing for the surveying helped me enormously with the navigation exercises we were doing in the thing so that, I think, helped towards the fact that I was allowed to train as air crew apart from the fact that they must have been very short of aircrew and they wanted somebody [to fill the boots]. Yeah, so -
CB: Just a quick question about your initial training.
RW: Yeah.
CB: How many hours did you fly before you went solo?
RW: When we first went solo at Codsall in Wolverhampton it was about eight or ten.
CB: Right.
RW: Something like that. When we got out to Canada you really had to start again and you were doing sort of fifteen, twenty hours before you really were allowed to go solo.
CB: So I’m just interrupting now because this goes into the early part of the interview because it got missed.
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AWaughmanR150803
PWaughmanR1501
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Interview with Rusty Waughman. Two
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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02:55:47 audio recording
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Pending review
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Chris Brockbank
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2015-08-03
Description
An account of the resource
Russell (Rusty) Waughman was born in Shotley Bridge, County Durham. Due to serious poor health as a child his education was interrupted. He describes his training with the Empire Training School in Canada. He was posted to 101 Squadron which was a special squadron with the ABC system. He describes some of the unusual aspects of squadron life such as premonitions and the close connections between everyone on the station. He had many close calls including having to right the aircraft which was flying upside down due to being blown of course by a nearby explosion. On one occasion he managed to keep his Lancaster flying despite a collision with another aircraft. On another occasion the aircraft was again damaged during an attack on Munich. However, as they made their slow progress back they found themselves flying over France in daylight and were amazed to see from the distance two Spitfires which had been sent to escort them home. He also took part in the Berlin airlift.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
101 Squadron
1662 HCU
82 OTU
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
briefing
C-47
control tower
coping mechanism
crewing up
dispersal
entertainment
faith
fear
FIDO
forced landing
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
heirloom
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
Me 109
mid-air collision
military living conditions
military service conditions
nose art
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
perimeter track
pilot
promotion
RAF Abingdon
RAF Blyton
RAF Desborough
RAF hospital Matlock
RAF Ludford Magna
recruitment
sanitation
searchlight
Stearman
superstition
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/311/3468/ANuttingS170222.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Nutting, Sinclair
Sinclair Nutting
Clair Nutting
S Nutting
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Sinclair "Clair" Nutting (b. 1921, J85055 Royal Canadian Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-22
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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Nutting, S
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MacCartney. The interviewee is Sinclair or Clair Nutting. The interview is taking place at Mr Nutting’s home in Banora Point, New South Wales on the 22nd of February 2017. Now, Clair, you’ve written a book called, “A Piece Of Cake,” which documents a lot of your experiences but even so we’ d like to go through some aspects of those and other aspects that perhaps were not covered with —in as much detail. So, let’s go back to the beginning. You were born in 19 —
SN: ’21.
JM: ’21. And where were you born?
SN: I was born in a place called Radisson. R A D I S S O N.
JM: R A D I S S — Yeah.
SN: Saskatchewan S A S K. period. Canada.
JM: And that is where you spent your, most of your youth.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And that’s where you did you schooling.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And you, your family had been in the area there for quite some time.
SN: Yes. They were pioneers.
JM: Pioneers. Yes. And what sort of pioneers? Pioneers in what way? They were farming.
SN: They were the first, among the first settlers as farmers in that area.
JM: Going back how many years would that be, do you think?
SN: To 1900.
JM: 1900. Yeah. And so what was your family farming?
SN: It was what we call a mixed farm of grain, wheat, oats, barley, rye. And animals. Cattle, horses, pigs, chickens.
JM: Right. And so all of those animals — were they raised and then sold or some of it used for home consumption as well? Or a mix again? Or what?
SN: It was rather a mix. They had horses of course were what were used to work the farm
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the cattle and pigs we slaughtered as we needed them. And they were sold on the market when they were ready to sell.
JM: So. Right. So, you sold them as cured stock.
SN: As beef and pork. Yes.
JM: Yes. Yeah. And your father did all the butchery or did he bring in somebody to do the butchery?
SN: No. My father did it.
JM: Right. Ok. And what about the grains? They were all sold. You sent stuff off to silos and that sort of thing or what happened there?
SN: It was, it was a large family farm which included my father, his brothers, my grandfather and they ran it as a unit. It must have been, what? About six sections of land or something like that. It — all of the farms in that area at that time were mixed farms meaning that they were — the people who lived on them were [pause] what’s the word I’m seeking? They were dependant on the farm for their livelihood. For gardens, for grain, for the animals. That kind of thing.
JM: Ok. And so, you would assist in some of the farming duties from time to time when you were a young lad a or —?
SN: Yes. All farm kids that were old enough were expected to earn their keep.
JM: Keep. Yeah.
SN: Yes.
JM: So what sort of things? What sort of tasks were you given?
SN: Oh, there were all sorts of things. In harvest time we would move out with the men. We did all the usual things, I guess. Getting water and wood. Driving horses on wagons and on machines. Binders and ploughs and that kind of thing.
JM: So then again you probably got some sort of basic mechanical, more than basic mechanical training with helping to repair machinery and all of that sort of thing from time to time too, I guess.
SN: All that I wished to have. Yes [laughs]
JM: Right. So, so you were doing this in between your schooling and so what was your schooling? I’m not particularly familiar with the Canadian education system. So would you have gone to school — normal school? The start age in Australia is five. And then through what they call primary school and then transfer to a high school or secondary school. And usually, well, back then, they usually finished about seventeen. Sometimes sixteen. But if they left early they finished at fourteen or fifteen. So how did the Canadian system —
SN: Pretty much the same Jean but this might be interesting. It was during the Depression.
JM: Yes.
SN: And during the Depression they had correspondence courses.
JM: Right.
SN: And I, for instance, went to a country school which had a total of eighteen pupils in all grades from one to ten.
JM: Right. Yeah.
SN: So that was most of my schooling.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this was caused by the Depression.
JM: Depression.
SN: They wanted to get the kids back to school.
JM: The kids were on the farms basically.
SN: Yes.
JM: I suppose. Yes.
SN: Yes. And I then went into the town for the last, I guess, year and a half I was there
JM: Right. And how far away was town away?
SN: Six miles.
JM: Six miles. Right.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And did you travel in and out each day or did you stay in town?
SN: I boarded with a family.
JM: Right.
SN: For a year and a half during the winters.
JM: Right.
SN: Because it was too difficult.
JM: Too difficult.
SN: To get me back and forward.
JM: Back and forward. Yeah. And was this family friends of the family or —?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes. They were dear people.
JM: They were?
SN: They were dear people.
JM: Dear people.
SN: Yes. And good friends of mine.
JM: Good friend. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. Ok. So. So that, yes, well that in a way is actually quite similar to what country children in New South Wales in particular would have experienced as well because they had, like, one teacher schools.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And you would have had one teacher school there.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Yes. Yes. So, what —
SN: One size fits all.
JM: Fits all. Who had sort of a multitude of different grades in the classroom in one corner and scattered all around the area and he was, he or she would be moving between all the children and helping them with the grade that they were on. So, the teacher was — had a bit of a challenge in those sort of situations as well didn’t they? So —
SN: Yes. I didn’t finish my high school.
JM: No?
SN: I was expelled.
JM: Oh, I see. Yes. Right. Because? You —
SN: I misbehaved.
JM: You misbehaved. Yes.
SN: Yes. What — it might be interesting — when I came back from overseas and was discharged you had to go to the capital of the Province, which was Regina, to be discharged. And I wanted to go to university so I went to see a man called a Registrar who was a small god in charge of education and I was in uniform and I told him my story. He listened, I came back the following day and his secretary came out and said, ‘I’m sorry. Mr,’ whatever his name was, I’ve forgotten, ‘Is unable to see you. He was called away,’ and my face fell. And she said, ‘but he left you this.’ And she handed me an envelope which was a, to the effect that I had fulfilled all of the qualifications for Grade 12 and marks were given me which brought me up to the level to enter the university.
JM: Very good.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Very good indeed. So that gave you the chance to go to university.
SN: That’s right.
JM: After you returned. Yeah. Ok.
SN: That’s right.
JM: We’ll come back to all of that in due course. But so, you, what age were you when you were expelled? Roughly. Do you remember?
SN: I joined up when I was eighteen. I suppose I would have been seventeen.
JM: Seventeen. Right. Ok. So I presume in that year between being expelled and being called up you probably just worked on the farm? Is that? Or did you go and get a job?
SN: No. it was a, it was the end of the school year.
JM: Right.
SN: And I joined up in December of 1940.
JM: Right.
SN: And by that time, because of my birthday, I was eighteen.
JM: Right. So --
SN: So —
JM: So it just happened.
SN: Yes.
JM: Just went through the war in a sequence.
SN: Yes. It did.
JM: Alright. So signed up then for the air force.
SN: Yes.
JM: Any particular reason for the air force or —?
SN: Well the air force was quite [pause] it was, I suppose the, the glamour service at that time. This was where people who wanted adventure or saw the war as an adventure this was where they went.
JM: And so that’s what attracted you. You saw that as an adventure.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: And you said, ‘Right.’
SN: That was very good.
JM: If they’ll have me that’s where I’ll go, sort of thing.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yes. Ok. Actually, I just meant to just backtrack once before we get in to — so this was in 1940 that you enlisted but just before that how, how much of an impact did the Depression have on your family? Because you were on the farm you were a little bit able to cope. A little bit better than perhaps people in town because you had lots —
SN: Yes.
JM: Of resources at hand, so to speak.
SN: That’s right. That’s right.
JM: In terms of food and, you know, meat and chicken and eggs. And you had milking cows too I presume.
SN: Exactly. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. So, you were relatively comfortable.
SN: I was.
JM: Yeah.
SN: In terms of the Depression I was — our family came through it pretty well.
JM: Well —
SN: You know there was never a time when I had to think about —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Whether I had any food to eat.
JM: Yeah. Whether there was going to be food on the table. Yes.
SN: Work or what have you.
JM: Yes. That’s right. Ok. So, you enlisted then December 1940.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes, and where did you do your initial training?
SN: I went to Brandon.
JM: Brandon. Yes.
SN: Which was the manning depot.
JM: Where? Sorry?
SN: It was the manning depot.
JM: Right. And where is Brandon in —?
SN: Brandon —
JM: How far away from Radisson is that? I assume you enlisted in Radisson or did you have to go over to the main —
SN: No. No. I had to go to the main, the largest city.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was Saskatoon.
JM: Right. And then so from there to Brandon how far? Where? What sort of distance is that? Just roughly. You know. Sort of a day’s train ride or half a day.
SN: It’s a day’s train ride.
JM: Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: Yes.
JM: So you were over there. So your parents were happy about you enlisting were they? Or was your father a bit —?
SN: I think so.
JM: I forgot to check. Did you have any other brothers and sisters? Or —?
SN: I had one sister but she was much younger than I am. She was seven years younger. After I was expelled I, and the fellow who was expelled with me, we got one of the freight trains that went into the city and we went to the army, the navy and the air force and nobody would have us because they said we were seventeen and did we have permission?
JM: So, you weren’t able to get in at that point.
SN: No.
JM: No. So then when you turned eighteen, you said to your parents. How did they feel about that?
SN: I think they were pretty well resolved that it was going to happen. It wasn’t something they — like all parents they were fearful but I think they were resigned that this was what most people, like me, were doing.
JM: Ok. So, you’re off to Brandon. Is that right?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. And what —how long were you there?
SN: Oh, I would think a couple of months.
JM: A couple of months. Yeah. So, this is early ‘41 basically.
SN: Yes.
JM: Ok. And from Brandon where did you go next?
SN: We went to what was called guard duty.
JM: Guard duty. Yeah.
SN: Which was another couple of months?
JM: Yeah. And where was that?
SN: And that was in Saskatoon.
JM: Yeah. So back to almost near home. Yeah.
SN: Yes. It was back to a couple of hours away.
JM: Yeah. And that was about a couple of months you think.
SN: Yeah. Roughly.
JM: What sort of things did guard duty — what sort of things were you guarding something? What? I mean guard duty sort of implies you were guarding. What did it actually?
SN: It was really part of the training regime to get people sorted out as to what they were to do. It was compulsory. You had two hours on, four hours off, two hours on, four hours off during which you went — in this instance we were guarding, they were guarding airports. Everybody went through this. And you simply went out with your musket and [laughs] patrolled an area for two hours and they checked that you were there and you were awake. And then they — oh there was continuous inspections and little marches and that kind of thing. It was a training thing.
JM: Thing. Yeah. Ok.
SN: Everybody went through it.
JM: Ok. So this is possibly getting to the — just beyond winter so at least out on guard duty.
SN: Yes.
JM: You were not out in the depths of winter. Out.
SN: No. no. There was danger.
JM: Pacing the perimeters.
SN: No danger involved.
JM: Yes. But I mean, but you weren’t out in the cold and snow and all the rest of it though at this point.
SN: No. No. No.
JM: Because as I I say it had become more or less the end.
SN: Yes, it was —
JM: You were pretty well early spring at this stage so —
SN: Yes. Yes, it was spring.
JM: Yes. So, ok. So what, anything in particular that stands out from there. Things that you realised you could do or things that you were being asked to do that you didn’t like doing or anything like that?
SN: I don’t think there was anything remarkable about it.
JM: About it.
SN: It was [pause] I think there were something like twenty four of us that went through this. Nothing.
JM: In that group.
SN: Yes. Nothing remarkable.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So where did you go to from there?
SN: I went to Calgary.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And that was to do wireless training.
JM: Ok. Yes.
SN: Wireless air gunners.
JM: Yes.
SN: And at that time we all got to wear a white flash in our caps.
JM: Caps.
SN: Which separated you from those who didn’t and I was there for — what? Maybe four months or something.
JM: Right. So, would this be, say, around about May? May ’41 to —
SN: I would say.
JM: To October ’41.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or something like that?
SN: Until, until December.
JM: Until December. Ok so we could work back from there.
SN: Yes.
JM: So, December, November, October. September to December. So, we’ll say August/September to December of ‘41 there at your wireless.
SN: Yes. I would say it was a five month course.
JM: Course. Yeah.
SN: That would be my recollection.
JM: Recollection. Yeah. Yeah. Ok. And so all facets of being a wireless op and air gunner all mixed in together. You didn’t — or did you do blocks of wireless work and then —
SN: No. It was all wireless.
JM: It was all wireless. Yeah.
SN: It was all wireless. And I did not finish the course.
JM: Right.
SN: I went —
JM: For any particular reason? Or —?
SN: Yes. I went on leave for, what was it, it was a long weekend and I caught pneumonia.
JM: That’s right. Yes.
SN: In Saskatoon. And they put me in the hospital and I was in the hospital for nearly six weeks.
JM: Yes.
SN: You know. And I was in an oxygen tent for —
JM: Yes. Because you were not a well person for —
SN: For four days because I had — I was lucky.
JM: Yes.
SN: They brought out the first of the Sulfa drugs and that saved me.
JM: That saved you. Yes. Of course. That’s how bad you were.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: So when I finished they posted me.
JM: So, this — when, when was, that was when?
SN: That was from the end of November.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Until the end of the year.
JM: Yes. That you were in hospital.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: In hospital or convalescent leave.
JM: Yes.
SN: It was something like that.
JM: That’s right. Yeah. So therefore, you didn’t actually finish that course. So, what happened there?
SN: I don’t know whether I would, to be very frank. I don’t know whether I would ever have. It was probably a good thing in that I wasn’t particularly — I could do the Morse at speed but I was not particularly — I don’t think I would have been a particularly good wireless operator. So, in any event, at the end of this thing they posted me to Trenton.
JM: Right. Where’s —?
SN: As what we used to call a straight air gunner.
JM: Yeah. And whereabouts is Trenton?
SN: Trenton is in Eastern Canada.
JM: Right. And when would this be? January ‘42?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. And that was for straight air —
SN: Yes.
JM: Air gunner training.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Yeah. So, what stands out about that training?
SN: It was about [pause] maybe six weeks. Something like that. Well I think I had decided that I really had to make this.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it was a large course and I came second. I think it was probably the first time I realised that I could do something.
JM: Do something. Yeah.
SN: This was, I think, largely attributable, I covered it in this book.
JM: Yes.
SN: This man I met who was much older than I was and he — I was a little ashamed of being somewhat bookish and that it was a bit sissy to excel. And he said, ‘You know, this is foolish.’
JM: Yes.
SN: ‘You do as well as you can.’
JM: You can. Yeah.
SN: [unclear] you can do that. And I did. And the other thing which is also covered in this book was the rather extraordinary thing of this man who was court martialled and, because he thought that he was operating a camera gun when he was not. He was operating a Vickers machine gun.
JM: Machine gun.
SN: And he shot up a parade of airmen.
JM: Airmen. That’s right.
SN: In a row.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was court martialled. And as I say in there this was an extraordinary spectacle that I’ve never forgotten. He was a little non-descript fella from Newfoundland whose name was Silver and he, the entire station, it was a big station, was out in hollow square.
JM: On parade.
SN: With the, we were all, yes, we were all on parade and we were all there and the band was there and the group captain was there with a table and the man with the leopard skin drum. The whole bit was the drum rolls, everything.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this poor little man was marched up and his hat off in front of this table, and the drum rolls cut off by [unclear] this corporal. Cut them off.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Cut them off.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And threw them on the ground.
JM: Ground.
SN: Marched him off.
JM: Off.
SN: And he got two years in the penitentiary.
JM: Penitentiary.
SN: So, we all remembered that.
JM: That.
SN: And it was for not turning up.
JM: Up.
SN: For an overseas posting. And so, I think, I think we all got the point.
JM: You all got the point. That’s right. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So, then, so this is sort of becoming a turning point. So, after the air gunning. This training at Trenton. Where did you go?
SN: Well I got, as everyone else did, our air gunner badge.
JM: Badge.
SN: And sergeant’s stripes.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we all went on embarkation leave. And that was a couple of weeks or ten days. I’ve forgotten. But Canada is like Australia in that train journeys were very long.
JM: Long. That’s right.
SN: It takes —
JM: And of course, if you’re right over in Eastern Canada that’s a long way from home.
SN: Yes.
JM: To get back. Yes.
SN: So then, following embarkation leave I came to Halifax and —
JM: So, you didn’t — did you actually get home in that embarkation leave?
SN: Yes, I did.
JM: Or — yes, you did .
SN: Yes. I got home for about ten days I think.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then we were back to Halifax and just as things worked out we were the last, there were twelve of us marched down to board ship. And we were the last people aboard.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the convoy left that about an hour or two later.
JM: Gosh. So this would have been the end of March, early April ’42.
SN: This would have been early March. Yes. 1942.
JM: Yeah. Probably be about mid-March. Oh yeah. Early March. Yeah. Yeah. That’s ok. Yeah. Early March ‘42. Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: And so so Halifax. So where —?
SN: Halifax is —
JM: So was this a large troop carrier that you were on? Or a small —
SN: A large convoy.
JM: Yes. But there was a convoy but were the boats themselves — was there large troop carriers.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Did you have any sense of whether there were thousands there? Or perhaps under a thousand or —?
SN: There were, they were crowded.
JM: They were crowded.
SN: It was a ship called the Andes. Which had run on the Latin American English run.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Not a bad ship.
JM: Yes. No.
SN: But we were in cabins. They were, I think, seven or eight of us in a little —
JM: A cabin. Yeah.
SN: And the the toilets were at the end of the —
JM: Yeah. Corridor so to speak.
SN: Corridor. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So where —
SN: But it was good enough. It wasn’t bad. We could —
JM: Ok. So —
SN: Everybody had —
JM: So where did you land in —
SN: We landed in Greenock which is Glasgow.
JM: Glasgow. Yeah. And so, on the train down to —
SN: We had no, yes, we had no adventures. We had one emergency in the Irish Sea where they shot at, where they put down a sub and the convoys were in lines of destroyers.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And ships.
JM: Ships. Yeah.
SN: Following one another.
JM: You don’t remember how many were in that convoy? In that total convoy.
SN: I haven’t the vaguest idea whatever.
JM: No. That’s ok.
SN: What it is.
JM: So you got there pretty uneventfully.
SN: Yes. Now they may have, I think they sunk something in the Irish Sea.
JM: Sea.
SN: But that was it.
JM: That was it.
SN: So we had really quite a good —
JM: Quite. Ok. So then you’re off in Glasgow. You’re on the train I presume to —
SN: We went by train to Bournemouth.
JM: Bournemouth. Yeah.
SN: Where everyone went and that was a manning depot there.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you stayed in Bournemouth.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Until you were posted.
JM: Yes.
SN: To wherever you were going.
JM: Going. Yeah.
SN: They were, we were a mixture of pilots, observers.
JM: Observers. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Everything. And that was a very easy thing. The only remarkable thing again, which was in the book, was that we were quartered in formerly resort hotels and we ate in a different building than the one in which we were housed.
JM: Right.
SN: And we came out this one day and a siren went and we tumbled out on the street and I remember seeing these two Fokker Wulf 190s come in and they came under the radar. Just straight over the —
SN: We were right on the end — Bournemouth is a —
JM: Seaside bit.
SN: Seaside resort. And they came under the radar and they came right up and they bombed. Dropped their bombs and went.
JM: Went.
SN: And they hit the building we were to eat in and I can remember we were all amazed. Standing there with our mouths open. And some of them, finally they were digging around in the thing said, ‘Come.’
JM: Come.
SN: Don’t stand there like —’
JM: Yeah. ‘Come and help us dig.’
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: So, it was a rude awakening.
JM: Awakening to the realities of war. What so now you finally knew what you were about to be part of .
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes. It was real.
JM: It was real. That’s right. So, any idea of how long you were in Bournemouth for? So you would have been there. How long did it — I didn’t — how long did it take to get from Halifax across to — It would only have been a couple of days.
SN: About ten days.
JM: Ten days. Yeah. And so then down. So, we’re probably talking about April. Bournemouth was probably about April ‘42 to — how long do you reckon?
SN: Maybe to June.
JM: To June. Yeah. And so where did we, and so —
SN: May or June. I’ve forgotten.
JM: May or June. What sort of — were they giving you any theory lessons there at this stage?
SN: No. It was — you just had a roll call.
JM: Roll call.
SN: Once a day.
JM: Once a day.
SN: And that was it.
JM: Pre. So did you —
SN: And then you did whatever you pleased.
JM: So, did you go up to London or do anything like that or how did you spend your time?
SN: No. You were not, you were I don’t know whether, they must have told us. No. No one went anywhere. I think you were on call.
JM: Call. Right.
SN: That you would be moving out as soon as it happened.
JM: Moving out soon. Yeah.
SN: And I don’t think anybody was —
JM: Right.
SN: You would have had to have leave.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: To do that.
JM: To do that. Yes. Ok. So, you were, you were just basically sitting around. What did you —play cards or things like that to pass the time? Or what did you do to pass? So just basically sitting around. Effectively doing nothing. How did you pass, how did you and your mates pass your time? Sit down on the —
SN: We moved around. It was quite a beautiful place with many gardens. We moved around during the day to the beach and so on and the pubs at night.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Nobody had all that much money.
JM: Money.
SN: You know that you [laughs]
JM: No. that’s right. Yeah.
SN: You could —
JM: Basically, sit and watch the world go by.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: There was no, there was no, no attempt to discipline or to —
JM: Right. Ok. So, from, so nothing, no particular experiences stand out whilst in Bournemouth.
SN: No, I don’t think there was anything there.
JM: No. Ok.
SN: There was a Palais dance. A Palais de Dance which they had in most places, you know.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So, where, where to next? Was it to Wales next?
SN: I went to Wales.
JM: Yes.
SN: To a place called Stormy Down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: It was a mining area.
JM: Yes.
SN: Coal mines.
JM: Yeah. And over there you were doing —
SN: To a gunnery school.
JM: To the gunnery school again. Yes. And roughly how long was that?
SN: It wasn’t all that long. I would say that it might have been a month. Pretty full on.
JM: Yes. And so, this was where you came. So, you hadn’t done any gunnery training back in Canada so, this would be your —
SN: Yes, I had.
JM: You had. You did do some.
SN: Oh yes. Yes.
JM: When you were at Calgary.
SN: No. No.
JM: No.
SN: When I was in Trenton.
JM: Trenton. Trenton. Ok. So — oh my apologies. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, because that’s where you were second. Second. Had the second highest score. Ok so how were the — what were you using? Different guns here now between what you were using in Trenton? Or —
SN: Yes. We were using [pause] what can I remember about it now? In Britain we were using old Lewis guns which were a pan that sits on the thing and it feeds outside and it seems to me that we were [pause] I’m not sure now what? We did quite a bit of target shooting. Drogue shooting where a drogue is dragged.
JM: Dragged. Yes.
SN: And of course in both places you do a lot of — what do you call it? [pause] Where you do — you shoot at the —
JM: Skeet.
SN: Skeet shooting.
JM: Yeah.
SN: A lot of skeet shooting. A lot of target shooting. That kind of thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And —
JM: As part of this.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: And there was a course.
JM: Yes.
SN: Which you, of benefit and I did very well. I got — they said, “A very good air gunner.” So —
JM: Were there particular competitions or something or —
SN: Yes. They would mark you for —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Target scores. How you —
JM: And you were coming out on top a lot.
SN: Yes.
JM: Right.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. So, do you think you would have perhaps back when you were younger, on the farm, I presume you would have been doing some shooting there.
SN: Yes.
JM: So, do you feel that that perhaps gave you a bit of an advantage having sort of been always shooting moving targets. I would presume a lot of the time they were moving so —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: I don’t know.
JM: You don’t know.
SN: No.
JM: Yeah. But nevertheless you obviously had an aptitude for it because you were doing very well there with your skeet.
SN: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. And you didn’t retain an interest in skeet shooting at any time. You didn’t do it many years down the track. Just as a little deviation here for a second.
SN: Only once.
JM: Yes.
SN: We were on a transatlantic ship with the family going somewhere. I’ve forgotten where but going. I was Foreign Affairs and we used to go by ship.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And they had a competition on this ship for skeet shooting.
JM: Yes.
SN: And I guess there were about thirty or forty people there and I won.
JM: You won.
SN: And they gave me a cup.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the rather wonderful thing about this was that both the kids were there and watched it. The two boys.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So that brought my [laughs]
JM: Increased your standing in their eyes no end. Did it?
SN: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: Ah well that’s very very interesting. So, do you remember how many rounds you had to shoot or was it a decent length competition or did they sort of try to keep it.
SN: It was, it was a pretty, a pretty easy one.
SN: Yeah.
SM: Ordinarily if you do skeet shooting you go through about seven stations.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And that means you’re shooting —
JM: Different heights. Yeah.
SN: At a bird at the height it’s going.
JM: Yeah.
SN: As it’s going away from you.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Up. It’s all the way through.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Whereas this one was there. Had to be done from the back of the ship.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you didn’t have, they couldn’t.
JM: Have variations.
SN: They couldn’t have done any variations of any sort.
JM: Any sort. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: That amounted to very much.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, you really did five and somebody, maybe they were five of you shot five each and you won that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then those who won competed again.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: It wasn’t really [laughs] that big a thing.
JM: It wasn’t such a big challenge for you.
SN: No.
JM: Having had all that other experience. Ok. Well that’s all very interesting. Ok. Well you completed the gunnery at Stormy Down. About a month. So, from there. OTU.
SN: I went to OTU.
JM: Yeah.
SN: At a place called Honeybourne.
JM: Yeah.
SN: A beautiful place in the Midlands.
JM: Yes.
SN: Near Evesham and Stratford on Avon. Yeah.
JM: And so how long were you at OTU?
SN: I was there for the fall because I remember we went out to steal apples. I got to the squadron in — maybe in October. Now, I had these. The reason I don’t have these dates here is my logbook was stolen.
JM: Stolen. Yes. I know. From when the book was —
SN: So I don’t have this.
JM: Yes. I know.
SN: I’m really just doing memory.
JM: I know. I’m just trying. I fully appreciate that I’m really testing your memory here but yeah.
SN: In the late summer and early fall I was at the OTU. I would have been —
JM: OTU. So that’s probably —
SN: I would have been there for at least three months.
JM: Three months. Right. So, we’re probably talking about August. September.
SN: Yes, I would say August September.
JM: August September of ‘42 we’re talking about here.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. Ok. Yeah. And what stands out about OTU? Anything in particular. Apart from the fact that there was nice countryside. There were nice orchards where you could scrounge some apples.
SN: Yes. Well they had very nice pubs and you could chase girls.
JM: Yeah. Yes.
SN: And the weather was delightful.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the only thing that — two things happened I guess. One was that you, a lot of OTU is the gunner — each, each — the gunners have their own courses. The navigators. Pilots. Then you form a crew.
JM: Yes. You’re doing your crewing up. Yeah.
SN: And a lot of this was called circuits and bumps.
JM: Bumps. Yeah.
SN: Around and around and around.
JM: Around and around. Yeah.
SN: And one night a German night fighter got in the thing. Got in the — there’s usually four aircraft.
JM: Aircraft.
SN: And they follow one another.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he got in the line.
JM: Line. Yes.
SN: And shot it down. We were in Whitleys which was an old two engine.
JM: Engine.
SN: Bomber. And he got in the line and shot the —
JM: The Whitley that was in front.
SN: The Whitley, as it was landing. Yes. So that was a big thing for us.
JM: That was. Yes. And, but that wasn’t you.
SN: No.
JM: Were you in, were you in.
SN: I wasn’t, I wasn’t even in the circuit either.
JM: You weren’t in the circuit either.
SN: No.
JM: Right. And what was the outcome with that Whitley. Was it —did he inflict injury as well as damage to the aircraft or —
SN: Yes.
JM: He did.
SN: Yes. He did.
JM: So, what? Killed all the crew or —
SN: No. No. I think they [pause] I think one. I think one man was either, either killed or very badly injured
JM: Injured
SN: And the aircraft was of course.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Runway. Smashed itself.
JM: Smashed itself. Yeah. Right. Ok. So at this point your crew. You’ve now, you crew up as well here at OTU.
SN: Yes.
JM: This is when you form your crew. So, your pilot.
SN: Was — I’ll deal with that I think.
JM: Yes.
SN: He was a man called Stonehill.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was a squadron leader.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was from Fighter Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I don’t know what he’d done but he was, he was not happy to be there.
JM: No.
SN: That was not what— he didn’t really want to fly this [laughs] box like aircraft. And he was, we thought he was old. Old would be he was in his thirties.
JM: Late twenties or something. Oh thirties. Yes. Yes.
SN: You know.
JM: Yes.
SN: But he was older than we were.
JM: Yes.
SN: And proper RAF type, you know. Had a handlebar moustache.
JM: And all the rest of it. Yes.
SN: Yes. And he’d, and we saw nothing of him because we were, there were five of us including him.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he of course he was an —
JM: An officer. And he was in the officer’s mess. In the —
SN: The other four of us were NCOs.
JM: Yes. NCOs.
SN: In our own mess. Ordinarily someone would have had, a pilot would have had something to do with us but he was, he didn’t want to be there.
JM: No. That’s right.
SN: And he, I don’t think he really knew our names. He, and so, we really saw, we saw nothing of him except we would, you know, get in the aircraft and we’d get out.
JM: Yeah. That’s right.
SN: Except for one. We went to a place called Long Marston which is up, just out of Stratford.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this was for a, sort of, pre-operational thing to work out with the crew and we flew every day.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Cross country’s and things and we saw one night he came. We were at the flights. The flights is where the aircrew wait to get on, to get off.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he came out of the flights where we were and suggested that we come and have a beer.
JM: And everybody —
SN: So, we did this to wherever it was. We went from the flights and he had he must have [pause] I don’t know how we got there. He had a little Austin convertible.
JM: Convertible.
SN: Thing. And he, I think he either had family or him, beside him. And we sat around with him for an hour in the pub and the only thing I remember about it was that he had a dog and the dog was a Spaniel. And the dog would drink beer. The dog drank beer and we sat and we had a beer and he was friendly. But I don’t think he — he didn’t intend to stay and he didn’t stay.
JM: Didn’t stay.
SN: They took him. They took him back to where he came from.
JM: Back to where he came from. Ok. So, he disappeared down the thing. Down the track. But the rest of you stayed together though at this point. So who was your navigator?
SN: Well we had a little, a little crash. A little accident.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which I deal with there when the aircraft went off the end of the runway.
JM: Runway.
SN: And it broke the leg of the wireless operator, I think. A big tall fellow named Hurst.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the crew packed up then. I think. Now I’m I don’t know which happened first.
JM: First. Yeah.
SN: Whether we had this, this [pause] this accidental crash. Whether we had that and then he was sent off or whether he was sent off when was just finishing up I don’t know.
JM: No.
SN: We never knew. We never saw him. They never said anything. They just called us in and they said, ‘Now, we’re disbanding this crew.’
JM: Crew.
SN: ‘And we’re posting you to other squadrons.’
JM: Squadrons. Yeah.
SN: To squadrons.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. Ok and so and from there you, that’s when you went to 405.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Ok. And so you were landing. You joined 405. How long, how long were you at OTU? August September ’42.
SN: I was about three months.
JM: About three.
SN: A good three months.
JM: Ok. So, you were posted to 405. What? About December. November. December or —
SN: No. October.
JM: October. Ok.
SN: Yeah.
JM: October.
SN: I think.
JM: ’42.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Ok. And so here and a couple of little experiences in 405.
SN: Well we went, I went. When I went to squadron I was on squadron for a long time. Longer than most people.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I came in with my kit and there was a note for me and it said something like “Welcome Clair.”
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when you come to the, wherever the, what do you call it? Not a dormitory. We were quartered in an old college.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he said, when you, “When you come to the quarters come and see me. Stuart.”
JM: Stuart.
SN: And it was Stuart Clark who was from my little town.
JM: Town. That’s right. Yes.
SN: Right.
JM: Yes.
SN: And so, I went up and he and the navigator who was a fella called Elmer [Bulman] from [unclear] Nevada. And they were playing Battleships and so we talked about things and Stuart said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘We need an air gunner. You come with us.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: In our crew.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I did.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I was lucky.
JM: You were lucky. Yes. So that’s it. You knew the pilot because you had Stuart there as that.
SN: Yes. He was the navigator.
JM: Oh sorry. He was the navigator. Yeah.
SN: And he went to see the —
[phone ringing]
SN: Excuse me a second while I see to that.
[recording paused]
SN: Yes. And so he went to the pilot and said, ‘Look I’ve got —
JM: He went to the pilot. Yeah. Went to the pilot.
SN: And I was in.
JM: The pilot’s name? I should have it.
SN: Weber.
JM: Weber. That’s right.
SN: W E B E R. So I was in.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And so then you went off and started to do your ops.
SN: We —
JM: Coastal Command.
SN: We were, what we did first is we —
JM: You got linked with —
SN: We were at Topcliffe up in Yorkshire. We had to do, we had to convert. It was called conversion at that time.
JM: Conversion. That’s right. Yes. Yes.
SN: Which was from, we had, they had been on Wellingtons.
JM: Wellingtons.
SN: And the squadron converted to Halifaxes so it was this period of people getting used to this new aircraft.
JM: Halifax.
SN: So that went on for a time. And then maybe a month later. Sometime in November they they were losing a lot of people with this. Losing a lot of shipping with the subs.
JM: Subs yeah.
SN: And they’d lent us to Coastal Command.
JM: Coastal Command.
SN: To cover during the time the North African invasion force went down.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And so we were sent down to Southampton to do this, this thing and we spent most of the winter there.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: Doing these —
JM: Patrols.
SN: Patrols. Yes.
JM: So you weren’t actually bombing. You were doing surveillance.
SN: It was called air sea warfare.
JM: Yeah.
SN: ASW. I think. And you were looking for, you went out on, it was called a square search and you went out. They were great long things that would go from ten to twelve hours. Went down off the Scilly Islands and Bishop’s Rock and somewhere. A point on the Atlantic or the Bay of Biscay. Whatever it was.
JM: Was.
SN: Depending on what they had decided that day.
JM: That day.
SN: At the briefing where everything is. Where you should go.
JM: Go.
SN: And you flew this course square and back. And you flew fairly low. A thousand feet or something and you looked for submarines.
JM: Submarines yeah.
SN: And evidence of them you see.
JM: Yeah. A bit — sort of a wake from the conning tower.
SN: Yes. There was a great deal of that.
JM: Yes.
SN: It was a separate — Coastal Command it was called. We were lent Coastal Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And Coastal Command, all through the war, and Australia. Here as well.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Operated all through the war doing just that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That was the —
JM: Yeah. So how many [pause] how many missions would you have done in Coastal Command do you think? Roughly.
SN: I can’t remember. You got — what they did is they, they took three of these [pause] ops or whatever you want to call them.
JM: Call them. Yeah.
SN: They took three of these for one op.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Three patrols if you want to call them that.
JM: Yeah. Three patrols were equal to one op in the —
SN: That’s right.
JM: The bureaucrats eyes.
SN: That’s how they did it.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: I don’t remember just what. Just how many there were. There wouldn’t have been all that many. The weather was pretty duff.
JM: Yeah. So —
SN: During that period so you would be stood down quite often, you know.
JM: Down quite often.
SN: And it was, there is nothing more boring than [laughs] [that sort of?] exercise
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I guess we had. We thought we saw evidence of a sub and we dropped our depth charges once. We thought we saw oil on the surface. And when they came up to charge their batteries and when they did this [pause] the oil — they would dive and they would send up several gallons of oil.
JM: Oil.
SN: So that —
JM: Created a bit of an oil slick.
SN: And you’ll see the oil slick.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the object was that the attacking aircraft would say, ‘We got him. We saw the oil,’ and he was — they sunk.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And of course, it hadn’t that at all.
JM: At all. No. Because they were in fact just doing it as part of their diving.
SN: Yeah
JM: Part of their diving process, so to speak. Yeah.
SN: We had one, I guess — two close encounters. One was [pause] one was that, was with, on these patrols they were so long that you had to carry excess tanks for excess fuel.
JM: Excess fuel.
SN: And that meant that you had the — they had of course to change tanks and you had to watch. The engineer had to watch the gauges to make sure that he changed, while one was still operating.
JM: Operating.
SN: To the new one.
JM: The new one. Yeah.
SN: And in this one case he forgot.
JM: Forgot.
SN: Whatever he was doing and the pilot fortunately noticed this and he said, ‘Mac,’ he said, ‘Change tanks.’ And he made a tremendous huge leap and did it and by that time we were down low enough and I wondered why we were this low that I could see the whitecaps on the waves.
JM: Waves.
SN: Yeah. So we were down maybe roof height by that time [laughs] and it sort of laboured its way up.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And the other one I describe in the book when we attacked the German —
JM: Yes.
SN: E-boats.
JM: E-boats. Yeah.
SN: In the [pause] it’s the harbour near, near Biarritz.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And they threw up a lot of stuff.
JM: Yes.
SN: And we —
JM: You got some flak out of that didn’t you?
SN: I don’t remember whether we did or not. We might have but it — we probably did because you could see the puffs and things.
JM: Yeah.
SN: But the sailors. I shocked them. They were out sunbathing on the deck [laughs] so we were close enough and I swept the decks of this thing.
JM: Yes.
SN: And you could see great activities going on there.
JM: Yes.
SN: But of course they had enough stuff there that they could have blown us out if —
JM: Out of the sky. But you got away before they managed to get to them. Yeah. So —
SN: Yes because I think you you could say our attack —
JM: Was totally unexpected. Yes.
SN: Was aborted.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And depth charges wouldn’t really have done anything.
JM: Done anything.
SN: That much harm.
JM: Much harm.
SN: They told us later.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. So, all up you were doing this for about —
SN: For the winter.
JM: For the winter. Yes.
SN: Yeah.
JM: So, through to early ’43.
SN: Yes. Till maybe it would have been about March.
JM: March yeah. And then you resumed with 405 then.
SN: It would have been March. Yes. It would have been the end of February.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Early March. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So you resumed with 405.
SN: Yes. So the Squadron. You see we never changed. Coastal Command is — they’re painted white grey.
JM: Yeah you were.
SN: And with us we just —
JM: Stayed black.
SN: Left it and stayed black.
JM: Yeah. And so how long were you back with 405?
SN: This was 405.
JM: Sorry.
SN: The whole squadron.
JM: Yes but with 405 base.
SN: To Bomber Command.
JM: Yes. To Bomber Command because you were down in Southampton.
SN: Yes we were.
JM: With Coastal Command.
SN: We were lent to Coastal Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Then we returned to —
JM: Bomber Command.
SN: The end of February we returned to —
JM: Yeah.
SN: To Bomber Command.
JM: To Bomber Command. To —
SN: To Topcliffe which was in Yorkshire.
JM: Yes. So, and so from here you then went on. Started to do some actual bombing raids from here.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: We did, we did several bombing raids from Topcliffe at that time. Maybe three or four or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And one of them was Stuttgart which was where I shot down a Messerschmitt 109.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And any comments in terms of, you know, how close he was before you were able to see him and get, get, you got on to him before he got on to you or was he trying to get to you but your pilot managed to get away. Get at an angle where he was ineffective but you got him or what?
SN: He came up behind and I saw him. And I gave, when he got within range I gave the pilot evasive action and the pilot did it in classic fashion.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when he was close enough. Six hundred yards. Not all that long. I got a good, a good shot at him.
JM: Yes.
SN: He was coming up like that you see and he, by this time had started to fire at us but he was, he didn’t hit us.
JM: Hit us because the pilot had already started the changing.
SN: He’d already started and he didn’t touch us at all.
JM: Touch us. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Yeah. And he then went above us and started to turn around and fell.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s how you know you’d had a — you’d scored.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: Yes. So it was confirmed hit for you.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: But I couldn’t see where I was until he was —
JM: Coming past you more or less.
SN: Went down. He was off.
JM: Yes. Yes. I see. And so, and so that, was that was Stuttgart raid. And any other things stand out from these raids at this point?
SN: No. They were —
JM: They were.
SN: They were all on —
JM: Sort of routine.
SN: What was called Happy Valley.
JM: Valley. Yeah. Over the Ruhr. Yeah. Yeah. But routine as such and just —
SN: That might have been a period of maybe three weeks or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I’ve forgotten.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And then we were transferred to Pathfinder Command.
JM: Pathfinders. Yeah. That’s right. Yes.
SN: Which was down at Gransden Lodge.
JM: Lodge. Gransden Lodge. Yeah. And so, this would have been March.
SN: It was March 13th was when I shot the aircraft down.
JM: Right. Ok. March 13. Ok. So then would that be later March then that you went to Gransden Lodge? That the Pathfinder.
SN: Yes. Or the 1st of April. I don’t know which.
JM: Right.
SN: It wasn’t long.
JM: Yeah.
SN: We just, we just did maybe two or three ops.
JM: Yeah. Ops. Yeah. Yeah. And the decision to move to Pathfinders. What, what’s the story there?
SN: Well 405 was the oldest Canadian bomber squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which had been operating on the [ unclear] maybe a year in Bomber Command in what was called 6 Group which was the Canadian group.
JM: Group. Yeah.
SN: And because it was the, I suppose, and I’m guessing here because it was the oldest squadron and had the most experience it was the one selected to go to the Pathfinder group.
JM: Pathfinders.
SN: And also, I guess because the CO was quite a remarkable guy. A fella named Johnnie Fauquier and he was a force in himself and he —
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: Because he was brought back.
JM: Back.
SN: As the head of the squadron and we were sent down as a part of 8 Group.
JM: Yes. But was it the commanders that came to you and said to your pilot, Weber and say, ‘Right, your crew’s a good crew – ’
SN: No. No.
JM: You’re going over to Pathfinders or —
SN: No. Oh no. Nobody was asked anything.
JM: No. No. I’m not asked but just said, ‘Right —
SN: No.
JM: Said to Weber.
SN: There was nothing. They just took the squadron.
JM: They just took it.
SN: As it was with Coastal Command.
JM: Right.
SN: Took the squadron.
JM: Right. The whole squadron. Yeah. Ok. Ok. So, and so no one had any choice in the matter. Everyone had to just comply.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Basically. Yeah. Ok. So [pause] so then began your time at Gransden Lodge and — how many — you did a lot of ops in that time.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: From Gransden Lodge.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Now I was, it was quite a time from October to January of forty — January of ‘44 I believe.
JM: Yeah. Ok. Well if the squadron moved over in March/April ’43.
SN: In other words I was with the squadron from —
JM: Squadron from —
SN: October of ‘43 to January of ’44.
JM: Yes, but you said that the squadron moved.
SN: Well in that time it was in Bomber Command to Coastal Command to Bomber Command.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: To Pathfinder Command.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. But what we had there before was that you [pause] you moved back [pause] to you had your Coastal Command and then —
SN: We went back to Bomber Command.
JM: You went back to there and that’s when you did your, you said the 13th of March.
SN: Yes.
JM: Was when you did your raid on Stuttgart.
SN: Yes.
JM: And you shot down the Messerschmitt.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And that was when you were back at Bomber Command.
SN: That’s right.
JM: That’s right. And so that’s why you were initially indicating to me that it was perhaps late March, early April that the squadron moved to —
SN: That’s right. Moved to Pathfinder Command. 8 Group.
JM: To Pathfinder Command. Yeah. In April ‘43. So, in fact you were part of Pathfinder from, roughly, early April ’43 right through to —
SN: To January.
JM: To January ’44.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s right. That makes sense. So would you have had leave at any stage? You must have had some periods of leave in between all these bits and pieces.
SN: Yes. We had a lot of leave. We had a week every six weeks.
JM: Yeah. And just before we get into Pathfinders you know, any of the, I don’t, I’m not looking for a sort — because you’ve had so many raids with, or ops with Pathfinders we’ll just pick on a couple I guess but just backtracking up until there you’d had periods of leave and what, did you have a regular places you went to when you were on leave or did you try —
SN: London.
JM: Always London.
SN: Usually. Yes.
JM: Yes. And did you have a particular place there that you always went to for accommodation or did you do different places? Or —?
SN: Different places. Yes.
JM: Right and —
SN: And usually with the, with the crew or at least two of us.
JM: With the crew basically went all together.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. So, so, Weber the pilot went with you and —
SN: No. He was English.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he, of course, went home.
JM: He went home. Yeah.
SN: And I had a particular, my particular pal was a wireless operator.
JM: Yes.
SN: Who was a fellow called Rickard.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the engineer.
JM: Yes.
SN: Who was called MacLean.
JM: Yes.
SN: So either usually the two of us but sometimes three —
JM: Yes.
SN: Would go on leave together.
JM: Together. Right.
SN: And we went to Ireland once. To Dublin. Which was interesting.
JM: Did you have to go in civvies for that? Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: You changed at the border. At a place called Larne. You left your uniform and got, they gave you a civilian suit and off you went. It was the, the, what I suppose the most attractive feature of it was that there was no food rationing and you could get all steak and eggs and bacon and what have you.
JM: Whatever you wanted. Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: Which made a change.
SN: Which was rather pleasant.
JM: Yes.
SN: For a few days.
JM: Yes. That’s right. Yes. So, it’s what I think a lot of chaps ultimately ended up doing is having a little excursion to Ireland. I think probably just for the sake of getting the food.
SN: Yes. Indeed. Indeed.
JM: Yes. That’s right. So, no other particular events stand out from when you were up onto this point. When you were on leave. Just all, just the usual sort of pubs and shows and —
SN: Pubs and shows and girls.
JM: Girls.
SN: You see [laughs]
JM: Yeah. Yes. Ok. So, looking at Pathfinders. What particular missions or ops do you want to highlight?
SN: I think, I think for Pathfinders, of course, the people who are most affected are the pilots and navigators and bomb aimers. For the gunners and wireless ops it’s really, it’s the same. It’s pretty much the same drill. The only difference is with Pathfinders you are continuously training.
JM: Yeah.
SN: There is very little time off so to speak. There is a training exercise every day you’re not on ops so it’s, it’s a pretty full on thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I guess there is another interesting thing about it is, of course, it was a pretty impromptu [pause] I was going to say it was a pretty impromptu move and we were moved and quartered in the village. In amongst the village.
JM: Yes.
SN: The huts and things were all in this village.
JM: Yeah. So, houses were basically just requisitioned to be your accommodation.
SN: No. The village was there and the village was operating in the same way.
JM: Yes. But individual houses might have been requisitioned.
SN: No.
JM: No.
SN: They built, they built —
JM: So, you were billeted. The people lived there and you were all just billeted in —
SN: Yes. And we all —
JM: With families.
SN: We all lived in, what do you called them, huts. What are they called?
JM: Nissen. The Nissen huts.
SN: Nissen huts. Yes. We all lived in Nissen huts.
JM: Oh ok.
SN: The masses were in Nissen huts.
JM: So, they built Nissen huts within the village itself.
SN: Yes. We all lived in the village and we walked to the flights.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was about a quarter of a mile.
JM: A quarter of a mile away. Right. Yeah.
SN: Which was rather interesting. It was an interesting time.
JM: Yeah. For what reason?
SN: Well I think you — these villagers, we went back. We had a reunion there. And they regarded us as their people. You know, they knew us all in the pubs and how many didn’t come back. Who.
JM: Yes. And so, they basically felt a sense of protection.
SN: Yes.
JM: Enveloped you guys in a cloak of protection in a way to sort of provide you with, I guess, some stability or something like that is what they felt they were doing by providing that [pause]
SN: Yes. It was quite —
JM: Extending that friendship for want of a better word. Yeah.
SN: It was quite touching.
JM: Yes.
SN: When we went back.
JM: Yes. Yes. And — Ok. So you were doing regular training as well as going out on ops and what? Any, which ops in particular stand out for you?
SN: Well [pause] it’s like anything else I guess. You — it becomes a routine and it’s what you do and you — I think you become a little callous. And I think it takes, it took me a time after I was discharged. I found it [pause] An uncle of mine spoke to me and said, you know, ‘Have a little compassion.’ You became used to death. And people didn’t come back. And the casualty rate was horrendous.
JM: Yes.
SN: And you were, if you survived it’s what you do and it’s your [pause] you can get, you can accustom people to almost anything.
JM: That’s right.
SN: So, you know, we went out and did it and came back.
JM: Back.
SN: We laughed about it.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Drank to the next man to go.
JM: Go.
SN: That was life.
JM: That was life. And what, what particular — I think there were a couple of particular ops that you mentioned in the book that you might just touch on briefly?
SN: Well I think we, we were first occupied with the Ruhr Valley. With Happy Valley.
JM: Happy Valley. Yeah.
SN: Then we went on to — we did one on Hamburg and we did some long runs. Pilsen, I think. And finally, Berlin. I went to Berlin seven times.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They [pause] we got shot up pretty badly several times and I guess what you remember is that your crew changes. Or ours did. For instance, the man I was telling you about. Stuart Clark.
JM: Yeah.
SN: He had a great friend in the squadron and instead of flying down to Coastal Command with us — we flew, you see. We just packed our stuff up and went. He decided to fly with his friend. You know, why not. And I remember he went off before we did. Went off. He just got over the horizon. Whack. The time of stress with an aircraft is when it takes its first turn because it’s got, not only the momentum of getting in but it has to make this turn.
JM: Turn.
SN: That’s it. And it didn’t and they were all killed. Blown up. So, we had an American with us and when the Americans came over and started to operate he went back to his, or went to — the American air force were happy to have them and most of them went back. And I guess the [pause] we lost crew members and I guess that’s what you remember. Who was the first one? [pause] We had, oh the first one we lost was unfortunately the navigator who was a very nice fella. We were good friends and we used to go to the pub at night. And we were at a place called Leeming in Yorkshire and instead of going around by the road we would cross the airfield and you had to be careful because of night flying [laughs] to do these things, you see.
JM: Yes.
SN: But it made it shorter. Anyway, we came back and I guess all had quite a bit to drink and we were at the top of our — they called them married quarters. They were cottages and we were in the two bedrooms upstairs. I, and Ricky, the wireless operator and Gibby. We got, we came back and we got to the top of the stairs and Gibby slipped and he rolled down these stairs and we got at the bottom and his head was bleeding. So, we got the ambulance and he was unconscious. There was nothing — his head was bleeding and the ambulance came and we never saw him again and I don’t know what happened to him. I presume that he perhaps died. And the other two I think I deal with in here. I might have dealt with Gibby as well. We had a thing which was called [pause] what did we call it? It’s [pause] lack of moral fortitude. LMF.
JM: Yeah.
SN: LMF. And that’s really quite a good story actually. We had two of our crew. One was over Essen. A fellow named Gordon Wood. Toronto. And he, how anybody could think of this when we’re over Essen and the bloody kite was —
JM: Bouncing around the —
SN: Bouncing because of the flak.
JM: Flak.
SN: Threw us [unclear ] and he, and we missed, we went over the —
JM: Target.
SN: Target. And we missed.
JM: Missed.
SN: We were off so we had to go around again. Do another thing. Because the bomb aim has to be straight and level to do this thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when we started going around the second time he went to pieces and he, the pilot’s name was Tony. And he said, ‘Don’t go in there Tony. Don’t go in there. They’ll kill us,’ he said, ‘I want to go home and marry Mary,’ he said, ‘Don’t do this.’ He wept and so forth at the pilot, Tony. And Mac, the engineer, went down and take his intercom out and then they had to get him up and put him on — we had a little bench.
JM: Bench. Yeah.
SN: Across from the hatch and tied him up on the bench.
JM: Bench.
SN: And he came and we reported this when we came back that we had this man. The ambulance met him and I never saw him again or heard anything of him. Then the other one was — we were — I don’t know where it was. Nuremberg. Hamburg. I’ve forgotten. Anyway, we’d got an American who was a mid-upper gunner and they did a stupid thing. They thought instead most attacks by fighter aircraft come in from the bottom.
JM: Bottom.
SN: And they don’t see because the rear gunner just sees a hundred and eighty degrees so they said, ‘We’ll put a thing like a tear drop in the bottom of the aircraft.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the mid-upper gunner will lie there and he had no guns, will lie there with his intercom, on his belly and report these aircraft that he sees. Stupid thing to have done. And he’d been alright before that but he, they only left the thing on for maybe two or three weeks.
JM: Weeks.
SN: And he went bananas.
JM: He went bananas.
SN: And he saw aircraft all over the sky and he gave evasive action and we’re pitching around [laughs] trying to find these until it finally occurred —
JM: Trying to avoid these imaginary aeroplanes.
SN: That there weren’t any aircraft.
JM: Yes.
SN: No one else saw it.
JM: No.
SN: So, he had to be disconnected, and put on the thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we never saw him again.
JM: Again.
SN: But after the war I learned what happened. And what had happened was they took these people, gave them whatever help they could.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They sent them back to Canada.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then they gave them a choice. They said, ‘Now we will not discharge you.’ For dishonourable —
JM: Dishonourable discharge.
SN: Put this on your conduct thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: You will have a choice. You can either join the army or the navy and carry on with the war.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Or we will give you a medical discharge.
JM: Discharge. Yeah.
SN: You have a choice and it always seemed to me that that was very fair. And nobody ever reported and said these people were cowards. They were medically —
JM: Unstable or anything like that.
SN: Or anything like that. So it was one of the good war stories.
JM: Good things. Yeah.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Now around in this period of time though in September ‘43 you discovered by accident shall we say in as much you and your good friend Drew were in London on, I presume on one of your periods of leave.
SN: Yes. I’d forgotten him but he was, yes.
JM: Yeah. And that he was sitting reading the newspaper and reading the latest list of honours and said that, informed you that you had been awarded the —
SN: DFM.
JM: DFM.
SN: Yes. That’s right.
JM: And the, I haven’t got the exact words of the citation in front of me but it was in terms of a, in recognition of a number of —
SN: Yeah.
JM: Ops.
SN: I remember I said something like, he said, ‘Read this,’ and I said something like, ‘Yeah. They’re going to knight me tomorrow,’ or something. And he said, ‘No. You silly bastard,’ he said, ‘It’s you.’
JM: It’s you. That’s right. But did you was it just simply for a sequence of raids or did you actually get told something?
SN: It was a sequence I think.
JM: Yeah. But did you, can you recall.
SN: The citation.
JM: The sequence that they were actually referring to in terms of particular difficulties on those particular raids or —
SN: No. It was a general citation it seems to me. As I remember it.
JM: Right. So were other members of the crew awarded DFMs?
SN: No. Nobody.
JM: So how did they seem?
SN: Only me.
JM: Do you know why they singled you.
SN: I think it was the aircraft that I shot down.
JM: So, going back to —when? So —
SN: Yes. it went back to —
JM: So, it goes back to the March.
SN: Went back to March.
JM: March. When you shot down the Messerschmitt.
SN: That’s right.
JM: In Stuttgart.
SN: That’s right. I think so, yes. I think that was what it was about because I was the only one.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So, so you didn’t get any further clarification in terms of the citation or anything like that. The commanding officers.
SN: There is a citation. Yes. And the citation [pause] I had or I probably have somewhere here but God knows where I would find it.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Right. And then you lined up and received your award from King George.
SN: Yes. I went to Buckingham Palace and lined up with a lot of other people.
JM: And did he have any words to you do you recall? Or did he just walk along and just pin and kept walking.
SN: No. He was on a little dais in the palace and you went up one by one, up just a little, maybe that high or something and the king was slightly higher.
JM: He was slightly elevated by about eighteen inches.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or something like that.
SN: He was there.
JM: Yeah.
SN: With a sort of a lectern or table that had the awards.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That were being passed to him by someone.
JM: An assistant on the side.
SN: Yes. And you were — before you went up they put a little tin thing or something on your tunic.
JM: Yes. On your tunic, yeah, so they had —
SN: And you went up. He shook hands with you.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And said something like I suppose, ‘Well done,’ or something like that and hung these on the thing.
JM: Thing. Yeah.
SN: And then you went.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It wasn’t, you know, he was there were maybe, I don’t how many. Let’s say there were a hundred or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: There were a lot of them anyway.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And that was it, you know. He wouldn’t have had enough time to have said —
JM: Too much to each one. No.
SN: To anyone really because it was a line.
JM: A line yeah.
SN: That went through.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It was a job he had to do. Yeah. That was it.
JM: So then did you have an afternoon tea afterwards and did you talk with any of the other recipients?
SN: No. That was it. That was it. No.
JM: You just received it and you were out the door.
SN: You were told to appear at the palace. You had an order written on the thing. At such and such a time. And you came and they said, ‘Yes, that’s you. Here it is. You go in there. You go there. Get in the queue.’
JM: Almost a sausage line.
SN: Yeah [laughs]
JM: Right. Ok. So so, at this stage we’re getting you’ve been doing the various ops etcetera so you’re building up the number of ops you’re doing. We get towards the end.
SN: Yes.
JM: Did you know you were getting — because by this time, where are we up to? About, January ’44 so this is getting to —
SN: We’re in October I guess.
JM: Yeah. October ’44.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: And at that stage we [pause] our pilot and all except two of us in the crew.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Ricky and myself —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Had completed the magic number.
JM: Number.
SN: Which was forty five.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And so, they [pause] they had done their —
JM: Completed their —
SN: Completed their second tour.
JM: Tour.
SN: And there were the two of us who had not.
JM: So that was you and Ricky.
SN: Ricky. And Ricky went. Ricky decided that he had had enough and he didn’t really want to fly with a sprog pilot or somebody else. So, he said, ‘I really don’t care whether I have that Pathfinder badge or not. I’d rather be alive.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I stayed on to finish and I had three to finish.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it took a while. November until I crashed because you had to find a crew that was short.
JM: Short.
SN: Of a rear gunner.
JM: Rear gunner. Yeah.
SN: To go with.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I went with well they wanted to put, yes, they put you on this crew. Their man had [pause] I’ve forgotten — he’d fallen ill, I think. Whatever he had he wasn’t going to be able to fly again. So, I had, this fella, his name was McLennan. Canadian. So, I became their rear gunner.
JM: Gunner.
SN: For these three trips. And because I had been waiting around the weather was duff.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we went to Berlin three times.
JM: Right.
SN: And in the end, you’ve seen there. So, and they were three bad flights because I guess they were I guess a sprog crew to some degree. We got shot up very badly and we got lost. And then the last flight we got shot up. The second last flight we were shot up pretty badly. And we were quite lucky. It burnt up the wireless operator’s notes and the navigator’s maps. The whole thing. [unclear] and it was pretty well peppered. So, then the last flight —
JM: So, did you use the same plane? Or did you — or the ground crew repaired it enough. Or did you use a different plane for that? For then? This last flight?
SN: They repaired it.
JM: They repaired it.
SN: They repaired it. I’m sure about that but I should say I don’t know.
JM: Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: That would be a better answer.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And then the last flight we, the last flight I made which was the forty fifth for me. I was — that would finish me off and it very nearly did.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we got, we got shot up again as we came off the target.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it was the night before, we were attacked by a fighter. The last night. I’ve forgotten if we were or not. Certainly, we were the second, it was an ME110 that very nearly got us. And we were lost. And the Met people had made a mistake in that they believed that a front was going to come in. They knew this but they believed that there would be ample time for people to get back from Berlin before this front came in. It was a heavy front. Well, they were wrong. And the front came in earlier and aircraft at that time when you’re doing blind landings come down in concentric circles.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It’s like —
JM: So, you stacked up.
SN: A for apple and B for Bertie.
JM: Yeah.
SN: X for X-ray and they’re in a line you see.
JM: In a line. Yeah.
SN: And they come down and you have a different altitude so they don’t get.
JM: Running into each other. Theoretically. Yes.
SN: Yes. And they bring them down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: The operator.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Brings them down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: And the last circle, and when they do this they find the marker that makes the, what is it called [pause] when you have a blind landing you’re looking at your instruments. I’ve forgotten the name. It’s in there anyway. You have to pick up this bar and come in.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And if you miss that you’ve got to go around ‘til you get it again because you’re coming down.
SN: Down.
JM: They’re bringing you down on that bar. They have given you your altitude that you should be at.
SN: Yeah.
JM: They’re following you down.
SN: The pilot is just blind flying into this. So, we had been up. We were lost. We were late and we’d been up a long time and they were bringing us in and the pilot missed the bar and we had to go around again. And by this time, we were out of fuel and he knows we’re very nearly out of fuel and I know that we’re in trouble because I can see the treetops going by the turret.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I did the luckiest thing I ever did in my life. There was a belt about that wide.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Webbing.
JM: Webbing belt. Yeah.
SN: With buckles on it.
JM: Strapped you in.
SN: And it was on either side and I put that on.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Locked it there and that saved me.
JM: That saved you. That’s what saved you. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So, you came and so having seen the treetops. It wasn’t too long after that that before —
SN: It was just minutes after that. Yeah. And the aircraft broke off, you see. The tail broke off.
SN: Broke off.
JM: Yeah. So, you were saved but the rest were not.
SN: That’s right. Well, the pilot came through but in a very bad state. And I found him. And I think I say there, things were blowing up. We had failsafe stuff. And it was burning. And I was not in a very good shape at the time. It had knocked me out. I was bleeding.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And in a stupor I think.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he, he was lying with this stuff popping off and I thought I should move him back a little and I took him by the legs and his legs started to come off and the bone appeared. I couldn’t do that. And I got — we had a little packet of stuff and I don’t know whether I shot him with a hypo. Certainly, I had, when they found me I had the packet but what I did with it I have no idea. In any event when they came back they found me wandering around with this packet. This kid found me who became a friend of mine. And they brought the ambulance out it was thick heavy fog, and packed I and McLennan in and he, he was not conscious through this, through all this, I don’t think. Maybe he was but he didn’t seem to be.
JM: Seem to be.
SN: To me. And he and I went in together and it seemed to me that I wasn’t sure whether, I think he, I think he recognised me as we went in. And then I was in this hospital in Ely maybe a week or ten days. I’ve forgotten. And I asked, when I came too the following day, for McLennan. He was a nice fellow. And he said he died when he got there. So, I was the only one who survived.
JM: Yes, and so do you regret having made the decision to have, to complete those other three ops? Do you feel you would have was there what was the motivation in the first place to do, to do the three? Was it simply that you wanted to have the completed tour or what?
SN: It’s, I signed on for to do the tours.
JM: To do the tours. Yeah.
SN: And I wanted it done. Yes.
JM: You wanted to do it.
SN: It was something I wanted to do.
JM: Do. Yeah. So —
SN: And Ricky, whom I met again after the war, who my particular chum he always regretted that he didn’t.
JM: Right. Yeah. There you go. So people who, despite the fact that it was very very difficult for you for those last three. One thing just very briefly. Did, in Pathfinder, did Gransden Lodge, did any of the various squadrons intermingle at any time or did you stay very much within your own squadron?
SN: Completely within our own squadron.
JM: Within your own squadron. Because, I mean Australian, you know, there were various other, you know like —
SN: Yes, we had all sort of people. Australians, British.
JM: Yeah, yeah, but there was a 156 Squadron at Gransden Lodge too, I think, from knowledge but there was never any intermingling or anything like that.
SN: No. De were the only ones.
JM: You were the only ones.
SN: During my time.
JM: Your time, yeah. Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: And we didn’t. Yes. No. We didn’t. I didn’t know anybody from any other squadron.
JM: Right. No. Right.
SN: You know the top squadron chief, they would have gone to group headquarters.
JM: Headquarters.
SN: And they knew —
JM: What was going on.
SN: Other people from the other squadrons.
JM: Yeah. Squadrons yeah.
SN: But not at my level.
JM: No.
SN: We never saw anybody.
JM: No. Right. And did — so you were in hospital and then I presume you went on leave and went perhaps to rehab. Like a rehabilitation.
SN: No. I went. I got out of hospital and went back to the squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That was in January.
JM: January ’45.
SN: Yes. And I got back to the squadron on Christmas Eve. I think it was.
JM: Oh. Ok. So that was Christmas Eve ’44.
SN: ’43. ’43.
JM: ‘44 wouldn’t it be?
SN: No. ‘43.
JM: Ok.
SN: In January of ‘44 I was posted.
JM: Yes.
SN: From the squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: To a RAF gunnery school for gunnery instruction instructor’s course.
JM: Yeah. Ok. That was in January ‘44. Yeah. Ok. And so how long were you there for?
SN: I would think it would be about a month but it might have been six weeks.
JM: Right.
SN: The only thing I can remember about it is that it was a RAF school at a place called Manby. And they spent all their Sunday, or most of their Sunday on the parade square where they were inspection after inspection and I was by that time commissioned. I noticed that they had a most extraordinary [pause] before they started this buggering about.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They called out, ‘Fall out the Jews and infidels.’ [laughs]
JM: Right.
SN: It’s true.
JM: Right.
SN: It’s true. And thereupon the head of the WAAFs who was shaped rather like a large trout and had a moustache bigger than me and was obviously Jewish and she would fall out and the other one who fell out was an Indian. Indian Indian. A little squadron leader of some sort and he, I guess, was a Hindu or — I don’t know what it was. But I thought this is not a bad lark so the next Sunday I fell out with them. And no one —
JM: Queried it.
SN: No one ever queried me. I think they simply assumed well he’s Jewish.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And well that was the end and I had my Sunday.
JM: Well there you go. That was a way to get a Sunday off wasn’t it? And so, what happened after? Did you complete this course? Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And what happened after that?
SN: Then I went back to 6 Group which was the Canadian group.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Up in Yorkshire and I instructed. I guess till the end of the year. Something like that. I’ve forgotten how long it was and then I was posted back to Canada.
JM: Right.
SN: To — they had a huge base near Vancouver.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was for [pause] for the Far Eastern campaign. Well the Far Eastern campaign was cut short at Hiroshima.
JM: That’s right. Yeah.
SN: So, nobody went anywhere.
JM: Anywhere.
SN: But there were about five thousand of us there and we were all given Joe jobs of one sort or another to keep us occupied. And that was for I guess for six months in ‘44. And then in August I was discharged.
JM: So that was August.
SN: 1945.
JM: ‘45 yeah.
SN: That’s ’45. Yes.
JM: ’45. Discharged. Yeah and —
SN: The only thing that I did during those six months, you know — there were really so many of us was I went over to Victoria to sell Victory Bonds for a month and this was rather fun. The people who were selling the bonds who were business men in the city I guess and were not the always the same people. And they would pick me up and we would go to factories, plants, offices and they would make a little spiel and I would get up and talk for, you know, maybe a minute or two and then we’d go on to another place.
JM: I see. Well that was different.
SN: Yes. That was the only thing I did when I was there.
JM: And this was when you were in.
SN: In this place. At Boundary Bay it was called.
JM: Near Vancouver.
SN: Yes. It was so bad that in the end the last job I had was to teach people who — no —I did do some work out there. I flew in Libs. They had Liberators.
JM: Liberators. Yeah.
SN: On instructing for three months which was alright. We had something to do. But then this last thing I was teaching [pause] what was it called? When an aircraft is is [pause] has to ditch. Ditching procedure.
JM: Ditching procedure. Yeah.
SN: And I had a sergeant and I had three other fellows and I had to give, I thought I was rather badly used and I had to give — I think I had to work two days a week. That was all I did.
JM: Did.
SN: But —
JM: Put a crew through this ditching procedure training. Goodness me.
SN: And there was hundreds of — well I don’t know how many.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Who were doing [laughs]
JM: Same thing.
SN: The same thing but there we were.
JM: And when you are discharged in August ‘45 presumably you then head back to the farm. To the family.
SN: Yes. I went back to the family and I went down and got myself discharged.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And in September, 1st of September I guess, I went to university.
JM: Right. And there you did, what?
SN: I did General Arts. And I was there for five years.
JM: Five years. Right. And?
SN: I got an MA.
JM: An MA right.
SN: In History and English Literature.
JM: Yeah. And where and then what? What —
SN: Well I then found [pause] I met a remarkable man who — I really started out to take law and I should have done that. That made sense. It was a profession. But he was an historian. Brilliant man. World scholar. Wonderfully — looked like Charles Laughton.
JM: Sorry?
SN: He looked like Charles Laughton.
JM: Right. Ok. And what was —
SN: A wonderful voice.
JM: And what was this chap’s name.
SN: He was a history prof. His name was Charles Lightbody.
JM: Right.
SN: And I was quite fascinated by him and he became a friend of mine and I thought well I would do that and so I —
JM: You’d become a historian.
SN: I ended up with an MA and I realised that there really wasn’t anything I could do but teach and I wasn’t — I didn’t think there was really be much of a teacher. So, I, in the meantime had written. There were three examinations which you had to pass for Foreign Affairs. One was a four hour written hour written exam. Or was it six. I think it was six. It was a half day anyway and then you had to go for an oral examination with people. And then you had a third thing. I’ve forgotten what it was and then you, if you were lucky this was across the country and if you made it you were, you got the appointment. They took you in to the Foreign Service. Well I had written this, I guess, in the spring. I heard nothing from them. So, I had to think what I could do. So I applied for some scholarships and got a fellowship which was a scholarship down in New Orleans at Tulane University. So, I went down there. By this time, I was married but I went down by myself to see. And I was only there for a month, six weeks, something, when my appointment came through. But I was there long enough to realise that this was really not my —
JM: Cup of tea.
SN: Cup of tea. I was put, this was for a PhD and I was put to my chore — you had to teach part of the time was the Tulane football team. And Jesus. They [laughs] recruited these people from the villages and towns not because of their academic.
JM: Their academic ability.
SN: Oh no. That was not [laughs]
JM: They were recruited for their football ability.
SN: And I’m teaching European history to these fellas and they’re going [yawn] so —
JM: So, you were very pleased to have your posting come through.
SN: I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t hesitate a minute.
JM: You didn’t hesitate. You grabbed it with both hands and —
SN: That’s right.
JM: So then —
SN: Happily, ever after.
JM: And when did you actually start your posting. So, I presume you had to do some sort of orientation period but when did you officially start with the — so what is this called? The Canadian Diplomatic Corps is it. Or what was its proper title?
SN: Canadian Foreign Service.
JM: Canadian Foreign Service. Yeah.
SN: Really from the 1st of January.
JM: 1st of January ‘46 would it have been.
SN: No, it was after that.
JM: What are we up to?
SN: It was after Christmas. It was December. I think it was December 27th. Something like that.
JM: So, December 27th.
SN: It had to be that year.
JM: Yeah. So, when would this be. About ‘51.
SN: In Ottawa.
JM: Would it be ‘51? December ‘51 or ’50.
SN: It would be December 1950.
JM: 1950. right. Yeah. So, December 27 1950 and it was, did you say, Ottawa.
SN: Yes.
JM: Ottawa. And so that was where you’re —
SN: So, I spent thirty odd years.
JM: So was that a training — your initial training at Ottawa or that was your actual first posting as —what?
SN: It was a training.
JM: Training. Yeah.
SN: It was before the first posting.
JM: Posting. Yeah. And then where was your first posting?
SN: It was really in Latin America and Bogota but before that someone fell ill in Tokyo. And they needed to send someone out to —
JM: To Tokyo.
SN: This guy didn’t come or I’ve forgotten what it was. In any event they needed somebody and the Korean war was on. So, they were able to send somebody out with military you see.
JM: Right.
SN: They didn’t have to go through the procedure of sending them by sea.
JM: Right.
SN: Across the thing. It was a time factor. So, I flew over and I was there for six months.
JM: To — to —
SN: Tokyo.
JM: Tokyo.
SN: Yes. Things happened and I was kept on.
JM: Yeah. So that became your first —
SN: I suppose that it was my your posting.
JM: Even though, yeah, yeah.
SN: But it was a temporary assignment.
JM: Assignment. Yeah. Yeah. So then did you come back to Latin America after that?
SN: I came back to Ottawa. And then by that time they had posted me.
JM: Yeah.
SN: To Bogota.
JM: Bogota. Right.
SN: And I was, you know, in Ottawa for a couple months.
JM: While they sorted the paperwork out, I guess.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So, Bogota and then and then you say thirty years moving around.
SN: Yes.
JM: Various embassies moving around the world.
SN: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
JM: Presumably changing roles. Moving up into a higher role most of the time. So, what was your —
SN: Yes.
JM: So were you a —
SN: I went through the usual steps of third secretary. Second secretary. First secretary.
JM: Secretary.
SN: Counsellor. Minister.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And ambassador.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, it was, I guess, about thirty three years. Something like this.
JM: Yeah. And where were you ambassador?
SN: I was [pause] I resigned or — I didn’t resign, I finished as ambassador to Ecuador.
JM: Right. And did you have any other ambassadorial post prior to Ecuador?
SN: I had another Head of Mission is what we called it.
JM: Right.
SN: I had a Head of Mission post before that. I was Canadian Commissioner in Cambodia.
JM: Right.
SN: Which is where I met Shirley.
JM: Right.
SN: And of course, that was an unfortunate thing in the sense of career in that divorce at that time was frowned on and I was unemployable because my then wife had to agree if I were to be posted and of course that was the last thing she was likely to do. And it was a long dragged out affair and very difficult for Shirley. However, we had this time in — well I went to National Defence College which was our half civilian and half military. I went as our departmental candidate. It was a year’s course for top executives so that was good. And then I went. I was farmed out from the department. I did a couple of years in the planning department of National Defence.
JM: Right.
SN: As their foreign affairs rep or advisor. Whatever you’d call it. And then I did two and a half years I think. A very strange business which was because one of my foreign affairs friends was the deputy and he brought me in and I headed up a research planning division in Indian Affairs.
JM: So what sort of, so this is the —
SN: This is when I had time out for divorce [laughs]
JM: So, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, ok. And that would have been a very interesting exercise as well.
SN: Yes, it was. I learned a great many things.
JM: Yes. I can imagine. Gosh. And then presumably the divorce finally got sorted and you were able to be reappointed as an ambassador then.
SN: The day, the day after, no. I didn’t. The day after our wedding we were posted to Washington.
JM: Washington. Right.
SN: And it was that quick.
JM: That quick. So, when was that. When were you married. What was your —
SN: It was September.
JM: September of —?
SN: Of [pause] We were at Washington for four years. 1978. 1974.
JM: 1974.
SN: We were married.
JM: Yeah.
SN: In September. And the following day —
JM: You were off to Washington.
SN: Off to Washington. And Shirley’s sister was there and my brother in law.
JM: And what was your role in Washington? You were attached to the embassy as what?
SN: As a counsellor.
JM: A counsellor. Right. Yeah. Ok. Yes. Oh well and so —
SN: You there you have —
JM: Yeah. And how do you feel that your air force experiences informed your diplomatic, the way you handled your diplomatic career in any way or or you never really thought about your air force time once you were in as a diplomat. I mean, recognising the fact you had many many roles as a diplomat that you, you know.
SN: Well I think it was useful to me in the sense that the things that I was doing. For instance when I was at national defence. When I was at National Defence College.
JM: Yeah.
SN: For a year and that’s, you know, we lived, at that time there there were only thirty two people and you eat, drink with those people every day for a year and it was useful to me, half of them were military.
JM: Right.
SN: To have —
JM: To have had that close quarter that — A — that background and, B — that close quarter living as you had had to have as part of war service.
SN: Yes. And when I was at plans it was useful because I knew people again. I was accepted. So when I was in Washington I did the political military thing for four years you see so I was always in close touch. So yes, it was useful.
JM: It was useful.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yes. Well you have had, certainly had an incredibly varied life and when you look back to the fact you started off as a farm lad, for want of a better word of describing it.
SN: Farm kid.
JM: Which is not to put down people who run, who own and feed the nation from their farms but it’s just very different life and lifestyle to — and then, and I guess, as part of that you became a bit of a rebellious child and that rebelliousness came out in some of your early years. In your early air force training and ultimately it clicked and you changed tack and you became — you decided to accept.
SN: Go with the stream. Yes.
JM: Go with the stream and accept the discipline which was probably when you started doing well in your gunnery courses.
SN: Yes.
JM: And that’s when you felt you had a role to play and that was a turning point potentially there. And then as we say you just ultimately going through to then find a totally different course of life and become part of the Canadian Foreign Service for such an extensive thirty three years. That’s an incredibly long time. And were you, have you ever been given any recognition for that length of service from the Canadian Foreign Service.
SN: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: In what format?
SN: I have no misgivings. I — I’ve been well treated. I have no, it would have been nice to have gotten a little higher up the tree but that was the way it played out.
JM: Was there a system of formal recognition? Awards or anything. Were you given any awards at any time or —?
SN: No. We didn’t have any. We all have a medal or I assume we do. That we get for having served.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you get a letter from the minister. The PM saying thank you.
JM: Thank you.
SN: And that’s it.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Now, unlike, and this has always been a grievance with, I think some people in the Commonwealth Foreign Services — the Americans, if you become an ambassador you take the title with you.
JM: Yeah. Like a —
SN: You were called that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the British usually knight their Heads of Mission and they can carry the title.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And Canadians, Australians or New Zealanders do not.
JM: Not.
SN: Yeah. So that bothered some people and of course it didn’t, it doesn’t bother most people because as long, so long as everyone else suffers with you [laughs]
JM: You’re not on your own in that circumstance.
SN: No. No.
JM: No.
SN: No.
JM: Well I think that you’ve been exceedingly generous with your time and we’ve covered a huge amount of ground there. Simply amazing set of experiences and I just thank you for it Clair. It’s just been really really wonderful and the fact that we’ve got this record now as part to help contribute to the knowledge base about Bomber Command personnel is so important. So, thank you very much for that.
SN: Alright. Well thank you. It’s taken a fair amount of your time.
Dublin Core
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ANuttingS170222
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Interview with Sinclair Nutting
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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02:16:42 audio recording
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Pending review
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2017-02-22
Description
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Sinclair Nutting Grew up in Canada and worked on the family farm before he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 405 Squadron. After the war he emigrated to Australia.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
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Canada
England--Yorkshire
Great Britain
Ireland
Ireland--Dublin
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
Contributor
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Julie Williams
405 Squadron
6 Group
8 Group
aircrew
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Medal
Fw 190
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Me 109
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Manby
RAF Topcliffe
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/722/10118/ABradfordS161031.2.mp3
18e10be05e692061bdfe7a521b7d2770
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Title
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Bradford, Stanley
S Bradford
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Stan Bradford DFM (1923 - 2017, 2216040 Royal Air Force) also includes his flying log book, service and release document, investiture ticket, newspaper cuttings and squadron photograph. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner from RAF Scampton.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stanley Bradford and Matt Ashamall and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-31
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.
Identifier
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Bradford, S
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today I’m in Abingdon with Stan Bradford DFM and we’ve just been to the Remembrance celebration in the centre of the town. And Stan was a mid-upper gunner and we’re going to talk about some extra items that have come out of the earlier part of the interview done by Matt Ashamall. So the first one that was intriguing I thought Stan was how you came to join the RAF. Because of when you were going in your truck.
SB: Yeah.
CB: To Blackpool. You thought you’d —
SB: Yes.
CB: Go into the Recruiting Office. So just talk us through that could you?
SB: Well, from what I remember it my foreman where I was an apprentice his name was Ervyn Jagger. And since the war I’ve been in management myself and one of the big things I felt I had to look at was his style of man management. And his man management was absolutely deploring. Now, our job. We were in a Reserved Occupation and our job was to repair fighting vehicles such as coaches that transported troops from station to station. If they had been involved in an accident we had to repair them and then deliver them to the old, back to the owners. And one particular day I was with a guy and he was an Irishman, his name was Mick Jagger. That was a good for you. Now, Mick was wonderful. But Ervyn Jagger, the foreman he came up to Mick. He said, ‘Mick. I’m going to take your lad off you.’ Which was me. And he said, ‘He’s big enough. And now the restrictions are lifted where you don’t need a driving test anymore,’ he said, ‘And I want him to take a Seagull coaches to Blackpool. Having repaired it now we’ll take it to Blackpool.’ And it annoyed me in so much that I was with Mick as a lad and I was doing pretty good. And it seemed to me that he was determined to stop me being so good because he had his favourites in the department. However, I got in the bus and we had to go through, I mean you will all have heard of Wigan Pier. And close to Wigan Pier we went through with this bus. And I thought, ‘Bugger. I’m going to go in the forces.’ My mates are in there that was in the village. It was a small village called Astley that had about a couple of hundred people and the local industry was a coal mine. However, I thought I’m going to have a go. So I went to the army guy and I said, ‘Can I recruit? Join the army.’ ‘Oh come in,’ you know, ‘We’ll take you on.’ Of course once he knew I was an apprentice he said, ‘No chance.’ He said, ‘You’re an apprentice in a Reserved Occupation. So,’ he said, ‘No chance.’ Well, for reasons best known to the service people there were three in a line. The army, the navy, the air force. So I’m now with the navy. So I went to the navy. And the navy bloke said, ‘Yeah. Come in.’ Once he started, Reserved Occupation, out you go. They wouldn’t have me. I thought well I’ll just as well fix the three up. I’ll go to the air force. And the sergeant in there said, ‘Yeah. We’ll have you. But,’ he said, ‘There’s only one place you’re going to be,’ he said, ‘Because I heard you talking about the guy down the street that you’ve been in a Reserved Occupation.’ I said, ‘Exactly.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘The only chance you’ve got of coming in to the air force,’ he said, ‘Is you go in aircrew.’ I said, ‘That’s alright. Put me down for aircrew.’ So off I went quite happily. Signed. And delivered the coach and then come back to my works where I was apprentice. Went home in the evening. I said, ‘Mum and dad, I’ve been and joined the services.’ My dad said, ‘What you done?’ I said, ‘I’ve joined the air force. In aircrew.’ He said, ‘What?’ he said, ‘Bloody nancy boys.’ [laughs] I said, ‘I’m afraid so, dad.’ Of course he had his say and it wasn’t very pleasant because he was a regimental sergeant major in the army in the First World War. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve done it. There’s nothing we can do.’ Within five days I had to go to a place which wasn’t too far from home called RAF Padgate. And there they did an attestation. So we had to sit an exam. Did we have a brain? We had an examination. Then we had a medical examination. A colour test. Make sure that we weren’t colour blinded because to get in aircrew you had to be spot on. Your hearing. And when they’d finished with you you could guarantee that you are a fit man. And from there within, we went home, and within less than a week I was in and back to Padgate. And I’ll always remember a funny story at Padgate. I said to the corporal who was in charge, we went to a wrestling match which they put on for the troops and this corporal, I said to this corporal, ‘Is there any chance of me going home?’ I said, ‘I only live just up the road.’ ‘Just the bloke we’re looking for. So what would I ended up? I was an usher ushering people to their seats. So, I didn’t get my chance to go home. And from there we went off to Lords Cricket Ground. So that was —
CB: Yeah.
SB: When I, why I joined.
CB: Fantastic. Thank you very much. Now, in the process of your flying you were very successful in engaging aircraft. So, I wondered if we could just take a sequence out of the overall sequence of your kills and because yours is a very unusual situation and it would be really useful to be able to hear how this progressed because some of the people I’ve interviewed never even shot at an aircraft let alone shot it down. So your first engagement was what?
SB: We were on the way to Nuremberg. And sitting up in the mid-upper turret you’d got a damned good view of proceedings and I happened to spot, when I was traversing the mid-upper turret [pause] a Lancaster blown up. And I thought Christ. I kept my eye on him. It was a 109. I kept my eye on him and I thought he appears to be swooping around towards us. And I thought extra alert on to him. So, I said to my pilot, told him there was enemy aircraft on our starboard beam. And astern and starboard beam is back of us. And lo and behold yes he was coming towards us. Well, one of the things in our training we had to know the aircraft that was we were engaging. We had to know it’s wing span. We had to know its speed. We had to know everything there was to know about who was coming so we could line him up in our sights and this 109 was coming towards us. And I thought right. I put my sights on him. Frightened to death. I watched him until he got within shooting range and then I gave him a burst. And hey presto I was lucky. I hit him and caught him straight in the engine and down he went. And I watched him go. I shouldn’t have done it but I did it. I watched him go down. We’re not supposed to look down at all. So, I watched him going down. And in between this what I told the pilot to, ‘Dive to port. Go.’ Now, a pilot never moved until the gunner said to him, Prepare to dive to port.’ And he always waited for the word, ‘Go.’ And you can imagine the suspense between the two of us. Him waiting for me and me waiting for him to [laughs] It was a little bit frightening but I did it. I did it.
CB: So you shot it down. So the idea of then going the opposite way. In other words to port, to the left was to get out of the way.
SB: Dive away from him coming in. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Because he might have got you himself even.
SB: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right. Ok. So which operation was that? Was that one of your early —
SB: That was the very first.
CB: Very first. Right.
SB: Very first. From Scampton.
CB: Right.
SB: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And the second kill. What was that?
SB: The second kill. Our rear gunner, he reported enemy aircraft astern of us and again he gave the pilot order what he wanted. I believe it was again dive starboard. And naturally it drew my attention to that situation. And Chick hit him. He fired at him. He hit him but he didn’t put him down. And I looked over as he went underneath us. I looked over and I thought well I’ve got to help him on his way. So, I belted him and he went down.
CB: What was that?
SB: I believe it was a Focke Wulf 190. And that was very close to the target. Nuremberg. Now, during this time obviously they the Focke Wulf in particular he shot at us and wounded us and he destroyed our navigational equipment. So, basically we come out the target the other end and we were lost. Ron, our pilot, he never kept anything from us. He always informed us of what was happening and he said, ‘Well, lads,’ he said, ‘You’ve done a good job getting rid of that lot. Now,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a problem. We’re bloody lost.’ However, this, what this did this brought in our navigator. He had what they called in those days a sextant. And this sextant it was taken from what they called the astrodome where the spare man, in this case it was our wireless operator in the target area looking for enemy aircraft to inform us if there was one about. But he relinquished the role and let the navigator go in there firing the sextant at the stars to get a fix. Where were we and whatever. And Tony got, Tony West his name was, he got a fix alright. And he seemed to get us somewhere near but we were all alone. By this time one of the engines had gone. We had three. And later on in the trip after probably maybe an hour, two hours we came out and Tony. He said, ‘I’ve got a feeling now, Skipper,’ he said, ‘We’re over the sea.’ He said, ‘I’m sure I see the enemy, the coast.’ So, he said, ‘Ron,’ he said, ‘If you’re looking for help,’ he said, ‘I would issue an SOS. Call up Darkie and say we’re lost.’ What are we going to do? So Ron did. He thought that was not a bad idea. He called out Darkie and SOSs and one thing and another. And before you could say jack’s a lad bump. Bang. We were over the Channel Islands and as is well known that the Germans invaded the Channel Islands and occupied it and the Germans were firing at us. We thought, Christ. It wasn’t very pleasant. But Ron stuck the nose down from what height we had and got well away as quick as he could. And after a little while an aircraft appeared and flashed his navigation lights. You know, the green and the red. And we picked him up by, well I picked him up. I said, ‘It’s a Typhoon bomber.’ I said to Ron, ‘It’s a Typhoon bomber.’ And he took a position. He was a little out of range of our guns. We only had a four hundred yards accuracy. And I said, ‘We aint going to have a go at him.’ However, I did identify him. He was a Typhoon. And he kept well out on [pause] of our range and he escorted us back. He was based at RAF Exeter. He guided us in. Wished us all the best. Did chatter. Got us on the runway. And we got to the end of the runway and the bloody engines packed in. Course the aircraft was knocked about like a colander. Well what they said to us when they got us out the aeroplane very quickly in case something blew up or whatever and debriefed us and then they took us for a meal. The old traditional egg and bacon. And the flight sergeant in the sergeant’s mess there was only two of us. Three of us, I beg your pardon. He took us into the mess and unfortunately the flight sergeant in the mess he’d just been informed that his son who was an air gunner had just been missing on operations. So he made a real special effort looking after us three. Two of us were gunners. And he said, ‘What about a drink lads?’ We were all dressed for flying so it was, thinking it was winter see keep warm so we kept the aircrew unit on and they took us into Exeter. We’d barely got out the van that he’d laid on for us into Exeter when the SPs got hold of us and whipped us back to base which didn’t please the flight sergeant. I think he doubted their parentage if I’m honest because of what they’d done and he told them what we’d gone through. And they said, ‘We’re doing our job.’ So it was all messed up. And the next day we flew back to Scampton where we picked our kit up and then off to East Kirkby.
CB: When —
SB: And then we had to wait a little while before 57 Squadron confirmed that we were credited with the two and they gave them to me.
CB: Brilliant. On a slightly different note what was the relationship you had with the ground crew?
SB: Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
CB: So, when you brought a colander back how did they express their feelings about that?
SB: I don’t think I’d like to come out with the language but can I just said Jesus Christ [laughs]
CB: Over the Channel Islands that was flak that hit you was it?
SB: The big guns.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. The big guns. Yeah. Yeah. And in point of fact some years later I said to my wife, we went on holiday into Weymouth and I said to my wife I spotted this sign, “day trip.” I said [unclear] ‘We’re going.’ And I went to see the old hospital and things like that.
CB: Yeah. The underground hospital.
SB: Just to bring back memories.
CB: Yes.
SB: Yeah.
CB: And those coastal guns.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Fantastic.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Right. So that’s your first operation and you shot down two aircraft.
SB: Yes.
CB: So, we’re on the topic of the kills. What was the third victory that you had?
SB: I think the Dornier 217. That was a fighter bomber. And I’ve got a feeling. I’m not certain where that, where he was. [pause] He was, all I can tell you he was persistent. He had a go at us two or three times and we, between us we dodged him with our tactics. Again, which was a lot of the training.
CB: Yeah.
SB: And our tactics beat him.
CB: So, how did you actually get him in the end? In the fuselage? In the engines? Or what?
SB: Straight in the pilot’s cabin. Yeah. I thought, well the bugger had got to go hadn’t he? It’s him or me.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Either kill or be killed.
CB: What, what raid were you on then? What op?
SB: I’ve got a feeling we were Berlin.
CB: Right.
SB: I’m sure. Berlin.
CB: Yeah. So that’s number three. What happened with the next one?
SB: I think again it was an ME 109. We was just approaching. Again Berlin. We were going in there. We hadn’t had a very pleasant trip in there and Munday decided well we’ve come this far. We’re going to go and we’re going to go in there and we’re going to do what we’re paid to do. And we did it. And just as we were coming out the other end he was waiting for us. So I thought well he’s got to go and all [laughs] So, yes. I did him.
CB: So, we’re in the night and these are single-engine aircraft. They’re being directed by radar to you.
SB: Yes. Yes.
CB: Right.
SB: Yes. Yes.
CB: So how did you see him first?
SB: I think I looked. I’m pretty sure I looked up and he was just hovering above. Obviously out of the way of the flak. And I identified him pretty quick and said that’s what he was. And I’m pretty positive in saying that as was the case with the last one he didn’t see us.
CB: So effectively you got him —
SB: I hit him. I hit him in the engine. And the last one I — he was flying on the beam and Dennis was in the, as I said earlier he, Dennis was in the astrodome looking. Helping the gunners. Looking for enemy aircraft. And he said, ‘Look on the starboard beam, Stan.’ I said, ‘Funnily enough I just got, I’ve just seen him.’ And with that I had him. I’d time to tell him to tell Ron what tactics were involved so a bit too late so, however, I had him. I shot the pilot. I could, I could even see it now. I had him. Full. No bother.
CB: And at what distance are we talking about?
SB: I’m talking of what two, three hundred yards.
CB: Right. And in, I didn’t ask you but in the mid-upper turret how many guns have you got?
SB: Two.
CB: Right.
SB: Two.
CB: And they’re zeroed at what range?
SB: The maximum we had was four hundred. Maximum.
CB: Right. So, we’ve done three and four. How did you feel about it once you’d dealt with them?
SB: Could you say elated in one sense.
CB: Yeah.
SB: And thanking my lucky stars in the other.
CB: Sure.
SB: Yeah. Yes.
CB: Number five.
SB: I’m not. Do you know I’m not certain. I’m not. I’m not a hundred percent certain so I don’t know if you don’t mind if I don’t comment on the one. I’m not. I’m not — it’s misty. No.
CB: At what happened you mean?
SB: Sorry?
CB: You mean when it was and what happened.
SB: Yeah. I’m a little bit foggy.
CB: Yes.
SB: I’m not a hundred percent certain.
CB: But roughly. Just roughly.
SB: Roughly. Roughly again —
CB: Because they were all at night these things.
SB: They had a go at us.
CB: Yeah.
SB: I’ve got a feeling one was on the way [pause] they had a clue from the — see being it was early this one. They were waiting on the borders. Before Sweden. And I think again it was a 109. Pretty sure it was. And —
CB: Is this over Denmark is it?
SB: Sorry?
CB: Is this over Denmark?
SB: Yeah. On the way in.
CB: Yeah. To Berlin.
SB: In to Sweden.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Because we flew over Sweden which unfortunately Winston Churchill denied that we were briefed to go that way. Again, strange enough it was one of the most frightening we did. Not being used to seeing streetlights and things like this. And also they had, the Swedish air force were equipped with Focke Wulf 190s —
CB: Right.
SB: As their front line aircraft. Fighters. And they kept just outside the four hundred yard mark at which are guns weren’t effective and your sitting there, ‘Is that bugger going to shoot at us?’ And you didn’t, just didn’t comprehend what, what was going to happen. Were they going, were they going to have a go at us or not? But fortunately they escorted us straight through Sweden to the other end and believe it or believe it not there was a searchlight pointing at to sea. Straight over our track.
CB: This is on the return trip.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
SB: We’d done the bombing. Then we were coming home.
CB: Yeah.
SB: And it was unbelievable to think that —
CB: They would do that. Yeah.
SB: They was identifying the track. That’s the way you’ve got to go lads.
CB: Fantastic.
SB: And our man went.
CB: Yeah. But your engagement with the fighter was before then.
SB: Oh yeah. That was on the, coming into, into Sweden.
CB: Yes. Oh you went over —
SB: The had an idea from the —
CB: You went over Sweden both ways did you?
SB: No. No.
CB: No.
SB: No. No. Coming home.
CB: Right.
SB: Coming home. I’ve got a feeling one of them, because of the following wind it took us an hour and a half to get from take-off to bombing.
CB: Really.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Gee.
SB: And it took us six and a half to come back against the wind [laughs]
CB: Blimey. Yeah.
SB: I can always remember that you know.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
CB: So that was a very memorable experience
SB: Yes.
CB: Because of the lack of knowledge.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Of whether the Swedes would attack or not.
SB: Yes. Yes. My very, very worst one was the one before the end.
CB: Right.
SB: We knew. We knew we were very very close to finishing. And we called it, it was christened the night of the high winds. And the wind blew us off track. And Tony West, he always put it down. He kept contact with Ron’s instruction. He kept contacting base about the winds. He said. ‘They’re not what you said they were going to be.’ And he kept on. On and on to them. And base kept saying to him there’s nothing wrong with the winds. And they wouldn’t accept there was anything wrong at all. However, it blew us off course and it blew us a hell of a long way off course and it blew us over the Ruhr. Now, in anybody’s language the Ruhr was naughty.
CB: Happy Valley.
SB: Yeah. Called, it was called Happy Valley. Yes. Now, what happened it was some pilots dream. An aircraft which we were the unfortunate ones. The aircraft were coned in searchlights. In total we were coned for thirty five minutes. Now, if you’re coned even for a few minutes you’re belted out, almost belted out the sky which they hammered us good and proper. We were shot. I think we had two engines in the end. And when I said about it being a pilot’s dream — if an aircraft was coned this was a signal for following aircraft to dive through. When they were coning you they couldn’t cone two of you together and it allowed the other one to shoot through. So they probably clapped their hands Christ thanked their lucky stars. Unlucky stars. But bless him, Ron my old skipper he threw that aircraft all over the sky and he got us out. Now, ‘Now, we’re free from that lot lads but,’ he said, ‘We’ve got another bloody problem.’ Fred Simmons, our engineer he said, ‘Ron,’ he said, ‘Unfortunately that little bit of a detour we had to have and all that you throwing it about the sky it’s affected our fuel consumption. So,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a decision to make as a crew,’ he said, ‘I always said and I always will stick to a decision that the whole crew make the risk. The decision whether we’re going to go back to try and get back to our original place on track or we come back over the sea.’ So, we said, well [laughs] we had different views but the vote was we came back by sea. And I believe we couldn’t make base because of we were short about I think we had two engines and I think we landed at Coltishall.
CB: In Norfolk. Yeah.
SB: Then a couple of days and fixed us up. Back to East Kirkby and Wing Commander Miller was our commanding officer and he said, ‘Because of the hairy situation you’ve just been in over the Ruhr,’ he said, ‘The trip that’s just coming up,’ he said, ‘Which I’m not going to put you on so you’re confined to camp.’ So we couldn’t go blabbing about where main force were going. He said, ‘I’m not going to put you on the Ruhr.’ He said, ‘I’m going to save you for a bit easier.’ Which wasn’t a bad idea really. In theory. So we attended the briefing for our last one. Lo and behold where was it? We looked at each other and said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ It was Nuremberg. Which was the infamous one that Bomber Command lost ninety odd aircraft. But between this I had been awarded my Distinguished Flying Medal. And we were briefed to go to Emden. And for some unknown reason, weather or whatever, they called it off. So, we were in our flying gear. I had a black and white silk scarf my mum gave me as a lucky mascot and buoyancy suits. We did look darlings. All grease all over the face where the buckles on your mask so you didn’t get frostbite. And so we were allowed in the mess because the trip had been cancelled so we were allowed in the mess in flying gear so we went in the mess for a jug or two. And I’d barely got a jug in my hand for a pint and the phone went in the mess and the page, paged me on the phone and it was my skipper. He said, ‘What the hell have you been doing?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m just having a pint.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve been doing summat,’ he said, ‘Because I’ve got to get you into Wing Commander Miller’s officer straight away.’ He said, ‘Now, I’m coming outside the mess to pick you up.’ He said, ‘I’m only just over the road at the officer’s mess,’ he said, ‘I’m, like yourself, having one.’ He said, ‘I’m going to pick you up. Down the flights we go.’ So he marched me in. After a little while he called me in. He marched me into Wing Commander Miller’s office and Wing Commander Miller looked at me. He said, ‘You sergeant are improperly dressed.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a tie. A scarf.’ He said, ‘You’re improperly dressed,’ he said, ‘Coming in my office.’ He tore me a strip off. Then he said, ‘I’m pleased to tell you, Sergeant Bradford you’ve just been the immediate award of the Distinguished Flying Medal. Now,’ he said, ‘Get in to Boston and have some bloody beer.’ So, Boston was our nearest place and he said I’ve reserved a couple of seats on the coach for you. So,’ he said, ‘In to Boston. You go and have some beer.’ And that was it. So that was the finish.
CB: Fantastic. On the sequence we were talking about you shot down six didn’t you?
SB: Yeah.
CB: So, we’ve got to number five which was when you went on the trip that went via Sweden.
SB: Yes.
CB: What about the sixth one? What was that?
SB: I can, yes. Well, yes he was. It was a Dornier 217. And whether you, the Germans allowed them to sleep or not I don’t know but there was two of them in there. And again we were coming out of the target a little bit higher than usual and he was up there and looking out for us as we were looking out for him. And I engaged him. He saw us at the last minute. I engaged him and, well the rest is history. He had to go.
CB: Where was him in, where was he in relation to the aircraft?
SB: Again, he was, he was —
CB: High up.
SB: Starboard up. Higher. Yes.
CB: So, in the circumstances what would be the aiming point of that, on that aircraft?
SB: I just shot at the aeroplane.
CB: Right.
SB: I just shot at the aeroplane.
CB: So effectively it raked —
SB: It blew up.
CB: It raked the underside.
SB: It blew up.
CB: Did it? Right.
SB: Yes. He did.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Yes, he did. Yes. He did.
CB: So —
SB: And then there was all this, ‘Well done, Stan.’ And in point of fact I got a book on the Battle of Berlin.
CB: Yeah.
SB: And my pilot, bless him he wrote in there, “A present to Stan.” Martin Middlebrook’s book. It was, “A present to Stan who saved our lives on many occasions.”
CB: Brilliant. Yes. The planes you were, you shot down were a combination of twin engine and single engine.
SB: Yes. Yes.
CB: So the fifth one. Was that also a single engine?
SB: Yes. A Focke Wulf 190.
CB: That was a 190 as well?
SB: Yes.
CB: That was —
SB: Yes.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
SB: Yes.
CB: On the way to the target was it?
SB: Yes.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
SB: Yes. They were over the target and on the approach as well.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Fighter planes. Get away quicker see.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
SB: The big stuff like the Dorniers were outside the target waiting for us.
CB: What sort of — when they saw you in advance what sort of range did they start shooting?
SB: They was around the four hundred yards. They had — they, obviously they could. They had a bigger range than us. See, four hundred yards was the, a Browning 303.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Whereas what were they armed with?
SB: Yeah.
CB: What were they armed with? What guns did they have?
SB: I don’t honestly know.
CB: So they had 30 mill err 20 millimetre cannon.
SB: I’ve no idea.
CB: Right. As well as machine guns.
SB: I’ve no idea at all.
CB: Yeah. Ok. Good. Thank you. We’ll take a pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, Stan with six aircraft shot down.
SB: Yeah.
CB: In RAF parlance that made you an ace.
SB: Yes.
CB: How did they recognise that?
SB: It was announced at briefing at East Kirkby that, ‘Gentlemen, we’ve got an ace in our midst.’ Miller. Wing Commander Miller. And I believe that there was another officer who was commanding officer of the whole of the group was Group Captain Taff. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of him at all.
CB: No.
SB: He was —
CB: Obviously Welsh.
SB: I believe, again that [pause] I used to get on pretty, well he did with most aircrew. He was a damned good drinker [laughs] But he announced that it was his pleasure to shake my hand. And he said to everybody, ‘Here we’ve got him. He’s an ace.’ That. And it was as quick as that.
CB: So, at Kirkby as everywhere else there was a gunner leader was there?
SB: Yes. Yes.
CB: And how did he react to that?
SB: I’d like to use a word but I don’t dare. Can we call —
[recording paused]
CB: So, there was a gunnery leader.
SB: Yeah. It was, it was the practice that the leader of each section, and I can only speak of 57 Squadron that the gunnery leader in my case, he said, ‘I’m going to rest you on the next trip,’ he said, ‘You won’t be going on the trip. I’ll be taking your place.’ Which rather dejected me and I went to my skipper and I said, ‘Ron, I’m not happy at all. My gunnery leader’s taking me off the trip and he’s going in my place.’ And Ron’s reaction was, ‘He bloody well aint.’ And he didn’t.
CB: What rank would gunnery —
SB: Flight lieutenant.
CB: Right.
SB: He had a thing about him. I can only again speak for my personal self and my other gunner, Chick who was a Canadian. I can only speak for the two of us. We never ever missed the opportunity to go out on the gunnery range and practice. Clay pigeon shooting and shooting from a, from a turret. From one like me I was in a two and he was in a four. We never ever, ever missed a session. Chick, he was the champion clay pigeon shooter and I was his deputy.
CB: Very good.
SB: Yeah. We never missed.
CB: Right.
SB: Now, so that gunnery leader should have talked to us and used us an example.
CB: Exactly. So my next question was what the reaction?
SB: He didn’t.
CB: Of the other gunners.
SB: He didn’t. Whether it registered. It must have registered mustn’t it? But he didn’t seem to take it on board.
CB: Ok [pause] Thank you. Now, a couple of other things. One is that when you were at Scampton you met Guy Gibson.
SB: Yes. I did.
CB: Just, what was the, he was 617 but —
SB: Yes. I was on my way. I can, again that’s one. Things like this never leave you. I was on my way into the sergeant’s mess. Right. And I think it was at mealtime and he was walking his dog. Naturally I had to throw him one up. Salute. And he called me over. And he had a thing. Gibson. About NCOs. He just [pause] he didn’t like them as much as he did officers. End of story really. I can honestly say that the aircrew — sergeants and flight sergeants, they weren’t his favourite people.
CB: Was that related to the role they did? So, did air gunners come off worst?
SB: I don’t know. I really don’t know. But he didn’t. He was against aircrew. Sergeants.
CB: Yeah.
SB: And flight sergeants.
CB: What about his dog?
SB: Friendly enough. Friendly enough. Them days the billets were just inside the gate and we were in one of those billets. There were two crews in the house. And he’d obviously been somewhere and come through the gates on the way to the mess when I met him.
CB: But the dog was called?
SB: I can’t remember it’s bloody name. Not Ricky. No. No. I forget.
CB: And the dog was called N*****.
SB: N*****. I went and looked at his grave this last year.
CB: Did you?
SB: When they called us up for our reunion. Yeah.
CB: And was the dog allowed to wander around? Or what happened?
SB: Yes. He did.
CB: With the dog.
SB: Yes. He did.
CB: That mess up your shoes?
SB: After I’d gone he was, he died.
CB: Did it mess up your shoes a bit?
SB: No.
CB: Ok. Thank you. The other one is a contentious one and its one that nowadays is used to, is described a different way but in war there are all sorts of sanctions that are imposed.
SB: [unclear]
CB: In war there are all sort of sanctions imposed.
SB: Sanctions.
CB: According to circumstances. So you had a certain situation where one of the crew on one of the trips lost his bottle. What was the circumstances of that?
SB: Ginger.
CB: What happened there?
SB: Well, that again was a Berlin. It was custom [pause] I would reckon that all pilots did it. When you were just before, well it was just before actually your bombing run you knew you were coming up shortly to your bombing run and pilots always lifted the nose of the aircraft slightly upwards. So that when the word, ‘Bombs gone,’ it automatically gave a lurch up and with it pointing upwards you took one hell of a lift up. And it was also custom that when the bombs had gone the pilot used to scream out, and it was a scream, ‘Full power.’ Now, the practice was that the engineer, the pilot had enough on his plate to steer the aircraft. So the engineer put his hand on the four throttles and pushed them forward and locked them. So they were screaming their guts out.
CB: So they’re through the gate.
SB: Through the gate.
CB: Yeah.
SB: And naturally the crew knew. We just took it as that was it. All glued to our seats. And when we got back Ron said to the crew, by which time Ginger had been left with intelligence but with the crew he got us all together and he said, ‘Well, lads,’ he said, ‘We’ve got a problem. We’ve got a problem. And,’ he said, ‘It’s not a pleasant problem. Ginger [pause] has gone LMF.’ He said, ‘You know from experience that it’s my job always to call for full power through the gate when we are coming out of the target to get us away as quick as we can and it’s unfortunate Ginger was hiding behind my seat. He couldn’t face up to it.’ So, he said, ‘There. You’ve got it.’ He said, ‘We’ve got no option but to report it to the commanding officer,’ he said. And well that was the end. He’d gone. Whether it was a stroke of luck. Fate. Is that what they call it? But we picked up another engineer within days because we, in them days it was essential we got as many bombers up there as they could and we picked up a bloke called Fred Simmons. And Fred, I always called him, he was point of fact we palled up. He was one of, my best friend. And what he didn’t know about an engine wasn’t worth knowing. He was absolutely brilliant. Now, Fred, he was with another aircraft and the crew he was with — Fred went sick [pause] And naturally if you had a sneeze in aircrew you were took off. So Fred was took off the trip and unfortunately the crew he was with didn’t come back. So we inherited Fred after a few days. We inherited Fred as our engineer. The replacement for Ginger. And he was brilliant. He was the kind of bloke that because I came from just outside of Manchester it was much too far for me to go home on a forty eight hour leave and [pause] he said, ‘You’re not going to stop on the station. That’s a certain fact,’ he said, ‘You’re going to come home with me. I live in Wisbech.’ Well, he was married. Unfortunately they couldn’t have children. And he lived with his mum and they kept the Railway Inn at Wisbech. So he and I used to go when we had a forty eight he used to take me and I used to help his mum. She was a widow by then. Incidentally Matthew took me to see the hotel. It’s still there.
Other: It’s a house now isn’t it? It was a house now, I think. Someone lived in it. It was still there. Yeah.
SB: Yeah. Yeah. Somebody lived in the house. What more can I say about Fred? We were absolutely — we lived in each other’s pockets.
CB: Did you, did you keep up with him after the war?
SB: No. I didn’t.
CB: Who did —
SB: Regrettably.
CB: Yeah. Just come back to that but what happened? What? What rank was Ginger?
SB: My rank. Sergeant.
CB: Right.
SB: Then, well naturally we progressed after a year.
CB: Flight sergeant.
SB: Flight sergeant.
CB: And what happened to him after he was arrested?
SB: I did contact him once. Something went wrong. He went to St Athan. South Wales. I believe it was an engineering.
CB: It was an engineering school.
SB: I believe. I don’t know.
CB: It was the School of Engineering. Yes.
SB: I don’t know.
CB: Yeah.
SB: I don’t.
CB: Ok. I think just one other thing. Who did you keep in contact with in the crew after the war?
SB: Only one. Ron. Ron Munday. I think that old Fred went. That’s all.
CB: So immediately after the war you had no contact with anybody.
SB: Market Harborough I went to.
CB: Yeah. Right. We’ll stop there for a break. Thank you.
[recording paused]
SB: Gave me an order see.
CB: Right. So what, we’ve talked about the dangers of what you were doing and clearly there was some amazing escapes, but the care, the aircraft was a colander on some occasions. The crew sometimes got wounded. In your case were you ever hit? And on what was the trip on which it happened?
SB: Yes. I was. I was wounded. We’d been instructed to bomb Stettin. Which was quite close to the place where they was building doodlebugs.
CB: Peenemunde.
SB: And I was wounded in a rather delicate position. And I won’t say any more about that.
CB: But in your role as a mid-upper gunner where were you in relation to the dangerous parts of the aeroplane?
SB: Well, I was just forward — backward. Sorry. Backward it would be wouldn’t it? Backward of the bomb bay. You could say within feet. Within feet. I knew probably first one they dropped when they went up in the air the aeroplane went.
CB: So of all the crew when the bombs went you were the one most relieved.
SB: Yes. Yes. I was.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Yeah. On many occasions. Yeah.
CB: Ok. And how many hours did you have to endure your discomfort after being hit on the way back?
SB: Five or six. There was blood all in my flying boot.
CB: There was a first aid kit in the aircraft. There was a first aid kit in the aircraft.
SB: Yeah. You couldn’t get at it. Your parachute, you couldn’t get at that.
CB: Right.
SB: As a mid-upper gunner you know.
CB: You sat on your parachute.
SB: No.
CB: Oh you didn’t.
SB: No. That was the position. Just close to the rear door.
CB: Right. But you couldn’t use the first aid kit.
SB: No. No.
CB: Ok.
SB: I can well remember when I was wounded. They got me out the turret. My bomb aimer was one Taffy. Taffy Evans. I could hear him say to Ron, I was conscious enough at the time, and ‘We got him out.’
CB: So, they lifted you out of the turret.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Then what happened?
SB: They took me to the — we had a bed.
CB: Right.
SB: Just by the main spar. And they just whacked me on the bed.
CB: Right.
SB: That was it. And then I went to sleep.
CB: So nobody then went into the turret in your place.
SB: No.
CB: No.
SB: There was nobody available.
CB: When you got back to East Kirkby what happened then? What was the sequence of events?
SB: I haven’t got a clue. When I say I aint got a clue I know because of what I was told.
CB: Which was?
SB: Our ground crew were there with the ambulance, well they didn’t drive the ambulance but they were there to assist getting me out of the aeroplane into the ambulance. There was no standing on ceremony. They whipped me off to RAF Rauceby.
CB: Which is the hospital near Sleaford.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
CB: Right. And when you were in the hospital what happened there?
SB: I don’t know. Well, when I say I don’t know. I’d been patched up by then. I’d also picked up another. Classed as a wound. I burst an eardrum. Ron came down quite quickly to assist me. So the story went. And in doing so I wasn’t breathing properly and I burst this. Dead as a doornail. And I can always, I always remember what they did it last. Repaired me.
CB: Right.
SB: I can always remember the guy that did it. I thought he was a brute. He drilled a hole through the bridge of the nose and put a tube in. He said it was a silver tube. Up, connected on the tube. And he put the ball part of it under his white gown and he said, ‘When I raise my finger,’ he said, ‘You raise yours that you acknowledge.’ He said, ‘That’s saying it’s gone around and around the head and blown it back.’ And he were pumping away and I [pause] and he looked at me. He said, ‘Good God man,’ he said, ‘You look as if you’re going to bloody faint. Go and stand in the corner.’ And that was that. A few days later I was back on flying.
CB: Amazing. Thank you. Your dad. Yeah.
SB: It’s not [pause] My dad was in the fire watching. He used to have a, they used to have a bit of string with a box on with a gas mask. And I said to my dad because he was, he worked at the coal mine issuing lamps for the miners. And he used to have to be up about 3 o’clock to get these for the people to start at six. But I used to say to my dad, ‘It’s pointless you being up for the bombing raid. The fire warden in the street. I’ll sit on the wall outside and I’ll do your shift for you.’ [laughs]
Other: Really.
SB: Yeah. I did. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Because this is the bombing of Manchester and Liverpool.
SB: It was the bombing of Manchester or Liverpool. We were straight between them. I think it was like twenty eight miles to Liverpool.
CB: And they flew near you because of the Manchester Ship Canal.
SB: That’s right. Yeah. They used to be up and down the ship canal a lot. Or the River Mersey. The krauts were always up and down there. Of course, there was, you can well imagine I mean they didn’t get a free flight. They were always been shot at and the bloody shrapnel was around your house and — [laughs] You would get the odd broken window about. Yeah. Yeah. Those were the days Matt.
Other: I suppose coming over from Germany they didn’t have to fly over much land ‘til they got, even over on the west side of the country there wasn’t typically a wide bit of the country to get over was it? That we’d notice.
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Interview with Stanley Bradford
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-10-31
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABradfordS161031
Conforms To
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Pending review
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01:03:52 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Stanley Bradford was working in a Reserved Occupation until he volunteered. The three services were represented but as he approached them in turn the army and navy both rejected him because of his work. The RAF said that since he was in Reserved Occupation he could only join as a volunteer for aircrew. He duly volunteered and began training as an air gunner. He went on to shoot down five aircraft and was awarded the DFM. He was injured on one operation and as a result of the pilot’s rapid descent to help him Stan also suffered a burst eardrum. After one operation their flight engineer had a breakdown and was replaced by another engineer whose crew had been shot down. Flying over Sweden they found themselves escorted by the Swedes and also guided by a searchlight beam towards home. On another occasion they came under attack from anti-aircraft fire from the Channel Islands when their navigation equipment was damaged. They were met and escorted home by a Typhoon from RAF Exeter.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Sweden
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
57 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
bombing
Distinguished Flying Medal
Do 217
fear
Fw 190
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Me 109
RAF East Kirkby
RAF hospital Rauceby
RAF Padgate
RAF Scampton
recruitment
searchlight
superstition
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/530/8764/PShawSR1604 copy.2.1.jpg
6ef757ed0517a8dee79afa1e17d1d6e6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/530/8764/AShawS160114.2.mp3
dcd6df4d27938dea630da3984b0221a7
Dublin Core
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Title
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Shaw, Stanley R
S R Shaw
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Shaw, SR
Description
An account of the resource
37 items. An oral history interview with Stanley Shaw (3002545 Royal Air Force) Photographs, documents and his log book. He served with a Repair and Salvage Unit and attended many crashes. He later served in North Africa and the Middle East.
The collection also contains two photograph albums; one of his RAF service and one of his time in a cycle club.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Stanley Shaw and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
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2016-01-14
2016-02-11
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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SC: Now that should be recording so we’ll put that just there.
SS: Lovely.
SC: I’ll stand it up if it will stay up. Yeah. So, we’re doing the interview today with Mr Stanley Shaw at your home address — XXXXXX, Derby.
SS: Yes.
SC: I’m Steve Cooke, I’m doing the interview today. Thank you very much for inviting me into your house as well Stanley, to do the interview, I really appreciate it.
SS: Oh, it’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure. [Peter]
SC: What I wanted to do was start in the early years, and just ask you, were you born and bred in Derby? And, why you wanted to join the RAF and the ATC?
SS: Yes, I was born at a very early age. 1926, not a very good year. There was a general strike on.
SC: Oh yeah.
SS: Churchill sent the troops to kill the miners but we lived in a slum in Derby. Two, two room, two up, two down as we used to call it. No hot, no hot water, no gas. Copper, the dolly pegs and all that caper. And, well there was no fat kids running about in them days I can assure you.
SC: Yes.
SS: Because we lived practically on a diet of bread and, bread and jam, or bread and dripping, whatever was handy. But I was a sickly child and the doctor said, ‘If you can raise him till he’s seven, he might pull through’.
SC: Gosh.
SS: But I was a regular attender at the Temple House Clinic for sunray treatment, instead of going to the seaside. My dad said Skegness was Russian propaganda, no such place. So, I had that and I wore teen glasses for a bit, and an operational twitch, and I succumbed. I was alright at school, loved history, loved history. And as I went on, about, I think I’d be about five or six, Alan Cobham and his Flying Circus came to Derby, and my dad had a bike in them days with a basket on the front, and he used to take me everywhere. And I can remember, well and truly, going to this place, called it Sentry Meadows in Derby, and lo and behold, these ex-1914/18 aircraft — patched up, fabric jobs, Biplanes. The stunts they performed and you could have a trip up for five shillings.
SC: Wow.
SS: The problem was five shillings was a lot of money in those days.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So, there wasn’t much chance of that, and as I went on through the years, I was very interested, very interested in aircraft. Always. That was the days of the Frog Models, you could buy a little one for five shilling in a box, and you used to stick the wings on and increase the revs on the handle, and it didn’t fly very well, but at five bob, good value for five bob. And took the Modern Wonder, that was another magazine at that time. Very, very descriptive on aircraft — the Modern Wonder. And I had an uncle, now, not many people had cars in those days. You were either a doctor or some exquisite person, a businessman, if you had a car and he had a, the old Flying Standard. And I think it was 1937, he took me and my father up to Hucknall, which was the home of the Nottingham, the Nottingham Air Squadron Defence. And they flew, I just forget - Hawker Hinds, Hawker Hind biplanes, all silver and polished. They were beautiful they were. And then, that was in 1937, that’s, that’s when I saw the first Wellington. This black fabric covered job in the corner. A bit secret at that time. And then in 1938, he took me again and, lo and behold, we’d got Battles, and they were the be all and end all. They could beat any fighter and all that, which were a load of twaddle really, but very, very interesting that was. And I said then, in 1938/’39, and I left school, I left school in Easter 1940 because my birthday is on January the 10th, and in those days, if you was born in the new year, you didn’t qualify to leave at Christmas, so I had to go till Easter.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That was a body blow that was. And I left school on the Friday, and I started work on the Monday. No — plenty of jobs around in them days because the war was on, and I worked at a garage. One interesting point, in the garage, when Dunkirk happened, we had a complete battalion of squaddies got straight off the boat from Dunkirk, shipped them up to Spondon village, and they hadn’t got a rifle between them.
SC: Right.
SS: They’d got absolutely nothing. They’d come up here by train I should imagine, and they had their headquarters in Spondon village, and they kept their petrol supply at our garage, and it was brown. No chance of nicking any because it was brown in colour [laughs], and I can remember in those days, the military could acquire any vehicle. Civilian. They just walked up and say, ‘Thank you very much, that’s ours’. And this battalion, the despatch rider was only about five foot tall and he’d got this twin, twin cylinder Matchless 1000.
SC: Right.
SS: Well, he used to bring it down to the garage and we used to fill his tank for him, and then somebody had to kick it started for him because he wasn’t strong enough to kick it. But I remember one morning, I was filling a customer’s car and it was a bit misty, and I heard this roar, and we got, we got an anti-aircraft battery up in the village by this time up, on the rise there, and they’d got a Bofors gun, and I heard this bang, bang, bang. I looked up and there was this German aircraft which is well known, this German aircraft flying, which bombed Royce’s that morning.
SC: Gosh.
SS: He flew all the way down from, came in from Hull, came down here and he bombed. He bombed Royce’s.
SC: Royce’s.
SS: And people say, ‘You didn’t see that did you?’ Well, just one of them things.
SC: Yeah.
SS: You saw it but I know one thing. The traverse of the gun was that low, it was nearly knocking the chimney pots off because as it flew —
SC: Gosh.
SS: It was that low.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That they followed it and of course, the lower it got, the worse the firing got. I saw that, and then also, while I worked at the garage, one day I looked up and there was an aeroplane with black crosses on it. I think it was a Junkers 88 reconnaissance flying, flying over and that was shot down at Lincoln on it’s, on its way back. A Spitfire shot that down. That was, and then Saturday lunchtime. I can remember it was a Saturday lunchtime, when I was fourteen and a half and listening, listening to the — well you did listen to the news, because it was all war, and this chap from the Air Ministry got on and said, ‘We’re going to form a new arm of Air Force’. Pre-training for the Air Force because we’ve lost that many, you know, to Dunkirk and in France, the Battle of France, that we’re short. We need recruits urgently and we want them partially trained.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Which was a good deal for the RAF, it took a lot of weight off them. And I thought, right, and it said apply at your local councillor. Well, a councillor, I knew about councillors in them days but didn’t used to bother. Somebody said, ‘Mr Fred West at Borrowash’, which is where we are, so I jumped on my old Vindec bike, scooters up there, hammers on his door. ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘I’d like to join the Air Training Corps’. He said, ‘I’ve not had the papers through yet’. I was a bit pre you see, and then I went to the first, I went to the first, well it wasn’t a parade, it was just the lads that were interested and I can remember it as plain as day. We went up to the Wilmot Arms at Borrowash and there was four of us. There was a chap called Austin Shaw that lived in Spondon, he became a pilot later on. There was a lad called George Wood and the lad called Bancroft and myself. We were the first four to get there and out of our four, George Wood was shot down in 1944 on a Lanc, a Lancaster rear gunner, and he was shot down and he’s buried in Bergen Op Zoom, Holland. I’ve never had occasion to go, I’ve been to Holland a couple times, I’d love to go and see because he got married and he had a baby and he never saw the baby. He never saw it. Very tragic. And from the four we blossomed, we blossomed. Everybody in Spondon and surrounding wanted to fly. Oh, they all wanted to fly. And we formed 1117 Squadron, and we got that big, we got that big, we formed four flights — A, B, C and D.
SC: Wow.
SS: Which were Spondon, Territory Hill — Chaddesden, the racecourse and Chester Green. All the four flights. In all, we were well over two hundred cadets.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Well over. And we had a civilian, he was an engineer at the Celanese at the time, and he’d got a big house in Spondon with a big loft. And we had a ground staff, we had aircrew. They were studying navigation and everything appertaining, Morse code and everything, and we were, well I was already an apprentice fitter so they made me a corporal, because I’d got a bit more knowledge than they had. And, yeah, and then came the days of visits to aerodromes. I think I’ve already mentioned about Burnaston, managed to get a flip. We went to Burnaston for a week, week’s camp. Roughed it a little bit as we thought, and they’d got Tiger Moths and Magisters, Miles Magisters, and they were 16 AFTS Flight Training School. And from there we went to better things, we went to Ashbourne Aerodrome for a week, which flew Whitleys and Ansons and Blenheims.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Well we had one officer, Mr Rigby, a rather nice chap, they took him up for a flight. They didn’t tell him where they were going, and when he came back, he told about these little black puffs of smoke behind the aeroplane. ‘Yes. That was flak, sir. We’ve been across to northern France, having a shufty around and come back again’. Didn’t tell him where he was going, joy trip it was. Well, Ansons were the name of the game, because you trained the pilot, navigator, wireless operator, bombardier all in the same aeroplane. So, we used to fly down to North Wales on the Brecon Beacons dropping these white, little white twenty five pounder bombs.
SC: Yeah.
SS: If you hit anything — I don’t think so, not very often. And as I say, then the last camp I went to was a bomber, it was a proper bomber station, at Hixon near Staffordshire. And Wellingtons, that was my first encounter with a Wellington and well, I mean, the ATC were smart. I kid you not they were very smart, and I was the right marker. So, I mean, this is an operational, this is an operational ‘drome with the erks wandering around, with their knives and forks dangling on their belt. Dead scruffy because they’d probably been working all night, caps on at fitter 2 angle, and we were there and we just paraded on the ground [unclear], all these lads used to stand there laughing. Smirking as well. ‘Bloody different when you get in mate’, and we managed to get a trip there. But you see, OTUs are a bit different. Every OTU operation is a little bit different, so the — our officer, he was the last, he was a World War One, First World War pilot and he, he was in charge of us, and he said, ‘I’ve got you a trip’. I thought, well I’m not really bothered really, ‘cause I’m not into flying. ‘I’ve managed to get you a trip’, you see, and it was this Wellington and we went down to the flight. They give you a mask and, you know oxygen bag, helmet and whatnot, parachute, and we got on the truck that was taking the crew out on this test flight. Just come out the hangar. Apparently it had had a new wing fitted, and there was us sitting there, our lads. Two lads sitting there, these hardened types sitting there, they said, ‘Have you got a date tonight?’ I don’t know what — ‘Have you got a date tonight?’ I said, ‘Yeah’. He said, ‘You can scrub around that’, he said, ‘I expect the flaming wings are gonna fall off’. This is just as we were starting trying. I was sitting there, I don’t want nothing to do with this sort of thing, and we went and sat in it, and the lad that I was with, he’d never been up before. We went up and he started throwing it about and we looked out, and there was a Mark I Mustang, and we were on a little bit of aircraft fighter affiliation in which case you were, you know, you were swinging it about a bit. And we came, we finished that, came away from there and then, as I say, I volunteered. I did volunteer, I always meant going in and I was still working at Celanese, Apprentice fitter, which meant I had to break my, I had to break my apprenticeship, and well that was it. I mean I told them, I said, ‘I’ve been in the Air Training Corps all this time’.
SC: Yeah.
SS: ‘I don’t want to miss out’, And — yes, I went from there, and at that time, we’d moved to Spondon. We lived in Spondon and we had six soldiers billeted with us. If you’d got a three-bedroom house —
SC: Right.
SS: And you got one room to spare, you got, you got six squaddies because the British Celanese was a huge depot for armaments, lorries and anything. So all these lads were in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Working down there in civvy billets you see, and how my mum used to feed them six, I do not know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: ‘Cause they used to come in, you know, barely enough to keep them.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And you’d got to find food and rationing and whatnot, queuing, and they were from all over the country. You know, different places they came from, different accents and of course, I was about seventeen, yeah, seventeen and a half, seventeen and three quarter. And I got my, I got my papers on the day before Christmas day, and they were all, you know, ‘You’ll be alright’, kind of thing. And yes, I was eighteen. I was eighteen on the one day and I went in the next.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Went in the next. Dad took me down to the station and well, I was, you see, it wasn’t as if you had just been plucked out of civvy street like a lot of, a lot of lads were.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I mean these lads that were conscripted, they didn’t have the, they didn’t have the luxury of being pre-trained.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Now, when you, when you, as soon as you got on to Cardington, which was a recruiting centre which did all the training and everything, you was half qualified you know.
SC: Yeah
SS: I mean, the RAF, you know. Thank God somebody knows what they’re doing.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But the Air Training Corps were prefixed with the numbers 300, so they just looked at your number and, 3002545, they knew straight away you were ex, ex-Training Corps and I was pretty fit, I was pretty fit in them days. And on the second day, no, the second week we were there, we got this contingent, a contingent of West Indians come, the black lads from West Indies, and January was cold.
SC: Right.
SS: I can assure you, it was cold and they had a cross-country run. A cross country run. Starting out, I think there was a hundred and forty four altogether, we were all in flights, sections, you know. I think there was about nine flights altogether with about, what? Thirty lads in each. And you’d got an drill instructor, corporal and a sergeant, and they had this cross country. Everybody had got to be in it, it didn’t matter if you could run or not. And there were, there’s two big hangars at Cardington where they used to store the airships, R101, two big hangars, and there was a narrow gap, like a road, down there. Well it was a cross country, so I set off amongst the pack. Saw these big athletic West Indian lads, I don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance here, and I was running along and saw this chap with “Polytechnic Harriers” written on it. I thought that looks a bit interesting, he’ll be the right lad to follow.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So I get behind and as we ran through these hangars, there was a bit of a wind blowing, so luckily I was, I’ve tucked in behind and then when we got outside — about two hundred yards — that was the finishing line. So he’d had it when he got to the end of the road and I chuffed in and managed to get first. And this officer type came across — he give me, what was it? He gave me a thirty-shilling postal order.
SC: Wow.
SS: And gave me a leave, a leave pass for the weekend. Never been done before, you see because I mean until you could march and look decent, they didn’t let you out of Cardington.
SC: Yeah.
SS: You know, and I went home. And these soldiers, ‘What are you doing home then? Have they kicked you out already?’ I said, ‘No’.
SC: For coming first
SS: And when I got back again of course, it was steam trains then, you know, and always full.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Always. Derby station. And always this smoke used to hang about, acrid smoke there was. If you went through a tunnel, made sure all the windows were shut.
SC: Yeah.
SS: It used to puther in, and you’re like a —
SC: Yeah.
SS: And you come out the other side. And when I got back, they were all lying in their bunks moaning and whatnot, and I said, ‘What’s up?’ ‘We’ve had the inoculations today. Oh you know, we’ve had jabs and this, that and the other’, and I thought, well I’ve not had it. They said, ‘No, but you’ll get it tomorrow though’. Yeah, I enjoyed that cross country running, twenty two mile march with half pack and rifle, and the chap that was in charge, a warrant officer, he was sixty-five odd and he marched at the front.
SC: Wow.
SS: He marched at the front and we went out. Had soup, hot soup out of the kitchen, and the jam butty sandwich and we marched eleven miles back. We got just outside Bedford, and he said, ‘Now, you buggers, lift your eyes up. Don’t tell these civilians you’re sagging. Get yourself’, and we did. Looked as if we’d just come up and started the march. But very, very good. Did grenade throwing, rifle, firing the sten, the — what was it? The Browning machine gun. We fired that.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And very, very, very interesting that was. It was to get you fit.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Now the food was rough, I would say, the food was adequate. You got the calories and after six weeks training, if they’d have said, ‘Stanley, run through that brick wall’, I would have done. You’re like, you’re like butcher’s dogs you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And then that was all finished you see, and then we got posted for training, so they got me down, they got me down as air frames so, at Halton this was, a beautiful place. It was on the Rothschild estate.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Near Halton.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Buckinghamshire. Nearest village was Wendover which had a Church Army little tea place where you could have a shine and a wad, and we did six, tem weeks intensive, intensive, riggers course.
SC: Yeah.
SS: We did the basic, basic fitting. Now, I’d already been fitting and all this caper.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And they threw a great big piece of steel at you and said, ‘We want you to make something that is square and file it so that fits in there’. Well, I thought, this is going to take weeks this is, so I looked — I had a look around. It was a big workshop and all the machinery was belt driven in them days, a great big grindstone, so I thought — right. So, I sneaks down there with this and of course, if you press down hard enough, you get a great big shower of sparks.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And have you ever had that notice, feeling, that somebody is standing behind watching you? So, I thought, and it was a sergeant. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘Hello. What are you doing then?’ I said, ‘I’m fetching, I’m fetching some of this metal’, I said, ‘There’s a heck of a lot to file off’. He said, ‘That’s the idea’, he said, ‘You’ll use a hacksaw and then you’ll file it into shape. No — no grinding mate. Here’s another piece of metal’. Bigger than that one [laughs], but we did rigging. Very interesting that was, rigging, but you see, we didn’t rig the Tiger Moth, which is a biplane, which we spent two days with the dihedral boards, angles — this kind of — all the measurements and we couldn’t — it was a degree out. Couldn’t possibly get it, couldn’t possibly get the dihedral on the wings and we told the instructor, ‘We’ve tried everything’. ‘Well’, he said, ‘You won’t’, he said. ‘That’s why Brooklands Flying Club threw it out. It was no good’. They didn’t tell you that before you started. And we went out on the grass airfield, we swung the propeller, that was an art. That was a Tiger Moth and you had to swing a propeller, and then they got a clapped-out Spitfire, and the idea was that the engine people, we were divided, airframes and engines, the engine people used to sit in the cockpit and the airframe bods used to lean across the tail plane at the back. Of course when you revved the Spitfire, the natural tendency was to tip up on its nose.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Or belt across the airfield — so — off the brake. So, we all lodged, lodged on the, on the, across the tail to hold the tail down, so if your cap blew off, which it did mostly, about three fields away before you found it. But that was very interesting. And one incident, it was midsummer and we’re talking 1944 now, and no water on the camp, run out of water so they sent us home, sent us home for a week but just before we went, the Americans were here by this time.
SC: Right.
SS: And the air was full of Forts and Liberators, and this Fort come steaming around, of course, we’d only got a grass airfield at Halton, come steaming around and lowered his undercarriage. By the way, already on the camp was two hundred WAAFs. By this name of the game, the girls were coming in and taking, and taking the place of the blokes, doing the same job, mechanics.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And of course, they trained in one part, we trained in the other. And this Fort landed and the doors opened and these lads fell out, with all their fur lined clobber and the you know, Mae Wests, yellow Mae Wests and smoking cigars. Of course, these girls descended on them [laughs], I think they survived to go, to take off again. They said they’d lost their way, they’d lost their way. And yeah, we came back off leave, and then it was posting time then. Then you were fully trained, or thought you were, and then life began in earnest then, life really began. And we formed up outside for the postings and, ‘You go there’. ‘You go there’. ‘You go there’. Oh, by the way does anyone, anyone here like to volunteer for flight engineers. Well, at this time the chop rate was very, very high, in some cases you were probably losing two out of four, you know, which was bad really. So, air crew, they was at a premium. They weren’t training them fast enough but they got these lads overseas in Canada and south, so they were beginning to filter through, but until then the flight engineer’s course, it was different of course. When they took the four engine bombers over, they did away with the second pilot. They had to look after the four engines, they had the flight engineer who used to look after a;; the fuel and the revs and all that caper, and the workings of the aircraft, and they were the second, more or less the second dickie.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I think they were trained how to fly straight and level, not to land it.
SC: No.
SS: Not to land the thing, but, ‘Any volunteers?’ And if there was, you got a white flash on your cap, you know, that was for going on to aircrew, and this chap came up and he said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘Salvage’. I said, ‘Eh?’ He said, ‘Salvage’. I said, ‘Have I spent flaming all this time training in all this and I’m going on salvage?’ He said, ‘Not the salvage you mean’, he said, ‘You’ll be posted to 54 Maintenance, Repair And Salvage Unit, at Cambridge’, he said, ‘On Trumpington Road’. He said, ‘That is where all the stuff is kept. The slings and the cranes and the low loaders. All the tools appertaining’, he says, ‘and you will all be part of a salvage party’, which, there was nine, there was nine salvage parties and it were your job that if any aircraft crashes, whether it American, Free French, RAF, anything — you will go out and you will bring it back. If it’s a CatE1, that’ll be a sweep up, you’ll just take your dustpan out and your brush and that’ll be it. It’s completely scrap.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Or you catch a CatB. Now a CatB has belly flopped or he’s had a slight landing accident, and it was stripped down carefully, quickly but carefully. And that, in the case of the Lancaster, which was seven low loaders, Queen Mary’s, which was stripped it off in to different parts. All the engines came out on one loader, the wings, the tail, the fins and everything. And then the wings, they took the wings off and they were leant on sideways. So, and some were wide loads, you know, I mean there was no danger of [laughs], they just went through a town and demolished everything that was on the sides. And yes it was quite, quite an interesting job and we got, we were billeted in Jesus College, Cambridge.
SC: Gosh.
SS: Among the graduates you see.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And the pokey hole. I don’t know, no wonder them graduates used to hang themselves, you know. You used to go up these little winding stairs, all the paintwork was dark green wood or dark brown and we got four metal beds and three biscuits and a couple of blankets, and of course, next door to the camp, and if you hadn’t got a bicycle, everybody got a bicycle but if you hadn’t got a mortar board and a gown, they didn’t take much different but we used to dine in the great dining hall.
SC: Wow.
SS: And we had three long tables and then one across the top. The one on the top, the professors and top people sat, and just here, we had the officers and the warrant officers for our lot, and then we had the bods in the middle. And then on this one we had the undergrads. And we had our own, own mess, cookery, the WAAFs. We had some lovely meals. The other lads going to theirs, coming back with a half a tomato and a lettuce and you know, we were fed pretty well, and we were there for quite a time and then we went to Newmarket. Now, Newmarket was a grass ‘drome and it was on the, on the racecourse itself.
SC: Right.
SS: And — but whilst we were at Cambridge, I’ll start there, while we was at Cambridge, I think nearly every week we had a crash, every week. It didn’t matter where they landed, where they landed. If they landed in water, trees, open land — and just give you a couple of incidents, I can’t give you them all because I can remember them all, but you’ll be here ‘til [laughs]. The first one we went to was a Lancaster at a place called Mepal. Now, that was a Bomber Command station, and we went up there and that was the first one I’d been on, and there was a little lad — he was called an ACHGD. That means Aircraft Hand General Duties. So, they put him with us to keep him out the road I think, and this sergeant, a Sergeant Donovan, he was brilliant on the makeup, the weight-up of the human body to counterbalance, he was very good sticking bods up to balance the thing up, if we hadn’t got the right tackle. And this Lanc was in the hangar, so we were fetching the nose section off and we got the slings, what we thought were the proper ones, and when we lifted it, it was slightly nose heavy, which means we couldn’t lower it down on to the low loader in the right position. So, we said to this little lad, ‘Climb up there and sit in the end there to balance it’. Well, the next thing, it dipped and this lad fell out, bust his arm, and the sergeant said, very sympathetic, he said, ‘Get off up to the sick station, sick quarters’, and this little lad went up and he said he just nose-dived in a Halifax, and they said, ‘Well where was this?’ He said, ‘Well, in the hangar —‘ and of course it wasn’t a Halifax, it was a Lancaster.
SC: A Lancaster.
SS: But he didn’t go out with us again because he’d broken his arm, but that was one of the easy ones, but then you started on the really bad ones. We went to a place called Chedburgh, which is quite near Newmarket. That was a, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit using the four engine Stirling bomber which the pilot was twenty two foot of the ground before you, before you took off or anything. Of course, the angle and the wing, it had a huge undercarriage and what they’d done to get it in the hangar which was, the wingspan was too long to get it in the hangar, they’d taken some off the wings which made it. If you got up to seventeen thousand foot in a Stirling, you was very lucky. Very, very lucky, they’d no altitude at all, and we went, we went on this one and he said, ‘There’s a Stirling. It’s still on the runway with a canopy missing, and then there’s another one just to the side that’s crashed.. So, we went, we went up to this place, Chedburgh, and there was the Stirling, sitting on the end of runway, still on its legs and the canopy had gone. What had happened, it was standing on the runway waiting to take off, the other Stirling — it was night — the other Stirling was coming on and I don’t know what happened, but one of his undercarriage wheels, which was huge, huge tyre, had struck the top of the canopy, knocked it off. And the pilot who was sitting up there he was, he was on the dashboard. He was a goner. He was on the board, what was left of him.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And it were hot, It was quite warm and of course, the first thing they did was climbed up in to the cockpit. You got that for a start. I was only eighteen at the time so, you know, it was just a little bit unnerving, and we got that and then we had to strip the other Stirling down, but they towed that one into a hangar, stuck a new canopy on it and that was ready for off again.
SC: Gosh.
SS: The worst one we did was a Liberator, this was in 1945, a Liberator. In those days, in 1945, Norfolk, Suffolk and all the eastern counties, the ground and the air throbbed because you’d got a thousand American four engine bombers climbing out, because they’d got to get altitude and they had these special planes called Judas. They called them Judas because they went back to the ‘drome, the other ones didn’t. It had all coloured in stripes and balls and flash colours and they used to fly alongside the other aircraft, firing verey cartridges like a shepherd and his sheep, getting them all into form because they’d all got to be stacked in the correct formation, which was better to defend their selves before they set out. And you could just imagine these going around and around, the air was alive.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And we got this message. We went to Ely, just outside Ely. We took a road from Ely to Downham Market, the main road, a place called Black Horse Fen. Well in the fen district, the soil, you could thrust your arm and up to your elbow — it was black, beautiful black soil, right for agriculture, and we went to pick up a Liberator and the first thing — when we got there, it was still smoking. Still smoke coming out of it and dogs running about, that was a bad sign. And here was the back end, the fin and rudder and the rear turret and the two waist gunners.
SC: Yeah.
SS: It had gone like that. It had blown up at sixteen thousand foot with the one — I don’t, they don’t know what happened, but I think American crews tended to get, have a fag you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And the Liberator, as soon as you climbed, you could smell hundred octane petrol and this thing, this thing had blown up with a full bomb load on board.
SC: Gosh.
SS: And it had spread about three miles. You’d got this tail end here with the two waist gunners in, you’d got like a depression in the ground, that was where one of them had got blown out and his chute hadn’t opened so that was how he landed. The nose section — there was five in there, that had really gone in. That’s what was burning and nothing smells worse than a burning aircraft. The wing was missing. The four engines — they might, you might have placed them like that, in four, and the bombs were underneath the engines.
SC: Wow.
SS: So, they called the bomb disposal squad, they came out, they said, ‘Well we couldn’t actually get the bombs until you get the engines out’. So, oh. Well in them days, you didn’t have the, we had cranes, the Coles crane, and then there was one with a long, long gib what — didn’t use, didn’t use that so very often. But if the ground was soft, you was bogged down pretty well and had to use the steel mattings, and of course, you had to get the engines up first. ‘Don’t touch that’ [laughs] ‘Be careful lad’, [laughs]. And we didn’t get the nose out at all, we just filled it back in because I mean, it was sitting there and what looked like a flying suit, pulled this arm, arm you see, so we just covered it in. But the farmers were, and the Air Ministry were very, very careful about the ammunition, because Americans used a .5 which is rather bigger than a 303.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I mean the 303s were like peashooters, and these .5s, they’d huge belts with them. I mean some of the Fortresses carried thirteen guns, thirteen .5s. That is a lot of ammunition. Well, I don’t think the Liberator carried quite as much as that, but you see, when an aircraft crashed, everything went all ways and it was nothing for a farmer with his tractor —
SC: Yeah.
SS: To run over a belt of .5s and frighten himself to death.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Of course, there used to, used to be explosive. What’s them? Tracer bullets and all the lot. So, you made sure that it was pretty clear and for some reason, there’s a farmer. He said, ‘There’s a wing’, there’s a wing gone in his farmyard, so, we thought, well it must be this one. Well the Liberator’s a Davis wing, which is about a hundred and four wing span I think, very, very thin camber, not as good as a Fortress in formation because they tend to wander around a little bit. But we went there and he said, ‘Since this thing crashed’, he says, ‘My fowls have stopped laying’, he said, ‘No eggs and they’ve stopped laying’. So, we thought, ‘Oh it must have been the shock so’, and he said, ‘I’ve got a wireless set as well’. So, we thought — wireless set, good, we’ve got one for the truck. We haven’t got one for the truck and he brings it out and it’s a big yellow box like that, with a handle on it and he said, ‘And you might as well have this as well’. It was like a big cardboard tube, and it was a emergency transmitter. When they landed in a dinghy, they used to crank the handle and they needed a kite with the aerial on in this to — there was a great big aluminium and silk kite. Six foot.
SC: Wow.
SS: So, moi had that, I had that - a trophy. And of course, this thing was no good, it could only send out a signal. That’s all.
SC: Ah.
SS: And anyway, with the [unclear] crane with the big jib, we got to, we managed to get it out into the yard and the wing, unless you’ve got the correct lifting tackle it balanced, but if there’s some knocked off the end, it unbalanced it. Well, as we lifted this wing, the flaps lowered and we was knee deep in eggs. These fowls had got inside the flaps laying their eggs, they’d not gone under the hedge, and it was caps and what’s the name, jackets at the ready. I think we lived on eggs for a month after that. But you see that, that was one of the lighter sides and one of the dead sides. Went to a place just outside Cambridge called Bourn, Bourn, that was a PFF station, Pathfinder unit, Mosquitoes, and they called us out to this one. They said, ‘It’s crashed in a field adjacent to the airfield’. So, we buggered off there, on the way up there, we gazed at the side of the road and there was a Catalina. Now a Catalina, in anybody’s language, is a flying boat.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Well I don’t know what had had happened to this thing, but it was perched up on the grass there, on a bit of a hill, so of course we had to stop and have a look at it, see what was happening. And then we went on to Bourn and went into this field, and there was two big gouges right up the field, right up the field, like two big [unclear], and as you walked up —one engine, half a wing, another engine, well, bits practically until we got to the end, and there was the cockpit and there was the cockpit floor. No canopy. The control column. That was it. You wouldn’t stand a dog’s chance in that. No way. And of course, partial amount of balsawood, the Mosquito. All the bomb bay — it was balsa planks. Ideal if you were an aero modeller, beautiful, but the rest were plywood, you see, and spruce, and we thought, right. Well we started work and looked down the field, and this couple, one holding on to the other’s shoulders come crawling up and jeez, that was the crew, that was the crew, and they’d belly flopped it and ran it. And the reason the navigator had jiggered his ankle - couldn’t get out what was left of the cockpit fast enough and he’d jiggered his ankle up. But —
SC: But they’d survived.
SS: That was them, that was them. Oh dear. You know, some, some were lucky, some were not. We went, we were called out to Tempsford. Now Tempsford is near Duxford, and it was a squadron for special duties, dropping spies and arms to the, you know, the Maquis and whatnot. They had numerous kind of aircraft. They’d Hudsons, Stirlings, they operated Halifaxes and — a real special job. Nobody said anything about Tempsford. And one of their aircraft had crashed. The tail had broke off and the tail, the fin and the rudder — where the entrance door was, looked as if the ring of rivets around there had sheared off, so the tail and the turret had fallen into a school playground.
SC: Oh gosh.
SS: With the, of course, the rear gunner was still in it, and then the other thing was a right mess, it was a right mess, and it crashed into somebody’s garden and the family that lived there, they’d lost their son over Germany a couple of weeks before, so they, they got it on their doorstep. But that were, some, but I want to finish up on a lighter note, a lighter note. New Year’s Day. I can remember it, the day before New Year’s Day 1944/45, we were sitting and it was cold, and it had snowed, the weather was a bit naughty, and they came in. We were squatting around the stove and they said, ‘There’s a Mitchell at Swanton Morley they want stripped for spares’. Lovely. So off we go, pile all the stuff in the wagon, off to Swanton Morley. Not a long run from Newmarket and we gets there, signed in at the station. We’ve come for so and so — that’s the number of the aircraft. It’s over there. Anyway, we gets over there and it’s on the airfield, and this thing — it glinted. It was sun, it was bright snow, piled high on either side and this aircraft glinting in the sun. You needed sunglasses to get near it. Is it? Is it? That’s the number.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That’s the number. ‘Right lads. Axes out, shear the brake line’. Out of the blue, this little jeep come howling around the peri track at four thousand mile an hour, like this. ‘Whoa. Whoa’, and this officer got out. He said, ‘This aircraft is flying on operations in thirty minutes time’, and our sergeant looked at him. He said, ‘This aircraft will never fly again’ [laughs]. So, they’d got the wrong number. Their fault, not ours.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And they said, our sergeant said, ‘Well where’s ours then?’ He said, ‘Well down this slope, in to the hangar’, and in the early days, the Americans used to paint their aircraft olive green, and this one had got a 75 millimetre canon stuffed up the nose and the big rack to put the shells in, because they used to go ship busting from there, used to fly low level and these 75 mill — the shell would go straight through a ship.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And that was its job. And there it was, all forlorn, battle weary, like this. And, well, we had to get this thing off the airfield, down this slope, into the hangar. Well, there was about three foot of snow on either side and the slope down was like a ski run.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Just like [unclear] like this, ice, so, we thought how are we going to do this. Well of course the brakes had gone, we’d had to chop the brake lines, so, how are we going to do? Well, it was a three wheeler, no steering job. Well there was a hole through the wheel, I thought, well if we get a crowbar and stick through that hole, we should be able to steer it and get the party truck with two ropes around, and they said, ‘We’ll do it that way’. We tried towing it down first and that didn’t work very well, so they said, right, we’ll put the truck behind and we’ll go slowly and let it go, and it didn’t work, and I was on the front, on the crowbar and I thought, and I looked and this wheel, and we’d lost all control and it just swung around and lodged itself on the top of the snowdrift. But I mean it was a laugh that was, a sheer laugh, but I’ll never forget that officer’s face when he said, ‘It’ll never fly again’. And well that was, and then the war came to pretty near the end and they said, ‘Right. What we’re going to do— we’re going up to Brize Norton. All the German aircraft are up there that we captured — and they’re going to take them down to Hyde Park, London. There’s also a Lancaster at Kemble near Gloucester and this Lancaster has got to be stripped down. You use the low loaders and you’re going to take it to Hyde Park and assemble it. Take it from Hyde park to Chelmsford. Colchester’. Army, a hundred percent Army. ‘And put it up in a kid’s playground and then you’re going to take it to Chelmsford’. This is to show the public —
SC: Yeah.
SS: What did the damage. Now, the aircraft were complete, what they were at Kemble, I’ve got a picture. They lined up, they’d flown from Manchester. Built, built on contract, finished off, short hop to Kemble.
SC: Yeah.
SS: For scrap.
SC: Yeah.
SS: All that much money. So, they selected this aircraft, I’ve got a picture of it there, and took it down to Hyde Park, and we stayed at the Grand Central Hotel. It was a transit camp, bare boards, four steel beds and three biscuits and a blanket. That was it. And we put this aircraft up along with the Messerschmitt 109. I’ve actually sat in a Heinkel 163 rocket plane.
SC: Gosh.
SS: The Arado. Tell my lads, I tell my lads and, ‘You were a lucky bugger you are’, and I said, ‘Well you were just there at the time’.
SC: Yeah
SS: And we were assembling this Lancaster, and this chap came up and he said, ‘Are you alright lads?’ We said, ‘Yes’, and he said, ‘What do you do for entertainment?’ ‘Course, RAF weren’t paid, ground crew, they weren’t paid. I mean two pound , what was it? Two pound a fortnight, you know, you couldn’t make headway with that and he said, he said, ‘Would you — would you care for two tickets?’ He said, ‘The Marble Arch Pavilion’, he said, ‘Showing Henry V. The premier of Henry V’. He said, ‘Would you like to go along this afternoon. Free ice cream when you got there’, and that was nice.
SC: That’s —
SS: He just came and said, ‘Would you like to go?’
SC: Yeah.
SS: So we saw Henry V.
SC: Wow.
SS: And that — that was smashing. Now, we took it to Colchester, Army, and we had our meals at the Army barracks. We were the only, they left two of us behind to look, and of course, being keen on aircraft, we showed hundreds of visitors through, you know. Letting them, letting the kids sit in the gun turrets and explained everything to them, and we used to go for meals and the cooks used to sit, you know, in the morning.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Used to go for breakfast, and we had these great big trays of bacon that had been soaking for about an hour, you know. ‘Help yourself lads’. Oh, it was Shangri La that was.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Shangri La. And then we took it to — from Colchester, this kiddies playground. It had got about a twelve foot fence all the way around, and this little old lady came up, she said, ‘He must have been a very clever pilot’. We said, ‘Well, why’s that?’ ‘To land it in here’. We were just putting it together, and then we went to Chelmsford and we were putting it up on some waste ground outside a pub. Ideal. Ideal. We’d just got it there a couple of days and this low loader pulled in from Newmarket, he said, ‘What’s your last three’. I said, ‘545’. ‘Right’, he said, ‘They want you back at Newmarket. You’ve been posted’. Oh very nice indeed. So, I went back and give me leave, and I went to Heaton Park, Manchester. Cold again, freezing, January. December this one, it was freezing. Everywhere was froze up, there was no water, this was on the camp, no water, and we lived in Nissen huts. There was no thermal, nothing, just got a, just got a stove in the middle with a pipe up and we couldn’t burn coal because there was no coal to burn. The coal was outside behind a barbed wire fence and we were guarding it, guarding the coal, couldn’t use it. To stop the civilians from pinching it. And came home on leave and went back again and we were posted Medlock, the Medlock route to Egypt, Medlock. That means across France by locomotive.
SC: Ah.
SS: Yes, so, 4 o’clock in the morning, we caught a train from Manchester down to Newhaven, we spent the night at Newhaven. We caught the tide the next morning, early tide, on the Empire Daffodil which was a paddle steamer which had taken part in the Dunkirk evacuation.
SC: Wow.
SS: Across to Dunkirk — Dieppe. Dieppe had had a rough time and we went to this transit camp that had got duck boards over the mud to stop you from dropping off and disappearing. Got these French ladies with the fur coats and whatnot dishing out the food, another bloke giving you French currency and you were going across France in thirty six hours from Dieppe, from Dieppe via Paris. On the outskirts, French rolling stock. The RAF had used it as a target for nearly four years.
SC: Yeah.
SS: There was holes in it. I think it was air conditioned, they call it air conditioning. Steam engine locomotive and we went from Dieppe, Bram, Neuvy-Pailloux, Limoges, and the scenery. I mean it was early morning, it was January, early morning, beautiful, and I remember there was no corridor on the train, no corridor. They were all departments, eight bods in a compartment, wooden seats, and the only place to sleep — you know the racks you used to have with the nets.
SC: Oh yeah. I know. Yeah.
SS: We took it in turns to have a kip in there, couldn’t sleep on wooden seats. And they said, ‘You’ll have a hot meal at Bram’. Oh, we thought, well so, we got off. I think we had a jam buttie. Got back on the train, didn’t get no hot meal, unless well, how are they going to do it or are they going to go along the roof and tip it through the top. Never got a hot meal. Landed at Toulon. Southern France. Thirty six hours it took, right the way through France, and the first thing we saw in the harbour was the French pride — The Richelieu battleship with the two guns poked out the water. Scuttled.
SC: Gosh.
SS: That was it. Two ladies in bikinis, ‘cause it was on the Riviera, you see. Two ladies from the Salvation Army with buns and a cuppa. Salvation Army, I always give to them, they’re the — anywhere — they’re there. Then we thought — right, a bit of a rest now. No, ‘Your ship is out there.’ The SS Orbita, the SS Orbita, so, we went across there and they give you a ticket. You got your kit bag and all your belongings and you started going down and down and down. EC two deck. EC two deck. Where’s that? Two decks lower than the rats [laughs]. Three days across to, across to Portshead through Corsica, Sardinia and then through the straits between Sicily and Italy. The Palermo. Well the Luftwaffe had bombed the hell out of us from that base.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Down to the happy land of egg white. Egypt.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Transit camp for fourteen days at Kasfareet. We travelled from Portshead down to Kasfareet on the Canal Zone by Egyptian State Railway with wooden shutters, no glass, wooden shutters, and we said, ‘Well, what have you got wooden shutters for?’ Well, you’ll see. Well the first native village we passed we were bombarded with brick ends stands. They didn’t like us then you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Welcome back filthy British and we stayed at the transit camp at Kasfareet and then back up to Portshead, and caught the SS Cape Town Castle. Oh luxury, luxury. They had a band on board. They’d got all these blokes going back to India, they’d been to Blighty on leave and they were going back. All brown, all nut brown. There was us, Khaki drill. Just left you two inches white to get a tan. Red eagles. And we got on there. And on the Orbita we’d had hammocks, forty four to a mess deck and they were that close, when you turned over everybody like sardines. Like that.
SC: Yeah.
SS: The trouble was if you didn’t know how to tie a knot during the night, many a crash where the bloody hammock had collapsed and bods was on the floor. This was lowered down, you know, lowered down. Very nice, but we was only on it for three days down the Red Sea and I think they must have taken wind that, ‘Where are you going lad?’ ‘Aden’. They took great pity on us, great pity, and we landed at Aden and it was about a hundred, over a hundred degrees. The humidity, shocking, and we all piled there on the quayside with our bags and it was amazing. The water. They used to bring fresh water up you know, and these Arabs would sell you anything.
SC: Yeah.
SS: They would sell you anything, and one came up and they also have a good shufty around, to see if anybody of any importance, ‘Would you like to buy a diamond?’ And they’d bring this diamond out. You’ve never seen anything like it, stolen from Farouk’s palace last night. And you’d say, ‘Does it cut glass?’ and it had a porthole, it had a porthole [unclear], It hadn’t cut anything like this, but they’d sell you anything. The finest, the finest salesmen in the world, Arabs. We got on the quayside, boiling, sweltering, this chap came out, a warrant officer. Oh dear, he looked as if he’d just fell out of a [unclear] window. The creases in his trousers, beautiful. Nut brown, bright blue eyes. Been in Aden about two years. Dark, he was mahogany, got desert boots on. They weren’t issued, you know, they weren’t, desert boots were never issued but I think you could wear, if you were officers, you could wear them. He said, ‘Right, chaps. You’re now in Aden. British protectorate of the colony’, he said, ‘And as you know. Ladies.’ He said, ‘Well Khormaksar’, he said, ‘Is the RAF’s camp’, he said, ‘Just outside — a couple of miles’, he said, ‘There’s a native village and’, he said, ‘And there are girls in there’, he said, ‘Well, it’s completely out of bounds’. He said, ‘That place has been shut since Lady Astor, Lady Astor’s daughter had problems with somebody and she shut it’. Oh. He said , ‘And in any case’, he said, ‘The girls here’, he says, ‘They’ve all got disease’, he said, ‘There’s eighty percent, eighty percent got gonorrhoea’. Oh. He said, ‘And there’s fifteen percent got syphilis’. The lad’s said five percent, that’s five percent, and he said, ‘The other five percent have got both’, [laughs] so that was it.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That was it as regards and if you wanted a monk’s existence that was, that was the place but from there we settled in.
[Phone ringing]
SS: There’s your phone.
SC: Oh sorry. Let me just turn that off.
[Recording paused]
SC: Yeah, that’s going again.
SS: Oh yes. After a week settling in, now, Aden had got barrack blocks, beautiful, lemon tiles [unclear]. That was the air conditioning and they said, ‘Right. You’ll be attached to the communication flight’. I thought very jolly that. They’d got Wellingtons, they’d been converted from bombers into passenger carrying aircraft, that’s a, that’s a tale that is, and we’ve also got two Albacore’s with the wings. Airborne. I think the Navy dropped them off because they didn’t want them, they stand very high, and so we reported, reported to the communication flight. He said, ‘Right. Rigger’. Well the Wellington is a rigger’s nightmare because it’s covered in fabric, and fabric in a hot climate comes off regularly, regularly, and we’d got six Wellingtons and another one was the AOCs aircraft, Air Officer Commanding. Very posh. MF455 and mine was HC968. Well, I think the lads that we took over from had been there two years, and they actually had a march in Aden. Never been done before in the Air Force. It wasn’t a riot, it was a march past the governor’s office because they’d been there two years. Now, two years in a climate like that is a bit naughty.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Used to lie on the bed staring into space, they’d got the ten mile stare. You know, like this. You could tell how long they’d been there the way they looked. Of course, they thought the world of us, you know, where we could go down and take them and they took us down and just gave us a quick look around. ‘Right. It’s yours’, and they said, ‘Well, yeah’, they said, ‘But it’s your aeroplane. You’ll look after that. Where that goes you go’. I said, ‘Yeah well’, I said, ‘I’m not aircrew actually’. ‘Well if you look in your paperwork, you agree to sign on any of His Majesty’s aircraft or boat’. So they’d got you by the short and curlies you see, and that was it. So, they said, ‘Right. Well, yours is going pilot familiarisation. There’s a warrant officer coming up in charge of it, Pilot Officer Parrott. He’s instructor and you’ll go up and get a bit of familiarisation what it’s like’. So, right, got there, got the KD on, sitting there. I thought, sniff, sniff, sniff — smell of smoke. That’s funny. I looked out and pft, pft, pft, — the propeller had feathered. I thought, oh it looks like we’ve got a fire in the engine. Well that would be the first flight and the last flight then because when these things hit, you’ve got a forty gallon tank, a hundred octane tank, above the nacelle, which they start on and switch off and go on to mains and they land on them. And if a Wimpy touches that like, that they erupt straight over. So then the cockpit filled with smoke, I thought, ‘Deary me’. We’d got parachutes on but I didn’t want to use them. And this Pilot Parrott, he got the warrant officer out of the seat who was flying it and flew an asymmetric — made a perfect landing, perfect, on one engine. So that’s a good start, I thought, that’s a good start. And then I got quite, we went all over the place. Different flights. Went u/s mainly but the trouble was where we went to it was an RAF station. You got [unclear] in East Africa, down to Mogadishu, Nairobi, Djibouti, REAN, Solala, Misera, Eritrea and we used to go u/s a lot. Of course, the aircraft were old, you see, so you had to look after them and all these RAF stations, they called them stations, it was just like an airstrip with an officer and six bods showing the flag of the Union Jack.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Showing the flag. And they’d all got well stocked with beer, and for us it was a night stop. For them it was a bit of company, so all the aircrew and ground crew we all got absolutely —
SC: Yeah.
SS: We’d got to get up next morning. Well, the Wellington isn’t pressurised, you can open the windows in flight, so, the pilot said, ‘We’ll be alright because if you lead me up the ladder and put my hands on the column and when we get to — ’ and we never flew over six thousand feet — got no oxygen. Yeah. ‘We’ll get up there and open the windows and a bit of fresh air around. Soon blow away’. Now these things, they’d got eighteen passenger seats in, eighteen passengers seats, and the one on car seats, car seat, whicker seats, any seat, screwed into the floor. It was a plywood floor. Screwed into the floor. Every passenger had got a Mae West and a parachute, they’d have never got out that door, they’d never have got out that door. Never in a million years. And they didn’t tell them that, we didn’t think about that. The dinghy in the back — they’d taken the turret out, left the doors on and there was a ten man dinghy in there. Well if you count six crew and eighteen passengers, that don’t go into a ten man dinghy. But you didn’t —
SC: Yeah.
SS: And we used to fly across the shark infested Indian ocean, you know, it was all by the board. But I didn’t like flying but I never got accustomed. Never got paid, you know.
SC: No.
SS: I think the RAF owe me. If it was a shilling a day, they owe me a bit of money.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But I never enquired into it but we — and we did a year there, did a year there. I started cycling there. I formed the — the Cycling Club was already there but it was a bit of a shed, so the word in the RAF is scrounging stuff. Very good at scrounging and we built an old, an English replica bar with a black and white ceiling and built the bar, and the seats went round and got a, we got an arrangement with the NAAFI manager to get stuff a bit cheaper. So, whisky was twelve and six a bottle, gin was eight and six a bottle, and all the beer was Canadian. Dows. And we acquired a big fridge, an American fridge. It was broke but we’d also got an arrangement with the chiefy in the cookhouse for the ice.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So we kept it and we had our own bar, and unfortunately, well, fortunately the prices was much cheaper than the officer’s mess. Well, we had, the cycling, we had eight bicycles and thirty eight members which means periodically you got a ride out.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But a large amount of officers joined us because the drinks were only half the price of what they were paying in the mess, until groupie cottoned on to it. Of course, Friday night is dressing night, you know, and they’d hardly got anybody in the mess. But, yeah, I got a certificate of service which, I’d never seen one before. I’ve asked my lad. He said, ‘No. Not a certificate’, signed by the Air Commanding Officer Middle East thanking me for my devotion to duty. But on one occasion we were flying to Djibouti with six Army blokes on board and Djibouti was a French place just across the sea there, and just sitting back enjoying the flip there and bang. A bit ominous. And on the Wellington, you’ve got an astrodome like that, which you can stand on the lid like that and have a look around, and looked up and I this chap’s head and shoulder through the front cockpit. I thought, ‘Oh, dear that’s rather strange’, and the hatch, the hatch had blown open at the front.
SC: Right.
SS: You can’t land a Wimpy without a hatch because as soon as you put the nose down, the airflow fills the aircraft and won’t balance. So this chap was mucking about, so it was my job to close the hatches, but it was that hot in Aden, we left them open to let a bit of air, cool air in otherwise —
SC: Yeah.
SS: You burned yourself, and it’s the pilot’s job to lock it. Well I hadn’t closed them and he hadn’t locked it so they were open like that, and one closes like that, the other closes like that. Lip there and then a handle. Well he wasn’t doing very well — this second dicky. I said, ‘I’ll have a go’. So I wrapped the parachute harness behind me, I said, ‘You hold on to this because if I get blown out I want someone at the end of it’, and I climbed up there, and after about three attempts, you get this shut, and when it come to do that, you trap your fingers, ‘cause you’ve got to get them on the [unclear]. They blew open a couple of times and all the rivets was coming out. I thought, if they come off, that’s it. But I managed to close them, locked it and got all black nails, you know, getting them trapped. But as I say just, little glimpse. Flying down to Nairobi, made a very bad landing at Mogadishu, ‘cause Mogadishu, you might have heard of that on the news. Mogadishu. As you’re flying, there’s only one single runway because the Italians captured it when they captured East Africa and it was one of the main Italian airbases. Regia Aeronautica. And it had got two Minarets on one end. This side was sea, and here was the edge of the cliffs.
SC: Gosh.
SS: So, you’d only got one chance. If it was a crosswind, well it was a bit dickie but we’d got full of passengers. The brigadier was taking the family and the kids down to Nairobi, where it was a bit cooler, and we came in we got this crosswind. So Mr Parrott, our saviour on the first trip, was flying it with a Flight Lieutenant Mac Williams, an excellent pilot. But Mr Parrott was flying it and we came in and got it slightly wrong. Really it was a controlled crash, and when you hear women and kids screaming in the back end there and we came in and they had to swing it around like that and try and get it like that. It didn’t happen like that. We landed on one wheel and then we went down a bit more and a bit more. Well after about the sixth time, you lose airspeed and it’s a complete — come to a shuddering halt. Well, I don’t think, I don’t think the passengers were very happy about it but there again —
SC: Yeah.
SS: They’re not flying it. Mr Mac Williams took Mr Parrott around the back end of the machine and said. ‘You’ll never land another, not with me mate. Where did you do your flying?’ [unclear]. I was doing my checks and the elevator, the operator, the elevator spar which operates the elevator — it’s controlled by a series of little wheels which are made out of cast iron. Three wheels. The bar’s there and the three wheels accuate it and you couldn’t put oil on. We used to put [pause] oh you used to put it on bike chains as well, like black.
SC: Graphite
SS: Graphite.
SC: Yeah.
SS: That’s the stuff. The problem was, you see, Khormaksar and all these airfields, they were sand and salt, they weren’t, they weren’t proper concrete, so when you, when you opened up the throttles up, you opened the throttles, you held your stick back which brought the elevators up, which caught the dust.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Which dropped it down into the rollers, which wore flat you see. Well you could adjust these rollers, you used to unscrew and just ratchet it around a little bit, but there comes a point when you can’t adjust any more, and I was doing my checks, and I said to Mac, I said, ‘We’ve got a problem here Mac’. He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Well you should only have a maximum — at maximum a sixty fourth of an inch plate. At maximum’. I said, ‘We’ve got a little bit more than that’. He said, ‘How much more?’ He said, ‘Well;. ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘Well there’s no accommodation here for these women and kids and whatnot’, and I said, ‘I’ll adjust as best I can’, I said, ‘But that’s it. I’ll sign for it if you’ll fly it’. So it was a — what’s the name? A Catch 22. So, anyway I adjusted them and got them all back on again next morning. On the way down to Nairobi, Mount Kenya with the snow on the top, we were there with our shorts on and bloody khaki drill and we couldn’t get up any higher. Six thousand, six thousand foot, ‘cause we’d got no oxygen you see. I think Mount Kenya is about eleven thousand or something like that and — vibration back end. It was down there. This torsionbar goes straight through with the elevators on. That was bouncing up and down, so I went to the control column, the control column was going like this. I said, I didn’t say, ‘Houston we’ve got a problem’, because there was no Houston then, I said, ‘I think we’ve got a little problem down the back end. I know what I’ll do, I’ll sit, I’ll sit on the spar’. So, the elsan bucket, it hadn’t got a proper toilet, it was just a chemical hole and a little plywood door. That was to stop prying eyes you see. So there was the elsan, there was the bar, so, I sat on the bar like this [laughs], and Mac rings Nairobi. Fire engines and ambulances and the station warrant officer. Engineering. So, we comes in and made a nice approach, nice landing, and as we come in, saw this line of ambulances and line of fire engines, waiting for it. Oh dear. I stayed behind locking things and whatnot and I heard this voice, ‘Where’s the rigger?’ Poked my head around the door, Station warrant officer. He said, ‘Did you know this aircraft was like this?’ I said, ‘Have you asked the pilot yet? Have you spoken to him?’ I said, ‘It was a [pause] it was a choice between stopping there and waiting for spares, which might have taken days or taking the risk’. ‘Oh’, he said, and they wheeled it straight into the hangar. Didn’t see it for seven days. They had to use their own lathes and whatnot to turn because they’d got not spares and they were cast iron, they weren’t, they weren’t steel. And we had a little trip, Nairobi, If you hadn’t got a lot of money — very upper class, and then came the magic day. It’s fit so they rolls it out. Air test. And on a RAF ‘drome, you had what you called a duty crew. They serviced any aircraft that comes in, it was their job to service it and get it out and they were all sitting around. And he asked, ‘Would you like a pleasure flip?’ Pleasure flip. Well, I think we had six of them on board, plenty of room, and just outside Nairobi, there’s this game park. I’ve since been talking to a lady, a coloured lady from Nairobi and I was telling her about this episode. I said, ‘’We flew across to Ngong Hills’. She said, ‘No. Not Ngong’. She said, ‘No N. No N. Pronounced Ngong but no N’. Like magic K in [unclear] isn’t it?
SC: Yeah.
SS: And down on the deck, chasing the game and then, looking out, the ground staff had re-fuelled it and the cover which covers the petrol tank, it’s got a metal clip on it. Well they forgot to do that, and this flap is on line with the lift line on the wing, and it was coming up. Lifting and spoiling the airflow, so we had to land just a little bit quicker than normal, you know, to stop the wing from stalling then, you know.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And little incidences. And then the last flip of all before we came away. We’d been to Mogadishu to pick this spare aircraft up, we’d repaired it and we were coming back in formation and we were coming back about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and selected undercarriage down. No lights, no lights — you don’t know whether it’s down or not. Now if it’s, if it’s not down, you’ve got problems, if one wheel’s down, you’ve got problems still, but we’d got thirteen on board and we’d got — thirteen on board — we’d got six parachutes. I got one ‘cause I was part of the and oh, we’d got a problem so he rung up, rung up the tower and said, ‘We’ve got no undercarriage lights. Warning lights’. Oh. Groupie, got groupie down, Group Captain Snaith. He said, ‘Right’, he said, told the skipper, ‘Fly past slowly as if you’re landing and drop your flaps. Drop your wheels and I’ll have a shufty if they’re down’. So, he throttled right back, put the flap down, dropped the wheels. Well we thought they were alright [unclear], and he said, ‘Well everything seems to be ok’, he said, ‘But of course, I’m in the control tower and you’re out there’. So, he said, ‘Well try flying over, [unclear] and get up to six thousand’, he said, ‘And come down in a steep dive and pull up sharply and you’ll lock them down’.
SC: Lock.
SS: Very nice. And anyway, we did that, but the chap that had done the daily inspection and should have checked all this, he was on board.
SC: Right.
SS: So, we said, ‘What are you going to do about this?’ He said it might be a ball cock, it could be. Anyway, we come in, perfect landing, so that was the last trip. So the first trip in it and the last trip — they were a bit naughty, but just before we came away Number 8 Squadron was stationed permanently at Aden. Khormaksar. Don’t know why. Since 1926 they were stationed there permanently, something had gone wrong. They put up a black I think and they were there permanently. Now, they’d got Mosquitoes, silver, lovely jobs. Did a lot of reconnaissance work and one officer, the boat was in, he’d got his boat packed, he’d got his bag packed and everything and there was a young lad that used to drive, I think only about nineteen, used to drive the towing tractor. Virgil his name was. And there was a lot, there was more killed on last flights, you know, ‘We’ll just go up and have go’, more killed. Cobber Kain in, during the French — he killed himself in a Hurricane, inverted flight, and he said, ‘I’m just taking the kite up for a trip’, but this lad hadn’t flown before. So he packed him in, puts him in, put a ‘chute on him and whatnot and took off, and they’d got a bombing range just outside the airfield, and they did a couple of, a couple of runs. Third run, big bang, cloud of smoke. Gone in. That was about 10 o’clock in the morning. We buried him at two.
SC: Gosh.
SS: ‘Cause you had to do out there, it was that hot. So that was I mean ready for boating and everything but there was more on these last, last trips. But, yeah, and then we came home, and my group number had come up. Fifty eight, my demob number. And I should have stopped in. Oh I wish now I would have stopped in and made a career of it, but came the shiny jobs and the buttons and the painting of the white lines, and the white belts and [unclear], I didn’t care for that. And the Air Force had really — well it had to do because it was no longer a fighting force. And back to Heaton Park.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Not Heaton Park, just outside, just outside Preston, Warton. Kitted out, beautiful suit, pinstripe suit, trilby, mac. I’ve never been so well dressed in my life. There were lads, the spivs outside on the station giving you five pounds. Shoes, socks, suit, shirt, underwear. Giving the lads five quid to take it off your hands, I mean five quid in them days.
SC: A lot of money.
SS: Was more than a week’s wage wasn’t it? But then I did that and I went back to Celanese, finished my apprenticeship off and on to Royces. Ten years building jet engines. Chilwell — working on Rolls Royce engines for the Comet tank, went on engine test and then back to Royce’s. I went to Royce’s then building the oil engine. I went on experimental fuel injection which was a lovely job ‘till they bought Sentinals at Shrewsbury and I was down to go and then they didn’t take me. They said, ‘We’ll give you a good job on Aero’. I thought, beautiful, and I went from fuel injection pump that big to a Comet engine. An Avon.
SC: Wow.
SS: One for the Lightning and went right through Avon, Nene, the one that the Viscount used. The nice little one, just forget the name of that. On to the RCO 42, Conway. The Spey and the dreaded Tyne, the dreaded Tyne. Then the money wasn’t — I’d got a family of three then and the money wasn’t awfully good.
SC: Right.
SS: Not for the job you were doing, and only two of you built an engine in them days.
SC: Gosh.
SS: None of these you can walk around and have a look, none of that, and of course, they were all built by hand. And I went back. My dad said Celanese — or Courtaulds — they’re were building a new nylon plant and they want fitters desperately, so there weren’t much doing at the time and engine build at Royce’s you was built, the more you did you built on a bonus. Well if there’s no parts to put on the engine.
SC: Yeah.
SS: So I asked the foreman. I said, ‘There’s not much doing here. I’m going to slip up to Courtaulds’, which I did and I went up. I was thirty eight at the time and I went in, and the engineer was a racing cyclist from the Derby Mercury. He said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’ve come for a job’. So, he said, ‘I desperately need fitters’. He said, ‘Can you work overtime?’ I said, ‘I can do as much as you want’. He said, ‘Right. What can I —?’ I said, ‘I’ll hand my notice in when I get back’, I said ‘And then I’ll join you on Monday’. ‘Right’. So, I went back, handed my notice in and they brought it back. They said, ‘You can’t leave’. I said, ‘You’re joking’. He said, ‘No. You can’t leave’, he said, ‘Oh no’, he said, ‘You’re contracted here’. I said, ‘I don’t think so’. So, I had to go and see the superintendent, so he said, ‘Well, what’s the exact trouble’. I said, ‘Well put it like this Walter’. Walter Hampton this is. I said, ‘Have you got your own house?’ He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Have you got a car?’ He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Do you go on foreign holidays?’ ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Well I don’t. I’ve got none of them things’. I said, ‘I’m on rather what you call a job that is very valuable’. I mean, jet engines. You couldn’t make any mistakes on them you know, and he said, ‘Well you’re getting seven and six an hour’. I said, ‘Of course I am’, I said, ‘An inspector’s getting twelve and six an hour and he’s only looking at it. I’m doing the work, he’s looking at it. And if it’s wrong, it’s me, not him’. I said, I said, ‘He’s a wicket keeper’, I said, ‘And he lets stuff through and all’. And he kicked me out, and then a couple of days later, this chap arrived from main works with his bowler hat and his briefcase. He said, ‘Right. You want to leave’. I said, ‘Yeah’. ‘Right’,‘ he said, ‘Six weeks. You’ll work six weeks’ notice’. I thought oh dearie me. Jumped on the little Bantam, went flying back up to Courtaulds. I said, and I saw Ted, he said, ‘You’re having a spot of trouble’. I said, ‘Yes’, I said, ‘Yes, I am’. He said, ‘Well, right, how long have you got to work?’ I said, ‘Six weeks’. ‘Right’, he said, ‘May the 8th which is Whit Monday’, he said, ‘You start on May the 8th, Whit Monday’, he said, ‘You’ll get treble time and a day off in lieu’. He said, ‘How much overtime can you work?’ He said, ‘You can work till 10 o’clock every night if you want’, he said, ‘We want all these machines in. You know. Installing’. And he said every Saturday and Sunday’, [laughs] every Saturday and Sunday. Well, in a month, I got my first car. The Ford Pop, sixty five pound, ten pound down and the rest when you get it from [unclear] garage.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And as I said I worked there and I finished. I worked a little bit extra because I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t feel like leaving. And I did a lot of experimental work and a lot of — made, made Courtaulds a lot of money, because on this nylon, you had to do what you could with it. Twist it, stretch it and all that caper, and it was purely development work and I enjoyed that. And then they shut, they shut the plant down, seven hundred and eighty, bang, just like that. So, I stayed on a little bit to sort the machines out and sell stuff and they promised me a job. So, when, when we finished finally, I went up to the office, the labour bloke said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘I’ve got all your redundancy papers ready’. I said, ‘Well you know what you can do with them’, I said, ‘They promised us a job’. ‘Oh’. he said, ‘Well’, he said, ‘Things have altered’, he said, ‘The two chaps that you were going to replace’, he said,’ they have gone up to the worst plant on the firm. CA Department, where all the chemicals is and acids’, he said, ‘They left spinning’, he said, ‘Now if you contact them and ask them if they want to go back to spinning, or do they want to stop on CA. They’ll stop on CA because it’s thruppence an hour more, because it’s dirt money. Danger money more or less’, and he said, ‘And you’ll go back on to spinning’. I said, ‘That’s alright’, I said, ‘I were building, when I came back out the RAF, I was building spinning machines on that where you’re going to send me. So, roll back the years’.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And he said, ‘Can you fit a spinning pump?’ I said, ‘Well put it this way, we put these machines in in 1947, so I think I’m a bit qualified’. And then I did — I worked longer there and I went to the twenty five years dinner, and I sat next to one of the directors. He said, ‘How old are you?’ I said. He said, ‘You never are’. I said, ‘I am’. He says, ‘Well do you feel like, do you feel like packing up?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t feel like packing up’. He said, ‘Do you think you could still —?’ ‘Of course I could still do the job’. He said, ‘Well you needn’t leave, you know’. Well, when I went back, my foreman was doing his nut. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you’. So, when I went back, they were queuing up for my job, the lads, so, I went back and I said, ‘Well I’m staying’. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t stay’. I said, ‘Well go and ask Mr White, the director, I’ve had a word with him’. And I saw the engineer, he said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘It’s like this’, he said, ‘Things aren’t very well at the moment, things aren’t doing well’, he said, ‘What we’ll do is — a three monthly basis’, he said. ‘After three months, if you want to pack up, you pack up. After three months, if things run into a —?’ I said, ‘That’s fair enough, that’s fair enough’. And they give me a marvellous party coming away, they said, how many, how many, well by now the firm was, you know, they lost big. They said, ‘How many people do you know on the firm?’ I said, ‘About all of them’. He said, ‘You’re not having that lot, he said, ‘You can have a hundred’. I said, ‘That fair enough’. So the wife picked us up in a taxi, and — a marvellous meal, and the engineer, he said ‘I don’t know what to say about this lad’, he said, he said, ‘He’s had rather — he’s had rather an interesting —' so he gets like a toilet, have you seen these things. Paper that goes like that’. So, he picks it up, he said, ‘Right’, he said, ‘You started here’. I said, ‘I didn’t’, He said, I said, ‘No. I didn’t. I started at [unclear]’ ‘Oh, and then you moved on’, I said, ‘No, I didn’t move on to there’. So, he let this paper go and it went like this, and he said, ‘Well I’m not going to say anymore’, he said, ‘Because what I’m going to tell you will be wrong in any case’. But, and never once in my life, never once have I got up in the morning and said, ‘I don’t want to go today’, because work is your life really. I mean that is it, and if and the problem is if a person’s not happy in the job he’s doing, it does more damage.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Because he goes, knowing very well that he’s not going to have a very good day, and that in itself and, and it rubs off, because when he gets home from a day’s work, his wife, he makes his wife have it because — it’s not her fault.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And the kids, it’s not the kids fault.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And that’s why, when I lost, I nursed the wife for about seven years from here. So we did eighteen years up at the aero park every Sunday.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Fetching the aircraft in, because there was only moi who knew how to go about it. Hunter from Alconbury, the Lightning from Warton, a Saudi Lightning from Warton, the Canberra from Cosford. All these different places.
SC: Yeah.
SS: I thoroughly enjoyed it. I helped to build it, helped to move it across, and then of course, when Jan used to go up every Sunday, you know, make stuff. A buffet, and really get involved there. I was the vice chairman.
SC: And just, just for the recording.
SS: Yeah.
SC: That’s the aero park at East Midlands Airport.
SS: Yeah.
SC: Yes.
SS: It started in 1984.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And we’d only got one aircraft. Graham Vale’s Varsity, which is still there, and he’s still the chairman, because if he goes, the Varsity goes. But we used to run the Varsity because the Varsity is a tin Wellington.
SC: Right.
SS: It’s exactly the same as a Wellington but its metal, exactly the same. Apart from the turrets, which don’t [unclear]. And yeah. The flying club used to give us eighty quids worth of hundred octane petrol, it wouldn’t run on eighty, a hundred octane. So the old bowsers used to come round and squeeze in and we had a twenty minute run. Used to run port starboard in the cockpit. [unclear] for the public.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Run it for the public, and for us, and it would have flown, that thing. I would, it would have flown because we’d got the revs and everything on it. And yes, I did eighteen years there. British Legion. All by the side is we ran a discotheque club 1969 ‘til ’83, up at the Celanese club here. Every Sunday night, teenagers disco, we had the finest disco light display stereo in Derby. All done free. Did it all for the firm, you know because it was for the firm, and then we did ballroom dancing. Strictly tempo, sequence dancing. Then I became a — I’d always been in the British Legion at Spondon, and I became entertainments officer, and I used to do — I did the VE dance, the VJ dance. Did numerous charities for Gurkha regiments, FIPO, all these different. Every farthing went to charity, did a lot of charity work and of course, when Jannie was really poorly, we couldn’t do it anymore. And I hope I’m a Christian, I hope I’m a Christian, and I used to go to chapel and of course the last few days, I couldn’t go because she was poorly, and finally, after three trips to the hospital they’d been treating her for [pause], what’s the name — shingles, and it was aggressive leukaemia. And so, I nursed her all through that, and they had her in for two days and decided — for you, it’s the Liverpool pathway. So, you get no choice, you don’t get any choice at all. Just withdraw medication, food, liquid.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Everything. And that was nearly six years ago which was, when you’ve been married fifty eight years.
SC: Gosh
SS: Where I’m working now, I met her at the Angler’s Arms. Used to call it the Stranglers Arms. And when I was cycling, I had one or two crashes, and I remember one August had a right crash and busted my collar bone, and we used to go there to the little dances that used to be on a Friday night and that’s where I met her. It wasn’t love at first sight. No, I had my twenty four inch bottoms, yellow socks, brothel creepers, suit shoulders out here, draped shape. Looked more like a gangster when I put it on. And she was a clippy on the Derby Corporation. She’d been a nurse but she caught everything that was going and was advised to get an outdoor job. There’s nothing more outdoor than an open double decker.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And then yeah, we got three. Three. I’ve got two sons. One’s — what is he now? I’ve got a daughter fifty nine, the son is fifty seven and then the younger one is fifty this year. Numerous grandchildren, and I think to myself sheer luck, sheer luck. If I walk — I had bronchial pneumonia a couple of years ago and that knocked me for six, if I walk about fifty yards now, I’m jiggered, absolutely jiggered. Can’t get my —. Considering, I smoked for over twenty years. Seventy years, sorry. Smoked for seventy years. I started with a clay pipe and a packet of tuppeny sage with no onion, and the old pipe used to glow, the bowl used to glow red hot. And then of course, when you’re fourteen, you automatically become a man and you start on the old Park Drive Woodbine. You graduate to the full Capstan, and overseas, they used to throw them at you by the hundred, you know. They used to throw them by the hundred, but they never said anything.
SC: No. No.
SS: And I worked in blue Asbestos at Courtaulds for over thirty years.
SC: Gosh.
SS: And as I say — this dance. I tried to get in touch with them I worked with. There’s only two, the rest I worked with in engineering have gone.
SC: Yeah. Yeah.
SS: Just —
SC: Yeah.
SS: But there again — pure luck. Pure luck. And they say, ‘Oh you do look well. Oh, you do look well’, but you do.
SC: And you do.
SS: I get up in the morning sometimes, you know, and I think, no, but I used to work five days a week, sometimes six.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Looking after these, a lot of them younger myself, and I found out I could sit and talk to them.
SC: Yeah.
SS: We were on the same wavelength.
SC: Yeah.
SS: If you’re ninety, and they’re around about that age, you can talk about the old times, the bad old days and you can work your way through the wireless set, the television.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And you can have — always wind up laughing.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And I loved music. I can go, I’ve got three hundred LPs, singles. I love music. I play music like a therapy. But when we’re not playing music and you’re sitting in the lounge, and one of them suddenly starts singing and they all join in and they’re the old music hall songs that Florrie Forde used to sing and it is. I’ve worked in a lot of places, and this is the most happiest place I’ve ever worked because there’s somebody worse than you.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But the only trouble Is, you make friends with them, you sit and talk for hours and then one morning you go in, and they say [unclear] passed away in the night.
SC: Yeah.
SS: And I’ve been there getting on for five years and we’ve lost forty.
SC: Yeah.
SS: Which is about, you know, it’s about par for the course.
SC: Yeah.
SS: But I don’t grieve. I don’t grieve for them because in fact, they’re going to a better place because half of them they can’t see, they can’t walk. They can’t. And really you wouldn’t treat a dog like that.
SC: Yeah.
SS: You wouldn’t treat a dog like that.
SC: I’m going to switch this off now.
SS: Lovely.
SC: ‘Cause I think —
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 Stanley Shaw
Creator
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Steve Cooke
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-14
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AShawS160114, PShawSR1604
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
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01:45:54 audio recording
Description
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Stanley Shaw was born in 1926 in Derby and left school at Easter 1940 where he worked in a garage looking after fuel for the nearby camp at Spondon. He saw some soldiers who had returned from Dunkirk, who were reporting to their headquarters.
Stanley joined the Air Training Corp after hearing a broadcast from the Air Ministry asking for volunteers. He tells the stories of the other 3 who joined up with him. He was an apprentice fitter with Celanese and had to break that apprenticeship to sign up for the Royal Air Force at the age of 18.
On joining up, he helped form 1117 Squadron, before moving to Burnaston where they had Tiger Moths and Miles Magisters and then moving on to 16 AFTS Flight Training School. He also flew Whitleys, Avro Ansons and Bristol Blenheims from Ashbourne Aerodrome. He also tells of his experiences with the Vickers Wellingtons and the Avro Lancasters.
Stanley was posted to 54 Maintenance, Repair and Salvage unit at Cambridge and was tasked with salvaging aircraft that crash, no matter whose aircraft they were. He tells of his experiences in his line of work, some good and some bad.
After the war, Stanley returned to Celanese and finished his apprenticeship before moving to Royces, where he spent 10 years building jet engines, before working at Chilwell, working on the Rolls Royce engines for the Comet tank. He returned to work at Celanese until he retired.
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Vivienne Tincombe
B-24
B-25
Catalina
final resting place
fitter airframe
ground crew
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
Me 163
military living conditions
Mosquito
Nissen hut
Stirling
Wellington
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6dcf778874a17c8eddc32754f15ef8a6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/222/3364/ACarrollT160418.2.mp3
6fcf0cd59fbdbb3b017155d7d3cae483
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Title
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Carroll, Thomas F
Thomas Carroll
Tom Carroll
T F Carroll
T Carroll
Description
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One oral history interview with Thomas "Tom" Carroll (1923 - 2019, 184755 Royal Air Force).
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-07
2016-04-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Carroll, TF
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JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Julian Maslin. The interviewee is Tom Carroll. The interview is taking place at Mr Carroll’s home, near Tarpoley in Cheshire, on the 18th of April, 2016. [Pause.] Tom, good morning. I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about your background, where you were born and brought up.
TC: Good morning to you. Yes, I was born in a place called Woodlands, Doncaster, in 1923, 5th of August 1923. It was a model village, and the king and queen came along and declared it to be so. I lived very happily there, with loving parents. My father was a miner, he came from Ballinasloe [unclear] in Ireland. And my grandfather – we all lived together in the same house at this stage – my grandfather worked down the mine when he was eight years of age. I think it’s – I’d like to say a little about him, because I asked him ‘wasn’t you frightened?’ when I was a little boy and we went walking with him around the village and so on, ‘weren’t you frightened, Grandad, at eight years of age working down the pit?’ He said ‘well I was at first.’ And I said ‘well what did you do Grandad?’ He said ‘well they put a piece of rope in my hand, and told me to pull it down, until I couldn’t pull it down any further.’ ‘And then what did you do?’ He says ‘they told me to release it.’ I discovered later on of course this was part of the fresh air that would be brought into the mine. [Pause.] He did, he did this, and I suppose – ‘were you allowed to, when you’re allowed, were you allowed [emphasis] to work down the mines?’ Well he said in those days there was a lot of poverty around, and if you got a letter, you could send a letter to the head teacher, and say that if you had a job they would allow you to go. So that’s how he worked down the mine. Grandad and I became very good friends, and on one of our little walks, he suddenly said to me ‘you know life Tommy? Life is nothing but smoke, magic and dust.’ Now I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but there was something about the words ‘smoke,’ ‘magic,’ and ‘dust’ that stayed in my mind until I began to write books. And then I thought, that’s a title of a, I gave to my novel ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust.’ Because, when I grew up, and had lived through the war, smoke, magic and dust made sense [emphasis] to me somehow. I’d been living a life not knowing where I was going or anything, and then, some magic came along and I realised that that was all part of it. And then Hitler, himself, became dust, towards the end of the war. And I thought to myself, really, life is smoke, magic and dust. We all I’m sure can say to ourselves at one time of our lives ‘where’s life taking us to? What is it all about?’ And then we experience some magic, perhaps we fall in love and get married, and that’s magic. But at the end of it all, of course, it all comes to an end in dust. Anyway, that’s how I came to write a novel later on, I’ll talk about that later on. But, everything was happy. We were living a simple life, walking out with my friends, and everything was farmland around the village. We would walk out, bluebells gathering, nuts we got from the trees in the little woods around the place, and then, we, when we were a little older, life began to change [emphasis]. Because of this man called Hitler, and what he was doing, and how he’d invaded this country, and yet another one, and by this time, my mother and father were getting very concerned, because my mother had lots of brothers who’d been in, not only in World War One, but Uncle Bernard had been in the Boer War as well [emphasis], and I remember sitting at his feet at our house and listening to his stories about the Boer War. One of them I’ll mention. At night time, they used to throw barbed wire entanglement around the troops because the Boers would perhaps attack them, and so they hung metal tin cans to the barbed wire which would sound an alarm if they were attacked, and they stacked the rifles ready just in case. And they were attacked, or at least they thought they were one night, the cans rattled on the fence, everybody leapt up, grabbed a rifle and began shooting in the direction of where the noise came from. And everything went quiet, and in the morning, when dawn broke, they found out what had happened. The mule that carried the water for them had somehow stumbled into the fence, and now it was dead, shot dead. But, later on in life I realised what these camps, prison camps were like. When the Jews were later imprisoned in camps. But at that stage, [shuffling] we just [unclear] going from there. [Beep.]
JM: Tom, could you tell us what it was that lead to your enlisting in the Royal Air Force?
TC: Yes. When I was, when I was fifteen and a half, I left school. I learnt to do shorthand and typing, and I thought it would be jolly nice if I could become a newspaper reporter. But, I didn’t. I became, at that early age [chuckles] an assistant cashier for an inter, an international company. Erm, the erm, I’m just trying to think – [Beep.]
TC: I was working for this international mining company, and the war had started, of course, and we were all speculating, young people working there, what would we do when our time came to join up. Immediately I wanted to join the Air Force. The prospect of flying was far more interesting to me than firing at people from a trench [emphasis]. So I must confess, it was excitement of the prospect of flying in aeroplanes that I thought of. And, it sounded much cleaner and scientific and everything else. That’s why I wanted to join the Air Force. And, when I went to be interviewed, by the authorities when I approached them I was eighteen years of age, they rather talked – I wanted to be a pilot, but they said ‘we’ve got a better job for you in the Air Force than being a pilot,’ I said ‘oh, how’d’ya work that out?’ They said ‘well you sit next to the pilot, you won’t be called the pilot, you’d be called a flight engineer, but you’ll be able to take part in operating this aeroplane, and you’ll be an engineer as well [emphasis]. So, that’s a very important role.’ So I said, ‘jolly good, I’ll do that.’ Up till then, the only thing I could do was mend punctures on a bicycle. But they said ‘don’t worry about that, you’ll be trained.’ So in due course of course I was called up, and I was trained at, I remember going to [pause] to, I think it was, it was, I think it was Mablethorpe I think it was, were we did our ground training. Drill and all that sort of thing. And this was where I met a guy called Ken Cameron, who became a friend of mine, a wartime [emphasis] of mine. Dear Ken was killed in the Air Force later on, but we were in it together. Everything [emphasis] we did together, Ken and I, Ken Cameron. He came from Scotland, he came from, he lived in Scotland, and [pause] we were at a dance I remember, at Mablethorpe, it was a very hot day, and we had the ice cream man outside. So we went downstairs to buy an ice cream, and ran slap bang into the arms of a, Warrant Officer Bloomfield, a flight sergeant, a sergeant and a corporal. Well, the outcome of all of that was the warrant officers taking the name of flight sergeant, taking the names of the flight sergeant, taking the names of sergeant, and the corporal, and took our names, and we were marched in and put on jankers for a week, scrubbing pans and all the rest of it. And Ken and I were also having to march up and down and round with a log held on one shoulder each, [unclear]. Anyway, it was a very interesting period. And eventually we went down on the first course of training, which was to be [pause, beep].
TC: So, after the misery [emphasis] of scrubbing all the pans clean, then it became the business of getting us prepared us for flying. And we, we did a course down at RAF Locking, in Holton, and then onto the actual course itself, down at South Wales, at, erm –
JM: [Whispers] St Athan. [Louder] St Athan.
TC: Holton.
Other: St Athan.
JM: St Athan.
TC: St Athan, rather. At St Athans. Erm, [pause] I must say this about the training, if I may. The training in the Royal Air Force, and all the other services I guess, must be the best training in the world, because if you didn’t understand a certain thing, they stayed with you until you did understand it. And in the end, of course, came the day when passed out, and we were sewed on our sergeants wings. That was tremendous. Tremendous. After that we were given some leave, and Ken Cameron, my friend I mentioned earlier on, instead of going all the way up north to Scotland in those forty-eight hours, he came home to Yorkshire with me, and spent a weekend at our house. That was tremendous. And our friendship blossomed [?]. We went back to, we trained then, as, with a crew – we had to be crewed up then. And we went to a place in Yorkshire called Lindholme, and I remember entering this room – how we even saw [emphasis] one another I don’t know. It was absolutely filled with smoke, everybody was smoking their cigarettes, and I was smoking too. But this guy came in, this officer came in, and said he would leave it to us to get crewed up. There were pilots in the room milling around, with air gunners and navigators, and they were all looking for a flight engineer to finish the, to finish the crew off. And a pilot came to me and said ‘would you like to be flight engineer in my crew?’ And I said ‘yes.’ I joined with them and it was terrific, that we were allowed to choose to fly with the people we wanted, we felt we wanted to fly with. So, I said ‘who’s that guy then?’ And someone says ‘oh it must have been a shrink’ [chuckles]. But it was very clever, I think, to be left to choose our own friends to work with. So, that’s how I became part of a Lancaster crew.
JM: What did you think of the Lancaster as an aeroplane to fly in?
TC: Well, we originally trained on a – it was a Halifax, which I thought was a very good aircraft. And then, halfway through the course on the Halifax, we were told we were going to fly Lancasters. And I thought the Lancaster was absolutely terrific [emphasis]. I was so interested, I knew every [emphasis] nut and bolt in that aircraft. I really, I really did. In fact, that’s how I gained my commission through knowledge of the Lancaster. I remember, we were posted then from this place to 100 Squadron at Waltham, and I remember the name of the group captain, Group Captain Newbiggin, and Wing Commander Patterson was the wing commander, I remember them both, and after – it’s very interesting to recall how, what happened when we arrived on the squadron. The [unclear] said ‘you go and see the [unclear – maybe wing commander] now boys,’ he said ‘you give us a buzz and you can go in and see him.’ Okay, we waited for the buzz, and eventually the buzz came, and we marched into his room and saluted. But to our surprise he wasn’t sitting down there to welcome us, he was lying flat out on a long table, and he was wearing, on this hot day, it’s true, he was wearing his overcoat [emphasis]. Somebody said to me, whisper, ‘he’s flak happy.’ Flak happy? [emphasis]. So he said – he told us he was going to take us on our first trip – second dicky. And we duly left. And the [unclear] saw us coming out with these long faces. Second dicky was – he was suffering from, obviously, flak happy, he laughed, he said ‘he’s not flak happy at all,’ he said ‘the reason he’s lying on that table is occasionally because he had a crash landing after doing so many ops, it’s affected his back and he has to lie on his back for a while,’ and the reason he was wearing that overcoat, he says ‘it’s just arrived this morning for him, and he was trying it on when his back went’ [JM laughs] ‘so he really is very, very good.’ And he says ‘the last time you’ll see Wing Commander Patterson flying around on his bicycle,’ and truly that did happen. But nevertheless, after a period of small cross countries to check out our navigator, who incidentally was a Canadian, we were declared fit to go. I was very happy with my pilot – I remember my first time we did a most wonderful landing together in training. The way that he looked at me and I looked at him, it was smashing, it was. So we went on our first op. I just can’t remember what [unclear]. Anyway, it was, it was somewhere in France I think, just my memory, and I remember the wing commander was flying in my skipper’s seat, he was sitting next to me. My skipper was sitting in my [emphasis] seat next to the wing commander, and I was sitting on a little rumple [?] seat at the side. Anyway, I reminded him at twelve thousand feet that he had to put oxygen on, so we all did oxygen, and everyone said yes they were receiving their oxygen, and as we approached France I saw, it was like kiddie’s sparklers, up in the air, and the wing commander says ‘don’t worry about that, light flak is, is, only goes up about twelve thousand feet, don’t worry about it.’ So we didn’t worry about it, and he said ‘I’ll explain what the heavy flak looks like when we get there.’ And, on we went. And suddenly, a searchlight came on, and began, and swept towards us, and he said ‘now, if a searchlight comes on like that to us, you have to do a corkscrew,’ and he described what to do, and he said ‘this is what we do,’ he says ‘you dive through [emphasis] it, you don’t run away from it, you dive through it.’ And then he had difficulty finding it again, well we dove through it, and the searchlight went out, it must have been faulty or something, but anyway we got the idea that you did a corkscrew through an aircraft beam, and you dived through it not away from it. So we thought that was very good training, I was very pleased with Wing Commander Patterson, by then. ‘Cause what we’d done, we’d called him Harpic, you know [JM laughs], clean round the bend [both laugh]. His nickname was Harpic as far as we were concerned, and he never, never escaped that name, but he was known with affection from now on as Harpic. Eventually, we saw what he’d been talking about, this heavy flak, I was rather frightened I must say, because the heavy flak, it lit up the sky with a flash as big as a motorbus. A fla – but out of it you can see big black pieces flying out of it, so we said ‘that’s heavy flak.’ Yeah. Well we had to keep on, with flying [?] and we got to approach the target with the heavy flak pounding away. I didn’t see any aircraft actually getting hit that night, but I thought, as bombs went, you know, I heard ‘bombs away,’ my foot [foot shuffles on the floor] felt peculiar [emphasis]. It had been hit up and down, I thought ‘God, I’ve been hit already,’ first trip! I didn’t tell anybody, I took off my flying glove, I put my hand down my flying boot and stocking, and tasted my hand to see if it was blood. Nothing there. And it wasn’t till a moment or two later, I thought ‘I know what it is.’ I’d been standing on a bomb slip cover. A bomb slip cover is a small piece of metal with a clip that you could pull out with your hand in case the bomb wasn’t released mechanically, you could release it by hand, and this had rattled of course under my foot when bombs were released. So I never told anyone about that, I kept that to myself. Then, on, on our – we landed back safely of course, and we were debriefed, and after briefing we went back to our place, and we were all sergeants at that stage apart from Jack Slater, the Canadian, ex-mounted [?] policeman, a bomb aimer, Goody navigator, a Canadian, he was an officer, pilot or flying officer – both, they were both flying officers, and our pilot, he was a flying officer as well. So our mid upper gunner was a chap called Robinson, and when I say we called him Robbo, we did, because he was a Czecho-Slovakian Jew I think, we could, nobody, nobody knew exactly where he came from, but he was a fantastic gunner, and we put up with him because of that really, although he couldn’t speak. We said ‘why [emphasis] Robbo, did you call yourself Robinson?’ He says ‘well, if we were shot down,’ he says,’ I give ‘em my name, rank and number, my name’s Robinson,’ he said ‘they’d think I was an Englishman.’ [Chuckles.] A Britain, oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, that was Robbie. But he had a little grammar phone, did Robbie, that he carried about with him, and in this Nissan hut where we were sleeping, it was a thin walled hut, made of metal, thin metal war hut, and you could hear the rats moving around in these thin walls, and Robbie and, erm, well he didn’t sleep very well to begin with bemuse, well we were still thinking about the trip, but eventually we, everybody fell asleep except Robbie, who got out, took out his little grammar phone and sat beside the stove in the, the stove in the middle of the room, and began to play records. ‘Shoo Shoo Baby’ was one of them, and what was the other one now, ‘Shoo Shoo Baby’ and [unclear], and another one, ‘Let’s Take the ‘A’ Train.’ And as the ‘A’ train went faster and faster I have to say it inspired the rats [emphasis] to move faster and faster [laughter] it’s amazing really, its true. The rats seemed to wake up and run faster as the ‘A’ Train was playing. Eventually Robbie got tired too, went to bed and fell asleep. I don’t know how long we’d been sleeping, but we were awake at – I woke up, I could hear somebody moving about the room very quietly – this is true – and what it was, there were people coming in, and there was one crew who hadn’t come back, and what they were doing, they were cleaning the bed spaces out from that and making it ready for the crew who were coming in the next day [emphasis] to take their place. So, that made me think, I’ll tell you, because I never ever [emphasis] thought I would die. I was – and all the young people I’m sure who flew, thought the same as me, they were too young to die. And so I was never really frightened very much. I always thought I’d get out of it. But anyway, we did a couple more ops, and by that time, we were legendary [chuckles]. We were the people who’d done three operations, and Group Captain Newbiggin, the group captain said to my pilot ‘do you mind if I borrow Sergeant Carroll and the wireless operator? I got so many hours to do every month to keep in touch, and I’d like to borrow them.’ So, the pilot couldn’t refuse the groupie [chuckles]. So off we went, and he was a nice, he was a lovely station commander [cough, followed by beep]. Group Captain Newbiggin was a, was a marvellous fellow really, I thought he was terrific, and we did about an hours’ training together, and we came back alright, and we said ‘we’ll have to do that again.’ And I thought ‘yes, if we’re not, [laughs] if we’re still here.’ At least, that’s what Mitch said to me, ‘that’s if we’re still alive.’ But we didn’t mean it seriously, we thought we’d go on forever. Anyway, I went up with him this next time, and we’d been flying around doing all sorts of [uclear] flying and all the rest of it, flying one-three [?] and all the rest of it, and then I noticed that our air pressure was going down, very rapidly [emphasis]. ‘Oh.’ He said ‘what’s wrong, Sergeant Carroll?’ I said ‘there’s something wrong, sir, our air pressure’s going down, we’ve got to do something about it because we’ll go off the runway be – we can’t land without any air pressure.’ He says, ‘can you do anything about it?’ I said ‘if I find where it is that, I can repair it.’ I was confident I could fix it. So I thought ‘I’ll check, I’ll check it first of all on the source,’ so I swung down into the bomb aimer’s compartment, and in the bomb aimer’s compartment on the port side was a container for compressed air, and I could hear, even with a flying helmet on, I could hear it’s ‘ssss,’ ‘ssss.’ The noise coming out, escaping. And it was, there was a loose connection on the pipe as it turned into a curve. A little gland had become adrift. So I did as all good flight engineers would do, I took out the chewing gum from out my mouth, stuck it round, I got some binding tape out of my bag, wound it round and that was a job done [emphasis]. So I got back again into my seat, he says ‘that was quick work, what was it?’ And I told him, he says ‘well that’s a story I can tell the wing commander flying tonight.’ And it was a short while after that I became a flying officer [laughter]. And, or I’m pretty sure it was because of the chewing gum and this tape.
JM: Would I be right in thinking it would have been quite unusual to have a commissioned flight engineer?
TC: Oh it was, yes. I was, I didn’t know any.
JM: No, I’ve never heard of any others.
TC: No, I was. There were others though, of course. But, later on in the war there were quite a few. But I was probably one of the first, I think. So [pause], oh there was Mitch, the wireless op who had been with me, he spread it about he said, ‘if it hadn’t have been for Tom,’ he said ‘we wouldn’t have been here today, we would have been off the end of the runway.’ So he said ‘we’re gonna take him out tonight, and we’re going on the razzle.’ And it coincided that – there had been a clampdown, and it coincided with a very special girl appearing on the stage. And she was the girl who appeared in all the new, in one of the newspapers, of Daily Mirror fame. Jane.
JM: Jane.
TC: And she was there at this theatre [emphasis] in Grimsby. Well, we all got there after several – I must say, I think we were a bit sloshed, and they came on the stage, she came on the stage, and of course the spotlight fell on us because we were in uniform, she’s, she said she wanted someone to help her, and of course the crew grabbed me, threw me onto the stage [laughs] and I was, I had to do a high kicks competition together with the rest of these, along with these little legged girls. And I with my short fat legs couldn’t kick very high. But nevertheless she gave me a huge big kiss afterwards as a reward, and it was a big greasy patent [?] kiss [JM laughs]. My lips and everywhere were smudged red. I got back to my seat and I began to wipe my face with a handkerchief, and the crew said ‘don’t you dare throw that away’ [JM laughs], you see. And the flight engineer was always the last one to get onto the aircraft. He got the final checks to do before takeoff. So the bomb aimer got on first, wouldn’t go up the steps until he’d kissed the handkerchief belonging to Jane. And that became the ritual, the whole of our trips. First he did it to Bill the pilot, then the navigator, then the wireless operator, mid upper gunner, then there was Mitch, the rear gunner. They all kissed this, we wouldn’t do anything – it’s crazy [emphasis] I know [JM laughs] –
JM: Not at all. A little.
TC: But that’s what kept people going during the war, these crazy things. So that was that –
JM: That –
TC: I don’t know what happened to that handkerchief in the end. But somehow it disappeared. I don’t know where it went, but it was, sometime after the war I think, sometime [chuckles].
JM: By now you’re operating in the summer of 1944 and it’s about the time of D-Day.
TC: Oh –
JM: Could you, could you tell us a little bit about –
TC: Yes.
JM: Your experiences of operating around D-Day?
TC: Yes. Well there were two things really. What we were really, we were a bit afraid of was the Ruhr. The Ruhr, we called it Happy Valley because there were fighters waiting for you before you went in, fighters waiting when you went out and on either side of the Ruhr there was big eighty-eight millimetre guns, and we were told on this occasion, oh we knew it was the Ruhr again, ‘don’t worry boys, we’ve got a crew going up the side of the coast dropping window. The night fighters will be there, and by the time they find it’s a ruse, they’ll be short of fuel and they’ll need to go back again, so you’ll be okay.’ Not on, somebody must have told the Germans about it, and I saw more aircraft shot down that night – there must have been about twelve [emphasis] I think I saw, and what, what was happening was, they were waiting for us approaching the Ruhr, what they couldn’t shoot down they somehow – well we had to get into the Ruhr to go – shepherd us, it was like shepherding us into a pen. And we went on like this, and we were supposed to be radio silenced of course, from the crew, but honestly this is true, a little voice spoke up, and it was of a Lancashire or Yorkshire voice I couldn’t tell, and it says ‘please God, let me get back from this one, and I’ll be good to Ethel.’ That, well, we don’t know who it was, we don’t know who Ethel was, and we don’t know whether, if he got back to be good to her or not, but that’s what I remember of that one. I remember some very, very brave things too. But, let me tell you about a couple of things then I’ll get onto D-Day. There was one time we were flying, and I remember Wing Commander Patterson telling us about doing a corkscrew through the, through the searchlights, and on this occasion, a searchlight took a lucky strike on an aircraft. We were at twenty-thousand feet, this must have been a bit higher, and it fell flat on this Lanc, illuminated this Lancaster, seven people in it, they knew all about diving this way and that way and corkscrewing, but it was like slow-motion [emphasis] in this searchlight, and then climbing up this beam, was MU109, and just, it got so far, you could see it, and just like a kid’s sparkle came from it, and the next thing was, the poor old Lanc blew up, never to be seen, a dark [emphasis] space where it had been, seven people in a Lancaster had been, and that was the end of that. That really did make us think, that one. And the other one that I remember vividly, was we hadn’t got H2SR, radar in our aeroplane at the time, and the MCs, Master of Ceremonies, were marvellous people, they were like commenting on a cricket match. ‘Right-o chaps, that’s bang on, lovely, now, instead of bombing the reds, bomb the greens, bomb the greens [emphasis], lovely, spot on.’ And off they went. And these people were fantastic in the, when they were marking a target, they were so brave [emphasis], I thought. This Lancaster, it was a Lancaster, because I heard him afterwards bailing his crew out, they were flying about twelve-thousand feet, they were shot at from every direction, and they were hit, and he bailed out his crew, and the engineer went last out of it, [unclear] was going out of it, but he was still talking when the plane blew up. And the deputy then came in and he [emphasis] then started talking just as though the other chap had been there. Yeah I’ve never ever experienced such bravery as I’ve seen in the Air Force. People just ignoring death completely. It was, it was, things I could never forget it, never ever forget it. So, that was that. And I’m going to explain about D-Day. It was decided that the thing to do, we’d been bombing all the railway tracks, marshalling yards, all that sort of thing, and we’re doing this on this particular occasion. And we seemed to be getting no flak hardly, no night-fighters, it was dead easy [emphasis]. Anyway, amazing, ‘keep a good look out for something, something’s going to happen.’ So we headed back home and then we were looking down into the early hours of the morning, I saw a number of ships, I’ve never seen so many ships in my life. They were, it was, you know, it was D-Day I was witnessing, fantastic. And off we went, and we were told at debriefing that was what it was. The other thing I remember about flying are the V-Bombs, you know, and we could see our fighters fling past us, to go and shoot down these [unclear]. Fantastic, well just before, just towards the end of the war, of course, you’ll remember the [pause], Holland was flooded. The dykes had been opened, and the poor people were flooded up to the rooftops, practically. And the RAF Bomber Command was asked if we could help. And 100 Squadron was taking part in, it was called Operation Manna. Oh off we went, I’d been twice, and we flew, we seemed to be just grazing the rooftops, dropping parcels of food and water, and children no older I would say than eight or nine, they were running along the rooftops like cats [emphasis] catching these, and having fun and catching these things before they could fall, drift into the water. And I remember the bomb aimer Jack Slater saying to me, he says ‘one thing Tom,’ he says ‘it’s far better dropping food and water than dropping bombs isn’t it?’ And I had to agree. And I thought about that when I was with him a short while afterwards. The war was over, and we were doing a three day trip to Germany to see the extent of damage. We didn’t want to go really, but somehow or another we had drawn lots or something and we had to go. And, it was, we were staying – we landed at Gatto [?] airport, we were duly met by a German chauffeur who drove us to, I think it was a Yugoslav Embassy really –
JM: This was in Berlin?
TC: In Berlin. And it was a magnificent, I had never been in such an opulent place. It was wonderful [emphasis]. And the food, drink, everything, fantastic. There was even someone there who looked and sang like Lili Marleen, woman who sang like Lili Marleen. And there was a member, there was an army officer there, I knew, I got to know him, he was a French Canadian I think, and he was sitting at a table, there were no other girls there, and we were all young and wanted to dance to the little orchestra that was there, and he was sitting with about eight most beautiful [emphasis] looking girls, they were all French or, different nationalities, they were all in opposite uniforms, but they were all beautiful. So Jack said to me and Goody, ‘you’re, you’re a good dancer Tommy. Go and ask him, ask him if he can, if we can dance with the girls.’ So I had a couple more drinks and I ventured over to him, and I said ‘excuse me sir, do you mind if I danced with one of your retinue’ or something, he said ‘yes,’ he looked at me, he was about six-foot-seven I think, a big heavy looking fella, and he said ‘but you will bring her straight back won’t you?’ That, it was the way he looked at me frightened me to death [laughter from TC and JM]. More than all the trips I ever done [laugher]. Yeah, so I danced with this girl, and I do declare that I, that the space between my hips and her hips was about three foot [laughter]. I was dancing away from her. All I, and she said to me, ‘excuse me,’ she says ‘but have you been wounded?’ [Laughter] in a French voice. I took her back, and he said, he told me to sit next to him, and I did, I couldn’t really stop it and he had, I never tasted brandy before. And he had this big goblet there and he topped it up with brandy, and he drank that. He kept me there talking, took me nearly, told me what he was going to do, he said he’d make sure that Berlin was alright and turned around,’ and I thought ‘I bet he does too.’ [Laughter.] He was so fierce, I thought ‘it’s bound to do what he wants.’ And that was, the first night |I think we’d stayed there. And on the second day Jack Slater and I decided to go down to the Birches [?] Garden, to try and see the Reichstag rather because that’s where the Germans were going with their valuables to try and get the new currency to try and buy food with. So Jack and I went along there with our packed lunches, and on the way we saw this girl, she had a baby in her arms, and she was so young looking and frail, and she indicated she was hungry. Jack and I promptly gave her our sandwiches for which she thanked us profusely, and then I remembered I had a tuppence-ha’penny bar of Fry’s chocolate in my pocket, which I took out and gave to her, and she give a bit to her baby, and I’ll never ever [emphasis] forget the look in that baby’s eyes, when it reached out for more. And I vowed [emphasis] at that time to myself ‘I’m never going to talk about war or have anything else to do with war after this lot, not now,’ not after seeing what happened in Germany, you know, what war had done. And I never did. I didn’t register with 100 Squadron, or 626 after this, or anything, I kept quiet, until I think we were talking about the war memorial in London.
JM: The Bomber Command memorial?
TC: Yes. And the Dutch had already done it for the, for us, but Winston Churchill or nobody else had ever done it for Bomber Command, which, that didn’t suit me at all. But anyway, the Gibbs brothers were very important, gave a lot of money towards it. And we went there, to the war memorial in London, and in fact I wrote an article about it which I sent to a colleague of yours about it, but on the way away Joyce was wheeling me in a wheelchair at the time, and one of the WAF officers said ‘oh, you mustn’t do that Mrs Carroll, plenty of big strong men here who can do that for you.’ And this fellow, he was about six foot odd, tall, and he had more medals than most of the RAF people there had on, and that’s because, although he hadn’t been flying, he’d been to Afghanistan I think three times, or was it six, I forget. And, as he wheeled me away, we stopped under a tree because it was very hot to get a bit of fresh air, and he says ‘my father was in the Air Force, you know, Flight [unclear] Carroll,’ I says ‘was he?’ ‘Yes, he was in Bomber Command.’ ‘Oh, what squadron was he on, do you know?’ ‘Yes, he was on 100 Squadron.’ Well, I says ‘really?’ And he pulled his bit of paper out of his pocket, and on the four, was it the fourteenth of March I think it was in 1944, he says he’d been on an operation, and Joyce, my wife, she pulled my operation book out of her handbag, and on the same date, we’d flown in different aircraft of course, to the same target. Well, he asked if he could take a photograph of me, and I strongly maintain, I know that the photograph he took, who he saw, was not me, it was his father. And he cried, we all cried didn’t we? Anyway, that was, that was the end of the war memorial there, and then I said that I wasn’t going to do anymore towards the Air Force or the RAF ever again. But, I thought later on, something at home happened –
Other: It’s okay – [beep]
TC: And then we came out, change of squadron. My partner [?] became squadron leader attached to 626 Squadron, Wickenby. We didn’t fly many operations there, we went, before war began, close to the end. I remember we went to Ludwigshafen, that was the twenty-fifth op that we did was Ludwigshafen, and we went to Dortmund in February, February of forty-five, [pause, shuffling papers]. And Cologne, we were at Cologne from 626, and then it, towards the end of the war, it became, the Dutch requested, they said the dykes had been opened, the rooftops were almost reached by floodwaters and would the RAF help. So we dropped, we went on the third of May 1945, we went to drop food in Holland. And again on the, I forget, it’s the second and third we went there dropped food for Holland. And I remember, we were flying over the rooftops, almost skimming the rooftops, and the kids were on the rooftops like cats [emphasis], just between the ages of say five and eight years of age, trying to grab the things before they landed in the water. Tremendous. And Jack, the granddaddy of the crew saying to me, ‘it’s far better dropping food and water than dropping bombs Tommy.’ And I had to agree with that.
JM: Did you take part in the operations to bring back the prisoners of war? Operation Exodus?
TC: Never brought – no, we didn’t take part in that, no. It’s after that, after we’d finished the operations, 626, the next thing I remember is being trained – what would it be after that? Oh no, yes, after we’d, the war ended, all I remember is everybody leaving and going to various homesteads. The Canadian people went back to Canada, Bill, he went back to Wales, still playing rugby [chuckles], breaking more bones I would have thought. I went – what happened to me? Eventually I went up to be trained as, I retrained as an air traffic control officer in the Air Force. And I was sent up to Scottish Command. That was a very interesting situation. All I remember was that we were responsible in the RAF for any, for the safety of aircraft, [unclear] air traffic control centre, Prestwick. We were responsible for the safety of all aircraft, military, civil, up to ten degrees west. Any other distance further west than that, that was the responsibility of America. And I remember, this particular room we had, we had our set up, it was fascinating really. It was about the size of this living room, and the wall I am facing now wasn’t a plaster wall, it was etched in glass. And on that glass was etched every airway and RAF station, main master airfields that we had, such as Kinross, Lochenrouse [?] and Leuchars and so on. And they had special equipment at these airfields, they had long runways to begin with, that was important. But they had a piece of equipment, that if an aircraft called ‘mayday’, or any other emergency, a light would shoot out, and it would emit a signal, would make a light shoot out on this etched glass board we’d got, and where the aircraft was deemed to be was where the light crossed in the cocked hat [?]. So there I was on this Saturday morning, sitting at my desk in charge of everything, on a Saturday, everything quiet, everything – nobody flew in the RAF on a Saturday in those days. And I was reading the Scotsman, feet up on the table, reading the Scotsman, having my coffee, I’d checked all around, the master airfield, everything fine, nothing to worry about. ‘Pan, pan, pan.’ This is so-and-so-so-and-so. I’ve got a flame out. I’m at thirty-thousand feet, heading from Abbotsinch up to Lossiemouth.’ Splash, coffee flew all over the place. I switched on what we called a gun in front of me, as a light shot out from, to form this cross up on the board. And what I’d got – we called it a gun but it flashed on there three hundred and sixty degrees of the compass on the board, which I could get a bearing on either transmitting into a course to steer, or they’d ring you showing distances, separating each wing with their [unclear]. So I was able to flash this gun onto the cocked hat [?], and see that this aircraft was in fact thirty miles from Leuchars, and he said, he was plunging down like a stone, it was no, it was a youthful voice, and I’m over forty of course by this time, experienced, he thinks ‘if I just get in touch with air traffic control, they’ll tell me what to do and I’ll be safe’ [emphasis]. He didn’t realise these things could go wrong. So ‘pan, pan, pan,’ so I get back to him, I forget his call sign, I said ‘you’re thirty miles east of, west of Leuchars. Turn right on the heading of zero-nine-zero,’ and he did that, and I knew the runway of course zero-nine-two-seven, main runway, and I pressed a switch on the controller at Leuchars came on, ‘what is it Tom?’ I said ‘I’ve got one for you, a flame out,’ he said ‘oh crikey.’ He says ‘I’ve put people on painting the runway.’ I says ‘well you get them off, quickly else because he’s got a flame out and he’s gonna,’ – ‘hang onto him if you can.’ So ‘I’ll hang onto him as long as I can’ I said, and of course the lower the poor chap got, the less these lights shone out from these respective airfields, until the end of it the only light I’d got on was the one from Leuchars. And as he approached Leuchars of course, he’s now getting low, he’s twenty-thousand feet descending, less than that, and then the light at Leuchars began to twiddle and, oh. I knew it was hoped, he was over the top of Leuchars by this time. So I maintained his heading out onto zero-nine-zero, timed him for a few seconds, turned inbound [?] two-seven-zero, and he broke cloud at seven thousand feet and saw runway straight ahead, he said [emphasis, JM laughs]. And the controller came in at that point and said ‘runway clear Tom.’ I said ‘well, he’s just landing now.’ That little chap phoned, he phoned back to thank me afterwards, but little did he know what a close shave he’d had. And I remembered a similar thing in Germany, I was doing air traffic control in Germany, and I was at Gutersloh, which happened to be Herman Goering’s airfield [emphasis], and you’ve never seen anything like that airfield. Perfect. No running around bits and pieces there boy, fifteen hundred weights and things like that, all by railway. Bomb dump [?], fuel, everything [emphasis] by rail. And I was sitting in the control, doing approach control on this particular occasion, with a CRDF tube in front of me, you know what I’m saying don’t you?
JM: I did, yes. Say it, would you say it for the, for the recording?
TC: Yes, yes. CRDF tube it’s – whenever an aircraft speaks to me on the frequency that we’re on, a light will shoot out from the CRDF tube and it will point to, and I can get either a steer for it to come to our airfield, or I can tell him where it is, where it is on the tube. Whereabouts it is. So that’s a CRDF tube, I hope I’ve explained that alright.
JM: You have. All these experiences that you’ve had as an air controller were after the war?
TC: Yes. Yes, this, this was after the war. But the RAF was strong, was very strong in Germany at this time because the Cold War on [?] with Russia. Anyway, there’d been a clampdown on at, I forget what squadron it was, but they’d been operating fighters from there. We were opping Canberras from where I was, there were Canberras. They took part in Suez, the Canberras from [unclear] airfield. I mean I could go on for hours about what happened there. But anyway, what happened was they diverted, I think it was eighteen, or was it twenty-four aircraft, to Gutersloh, where I was sitting in the chair there, and that was the most fantastic job. The people in a caravan at the end of the runway at that stage could talk them down, but it’s a longer job. You had to be really smart and quick to get people down in a hurry. So, it, I was absolutely thrilled by this opportunity to get them down. It was, I forget what it was, there was a green flight, a red flight and whatsoever [?], so many aircraft in each [unclear] stacked up, all above one another all coming in. And I took one after the other, one squadron after, one flight after another to bring them in. And I brought them in over, overhead [?] turned them out [?] parked them in [?], smack down the middle of the runway, then the second lot did the same. And of course, while you got this sort of thing going on, you’ve got the group captain to wing commander flying, all the, all the high persons [?] there, and of course I was congratulated afterwards by everybody. That was a tremendous thrill.
JM: That’s a, that’s remarkable. But I know that there’s another remarkable element to your career, which is that you’re now an author, writing about your experiences. Could you tell us a little bit about that please?
TC: Well, yes. I, I used to tell my grandchildren stories at night. I used to go, if I was babysitting with my wife, I would go and take, lie on the bed next to them, falling asleep myself [laughing] and make up a story to tell them. And they were so impressed by these stories, that in the end they said ‘Grandad, why don’t you write them down?’ And of course I did, and I wrote a story about wizards first, ‘The Angry Witch,’ ‘Witch’s Revenge,’ and ‘Witches on the Run.’ And they were the first three, and the next one I wrote about was ‘Somebody’s Kidnapped Santa.’ And the last one I wrote about is a solar powered dog, and that’s waiting for, I’m doing a sequel to that one, and I’ve got to do a sequel to another [emphasis] one I’ve wrote as well, which is ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust.’ Now ‘Smoke, Magic and Dust’ means something to me. I was out with my granddad, I mentioned him earlier on, and he said to me, on one of our walks, that life was only smoke, magic and dust. I was too young to understand what he meant by that, but the words ‘smoke, magic and dust’ remain with me, and always will remain with me.
JM: And that book is about your RAF service in part?
TC: Part. In, in book two it’s, yes. It leads up to the part where I joined the Royal Air Force. And everything in it, about the flying, training and the operations are all true, absolutely true. The only thing that’s slightly different is I’ve had to change the names slightly, about Jack Slater and Goody because, well, they did certain things and it’s better that they were private. So, some of the things I wrote about them aren’t true. Everything else is true, except when I went to college, there was a German girl that came to visit us at this college, this is true, and she spoke about Hitler and Germany and all the rest of it, she was a beautiful girl too, I fell in love with her, I was fifteen, and I wondered how on earth I was going to get her to talk to me. And I knew that if I could, and she was staying over Christmas, she would come to the Christmas Dance at the college, we always had one. So I thought, ‘well I wonder how I’m going’ – and then I remembered the Hitler planes, and the other fascist planes that had bombed Guernica. So I said to her ‘what did you think about Guernica?’ And the teacher at that time, he was called, he was called – he was a nice guy, but he was, he was annoyed with me. He said ‘you mustn’t ask questions like that Carroll. I’m surprised at you.’ Because, she didn’t answer. I knew she is [unclear] at home, and it turned out, so I kept quiet. But I knew she looked at me and she knew what I’d said about Guernica, and it came out that she was going to serve at Christmas and come to our dance, and she did come to the dance, and I got her to dance with me. All the boys were lined up one side of the gym, and all the girls along the other, and the teachers I know were putting bets on who would move with her [?]. And they said ‘well nobody will move,’ so I thought ‘well I’ll move,’ when they said, and they told us what to say, ‘please may I have the next dance with you?’ [Laughs] Joyce, my wife will tell you about that later. But, so I went, I broke ranks walked over, and said ‘please may I have this next dance with you?’ So we danced together. And we became quite friendly all the time she was there. But when, then when it was over she went back to Germany, and that was the end of that. But in the book, I kept her in my book that we kept in contact with one another, and, she came back on a further holiday and became more than friends. And so, during the war I never mentioned this to the crew. But in the book, I’m so concerned about ‘are we bombing her?’ Wondering if she’s alright and what will, what will happen to her. But you’ll, it’s all mentioned in the book.
JM: Tom, thank you very much. I think that would be a very appropriate place to finish the recording. Tom Carroll, thank you so much for sharing with us all your memories so clearly, so vividly, it’s been a very, very interesting interview. Thank you.
TC: Thank you.
JM: Wow.
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ACarrollT160418
PCarrollT1601
Title
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Interview with Thomas Carroll
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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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01:14:31 audio recording
Creator
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Julian Maslin
Date
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2016-04-18
Description
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Tom joined the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer. He did his ground training at Mablethorpe, followed be a course at RAF Locking and RAF St. Athan. Tom speaks highly of the training he received. He went to RAF Lindholme where they crewed up as part of a Lancaster crew, although they originally started on Halifaxes.
Tom was posted to 100 Squadron at RAF Grimsby. He pays tribute to the wing commander and group captain. The former taught them to corkscrew and dive through a searchlight, reassuring them about flak. Shortly after sorting out a problem with the air pressure, Tom became a flying officer. He recounts the crew’s ritual on each flight with a lucky handkerchief.
Tom explains how they were anxious about the Ruhr and how they observed a Lancaster shot down by a Me 109. He also describes the bravery he witnessed. Tom noticed a huge number of ships coming back from a raid on marshalling yards and railway tracks; it was for D-Day. He was involved in Operation Manna, dropping food parcels in Holland.
Towards the end of the war, Tom moved to 626 Squadron at RAF Wickenby. They flew to Ludwigshafen, Dortmund and Cologne.
When war ended, Tom retrained as an air traffic controller in the Air Force. He was sent up to Scottish Command and describes a couple of incidents. He became an author, writing children’s books and about his RAF experiences.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Cologne
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
Sally Coulter
100 Squadron
626 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Lancaster
Master Bomber
Me 109
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
promotion
RAF Grimsby
RAF Lindholme
RAF St Athan
RAF Wickenby
searchlight
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/261/3407/AGeogheganWT160706.1.mp3
faf838f500bf258d83db664b59725576
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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Geoghegan, William T
William T Geoghegan
W Geoghegan
William Geoghegan
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with William Geoghegan (424638 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-06
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.
Identifier
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Geoghegan, WT
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DG: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. My name is Donald Gould and I’m interviewing Bill Geoghegan at his home in North Curl Curl. A Sydney suburb. How old are you please, Bill?
WG: Ninety six.
DG: And where were you born?
WG: In Sydney.
DG: What, what did you parents do, Bill?
WG: My father was, as far as I can remember he was a wharf manager for a shipping company called Williamson. He was, he was a good athlete. He was written up, when he died, in the paper as being a pioneer of rugby league and he also in swimming. That was Australia against America in one stage. I haven’t got the complete details.
DG: Where did you go to school?
WG: I started off in Leichhardt at a school called Orange Grove Public School.
DG: And what, what did you enjoy doing at school? What were your favourite subjects?
WG: English and maths.
DG: And how old were you when you left school? Do you remember? Oh well it doesn’t matter.
WG: I think I was, I think I was fourteen because things were pretty bad at the time. I had wanted to go on and become a doctor but I had to leave school because the aftermath of the depression.
DG: Oh yes. Yeah. Well where —?
WG: I did three years at Stanmore High School.
DG: And where were you, or at what stage of life were you at, do you remember, when the war broke out?
WG: Yeah. At Bondi.
DG: And what, do you remember how old you were?
WG: Yeah. I think the war broke out in September ’39 and that was the same year as I turned twenty.
DG: Right.
WG: So I was twenty.
DG: So when you, when you left school. Well, obviously when you left school that was before the war started?
WG: Yes.
DG: I’m just a bit. I’m a bit — ok. So you were twenty when the war broke out.
WG: Yeah. Well I’m not too sure.
DG: No.
WG: It would just be a week or two in it.
DG: Ok. Yes. Yeah. But near. Ok. And did you, did you think, when it first broke out did you think about going to the war? Or what were your thoughts about what you might do?
WG: Well the war broke out in 1939, September. So in October the same year I enlisted in the RAAF but they wrote me a letter and said that they weren’t able to take me at the time and they would get in touch when they were ready. But as time went on and I hadn’t heard from them so I joined the AIF. And I spent a year in the artillery unit in the AIF before I received a notification from the RAAF that they were ready to take me into the air force. So they demobilised me, I think is probably the word, from the army and I went to Bradfield Park.
DG: Why did you, why did you, your first idea was that you wanted to join the air force. Why? Why did you want to join the air force as opposed to the army or the navy?
WG: I guess the general concept of what I thought I’d like doing.
DG: And when [pause] did you have, did you have anything in mind. When you joined the air force did you have in mind what you might like to do?
WG: In the air force?
DG: Yes.
WG: Yes. Yeah. I thought I’d like to be a fighter pilot.
DG: Oh right. And did that eventuate?
WG: No.
DG: No.
WG: I went to, I went to Temora and I did a short course on Tiger Moths [unclear] and I went past the stage of doing aerobics and what they call circle, circuits and bumps. And I was asked to go to the COs office one day and he said they were transferring me to navigating school. So I said, ‘Well my instructor told me that I’d done very well in the flying. So he said, ‘Oh well, we’ll leave it for a couple of weeks.’ And the same thing happened a couple of weeks after. Anyhow. the flight lieutenant instructor volunteered to drive me to the station and he said. ‘The only thing you did wrong was previously doing too well in your exam at navigation.’ So —
DG: Oh [laughs]
WG: I’ve since then read in a book a few years back that this was what was happening. Everyone wanted to be pilot.
DG: Yes.
WG: So they wanted other people in other positions in the plane and this was what happened. So that was something that went amiss.
DG: So you went. You said you went to Bradfield. And what happened there? What did they — what did you do up there?
WG: Well that was the Initial Training School.
DG: Right.
WG: And then, after that, after I left Temora I went back there, and from there we were shipped to Canada. Two of my friends and myself. And this was important. Well it’s not important. But we were the only three that didn’t go when the ship left. We’d all gone out together on a Saturday night to the [unclear] theatre.
DG: Oh yes.
WG: And we all had girlfriends and we went out at the interval. And while we were out at the interval they put up on the screen that all members of [pause] I think it was thirty five, I’m not sure, course at Bradfield were to return immediately. When we got back on the Monday morning the guard said, ‘The CO wants to see you three.’ And we found out that everyone had gone and we were the only ones left. So from there we went to Edmonton in Canada.
DG: Right.
WG: And I think I was there a bit over twelve months before graduating. I think it was as sergeant or [pause] flight sergeant. I think.
DG: And so Bradfield, at Edmonton was all your navigation.
WG: That’s right.
DG: All for navigation training.
WG: Yes.
DG: How long were you doing that at Edmonton?
WG: Well a bit over twelve months.
DG: Right.
WG: Yes.
DG: What sort, what did it involve? What practical exercises? What sort of practical work did you do in navigation?
WG: Well mainly obtaining a fix.
DG: Right.
WG: Every ten minutes. In an aircraft the course is set on the instruments that you’re going on. That’s the, but then that isn’t your actual position in the air because of wind blowing.
DG: Yes.
WG: It’s important that every ten minutes you find a fix. Connect it up with your actual air course and find out the direction of the wind and the speed of the wind. So you have to correct that. You give the instructions to the pilot as to the way he should alter course to take advantage of it — that wind.
DG: How did you know of the direction and the speed of the wind to be able to make those changes?
WG: Well, after, for instance in navigation to obtain a fix you had to get a shot on three different places which took time.
DG: Right.
WG: Probably. And then the first two were moved up to the third. That was your ground position.
DG: Right.
WG: Not your air position. It showed your ground position. So in that way you knew just how far you’d strayed off course from, in a certain time.
DG: Right.
WG: This allowed you to figure out the speed of the wind and the direction the wind was coming. Like say that’s your air position. That’s your fix. Then the lines would be drawn between the two and gave you the direction of the wind plus the speed.
DG: A little bit different from GPS that’s used now.
WG: Yes. Yes.
DG: Did, have you, your age this is something that is, that’s something completely different. GPS is something completely different from the sort of. You have, you understand, well, I mean you know what GPS is all about.
WG: Yeah.
DG: And that sort of thing. It must, when you look at that now it it must be very difficult to comprehend.
WG: It’s amazing.
DG: For the change from what was involved in what you did and how I guess it could be so inaccurate sometimes being because it would be hard to get a fix and knowing what wind speeds were. Compared to something now whereas you look at, look at a screen and it shows exactly where you are.
WG: It’s all computerised. Yeah.
DG: Yeah. Yeah. It’s incredible.
WG: But generally the navigation was very accurate.
DG: Was it?
WG: Yeah.
DG: Or you were just a very accurate navigator.
WG: Well that could have been it [laughs]
DG: That could have been. Sounds like it.
WG: Because later on when we got on to ops I don’t think I was ever involved in big raids. You know, like the thousand bomber raids. But wherever we went like I mentioned to you before, Norway for example, I think we used up all our gas. It was a long way and we arrived on target, you know and in the right position without looking for it.
DG: Yeah.
WG: Yeah. So, but then they, they had invented what they called a Gee set which recorded radar findings. But you still had to get a, make a fix as in, as in area.
DG: Did that get you all the way to Norway? Gee.
WG: Yeah.
DG: Ah Right. Because when you were over Germany I believe the Germans could block it couldn’t they?
WG: Yes.
DG: To a certain, to a certain distance.
WG: Not completely though. We were still able to get it.
DG: Oh were you?
WG: Yeah. Like now they’ve got ways of intercepting the radar.
DG: Yeah.
WG: With these stealth planes for example.
DG: Oh yes.
WG: They’ve got some instrument on board. I’m not conversant with it fully but that can counteract it.
DG: Oh I see. Yeah. Now, you, at Edmonton you then went to the UK.
WG: Yes. To West Freugh.
DG: So that was your first base in the UK.
WG: That’s right. Yeah.
DG: Right. And what did you do in West Freugh?
WG: Well we did further training over England in navigation.
DG: Right.
WG: More or less getting used to a different type of plane I suppose. The Anson was, although we had been on Ansons in Canada and then went back on Ansons there. I suppose it involved the different type of terrain and probably a forerunner of the type of thing you would do on operations.
DG: And what —? What, after West Freugh where did you go?
WG: I should have written this down.
DG: Oh that doesn’t matter.
WG: Yeah.
DG: That doesn’t matter.
WG: We went on to Wellingtons. It’ll come to me in a moment. Wellingtons.
DG: Right.
WG: And then that was a bit more advanced to what we’d done on, in the Ansons. And that was a bit more advanced than what we’d done on the, in the Ansons. And then we went on Stirlings and then we went on to — that was a four engine very ungainly bomber. And then we went to Lancaster Finishing School which was, that was pretty dicey in some respects because we sent, they sent us a couple of times out on what they called a diversion and they didn’t explain what it was. I don’t think we asked at the time. But we were up near the border with Holland on our own. We were attacked by two German fighters. One of them was an ME109 and that was coming in from port because they’d got fixed guns and they had to get behind you to shoot you up. So they sent the ME, which was the slower of the two fighters, in and the rear gunner picked it up and he yelled out, ‘Dive port. There’s a ME109,’ and by diving port you increased the arc of the fighter coming in.
DG: Right. Yeah.
WG: And you go in to what they called a corkscrew.
DG: Yeah.
WG: But then half way through going through there he said, ‘Dive starboard there’s a Fokke Wulf coming in from the other side, from starboard.’ [laughs] Anyhow, we got, some or other, we got with just a small amount of damage. We, we got out of it and that was when we got back we found out that a diversion was sending us from, I think it was Lanc Finishing School to, as sort of decoys. When they were sending the main force out they’d sent us up on a diversion to attract fighters before the main force.
DG: Draw the attention.
WG: Caught up. Carrying the bombs.
DG: So was, was that from West Freugh or that was from another —?
WG: No.
DG: That was from another station.
WG: Yeah. Yeah.
DG: Right. When did you or where did you, where did you go then? Where were you stationed permanently?
WG: At Skellingthorpe.
DG: And can you remember when that was? What year? Well what year it was? It doesn’t matter, it’s not important.
WG: I think it was 1944.
DG: Right. And which squadron were you with at, at Skellingthorpe?
WG: 61.
DG: And what was your, can you tell me a little bit about your daily life at the base? What, what happened? Got up in the morning.
WG: Well, looking back I mean it wasn’t a matter of getting up in the morning it was a matter of getting a few hours sleep in the daytime. It was never regular. You’d get, the weather would be too bad so you wouldn’t be going out so you’d get probably a night’s sleep then. But other times you’d be flying all night so you had to sleep during the day. But there wasn’t much rest because in between they would, we would be sent to a bombing range to practice there.
DG: Oh right.
WG: It’s not, [pause] I can’t really remember even getting nights off too much. Occasionally we’d get a night off and we’d go into Lincoln. I think to the Strugglers Inn and have a few beers.
DG: Right.
WG: Yeah. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t a station life. Not like they think the air force is all wine, women and song.
DG: No. If, if you were flying a mission that day. Well, that, presumably that night. When would you find out you were flying a mission? Just find out that morning or would you know the day?
WG: Yeah.
DG: Usually just that same morning.
WG: That day.
DG: Just that day.
WG: We had to go to what they called briefing.
DG: Right.
WG: Which took quite a long time and it mainly involved, I think, well it involved everyone I suppose. I was going to say the pilot and navigator because they gave a hell of a lot of details and so on that the navigator would record at briefing. But then, I’m not too sure about this but I think the whole crew were there and perhaps the wireless operator would be there as well.
DG: Right.
WG: Yeah. The engineer and the gunners. They were probably listening there too although they didn’t have a job to do at briefing.
DG: How many Australians were there? How many Australians were there? Well not how many but were there a lot of Australians at Skellingthorpe?
WG: Not a lot.
DG: No. Of course being RAF it would be mainly —
WG: Well my crew were, we had a Australian pilot, a Canadian navigator
DG: Oh right.
WG: And then the others were English.
DG: Right. Right. How did you all, the different nationalities in a crew like that you’ve obviously got to all get along very well together under a lot of stress and strain how did you all get on with different nationalities. Did you get on pretty well?
WG: Very well I think. Yeah. We were very close. The whole crew. I can’t remember any dissention of any sort, you know. I had the impression that they were all very efficient.
DG: Yes. There was, there was some fellows that had trouble going on a raid or something and they couldn’t go or something and they would accuse them of having a lack of moral fibre.
WG: Yeah LMF.
DG: Yes.
WG: Yes.
DG: Did you? Did you ever have experience with that?
WG: No. Not really. I’d heard of it.
DG: Yes.
WG: But I didn’t know of anyone on my squadron who did that you know.
DG: Did you, did you hear about how they were treated?
WG: Yeah. Well we didn’t, we actually thought that they weren’t treated very well. I mean if your make-up was that way. I mean everyone is different. I mean at times with tiredness and everything else you can probably understand it was pretty easy to think I can’t go on and do my job properly the way I, the way I am mentally. So they informed the CO that they couldn’t go on.
DG: Being honest. They were just being honest. Yes.
WG: Yes.
DG: Yes. Yes. What can you, can you tell me a few of the names of some of the targets that you bombed?
WG: Yeah. Bremen. Nordhausen. I could probably look it up.
DG: Oh that doesn’t matter.
WG: Nordhausen.
DG: You did say you did some bombing over Germany.
WG: Yeah. Yeah.
DG: And you mentioned Norway.
WG: Norway.
DG: You did some. What were you, what did you bomb in Norway?
WG: That was an oil refinery.
DG: Oh right.
WG: And there was only ten Lancasters went, went there.
DG: Right.
WG: Actually there was fourteen. They started with four that had to turn back. And it was a daylight raid. Looking back on it it was probably pretty bit dicey, you know because a few aircraft crossing over enemy territory.
DG: Yes.
WG: But I think the main thing about the raid was that the oil refinery was destroyed without much or at any loss to civilian life up there.
DG: Now some, some of the targets that you’d bomb would probably no doubt be near populated areas.
WG: Yes.
DG: And no doubt bombs would fall on civilians. How did you feel about this sort of thing when you were doing your missions?
WG: Well I don’t [pause] sort of mixed feelings. But I think, well as far as navigator I was so busy the whole time I was in the plane that I didn’t have much time to think about anything else.
DG: Yes.
WG: But looking back on it I think it’s pretty horrendous to know we were dropping people on civilised towns and that and the civilians were getting killed but at the same time I think we had the impression that ok everyone in Germany was in favour of the war when they started off. And they treated people very badly like Auschwitz where they had the camp ovens and all that. And then they started to, they started to go through Europe and then they got to the coast and England wasn’t really prepared at that time.
DG: Yeah. Yeah.
WG: So it was vital that you did the job to stop any more of this happening.
DG: Yes. Yes. How were your nerves? How did you, how did you feel when during just the day at the base? How did you — did you think about, you know your missions or? How did you feel? Because you were doing, you know, a very risky business and yet back there you were in a nice comfortable surroundings. How did you feel?
WG: Alright. As I was saying before it was a pretty busy life and as a navigator I think I probably had to do more on the ground than what the others did.
DG: Right. Yes. Yes.
WG: And my general impression thinking back on it as I do occasionally that most of the time I was too busy and I formed the opinion that it was probably inevitable because I think at the time we were having something like fifty percent casualties that we wouldn’t come back one night. But I thought to myself if I concentrate on doing the very, doing my job the best I can I shouldn’t worry about anything else.
DG: Yes.
WG: It’s something that I’ve been able to use in my life ever since. I mean let’s not worry about something doubtful about in the end but to concentrate on while you’re living. On the situation while you’re living.
DG: Yes. Yeah. That’s, that’s very good. Well then when you were flying how did you feel?
WG: Well, just the same. I was too busy to think about things.
DG: Yes. Yes.
WG: Even when we were attacked. I mean you couldn’t stop what you were doing.
DG: No. No.
WG: And there were different ways of being attacked by fighters, or flak coming up or bombs dropping on you from another aircraft. Although we weren’t, we didn’t have that problem much because we were mainly operating in smaller groups.
DG: Now, just the navigator of course was in his little, his little hutch.
WG: That’s right.
DG: You couldn’t see a thing. You just, I know where you are. Behind the pilot. You were sort of boxed in with your little desk. Walled in. Can’t see a thing what’s going on. Whereas just about everybody else on the aeroplane can what’s going on all the way around.
WG: That’s right.
DG: How did, how did you feel when you were just sitting? Couldn’t see anything. Obviously concentrating on what you were doing. And you had to do that but how did you feel when, that you couldn’t see and you didn’t know what was happening out there?
WG: Yes. Well, I, I can’t remember having even thinking about that because I found to do my job properly I had to concentrate entirely on what I was doing and inevitably from the time we left England to wherever we were going and back again I think you couldn’t take your mind of that. If you were going to get there without using too much fuel.
DG: Yeah.
WG: Would be If you wandered off course and all that. And you had to get there at a certain time like other aircraft. So I really don’t think I had time to think about anything else.
DG: When you were, when you were coming back from a mission did you [pause] you said, you said your navigation was usually pretty good. Did you ever have any experiences where you didn’t quite know where England was and you thought you might —
WG: Not really.
DG: You were pretty right.
WG: Yes.
DG: So when you knew you were flying to England did you ever find that you didn’t land at Skellingthorpe but you landed on a runway of a, in a village nearby by mistake. Did you ever do that?
WG: No. but there was one flight where we wondered if we would make it to Skellingthorpe as we were coming back over the coast of England. And we thought we might have to land at one off the coast because it was all flat country there. It was close to the aerodrome but no we managed to get there.
DG: Yeah.
WG: In one piece.
DG: How many missions did you fly?
WG: I only flew on seven actually.
DG: Right.
WG: Yeah.
DG: Right. Because you would get, when did you, when was your last mission?
WG: I think the last one was the crossing of the Rhine. That was 1945.
DG: Right. Early 1945.
WG: Yeah, well I think it might have been May or something like that.
DG: Right.
WG: Yeah.
DG: Right. When you, did you know that you were flying your last mission? When you were on the mission did you know that was the last or was it just another mission?
WG: Well we knew, we had a fair idea that war was going our way. But the Rhine was quite a major thing because they had, I think they had on the other side of the Rhine they had the German Panzer division like armoured vehicles, tanks and stuff. And for the troops to cross over the Rhine something had to be done about them. And this was one of the targets where we got the congratulations from the prime minister and all that. It was so effective that they got across with something like thirty four casualties, I think. Strangely enough I think I told you about the young person that was giving me that introduction. Her father, no her grandfather was a major in the infantry. While we were bombing they were preparing to cross the river.
DG: Right.
WG: Yeah.
DG: What were you actually bombing? What was the target?
WG: The Panzer divisions and —
DG: Oh yes. Ok. Right.
WG: Yeah.
DG: And that was pretty successful?
WG: Yeah. Very successful.
DG: What height were you bombing to do that?
WG: Oh it was flat and level.
DG: Pretty low.
WG: Possibly about five thousand feet, I think.
DG: Oh that’s pretty, that’s still pretty high to get targets.
WG: It could have been lower but —
DG: Yeah. Oh yes but I mean it wasn’t just at a couple of hundred feet.
WG: No. No. And where [pause] so you were at Skellingthorpe when you flew your last mission. And after that? What? What happened? When you had flown what happened then?
WG: On, the end of the war came and we were given three weeks leave and I didn’t leave England I think until April 1946 because I think it was the Stirling Castle I was on. Got down near Suez and had to go back because of problems with the ship. So it was another few months after that that I came back. Actually, I navigated the world by sea. We went over through the Panama and came back through the Suez.
DG: Yeah. Circumnavigated. Yeah. What did you do when you got back to Australia? What did you do?
WG: Well our first thought was to to find a job.
DG: Right.
WG: Like everyone else that was coming back.
DG: Yes. Yes.
WG: But fortunately I’d joined a textile company during the war and I went and saw them and they gave me a job back at, because they’d been grooming me to take over as production manager. Putting me through all the various sections of that. But I finished up really as sales manager there. But I was one of the lucky ones because a lot of people couldn’t find work and I was married then and living at Bondi.
DG: Right.
WG: And I managed to scrape up enough money to buy a block of land over here at North Curl Curl. Built a house and been here ever since.
DG: Good. And did you ever keep in touch with anyone from Bomber Command?
WG: No. I’ve often tried. Even the pilot who I was very friendly with. Very close to. I don’t know what happened to him. I’ve tried the rolls in Canberra and various other things without any success.
DG: Oh. Yeah.
WG: But the other’s, no. I lost track of them completely.
DG: How, how do you feel about how Bomber Command was treated after the war?
WG: I think generally people that counted like the chief of the Bomber Command and people like Winston Churchill who came out later and said, I think he said something about the fighters were our salvation but the bombers won the war.
DG: Yeah.
WG: So he appreciated. But apart from that I’m still amazed that very few people were aware of the amount we did.
DG: Yes.
WG: Because people were even condemning us for bombing the cities. As we spoke about before. But the Germans were manufacturing all sorts of armaments and so on in these town. And there didn’t seem to be at the time to be any other way.
DG: Yes. Yeah.
WG: But ever since, I mean [pause] actually in the First World War that keeps cropping up every year which, rightly so I suppose. But I even went to the church one day and asked if, if they could, in the churches throughout Australia just devote ten minutes to have some sort of monument to the Bomber Command.
DG: Yeah.
WG: People that died over there.
DG: Yes.
WG: But that didn’t seem to go very far.
DG: Did you, did you got to that commemoration? To that new Memorial that was unveiled in London.
WG: No.
DG: A few years ago.
WG: No.
DG: Right. Right.
WG: Actually, I didn’t know much about it.
DG: Yes.
WG: I could have probably would have gone if I’d known more about it.
DG: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well I think that covers it. Thank you very much Bill.
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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AGeogheganWT160706
Title
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Interview with William Geoghegan
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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00:35:36 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Donald Gould
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-06
Description
An account of the resource
William Geoghegan grew up in Australia and after serving in the army, joined the Royal Australian Air Force. He flew operations as a navigator with 61 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe.
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 Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
61 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Fw 190
Gee
Me 109
navigator
RAF Skellingthorpe
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2056/33788/LDoxseyJA630441v1.1.pdf
fc12441228a525cb4f9bb0f0103af7e6
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
Doxsey, JA
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. The collection concerns Warrant Officer John Alfred Doxsey (b. 1921, 630441 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs and documents.
He flew operations as an air gunner with 149 Squadron before serving with No.3 aircraft Delivery Unit in North Africa.
A sub-collection photograph album contains pictures of aircraft, people and places in Europe and Africa during and after the Second World War.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Nigel Doxsey and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-20
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
Doxsey, JA
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
J A Doxsey RAF observer's and air gunner's flying log book. One
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. Transport Command
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet with b/w photographs
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LDoxseyJA630441v1
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.
Description
An account of the resource
J A Doxsey’s RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book from 5th October 1939 to 25th January 1944, recording training and operations as a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner, and Transport Command ferry duties across Africa, Brazil and USA. Aircraft in which flown: Heyford, Wellington, Blenheim, Wellesley, Martin Maryland, Liberator, B-17E, DC-2, DC-3, Boston, Bisley, Beaufighter, Baltimore, Sunderland, Hudson, Anson, plus others as a passenger. Based at: RAF Yatesbury, RAF West Freugh (No. 4 Air Observer School), RAF Mildenhall (149 Squadron), RAF Bassingbourn (11 OTU), RAF Station Takoradi (Ferry Pool, No. 1 Aircraft Delivery Unit (ME), No 3 Aircraft Delivery Unit). Records a total of 27 operations (20 night, 7 day). Numerous operations are only recorded vaguely, for example: “Sweep”, “Norway” or “Raid as detailed/authorised”. Named targets in Germany, Netherlands and Norway are: Hamburg, Hamm, Heligoland Island, Kolleda, Rotterdam, Stavanger, Sylt and Wilhelmshaven. His pilots on operations were Squadron Leader Harris, Pilot Officer Innes, Flying Officer Robertson and Pilot Officer Whitakar. Also includes photographs of aircraft and crew, cuttings and maps.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939-12-03
1939-12-18
1940-01-02
1940-03-15
1940-04-06
1940-04-07
1940-04-12
1940-04-17
1940-04-25
1940-04-26
1940-05-05
1940-05-06
1940-05-10
1940-05-11
1940-05-14
1940-05-15
1940-05-19
1940-05-20
1940-06-13
1940-06-14
1940-06-17
1940-06-18
1940-06-19
1940-06-20
1940-06-29
1940-06-30
1940-07-11
1940-07-12
1940-07-13
1940-07-14
1940-07-23
1940-07-24
1940-07-25
1940-07-26
1940-08-01
1940-08-02
1940-08-07
1940-08-08
1940-08-09
1940-08-10
1940-08-11
1940-08-12
1940-08-16
1940-08-17
1940-08-25
1940-08-26
1941
1942
1943
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Africa
Brazil
Denmark
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Puerto Rico
United States
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Suffolk
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Kölleda
Germany--Sylt
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Ghana--Takoradi
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Norway--Stavanger
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Ghana
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Leitch
11 OTU
149 Squadron
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
B-17
B-24
Beaufighter
Blenheim
bombing
Boston
C-47
Hudson
Ju 52
Me 109
Me 110
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Mildenhall
RAF West Freugh
RAF Yatesbury
Sunderland
training
Wellington
wireless operator
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/490/27465/LMillarJ1893458v10001.2.pdf
e352f9e02b4c620fe44613b7e6486819
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
Chinery, Donald
Donald Robert Chinery
D R Chinery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chinery, DR
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Donald Chinery (1921 - 2017, 1465877 Royal Air Force) his log book, and the log book of J Millar. Donald Chinery flew operations as an air gunner with 61 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Pam Winter and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
J Millar’s navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book for J Millar, air gunner, covering the period from 29 July 1943 to 27 June 1944. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Pembrey, RAF Newmarket, RAF Stradishall, RAF Leicester East, RAF Coningsby and RAF Skellingthorpe. Aircraft flown in were Blenheim, Wellington, Stirling and Lancaster. Having initially joined 620 Squadron he flew a total of 35 night operations with 61 Squadron. Targets were Chateauroux, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Berlin, Essen, Nuremberg, Tours, Aachen, Paris, Brunswick, Munich, Schweinfurt, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Mailly-Le-Camp, Eindhoven, Nantes, Saumur, Ferme D’Urville, Pierre du Mont, Argentan, Rennes, Orleans, Poitiers, Aunay, Watten, Gelsenkirchen, Limoges, Rouville and Vitry. His pilot on operations was Pilot Officer Auckland. This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMillarJ1893458v10001
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
France--Argentan
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Caen Region
France--Châteauroux
France--Limoges
France--Nantes
France--Orléans
France--Paris
France--Poitiers
France--Rennes
France--Saumur
France--Saint-Pierre-du-Mont (Landes)
France--Toulouse
France--Tours
France--Troyes
France--Valognes Region
France--Vitry-sur-Seine
France--Watten
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Wales--Carmarthenshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Bolbec
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1944-03-10
1944-03-11
1944-03-16
1944-03-17
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-03-24
1944-03-25
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-12
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-04-29
1944-04-30
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-03
1944-05-04
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-03
1944-06-04
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-19
1944-06-21
1944-06-22
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1657 HCU
61 Squadron
620 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Blenheim
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Juvisy, Noisy-le-Sec and Le Bourget railways (18/19 April 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
bombing of the Watten V-2 site (19 June 1944)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Me 109
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Coningsby
RAF Leicester East
RAF Newmarket
RAF Pembrey
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stradishall
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1549/35521/LHansonJE46968v1.1.pdf
4b0fc8fbb3e8b03820e6719b128cd957
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
Hanson, Joseph Edward
J E Hanson
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
2016-10-18
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
Hanson, JE
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns Flying Officer Joseph Edward Hanson DFM (<span>46968 </span>Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, remembrance and photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 50, 44 and 61 Squadrons. He was killed 1 October 1942. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Colin Thompson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br /><span data-contrast="none" xml:lang="EN-GB" lang="EN-GB" class="TextRun SCXW134679673 BCX0"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW134679673 BCX0">Additional information on<span> Joseph Edwar Hanson Joseph Edward Hanson</span></span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW134679673 BCX0"><span> </span>is available via the</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW134679673 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}"> <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/109837/">IBCC Losses Database.</a></span>
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
JE Hanson flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for J E Hanson, wireless operator/air gunner, covering the period from 3 January 1939 to 1 October 1942. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Finnningley, RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Lindholme, RAF Warmwell, RAF Coningsby, RAF Scampton, RAF Waddington, RAF Boscombe Down, RAF Nutts Corner and RAF Syerston. Aircraft flown in were Tiger Moth, Wellesley, Anson, Whitley, Hampden Hereford, Blenheim, Battle, Lysander, Lancaster, Manchester, Hind, Botha and Wellington. He trained with 76 Squadron which became 16 Operational Training Unit. He flew a total of 46 operations. 29 with 50 Squadron, 3 with 44 Squadron and 14 with 61 Squadron. The aircraft crashed on take off on their 47 operation, with the loss of all crew when the dinghy deployed fouling the tail plane. Targets were Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Lorient, Bremen, Brest, Cuxhaven, St Nazaire, Wilhelmshaven, Dunkirk, Hannover, Kiel, La Rochelle, Copenhagen, Bordeaux, Essen, Saarbrucken, Atlantic Ocean, Kassel, Konigsberg, Wismar and mine laying. The log book also contains photographs of him and aircraft. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Paramore, Pilot Officer Woodward, Squadron Leader Weston DFC and Squadron Leader Burnett.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Atlantic Ocean
Denmark
France
Germany
Great Britain
Russia (Federation)
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Denmark--Copenhagen
England--Dorset
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Brest
France--Dunkerque
France--La Rochelle
France--Lorient
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Cuxhaven
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Wismar
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ)
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LHansonJE46968v1
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-10-29
1940-10-30
1940-11-15
1940-11-16
1940-11-25
1940-11-26
1940-11-28
1940-11-29
1940-12-08
1940-12-09
1940-12-16
1940-12-17
1940-12-21
1940-12-22
1940-12-28
1940-12-29
1941-01-01
1941-01-02
1941-01-04
1941-01-05
1941-01-08
1941-01-09
1941-01-14
1941-01-15
1941-01-30
1941-01-31
1941-02-05
1941-02-06
1941-02-07
1941-02-08
1941-02-10
1941-02-11
1941-02-12
1941-02-21
1941-02-22
1941-02-24
1941-02-25
1941-02-26
1941-02-27
1941-03-18
1941-03-19
1941-03-20
1941-03-21
1941-03-29
1941-03-30
1941-04-08
1941-04-09
1941-04-13
1941-04-14
1941-04-17
1941-04-18
1941-04-24
1941-04-25
1941-04-28
1941-04-29
1942-05-02
1942-05-03
1942-05-31
1942-06-01
1942-06-02
1942-07-26
1942-07-27
1942-07-29
1942-07-30
1942-08-09
1942-08-13
1942-08-17
1942-08-19
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-09-01
1942-09-02
1942-09-10
1942-09-11
1942-09-14
1942-09-15
1942-09-16
1942-09-17
1942-09-24
1942-09-25
1942-10-01
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939
1940
1941
1942
16 OTU
44 Squadron
50 Squadron
61 Squadron
76 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Blenheim
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Botha
crash
Distinguished Flying Medal
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Lysander
Manchester
Me 109
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Coningsby
RAF Finningley
RAF Lindholme
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Scampton
RAF Syerston
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Waddington
RAF Warmwell
take-off crash
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator / air gunner