1
25
182
-
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
Green, Langford W
Bill Green
Joe Green
L W Green
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Langford William Green (1923 - 2022, 2236292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, service documents and photographs. After training, Langford Green served as an air gunner with 218 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh. He flew 18 operations and several Operation Manna supply drops to Dutch civilians.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Langford Green and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, these items are available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
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
Green, LW
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
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
Langford Green’s flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Air Force navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers flying log book for L W Green, air gunner, covering the period from 16 June 1944 to 8 July 1945. Detailing training, scores on gunnery course, and operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Bishops Court, RAF Peplow, RAF Sandtoft, RAF Ingham and RAF Chedburgh. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Wellington, Halifax and Lancaster. He flew 18 operations with 218 Squadron, 11 Daylight and 7 Night. 3 Operation Manna to The Hague and Rotterdam and 6 Operation Exodus to Juvincourt. Targets were, Monchengladbach, Weisbaden, Dortmund, Wanne-Eickel, Dresden, Chemnitz, Gelsenkirchen, Datteln, Hallendorf, Wurzburg and Kiel.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGreenLW2236292v1
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Northern Ireland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Würzburg
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Netherlands--Hague
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-07
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-22
1945-02-25
1945-02-26
1945-03-09
1945-03-10
1945-03-12
1945-03-14
1945-03-19
1945-03-29
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-09
1945-04-10
1945-04-29
1945-05-05
1945-05-07
1945-05-11
1945-05-12
1945-05-14
1945-05-17
1945-05-23
1945-05-24
1945-06-14
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
218 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Cook’s tour
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Ingham
RAF Peplow
RAF Sandtoft
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/147/1566/PColeC1601.1.jpg
1bf8921fe4149a2ba534e67eb3ce33db
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/147/1566/AColeC150727.2.mp3
dc94a957b0efc83699d429a24c84684d
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
Cole, Colin
C Cole
Colin Cole
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. The collection relates to Warrant Officer Colin Cole (1924 – 2015 RAF Volunteer Reserve 1605385) who served with 617 Squadron. The collection contains two oral history interviews his, logbook, service documents, medals, memorabilia from the Tirpitz and six photographs.
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. Six items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties or to comply with intellectual property regulations. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-27
2015-07-27
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cole, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: This is Nigel Moore interviewing Colin Cole on the 27th of July. So, we’re at Colin’s address in, in -
Other: Willan House in Stainfield.
NM: Thank you very much. And Colin’s starting to look through a box of his, his photographs and other, other documents.
CC: Yes I’m just trying, I remember, I remember showing these you know
Other: ‘Cause there’s all sorts of
CC: Probably one of the oldest ones at Willan (?) and, yes.
Other: Take it out of the box Colin.
CC: Sorry?
Other: We’ll take out of this box the ones that are pertaining to the Lancaster like that one which is obviously a picture of you with it. Ok?
NM: So what we’ll do, in the end is I’ll inform the people at the Bomber Command Centre that all this documentation is available and if they want to scan it
Other: Yeah.
NM: They will contact Colin separately.
Other: Right.
NM: And they’ll be informed and we’ll get them to contact Colin directly.
Inaudible
NM: Is Colin’s logbook in there?
Other: No it’s in the safe.
NM: OK. It’s a very valuable document.
Other: That’s you with some twins. You carry on and I’ll have a quick look through and grab the ones
NM: Well no it’s going to make a noise and it’ll catch on the
Other: Oh right
NM: We need to sort of try and catch pure form of Colin’s voice. So what I suggest is that we conduct the interview.
Other: Do you want me to look through this at a separate time then?
NM: Yeah I think so.
Other: I think
NM: That might be better yes. I would, sort of trying to do it at random right now. ‘Cause what we’re trying to get is, is mostly Colin’s voice.
Other: Right.
NM: These, these recordings I know are very sensitive. We practice with them and you can pick up.
Other: In that case Colin we’ll go through these later on.
CC: Oh righto, yes. Ok.
Other: And I shall disappear.
NM: I wouldn’t mind looking at Colin’s logbook later if that’s alright.
Other: Right.
NM: But we’ll
Other: And we’ve got his medals and things like that as well.
NM: Yes I’d like to look at those as well, absolutely. I appreciate your help.
Other: I’ll leave that lot down there.
CC: Yeah ok.
NM: Right, so you’ve had lunch haven’t you Colin? Everything’s
Other: Yeah.
NM: Ready to
Other: Just waiting for the beach party this afternoon.
NM: Alright, thanks very much for your help.
Other: See you later. Call If you want anything, just press the yellow button.
NM: Ok. Oh right, fine, brilliant. Thank you very much indeed.
So, hello again Colin and thank you for seeing me again. Can you hear me all right?
CC: Just yeah.
NM: Ok I’ll speak up. What I’d, what I’d like to do
CC: Yes that’s better
NM: You’re ok with that? What I’d like to do Colin is, is ask you a series of very simple questions and you can just talk to me about your life, your experiences and just, just as, as you remember it. Is that alright? Are you happy to do that?
CC: Yes, if I can go back far enough [laughs].
NM: Well if you can brilliant. Ok, well, we’ll just, as it comes alright.
CC: Yes.
NM: So, so tell me a bit about your very early life up to the age of eighteen.
CC: Ahum.
NM: So what about your upbringing and childhood?
CC: Right. Let’s think now. What’s
[Pause]
CC: My upbringing and childhood as a, sort of, very young days, from what I can remember, this is going back, getting a bit old now isn’t it? It’s, yes what can I, what I can remember of it is that my father worked for WH Smith and Sons and which meant that we were, we were all up and running and the irons going and everything else. He had a pretty good job so it was that year and subsequent years, I mean we weren’t rich but I was quite well off you know. We had a comfortable childhood. And when I say an early life I mean, it’s life. We had breakfast at about seven o’clock in the morning you know because of his work, you know. He used to go and we had contacts with the railway which I suppose would be the, the most sort of idea of the, of my childhood you know.
So I had an interest in railways and all that sort of thing going, going to that. And childhood in those days, which in those days, was you know I had a good childhood. Sort of well brought up and, you know, tried to bring you up one thing and another and from that point of view, you know, it was a long time ago you see because I’m now what past my 101th birthday which, and you’re talking about an awful long time ago and the sort memories that, you know that, I did have memories of early train life ‘cause we went around various stations where he was manager and all that sort of thing and I wasn’t concerned with newspapers they were dull and mystery things. So, and had a jolly good time sort of looking at railways how they were formed and you know what they provided and all that sort of thing. I suppose that really was the early, it was not particularly connected with the RAF at all you know, sort of that was something which came along later I suppose you could say
NM: What about school days?
CC: Sorry
NM: What about school days? Your schooling?
CC: Schooling. I, I was at Twickenham. My dad was so, ‘cause I was as well cause we moved around various counties you know sort of and places and that but, yeah Twickenham was school time. Yes it was. I was more or less brought up in Twickenham so yeah it was just an ordinary sort of classroom membership at the time I suppose. Can’t think of anything else that I thought that was different from anybody else’s you know, sort of, learn the sort of tables and all that sort of thing, generally worked our way through to the various classrooms you know and that sort of thing and that was it you know.
NM: What age were you when you left school and what did you do straight after school?
CC: I, I, ages, age when I left school was a customary age was at fourteen, no fifteen. There was always
[background noises].
CC: [unclear]
NM: So Colin you were saying about leaving school at fifteen?
CC: [unclear] Fifteen [laughs]
NM: So what did you do after you left school?
CC: Yes and generally speaking at that time of the year you know, that time of my career such as it was you know sort of just had to take what everybody else took, you know, sort of. Oh dear, what can I say. Just, just really the usual customary schooling, you know. Sang the class tune in every class whatever it was, fourteen, fifteen, you know, so and, nothing very out of the ordinary.
NM: But after school when you left school, Colin, after, after you left aged fifteen what did you do?
CC: Well funnily for a short time I, one of the managers at WH Smith’s from London you know he persuaded Dad to enlist me in WH Smith and Sons so I had a job straightaway, you know. There was no question about that you know. I was always keen to get it right and keen for, to do the job right, you know, sort of thing and which made it easy going if you know what I mean, yeah. It was [unclear]. Now, when, I was trying to think when war started. 1940 was it?
[pause]
I can’t remember. Can you? [laugh]
NM: So tell me how you
CC: It’s a bit of a mix up you know, sort of. I don’t think anybody’s ever asked me that question before, any questions before and I’m afraid my memory’s not as good as it might be if you know what I mean. Sort of summarise and general sort of glance of it you know. Nobody’s really asked me anything about it you know.
NM: So tell me how you came to join the RAF?
CC: Ahh now of course aero, aeroplanes were new and, you know, exciting and all the rest of it, you know and yes I wanted to join the RAF and, and my father said well he wouldn’t stop me you know so, so really, I was trying to think now what I know I was, let me get this right when I was
[pause]
I was eighteen I think when I first joined or put in to join the RAF. Went for examination and one thing and another, both physical and, sort of, more physical than anything else I suppose you know sort of to see if I was fit you know. I had a two day sort of what’s the name to sort of make sure I was ok you know and one thing and another and yes got the ok and that was it. Oh what did the, what, dear oh dear [laughs] funny isn’t it when you go to go back you know.
[pause]
All I can really say I suppose was there was, there was always a job available you know, sort of thing which was what my parents wanted to make sure that I’d got, you know, you have pay from a very early age you know a few pence a week sort of keep going and one thing and another like that and I was just quite happy about it and just feet up you know and there wasn’t much else I can say outstanding.
NM: So when you, when you joined the RAF how did you go into the wireless operator/air gunner route as opposed to any of the other routes. Tell me a little about that.
CC: That, the wireless operator/air gun, well not the air gunner bit because that fell in to the, I was keener at doing the wireless bit. If you went in for a wireless operator you always had - there was always wireless operator stroke air gunner, because if you look at the setup of the crew, and one thing and another the wireless operator was farther back as, as any of the crew but from the pilot and that would be, and they, it was the wireless operator that took over from the air gunner if he was shot down or shot at that sort of thing. So it was really the wireless operator that I was, I was keen on.
The reason of going in for that I suppose really would be that I thought if it was sort of idealistic move you know that if you could do Morse, Morse code and one thing and another and oh and in the first place I joined the, what was the
[pause]
What oh dear trying to think of the word now, joined as a - you know - oh a cadet. You sort of, you had a peacetime job and you had a part in the RAF, you know, that you could take part in, you know, which gave you a better chance of getting into the RAF that you wouldn’t normally have got, you know. And we had a chappie that was he, he was retired then and he took tuition over to cadets you know and was talking and teaching them and that sort of thing and he was a master well mastermind in - what’s the name - you know, sort of, what’s the name of, what’s the name, Morse code you know and the thing I can remember mostly was that I sat in that, sat in that hearing him doing Morse code you know and he was trying to see, to sort of teach people Morse and that sort of thing and I can always think oh I can do that you know. I don’t know why but anyway I thought I could do and it turned out that I could, you know. I easily learned Morse code and one thing and another and I was keen you know on doing that sort of thing. And naturally when I was what eighteen and called up, sort of permanent RAF, went in for sort of wireless operator which I got, you know.
There was a quite lot of what shall we say you know you had quite a job to get into the RAF then. There was a lot of, all the kids used to, you know, it was always like wow sort of (cough) pardon me. You know, you was in the RAF and could fly an aircraft and all that sort of thing which was always new about that time and you know not everyday sort of stuff and, you know, you were looked at. That’s how I got in the RAF. You know, went in for examinations and all that and passed that and it was just a job you know and that’s how I got in the RAF.
NM: Tell me a little bit about the training you had to go through before you went operational. What was your training like?
CC: Well then you, then you went into training once they accepted you. You had a preliminary course which we did nothing else but you stood to attention and stood at ease and all, all the, I don’t know, the job and one thing and another. You didn’t start doing Morse code although I could do it, you know, sort of thing, since I was - the fact that I could do it made absolutely sure that you know I could get it you know but that didn’t come to the second half of the, when they started. Then they, you took the wireless set oh you know sort of a tin box thing you know, sort of thing. I’m talking now, from what I can remember, you know, sort of thing it’s, it’s long, long since this is and yeah got three, it was a three month course which I passed, passed quite easily you know and, sort of and then once you passed the ground staff they wanted me to, one thing I do remember they wanted me to stay in the RAF but the chappie that was teaching all this stuff coming through which I was at, where was I at the time, I’m trying to think. I was around the, oh – Yatesbury that was, there was a big tour at Yatesbury - would I like to stay on as, as an instructor you see, So, which, no I wouldn’t, I wanted to fly in the end, you know so I turned that down and then they sent you, the thing at Yatesbury was like a two sided thing you know if they wanted you as air crew you went along one side and if ground crew you went on the other. So I got on aircrew and just went on and trained on and on you know.
I can’t think of anything of, [pause] nothing’s, nothing sort of I could really talk about. It was all straightforward you know. Take it from there onwards, you know. The difficult things was up until then had a memory in the head you know and that was it you know sort of joining the RAF and end of story you know and got one or two bits and pieces and I tried to remember I’m sure I missed some but
NM: How far into your training did you meet your crew? At what point in your training did you meet your crew?
CC: What trying sorry.
NM: At what point did you meet up with the rest of your crew? John Leavitt and the rest of your crew?
CC: Oh right, John Leavitt and, and crew yeah. Where did we, (pause) well I guess [pause] I know they made up crews over there , now then [pause], [laughs] have a biscuit [laughs]
[pause]
CC: I’m trying to [unclear]
[pause]
CC: Yeah the thing that I do remember that was different if you like, as I say, was we formed up with a crew and John Leavitt was American. He’d been, he was older then we were you know. Two or three, four years older than what we were as normally pilots would be you know and so we - I was trying to think where we were sort of formed up as a crew.
[pause]
Do you know, I can’t really think. Nobody’s ever asked me these question before. It’s one of those things that, you know, what do you tell somebody well not what tell them what do you tell the truth yeah that’s what I want to try and do. Oh dear.
NM: Can you tell me something about the rest of your, the rest of the crew?
CC: Well the rest of the crew well yeah we, there were two gunners posted. Rear gunner and the, and the mid upper gunner they who we who have we got, we’ve got
[pause]
There was what, seven of us altogether wasn’t there? There was two gunners, myself as wireless operator we were called wireless operator/air gunner because we, we first of all had to take a sort of short flying trip you know as a sort of be able to shoot down somebody else which I never used. We never had any trouble with losing a member of the crew or anything like that you know it was quite straight, more or less straightforward, you know.
[pause]
What else can I tell you?
[Pause]
CC: You see we didn’t run into any particular trouble.
NM: So
CC: So it’s all rather
NM: So after you were crewed up you were posted to 617.
CC: 617 at
NM: Squadron
CC: Yeah. What’s the name of it? Yeah, see now where
NM: Tell me a little about life on 617 at Woodhall Spa.
CC: Err
NM: What was life like?
CC: I was at Woodhall Spa yes.
NM: So tell me about squadron life?
CC: Tell you about?
NM: What was your experience of serving with 617 squadron at Woodhall Spa? Just tell me what you remember.
CC: Well I sort of remember, you know, sort of meeting with the lads that I hadn’t met before, you know, one thing and, oh dear.
[pause]
I’m trying to think if there was something different and there wasn’t really. It was, you know, sort of quite straightforward and we got along alright together if you know what I mean. We didn’t see much of the gunners (?) until we went on ops you know and
[pause]
CC: That sort of, putting on operation, that’s when you sort of formed up at Woodhall Spa if you know what I mean, you know. Nothing, nothing outstanding you know sort of thing and
[pause]
CC: And we, we never, once we were a flying team if you like call it that you know it was, it was nothing untoward about it you know. We were sort of flying on operations, you know so.
NM: So what operations can you remember?
CC: I remember, well I was, well of course I remember Tirpitz operation of course
NM: Tell me about that.
[pause]
CC: From what I remember about the Tirpitz operation it was we, it was a very long trip on a Sunday morning that when, well we had one or two goes at that you know, sort of thing. The final one - we sort of, sort of, what can I say about it. Now once we’d flown over, dropped the bombs and away for home as quick as you can you know sort of thing [cough] but and we were just passing over the - just dropped bombs and one thing I can remember and others would remember as well that our rear gunner, he’d gone to the back of the plane you see ‘cause normally when, when we took the final run over the operating aircraft or forward of the aircraft he came towards the front you know sort of anyway he ran over the back of it and he, because it was a special op he kept an eye on the what’s the, on the operation and we, we all remember him saying that he was looking down and he says “Oh” he says, used to call him skipper, always called the pilot, “Oh skip” he said “We’ve hit the bugg, hit the” and everybody cheered [laughs] so I thank God for that sort of, you know and that was that, you know. I remember that part.
[pause]
CC: There was one other I can’t remember where it was when we went to it, we were only talking about it the other week you know, sort of, I’m trying to remember the name of the place we went to. It was in the Baltic, you know, in that area. And what was I going to say about it? Oh it took place on the, on the 13th of April and I said oh this is [laughs] oh we didn’t do anything with it because it clouded over you know, kind of thing but we went on the op you know and had a look at it and one thing and another I did remark that it was my twenty first birthday. Nothing very exciting. I thought it was for me but, you know
[pause]
There really wasn’t anything sort of very exciting about the whole thing, you know. Nobody was shot down or anything like that, you know.
[pause]
I can’t think of anything else.
NM: Was the
CC: I’d rather leave the questions to you.
NM: That’s fine. That’s what I’m here for Colin.
CC: Yes.
NM: When you served on 617 did it feel like a special squadron to you? Did it feel like a main line, main force squadron?
CC: It just felt like a main line you know sort of thing you know. Nothing you know, nothing, nothing particularly special. I mean, in all the, all the operations we took part on that were sort of special if you know what I mean, you know. We realised that, you know, so, but not really, no. 617 was, I probably couldn’t have told you then what the squadron number was if you know what I mean, you know, sort of thing but it didn’t have a particular ring about it, you know. Sort of, just, yes 617 squadron which just happened to be 617 I think, you know.
NM: The fact they trusted you with bombs like Tallboy and Grand Slam - did it feel different to any of the other squadrons?
CC: Oh what they, when they, sort of aye they did, did carry the extra bomb wasn’t it? That was right yes. Took it all in its, all in its day you know. Never thought of it as anything very special if you know what I mean. You know, just another wartime thing that had gone on if you know what I mean, you know, that sort of -nothing, nothing very special about - there was a, when I get hold of the air book there was - I mean there was a date in there that I can’t remember what it was now but nothing particularly special. No, not really ‘cause we weren’t shot down or anything like that you know. We were
[pause]
CC: No, can’t think of anything that’s
NM: What was it, what was it like as an NCO rather than an officer? ‘Cause the officers were all at the Petwood but what was it like for you as an NCO on Woodhall Spa?
CC: Well the funny part was that, that we only saw the officers on operations. There was, you know, like they were sort of, [unclear] what’s the name quartered in the quarters, you know, sort of thing and we, we were the bottom end of 617 squadron if you know what I - nobody bothered, sort of thing. All our nights out were always NCOs and all that sort of thing, you know, sort of thing. Very, only very, very seldom - I think one was at the beginning - one was at the, one of them, the war was, we went and had a few pints on the fact the war was over you know, sort of thing like that and we all went together, you know. It was the most unusual thing of the, of the lot, you know. They used to do their own thing and we used to do our own thing. We used to go into sort of various civilian places and you know sort of do them, them bits and pieces out of duty if you know what I mean, yeah. I can’t think of anything very exciting you know. I was trying to, you know, I was trying to
NM: So how about after, after the war finished and, what happened to 617 and you at that point?
CC: So we more or less, apart from when we met up to either do a practice operation or something like that did we see everybody, you know. It was just [pause] sorry. No one has ever asked me before and I can’t think of anything that was, there was nothing very exciting about it.
NM: Tell me a little about the Tiger Force.
CC: Oh the Tiger Force. Yeah well of course that was special you know. That, if there was one thing I did do funnily enough that somebody grabbed the, sort of, the photographs of that. While we were flying out to the east you know, sort of thing I had a camera, only a sort of little camera you know, sort of Browning type of thing, nothing, nothing very, I took photographs of one thing and another and they are or I hope they still are, but they were in this went in sort of talked about very much later and they were, what was I going to say. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say now. Blast. Nothing, nothing very sort of special except that was, I think I gave them to the, let’s see where were we assigned [?] where? Can’t even
[pause]
CC: I’m trying to think
[pause]
CC: No can’t think I shall have to try and think about that so
NM: Can you remember what you, can you remember where you were posted when you came back from India when the Tiger Force was deployed back to the UK. What happened after that?
CC: We ended back in the slippery slopes of Cornwall actually, you know and then formed up together, you know sort of, I’m trying to think what we did next. It’s almost a question of sort of detaching the crew altogether you know. ‘Cause I think, I say that because I think from what I can recall as it had is that I thought, you know, this would be the end of us, the old form of the 617 you know, sort of, crew if you like yeah and took some pictures of it and you know and made a little write up and that. And that, it’s hanging in if you like, sort of around somewhere or other. God know where but it was brought up, where did I give it to, one of the RAF stations you know so that should still be there. Should be a sort of, ‘cause I think they made quite a thing of it sort of photographs of where we landed and where we took off and all that sort of thing. I don’t know where it is now. It should, should be alright. Is there anything? Have you come across anything or you haven’t?
NM: I’m sure someone will know.
CC: Sorry
NM: I’m sure someone will know where that is.
CC: Well they ought to. Yes, so.
NM: Were you in, I understood you were involved in the disposal of the old upkeep Dambuster mines. Can you tell me?
CC: Oh yes
NM: Something about that?
CC: I was in a different station. I was called in to, they formed up a crew you know, to get, now what did they, oh dear. I’ve got all these things you know ticking about in my mind but when it comes down to putting them into – I can’t [cough] I can’t think of them. Yes we were sort of recalled and, you know after the coming back from India, you know, sort of thing, we were recalled and then you know disposing of the mines weren’t there, sort of. That’s one of things that we just did and end of story if you know what I mean, I’m afraid.
NM: So what happened to you? What did you do with your, after you left the RAF? At what point did you leave the RAF?
CC: Now when did I leave the RAF? Well generally speaking going, going back to civvy life you know. Nothing more, nothing less you know so I worked for the [pause], all I can remember you know when I went back to civvy life and onwards like that was that I picked out or I found out that if you worked for government place of any sort they paid your, oh my God I can’t remember, pension that’s what I was trying to think. They paid your pension and I thought oh you know sort of if I kept on till pensionable age you know and that would help to retirement which it did you know tremendously so you know very much so. I’ve never paid anything else since [laughs]. Oh dear, yeah.
NM: So you worked for the local government or council?
CC: Local government. The council. Then for some reason, I can’t remember why or how it was, I became clerk to the council of - cause I was living at, I was living at Waddington then I became clerk of the council at Waddington Parish Council. I was there for quite a long time you know. Yeah. What happened after then you know, for the life of me nothing of, sort of nothing to report on. Nothing at all that was
NM: Did you keep in touch with your crew at all after the war?
CC: Yes we did for, ‘cause I went, when our skipper died which was only, not so, not so long ago you know, sort of, well don’t know how much now but time marches on doesn’t it but yes we did in parts you know but we never really sort of got together as a crew if you know what I mean, you know, sort of. It’s all very misty that one is [laughs].
NM: You were very heavily involved with the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association weren’t you?
CC: Ahh yes.
NM: Tell me.
CC: Yes, yes, yeah, yes.
[pause]
I think that was all part of parcel of sort of keeping the connection going if you know what I mean, you know, sort of.
[pause]
I don’t know whether it did any, anything to keep it going but, because I often still, when I say recently I mean alright a few years have gone passed now and since the starting years that yes that was one of the things that did keep going. I was secretary to the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association for quite some, that, and then that became for some reason just couldn’t tell you why [unclear] associate sort of thing you know but it’s just all these things kept trying along, you know. When somebody asked me and nobody ever has you know apart from, I mean, I suppose that up to in inverted commas quite recently the, you know the chairman, you know we used to keep in touch with one another and one thing and another [unclear] died now died recently but apart from that that was it, you know. So of certainly until [unclear] asked questions about it I thought the thing had sort of died and [laughs]
NM: When you, when you look back on your time at Bomber
CC: [cough] sorry [cough]
NM: Are you alright
[cough]
[pause]
CC: Pass me that [cough]
[pause]
Sorry about that. I wasn’t
NM: Don’t worry. Don’t worry
CC: Talking a lot
NM: We’ll stop in just a minute.
[pause]
CC: That’s better
[pause]
CC: Sorry What, what was the last question?
NM: I was wondering what your thoughts are when you look back on your time at Bomber Command. What are your reflections?
CC: Nothing, nothing anything particular, you know. Had to be done [cough] Oh blast. No. Took it on as part and parcel as life’s, you know. A lot of it’s, I suppose, took on, you know, I really took it on sort of well thinking about what I did through the years was really what was concerned with the war and when there wasn’t the war and all that sort of thing, you know and it was that that was leading from one sort paragraph to another if you know what I mean. Yeah.
[pause]
CC: Yeah can’t think of anything else.
NM: How do you think Bomber Command has been treated since the war?
CC: Sorry
NM: How do you think Bomber Command has been treated since the war?
CC: Oh [pause] I’ve never really thought of anything in particular you know. It was just the sort of [unclear] what they wouldn’t have done today and then tomorrow and yesterday and, you know sort of just formed and reformed and put this and put that and that just, just things that just suited them you know. I suppose there must have been things that, I can’t remember any you know, that they did or didn’t do or this that and the other. Just took them for granted that it was it’s what you get when you’re in a certain position sort of plays around with, you know.
NM: Ok Colin thanks very much we’ll
CC: I’m sorry.
NM: Shall we, shall we’ll leave it there. No, that’s absolutely fine.
CC: Yeah. Nobody, nobody’s ever really asked me before you know. I suppose when I’m in bed tonight I shall think of all sorts of things. Well I don’t think I will. You know, oh dear, I’d have liked to have been a bit more precise but I don’t really know [unclear].
[pause]
[unclear]
NM: Can you say that again Colin.
Other: What did you qualify for Colin?
NM: What did you just say Colin?
CC: The naval quite a recent one though. The naval star. Running up to the North Pole and all that sort of thing.
NM: Oh the arctic convoys.
CC: Arctic convoys. Yeah
NM: And you qualified for that because?
CC: Yes I have.
NM: Because of the Tirpitz raid?
CC: Because of the Tirpitz well mainly because of the Tirpitz raid yes
Other: The Arctic Star
CC: Yeah
NM: So you qualified for the Arctic Star because of the raid on the Tirpitz?
[pause]
NM: So you joined in 1942 at Yatesbury.
CC: Oh yes, yes I went to the flying
NM: Yeah
CC: ‘Cause they wouldn’t have us, from what I remember we wouldn’t have a flying logbook of course until we started flying
NM: So Yatesbury. Barrow in Furness.
CC: Oh Barrow in Furness yes we did a gunnery course in Barrow in Furness.
NM: Market Harborough.
CC: Market Harborough and that was what was it [unclear] one of the train for aircrew, yes. Yes.
NM: That’s where you met up with John Leavitt?
CC: Yes
NM: John Leavitt.
CC: Yes it would be, yeah.
NM: Flying Wellingtons.
[pause]
CC: That was, that what’s its name has been kicked around well not kicked around ‘cause I used to keep it in the box on the hall of the house on the, you know sort of.
[pause]
CC: I kept them close. I didn’t think there would be other but other people were worried about it and I could understand that really because I understand they fetch a lot of money you see. Whatever they are you know [laughs].
NM: There was, so that was your first operation.
CC: Sorry?
NM: That was your first operation.
CC: Oh yes it was [laughs].
NM: The Tirpitz raid.
CC: Yes [laughs]
NM: Thirteen hours. Can you remember any other of your operations?
CC: I can’t just one or two odd ones. The funny part was that we, you see because there was that one and then the ones in between weren’t all that in number because we used to have to train for a lot of them you know.
[pause]
NM: Here’s the one on your 21st birthday.
CC: Sorry?
NM: Here’s the one on your 21st birthday. It was Lutz.
CC: Oh yes, Lutzow. Lutzow, that’s right.
NM: And you didn’t fly with John Leavitt that day you drove, you flew with Flight Lieutenant Price
CC: Oh there were probably other people as well of course ahum. Yeah there was that sort of officers
[pause]
I would probably go with some with quite a number probably you know.
NM: I see you took part in Exodus, the
CC: Sorry?
NM: I see you took part in Operation Exodus to recover prisoners of war.
CC: Oh yes there was that as well ahum.
[pause]
CC: You know I forgot about, well not forgotten about but at the back of my mind.
NM: Can you remember what the prisoners of war how they reacted when they saw you or were being flown home by you?
CC: I can’t actually no. I think they were, were the most had had enough of it, you know and were glad to get back.
NM: What about the Cooks tours. Did you take some of the ground crew?
CC: What was?
NM: Did you take some of the ground crews on some of the Cooks tours of some the targets?
CC: Oh Cooks tours.
NM: Yeah
CC: Oh yeah we used to go on those didn’t we yes.
NM: Can’t remember too much about it?
[pause]
CC: No. If somebody was going to come along twenty thirty forty years later you’d more write a journal wouldn’t you. It was more or less a blinking nuisance, you know
[pause]
I’m not trying to hide anything it was just a blooming nuisance. Having to lock up a log book up oh
[pause]
NM: So Operation Guzzle. Is that when you had to dispose of the Dams mines?
CC: Operation?
NM: Guzzle?
CC: Yes it was. Ahum.
NM: Ok.
CC: Aye Guzzle ahum.
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 Colin Cole
Description
An account of the resource
Colin Cole was brought up and schooled at Twickenham, and worked for a time at W H Smith before joining the Royal Air Force. He trained as a wireless operator/air gunner at RAF Yatesbury and RAF Barrow in Furness. He then served with 617 Squadron, stationed at RAF Woodhall Spa and took part in the sinking of the Tirpitz. He was also involved in a number of other operations during and immediately after the war, in particular Tiger Force, Operation Exodus, Operation Guzzle and the Cook’s Tours.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nigel Moore
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-24
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:17:44 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AColeC150727
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.
England--Stainfield
England--London
England--Yatesbury
England--Waddington
England--Market Harborough
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Barrow-in-Furness
England--Lancashire
England--Leicestershire
England--Wiltshire
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
Julie Williams
Heather Hughes
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
617 Squadron
aircrew
Cook’s tour
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Guzzle
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Yatesbury
Tiger force
Tirpitz
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/147/1572/LColeC1605385v1.2.pdf
146cc1c3261e10e2ec1fd6bc26ecd692
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
Cole, Colin
C Cole
Colin Cole
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. The collection relates to Warrant Officer Colin Cole (1924 – 2015 RAF Volunteer Reserve 1605385) who served with 617 Squadron. The collection contains two oral history interviews his, logbook, service documents, medals, memorabilia from the Tirpitz and six photographs.
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. Six items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties or to comply with intellectual property regulations. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-27
2015-07-27
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cole, C
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
Colin Cole's navigator's, air bomber's, air gunner's and flight engineer's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air bomber’s, air gunner’s and flight engineer’s flying log book for Warrant Officer Colin Cole from 5 August 1943 to 23 September 1946. Detailing training schedule and operations flown. Served at RAF Yatesbury, RAF Mona, RAF Barrow in Furness, RAF Market Harborough, RAF Winthorpe, RAF Syerston, RAF Woodhall Spa, RAF Digri (Bengal) and RAF Scampton. Aircraft flown were Anson, Proctor, Dominie, Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster and Lincoln. He carried out a total of ten daylight and one night-time operations with 617 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa as a wireless operator on the following targets in Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Poland: Bergen, Dortmund-Ems Canal, Hamburg, Ijmuiden, Lützow, Oslo Fjord, Rotterdam, Tirpitz Tromsø, Urft Dam and Viesleble [sic] (actually Bielefeld) viaduct. <span>His pilots on operations were </span><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}">Flight Lieutenant Leavitt and Flight Lieutenant Price. </span>Annotations include bombing the Tirpitz and an attack by an enemy jet aircraft. Operation Exodus and Cook’s tour flights are included, as is a tour of India in 1946.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LColeC1605385v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Pakistan
Norway
Pakistan
Poland
Wales
England--Cumbria
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
Wales--Anglesey
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden
Germany--Bielefeld
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Schleiden (Kreis)
Pakistan--Digri
Netherlands--Ijmuiden
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Norway--Bergen
Norway--Oslo
Norway--Tromsø
Pakistan--Digri
Poland--Świnoujście
Germany--Urft Dam
Netherlands
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1946
1944-11-12
1944-11-13
1944-12-08
1944-12-11
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1945-01-12
1945-02-14
1945-02-22
1945-02-24
1945-04-09
1945-04-13
1945-05-08
1945-05-10
1945-05-15
1945-09-27
1945-09-29
14 OTU
1661 HCU
617 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
Me 262
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Guzzle
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mona
RAF Scampton
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Woodhall Spa
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
submarine
Tiger force
Tirpitz
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/178/2341/PBriggsR1613.2.jpg
21d447364bbb0c33d44abf36914a71a4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/178/2341/ABriggsR160128.1.mp3
03beb9ecd0a2c80b649bf4291792a9a5
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
Briggs, Roy
R Briggs
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. One oral history interview with Roy Briggs (1893726 Royal Air Force), his logbook, service material, training material, official documents and 12 photographs. Roy Briggs trained as a wireless operator and flew four operations with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton. He also took took part in Operation Manna and Operation Exodus as well as Cook’s tours over Germany.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Roy Briggs 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
2016-01-28
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Briggs, R
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Transcribed 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 I am in Hemel Hempstead with Roy Briggs who was a wireless operator in the war and we’re going to start talking about his earliest days and right through to his working life as a civilian. So, Roy, where did it all start?
RB: In Battersea. I was lucky but we lived in a London terrace which was by the side of Clapham Junction Station, and Mac in number 3, my dad in number 5 married two girls from 17. There was still a girl and a boy left there. One, one aunt was married and one of the sons was married but they only lived locally so when I was born we moved to Balmoral [?] Street opposite Price’s Candle Factory alongside the Thames. We lived in a downstairs flat. This, what I’m saying now I’ve got vague remembrance but it’s mainly from the family talking. When the Thames got high the water come up the manholes and come down in the basement where we were and the police knocked us up and we, we went upstairs. We weren’t there long. My grandmother on my father’s side had diabetes and lost both her legs so mum, dad and me moved back to help grandad with nan so from then on I saw my two grandfathers and my grandmother every day. My grandad, who had come from the country, had rabbits, chickens and racing pigeons and I was very involved with him with the racing pigeons from an early age. He died by the time I was ten and I used to put rings on the, on the young birds. They used, he also got fairly bed ridden and he instructed me from the bed on what to do. I matched them up, pairing them up for mating and so I rung them. I took them up to Clapham Common and released them. We had a friend who used to race our pigeons so I was down there most days. My aunts, on Saturday afternoon, used to go to Battersea High Street and Northrop Road shopping and they used to come in to see grandad and grandad so on a Saturday afternoon it was, in the summer, it was the men playing darts in the garden and the girls chatting with nan and drinking tea indoors. [mild laughter] The only time that I went away I think I went to Westward Ho! I think it was only for a week, what they called in those days school journeys. We had an undertaker’s opposite us on the corner and horses. The Chapel of Rest was opposite us and the horses used to be there in those days when they went I went and picked up the manure and put it in buckets of water for grandad for watering his flowers and stuff. And in Battersea in those days that was sort of the life. My father worked at South Kensington Museum. The highlights in the summer used to be when he used to cycle home and come in to Battersea Park and mum used to take us down and we met in the park and had a picnic and played games before we came home. When I got bigger we used to go as far as Clapham Common and Wandsworth Common during the summer holidays but that was about it. I went to Shillington Street School at first until I was, till I was ten and then I went to Latchmere, Latchmere Road. I broke me thigh when I was ten, I didn’t realise it, playing football. On a Sunday morning going down to get the chicken food and the pigeon food I took the dog with me and on the way home I collapsed and got up and didn’t realise at the time but when I got up I shot the bones up. Somebody come to help me and that they hopped home and told me dad and he came down and got an ambulance and took me in to Battersea General Hospital where I was, where I was put on traction for weeks, for some weeks to pull me leg down and then when they took me down to plaster me they measured both my legs and the one that they hadn’t pulled down had grown so they put me up again to pull the other, the leg that had broken down to get it to the same length. My uncle worked for Battersea Borough Council, driving. Used to come and look over the wall, get on the back of the van and wave to me [laughs]. My grandad looked after the horses for Battersea Borough Council and he used to go in early of a morning and feed them and clean them, get them ready to take the dustcarts and that out so he used to come home about half past nine to have his breakfast. So, he, he was around during the day. He used to then go back in the evening to feed them and look after them in the evening. [pause] Yeah. That —
CB: What about school?
RB: Pardon?
CB: What about school? So, when did you leave school?
RB: 1939. I was, I’d put in for going to the, be a telegraph boy but went and had tests and that but there was people at sixteen who’d left Grammar School going for the same job because it was thought to be a fairly good job [laughs] in those days and I did not get accepted so I then started at Quickflows [?] it was supposed to be a good little engineering firm. So the Labour Exchange told me. They did Spitfire cockpits and also the sliding windows on London Transport buses. I got the job of cleaning the Bostik off round the glass that went in the frames to slide and as there was somebody there about nineteen and had been there since he was fourteen and he was still cleaning Bostik off the glass I did not [laughs] think it was a very good job. Luckily my mum had worked with somebody in the 14/18 war and her son worked for Benham and Sons, a catering company, and she had a word and he’d just finished his apprenticeship and he had a word and got me a job there. I think, I think it was somewhere about May ’45, er ‘39 I started there. They were starting to expand because they were getting contracts for the Ministry for cooking equipment and that because they’d started re-arming with cooking equipment if not the aircraft [laughs]. They were in, in Garratt Lane and they went over the River Wandle and they were having an extension built. They, they dug down and took half the Wandle up and built an air raid shelter in level with, in the Wandle [laughs] really and then built on top of it more workshops which were finished probably late, late ’39. Yeah. ‘39/’40. Yeah. I, first of all, started building dish washers and then I got in with Jimmy Thurgood who was a good all-rounder in his, in his thirties and he was the odd job man and with him I got a lot of experience and when I did sinks and drainers and boiling pans with him but, yeah he, if there was maintenance trouble quite often he used to get involved in it. Getting on in to, in to 1940 and Dunkirk our first Ministry contract was for hold fasts. It was one about half inch six steel plate and one about three quarters and they were somewhere about four foot square and they had, I believe, thirteen holes in them with thirteen tie rods about three foot long I believe. We made the tie rods and the nuts and one went either side. Being a catering firm we didn’t really have big lifting gear and somehow or other we got permission to use the Wandsworth Greyhound Stadium car park and Jimmy Thurgood and me went down there and we met a low loader with sixteen foot by eight foot sheets of steel. We took some crowbars with us and we crowbarred these sheets off the low loader on to the ground and at the same time, all very organised the [laughs] British Oxygen Lead [?] came with Oxy Acetylene boards which they unloaded there for us. We went back I suppose about a quarter of a mile away to the works and we picked up gauges and hoses and cutting equipment and went back down there and connected up and we cut these sheets into eight pieces, four foot square which was still not really handable [?] but a lot better. We, we put these on a trolley and pulled them along Garratt Lane to the works. They went in and they, they flame cut them to the shapes on the outside and then they went to the machine shop where there was only one machine. It cut, it drilled the thirteen holes which I think were somewhere about three quarters. As soon as they were done they were assembled and taken to Clapham Junction Railway Station and put on, in the guards van and they went straight down to the south coast but they were set in concrete for coastal guns to be connected to. The first contract was done in about seventeen days. A manager or director of the firm afterwards said to me said to me when I said about this ‘oh it didn’t matter what it cost’, but cost wasn’t in it. People just worked on it. They drilled the holes. If somebody went for a break then somebody else stepped in. The drills. There was a stock of them. When they needed re-sharpening they went to the tool room and re-sharpened and it it it just kept going all the time. After the first contract we got lots more and then we started, which was something very new, rocket [emphasis] launchers and Jimmy Thurgood and me were on, on the first of the rocket launchers. They, we had the sheets come in and there was lots of holes punched in them so that the heat could go through and, but they were made in to a half round with rolled edges either side and the rockets were just placed on them and fired. Fired. There was the back of it rested on the ground and there was two, like a tripod, fixed half way up. After the first ones other people started getting involved and Jimmy Thurgood and me we got involved in the firing gear, because the heat that came out of the end of the rocket melted [emphasis] the first firing gears [laughs] and [background laugh] we, we devised a, a nose which we did an [abrasion?] at the end which touched the contacts and it went back down on to a spindle with a, with a, a spring on it, and, I worked or we worked till about 1 o’clock the first time we were on this and there was a despatch rider waiting there and he took it down, I believe, to Aldershot where the rest was already down there and they fixed it on to try it out. The night superintendent came along and said, ‘What are doing here?’ We said, ‘We’ve been working here.’ Well he said, ‘Are you Roy Briggs?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Your dad’s been on wanting to know if you were still working and I told him no.’ Of course there’d been an air raid and I wasn’t home [laughs]. So he said, ‘You’d better go.’ So, [laughing] as we’d finished I went home and dad was on the doorstep waiting for me. Yeah. We went in about 10 o’clock in the morning and by then we’d found out that it had been partly successful but not successful. We made a little bit of alteration to the shape but the main trouble was the springs. Anyway, we got, we’d, they’d got on to the spring manufacturers and we, we made two of these contacts during the day with the U shaped and in the evening the springs came and we fitted them and once again it went down to Aldershot. I think this lasted three or four days, three or four nights by which time we had a successful job and it went in to mass production. Yeah. But in ‘39 in the summer they had started calling people up and, to do I think it was six months National Service but because the war started before they got out and they were still in the services but after Dunkirk these people came back out of the forces because as they’d all sort of finished their apprenticeships it was easier to train soldiers to fire a gun than it did to make engineers which took much longer. Yeah, what, in fact one of them he come out and he got the chief, he was the chief Ministry inspector. A couple of others. We then started building rocket, anti-aircraft rocket launchers. I don’t know whether they have a name. When they were, they went into parks they were known as Z batteries. There was, they started off as singles and then there was four, doubles. The doubles were long tubes with about five holes drilled in them which had studs go through them and they were welded and cleaned off on the top and those studs held them on the framework. The base was, was round and went down and then these went on and we, we took over a printing works at Colliers Wood and they were made, all made over there. They went into the parks. Wormwood Scrubs there was no and I think, I think it was about sixty odd in a battery which fired about a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty rockets. They weren’t very accurate but they put a barrage up [background ‘Hmm’]. They carried on until 1943, when the army was getting short of people they took the people off these guns and ATS went on there and the Home Guard which were not really needed, they thought, then. There wasn’t much chance of invasion. They, they took over at nights as well. I do know one or two of the Home Guards who, who fired them. This, this time probably because I could, I could make simple tool jobs and we had half a dozen fly presses with ladies on them and I was more or less looking after them. It was, it was of a range. We had everybody from an actress to a lady whose father was a doctor and had never been out to work. Quite a shock for her to see what life was like. We had a prostitute. We had Kath whose husband had been killed at Dunkirk and yeah I more or less looked after them. Made sure the parts that they were putting through the fly presses were there and cleared away afterwards and if anything went wrong sorted it out. When I went to, yeah, the same time we’d taken over cheaper garages at northside, Wandsworth Common which we were, we were producing cooking equipment in. At Clapham Junction the milk depot closed down just before the war and we took over the milk depot at Clapham Junction and there ovens and stuff was made. There was, round Wandsworth High Street there was a dump or you could call it [laughs] you had a bit of a shelter, and not much but people worked in there doing sinks and drainers and by that time we were involved with the City and Guilds and their training rooms and that, professors and that were actually producing for us mass produced parts and that. Well there was one of the theatres. They took that over and that. It was a general office for getting war work done and we had gone from somewhere about five hundred people to, I think, about sixteen hundred people in that time. Colin. Colin Benham was quite well educated in engineering. His cousin, who was a commander in the navy, came out to help with us in the war work. There again, thought he had, with his, he had an engineering background I think, but, it was more useful. Miss Benham came and she, she looked after people who, who’d been bombed out and that and did things what she could for them and generally did work for them. Yeah. They had, they did their own ventilation stuff and sterilising. Big sterilisers. When it come to register I can’t remember which it was now. If you registered as a sheet metal worker you weren’t, you weren’t reserved occupation. If you were registered as a sheet arm worker you were. Or it was the other way around. Anyway, as I wanted to go in the air force, I’d been in the ATC, I registered as the one that went. I didn’t tell them that I’d put it down. And yeah while I was in the ATC we were attached to the Home Guard. We went down to Bisley throwing hand grenades and firing. We actually, in the ATC we actually had 1914/18 Lewis guns which they’d got out the dungeons from somewhere. I started off as number three but by the time I was going in the air force I got up to number one. Number three was, as they fired up to six hundred rounds or more a minute you know, you had to have a supply going. One fired and the other one fed it through I think and I, I got it up and then gradually we went up. Yeah. There was talk at the time that if we were invaded there was holes in the ground on Wimbledon common and that and some of us would go up there and come out to try and kill Germans. I thought afterwards that when, after Dunkirk, a little while afterwards there used to be reports come in that in villages in France somebody had come out and killed a German and they had killed all the, all the men and that over fourteen and things like that and then there were reports that they’d killed everybody in the villages, you know, I thought if I’d have come out and killed somebody how many of English and Londoners might have been wiped out by it. I had that in my mind all my life and glad it never happened. Yeah. We, we, we had a stick of bombs dropped around our road in October ’45. We’d had brick air raid shelters built in our back gardens. We had one and next door had one and there was just a three foot square hole which we could have got in to them or them in to us. I think there was about nine bombs came down. One of them had blown up and dad and me ran out and we went down the road and as I passed the house with somebody I used to go to school with he said, ‘Roy we’ve got a great big hole in our passage’ and I said, possibly a bomb by the side of it, probably a bomb had gone down so I said, ‘You’d better, better grab some clothes and get out in case it goes up.’ Before the war I used to help a green grocer setting up his stall before, before I went to school and on the way back home to get washed I used to take the vegetables into the fire station, Este [?] Road fire station which was in the next road to us. It was only half a dozen houses down so I did know the firemen in there. The fire engine from there came, came around and somebody I knew said, ‘Roy we’re here now. You go back home.’ So dad and me went back home, I was in the shelter and dad was in the doorway. We were talking to mum and there was a big bang and the bomb which was in this house had gone off. Dad and me raced down there. The fire engine was more or less wrecked and I couldn’t see the firemen I knew but anyway the other, other people were coming then. As we walked back home the moon was out and we saw a hole in the Flatt’s house. Jean, my sister was friendly with Jean, the daughter, and dad and me went and started banging on the door and couldn’t get any reply and next door come and said, ‘What are you banging on there for?’ We said, ‘The Flatt’s have got a hole in it, in their roof. Probably a bomb’s gone through it.’ So she said, ‘Oh. We’ll, we’ll go and tell them.’ They were in the shelter at the back and they went and told them and they came out and they grabbed some stuff and we helped them take it over outside in the car park at Clapham Station. They’d built an air raid shelter and we took it over but they went in the shelter and then we went back home. The, what we didn’t know that one of the bombs was on the shelter at the other end and later on it went off and killed, I think it killed two people in the shelter but [unclear] Jean and that. Yeah this must have been on the Friday night. On the Saturday morning I cycled over to the Beverly at North Cheam and my mum had had a friend over there who she’d worked with during the war and I said, said to ‘em, ‘Any chance of mum and my sister and me coming over?’ And they said, ‘Yeah come over.’ Her son was in the marines. ‘We got a four foot bed.’ So mum, me and my sister went over there and we slept together in the four foot bed [mild laughter] but dad stopped at home more or less. Dad patched up the windows and that that had gone, to look after the house really during the night. We had some old [unclear] but they didn’t bother to put, they didn’t bother to replace the windows. They put like a muslin over it, there was just the downstairs in the front that had a window in because people could have broken the, got through the muslin quite easy. The glass was a bit more difficult. Yeah and I cycled from North Cheam to Wandsworth in the morning. The raids were still on sometimes and the guns on Cannon Common were blazing away, shrapnel was coming down and when we went home of a night it was still, they were still firing and the shrapnel was still coming down. I’ve got a feeling that I did that for three or four months before we went back home. Yeah. March ‘43 I went for the first medical at North Cheam. I think some, early April, went to Euston House for the aircrew medical and selection board which I passed and got me number and the, and the King’s shillin’ and got deferred for two or three months but there was a great demand to get in as pilots but I think some of them were deferred for about a year there was, they had that many. Yeah. And in fact I was called up for going to Lord’s Cricket Ground on the 21st of June 1943. As I, as I went there I met Len Spratt who I spent the day with at, at Euston House and we went in and we, we got our injections at the same time in the long room. We dropped our trousers in the long room. W G Grace was on the, a picture of him was on the wall. [phone rings in background] I don’t remember but they, they said that they used to turn W G Grace’s around.
[phone ringing and then phone conversation]
CB: So we —
RB: It’s a bit —
CB: We’re just on W G Grace and when you were at um when —
RB: Yeah.
CB: You went to Lords and he was looking down on you.
RB: Yeah but they do say that they used to, used to turn him around when we dropped our trousers but in all of it I don’t remember that [laughs]. Yeah. We, we were in flats opposite Regents Park Zoo. Len and me were in the same room and, in fact, I can cut it short, we were always in the same room or the same hut for the next year. We, we went in to the zoo four times a day to eat. In the restaurants not in, not in the cages. Along by our flats were Stockleigh Hall and another posh one. I must be getting old I can’t remember their names. Yeah, and they had a garage underneath and they did put a canteen in there but we still we were talking to people afterwards who were at Lords they that they were still using the zoo for quite some time. We went to Seymour Hall for lectures and swimming. You could march down there and have a lecture in the morning and go in the afternoon and they’d removed the flooring and you were in, in for swimming. There was a garage at the roundabout at St Johns Wood and they took that over and that’s where we got kitted out. In, in the park was [pause] anyway I can’t remember at the moment. They used that as the hospital. The normal run was to stop at Lords for nineteen days. Some, some things were, activities took place in Lords. They had the gas mask room built there and you went in and tested your gas mask. You got paid there, sat on the seats in Lords till you got called out for your pay. We did our first marching in Regents Park and in the back streets there. First four, three nights were spent putting your names on all your clothes and that. After that you were allowed out where most of the Londoners took their civvy kit home and sort of saw their parents. Unless you were on guard most evenings were free. Yeah, after the nineteen days we went to the railway at Olympia. I think it was called Olympia and there was another name for it where there was a troop train in there and it was just the one train and all the different trades went on and they dropped off a couple of carriages every, every here and there going along. We used to then, got taken to, either pilots or navigators, where they were going. We went to Bridgenorth which was up on the high level. There was a lift to go down to get on the street level down by the river. Yeah. Yeah. We went out to, there was 18 and 19 ITWs which was mainly wireless operators and air gunners. I, I had actually gone in as wireless operator/air gunner and at that stage I was still a wireless operator/air gunner. Probably jumping the gun a bit. Early in oh probably the decision had already been made and hadn’t got through that to stop training wireless operators as WOPAGS for Bomber Command. The, the thought was that if your gunner got killed or anything and you had to go back, by the time you got back, operated the dead man’s handle which lined the turret up with the fuselage, opened the doors at the back, disconnected his oxygen, his intercom and got that out of the way. Got hold of him and pulled him in and if he needed first aid badly to stop it and then we’d have got in to the turret we would probably have been shot down anyway so after that ruling come out we stopped doing the full air gunner’s course although we did enough that we could have got in and fired them. If the wireless operators were going to Coastal Command they then went on and did the air gunner’s course because all the gunners I believe and wireless operators operated air gunners and they did a swap around on sixteen hour flights that they all had a break from whatever they were doing. Yeah. I, I stopped with Len for all that time and then they said he had webbed feet and got to go to Coastal Command. We don’t believe it [laughs] and I’ve still kept in touch till today. Yeah. We, at, at Madley after ITW we went to Madley where we flew on Dominies where you could have an instructor and a number of you went in there and you had the one set and went through it, after that you went into Percival Proctors which is just well, [?] you and the pilot in the main although there were some three seaters if anybody was having trouble and they needed an instructor up with them. Most of the, most of the flights were about fifty five minutes but the most dangerous part was coming back to land because they used to see the NAAFI van leaving the site and they had Lyons fruit pies which were delicious but there was a very limited number and they all wanted to get in to get their pies. There were one or two collisions when the airfield controller fired Very cartridges to tell people not to land. They always thought he was firing at somebody else I think. Yeah. It was, it was pretty hard work on, on training. You, we had Morse. At the same time we did things which health and safety and things because I suppose they thought we were all going to end up as officers and NCOs. We did things like setting up camps by a river and taking the water for cooking from the top and washing and using the ablutions down the way the water was lying. [laughs] Yes. We had to do fault finding on, on the radios, coding and things and you used to get a test on these. Some were about every fortnight or so. If you did not do very well then you went to evening classes and I believe a week was eight days so that the schools were used every day. You had a different day off every week. If you went on evening school and then on the next time you hadn’t picked up or perhaps it was a couple of times you then went to FT which was Further Training and you didn’t want to do that ‘cause you lost all your mates. You went back a few courses. I, I was nearly always on extra training but I never went to FT. The people who went to FT if they went back a few courses and then didn’t succeed they were then ceased training and well the only place for them really was to go as air gunners. We had people who, who joined us at Madley who had been to America and failed as pilots and then go on the training as navigators and had failed at, failed as navigators. I believe some of them after that went, went as bomb aimers. Yeah, in fact we had one chap who reckoned he’d worked it that he’d fail his pilot’s and failed as a navigator. I don’t know whether the air force had caught, caught on to him but when he took his wireless operator’s exams he just scraped through and I don’t know whether the air force had done that deliberately and he was the first one that had to bale out [laughs]. Yes, well I got me, got my sergeant’s stripes about a fortnight before I was nineteen, went on leave and then we went back and then we still did another about three months wireless operator’s training. After that we went to Llandwrog, North Wales. Number 9 OAFU I think it was. They were flying Ansons and we got bearings for the navigators who were really having more, more experience of flying and training where they were going but I believe sometimes we used to fly two or three times a day with different crews. I think we were only there about a month. After that we went to 30 OTU at Hixon and we got crewed up. We, we got Reg, Reg Featherstone as a pilot, Johnny Smale as the navigator, Roy Briggs as wireless operator, Benny Benson as a rear gunner and me and the navigator disagreed afterwards about whether we got Taffy Jones as a mid-upper. He seems to think that we didn’t get a mid-upper until we went to Heavy Conversion Unit but I’m sure he’s wrong. Oh and we got a bomb aimer. This is bad [laughs]. He was an Indian civil servant. I can’t, I can’t believe I can’t remember his name. [laughs].
[pause]
Right. We’ll have to come back to that. After doing ground training we started flying. Reg was struggling rather and he, we soon sort of always had another pilot in with us and I think it was probably only after a couple of weeks we had the chief flying instructor in with us for a couple of times and Reg got grounded. Unfit for heavy aircraft. So, we become a headless crew. Robbie Roberts had, had joined the air force before the war. He had been seconded to the Royal Navy and had spent some time on the Ark Royal. He then re-mustered for pilot training and went to South Africa, and I believe South Africa and Rhodesia for pilot training and ended up, I can’t remember what the, what aircraft he flew but he did a tour in the Middle East before coming back to England. He was then at Hixon as a headless crew and we got together and luckily because he’d got this mass experience it didn’t lose us too much time because he had twin engine experience. So we, we swapped between Hixon and Seighford. Spent some of the time over at Seighford for OTU. When we were at Hixon they were a rotten lot. They said as we got in the plane, we were on circuits and bumps at Seighford and they said, ‘Roy take us back to Hixon will you?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ full of confidence and I got in and we took off and I worked like mad to get Hixon to recognise my call sign amongst the other three hundred who were trying to get it. Eventually I got through and I got a bearing and all proud I said fly so, so and so and so and they were all looking at me and laughing and they went like that and we were about two foot off the ground [laughs]. Yeah talking about like that when we were on Lancs the navigator used to call the sign out for the, to get the speed out for the pilot. Of course the pilots didn’t do anything. Only drive. I mean the engineer used to push the throttles up with him. He used to do what I told him. He used to do what the navigator told him and the gunners if they wanted him to do something he had to do what they told him. Yeah and Johnny was calling out the speeds and I, it was getting slower and slower and I was looking at him and he looked at me with panic in his eyes because we shouldn’t be up in the air and we weren’t. Rob had made that good a landing we were on the ground. We were all looking at the, on the other hand Rob did a rotten landing and we bounced and Len said, ‘Oxygen going on skipper.’ [laughs, including background laugh] They were a few of the, yeah, from, we were, we were actually in a field at Hixon by the side of the railway. I don’t know whether you remember but in the, in the ‘40s after Hixon packed up English Electrics took over the hangers and they were taking one of their big transformers and it got stuck on the level crossing and a train hit it. There was a loss of life but that was actually at that level crossing in the field that we used to stop in. Yeah.
[pause]
Yes. We then went on to a holding unit I think, for a couple of weeks before going to Swinderby. We started heavy conversion on, on Stirlings. After Stirlings and when you were used to four engines you used to then go to Lancaster Finishing School if you were going on Lancasters but a couple of weeks into our course there was enough Lancs available and they phased, the courses in front of us carried on on the Stirlings but we were the first at Lancaster course to go right through on, on Lancasters. Yeah, we picked up Len Piddington as the, he was a pilot flight engineer. In 1944 they had trained that many pilots they didn’t know what to do with them so they sent a complete courses of flight engineers from St Athans to the army ‘cause the army was shorter, short of people and these pilots went to St Athans and did an engineer’s course on the promise that if they completed a tour on Lancs on Bomber Command they could then go back and re-muster and finish and carry on as a pilot for Lancs then but of course the war finished and none of them had finished a course by the time, I don’t think, a tour by then. I have met one person who carried on flying on Lancasters and finished his tour and went back and then trained as a pilot and he went into Lancs. We then, I think we went to a holding unit, Balderton I believe, because there wasn’t all that much flying. There was a lot of snow around in Lincolnshire but it wasn’t, it wasn’t too long because we went to Fiskerton. The pilot and I think the navigator, some of the crews went second [?] dicky on tour with an experienced crew, they never entrusted me with anybody [laughs]. They, on the day after me twentieth, yeah my twentieth birthday because I was the only teenager in the crew by this time, Benny who was a teenager when we first crewed up had had his twentieth birthday. I, [pause] we, I don’t think I went out drinking because we were on an air test of N-Nan which had completed a hundred ops so we flew around N for Nan. I think it was an air test. Afterwards we flew, N-Nan did a hundred and thirteen ops and we took it on its hundred and tenth and the hundred and eleventh. Yeah. We then had a week’s leave to, which they used to say to go and say goodbye to your family and before starting ops and went back. We got called for an op which I think they called us about midnight which got cancelled and then we, we got called back to the briefing room for an attack at Plauen on the German Czech border. This was one of the targets that the, Churchill and Stalin had agreed needed bombing. It was er, we took off just after 6 o’clock and got back something like I think it was nine hours. Nine hours trip, which seeing we’d been up for an op the day before and we then had to go in for the debriefing and a meal. Carried on for quite a while and I think it was four days later we got called to do a daylight on Potsdam on the outskirts of Berlin. We were all briefed and ready to go and the Met Flight said that the weather was too bad over there so it got cancelled. We got called back to the briefing room later on and the stream was told us it was still Potsdam but there was still one going around Germany. They told us that the Potsdam raid was still on. This was the first time Berlin had been bombed for about a year. The last time by Lancasters. The last time they’d lost about forty two I think. Mosquitos had carried on bombing Berlin of the night, light night bomber force. They used to bomb regular with their one four thousand pounder. In fact in the darkest days Mosquitos used to do two flights a night. A crew would take off in light over here, bomb Berlin, come back, a new crew, new bomb and another crew would take off and it would be light by the time they got back. Anyway, we were told we weren’t going to Potsdam. We were going on a daylight training aircraft were going to have OTUs and heavy conversions were going to fly towards Germany to pick up the fighters like this was just going to be our squadron. I’m not sure if we had one or two Mosquitos and we were going to fly around Germany and bomb Cuxhaven on the way back and I don’t know whether it was because we had an experienced captain we could then go back in and see what we could see on fires and that and then I could send a message which I didn’t want to do because the German fighters could pick up on your radio. But they, we felt that they were risking our lives unnecessarily because if there had have been fires we were going to be home in an hour and a half. We could have told them. [laughs] Anyway, we went back in, didn’t really see anything. I mean we didn’t have enough aircraft really to get any fires going and I did code a message up and send it, send it back. Oh yes and on the nine hours to Plauen it was an extra long night because somebody had a puncture in front of us and we couldn’t get back to, to our dispersal and had to stop and wait there until they organised somebody to come and pick us up and a ground crew to come and take over the aircraft because we had to sign to say that any faults and that was on it. Yeah so yes so that was it. After that we had, yeah on the 18th of April we, we were briefed to bomb Heligoland. The main reason for this was that the Royal Navy were going along the North German coast supporting the army and Heligoland had U-boats and E-boats and submarines which they felt could come back and attack the navy by the rear. Yeah. There was approximately eight hundred Lancasters and two hundred Halifaxes on the raid. We, I think we bombed Sylt. It was an island by the side of, with a little airfield on it or an airfield on it. I don’t think they’d been using the aircraft from there for some time. Somebody hit the oil storage tanks and the master bomber didn’t have much, a chance of directing bomber. I think he said, ‘Bomb the smoke, under bomb the smoke as you get in and then over bomb the centre of the smoke and port and starboard of the smoke’ you know so yeah there was only a couple of Halifaxes lost I think. It’s probably the only time I saw the thousand aircraft ‘cause we bombed and we went over we turned around to come back and we either saw the aircraft that bombed in front of us or those that were still going in to bomb you know because normally on nights you didn’t see them anyway and on other daylights if they went and bombed and carried on you didn’t see them. After that we started, mixed up with a briefing for the 20th for Hitler’s birthday to bomb Berchtesgaden, we were also being briefed and I believe we had something like twenty briefings for Bremen. Bremen, the army was having trouble in some places to advance and in other places were going easy and we kept going back to the briefing room and eventually we got, we got briefed for Berchtesgaden and we, I think we got out to the aircraft and the Met Flight said the weather over the Alps was too bad so it got cancelled. I’m not sure if the next day or the day after, yeah, the 22nd I think we went to Bremen. Yeah, in the end we went to the briefing room and they said that they were gonna withdraw troops to a certain line for, in the evening and they were ordered to come back to that line and we were going to bomb in front of it. As it was I think when we got there and we were going in as we got along there, there was some cloud and the master bomber said, ‘Apple Tart,’ which was don’t bomb. So we went there and we didn’t bomb. I think whether some aircraft earlier or after went and bombed but we didn’t bomb. The, a couple of days afterwards I think it was about eleven thousand garrison surrendered. [pause] And, oh yeah and then the squadron, we didn’t go, I think about the 25th they bombed Berchtesgaden but as we bombed, as we’d done four or five we were on a stand down and the Berchtesgaden one, that was the last one on the squadron. We, we somewhere amongst then we got a cross country looking for [pause] windmills [laughs] sorry. Sorry I had a job to remember the word. Yeah. We went around Norfolk looking for windmills not knowing what it was but on the 29th we got called to the briefing room to say that we weren’t going to drop bombs. We were going to drop food over Holland. And that was the first of our six trips over, over Holland. When we come they said that we, they hadn’t got permission for us to drop the food and they weren’t sure how the Germans were going to take it. They were going to tell them we were going to go and were hoping they were going to get away with it. Nobody got fired on although there were reports that some of the Germans were still with their guns and that but so we, so we came back and we got called to the briefing room on the 30th and were told that as we had got away with it the day before they were going to do it again and send some more aircraft in the hopes that the Germans wouldn’t think that we would do that and then they would open fire. We did it on the second and then the next, the next, the next day we got called and were more or less told the same although I believe later on that day that the, they did agree that we could go over and do it so, yeah. So we did another three we did six drops to I think, the Hague, Rotterdam, Delft and Valkenburg airfield. Amongst the children there was a girl who now works in our charity shop up the shops and we’ve got chatting and I’ve, I’ve taken her to an aircrew buffet and told her that I was feeding her sixty nine years ago. I didn’t still think I’d be feeding her sixty nine years afterwards. We’re great, we’re great friends.
CB: What height were you flying when you dropped —
RB: Oh I should think about two fifty foot or something like that wasn’t it? About two hundred miles an hour I think.
CB: And was the food in the bomb bay or how was it released?
RB: It was in the bomb bay. It was in nets. Yeah.
CB: So how did they, how were they released?
RB: By the bomb aimer on, as though he was dropping —
CB: In a sequence was it?
RB: He just dropped the lot you know and they, but they, you know, you could see the targets anyway but they had pathfinders had put targets, targets down. Yeah,
CB: Could you see the locals?
RB: Pardon?
CB: Could you see the local?
RB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah you could see, you were close enough to see them. Yeah.
CB: What were they doing?
RB: Pardon?
CB: What were they doing?
RB: Waving and, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and they by the end they had put in flowers “Thank you RAF” Yeah. Because they, it was about nineteen thousand extra people died during that winter which they take it was you know the starvation and that. They were eating bulbs and things. The, the Germans weren’t really feeding them and the Dutch had gone on strike to help for their bit for the war effort. Yeah. I think this lady I talked to I think she was fairly well off and they had a maid and they, they, they took some of their valuables. They got her to take them in a pram out in to the country where people were a bit well off to try and sell it, you know.
CB: What’s her name?
RB: Ellen, Ellen.
[pause]
CB: I think we’ll take a break there.
RB: Right.
CB: Thank you.
[pause]
CB: We’ve just had a break for one or two things. By the way this is the 28th of January and we’re now going to carry on with Roy. We’re close to the end of the war, right at the end of the war but we’re talking about Operation Manna. So Roy how did you get briefed about this and what were your reactions as a crew?
RB: Well we went to the briefing room and were told that we weren’t going to drop bombs we were going to drop food. I don’t, I think it was a shock really that there was, they’d said that they’d tried to get permission from the Germans but they weren’t playing you know and that the Dutch were in such a state that they’d offered to let a ship go in but the, I believe but the Germans had said no. Yeah, it was a bit of shock yeah that I, I know that I’ve read that a CO wasn’t pleased that he was telling his crews to go in at about two hundred miles an hour and two hundred and fifty feet or something like that and there was no, no agreement and that they were going to tell the Germans that we were coming, you know, over the radio yeah. But as, I mean I could never really have imagined myself dropping bombs over Germany. In fact, as a little titbit, you know when we got, I think it was over Bremen or somewhere. I thought, is this me? A boy from Battersea doing this, you know. There wasn’t much flying before the war. It was a different world. And everything it’s just when it all starts it’s all far away and it just goes one step at a time, you know and then all of a sudden you’re on a squadron and then all of a sudden your skipper goes on a second dicky and that and it’s getting nearer and you’ve been trained for it for twenty one months you know and it’s, it is all, it is all a case of doing one step and somehow thinking that what, if anything bad is going to happen it’s going to happen to somebody else. Not you. Yeah. No. I mean even the second day there was a thought of oh when they said they were going to send more we thought are they going to let us build up you know, to, before they fired at us. They just, I think when we got over there glad that those in front of us if they, well if they’d have been firing on them we’d have no doubt turned around and come back. Yeah. Because you know I mean they could have virtually fired at you with rifles couldn’t they, I mean. Because the Dutch people had been good to aircrew that had come down over their land. They were good ‘cause the Manna Association went over there for years after the war and took part in their, I think it’s their Freedom Day or something isn’t it?
CB: And when you got back from the sorties what discussions did you have as a crew?
RB: Well, we, we’d got away, you know. They hadn’t fired on us, you know and we sort of accepted it. That we had got away with it. But there was, there was that thought that the next day was, was going to be a build up but no. That was—
CB: So you’d done two. Now you get to number three. What are you feeling now?
RB: Yeah well after that we did, I think it was after the third that we were told when we come back from our third that they had agreed that we could —
CB: No.
RB: Go on dropping there. Yeah.
CB: So you stopped at six.
RB: Yeah.
CB: So what was the reason for that?
RB: VE day I think.
CB: Right. OK
RB: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So in the beginning you’ got the apprehension. What was the briefing about? If the Germans did fire on any of the aircraft ahead what were you going to do?
RB: I don’t know that there was much, you know, that they were just hoping that they wouldn’t.
CB: Just go in —
RB: I think we were about the third squadron in you know so we were in the early stages of it.
CB: Right.
RB: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So fast forward now to the last raid and we’ve got the end of the war. So can we carry on the narrative there? What happened then?
RB: We, Bomber Command brought, I think, something like seventy two thousand released prisoners of war back in twenty seven days. We took Uncle over to B58 at Rotterdam. No. Was it Rotter?
CB: Melsbroek?
RB: What?
CB: Melsboek?
RB: No, B58 at, Holland anyway. We took a service aircraft over. We had a spare wheel and a ground crew and we went over and landed there. It was no air traffic control. I think from, from, from H hour to twenty five past aircraft landed. From H30 to 55, aircraft took off and that’s how it was. You know, there was discipline and it went, and they they came in and they landed and loaded them up with troops and away they went.
CB: So this was Operation Exodus. Where did you fly into with these POWs?
[pause]
CB: Because Westcott here —
RB: Pardon?
CB: Westcott up the road here?
RB: No. No, we didn’t bring any back. Although they say we did we didn’t bring anybody back, in my actual log I’ve got them asking me whether flight sergeant somebody of, did we have him on board.
CB: Ah.
RB: He was on compassionate leave.
CB: Oh right.
RB: And we brought him home but the squadron records say that we didn’t bring anybody home.
CB: Right.
RB: We one of the other aircraft brought some Red Cross.
CB: So as such you weren’t part of Operation Exodus.
RB: Pardon?
CB: As such —
RB: No. No.
CB: The squadron wasn’t part of Operation Exodus.
RB: No. No. No.
CB: Ok. Well don’t worry about that. So we’ve got to the end of the war. Then what?
RB: We took, I think we took some people around Germany. Some ground crew. To see. And then we went to Bari and Naples bringing troops home.
CB: Oh you did.
RB: Yeah. We, yeah.
CB: So just on the round robins, the Cooks tours they called them. What height did you fly over the cities? Cause that’s what you were doing.
RB: Not very high so people could see. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And what was your relationship with your ground crew during the, during hostilities anyway.
RB: Yeah we got on alright with them all but seeing as we flew a number of different aircraft you know you didn’t get the same ground crew all the time.
CB: Oh right.
RB: I mean some, some people seemed to do twenty, twenty trips in the same aircraft.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and more.
RB: No. All I got here is Exodus. Service aircraft to B58
CB: Right. Anyway, on the Cooks tours where did you fly then?
RB: Essen, Cologne, Aachen and Antwerp.
CB: Right.
RB: I think that might have been the only one we did. Yeah ‘cause in, in May ‘45 by the end of the month all Australians, Canadians and foreign people had gone out of the, out the crews, you know.
CB: Oh right.
CB: They went home immediately.
RB: Yeah they yeah they got out. So, I mean, I know a pilot, he was the only Englishman. He was on leave and went back and they’d all gone. [laughs]
CB: Didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.
RB: No. No. No. No.
CB: I bet he, yeah, what was the relationship in your crew like?
RB: Yeah alright there was only one snag was the mid upper gunner.
CB: Oh go on. What about him.
RB: He had a girlfriend in Leicester.
CB: Taffy Jones.
RB: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So he went there a lot.
RB: Yeah and you know we covered for him when we were more or less in briefings and he didn’t get back till the last minute and things. Yeah.
CB: So what, so did the crew socialise a lot.
RB: Yeah well you really had to because other crews were doing things at the time.
CB: Yeah.
RB: We basically knew our crew and then I knew wireless operators, the navigator knew navigators because they had —
CB: Yeah.
RB: Sessions together, you know. I might, if you got friendly with another wireless operator there was a, chances are that you might get sort of a bit friendly with the other crew but they would be flying other times so you know other than being in the mess —
CB: So how did the crew feel about Taffy Jones going off all the time?
RB: Yeah [laughs] We’d know that there was, there was —
CB: What did the crew say to him?
RB: Well at times we felt as we should dump him, you know.
CB: Did you?
RB: Yeah. Yeah. The rest of us were, were alright you know.
CB: Commonly known as pee’d off.
RB: Yeah.
CB: Because the flight engineers didn’t join till after OTU how was Len Piddington selected? Or did he just appear?
RB: I think, I think he just appeared. I can’t remember now, you know but yeah.
CB: Yeah and how, how did he get on?
RB: Yeah he was a Londoner you know and we had, yeah.
CB: So now we are at the end of the war what happened then?
RB: We went down to Wyton. No we went down to Upwood. Upwood was due for a clean up after the war so we went, we got transferred to Wyton. By the end of August 576 and 156 were being disbanded. Alan Craig was CO of 35 err 156. He was ex- Halton he’d done a number of master bomber trips and they, they did six Lancasters with Lincoln engines in to try them out and he did master bomber trips on them trying them out. I suppose because he had an engineering background because of Halton.
CB: What was his name?
RB: Alan Craig.
CB: Oh Alan Craig. Ok.
RB: He was well known and he got picked to take 35 Squadron around America in 1946. He, as the squadron was being disbanded he went over there to Graveley. He grounded some of their crews and they not very, they weren’t very pleased with him and he sent over to 156. My skipper was in line for going but he, his, he got married in ‘44. Joan who lived in Stratford on Avon and I take it there were a lot pilots around there she had been engaged twice and both got killed and when they got married she thought flying was dangerous and when the war finished he was to give up flying. As he’d been in before the war he was due for demob by the time they were going to America so he would have had to sign on and he wouldn’t sign on so that wiped our crew out. Flight Lieutenant Jenkinson DFM he, I don’t know how, he didn’t have a wireless operator and I’d kept me nose clean. Nothing special but you know just did as I should do. The signals officer, we got on alright but he got on alright with lots of them you know and him and Jenkinson asked whether I would like to go with them so I said yes because my crew had well I think a couple of them had already been posted to other places. Me navigator was on his way out to the Middle East. He was an accountant and he was going on ground crew in the accounts somewhere. The bomb aimer’s going. Len they sent over to, to another squadron. I mean why they, why they took him and put on another squadron. Benny, the rear gunner he went to another squadron. Yeah. So I went over to Graveley. We got our white Lancs and started flying and we were going to be Alan Craig’s crew. We spent hours in the crew room waiting for him to take us up to fly but he never did because he had other things to do and then a signal came through from High Wycombe that it was all pathfinder crews and it had got, been remade with crews from each of the bomber groups so you’ve heard of Sir Mike Beetham have you?
CB: Absolutely.
RB: He come from East Kirkby down to Graveley and swapped with a crew. We swapped with a crew from 138 at Tuddenham and, I was, I was torn. When he come he didn’t have a wireless operator and I said did I [?] want to stop with him and you know I didn’t want to lose my crew so I said no. It was the worst thing I ever did really because when they got us over there to Tuddenham we were a new crew and they were grounding crews left, right and centre. They sent. They us on leave. I got recalled the next day and got posted so I never saw any of Jenks crew. The day after I left the two gunners come back and got posted. So I found out. By the time the pilot come back he didn’t have a crew. They’d all gone, you know [laughs]. So yeah at Tuddenham we were doing photographic work for town and country planning. We didn’t do much because we were making maps over bombed areas but quite often you know with cloud and that we didn’t get all that much photographic work done. And anyway I don’t know whether I would have gone because Flight Lieutenant Koreen [?] had a mid-air crash. He had a nose and he went into somebody’s tail and the wireless operator had frostbite and I never did find out whether he went around America.
CB: So they took their Lancasters with them did they?
RB: Yeah they did.
CB: To America.
RB: Yeah they went around. Sixteen —
CB: Good Lord.
RB: Sixteen went around America. Yeah. Yeah. I did, I did have all the cuttings and that.
CB: Yeah.
RB: And um —
CB: But you never went.
RB: No. I didn’t go but I knew the people, a lot of the people, and I thought of, and when I saw Mark Beetham up at Hendon once I said ‘I got them’ and he said ‘I didn’t ‘ave it cause I was there’ so I handed over to him all the photos and that that I had. Yeah. Yeah it’s like. How far are we going to go on?
CB: No, we’re just, it’s just a question of what you did at the end of the war.
RB: Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause you came out in ’47.
RB: Yeah.
CB: So what did you do between the end of the war and when you were demobbed?
RB: I went to Cranwell on a, on a course for VHF Homer. Do you know?
CB: Yeah.
RB: VHF Homers? I operated a VHF Homer at Wyton. Only for a day or two. I was on air traffic control as an RT operator giving aircraft permission to take off and land. I, I was on duty now, now, now I’m going to do a bit of a shine [?] I was on darkie watch. Darkie watch. Anybody know darkie watch?
CB: That’s, no. No
Other: No. No.
RB: It was on channel 4. The transmission was I think was ten to twelve miles maximum so if you were in trouble during the war you could use plain language.
CB: Yeah.
RB: And you could say —
CB: Oh it could only go twelve miles.
RB: Eh?
CB: Yeah.
RB: You could say Lancaster of 576 squadron I’m lost.
CB: Right.
RB: They could put searchlights up and things like that.
CB: Oh right.
RB: If you had trouble they could get somebody to talk if he was injured or in trouble and things like that. Anyway, I was the only one, there was no flying so I was the only one on air traffic control for the night. I took a —
[pause]
CB: We’re just pausing to look at documents.
RB: I took a call from Group in the night that the Americans had lost a Dakota in the Alps. Oh I’ve already told you every, every three weeks we were duty Air Sea Rescue [?] Squadron and had to have an aircraft standing by all the time. I think we had airborne life boats which had come in. We had one of those. We never used it as far as I know and I switched on the tannoy and said, ‘Emergency air sea rescue. Emergency air sea rescue. Emergency air sea rescue. All air and ground crews report immediately. All duty air and ground crew should report immediately.’ I rung up the crash crew to make sure they’d heard me. The Met girl had come up before she’d gone off. I knew the winds. I’d put the runway lights on, I’d put the perimeter lights on and by the time the, I can’t believe it now but I believe it only took somewhere, something about just over a quarter of an hour for a crew to come ready to take off and by that time ‘cause I wasn’t supposed to give the aircraft permission the flying control officer was supposed to be there. I mean when I was on an airfield by meself overnight I wondered whether if it had ever happened you know if someone had said, ‘I’m in trouble.’ I had to [?] switch the lights on for them to land. What would have happened —
CB: Yeah.
RB: You know, but officially?
CB: What rank —
RB: So —
CB: What rank are you now for authority?
RB: I’m warrant officer.
CB: You are. Right.
RB: Yeah. Yeah the, anyway we got them off and they went to the Alps and they did find the Lanc but I think they —
CB: The Dakota.
RB: Pardon?
CB: The Dakota.
RB: Yeah, they found the Dakota. They saw it a number of times. In fact I can probably tell you how many times they found it. [pause] Anyway, in the Alps, flying, they’d saw it a number of times and there was a crash crew from Milan sent to find them and I think they went across to Castel Benito for the night and then went back the next day.
CB: Right.
RB: I suppose being the nearest —
CB: Yeah.
RB: Anyway they went over and —
CB: This was a daylight operation?
RB: This is looking for daylight in the Alps, yeah. I have got the cuttings here.
CB: So why didn’t the Americans send a plane to search?
RB: I don’t know. I don’t know. In fact, in fact I think afterwards they did sort of say that —
CB: Can we look at those in a minute?
RB: Yeah. Yeah well yeah well that —
CB: Yeah.
RB: That is the paper reports.
CB: Yeah.
RB: And it’s in focus and we diverted the Lanc to what is now London Airport to be interviewed by the BBC.
CB: Right. Amazing.
RB: And I’ve here got the signal from the American air force. Message received as follows from the USA Air Force in Europe, ‘Please convey our deep appreciation for the efforts in finding our aircraft and the hard work put in.’
CB: Brilliant.
RB: And when we were clearing up they said, ‘Roy you did most of it. You’d better take that with you.’
CB: Very gratifying.
RB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RB: Yeah.
CB: So when are we talking about? 1946 is this?
RB: This is ‘46.
CB: Ok. And you were at Cranwell.
RB: No. No, I’d come from Cranwell. I’d done the course at Cranwell.
CB: Oh right.
RB: I’m back at Upwood.
CB: Back at Upwood. Ok.
RB: Yeah.
CB: So you’ve done, you’re still flying intermittently.
RB: No. No.
CB: Not at all.
RB: No. No.
CB: Ok so how did you come so we’re in ‘46 but you didn’t leave till ‘47 so what did you do in the rest of the time?
RB: RT at Upwood.
CB: Ok and how did your demob come about?
RB: You got a demob number. Your age and when you went in and mine was 45 and that was due out but it varied on trades because believe it or not in some trades they were short. Trades which had been built up at the beginning of the war were due for demobbing and if they hadn’t, if they didn’t need more along the line yeah and I did while I was at Upwood the only other highlight was I went over to Wyton because they were short of an RT operator over there and somebody on the VHF Homer and I did, I did a day or two on the VHF Homer over there. Yeah.
CB: So your demob date was actually 1945 but you didn’t take it till ’46?
RB: No, no, no that was 45 was the number.
CB: Oh sorry.
RB: But it came up —
CB: Beg your pardon.
RB: It came up. Wireless operators. It was due March ’47.
CB: Right.
RB: Yeah.
CB: Ok so then you knew that in advance.
RB: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go for demob?
RB: Lytham St Anne’s at Blackpool.
CB: Ok and what happened then?
RB: They said did I want to go back in? [laughs]
CB: Yeah. And you said —
RB: No. Well those, at that time well pre-war the air force spent a lot of time overseas. In actual fact about that time squadrons of Lancs used to go to the Middle East and that for a month and come back, you know so it would have been a whole different ball game then if, from the —
CB: So when did you meet your wife Joyce? What was she doing?
RB: 1943.
CB: Right. Where was she?
RB: Um she was in Battersea. Yeah, she worked for the Red Cross and St Johns Joint Organisation [?]
CB: And so you saw her intermittently or how did you —
RB: It was intermittently, yeah. Yeah, yeah I mean I was only coming home once every three months for leave sort of thing or —
CB: Yeah.
RB: An odd weekend.
CB: So that was another motivation for leaving the RAF was it?
RB: Yeah and to really I suppose to start doing something for, for me life you know.
CB: Yeah. So what had you chosen to do when leaving the RAF?
RB: I didn’t choose it. I got a job in engineering didn’t I?
CB: And you went back to it.
RB: I went back to it yeah.
CB: Ok. And they had to, it was a reserved —
RB: Pardon?
CB: Place? They had to take you back.
RB: Well yeah when I went back in there he said, ‘I’m not taking you back. I didn’t want you to go and you went.’ He was joking he was. [laughs]
CB: Oh right.
RB: Yeah. I I didn’t really have any young life, you know, even social life ‘cause I went to evening school for three years and evening school was evening school. There was no day release in those days you know. I used to work till 6 o’clock and race home and drink a cup of tea and race to be at Wandsworth Tech by quarter to seven, you know.
CB: And what was the course?
RB: Sheet metal plate work.
CB: Right.
RB: And after I passed it I went back in to work and said I passed my course and they said, ‘Right, Roy, we will give you a rise. We will put you up from one and seven pence farthing to one and seven pence three [emphasis] farthings.’
CB: Fantastic.
RB: And a little while later they said we’ve got a contract for Kirkup [?] Oil Pipeline and their cooking equipment as they’ve got so much oil they want it oil [?] fired so the boiling pans if we give you a half a dozen people to work with you you control it [laughs] ‘cause you’re getting the extra money. I’m getting the extra ha’penny an hour. So you know thinking back on it that probably they’d charge on [?] it got ten bob a week extra so you know yeah so I I organised it that the iron framework had to be, go and be hot dipped and galvanised so I sort of got that organised. The outer panels were going to be vitreous enamelled but we didn’t have a plant in those days we had to send it out to get it vitreoused [?] so the bits that had to go you got done in the hopes that when they come back all the in-house bits, the pans in stainless steel and the tops and that and the bits and pieces you were making you kept it going and it all ended up, yeah.
CB: So you spent the rest of your working life with that company did you?
RB: No. No I well we couldn’t get a house, you know. We were, we were in the mother in laws front room and then we managed to get two rooms and there was no chance of getting a place in London, I mean and Bartlett’s were in the same line but they, they were moving from Bell Steet because they thought they were going to be pulled down for the Harrow Road Flyover and they were having a place built out here so I applied for a job there and got it.
CB: In Aylesbury.
RB: No Hemel.
CB: In Hemel.
RB: Hemel, yeah, yeah and in fact we got a house and were down here before the factory. We had to travel up every day you know to, the next job I got when I was at Benham’s they got the contract for the ventilation for the House of Lords and the Commons what had been bombed during the war and they were used to galvanised and aluminium but underneath the fancy plasterwork they wanted stainless steel because they didn’t want it to rot and after all the cost of all the plasterwork so I got the job of the stainless steel because it all had to be welded and I could weld stainless steel when it was all curves and that. Yeah.
CB: So you know the House of Commons backwards.
RB: No. No, I didn’t, I didn’t go up there at all. I just made it and it all fitted so I didn’t have to go up there. Yeah. I got, I got in with the, the gang that places in London, the restaurants and that hadn’t been, hadn’t had any building work done on them during the war and we went to places like Derry and Toms to, to update their service counters. We used to, at this time we were working eight to eight because we were busy and we used to go up there Friday dinnertime and the counters were red hot. The counters in the pre-war used to be galvanised pipes going back with steam going through them and they would be red hot and we’d start stripping down from as soon as they’d finished serving dinnertime and we’d carry on stripping down and the stainless steel tops and that in the early days there wasn’t welding on stainless steel. It was riveting and various means and er but we used to put that on the lorry which used to go back to the works. We used to go home and then go in at 8 o’clock on Saturday morning. Our outside fitters used to be pulling out the pipes because at this time copper pipes were going in to replace the galvanised which were some had like rusted and that you know so we used to go in to the works and replace the tops and anything that needed to be. Sometime during Saturday night we’d load it on to the wagon and we’d go back and we’d go straight in and we’d start putting it up but there was no break because you didn’t know what snags you were going to come. Until it was finished you just kept so you worked from Saturday morning all the way through Saturday night round and it usually used to be sometime Sunday afternoon that used to get finished and you’d say ‘right we think we’re there’ you know, we ‘ave to, we used to have to make sure there were no leaks or nothing so there wasn’t too many of them but there was one. Barclays bank had a terrific long counter and it was decided that it was hopeless to try and do it all in one weekend so we did it in three weekends all running on so for four weekends I didn’t have a weekend off. I was out working eight till eight. Luckily it was, it was during the summer so I wasn’t at evening school. My son was born and I daren’t, my wife went into hospital. I daren’t say I’m not going because you were in that gang and if you didn’t go you were frightened that they wouldn’t have you next time you know but er
CB: When were you married?
RB: 1950.
CB: And how old are, well who are your children?
RB: Roger.
CB: Yeah and how old is he?
RB: He’s about sixty —
CB: No. He was born when?
RB: Er ’52.
CB: 19, and the next one?
RB: Peter ’53.
CB: Yep.
RB: Trevor ’56.
CB: Yeah.
RB: Andrew about ’59, I think.
CB: And then you adopted.
RB: Yeah.
CB: Who? What’s her name?
RB: Elizabeth.
CB: And how old is she? When was she born?
RB: About ‘69 I think.
CB: Right. So you needed to get over the others a bit before you took her on [laughs]
RB: Yeah. Well [laughs] Roger was working, you know.
CB: Oh was he?
RB: Bringing money in.
CB: Yeah. Right. Ok. We’ve done amazingly well. 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 Roy Briggs
Description
An account of the resource
Roy Briggs was born in Battersea, London. After leaving school he undertook an engineering apprenticeship with Benham and Sons, producing equipment for the war. He describes his life during the Blitz. When he joined the Royal Air Force he trained as a wireless operator and served at RAF Fiskerton. He was on operations to Plauen, Cuxhaven and Potsdam. He also took part in Operation Manna and Operation Exodus as well as Cook’s tours over Germany. Until he was demobilised in 1947, he served at RAF Upwood. After the war he returned to a career in engineering.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Janet McGreevy
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:58:03 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABriggsR160128
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
Germany
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Plauen
Germany--Cuxhaven
Germany--Berlin
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
30 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
air sea rescue
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
demobilisation
Dominie
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Initial Training Wing
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Hixon
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Madley
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upwood
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/2380/LAndersonAA428289v1.2.pdf
357f3a160f67920aa88d481a2db49408
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
Wood, Colin
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Colin Wood (1922 - 2021, 1451225 Royal Air Force), his log book, service record and seven photographs including pictures of some of his crew. Colin Wood trained in Canada and flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. His crew were:
428289 - Andy A Anderson, pilot
1593692 - D Evans, flight engineer
1451225 - Colin Wood, navigator
1564707 - G H McElhone, bomb aimer
1873924 - P Thomas Tobin, wireless operator
1584474 - Vernon R Grogan, mid upper gunner
1595586 - R O Day, rear gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Colin Wood 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
2016-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wood, C
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
Andy Anderson's flying log book for pilots (incomplete)
Description
An account of the resource
Incomplete pilots flying log book for A A Anderson covering the period from 19 April 1944 to 31 May 1945. Detailing his training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Bitteswell, RAF Bruntingthorpe, RAF Winthorpe, RAF Syerston, RAF Metheringham, RAF Warboys and RAF Coningsby. Aircraft flown were, Wellington, Stirling and Lancaster. The total number of operation shown are 23, 14 night with 106 Squadron and nine night with 83 Squadron. Targets were, Rheydt, Dortmund, Karlsruhe, Kaiserlautern, Brunswick, Bergen, Dusseldorf, Dortmund-Ems Canal, Harburg, Trondheim, Munich, Horten Harbour, Danzig harbour, Bohlen, Lutzkendorf, Wurzburg, Molbis, Cham, Komotau and two Operation Exodus to Rheine. His first or second pilots on operations was Flying Officer Sayeau.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
37 photocopied pages
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
LAndersonAA428289v1
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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-09-19
1944-09-20
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-11-03
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-11
1944-11-12
1944-11-21
1944-11-22
1944-11-23
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-14
1944-12-15
1944-12-17
1944-12-18
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-04-07
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-17
1945-04-18
1945-04-19
1945-05-08
1945-05-10
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
Norway
Poland
Czech Republic--Chomutov
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Warwickshire
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Harburg (Landkreis)
Germany--Kaiserslautern
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Munich
Germany--Rheydt
Germany--Steinfurt (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Würzburg
Norway--Bergen
Norway--Horten
Norway--Trondheim
Poland--Gdańsk
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
106 Squadron
1661 HCU
29 OTU
83 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
mine laying
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Coningsby
RAF Metheringham
RAF Syerston
RAF Warboys
RAF Winthorpe
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/2381/LWoodC1451225v1.1.pdf
216ec66745b3d4c0ff1f52309fe0300c
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
Wood, Colin
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Colin Wood (1922 - 2021, 1451225 Royal Air Force), his log book, service record and seven photographs including pictures of some of his crew. Colin Wood trained in Canada and flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. His crew were:
428289 - Andy A Anderson, pilot
1593692 - D Evans, flight engineer
1451225 - Colin Wood, navigator
1564707 - G H McElhone, bomb aimer
1873924 - P Thomas Tobin, wireless operator
1584474 - Vernon R Grogan, mid upper gunner
1595586 - R O Day, rear gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Colin Wood 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
2016-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wood, C
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
Colin Wood's Royal Canadian Air Force flying log book for aircrew other than pilot
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the training, operational career and and post war flying of Colin Wood from 8 July 1943 to 7 February 1946. He trained in Canada and in Great Britain and was stationed at RAF Metheringham, RAF Coningsby and RAF Full Sutton. Aircraft flown in were Anson, Wellington, Stirling X, Lancaster I and III, Lancastrian, Dominie. He flew 25 night operations with 106 and 83 Squadrons to targets in Germany, Norway, Poland, Italy, and Czechoslovakia: Bergen, Bohlen-Leipzig, Brunswick, Cham, Danzig, Dortmund-Ems canal, Dusseldorf, Harburg, Horten harbour, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, Komatau, Lutzkendorf-Leipzig, Molbis-Leipzig, Munich, Trondheim and Wurtzberg, His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Anderson. Colin Wood also flew operation Exodus to Rheine and two operation Dodge to Bari. Additional remarks include corkscrew training, H2S, and stowaway Olive on cross country flight. Post-war 231 Squadron.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LWoodC1451225v1
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 Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Norway
Poland
Scotland
Czech Republic--Chomutov
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kaiserslautern
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Munich
Germany--Rheine
Germany--Würzburg
Italy--Bari
Manitoba--Winnipeg
Norway--Bergen
Norway--Horten
Norway--Trondheim
Poland--Gdańsk
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Czech Republic
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Manitoba
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-09-26
1944-09-27
1944-09-28
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-11-03
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-11
1944-11-12
1944-11-21
1944-11-22
1944-11-23
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-14
1944-12-15
1944-12-16
1944-12-17
1945-02-19
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-23
1945-02-24
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-04-07
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-17
1945-04-18
1945-04-19
1945-05-10
1945-05-31
1945-09-13
1945-09-15
1945-09-29
1945-10-01
106 Squadron
1661 HCU
29 OTU
83 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
Dominie
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Lancastrian
navigator
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Coningsby
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Metheringham
RAF Syerston
RAF Warboys
RAF West Freugh
RAF Winthorpe
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/2409/PSandersDS1606.1.jpg
bcbc31c9af960e94130f17aa9a184b7b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/2409/ASandersDS160305.2.mp3
a759a084fadbc2e92b6a1749462ccfd5
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
Sanders, David
D S Sanders
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. The collection contains an oral history interview with Sergeant David Stuart Sanders (1925 - 2022, 1869292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, engineering documentation, operation schedules, a personal record of all his operations, a Dalton computer, a number of target and reconnaissance photographs. David Saunders was a flight engineer on 619 Squadron and 189 Squadron at RAF Strubby and RAF Fulbeck in 1944-45.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Sanders and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sanders, DS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GC: Right. So. This is an interview being conducted on behalf of International Bomber Command. My name is Gemma Clapton. I’m here at the home of David Sanders on the 5th of March 2016. He was a flight engineer in 189 and 619 Squadrons. We’ll begin with something nice and gentle. Tell me about how you joined up for the war for Bomber Command?
DS: Well it’s very difficult because my brother was in the Air Force and I didn’t particular want to go in the army so I volunteered not knowing exactly which part of the aircraft I wanted to be in, but as I was in engineering before as a youngster I decided to go as a flight engineer . So I went to Cardigan and they did an exercise and interviews and I had to file a cube to go into a square [unclear]. I did it perfectly so they said go back home and a few months later I got accepted as a flight engineer. Um, my first thing, my dad took me to Lord’s Cricket Ground for six months, sorry six weeks, as an introducing and being uniformed and have inoculations and all these things there. And we had to march every day to the zoo for our food. [laughs] Anyway – that ok?
GC: OK. Um, where was you stationed first? What’s your first memory of life of Bomber Command itself?
DS: Of Bomber Command? Well ‘cause this came a lot later ‘cause I had a six months course in St Athan. Learning the inside and out of the Lancaster Bomber. Um, so my first actually meeting the crew was at, I can’t remember the name of the place now, but the, the rest of the crew were already joined up and I was the odd man out. So my skipper came and I joined up to the crew, that’s my first thing and we flew into Stirlings aircraft and that was on operations, I forget what they call me. You kept — just a minute, I can’t remember the name of the places now and we were there for several months and flying and then we converted on then to Lancasters. Did training and eventually we went to a squadron. OK.
GC: Can you remember the first time you was inside a Lancaster? First op in a Lancaster?
DS: Oh the first op was quite traumatic because obviously we were all nervous, ‘cause being our first one, even though the pilot’s already done as a spare introducing. Anyway we went to Blenheim [?] and the only fault ever the navigator made he got us too early there and the rest of the time he was perfect. So we had to hang around being fired at which we never experienced before in our lives. After we’d dropped our bombs, on the way out we were combed by searchlights for about seven minutes and we thought we’d never get out of it ‘cause you’re a sitting target. But fortunately the pilot, he was a wonderful Australian, a lot older than us, a lot of experience of flying, just pulled back the throttles and we fell out the sky and we lost them. So we managed to get home and that was our first [laughs] experience.
GC: OK. Tell me a bit about the crew, ‘cause you obviously had an Australian?
DS: Well the pilot, Australian from Sidney, he was in his thirties so we, we treated him as our dad. He looked after us very well. The two gunners were wonderful Canadians, my age. The navigator was more — a little bit older. He was from Nova Scotia in Canada. A little bit snootier him [laughs] but the wireless operator [unclear] came from somewhere Middle East. Unfortunately he was shot down in another plane later. My mate Matt and I were both Londoners.
GC: So you had a real mixed crew?
DS: Very mixed crew, yes.
GC: Did – What was, what was the camaraderie like?
DS: Great, yes, yes we would — generally we used to go out and have drinks together. Perhaps the pilot was a little bit more aloof than us ‘cause we were much younger. [laughs]
GC: OK let’s take this somewhere else. You were obviously quite close to the rest of the crew. Can you describe a bit about life on the station?
DS: Um.
GC: As, as a group.
DS: Yes. Well ‘cause we were, we were in Nissen huts so it was quite, quite funny really ‘cause the Canadians, if you’re from the East or the West they used to fight each other so you had to put the fighters [unclear] up by the door in case we get raided. There was always, always friendly friction between, between people. In each Nissen hut there were two crews. So you had a funny old fire and we had to try and keep warm by putting in anything we could find to keep it — to keep us warm. [laughs] It was quite fun really, you know.
GC: It, it sounds good. OK. So can you, can you — is there a raid or op that sticks out in your memory for a various reason?
DS: Um, oh yes ‘cause most of them. There was an instance possibly in every one. I did say, the — when we went to Dortmund Canal, Heinbeck [?]. We’d go there every three months ‘cause they’d build it up and we’d knock it down again for them. It’s a viaduct. And we lost seven aircraft that time. But on the way back over England we were all relaxed thinking it was good we were getting home. Then we saw an aircraft go down, we thought the poor chappie didn’t make it. And later another one came down. And we had to log them each time. When we got to our aerodrome the perimeter lights were out so we asked them to put them on. They put them on. We landed straight down and we went to the end of the runway and went through our perimeter at the end of the runway. The [unclear] was in the truck ready to pick us up when a Messerschmitt came down the runway firing bullets all the way down. Jokingly the mid-upper Canadian [laughs] he [unclear] in his arms and said ‘it was worth every minute of that’. That night we lost about twenty something aircraft ‘cause we didn’t know the fighters were in, coming in with us.
GC: Was it common for the fighters to follow the planes?
DS: Sorry.
GC: Was it common for the fighters to follow –
DS: No.
GC: Follow home?
DS: No, no it was practically unknown and we weren’t warned ‘cause we had in the aircraft friendly and foe, and you press that and on the radar it would, it would tell whether you’re friendly or not and so they should have seen these coming but they didn’t and they didn’t warn us.
GC: And it wasn’t common?
DS: No.
GC: No. When you was on an op what was more unnerving the, the lights going up or knowing that there was possibly fighters up there with you? Was there a –
DS: Oh no, it’s, it’s very mixed. Another bad raid we had. This time I wasn’t with my crew, I was just spare and I had to go and do this crew. I’d been to Harburg before and Harburg was rather flak. Harburg, which is very near Hamburg. When we went there and bombed there wasn’t any flak and we couldn’t understand it, but when we came out we could see air to air fly, firing going on and as we – all of a sudden our aircraft lit up by an aircraft put a flare beside us. Behind that a fighter came in and fired on us so we had to corkscrew right away. The [unclear] bullets were flying everywhere and the two gunners, very experienced, shot him down. Hurray [emphasis]. And later another aircraft came in we started to corkscrew but he disappeared. We got home safely. The two gunners were awarded DFNs.
GC: Oh wow.
DS: Um.
GC: So, is there, was there a difference in attitudes towards a daytime op and a night-time op?
DS: Um.
GC: Was there a difference?
DS: Well they’re totally different really ‘cause the Americans generally did the daylights and we always did the nights. I went on one daylight. A thousand-bomber raid and you don’t believe what a sight. Everywhere you see is aircraft and when you got to the target you had to look up. You see aircraft are probably opening their bomb doors [laughs] and [unclear] get out of the way skip, you know, but generally speaking apparently all my raids were at night. And, er, you’re individuals. Your navigator is on his own. Do you like one?
GC: No.
DS: OK.
GC: Do you – I’m, I’m reading here your list and it said at one stage you, you went up to Bergen.
DS: Bergen, yes.
GC: Bergen. Would you like to tell us a bit about that please?
DS: It was more or less straight forward, no problems just a bit of flak and not difficult at all. The longest raids I did was Munich into Poland, I can’t think of the names in Poland. Oh Politzs [?] and that thing — they were very long raid. Took us about ten hours and standing in the dark all that time. It’s – your eyes start to play tricks on you. You’ve got to look out all the time. So long raids were very fatiguing.
GC: So if you are doing raids say of nine hours plus. I know going out you’re going to be concentrating. How do you keep your mind sharp to concentrate for that amount of time?
DS: Well you used to take wakey wakey pills. You had little pills to keep you awake [laughs]. But I don’t know it’s very difficult because then you get – your life is at stake so you had to keep, you know keep on, keep on watch. My job being a flight engineer I had to look out a lot to – apart from looking after the engines and everything I had keep doing – and your eyes did play tricks with you sometimes looking out in the dark for so long.
GC: So I take it from that you didn’t have something to focus on it was all done by maps and –
DS: Sorry I missed that.
GC: As I say it was all done by maps rather than what we would class as modern technology?
DS: Oh Yes. Well he had – the navigator had Oboe and other radar type of improvements. Though it was up to the navigator completely. I mean the pilot was the great, he was the chauffeur, but the navigator was very important if he didn’t get us to the proper place at the right time we were in trouble.
GC: Right OK. Is there anything that sticks in your mind from serving in Bomber Command? Any incident or –
DS: Well you see. I learnt to talk about the flight engineer job he was the jack of all trades. I had, once or twice, I had when the trimming – when you trim the aircraft you had a wheel to turn and it wouldn’t, it stuck so I had to go out and put my oxygen thing. Go round the aircraft to try to see what the problem was and the wires had slipped under the little wheels, so I had to correct that for the skipper ‘cause he can’t fly with that keep trimming his aircraft. Odd jobs like that the flight engineer had. We lost an engine one time therefore balancing the fuel was very tricky. I had to switch over and the flight engineer – if one of the gunners was injured or something it was my job to get up and take over so I learnt a lot about being a gunner. So it was rather a different job. And in take off I was the pilot’s third hand in take off and we had quite a thing between the two of us and know how to take the aircraft off. So it was quite an interesting job.
GC: What was it actually like inside a Lancaster though?
DS: Well being tall, six foot odd, I had difficulty getting in the aircraft because there was a part going right across the aircraft where they hold the wings together I had to climb over. So it was very restricted. It’s much smaller inside than you think it is and I had a little portable seat to sit so I could lift it up so the bomber, bomb men could get by and get underneath. So [laughs] it was a – not the most comfortable of places.
GC: OK. I’m going to take a [unclear]
DS: Yeah.
GC: OK. Tell me a bit about the actual training for Bomber Command if you would please?
DS: Yeah. One of the interesting things was that when you fly, when you got above ten-thousand feet you had to put your oxygen mask on and to prove that it was necessary in training we went into a decompression chamber. There was a whole crew we was all in there all sitting round all happy and joking then they said would you write down this poem. So we was writing the thing, we was writing it down and then we had to take our masks off then went down – I was still writing and I just went out. Then after they put us back onto our masks and I looked and I found that after the poem was just a scribble. The other thing he asked me he says ‘what’s the time now?’ I looked at my wrist, my watch has gone. So it just shows you that you’re oblivious once you have lack of oxygen when you go to, as we had to go, up to eighteen-thousand feet.
GC: You said, you said earlier that you had an engineering background. How did they train you? What part did they train you for? I know you were a flight engineer.
DS: Well –
GC: Just want to try and find out a bit about your training.
DS: Well as it happens every fortnight we did a different part of the aircraft and had exam on each one so you could pass onto the next one. So we did the whole – the frame, the engines, the hydraulics, the pneumatics, gunnery, bombing. We did the whole lot over six months. Every, every – it was very, very –
GC: Intense?
DS: What’s the word? Very, very – what’s the word? [laughs] Very, very, um —
GC: Intense? Intense?
DS: Intensitive that’s it yes. Anyway that’s — so at the end you had to pass another, another examination completely. I had a moaning [?] engine in front of me and they asked questions one after the other about that particular engine. I just scraped through. [laughs] OK.
GC: Um. We was talking earlier as well also about your uniform about the boots and things. Was — How was —What was it like putting that on? What —
DS: I think it was no problem really. I think we got so used to it and quite pleased to put it on knowing it was going to warm us up a bit. No I think it was quite easy. I think we got quite used to it. We did it so many times. We had big boots and we had a flight engineer I used to stick something in there just in case I needed it and also I had to carry the thermos for a skipper for when he wanted a drink. [chuckles]
GC: OK. Tell me about one of the ops when —
DS: One of the most vivid things I can remember was going to Brunswick. It was an incendiary raid. Very old town and terribly on fire. When we was going to a bombing raid there was another aircraft right beside us coming in with us. And all of a sudden he was hit and a huge [emphasis] great flame came up and he held us for a little while and then went down. That could’ve been us, we were right beside him.
GC: Did your brain work like that? Did you just accept it or —
DS: Well you had to. You had to go on. Do a bombs. And after you’d dropped your bombs you had to hold, I think for about forty seconds to take a photograph. You dropped a flare and you had to wait until that photograph was taken. And another bit of a funny thing with the photographs because my second raid was on Wolfen Island off Holland. We had to go to the island to breach the fence and when we took off we couldn’t find the group we was in so we rushed over to one to try to find it. It was the wrong group. We keep doing this and all of a sudden the bomber with me said ‘Your targets coming up. Quickly!’ So we lined up, dropped our bombs, came back home. Easy raid only two and a half hours but the next day the pilot and the navigator were up to see the CO. We’d bombed the wrong island. [laughs] So it was a — we’d bombed the — [laughs]
GC: Did they make you go back?
DS: No. Well actually we did it another, another time but they were in trouble. But it’s only because we couldn’t find who we were meant to be flying with. [laughs]
GC: Did you bomb mainly Germany or were you —
DS: No, we, we — Germany, Poland, Norway. Mainly those three.
GC: OK. I’m just going to introduce that there is a third person now in the room and it’s, it’s David’s wife, it’s Daphne. So if you hear a third voice it’s Daphne. So my apologies.
DS: One raid, I tell you is — how clever the Germans were. We went to Munich which is a very long raid. We had to go down South and across Switzerland but on the way we suddenly saw an aircraft on fire and it all of sudden you saw a big explosion on the ground, but we sussed out that when the aircraft was hit it wasn’t moving. So the Germans are very crafty and trying to scare especially the new, the new, new, the ones on their first and second raids. Thinking that they — but they, they shot over a flare up in the air that looked like an aircraft. Then did an explosion on the ground thinking that’s them. It’s very very clever how they tried to trick you.
GC: I know we have spoken about, like you said, the thousand-bomber raids. What was it like being surrounded by all those planes?
DS: You don’t believe it. ‘Cause today if two aircraft go anywhere near each other they’re in trouble. There was a thousand and they were all putting out window. That’s a big strip of things — to try and, to confuse the German’s radar. And everywhere you could see there was aircraft. In fact you know you had to keep your eyes open and tell the skip to watch out, go higher, go lower. Watch out the bombs are dropping in front of you. They were everywhere. [laughs] Anyway it was a very easy raid, there was, I think, only one or two aircraft lost most probably by other, you know, own aircraft. But you can’t believe watching everywhere you see there are so many aircraft in the air.
GC: What kind of bombs did you carry? Weaponry?
DS: Well they varied. The big cookie. Funnily enough once it didn’t release properly and it was rocking about in the bomb doors so the skipper had to open up and waggle the aircraft about tremendously to release it. [laughs] and it did go but sometimes we had incendiaries for fire. Yeah it was varied but generally it was a cookie and a few smaller ones either side of it.
GC: Can you describe a cookie for us?
DS: Sorry.
GC: Can you describe the cookie for us?
DS: Well it was like a big barrel, a huge great bomb, er, nothing like the ones you have on the 617 Squadron. They had, they had huge great things, but it was quite a big one. I forget the weight of it now.
GC: Good.
DS: Quite a big one.
GC: So it was just the one you carried at any one time?
DS: We carried the cookie and we had about six either side of the smaller bombs. [pause and whispering]
GC: Right, tell me about — you was describing to me the take off for a Lancaster please?
DS: Yeah OK. This is the flight engineer’s job on take off. So we taxied round to the runway. Lined up the runway and waited for the red light to come up, or the green light, I forget what, to start. So then we keep the brakes on and the skipper puts the throttles right up, half way up to get big power. Then suddenly releases the brakes so we go off. As the pilot is pushing the throttles my hand is behind him. Then he takes his hand away. Then I take over the throttles and I push them up to what we call the gate. I hold it there. As we go down the runway he says ‘full power’. Then I push it right through the gate and lock it. We can only hold that for a few minutes because it will blow up the engines. So now we manage to take off, so then I throttle back and lock it there. Then the skipper says ‘wheels up’. So I pull the wheels up, then he asks for flaps up by a third. I put them up a little bit then I pull the flaps up. Then we should be full take off then, so now we can just throttle back to the speed we need what the navigator has taken. That’s my initial job on take off.
GC: OK. Thank you very much. You often hear referred to in rides — you often hear referred to the phrase of a corkscrew. Can you describe a corkscrew for us please?
DS: Yes. A corkscrew is a — on the radar I said before when one of the enemy aircraft lit us up and the other fighter came in on the blind side the gunner said ‘corkscrew’. So we go down, fly down, very very fast. Then pull the aircraft up into like a corkscrew, going through the sky like a corkscrew. We’d done this many times on practice so the gunners know exactly where to put their guns. The enemy has got to keep resetting his aircraft to fire upon us, so fortunately this time it worked and we shot him down. But it’s, it’s very dramatic in a sense because one minute your, your blood is pouring down your face, next minute you’re lifted up as if you’ve gone into the sky. So it’s quite a dramatical thing to do really.
GC: Thank you. We was talking earlier as well about superstitions. Did you have any lucky charms or —
DS: Well I had a threepenny bit sewed in behind my wings. And I had a funny little thing that had a little beer barrel on and you tried to pull it and it would come down and you release it and it would go back again. So as I got in the aircraft I always gave it a pull.
GC: You was also talking about you had a dog, well the squadron had a dog.
DS: It was a stray dog which we, we looked after. A big black dog. And when we went into town on our bicycles he used to come along beside us. But as we speeded up a bit he didn’t like it so he rushed in front of us and grabbed hold of our wheels to stop us. So, and also on the way we got a piece of wood and we used to throw it in the field. And on the way back we’d tell the dog ‘go and fetch it’ and believe it or not he’d find that piece of wood we’d thrown in, you know. It’s a great dog. And a stray one. [laughs]
GC: You don’t know where he came from?
DS: No.
GC: You talked about going into town, obviously as a squadron and as a crew. What were the kind of things you did on your off days?
DS: Well. Relax one thing, and the other thing we obviously went to the pubs. We went to Dirty Annie’s for our meal and she used to give us eggs and bacons and things ‘cause we did like the breakfasts you used to have. We obviously had a bit of fun. We had parties in the mess. We went to once with an urn to fill it up with beer to come back so we all had a nice drink. It’s, it’s — we went together. So it’s, it’s about being together and enjoying our company ‘cause we’re, we’re fighting together.
GC: OK. We, we, we talked earlier as well about your crew. Could you just give us a little snapshot of each crew member please? With you.
DS: Well the pilot was Australian. He was in his thirties. He was very senior to us and he was our dad. He was a great pilot. The navigator was from Nova Scotia, Canada. Very, very good, very good navigator. The two gunners, mid-upper and rear were Canadians. The rear gunner at Penrose [?] thought he had enough so he went AWL and unfortunately got the LMF, lack of moral fibre. The bomber [unclear] and myself were both Londoners. And the wireless operator was somewhere from Middle East. I’m not quite sure where but unfortunately he went on a spare trip and got shot down and died.
GC: OK. I’ve read your CV and you, you spoke about bringing the POWs home. Could you tell us a little bit about bringing the POWs home?
DS: What? Sorry.
GC: Could you tell us a bit more about bringing the prisoners of war home?
DS: Oh sorry, yes. After the war, rather a wonderful thing really. We went [clears throat] — a whole lot of aircraft went [clears throat] I think it was to Belgium to pick up the prisoners of war. They were all lined up everywhere and as we taxied we stopped and our line all came into the aircraft. Full up. One sitting — standing right behind me. We took off and on the way back we saw the Cliffs of Dover and believe it or not they were all in tears.
GC: OK. I’d just like to say thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure and an honour to have met you today.
DS: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.
GC: You’re welcome.
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Interview with David Sanders
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Sound
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Pending review
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Gemma Clapton
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-03-05
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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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00:31:24 audio recording
Language
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eng
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ASandersDS160305
Description
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David Sanders flew operations as a flight engineer with 189 and 619 Squadrons. He joined the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer and discusses an operation when they arrived too early over the target, being followed by a night fighter and having a bomb hang up. He also explains the role of a flight engineer.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
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Tracy Johnson
189 Squadron
619 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bombing
flight engineer
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Fulbeck
RAF St Athan
RAF Strubby
Stirling
superstition
training
-
Dublin Core
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Title
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Green, Langford W
Bill Green
Joe Green
L W Green
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Langford William Green (1923 - 2022, 2236292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, service documents and photographs. After training, Langford Green served as an air gunner with 218 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh. He flew 18 operations and several Operation Manna supply drops to Dutch civilians.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Langford Green and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, these items are available only at the International Bomber Command Centre / University of Lincoln.
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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, LW
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Title
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Interview with Langford William Green
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2016-04-28
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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.
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01:23:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGreenLW160428
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Langford "Joe" Green was born in Wales but moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire with his family when he was still a child. He worked in a factory from the age of 14 until he joined the Royal Air Force. After training he flew operations as an air gunner with 218 Squadron RAF Chedburgh. On a cross country training exercise, his aircraft suffered engine failure and the crew were told to bale out. Only the bomb aimer managed to exit the aircraft and the pilot landed with the rest of the crew on board. He also discusses the corkscrew manoeuvre.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Suffolk
Germany--Dresden
Germany
Temporal Coverage
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1945
Requires
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CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re in Marlow and the date is the 28th of April 2016. We’re interviewing Langford Green known as Joe and we’re going to talk about his experiences as a wireless operator/air gunner particularly in 218 squadron. So, Joe, what was the earliest recollection you had of life and what did your parents do?
LJG: Well, we were poor. I remember that. It was just an ordinary life really. Yeah. I mean I had two brothers and a sister older than me and we lived in Wales and then when the job finished when I was four I think, we moved to Marlow. My father was working in [?] in Pontypridd working and the job was finishing so he got on his pushbike, cycled all the way to Marlow because I had an uncle living here on, he was a signalman on Great Western Railway and he put my father up for the night. He got a job and a house and cycled back again and we came back on the train ‘cause dad was only allowed one ticket a year. The posh people on the railway could get have than one but because he was a labourer we only had the one. And we moved to Marlow in 1927. I went to school at the Church of England school. Infant school in Oxford Road and then the big school and at fourteen I left school. Went to work in High Wycombe in a factory. Just an ordinary, everyday, like everyone else did. There wasn’t, there was very little employment in Marlow. I mean we had a brewery. And we had a few independent builders but they only employed a few people. They didn’t do many apprenticeships so my father got me a job as an apprentice in to marquetry and then of course in ‘39 the war started so that was the end of my working career. The war started when I was just over sixteen you see. The company went on to war work. They were doing the parts for aeroplanes I think. They were doing big bases anyway so and then I got fed up with that. I got away with it and joined the air force. Another experience.
CB: Why did you join the RAF and not the other?
LG: Well I thought it was the best one to do. I wanted to fly actually but I’m afraid my education wasn’t good enough to be a pilot or a navigator or anything like that but I went to Wycombe to try and join up and they said you’ve to go to Reading. I’d never been to Reading in my life. Didn’t even know how to get there. Then luckily I the sergeant who looked after, the police sergeant who looked after me when we was couriers he said, ‘Well get on a bus to Reading and ask the conductor where Broad Street is,’ and that’s where I went. I joined up that particular day. I had all my checks, exams and I come away with the kings shilling and I’d signed up for the air force as an air gunner. They said go home and we’ll send you a letter or a telegram to tell you where to go and that happened about two or three days later and there again I got this telegram report to Lords Cricket Ground. I mean I’d heard Lords Cricket Ground on the wireless but I didn’t, had no idea where it was. Hadn’t got the faintest. So back I went to see my police sergeant. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘No problem Joe,’ he said, ‘Get on the train at Marlow, you get off at Paddington and you’ll find a big red sign that says RTO, Rail Transport Officer. Go and ask him and he’ll tell you exactly how to get there. In fact,’ he said, ‘He might even send someone with you.’ So goes to Paddington, saw this officer and he put a squaddie with me. He said, ‘Take this gentleman down, show him how to get on, which train to get on to and where to get off.’ I finished up at Swiss Cottage which was the station nearest to Lords and I was there for about three weeks having all the injections, got my uniform. I lived in one of those big flats just outside Lords Cricket Ground. We had a room about three times the size of this, two of us. Lap of luxury. I thought this is great [laughs] but it soon changed. Yeah. Yeah I was there in London for about three weeks. Yes. Quite enjoyable. And then we were put on a train at Euston to Brignorth to have initial training. Then I, I was there for like five or six weeks I suppose. Waiting to come home and they said you’ll get a telegram report to gunnery school and there again had the same problem. You’ve got to go to Northern Ireland. How do I get to Northern Ireland? So when I got up to, I got the travel warrant. I went and saw this officer again. He said, ‘Oh that’s no problem. Euston station,’ he said, ‘And the train will be there.’ he said, ‘It takes you to Stranraer so you see, goes to Glasgow first and then goes back again,’ and off I went. Quite enjoyable it was too. I was a bit frightened at first. It was a long way away from home. Of course it wasn’t all that exciting but you do whatever they ask you, muck in and make the best of it. I quite enjoyed it in the end. I was there a few weeks and then I qualified, got my three stripes and my wing, came home and got another telegram to report to OTU at Peplow. That was a great bit that because you get there and you’ve got masses of people walking about. Pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless ops, air gunners trying to, joined up to make a crew. They weren’t getting at you, just try and find yourself people you like. I, I met one of the air gunners that I trained with in Northern Ireland. We walked around together and finished up with the crew that we got. It was great. Found it a bit strange because the navigator was a pilot officer. All the rest were sergeants. The pilot, skipper Alfie Kemp was a sergeant, the bomb aimer was a sergeant but Dickie. Dickie Ball, the navigator, was a flying officer, a pilot officer but we got on well. He was alright. And as I say we done our training there and we were posted to Sandtoft to convert from Wellingtons. Twin engines in to four engines. We started on Halifaxes actually. They were, you know, clapped out old planes that weren’t fit for service but were good enough for training but as I say we did have one hair raising experience if you want to hear about that. We were doing a cross county on a Halifax and we were diverted because of fog. It really was, really foggy and we were diverted to Stradishall, or Mildenhall, I can’t remember, and we were losing height. Two engines. One engine had gone and then another engine went and we got on to traffic control and said put it in [George] head for the North Sea and bale out. Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Halifax, there is an escape hatch in the front by the, between the, in front of the pilot, behind the bomb aimer and of course everything in the air force is done in routine. Bomb aimer goes out first cause he’s in the front and he goes out first and he goes head first, and the navigator goes out but unfortunately to get open this hatch you have to lift up the navigators seat ‘cause he’s facing crossways and Dicky Ball goes out feet first but his harness catches on the seat so there he is hanging outside on his harness and the door shut and of course luckily the skipper called us up the two gunners have an escape hatch at the back. He says, ‘Don’t go. We’ve got a problem.’ So we managed to get Dickie back in alright and by that time we were down less than a thousand feet which is far too low to bailout and with a bit of luck we saw a Lancaster with the wheels down so we followed him in. Got told off mind you but we got down on the ground safe and sound but the bomb aimer was in the police station at Peterborough [laughs] trying to convince them that he wasn’t a spy, he’d baled out. ‘Where’s the rest of them?’ ‘Don’t know,’ he said. Quite exciting isn’t it? But there again we got through it. And then we converted on to Lancs which was a blessing as far as I was concerned ‘cause I didn’t like the Halifax at all. I didn’t like a Lanc with the radial engines but I did like the Lanc. Yeah. It was such a beautiful aeroplane to be in. It flew like a fighter, like a fighter plane. We enjoyed it. And we gradually graduated. We were posted to 218 squadron which had moved from Downham Market to Methwold and when we got there they had moved to Chedburgh and that was where we spent the rest of our, the war. I’d done my first op. Munchen Gladbach I think, 1st of May, 1st of February 1945. Done a few more till the war finished. We were a distinctive squadron because we were one of the first squadrons to do Operation Manna. That was on the 29th April. The week before the war was officially finished. Dropping food on Holland. That was quite cheering. The war was still on officially. The High Command gave us permission to fly. We had to fly a direct route. They told us which way to come in and I think it was Rotterdam the first one. We’d done quite a few. Three I think because we were due to go on leave but because of this we, it was postponed and so we did have our leave in the end. They call it a week’s leave but you travel on a Thursday and go back on a Wednesday which is seven days really but it’s only five days at home isn’t it? Even from Bury St Edmunds it was a long, a long day to get there, get home to Marlow. Get in to London, across to Paddington and hopefully you’d get a faster train but that wasn’t always the case and when we went back off leave we done what was called Operation Exodus bringing POWs back. Twenty four in the base of a Lanc, Sat on the floor with their legs apart. Two rows of twelve. Yeah. And that’s where I finished my flying career. Chedburgh.
CB: What did you do after the war? When were you demobbed?
LJG: 1947. May 1947
CB: So what did you do?
LJG: Pardon?
CB: Between, what did you do between the end of hostilities and being demobbed?
LJG: We were given an option what we could train and I decided I’d be a storekeeper. Nice quiet job. So I went to Blackpool. Done about a three month course I suppose and graduated from that I suppose they call it and went home and said report to North Weald and I flew out to Singapore via Karachi and I spent the rest of my service career in Singapore. RAF Seletar till May the 9th. I got home and was demobbed. Went to Blackpool to be demobbed. Yeah. Great.
CB: Then what?
LJG: Well then I had a job to settle down. It’s such a different world, you know, coming back in to the real world. You had everything done for you in the air force. In Singapore I was a flight sergeant then. Got reasonably well paid. Everything found. Come home. Tried to find a job anything like it but couldn’t you know. Eight or nine pound a week was a lot you could get. Then you had to travel to get it. I had loads of jobs but none of them, I went into Parker Knolls in Wycombe being a store keeper but it didn’t last long. I used to cycle to Slough and I got a job in [Citroen?] cars being a storekeeper there and I moved from there into repair work in the factory all the small [?] I used to have. Used to repair them. Odd jobs. Then 1960 and I was getting fed up with it anyway. It was a long cycle ride and it was, the bus fare took a lot out of the pay packet. So my wife was working at [Broomways?] in High Wycombe then when it was a big factory and she said there’s plenty of jobs going over there. Go and try and get a job there which I did and I was there sixteen, seventeen years. Then I found I was getting on in years and I worked in a heavy division in [Broomway?] big compressors. Twenty six, twenty seven inch pistons. Had a job to lift them in and I got a job, oh I went to a company in Cressex called [?] Spark as a fitter, a general fitter but I was only there three years and it was taken over by an American company and most of them were made redundant. Fortunately, my luck was with me again. My brother was a union man. He got me a job at Harrison’s which used to be the sand factory in Wycombe and that’s where I stayed until I retired in 1948. Yeah. And that is my career as such and since then I’ve done nothing really exciting.
CB: So what age did you retire?
LJG: 65.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So not 1948.
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: Not 1948.
LJG: [laughs] No, 1988 sorry.
CB: ‘88.
LJG: Yeah sorry I apologise. Yeah 1988.
CB: Ok. What was your most memorable experience of flying in the war?
LJG: [laughs] well the most frightening was Dresden I think. It was such a long way. It was over nine hours and when you think flying don’t start until the wheels are off the ground. When the skipper says, ‘Undercarriage up.’ That’s when you start flying. That’s when the time starts but you could have been in the plane a half an hour. I mean you get in, make sure everything alright, taxi around, you could, that could take you ten minutes and the same coming back you know as soon as the navigator feels the wheels hit the ground then you stop flying but you’ve got a long way to go back to dispersal and sort things out.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So what was frightening about Dresden?
LJG: Well I think it was just tiredness you know and –
CB: What do you remember about the raid itself?
LJG: Well, that was, that seemed to be quite easy but we did have a scare. I suppose you know that the actions of a pilot if you’re attacked by a fighter is dive and corkscrew.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Right. Well, George, the rear gunner thought he saw a Messerschmitt so he said dive port so down we go but nobody’s ready for it you know so all the papers the navigator’s got – all over the place. And he brought us back by the stars which was great but other than that we had quite an uneventful, just a job really. Just get in, go over there, drop the bombs, and come home again, you know. Go and have a drink.
CB: On how many occasions did you shoot at another aircraft?
LJG: Never. I never fired my guns once.
CB: Why was that?
LJG: No need. We only have to defend. Not to attack. Try to get out of trouble if you could rather than look in to it you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: My skipper was married and he wanted to get home to his wife [laughs]. No chances. No.
CB: No.
LJG: No it really was –
CB: Did you get attacked and hit on any occasion?
LJG: We did have one which only affected me. I suppose other people will tell you towards the end of the war the Germans didn’t attack individual aircraft they had a barrage of anti-aircraft guns and they decided to lose, let the bullets explode at a certain height so you had to go through it. That’s why we staggered at different bombing heights. Halifaxes went in lower because they couldn’t manage the height and we went in higher but they’d alternate it. Hopefully we could get away with it you know and that and so the explosion on hitting you, an explosion at a certain height. Well I had one. An 88 and through the fuselage at the floor, between my legs, between the guns, out the top and never went off.
CB: Oh a complete shell.
LJG: A complete shell.
CB: Yeah. And how did you know it was an 88?
LJG: By the size of the hole.
CB: Right.
LJG: Well that’s what, I’m only going with what the ground staff said.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. So this is the flak box -
LJG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
CB: That you’re talking about.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And their detonation is based on a time.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: At height.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: To hit the height. Yeah. So it went wrong.
LJG: Yeah I mean when you get a raid of six or seven hundred aeroplanes you probably have four or five different heights. The first one would go in at say twenty thousand feet. The next hundred would go in at eighteen thousand feet and I think we were one of the lucky ones. It went straight through and out the other end.
CB: Did the, you were in the dark so it’s difficult to see but could you see effectively when you were approaching a flak box?
LJG: No. No. Only if it was I mean because me as mid upper I was always circulating.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: You know. George the rear gunner done ahead and below. Not so much above because he had a job to see above so I had the bits above and then I could, sometimes you could see it but often or not it was below you.
CB: Did you ever get attacked by a fighter from underneath?
LJG: No. No this one that George saw coming back from Dresden it was way up, you know. And he seemed to think it was coming towards us and then it veered away but we got away with it.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Unfortunately a lot of them didn’t but we did.
CB: Yeah. And as a crew how did you get on?
LJG: Great. We had a great time ‘cause funnily enough George, the rear gunner, lived at Clare and if you know that area at all in Suffolk Clare’s only about seven miles from Chedburgh.
CB: Right.
LJG: And the skipper had an old Austin 7.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And the bomb aimer, the er flight engineer didn’t drink. He’d have a half a shandy last him all night. So he would buy his half a shandy, sit in the mess near the phone and near the phone was where battle orders went up the following day for the following either morning or night so we was off, we’d go down to Clare. Six of us in an Austin Ruby. If the weather was bad you stood on the running board if it was foggy and go down to George’s local and then when battle orders went up if we were on Don would give us, give us a ring. We’d say we’ll be in The Globe tonight or be in The Cock in Clare so he’d ring up, ‘Oh you’re not on tonight,’ so we’d stay there till one or 2 o’clock in the morning but we did get caught out once. I can’t think where it was we were going but it was we had a phone call at 7 o’clock to say, ‘You’re not on, there’s a raid, a daylight raid, take-off is at 6 o’clock but you’re not on it, we’re not on it.’ He rings up at 11 o’clock to say, ‘We are on it,’ so we had to get back, try and have a shower, sober yourself up and do a trip at about 6 o’clock the following morning. But that was life you know.
CB: When the battle orders went up how did the briefing work?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: When the battle orders went up how did your briefing work?
LJG: Well -
CB: Because some of the crew were briefed differently -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: From the others. So how did that work?
LJG: Oh you were woken up by one of the people on guard, you signed a book to say you had, you’d been woken up. You had your breakfast. Then go to briefing. Then you get dressed afterwards. I mean the, it was only the two gunners really that had to get dressed as such. We wore a kapok suit with electric wires down it, and slippers with electric wires in it and gloves, the same. All connected up in your boots and, but the others they just wore the uniform.
CB: So the, how did the electric system work? You plugged it in how? ‘Cause you’re the mid upper. How did you plug that in?
LJG: Well each engine done something. I can’t remember which one was which.
CB: Right.
LJG: One done the electrics. One done the hydraulics but it was great because it wasn’t very comfortable in the mid upper turret. It wasn’t a very big comfortable seat. I mean George was alright in the rear turret. He had quite a cushy, and all this but my seat it reminded me of a child’s swing and that’s about what it was. A piece about so big. Fifteen by eighteen by six padded and you dropped it down off the hook to get in and you stood up and you hooked it back up again and got on it but it wasn’t very comfortable. Especially a trip like Dresden. Nine hours or something. No. But there we go. We got it.
CB: Just going back to the briefing. The pilot and the navigator would be briefed together would they? And how -
LJG: We’d all be briefed together.
CB: All briefed together.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: Well in my day anyway.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So you come out, you go into a large room.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where the initial briefing is carried out. Is that right?
LJG: Yeah. The -
CB: All the crews go in.
LJG: At the end of the hall it would be a big map.
CB: Right.
LJG: With the route.
CB: The route marked on it.
LJG: The route from Chedburgh to where we’re going to bomb.
CB: Right.
LJG: And then, I mean the squadron commander which in my case was warrant officer er Wing Commander Smith. He would tell you which way you were going and which way you were coming back and he’d ask then for questions from experienced pilots that was it, was anything going to be made better or easier. All we do is get there. I mean some places flak was quite heavy. Some it was quite light you know so it was, and then of course the weather man would get up and have a chat but he was never very good [laughs]. Our weather was more predictable from George’s parents. They had a small holding in Clare and he would tell you, you know what it was going to be tomorrow. Over here anyway and he was never wrong but sometimes the weather man got it wrong but you just accepted it didn’t you?
CB: What sort of mistakes would he make?
LJG: Well I mean he would tell you you were going to have clear skies and no cloud at all and when you got there you couldn’t see a thing but of course you must remember that in ‘45 a lot of bombing was done on flares and bombs with colours.
CB: Markers. The markers.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
LJG: So it didn’t really matter much about the weather being bad. You could, you could see a yellow marker at twenty thousand feet even if it was foggy you know so you had a good idea and of course towards the middle of April, February, March and April H2S was coming in which was another godsend. That was the, helpful for the bomb aimer wasn’t it? Yeah.
CB: Ok. Now you said you did three sorties in Operation Manna which was supplying food to the Dutch civilians. Yeah.
LJG: That’s right.
CB: Because they were starving.
LJG: I’m sure -
CB: So what, what how did that work? Initially, as you said there was no agreement with the Germans so how did it work over here? In other words what was the briefing for that because there was no agreement?
LJG: Well the, it was packed in sacks in the bomb bay and we were given a special route and a height and a speed so, we, it was quite an easy route really. I think the first one -
CB: I wonder, I wonder what you expected because if the Germans hadn’t given the ok at that point what was the crew’s reaction to the lack of authority to do it?
LJG: Well, they were, I think most of them were concerned because as I say never trust a German anyway but I think one or two did shoot at us but it never affected us. No. But we were only at about five hundred feet I think or probably a bit lower. It was quite low and I know the Lanc is quite good but it wasn’t designed for low level bombing. I mean, I know they done the Dambusters but that was exceptional. You couldn’t do that all the time.
CB: No.
LJG: I don’t think. They were really a high level bombing aircraft. Yeah.
CB: Now. What sort of height were you dropping?
LJG: Where?
CB: When you were dropping the food.
LJG: Manna. Manna.
CB: Manna. What sort of height were you flying?
LJG: Anything under five hundred feet.
CB: And do you know what speed you were flying at?
LJG: Speed?
CB: Ahum.
LJG: Just above stalling speed. About a hundred miles an hour.
CB: Oh really.
LJG: Yeah. Well we weren’t sure whether, what damage we could do ‘cause most of it was loose stuff you know. Flour and things like that. Potatoes. I think there was some canned stuff but they were concerned about it. Yeah. That was my first one. May the, April 29th I’m sure it was.
CB: So you did three of those? To different places were they or -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: The same place?
LJG: Yeah well I have got them down here somewhere. Here we are. Two to The Hague and one to Rotterdam. The first one was Rotterdam. It’s only just over three hours there and back.
CB: Ok. Now you then talked about Exodus which was the repatriation of prisoners of war.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where did you pick those prisoners up?
LJG: Juvincourt.
CB: Where’s that?
LJG: In France.
CB: Right.
LJG: That’s the only airport or aerodrome capable of taking the Lanc.
CB: Whereabouts is that in France?
LJG: I’ve no idea. No idea.
CB: No.
LJG: But I’m sure it was Juvincourt.
[pause]
CB: I’ll just stop the tape a mo and we can take a look.
[machine paused]
CB: Right.
LJG: Westcott.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Dunsfold.
CB: Yeah. So can we just, go over that? When you were doing the Exodus you you flew each time into Juvincourt.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In France.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And then you flew where? What were the places you flew to?
LJG: That was it.
CB: So -
LJG: Tangmere was the first one.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Ford.
CB: Which was -
LJG: On the south coast.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: As well, well they were all on the south coast weren’t they? Ford was the third one. Westcott was the fourth one.
CB: Near Aylesbury.
LJG: Dunsfold.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And Oakley.
CB: Yeah. Ok. North of Oxford. Yes.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And how many, how many prisoners were they and what type of prisoners did you take each time?
LJG: Well they were all in fairly good condition. Well they had to be, you know, fit. Really. Well not really fit but they had to be reasonable to take the flight you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: We didn’t have oxygen masks for everybody so we had to keep under eight thousand feet anyway so we used to come back at about three or four thousand feet.
CB: Would there be several aircraft together doing that or –
LJG: Pardon?
CB: Would you be with several other aircraft?
LJG: Oh yeah.
CB: At the same time.
LJG: Yeah there would be -
CB: So you’d fly a stream would you?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: Quiet a stream of them actually. You had to be careful though because they were so keen, these POWs, to get home which was understandable and they used to wander about a bit and you know you can wander about too far in a Lancaster because we didn’t stop the engines.
CB: Right.
LJG: They were just ticking over but you could walk in to the prop and not know it you know and because it was my responsibility as, because I was the last one in you know.
CB: So what was your responsibility in that case?
LJG: Well, yeah.
CB: Was it, you’re responsible for loading up?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Ok. How many in the aircraft?
LJG: Twenty four.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Two rows of twelve
CB: Yeah. Just sitting on what?
LJG: They sat on the floor, legs apart so they got two rows together. Yeah.
CB: And how long were the flights?
LJG: Well -
CB: Roughly.
LJG: An hour and a half.
CB: Right. Ok.
LJG: Two hours.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Nothing much. That was getting there and coming back was that much.
CB: So when you got in did you get up in to your turret or where did you go?
LJG: I was stood by the door.
CB: Right.
LJG: You know, to stop them, to stop them well walking about really. Had to be there. An aeroplane can be dangerous.
CB: LJG: Yeah.
So, yeah Ford and Tangmere. Tangmere was four hours there and back. Well from base to Juvincourt
CB: So the engines were running and you just, they climbed in while you were stationery.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: With the engines running.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: I was the only one that got out.
CB: Were there any cases of accidents in that?
LJG: Not to my knowledge. No. No.
CB: Right.
LJG: As I say all the rest of the crew just stayed where they were you know. The marshall who was organising it used to bring them over in twenty fours and hand them over to me, you know.
CB: Right. Ok. We’ll stop there for a bit.
[machine pause]
CB: Right my witness today is Vic Truesdale and I’m just going to ask him whether he has any questions to put to Joe. Vic -
VT: I was just wondering what it was like, what difference there might have been for you between the daylight raids and the night time raids? I mean was it very routine and just the same more or less or -
LJG: Well I think we just took it in our stride you know. We looked on it mostly as a job. Yeah. A job that we wanted to do but I mean we were all volunteers and I didn’t mind daylights actually although we done as many nights as we did daylights although it was a daylight squadron. It was formed for that reason really. Well moved down to Suffolk because it had been all over the place hadn’t it? I think Woolford Lodge was a place it went to.
CB: Woolfox Lodge.
LJG: And -
CB: In Rutland.
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: Woolfox Lodge.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In Rutland. Yeah.
LJG: Downham Market. They found Methwold a bit small I think.
CB: Did they?
LJG: Well even Chedburgh, I mean one of the runway was quite short really and it, you had to get really get back on the fence at the end of the runway to make sure you got off alright.
CB: Did you?
LJG: Yeah. There’s a lot weight. Especially if you’re going to the Ruhr. Happy Valley everybody called it. I mean probably have fourteen thousand pounds of bombs. A cookie. Four thousand pounder and ten one thousand pounders. I mean you couldn’t bring them back. You had to drop them somewhere. But I didn’t mind daylights actually.
VT: Forgive my ignorance but did you have an escort on the daylight raids?
LJG: No.
VT: No.
LJG: No. No. Only had each other.
VT: Yeah. And how much time you were actually up in the mid gun position when you were on a typical trip shall we say?
LJG: Well er-
VT: When did you go up and come down and things like that?
LJG: When did I get in?
VT: Yeah.
LJG: I was always the last one in the aeroplane. You got in an aeroplane in order. The bomb aimer went in first because his position was right in the front. Then the skipper. Then the flight engineer. Navigator. And wireless operator and he closed the bulkhead doors. That’s why they could wear their uniforms. That was the bit that was heated.
VT: Right.
LJG: Then George got in. Then I got in and then they would shut the door and take the ladder away but I always had to make sure the door was shut. Well I did anyway.
VT: The last one in.
LJG: And then you’d be sat in there and as I say well you’d be in there before the doors shut, the flight sergeant in charge of the aeroplane, to make sure it was alright had to sign the 600.
CB: Form 600.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: To say that everything was ok and the skipper was pleased with it and then, then you had to wait for permission to taxi although the engine was still going but they weren’t revving they were just ticking over. You were told to taxi around and the same coming back. I was always the first out then [laughs], it was, yeah.
CB: So when you were taxiing there would normally be a plane in front and another behind would there?
LJG: Oh yeah.
CB: And how long would it take to get from your dispersal to the end of the runway?
LJG: Well depends which runway you were using.
CB: Right, but on balance -
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Did you always park at the same place?
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: So -
LJG: Each aircraft had its own dispersal.
CB: Right.
LJG: You might not fly in the same aircraft as you can see by that it is R-Roger was our favourite but you had others as well and you took them back where you got them from. Then you’d wait then for the crew bus to take you back to debriefing.
CB: Afterwards.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Just quickly. That’s an interesting point. Why would one plane be more popular, your favourite, R-Roger than the others?
LJG: It was just one of those things I think. You know. You just felt, just felt good with it. I mean nobody like flying Q-Queenie and I don’t think it ever done a full op. There was always trouble with it but nobody could find out why. It was weird you know. You get used to an aeroplane. Plus we had it quite new anyway which was a blessing. R-Roger was very good. So -
VT: And would you like to say a bit more about the, I think you mentioned two targets including the mercy missions. Three or four targets. I just thought you might like to mention a few more.
LJG: I’m sorry I’ve got a problem with my hearing.
CB: Ok. Ok.
VT: Chris will relay -
CB: You did, when went on raids you went to different places so what were the targets that you hit? What are, what are the ones you’ve got there?
LJG: Oh yes.
[pause]
CB: Just looking in the logbook.
LJG: Yes.
[pause]
CB: That’s it.
LJG: As I said Munchen Gladbach was the first one.
CB: Yes.
LJG: That was a daylight. Then operation two was at Wiesbaden, a night drop. Operation three was Dortmund. That was a night drop. Then we done Dresden. Oh no we done one before. It was a daylight. [?]. Then we done Dresden which was nine and a half hours and the following night we done Chemnitz.
CB: Oh did you. Along the road.
LJG: That was nine hours.
CB: Nine hours as well.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Right. They were the two -
LJG: And then we done Dortmund. Another night one. Then we done Geilenkirchen. The next op we didn’t do because we got halfway there and we had engine trouble so we came back. Then the next one was a daylight to Dortmund on the sixth, in February. Datteln was another daylight raid. Geilenkirchen again. Dortmund again. Datteln again. Geilenkirchen again. [?] and that was the end of my bombing career. Oh no. Kirsburg and Kiel. Kiel was our last one. That was a day er a night trip.
CB: Kiel. Kiel was a major one at the end wasn’t it?
LJG: Yeah. Yeah that’s when they sunk the Gneisenau.
CB: Yeah. You mentioned Chemnitz. So that’s the same distance as going to -
LJG: Dresden.
CB: Dresden and they’re relatively close.
LJG: Well it’s in the same area.
CB: Exactly.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So what was that one, how different was that from going to Dresden? Was it any different? Or -
LJG: No actually I think it was a better raid. We didn’t have any problems at all. Quite a nice raid actually. If you can call a bombing raid great.
CB: Well there were some experiences easier than others weren’t they?
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Why were some of the operations in daylight?
LJG: Well I think that’s what the war command wanted you know. I mean the Ruhr was very popular wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah. I mean which was the -
CB: Major place.
LJG: Major -
CB: Of military production.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah. We stopped that.
CB: Ok.
LJG: Kiel was a nice one.
CB: Yeah. But when you were in your daylight raids were there many fighters around?
LJG: We never ever saw one.
CB: No.
LJG: No. It wasn’t until almost at the end of the war we did, we saw a 262.
CB: Jet yes.
LJG: That was, I think that was in April.
CB: That was in daylight.
LJG: In daylight.
CB: LJG: Yeah.
LJG: But he was going the other way.
CB: Oh.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And did he, did you see him shoot at anybody?
LJG: No. No. He was, he was above us actually but he was quite a long way away. As a matter of fact I wasn’t sure what it was and then George said, ‘Well that’s a, funny,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know they had a twin engine,’ he said, ‘But they got no propellers on it.’ He said, ‘It’s weird.’ And when we got back we reported it, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That’s a jet engine.’ But no.
CB: What were the levels of losses like in your time? What was the rate of loss of aircraft in your time?
LJG: Very good. Very good. In my, as I say we got there, we got there on January 1st actually but we didn’t start bombing until February the 1st and our last raid was in April. We had three losses I think. That was all.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah. Unfortunately, it was one that we’d done towards the end of the war experienced pilots and experienced crews which we were considered to be after we’d done a dozen ops or so if a new crew came onto the squadron we’d often take the pilot with us and we took this new pilot –
CB: Just the pilot.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Just to give them some experience you know and the following day we was on a daylight and we lost him.
CB: Oh.
LJG: That was his only op but we don’t know what happened to him ‘cause one minute he’s there, the next minute, ‘cause once you’re on the bombing run you’re interested in yourself, not anyone else and as I say my job is to scan the sky above us.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Or in front of us and when we got back he was reported missing. And we had one which was lucky in one respect. He had an engine cut out, port inner, course he veered over and he landed in a field between the WAAF quarters and the airmen’s mess. Well he crashed in a field but only the rear gunner got out.
CB: Oh.
LJG: When it blew up it shattered off the rear turret and he was found a few yards away. He had a lot of broken bones but he was still alive and I think he was still alive when I left the squadron but that’s the only two I can remember.
CB: Right.
[machine pause]
CB: Now we haven’t talked much about your wife so where did you meet your wife? Under what circumstances and when?
LJG: I walked her home from the pictures when I was on leave one day. But I didn’t see her then until after the war.
CB: Oh.
LJG: No. I had, well I don’t know, I had lots of girlfriends but I didn’t think it was wise, being in the job I was on, you know, survival rate was very bad wasn’t it? So I didn’t want to put her through -. It was after the war, one of the jobs I tried to do I worked for the War Graves Commission and she worked there in the office and we met from then, you know. That was in 1947 ‘48. I didn’t stay there long because although it was civil service it had lots of perks but didn’t have a very high salary.
CB: Now you mentioned very briefly about the police so when you left school then you worked in the daytime but you also did another job for the police. What was that?
LJG: Yeah. We was, well sort of couriers they were in case the phones broke down and they wanted to contact other people in the area we would cycle along with the messages.
CB: Right.
LJG: So we stayed in the police station two nights a week. There was quite a few of us.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And we stayed there overnight in case. This was, well, the beginning of the war of course. Yeah. It was alright. Yeah.
CB: It gave you something to do that was useful.
LJG: Slept in the cells.
CB: I was just going to ask you that. Yeah.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Good. Just tell us about please about air gunnery. So when you were learning air gunnery how did that work? So from the beginning of being at Bishop’s Court what did you do. When you arrived, then what did you do?
LJG: Well our first training was with a twelve bore shotgun and -
CB: Yeah.
LJG: What do they call them?
VT: Clay -
CB: Clay pigeon.
LJG: Yeah. We had a few days of that and we had, I was very good at this, I could strip a Browning machine gun with my eyes shut and put it back together. Not everybody could do that and it was, I’d been there oh two or three weeks before we started flying you know and they flew, we had all Ansons to fly in, you know with a mid upper turret.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And another aircraft would fly a drogue and there was usually four of us in there with, and we’d have a couple of hundred bullets all painted different colours so if you hit the drogue your colour would show up. Blue, yellow, greens and clear you’d all fire a couple of hundred rounds and come back, come back down again.
CB: Ok.
LJG: And they had, we also had cinecameras with, for fighter affiliation. Instead of -
CB: Ok.
LJG: Bullets you had a cinecamera.
CB: How did the fighter affiliation work? Who did what?
LJG: Well you had, you went into the turret with this special gun with adapted, with a film in it and it was usually an old Hurricane they had at Bishop’s Court attack you and you’d film it as if you were shooting it, you know.
CB: How did you get on with that?
LJG: Reasonable. It wasn’t until Peplow I think that I really got used to guns ‘cause we had Wellingtons there and George and I, the other gunner would take turns to be in the turret and then we had fighter affiliation, fighter affiliation there and I got better as the day went on, you know.
CB: In the fighter affiliation what exactly did the fighter do?
LJG: Well he would try and shoot you down. He would attack you as if he was going to shoot you down and you had to -
CB: So what angles would he come in at?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: At what angles would he come in at?
LJG: All angles. All angles. Usually he’d try and get you in the sun but if you had a good skipper it didn’t matter but of course that was the most dangerous place isn’t it? In the sun.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: You don’t see them. Although we had sun, sun goggles you could put down it wasn’t the same.
CB: Did you have sun glasses or just sun goggles?
LJG: Well they were tinted goggles.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Ok. Now when you’re flying as a gunner then you talked earlier about corkscrew which was getting the aircraft out of a jam, who would be calling the corkscrew normally?
LJG: Well, whichever gunner saw, saw something, you know.
CB: You said everybody was caught unawares by the rear gunner would they, would normally there would there be some kind of warning would they when it was far away?
LJG: Well -
CB: How would that work?
LJG: Well, it all depends on what you saw and when you saw it, you know. As I say we didn’t go looking for trouble. We tried to avoid it -
CB: Yeah.
LJG: If we could you know. I think that’s what George. I think he saw something and he wasn’t sure what it was and although he seemed to be going towards you from, but at an angle he decided he would corkscrew.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And how did the corkscrew work?
LJG: Well you turned in, you dived in to the direction that he was coming.
CB: Oh did you?
LJG: So if he was coming from the port quarter you would corkscrew port, roll, corkscrew starboard roll climb port climb starboard.
CB: Back on to where you were.
LJG: Back on to there. Hopefully you get back on the same course you know but we were fortunate we had a good navigator. He always got us there on time, always got us back on time.
VT: Did the Germans know that the corkscrew was a manoeuvre? A standard manoeuvre.
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah. It was for a Lancaster. Yeah. I don’t know whether it would apply to a Halifax ‘cause they’re so different to fly. In fact my skipper reckoned the Lanc acted like a fighter pilot it was that easy to fly. Had lovely lines didn’t it?
CB: Brilliant. What was the combination of crew? Were they all British or –
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Where? Did you have a mixture?
LJG: Alfie Kemp was the skipper. He came from Bradford. Vic [Giles?] was the bomb aimer. He was an East Ender. Don Pryor was the flight engineer. He came from Peterborough. Dicky Ball, navigator. He came from Newton Abbott. Len Garnett, the wireless operator, he came from Leeds. I came from Marlow and George came from Clare. George Green, the rear gunner, came from Clare. As I say the six of us got on well. Well we got on alright with Don but he just –
CB: George Green did you say?
LJG: George Green. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: No relation [laughs].
CB: No. What was the engineer’s name?
LJG: Engineer?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Donald Pryor.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Donald Pryor.
CB: Yeah. Ok. On the social side Joe the crew all gelled together very well professionally.
LJG: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And on the social side but one of the crew was an officer so -
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: How did he fit in with all the sergeants?
LJG: Yeah. He fitted in quite well. Yeah. Well I think he realised he had to rough it like the rest of us if he wanted to get on. And he did. He was great. Dickie. Yeah.
CB: Were you all sergeants or flight sergeants or what were you?
LJG: We were all sergeants, the six of us, when we joined 218. Now Alfie got his flight sergeant [pause] Yes. When we joined Sandtoft Heavy Conversion Unit.
CB: Yeah he became -
LJG: He became a flight sergeant.
CB: A flight sergeant. That’s the pilot.
LJG: And he got his commission -
CB: Yeah. Oh.
LJG: Towards the end of the war. April I think or March. March I think.
CB: Ok. Now after the war Joe how did, did they crew keep in contact or what happened?
LJG: Richard, or Dickie as we always called him, we kept in touch for a few years. He was the best man at my wedding actually.
CB: Was he?
LJG: But in the end they all married and gone to different places. George moved to Lincoln, Vic moved to Ipswich. I don’t know what happened to the skipper. I think I’m the only one alive. It’s, it’s only Dickie, the navigator.
CB: Navigator.
LJG: I’m not sure of -
CB: Yeah. Ok.
LJG: But the skipper is gone.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: The bomb aimer is gone. The bomb aimer went quite young. The wireless op’s gone. Don’s gone, Don Pryor went when he was in his forties. George died last year.
CB: Right. Ok. What was the greatest achievement do you think when you were in the RAF? What made you feel really proud?
LJG: Just thinking that we won. Yeah. And being part of it. Yeah. I enjoyed it. I think I went in with the right attitude that it’s a job I wanted to do. I wanted to fly and I think that that was my achievement you know.
CB: How do you feel about the, not having the opportunity of shooting down anything?
LJG: Well, not really. No. I didn’t think it mattered. As long as we’d done what we had to do.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Which was get there, drop the bombs, come home again ready for the next lot. I don’t think it mattered. Chasing after them wouldn’t have made any difference. The risks were too great. I mean that was their job wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
LJG: We had, we had an aeroplane full of bombs and we were told to take it somewhere drop them.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And that’s what we done.
CB: Your job was to defend the aircraft. Not to shoot down other -
LJG: Well yeah.
CB: Planes. Yeah.
LJG: Avoid it if possible. I mean if you shoot down a Messerschmitt you’ve only killed one man in an aeroplane. If a Messerschmitt shoots down a Lancaster he’s killed seven people. You know. I think the odds were too great to go looking after trouble.
CB: Yeah.
VT: Did some crew go and look for trouble?
LJG: Yeah.
VT: Yeah.
LJG: Oh yeah.
VT: Can you tell us a bit about that?
LJG: Well I mean it’s only hearsay.
VT: Alright. What’s the hearsay then?
LJG: That they would look for trouble.
VT: So what would they do?
LJG: If they saw an aeroplane which they thought was a German they’d go after it or fly in that direction but I mean it was too dangerous for the rest of the crew because we went in a stream. I mean we weren’t like the Yanks. The Yanks made a formed a squadron pattern here in England and they all went out together. We would form a stream on the way out -
VT: Right.
LJG: You wouldn’t catch up in an aeroplane until you got to Brighton. So we didn’t look for trouble. If you stayed where you were supposed to be -
VT: Yeah.
LJG: You would bomb at the height you were supposed to be and there was always the risk that if you were on the lower tier someone up above would drop one on you but that’s the risk you had to take and that was my job you know. If there was one above me, dead above me, I would tell the skipper, you know. ‘There’s a Lanc above us skipper.’ ‘Which way do you want to go?’ He’d decide. I would tell him where it was and he was the skipper. He was the governor. You done what you were told. You tell him what’s happening and he, he’d solve the problem. Either move port or move starboard you know. It depends on where the stream was and what position you were in the stream. I mean we weren’t wing tip to wing tip. I mean we could be a mile wide and gradually move in to the target as we got closer to it. I mean it was, you were an individual really although you were part of a stream.
VT: Yeah.
CB: How much of the time could you see other bombers?
LJG: Hmmn?
CB: How much of the time could you see other bombers?
LJG: At night. Never see one at all.
CB: Right.
LJG: Very very rare unless it was a good moon but of course in daylight you would see them quite a lot.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Because you could be, depends on where you are in the stream they could be all around you.
CB: So just as a, why was it that Bomber Command flew in a stream and not in formation?
LJG: I’ve no idea.
CB: I would suggest it’s because it’s impossible to fly and it’s dangerous to try and fly in formation.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: In the dark.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: So the bomber stream is simply everybody’s going the same way.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: But the danger is as you just said ‘cause you can’t see anybody else -
LJG: The secret of that was you had to be at the right place at the right time.
CB: Right.
LJG: I mean if we went to the Ruhr from Chedburgh it would be base, Reading, Brighton and across the channel from there and then the course would be variable depending on hot spots.
CB: Why did, why did, why did the bomber stream not go straight out across from Chedburgh across Holland?
LJG: Well -
CB: In to Germany.
LJG: There were hot spots that were heavily defended. Very heavily defended. Others not so heavily defended.
CB: With anti-aircraft guns.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
LJG: So we, they tried to pick the safest route for us and the same the way back so you if you all went the same way and turned at the same time everything would be in the right place and you, the chance of having a collision were remote but you had to do what you were told to do.
CB: Yeah. Now on the bombing run the aircraft has to be stabilised.
LJG: Yeah. Yeah. Two minutes.
CB: So how, two minutes before was it?
LJG: Two minutes yeah.
CB: And then how many minutes after bombs gone did you keep straight and level?
LJG: As soon as you could. Get back in to the stream.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: ‘Cause you had, you to had to hold on for a while to do the photoflash.
LJG: Do the photograph.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah. It was only a few seconds really. About fifteen, twenty seconds. As soon as the skipper said, ‘Bomb doors closed,’ that was the sign to get moving.
CB: Right.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: You mentioned earlier about H2S radar system. Was that used very much?
LJG: Well, it was, it was used more at night than it was at daylight. You only used it at daylight I think if the weather was bad but we did use it once or twice yeah and got quite good results apparently. I mean I don’t know. I’m not a technician. The briefers, debriefers would sort that out, you know.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Another question. You carried a bomb load of how much normally? What sort of weight of bombs?
LJG: Depends where you went. I mean the aircraft was only safe with a certain weight in it so the more petrol you had the less bombs you had. At Dresden I don’t think was only six or seven thousand. I don’t, I don’t really know about the bomb load but it was a long way.
CB: Right.
LJG: So you had, I think you had twenty two, fifty gallons of petrol so that means the bomb load is displaced but Happy Valley say, you’d have fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand pounds of bombs and less tanks.
CB: So you talked about the cookie so could you describe what was the cookie?
LJG: Pardon?
CB: CB: What was -
LJG: Cookie.
CB: A cookie. Can you describe it?
LJG: A four thousand pounder.
CB: Yeah well what was in it?
LJG: Well that would depend on what the target was and what they wanted to do. There were devising one that exploded a thousand feet above the ground full of incendiaries and you only dropped high explosives, splatter it all over and a cookie would set fire to it. It was like an oil drum really.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: It was. Not a very attractive looking bomb but there again it mattered it was only going down. It wasn’t going anywhere else.
CB: It didn’t have any fins on it did it?
LJG: No. No. No.
CB: It was just like a big barrel.
LJG: Just like a forty gallon oil drum or a bit longer than that actually. Yeah.
CB: Ok.
[machine pause]
LJG: I think it was about four pound a week on the squadron.
CB: So the pay was in two parts was it? There was a basic pay and then a flying pay.
LJG: No. They just -
CB: Or just a basic -
LJG: Just a single pay.
CB: Ok and how much was that?
LJG: I think it was about four pound a week.
CB: And what was that in relation to what other people were getting?
LJG: Well I think we were reasonably well paid considering. I don’t know what other people were getting. No idea.
CB: In civilian life I mean. In civilian life -
LJG: Well –
CB: Was it better than or worse?
LJG: Well I don’t think there was much in it really. I know my elder brother he was an apprentice cabinet maker and he finished his apprenticeship as the war started but you see he was a lot older than me and I remember him coming home he had four pound and sixpence and he gave me the sixpence. Yeah.
CB: Because it bought a lot in those days.
LJG: Well yeah I mean three pounds was a good wage.
CB: Yeah that’s what I meant you see.
LJG: But then again things were that cheap anyway weren’t they you know. I mean I remember Tesco opening in Wycombe when it was a small shop then and my wife and I were both working at [minimum wage?] and if she spent three pounds on groceries in a week she’d had a bad week [laughs] but now -
CB: This is a company called [Broomway] making compressors.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: We were just talking about when we, when you in the latter days you were in Singapore.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: And then you were ready for demob so what happened?
LJG: They just told us to pack up our clothes and they put us on a boat. Actually I was on the boat the day before because I was mess deck sergeant on the way home and when we got to Southampton unfortunately, well fortunately we were the first ones off because we had the farthest to go. We had to go from Southampton to Blackpool and we got in to Southampton quite early in the morning. Seven or 8 o’clock. Got on the train, got to Blackpool and we got out civvy kit. I got home at midnight that night. Yeah.
CB: All day travelling.
LJG: All day travelling yeah. I’d been travelling for three weeks.
CB: Amazing.
LJG: Well we, at that particular time they were, India was getting independence and we were evacuating in troops and we had a load of band boys we had to divert from Singapore to Bombay to pick up these band boys and they stuck them right down at the front. The lowest deck of all. And as we come out of Bombay a day out hit a typhoon and we had to heave to for a day and the boat was doing this.
VT: Yeah.
CB: Frightening.
LJG: They was, they was sick and sick and sick terrible but as I say we got out of it.
CB: How many people on the boat?
LJG: A couple of hundred I suppose.
CB: And what was the liner called?
LJG: HMS Otranto. Otranto yeah. I think it rocked when it was in port, in dock. Not very exciting.
CB: So then you had your demob. What was the most, you said it was difficult to settle. What was the thing that made it so difficult -
LJG: Well it’s such a change -
CB: To settle?
LJG: Wasn’t it? Such a change you know. I mean in Singapore it was the lap of luxury. I mean, fortunately I didn’t do any work. It was in ‘45 when the Singapore RAF were on strike.
CB: Oh.
LJG: All junior ranks it was. Senior ranks weren’t allowed to go on strike. And although I had a double rank you see I was flight sergeant AC2.
CB: Yeah
LJG: Anyway the -
CB: Because you were reserve?
LJG: Yeah
CB: Volunteer reserve.
LJG: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LJG: And well Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park was in charge and Singapore was a pre-war station. We had lovely barrack blocks. Of course the Japs had used them so they were using.
CB: Right.
LJG: The swimming pool they used as an oil dump and everybody else, well [they had been?] on strike and this Mr Park he went to Australia I think and Group Captain Beamish became CO and he was sport mad. If you could play sport you were alright so I decided that I would play sport.
CB: What was your specialty then?
LJG: I was goalkeeper. I played for 389 MU. I played for the station once but if you were on guard duty and you were playing for the station you came off guard duty and went and played football.
CB: Oh right. Yeah.
LJG: And he got things going you know. He had football pitches marked out, he had a cinema cleaned out and working order. It was great.
CB: Right.
218 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
briefing
crewing up
demobilisation
Halifax
Lancaster
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Sandtoft
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/109/2425/LGreenLC1318527v.1.pdf
b5e686d98ddbb0320085b55c6d541553
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
Green, Leonard
Len Green
L C Green
Description
An account of the resource
Twelve items. The collection relates to the service of Warrant Officer Leonard C Green (1318527 Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, correspondence, a newspaper cuttings, four photographs and a foreign languages phrase book. Leonard Green flew Lancasters with 50 and 61 Squadrons from RAF Skellingthorpe and completed 19 daylight and night time operations.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mark Boother and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Green, LC
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
Leonard Green’s navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGreenLC1318527v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator's air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book for Flight Sergeant Leonard Green, wireless operator, covering the period from 15 December 1942 to 20 January 1946. He was stationed at RAF Manby, RAF Wigtown, RAF Bitteswell, RAF Bruntingthorpe, RAF Swinderby, RAF Syerston, RAF Skellingthorpe and RAF Coningsby. Aircraft flown in were, Dominie, Proctor, Anson, Wellington, Manchester and Lancaster. He flew a total of 23 operations, 13 night with 50 Squadron and 3 day and 7 night with 61 Squadron. He also flew operations Exodus with 61 Squadron and Dodge to Bari, Italy with 83 Squadron. Targets were, Hannover, Dusseldorf, Modane, Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Brunswick, Magdeburg, Bohlen, Gravenhorst, Dortmund-Emms Canal, Lutzkendorf, Wurzburg, Bremen, Wesel, Nordhausen and Molbis. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Lundy and Flight Lieutenant Phillips. The log book also contains many newspaper clippings relating to the targets attacked, aircraft flown in and events of the war and post war. It also contains pictures of the crew positions of Navigator, Bomb Aimer and Wireless Operator.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Scotland
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
France--Modane
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Würzburg
Italy--Bari
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Germany--Böhlen
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia)
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1943-10-18
1943-11-03
1943-11-10
1943-11-11
1943-11-18
1943-11-19
1943-11-22
1943-11-26
1943-11-27
1943-12-02
1943-12-03
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1943-12-29
1943-12-30
1944-01-02
1944-01-03
1944-01-14
1944-01-15
1944-01-20
1944-01-21
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1945-02-19
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-24
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-22
1945-03-23
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-06
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
1945-04-26
1945-05-06
1945-05-12
1945-05-14
1945-07-17
1945-09-09
1945-10-16
1945-10-20
1945-12-14
1945-12-20
1660 HCU
29 OTU
50 Squadron
61 Squadron
83 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing up
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Manchester
military service conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
Proctor
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Coningsby
RAF Manby
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigtown
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/187/2467/SMarshallS1594781v10031.1.jpg
127f75d875563164a3ceb15110f8de91
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
Marshall, Syd. Album
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Marshall, S
Description
An account of the resource
77 items. The album contains wartime and post-war photographs, newspaper cuttings, and memorabilia assembled by Warrant Officer Sidney Charles Marshall (1924 - 2017, 1594781 Royal Air Force). Syd Marshall was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Marshall and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-08
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
ELSHAM WOLDS’ GREAT PART IN BOMBING CAMPAIGN
Four Years of Magnificent Effort
ELSHAM Wolds began to operate with R.A.F. Bomber Command in July, 1941. The airfield was not quite completed when No. 103 Squadron arrived from Newton on July 11, but the Squadron soon settled in and has remained there ever since.
In nearly four years Elsham has built up a high reputation in the Royal Air Force. There was little delay before the airfield was placed on an operational basis and the Wellingtons were out on July 24, from 11 a.m. to 6.45 pm., attacking the battle cruiser “Gneisenau” at Brest.
Before long the Germans knew of the new bomber station, and in August, 1941, enemy aircraft attacked it. They did no serious damage. They tried again several times in later years, though never in strength.
The “Wimpeys” held the fort while the factories got busy with the production of the new four-engined bombers.
On September 10, 1941, Wellingtons flew to Turin for the loss of only one aircraft. By the end of December, Elsham was able to record as many as 17 Wellingtons airborne on a single night.
On one occasion two sergeants brought back their aircraft after four of the crew had baled out; a flare had caught alight in the rear fuselage.
AMONG THE 1,000
After taking part in the May and June 1,000 bomber raids in 1942, there was a lull.
Halifaxes began to arrive and in August made their first sorties from the station, against Dusseldorf. Hardly had the engineering staff accustomed themselves to these aircraft when there was another change, this time to Lancasters. By November 21 the Lancasters had replaced the Halifaxes and were doing excellently.
On the night of May 23-24, 1943, No. 103 Squadron put up 27 Lancasters, which at that time was a Command record.
The Commander-in-Chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, G.C.B., O.B.E., A.F.C., visited the station in September and addressed the crews.
One of the flights of No. 103 Squadron was transferred to No. 576 Squadron, which was being formed at Elsham. This left 103 a two-flight squadron. The two squadrons were together in close association and friendly rivalry until October, 1944.
OVER BERLIN
No. 103 Squadron had 30 aircraft over Berlin on the night of November 26-27. Elsham became a base station from December 1 and controlled the airfields at Kirmington and North Killingholme.
The wild weather of January, 1944, made life at Elsham what the R.A.F. call “pretty raw,” but the ground staff worked wonders in clearing blocked roads, and runways.
During the spring the Base Commander, Air Commodore Ivelaw Chapman, O.B.E., D.F.C., A.F.C., was shot down over France and taken prisoner. He has recently returned to this country. Air Commodore F.R.D. Swain, O.B.E., A.F.C., who broke the altitude record some years ago, took over from Air Commodore Chapman.
In June both squadrons at Elsham dropped a thousand tons in a month for the first time, and kept this up for some time. In the summer people in the neighbourhood were able to realise the full power of Bomber Command. Daylight operations against V sites, railway centres, and in close support of the Army enabled them to see the sky full of four-engined aircraft day after day.
In October, No. 103 Squadron dropped 1,277 tons, and 86 aircraft of both squadrons operated against Duisburg within 24 hours. On October 31, No. 576 Squadron left Elsham for Fiskerton. With 103 Squadron they had dropped 5,748 tons in the previous five months.
BOMBER COMMAND’S PRIDE
Elsham was the home of Lancaster “M.2,” the pride of Bomber Command. Its long life showed what a high standard of maintenance had been kept up. “M.2.” first flew on operations on May 4, 1943, to Dortmund, with 103 Squadron. It was later transferred to 576 Squadron, and had been on 103 operations by the beginning of 1944. It was retired with 144 trips to its credit, 97 of them to Germany and 15 to Berlin.
During the last winter everyone at Elsham was working at full stretch, and the Lancasters were fully employed on targets like the Ruhr, Ludwigshafen, Nuremburg, Munich, Chemnitz, and Dresden. Many mines were laid in enemy waters.
For the last month of operations No. 103 Squadron was joined by No. 100 Squadron from Waltham (Grimsby), and both were in the attack on Berchtesgaden on April 25.
When there was no more bombing to be done, large convoys of Army vehicles began to drive up to the station. They carried food for the Lancasters to take to Holland. Another task was to bring back hundreds of freed prisoners of war from the Continent.
Many Elsham names will go down in history for acts of heroism. On May 4, 1944, an aircraft of No. 576 Squadron, captained by Pilot-Officer Reed, of Wellingborough, Northants, landed with the flight engineer helping Reed to hold the control column and the air bomber clinging to the rudder pedals. The Lancaster looked a total wreck. It had been shot up by a fighter over Mailly-le-Camp; it had caught fire, a large hole was knocked in the floor, electrical and navigational instruments were smashed, the rudders and elevators were damaged, and the rear-turret was hanging by a threat.
Two Lancaster from 103 Squadron were each attacked by two fighters on July 29, 1944, when bombing Stuttgart. All four of the enemy were destroyed in a couple of minutes.
Another 103 crew shot down a Ju. 88 over Karlsruhe on April 25, 1944, but sustained serious damage. The pilot had to ditch, and the crew were on the Goodwin Sands for seven hours before being picked up.
Just before the end of the war one of Elsham’s aircraft came back with a 250lb. bomb embedded in a wing. The pilot told the crew to bale out, and the baled out himself near base.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Elsham Wolds' Great Part in Bombing Campaign
Four years of Magnificent Effort
Description
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A history of 103 Squadron's operations at RAF Elsham Wolds.
Format
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One newspaper cutting on an album page
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eng
Type
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Text
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SMarshallS1594781v10031
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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France--Brest
Italy--Turin
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Munich
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dresden
Netherlands
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Karlsruhe
France
Italy
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Govert J. van Lienden
100 Squadron
103 Squadron
576 Squadron
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
ditching
Gneisenau
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Ju 88
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Kirmington
RAF North Killingholme
rivalry
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/159/2504/AParkinsHW150612.2.mp3
a7b074df4b419b69687ccb1c168e6939
Dublin Core
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Title
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Parkins, Harry
H W Parkins
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Harry Parkins (891679 Royal Air Force), his logbook, identity card and one photograph. Harry Parkins was a flight engineer with 630 Squadron and 576 Squadron and flew 30 night time and 17 daylight operations from RAF Fiskerton and RAF East Kirkby.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Harry Parkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Harry, you were going to tell me the story of being shot at.
HP: Yes it was on the 21st of the 6th ‘44, we were on operations to Wessling, and we had twelve thousand pounds worth on bombs, we succeeded in doing that but on the way back I spotted what I thought was a plane coming towards us, I shouted to the gunners ‘cause [sic] they hadn’t seen it, and as it got nearer it started firing tracer bullets which was very frightening, and the gunners spotted it and shot at it and luckily they downed it, so we were able to get back home safely but I went down to see where the tracer bullet had gone in the aircraft to see if there was any serious damage, I couldn’t see any but when we landed the ground crew actually cried because there was seventeen holes in the plane and it didn’t fly again, a shame that was, and that took us four hours twenty minutes that trip.
DE: Where were you standing when you saw this aircraft attacking you?
HP: I was just standing by the seat that’s next to the pilot, where there’s a little dome, and standing in that dome you can see all the way round, and I always liked to look all the way round when I wasn’t checking the engines because, it was your job really to spot anything, and some of the frightening aspects of it is if the Perspex wasn’t cleaned very well, in the night time, incidentally that was a night time flight, in the night time if you saw a little speck of dirt that hadn’t been cleaned it could be a fighter coming after you, so we always wanted the ground crew to make sure the Perspex was always as clean as possible.
DE: So what did an incoming eighty-eight look like then?
HP: [slight laugh] it’s hard to remember because with the tracer bullets coming at you, you practically didn’t see the plane, all you saw was these lights coming at you, which was very frightening, it’s bad enough being shot at but to see, actually see it coming at you, it was worse than ever.
DE: Did the pilot take any evasive action?
HP: Yes, he did a slight corkscrew but not too much because the gunners had got the plane, and it went down, so he really didn’t have to do a corkscrew, but that’s a frightening thing when you do a corkscrew, because at one time coming back from an operation, I forget where that was, we were caught in searchlights, and that again is another frightening thing, and it’s, it’s like being on a stage completely naked and everyone’s looking at you, and well the gunner shouted to do a corkscrew and it went really mad, it was a really violent corkscrew, you thought the wings were gonna [sic] come off, but we managed to get out of the searchlight and carry on home, again we were lucky.
DE: And when you landed, you say the ground crew were really upset, was it that obvious then that the plane had been hit?
HP: Yeah, you could see all the holes in the side, yeah, but we didn’t know until after briefing how many holes there was, seventeen all told [sic], which is quite a lot, [pause] that was our twentieth operation that one.
DE: So, you mentioned at certain points when the searchlights were on you or if you were being shot at you felt frightened, how did you feel before and during operations normally?
HP: I didn’t feel too bad because, I think half the time being a young age it was like excitement more than anything else, you didn’t really have a lot of fear at all, at least I didn’t, and I don’t think the rest of the crew did, except maybe the rear gunner because that time when we had a mid-air collision, I think that really frightened him.
DE: But he was OK?
HP: He carried on until the end yeah, and when we finished the tour of ops, they went back to their various countries, which was Australia and New Zealand.
DE: You had another story about some low flying?
HP: Oh yes, my skipper like to do low flying, and, we were low flying what we called air to sea firing where the gunners fired off their guns to make sure everything was OK and you checked various things in the plane and coming back, he decided to do a bit of low flying along Skegness and in actual fact when I looked out from my little blister, I could see the pier above us [laughs], and he still carried on and as we passed further along near to the pier there was two men in a boat, who must have thought we were coming into crash because they jumped out the boat [laughs] and we passed them and coming up to Butlins camp which at that time had been taken over by the navy, and the navy was having a parade on their parade ground and he went so low that the parade all scarpered and ducked down and we all laughed at that and carried on back to East Kirkby, but a couple of days later we were called to the group captains office and he said, ‘first of all you needn’t deny this because we’ve got people who witnessed your aircraft number from the naval station’ and he said the naval officer in charge contacted him because he knew it was from East Kirkby and said that ‘tell your crew that next time if they do that, it won’t be air to sea firing, it’ll be ground to air firing’ and he just said ‘dismissed’, I think he thought it was more of a joke as well [pause], anything else?
DE: Well anything else you can tell me?
HP: I don’t know if I told you about when Pilot Officer Jackson and I went, three, twice with him, did I tell you that?
DE: Yes you did.
HP: I’m just trying to think of the other thing.
DE: Yes you said that three was your lucky number.
HP: Yes, well I lived in 13, Churchill Walk in England, in London I should say and we had a bomb dropped on the next street and it shattered all the windows of our street, right the way along except number thirteen, never touched the windows at all, and with no explanation for that at all.
DE: Would you say you are quite a superstitious person then?
HP: In the way of three and thirteen, yes.
DE: What about any lucky charms did you have anything?
HP: No, never had lucky charms but quite a few air crew used to have lucky charms, and my opinion is that often the lucky charms cause them to do something wrong and end up being either shot down or crashed, because when you think about it, if a member of the crew had a lucky charm and he’d gone and left it before he was flying, instead of his mind being on what he should be doing, his mind was on, ‘what did I do with that lucky charm?’ and during that period something could happen, but that was only my opinion.
DE: So you think it’s more professional just to keep your mind focused on the job?
HP: Oh yes, definitely.
DE: Did you know if anybody in your crew had anything like that?
HP: No, none of them, none at all, the only thing we considered a lucky charm was our whistle and we all had a whistle it was always pinned to your coat.
DE: So the other thing I’ve read about is similar superstitions that if you associated with a certain woman she was unlucky or anything like that, do you have any stories about things like that?
HP: No, the only story I had was that one of the air crew, I don’t know who he was, I think he was a pilot, he’d got going with one of the girls in the village and after a while, whether he got fed up with her or not, she found out that he’d been seeing someone else when he said he was off flying and she happened to be in, the, it was a WAF and she happened to be in where they had the parachutes and as a revenge apparently she cut the strings of the parachute and of course nothing happened for a while but eventually they were shot up and the crew bailed out but his parachute didn’t open properly and that was the end of him, there was an enquiry about that but it was more or less hushed up because it would’ve scared other members of the crew. Whether that was a true story I don’t know but that’s the story that went round.
DE: And you heard that on, during your time on operations?
HP: Yes.
DE: Did you have any associations with any WAF’s?
HP: No, only when I was training I had a association with a land army girl who lived in Nottingham, and, I think it’s more or less after, no towards the end of the war, I was stationed at Stirgate and we got leave and I thought ‘oh I’d go into Nottingham and see if I could find this land army girl’ and as it happened, whilst I was in Nottingham I met up with some Americans and they got chatting to me and they said they had a club, would I like go into the club and having a few drinks, well a few drinks ended up to a lot of drinks and then I found out where this land army girl lived and I knocked on the door and she came out and give me a cuddle and said ‘oh lets go for a walk’, and at Nottingham there’s the Lincoln castle where you go up a sort of a hill, and we were walking up there and we got to the top, we were going to sit down and have a chat and I was dying for a leak [slight laugh] and I said ‘I’m ever so sorry, I’ve got to go and find a toilet’ and I actually run down all the hill to find somewhere, I found somewhere, when I went back up she’d gone, [slight laugh] that was the end of that ‘cause [sic] she didn’t like people drinking, and that’s about the only experience I had.
DE: Did you have a lot to do with Americans then?
HP: Not really, but we did have an American who swapped a pilots, with, he came to East Kirkby as a pilot on Lancaster’s and an English pilot went onto theirs, to go onto super fortresses , just an exchange and it appeared the American was a bit of an unruly type so that’s why they were keen to get rid of him go to the RAF, but if ever we went out together because we always get chatting together, he would go into Boston with us and instead of wearing either his American outfit or his British outfit he used to go with part aircrew American on top and part RAF at the bottom and he was always being picked up by MP’s, but being American he always got away with it, and there was one incident where, it was when a lot of prisoners made an escape and the Germans found out where they were coming up and I don’t know if you ever read about it but the Germans shot, I think it was about thirty or forty of the escapees, so at that time the group captain said that if anybody wanted to draw a gun, fifteen rounds of ammunition, he’s not saying you should do that but if you felt you wanted to you could do, so I think nearly half the air force drew guns and fifteen rounds of ammunition, and this American he’d got his gun and fifteen rounds of ammunition, and outside his nissen hut, there was a tree where a blackbird used to come every day twittering away and it upset him he didn’t like this blackbird so he went outside and fired at it but he never hit it at all until he run out of ammunition , and I can remember also, where you went for ablutions, it was in a place outside where your nissen hut was, and they used to issue you with a tin bowl, and I was walking across with this tin bowl and all of a sudden a bullet hit this tin bowl [laughing], I dropped the tin bowl and rushed into the ablution, never found out who fired it, but there was so much ridiculous firing going on round the airdrome at East Kirkby that the group captain got to know about this and he said ‘right, that is stupid of all these people’, so he wanted all the guns handed, handed in and all the ammunition handed in, well, all the guns were handed in OK but I think there was only ten rounds of ammunition, all the rest had been spent. Similar things like, in my crew a New Zealander, he didn’t like flies and we used to often play darts a lot and he saw this fly going across the dart board so out come the gun firing, [laughing] firing at the fly, so as I say there was all daft things like that going on, that’s why the group said, group captain said ‘right they’ve all got to come back in again’, he didn’t trust any of them.
DE: So, people in your crew took them, did you take one?
HP: Oh yeah, we all took one I think, as I say, I think everybody who was allowed to took one, I never fired mine, I don’t think my crew did except this New Zealander, he did at the dart board [laughs] a crazy lot.
DE: I’ve read in other people’s stories that the medical officers sometimes gave tablets to help you get through night operations, did that ever happen with you?
HP: Never heard of it, never, although once when I got a sty on my eye it was considered to be unlucky if you couldn’t go off on your routine operations one after the other all the way through, and I got such a bad sty on my eye, I thought ‘well they won’t let me fly’, so I said to the crew ‘I’m going down to sick quarters’ to see if they can do anything, and sick quarters was quite a way off the airdrome and it had a seat in there which was just concrete to sit on while you was waiting to be seen by the doctor, well when I got there there was nobody else there but the doctor wasn’t there, and while I was sat there, the dentist came out and he said ‘it must be freezing cold over there, son’ he said ‘come in, sit on the dentist chair and we’ll have a look at your teeth’ [laughs] so he had a look at me teeth and before I knew it he’d took one out and [laughs] I got blood all over me shirt and I said ‘oh I only came in for me eye’ he said ‘well it was much warmer in here wasn’t it?’, [laughs] and I said ‘yes’ and his WAF helper, she said ‘oh here’s the doctor now, so you can go in next door and see the doctor’, and he looked at me and said ‘good God, what’s all this blood all over you?’ ‘I said ‘well the dentist decided to keep me in the warm and took a tooth out’ and I’m sure, it was that one there, and I’m sure there was nothing wrong with it, and he looked at me eye and he said ‘I could lance it’ and he played around with the sty for several minutes and he said ‘if you go back and rest before you get your briefing’ he said, ‘I think you’ll be OK’ and that was it, I carried on on ops.
DE: I would’ve thought you’d need more time off for having a tooth out?
HP: Yeah [laughs]. We certainly had some funny things happening during our time in the RAF.
DE: You briefly mentioned the ablutions then, what were the living accommodations and the ablutions like there?
HP: Well it was only a nissen hut with so many beds all the way down which weren’t all that comfortable but you had plenty of blankets that you could put underneath or over the top of the mattress so it weren’t too bad and the ablutions was, well you had to take your own bowl, you didn’t get hot water, just turned the tap on and that was it, so it was very sparse, but you got on with it, you didn’t complain, if you complained nothing would happen about it [slight laugh], and another thing happened, they used to be card mad and if you weren’t on any day light trips or anything like that, you used to sit there playing pontoon or shoot, shoot pontoon, I don’t know if you knew that, it was where you had a dealer and he’d go round to everybody to see how much they’d put it the deal in the front, either to match his or over match it then as they dealt the cards round to each person you said ‘shoot’, either put a bit more money in or you left it as it was and you either lost or you won and you took something out or put something in and when it got to my turn, I had an ace and I thought its worth shooting the lot , so I shot the lot, I got a queen and the damn dealer got a king so his took preference over mine so I lost the lot and another fella next to me, weren’t member of my crew, he had an Indian motorbike and he’d done the similar thing and lost it all so he still wanted to go again so dealer said ‘what have you got?’ and he said ‘well, I’ve got no money left but I’ll put my motor bike in’ [laughs] and he put the motorbike in and he lost, so round it went and when it came to my turn again and I said ‘I’ve got no money neither but I’ll shoot the motorbike and I’ll have to pay if I lose, at a later date’, anyways I won so I won this motorbike and I had no clues what so ever how to drive a motorbike, and the fella who had originally lost it, he said ‘you lucky devil’ he said ‘I’ll show you what to do’ and we got outside the nissen hut ‘cause the card game had finished and he said ‘right, you do this, do that, and away you go’, so I did that and did that and I went straight through the ablution, straight through [laughs], straight through the covers that were on the outside and just stopped so I said ‘no I don’t want this anymore’ [laughing], I had a few bruises but the motorbike was OK, except where there was a big hole in the side of the ablution, so the next time we played I put the motorbike in purely to lose it, and I never went on a motorbike again.
DE: Probably quite right. So did you play cards with other crews?
HP: Yeah there was all sorts that used to mix in with playing cards yeah, yeah there was one time when we were due leave but the train wasn’t due till, I forget probably about half past ten or eleven and we were always up before seven, you go for your breakfast, come back and waiting to go in, get in to Boston station and you’d play cards, and I played cards and lost again, lost all me money, I went on leave purely with your leave application where you didn’t have to pay anything and when I got to London, I relied on my father to pay for the fayre to get back home, and I said what I had been doing, playing cards and he said ‘your best bet is to leave cards alone unless you’ve got a good memory for where cards turn up’, so I never played cards again [slight laugh].
DE: So just quickly going back to the nissen hut, who did you share with?
HP: Just your own crew, maybe, possibly another crew that were in a nissen hut nearby, so it weren’t too bad, bit cold in winter though, yeah [pause], but I had a cut throat razor, as where we used to live in London, we always used to go to the top of the road ‘cause there was a Jewish barber there and he was always asking about me, when I come home on leave I always used to go there to have a haircut and have a chat with him and he said, ‘you’ll soon be needing to shave, won’t you?’, I said ‘well I got a little bit of stubble coming’, he said ‘I’ve got something for you, I’ve saved this for you’ and it was a German crop razor one of the best there could be and he said, ‘there you are, that’s for you’ and eventually I had to use this, and people used to come and watch me shaving thinking that if I got the twitch from flying I’d cut myself [slight laugh] but I never did and then we went off somewhere and we came back and somehow the call up[?] seemed to go astray, went wrong and instead of landing at east Kirkby we landed at another field, airfield nearby, can’t remember what it was, it might have been Strubby or some name like that, and when we landed we had briefing and they said ‘oh you are not far from East Kirkby so you may as well stay the night, which we did, then next morning refuelled and fly back to East Kirkby, when I went into the nissen hut there was nothing of mine there, it had all gone, and I had a wallet where one of the young ladies I knew in London had given me a ten pound note and I’d always kept that in this wallet for emergencies and that had gone, ‘cause you weren’t allowed to take anything on ops with you, nothing to identify you, and what had happened, if any crews were shot down or didn’t come back, rather than send any of the stuff that the person had kept, they used to have what they called a committee of adjustments, and that was where the stuff was put in to be auctioned off and everything was auctioned and I lost all my stuff, and other members of the crew had lost their radio or maybe a bike, it was all gone, so I never ever got my razor back.
DE: Oh dear and this was because you were somewhere else for one night?
HP: Yeah, they thought we had been shot down.
DE: So for the sake of one phone call, you lost all your kit.
HP: Yeah. That was one of those things, but hardly anybody had ever heard of it, committee of adjustments, I’ve never heard of anybody who knew about it, none of the parents or lovers knew about it either, it just all sort of vanished.
DE: And over efficient as well it seems.
HP: Yeah, very efficient [laughs]
DE: You mentioned when you were talking about your razor, about the dangers of shaving if you got the twitch, could you explain a little bit about the twitch?
HP: Yeah, well that was where some air crew who had got so scared, that they were too scared to admit that they were frightened and they used to have a sort of twitch which gave them away, you know when they were walking along they would go like that somehow, do a funny little twitch with a hand or the head and we we [sic] had one fella who had got it so bad he was walking along as though he was carrying a ladder and if anybody was near him they’d shout at them ‘get out the way, can’t you see the ladder?’ and he’d got nothing, again [laughing] this is what we called the twitch.
DE: Did these people carry on flying then?
HP: Some of them did and some of them didn’t, they ended up in hospital you know having consultations and things like that, see if they could get them back to normal.
DE: Did you know anyone personally?
HP: No. I say on an airdrome or a base you’d mainly know your own crew really thoroughly but other crews you didn’t really mix a lot at all, so didn’t know many of them at all, ‘cause many a time I spoke or people have asked me about being in East Kirkby and they say, ‘do you know Jack Thompson?’, I said ‘never heard of him’, ‘oh well he was there, he was at East Kirkby’, as I say you just didn’t know these people, unless they were someone famous.
DE: So you wouldn’t talk to each other in briefing or anything like that then?
HP: Not really no, ‘cause your crew was your crew altogether and further down was their crew, all listening to what was going on.
DE: I see, what about the ground personnel and the ground crew that looked after your aircraft?
HP: They were smashing, really good blokes, yeah.
DE: Did you have more to do with them then?
HP: Not really, only when we took off and come back again, so you didn’t really mix with them in the mess because most of them were, I forgot what, LAC’s, they weren’t sergeants or anything like that, so they were in a different category.
DE: I just wondered if you chatted to them about anything out on the dispersals?
HP: You did occasionally but not very often, not unless like when we came back and we had seventeen holes and they were upset about it.
DE: Did you always fly the same aircraft then if you could?
HP: No you had several different aircrafts but in just looking at that, we flew an X, X X X X, the same Lancaster all the time there, then, after that X X, Q V, all different letters to the different Lancaster’s.
DE: I’ve read somewhere that the ground crew said that the aircraft belonged to them and the air crew only borrowed it.
HP: Yes [laughs] I think that’s true as well, because they really were good blokes, nothing wrong with them at all, they really looked after your aircraft, [pauses] in fact they should have got more praise than they ever did, ground crews.
DE: Did you have any views about what you were doing? I know it’s been a matter of debate since the war a lot.
HP: Not really, but I always thought we were doing the right thing as being a Londoner and being in the Blitz, seeing what had been happening in London and you felt you were doing the right thing to do the same thing back to them.
DE: Yes you mentioned last time we spoke how you were on your way to work and the factory wasn’t there anymore.
Hp: Yeah, so you know you had that feeling we were doing the proper thing.
DE: I can’t remember if I asked you much about your recruitment and your training?
HP: Well I think I mentioned that, two lads at the outer city trip (?-name of company) transport company where we were thinking we might get called up, we were having our lunch and we were debating should we volunteer and we decided we ought to so we got what we wanted and we went straight out after lunch, straight down to the recruiting office and both volunteered for the RAF and that was because I thought it was safer in the air than on the ground at the time.
DE: Yes you said that you didn’t want to join the navy because you couldn’t swim very well.
HP: No only across the canal because there was a big canal near us in London and we often used to go and swim across the canal, and we also used to get an old bike wheel, break all the spokes out and thread a sack round, put some string on and drop it down, pull it up and we’d got loads of sticklebacks and it reminded me of that, seeing I don’t know if you watch it, Countryfile, it was showing you about a stickleback there that was blowing its nest waiting for the little ones to come out and they called it the star of the show and it reminded me of that because we used to sell these sticklebacks then to other kids, because everybody used to like a fish in a jar, made a little bit of money doing that. [laughs]
DE: But you were expected into the RAF and then you went away?
HP: Yes we, we went first of all to the flats were film stars used to be, the RAF had accommodated those and I thought it was marvellous because the bathroom was cut glass all the way around with like fish swimming round and I thought ‘boy this is the life to be in the RAF’ but that was only temporary while we were doing the training, and also on the square we had a fella called Alva Liddel, he used to be an announcer for the news and he always used to say ‘this is the news and Alva Liddel speaking it’ and he happened to be in, I don’t know whether he volunteered or not or was called up, but he was on the square and in the papers it said ‘this is Alva Liddel on the square, bashing it’, so that was interesting and we were opposite London zoo and we had our food in the zoo, and people used to be wondering around looking at us having food in the zoo which seemed strange to them, and there used to be a place, I forget the name of the place but we used to march from the flats where the square was, down across the stop lights on Marylebone road to a swimming baths, where we used to have training for, if you came down how to turn the, not the airborne lifeboat, it was like a big circle, I can’t remember what they call that now, but often if you dropped it for you to go in to, it would turn up the wrong way so the bottom of it was on the top and there was like a suction, so you had to be able to go over the top of it, hold on just where the bottle was for blowing it up, grab hold of that and pull yourself up like that and go right the way under and re-put it right, [DE: turn the dingy the right way round] yeah dingy that was it I couldn’t remember what they were called them, yeah and I wasn’t pretty good at that even though I couldn’t swim very far, but they used to make you march in this place as well, because they put boards across and if it was raining you could go in there and do your marching up and down on these boards, when it was swimming they used to take all the boards up and you did the swimming exercise, and there was one where this sergeant he called out, I don’t know if I mentioned this before, he called out that all the crews that were there had to put on their flying suit and he said ‘I want all the swimmers this end and all the non-swimmers that end’, so I thought to myself ‘I don’t know what he’s going to do so I’m going to go to the non-swimmers’ so I was down the non-swimmers which was the least deep part of it and all the swimmers were up by the diving board, then he said ‘right I don’t want anybody to move but all the non-swimmers come up by the diving board’, all the swimmers went down to the non-deep side and the idea was you had to climb up to the top diving board and jump off with your flying suit on then swim to the side if you could, and I was that scared of having to go up that ladder I kept getting behind and behind and behind, and I was the last one and everybody was booing me and he came up to me and he said ‘I can understand you being scared but just go up to the top, I’ll come with you and just look over and you’ll be OK’, he said ‘then you can come back down’ so I believed him and I went up with him, got to the top, and he said ‘you can let go of the bars either side’, so I let go and he just pushed me and down I went and I went right down under, well I didn’t come up because where the zips on my flying suit didn’t work they just filled up with water, held me down, so there was panic on to fish me out, get me back and pump me chest to get me spilling all the water out and after a while I was OK, but I wouldn’t dive after that [slight laugh], and that was a frightening experience, and I always hoped that I would never have to jump out of an aircraft into the sea or even have to turn the dingy over, but luckily we never had to, but that was a frightening experience before I even got to flying.
DE: So what other things did they have you doing for your training to be an engineer?
HP: Oh before you was, became an engineer you had to do like army training, going through tunnels and climbing over things and that was done at Bridlington, I think I mentioned that, [DE: briefly yes], well that was where we were marching along and I looked over the side and I thought that looks like my Uncle Ernie, and I didn’t know he was in the army, he’d been called up, and I just went marching over to him, because the sergeant halted the crew, came over to me and shouted, shouted a few abusive words at me and I said ‘well that’s my Uncle Ernie’, he said ‘I don’t care if it’s the f’ing queen’ he said ‘you don’t walk out of my marching section’, so I got ten days working in the cook house cleaning dirty tins, yeah, and he got chatting to me uncle to see if it was true, he was my uncle and they got quite friendly and he used to arrange football matches between the RAF and the army, ‘cause the army didn’t get on very well with the RAF but that broke the ice down.
DE: Why didn’t the army and the RAF get on?
HP: Well we were called the ‘Brylcreem boys’ [laughs], supposed to be the aloof.
HP: Did I mention that on, when they were expecting the invasion from the Germans they put us on duty either end of Bridlington with our rifle, so many rounds of ammunition and you had to march up a little way and back just to see if there was any invaders coming and shoot them, and this particular time it was a moonlight night with the clouds suddenly going over, and I looked up at one of the hotels and I could see what I thought was somebody flashing to the enemy, so I thought ‘well I’ve got to go and investigate as I’ve seen it’, and I got my rifle ready, I went scrambling up the stairs, right to the top, and as I went along the top corridor I saw another fella coming at me with the rifle and it frightened the life out of me, I dropped my torch, dropped my rifle and ran like mad and when I got to the bottom I thought ‘that was odd, nobody shot at me and nobody come running after me’ and I couldn’t work it out so I thought I better go back, pick me gun up, rifle, and when I got up there I realised I’d saw myself in a mirror [laughs] at the end of the corridor and there was anybody there and the light that I thought was somebody signalling was as a cloud went over the moon it was flickering on the window and the window was sort of flashing, I never told anybody about that [slight laugh] so that was another funny story.
DE: Were you at Bridlington very long then?
HP: Not long, no.
DE: Where did you go after that?
HP: After Bridlington, it was to do with going down to Saint Athens where you learnt everything from the book and from me looking at the engines to find out how they all worked and that took a couple of months, so you really knew everything about the Stirling bomber, and then you eventually went flying with different people in a Stirling and that’s where I said you were dead scared seeing as you’ve never flown before and you were meeting your crew for the first time in the bar, and that’s when this Aussie, rear gunner come up to me and said ‘you sound a bit like us, mate’ I said ‘why where you from?’ because I didn’t know where he was from, he said ‘Australia, where are you from?’ I said ‘Hackney’ he said ‘where’s Hackney?’, I said ‘in London’ he said ‘that sounds good, Hackney Harry’, ‘cause I’d told him my name and that’s when he said come and meet the crew, and I think I went through that.
DE: Yeah you did, you mentioned you got put on a charge and had to work in a kitchen?
HP: Yeah that was through meeting me uncle.
DE: What did they have you doing in there?
HP: Well all the greasy tins when they fried anything or done anything, they couldn’t wash them straight away, so you had to scrub away with the brush to get all the grease off and you had to do that at breakfast time, dinner time and evening meal time, which weren’t very good [slight laugh].
DE: Was it a fitting punishment then do you think?
HP: Yeah, I didn’t think so at the time, but there in the hotel where we used to go into, there was a stairway like that coming up with a landing like that and the toilet was right in the middle, and there was no locks or anything on it, did I tell you about that? [DE: no] well there used to be a scotch fella, who always had a great big knife, always down the side of his belt and I was on the toilet and this scotch fella came out, bashed the door open and said ‘out’ [emphasis], like that and it so infuriated me, I head butted him, he’s much bigger than me, great big bloke, and he went over the banisters, landed on the floor, I, I honestly thought I’d killed him and the sergeant come over and he was still laid there, he’d been knocked out actually, ended up in sick quarters, and all the rest of the air crew that used to be training there they were really scared of this scotch men and I became his best friend because nobody had ever stood up to him and it really upset him and he looked after me from then on, [slight laugh] but it was a frightening experience.
DE: Did you keep in touch with him?
HP: No, no once we split up, went off to you know the squadron where you met your crew and started flying with them, and as I said before it was with Stirling’s to start with and then after a little while they decided Lancaster’s were coming in, so you ended up at East Kirkby on Lancaster’s and I think I told you what happened when I said that I needed more training, they put me on ops.
DE: Yeah. That’s smashing, I think we’ll call that a day unless you can think of any other amusing anecdotes? I’ve ticked all the questions I had for you.
HP: Yeah, well when I was at the end of my first tour training with, I think I said that the pilot trained a pilot and the engineer trained an engineer, and I was with a, a pilot and we’d be on a cross country or something and it was dark when we were coming back so they used to let you go round the circuit before you came in, and this particular time someone fired up a red flare which meant there was danger you couldn’t land, and the pilot carried on landing and I said to him ‘we can’t land, there’s something wrong’, I think somebody had crashed before us, so he said ‘oh, we better go round again’, so we went round again, he was a squadron leader and he’d been on a lot of ops, and as we come round again, another red flare went up and he said ‘oh good we’re ok now’, I said ‘no it’s a red flare, what’s up with you, are you blind or something?’ [laughs] and round we went again and we were called up on the intercom to keep flying round until a green flare was fired, so we did this until I spotted a green flare coming up and I said ‘it’s ok now, there’s a green flare’, so he said ‘ok, we’ll go into land’ and when we’d landed and taxied round I said to him ‘I know you are a higher rank than me but I’m wondering if you’re bloody colour blind’ and he said ‘sssh, I am’ [whispers] and he said ‘I’ve never admitted it to anyone’, he says ‘so please, please don’t report me’, I didn’t know what to do really, because he was training he wasn’t on ops anymore so I just forgot about it, and I thought well if he’d been on ops, he’s done his share so let the poor bloke carry on, but that was frightening as well ‘cause if I hadn’t had said something he would have gone in and probably have crashed into the other plane crash.
DE: Which operation training unit was this you were at then?
HP: Can’t remember where that was. It might have been at Stirgate, fifty squadron ,Stirgate, it was there and that’s where we went on to picking up the passengers in Italy.
DE: Yes, you told me about that.
HP: Oh and another time we had to go to Brussels, this was after the war, to pick up twenty four ex-prisoners of war and the first time went there, everything went through OK, we had a couple of days off and then we had to go again and as we were coming into land, my pilot was looking either side because there’d been a lot of aircraft that had crashed there, and they were just bulldozed over the side and he was looking at, ‘oh look at that, that’s an American so and so, oh look at that’, and there was a great big gulley where somebody had crashed there and they’d moved the plane out the way and we went into that and burst a tire and an American bulldozer come out, up to us, I’d got, well we’d all got out the plane and he said ‘ok, everybody out the plane, I’m bulldozing you over to the side ‘cause other planes have got to come in’, I said ‘no you daren’t, you’re not gonna [sic] bulldoze my plane’, I said ‘we’ll wait until we get a new tyre’ he said ‘no I’m gonna bull doze it’, so all the crew stood in front of him so he couldn’t do it so in the end he gave up and somebody else came out and towed us over to the side where we had to wait for somebody to bring out another wheel for us, and that was at Brussels and we ended up at Melbrook, wherever that was and then we got the tyre all sorted out and then went on to our base, that was a daylight operation.
DE: Did you bring many prisoners of war back then?
HP: Yeah there was twenty four there, another twenty four the second time and then when we went to Italy there was six where we brought twenty back at a time so [adds up out loud] so that’d be about hundred and eighty blokes coming back.
DE: How does that make you feel that you did that?
HP: It made us feel good because they couldn’t get back other than by sea and going by plane it was a couple of hours so they were really grateful to us but really scared of flying, so we went without our parachutes to prove to them that it was safe to fly [slight laugh]
DE: What state were the POW’s in?
HP: Very poor state, very poor, some of, some of them were being sick but they couldn’t help it because they’d never ever flown before and some had bandages on them where they had broken their limbs, but it felt really good fetching them back.
DE: The other thing I’ve read about, about flights at the end of the war, where you had a sort of tour of Germany and had a look at the bombing, did you do any of those?
HP: No, no I didn’t hear about it though.
DE: I think people called them cook’s tours?
HP: No never heard of it, [pauses] the only time I heard of anybody going around, looking round again is Guy Gibson, I think I told you about that didn’t I? I had a mate, air crew flight engineer, used to on the same sort of ops as we did but I had done a lot more than him, we got very friendly and if we managed to get back we’d go into the pub and exchange stories, and this particular time he was right down in the mouth, he wouldn’t have a drink and I couldn’t get him to talk and I thought he’d got lack of moral fibre and was likely to disappear, so I kept talking to him and in the end he said ‘I’ve been sworn not to say anything ‘, so I said ‘well that’s a bit daft’ I said ‘because we could be not here, on our next op so what does it matter about telling me what you’re on about?’ so he said ‘alright then’ he said ‘you know we’re the last ones to get in the plane after our inspection?’ I said ‘yeah’ he said ‘I was just going up the ladder and this bloke come up to me, pushed me out the way and before I knew it was on the plane’, he said ‘I didn’t know what to do so I pulled the ladder up and went up to my position’, he said ‘and when I got there was this bloke sat in my seat and he just said ‘bugger off down the back’ and I was just about to shout at him when the pilot said’ ‘ssh, it’s Guy Gibson’ he was a squadron leader then, so I shut up and listened to rest went on and he said ‘all the way over when we went on the op he was criticising everybody, the gunners, the navigator wasn’t doing it right, the pilot wasn’t watching this and watching that’ and he said when they got to the target, they went round, dropped the bombs and the idea was you got away quick but Guy Gibson said ‘hang on, go round I want to have a look’ and he made the pilot go round about three times before they flew off back and all on the way back he still criticised them all and he said just as we were coming into land he said ‘I wanna [sic] speak to every member of the crew, I want you to swear an oath that you never saw me in this plane’ and he said ‘it frightened the lives out of all of us’ and that was why he was like he was but anyways he got over that and carried on flying, and I never liked Guy Gibson and when I once went to, I forget where it was, somewhere near Coningsby, which was the end of the runway where they’d got a museum there of what happened with bomber command and one of the fellas there happened to mention something about Guy Gibson and I said ‘I hated him, from what he did to one of my mates’ so he said ‘you’re not the first one to say that’ I said ‘why?’, he said ‘well there was a young pilot who was just about going to take off, walking up to his plane and Guy Gibson happened to be just at the side and he called this pilot over and he said ‘don’t you ever salute your superiors and the pilot said ‘I didn’t know you did that when you’re going off flying’ and he said ‘right, when you come back, you’ll be reduced in rank’, reduced him down to sergeant from a pilot officer, he said and that’s why he didn’t like Guy Gibson, but strange nobody liked him not on the squadron he was at and there was once when we come back from ops, we went into the pub and all of a sudden there was a shout and everybody saying ‘wahey’ and I said ‘is that the end of the war, have we finished?’ and somebody said ‘no, Guy Gibson’s caught the bucket’, in other words he’d gone down and that was where he’d gone off with some, I think it was mosquitos he was flying and on the way back instead of keeping with them, he spotted a train and he decided to go down and shoot this train up, and the story we heard was that one of the guards on the train had a rifle and he fired at Guy Gibson’s plane and a million to one chance he hit the fuel tank and it blew up and he went in, but that was all hushed up, they gave another story about why he was shot down.
De: What was the other story?
HP: I forget what it was but he was coming back and he was with the two other mosquitos and he was unlucky that got a shot that hit his plane and down he went, but we believed the first story, no he was never liked at all.
DE: Why was that do you think, was that just his attitude?
HP: His attitude to everybody, he was the king and he was the one who knew everything.
DE: Was there a lot of discipline or difference between people with officers and sergeants?
HP: There was some, I wouldn’t say a lot, but often when people were sergeants and they were made up to officers, that’s when you got a bit of flack, ‘cause I always remember after the war there was something happening and all crews were going to this place, I forget where it was, and I’d been issued with medals and I’d got the air crew Europe and star, because I had actually flown before my crew had so I come under that particular section and my pilot who’d got the DFC on behalf of crew co-operation, we never got anything so we were a bit bitter about that but I happened to spot my pilot and I went up to him to shake hands and say ‘how you doing?’ and the first thing he said to me, ‘how is it you got that?’ I said ‘what?’ he said ‘the air crew Europe and star? I’ve only got the air crew Europe’, I said ‘that’s because I flew before you’ and he weren’t very pleased and just walked off, never even spoke to me, so that sort of thing did happen.
DE: Was there a difference between people who were flying before the war and people who were volunteer reserve?
HP: Not really no, they were all doing the same thing.
DE: So how long did you stay in the RAF for?
HP: I think it was about seven or eight years, all told [sic]
DE: So what did you fly after the war?
HP: It was Lancaster’s and Lincoln’s, that was at Waddington, and did I tell you about the story of taking a photo of a, a Lincoln bomber? well when the Lincoln’s come onto the squadron, I was thinking about this and I thought to myself ‘it’d be marvellous , a Lincoln bomber flying over Lincoln Cathedral’, sounded good and I said this to my pilot and he said ‘yeah that sounds good’, he said ‘if you could get it organised ‘cause I’d had more experience than this new pilot, so I said to the photographer who used to unofficially do our photographs for us, I told him about this, he said ‘that would be marvellous, if you get me on the plane’, so I spoke to another pilot and we all agreed that we’d do this, we’d be in a plane with the photographer and another plane in the Lincoln would fly over Lincoln Cathedral but he happened to be late on take-off, the Lincoln pilot, and he came in a bit late, but because he was late he went flying too low and he went below the cathedral so anyways we got the photo of this, got back on the ground and I said ‘I’m going up to the photographer’s to see how he’s getting on’, so when I got there, he said ‘oh come in’ he said ‘a fabulous picture, Lincoln bomber flying below Lincoln Cathedral’ he said ‘it’s absolutely marvellous’ and he’d put the either negatives or something on a drum which used to go round to dry these photographs and just as he was doing this the group captain came in, inspected and he said ‘what are you two up to?’, ‘nothing, sir’ saluted him and out came this picture and he looked at it, he said ‘good God are you trying to get me demoted?’ he said ‘that’s illegal [emphasis], where is the negative?’ so the photographer was dead scared gave him the negative, he ripped it up and he ripped the photograph up and he said ‘you deserve to be on a charge, you two’ and he stormed off , and just as he stormed off the second picture came out and I grabbed hold of it and put it in my battle dress and the photographer said ‘you can’t do that!’, I said ‘I’ve done it, cheers’ and I kept this right the way till the end of the war and when I came out and I got friendly with a photographer, can’t remember his name now, of the Echo and he got to hear where I was working at Thorne electrical wholesalers and he phoned me up and said could he come in and see me so I said ‘what for?’, he said ‘I’d like to have a chat with you’ and in my office ‘cause I was a manager, I had a big picture up of the Lancaster and anybody who used to come in to see me said ‘that’s a super picture, why have you got that in an electrical wholesalers?’, because I said ‘I was in them’ and I used to get in with these people who used to come flogging you things for the electrical side, so he came in and he saw this picture, he said ‘that’s marvellous’, I said ‘I got a better one than that’ and he asked me questions like you have about me war record and he said ‘can you fetch that picture in to me?’ and I said ‘yeah I can fetch it in but I don’t want to let go’ so he said ‘OK’ he said ‘I’ll have a word with the editor and see if we can publish it’, so a couple of days later he rang me up at work and said I’ve got some sad news, he said the editor said it’s on RAF paper, it’s illegal photograph and he said it couldn’t be published until say twenty five years until that time had expired so he said ‘but I’m keeping it on file’, so I said ‘Ok then’ he said ‘I’ve got a copy of it and I’ll let you have that back’ and I got a copy in the bedroom I’ll let you have a look, and I suppose about twenty years afterwards he rang me up at work and he said ‘do you get the Lincoln Echo?’, I said ‘now and again’, he said ‘well buy it today’ so I did, front page was this picture, that marvellous picture and no end of people wanted to know how I took this and I told them and as I say I can show you the actual photograph, but this group captain, did I tell you about him who lived across the way? When I got a puncture outside his house? [DE: yes you told me but it’s not on the tape] Oh I was going one Sunday to get the Sunday paper and just as I got near this group captains house, I didn’t know he was a group captain, something went wrong with the car and I got out and I found I got a puncture and I jacked the car up, tried to get the wheel off but do you think I can undo those nuts, just couldn’t do it, and this young fella come strolling over and he said ‘I can help you there, I’m a younger fella than you’ so I said ‘oh thank you’ and he did everything, put the old one in the boot and put the new one in pumped it up, I said ‘oh thanks very much’ so he said ‘I hear you was in the war, in the RAF, is that right?’ I said ‘yes, I was flight engineer’, he said ‘did you do any ops? I said ‘yeah, I did thirty nine all told [sic] and had a mid-air collision at East Kirkby’ he said ‘good God and you’re still here’ [laughs] I said ‘yeah’, then he put out his hand and said ‘well done, I’m a squadron leader’ no he was a wing commander then, ‘I’m a wing commander’ so I said ‘well fancy that, that’s a new one ain’t [sic] it?, a wing commander changing the wheel of a warrant officer [slight laugh], it’s never been known’ and he laughed and he said ‘can I come across and see you?, where do you live?’ I said ‘just across from you’ so a few days later he came over and like you he sat there and he said ‘have you still got your log book?’, because you’re not supposed to have had it really but most people did and I said ‘yeah’, he said ‘can I have a look at it’ and he went through it and he said ‘I can’t believe you’re still here’ [laughs] and he said ‘there’s going to be a do at Petwood hotel’, I forget what it’s called but I can show you what it’s called up here [pause – background noise, moves to collect something] it’s called the memorial dinner, 3rd of July 2009 and there would be all top ranking officers there and these officers either had the girlfriends or their wives there and it was a fabulous dinner because lots of companies had donated money, they didn’t have Petwood hotel chefs they had the, what do they call those top chefs?, I’ve forgotten what they call them at the moment but they did the dinner, wish I could remember the names, you see them on television sometimes, very top chefs, somebody had arranged to have all the drinks so everything was free there and it was marvellous, and half way through, a fella got up and he was a famous painter, don’t know if you’ve ever seen a big elephant, I forget the name, what it was called but he was there and he said ‘gentlemen and ladies’ he said ‘I’ve asked the squadron leader if he would auction those three paintings that I’ve donated to the RAF because my heart is felt with the RAF for what they did during the war’, so the squadron leader got up and the first two paintings went for fifteen hundred pounds each, the last one went for two and a half thousand pounds, so it was smashing all donated to the RAF, and I thought I’ll have to go up and get his signature this fella and I went up and there was a couple of people in front of me and it was funny because one of the group captains wives was there with all her gold and chains on her, and she turned round to me and she said ‘oh’, she saw me medals and she said ‘you were in the RAF were you during the war?’ I said ’yes, that’s what these are for’ she said ‘what did you do?’ I said ‘I was a flight engineer on Lancaster’s and I did thirty nine ops’ she said ‘good God can I kiss you?’ [laughs] I said ‘if you wish’ [laughs], she kissed me and she said ‘thank you very much’ she said ‘if it wasn’t for people like you we wouldn’t be here having this do’ so I said ‘oh thank you’ and they gave us one of those, [DE: the mug] also a book of Lancaster’s and spitfires in it, it’s fabulous and then I suppose a couple of months after that, he rang up here and he said ‘would you like to come over?’, so I said ‘yes’ went to his door, he said ‘come in, I want to show you this’ and he showed me his hat and his lapels on his suit and he said ‘I’ve been promoted to group captain’ so I shook his hand and said ‘well done’ and he said ‘we’re having a do at’, he said ‘I’m at bomber command headquarters at the moment now’ he said ‘but I’ve come home for the weekend to show the wife me promotion’ he said ‘so when I go back I want to take you with me to bomber command headquarters and have a big dinner there’, did I tell you about that? So he said ‘have you still got your uniform?’ I said ‘you’re joking its seventy years ago now’, he said ‘well you need to have a dress suit’ so I said ‘well I haven’t even got that’ never even thought about it, so he said ‘well I’ll leave you to it, see if you can get one quick’ and he said by such and such a date, he said ‘I’ll be taking you down with me’, so at that moment my wife wanted to go to Matalans and my son said ‘I’ll come along with you I might see something I want’ ‘cause it’s a bit cheaper buying stuff there so we walked round and my wife brought a few skirts and things, and my son said to me ‘you wanted a dress suit didn’t you?’ he said ‘come and have a look at this’, and they had some dress suits that they were selling off cheaper so I worked out my size, tried a jacket on and it fitted so I said ‘I’ll buy this’ and instead of paying a couple of hundred pound I got one for about forty five quid so I thought that was really good and, I rang him up then, I said ‘I’ve got a dress suit now’ and I said ‘do I need to have me medals put on?’ he said ‘yes’ he said ‘if you bring it across, my wife will stitch them on for you’ so that was good, so did all that, she made some sandwiches and we went all the way down to High Wycombe, when I got there I’ve never seen so many high ranking officers, because I was only a warrant officer, I didn’t really know where to put myself so he said ‘I’m going to take you round’, he said ‘cause I got to do some work’ he said ‘but I’ll come back for you at seven o’clock, be dressed up with your medals on and we’re go and have a drink first with some of the officers, then we’ll go in for the dinner’ so I thought ‘lovely’, so picked me up at seven o’clock, I was put in an officer quarters so that was nice, went down to where they had the bar, had a few drinks and a lot of these top officers had never been on ops at all and they started asking me questions so that was good, and then he said ‘it’s time now to go in to our table’, and all along the top table, group captain was there, I was sat at the side of him and a nice WAF squadron leader at the side of me and we started off with this dinner and then he said ‘we’ve got to drink to the Queen’ and what is coming round is port and there was a great big jug like that of port so I went to grab hold of this big glass to pour mine out and he ‘aaah no you mustn’t touch it, it’s only touched by the squadron leader coming round, its part of the system that we have’ so they poured these glasses out and went all the way round and it was all silver service, you never see anything like it and then, a little while through, air vice marshal got up and he said ‘Gentlemen’, [clap clap] he said ‘I’d like to tell you there’s an interesting person with us tonight and I’d like to speak about him’ and I looked round and I thought maybe the Duke of Edinburgh were there but by the time I turned back he said ‘his name’s ex warrant officer Harry Parkins’ and he said ‘he did one of the longest bombing trips in the war from East Kirkby where they had to top up at the take off point, they went all the way down to Italy to fool the Germans, came all the way back up again to bomb Munich and on the way back his gunner a New Zealander’, no an Australian said ‘Harry we’re going to lose a day of our leave or maybe more if we land down south where we’d been told to go because we might not have enough fuel to get anywhere else’ so he said ‘can you work out the fuel, Harry?’, I said ‘yes’, there was no computers in those days, and I worked it out and I said ‘if there was a sunny morning we’d just about make it’ he said ‘so all the crew said ‘go for it, Harry’ so we did and we landed at East Kirkby on a nice sunny morning and all the engines chopped at the end of the runway’ and he said ‘gentlemen that took ten hours twenty five minutes, the longest that had ever been done in a Lancaster bomber and a hundred and sixty officers got up and gave me a two minute ovation, I didn’t know where to put myself or what to say but I got up and said ‘it wasn’t me gentlemen, it was the crew’, so we carried on with the dinner, and that was really was smashing and then he brought me all the way back home, stayed there about three nights, and one lunchtime, he said ‘I’ll tell you when to come in’, went in at a particular time and there was two other pilots sat with him, we were having your dinner and you could pick almost anything you wanted and it was a Friday so I said I’ll have fish and chips and they all had the same, they all did the same [laughs] and one of these pilots said to me ‘as a flight engineer did you ever do any flying yourself?’ I said ‘oh yes, we had training in a link trainer’ and up to a point I’d never flown a Lancaster but my pilot was a sergeant and then he was promoted to a pilot officer and he went out celebrating that night, and next night we were on flying, on ops and he was still under the weather so went through the briefing, never said much but felt a bit hazy like, he said ‘I’m going to take off Harry’ and I’m sat at the side of him and he said ‘you can do the rest’ I said ‘what do you mean?’, he said ‘ well you’ve had training on the link trainer’ he said I’m going back and having a sleep and you can carry on’, so I flew I think it was about two and a half hours to the bombing target and the bit that amused me most was when they were saying ‘left a bit, left a bit, right’ ‘till we got over the target, bombs away, turn round and on the way back and on the way back, I didn’t feel like doing the landing myself ‘cause I’d never done anything like that so I went back and woke him up and he came up and did the landing, so that was my time of having, flying the Lancaster myself, I didn’t do anymore that was the only time, but I felt quite proud about it and luckily we got back OK.
DE: Well that’s amazing, you mentioned the story of your ten hours twenty five minutes, is there any significance about it being a sunny day?
HP: Yeah because if it had been dark, you might have had to go round the circuit, to get your bearings for coming in, being a sunny day you could just go straight in, no need to go round the circuit, no other plane were likely to be flying there. I told you about the group captain coming in, yeah? So that was another good story.
DE: Smashing, I’m going to press stop there, that’s another hour and a half that, thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Harry Parkins. Two
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AParkinsHW150612
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-12
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Emma Bonson
Sally Coulter
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:29:35 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Harry shares several memories of his time as a flight engineer in the Royal Air Force. He describes their initial accommodation in luxury London flats, and dinghy training at the local swimming pool. He recounts how in June 1944 they received 17 bullets in their aircraft on an operation to Wesseling but managed to return safely, also discussing lucky charms and superstition.
Anecdotes include a low flying incident near Skegness for which they were in trouble with the group captain, and the issue of guns and ammunition when some German prisoners escaped. They lost their possessions to the Committee of Adjustment when they were diverted to another airfield.
Harry received army-type training at RAF Bridlington and continued his flight engineering training on Stirlings at RAF St Athan. He was sent to RAF East Kirkby on Lancasters.
Harry collected prisoners of war from Italy and Brussels. He describes people’s recollections of Guy Gibson.
He stayed for seven or so years in the RAF, flying Lancasters and Lincolns at RAF Waddington. Harry relates the delayed publication of a photograph, with a Lincoln and Lincoln cathedral.
Harry outlines his encounter with a group captain who helped him to change his wheel, subsequently inviting him to dinners at the Petwood Hotel and Bomber Command headquarters. Harry received a two minute standing ovation for one of the longest bombing trips of the war.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Wesseling
England--Woodhall Spa
England--Lincoln
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
fear
flight engineer
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF East Kirkby
RAF St Athan
RAF Waddington
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/213/3352/ABlakemoreL160504.2.mp3
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Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JF: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. I’m John Fisher and I’m interviewing Mr Les Blackmore, who’s ninety two. We’re at Mr Blakemore’s home in Wolverhampton and the 4th of May 2016 and with us is his wife Gwen. They’ve been married for seventy one years. Les, thank you for seeing me today. Tell me a bit about your early years. For instance, when you were born and then I’d like to go into perhaps at the age of fourteen, when the war started and how you felt about all that.
LB: Well, I was born in West Street, Willenhall. My father was a baker and he’d served in the ‘14-‘18 war. My mother Rachel had two sisters, Dorothy five years younger and Kathleen ten years younger. And we moved from West Street when I was four into Gough Street, also in Willenhall and Gough Street was my home until I went into the air force. I went to school in Willenhall, the Central School, and at fourteen I left and looked for a job. I wanted to be a draughtsman and I actually went to Yale works first and then to Josiah Parkes for an interview. Yale had offered me eleven shillings a week but Parkes offered eleven and sixpence a week. And so Josiah Parkes had me and on joining the company the first person that I recognised was my future wife, who I had seen earlier aged about eleven or twelve. She was going down to her school at Albion Road and I was going to my school with my gang of friends at the Central School but it was rather strange that we should meet again so quickly when I went to start work.
JF: So, how did you come to join the RAF?
LB: Well, when I joined Parkes that would be 1938. War started in ‘39 and I was naturally interested in the war itself and conscious of the fact that if it went on for any length of time, for instance, the four years of the first world war, I would be going to be involved in it, and consciously took interest in the three forces: the army, the navy, and the air force and in my mind made up my mind to say I would look forward to going into the air force and if possible, have flying duties and this I did actually. In 1942 when I became eighteen I went to Birmingham and was accepted as a possible entrant but asked to go home and they would call me as and when they needed me and I actually got calling up papers May 1943.
JF: So, you were probably one of the first in the squadron, 514 Squadron?
LB: No, no. 514 Squadron had been in existence long before I volunteered for the air force and it wasn’t - I’ve got a record of 514 history and it shows where they started and they moved to Waterbeach at a later date. But I was an entrant in May 1943 but I didn’t get to Waterbeach until the end of January 1945. The period in between was my training at various stations then joining up, made up as a crew and with the crew moved from a five-engined Wellington, via a Stirling and then into Lancasters but all of that is in my log and you’ll be able to see and record those dates from that log.
JF: Tell us about the first op’ you went on.
LB: My first op’ I think was Wessel. Can we just check ‒
JF: We’re just pausing for a minute to check on the records.
LB: I can’t see, so I’m going to have to ‒
JF: Interview resuming with Les Blakemore. Les, tell us a bit about those early ops. Were you a bit nervous? How did you feel?
LB: Nervous, no? Apprehensive. First of all that I’d be capable of doing the job I’d been trained to do under different conditions. I didn’t want to let the crew down and I think that’s what really bound us together because we all had the same intensity of being part of a crew. And we were a mixed bunch: the skipper, G W Gibson, was from Belfast. The navigator, Les More, he was a serving RAF man when the war broke out, in accounts, and was a warrant officer at the time he volunteered for air crew duties and was sent to South Africa to train as a navigator. The bomb aimer, Craig Tailor, David Craig Tailor, was a Scot by birth but was in Manchester Police Force when he was called up. The rear gunner was a Welshman, the mid upper was a Geordie (Blondie) and I was a mid-lander as the wireless operator. So none of us was with anyone born and living near us. So we seemed to gel together because of our difference of source.
JF: We’re just pausing a minute. We’re now resuming the recording with Les, who I think is going to tell us about nick-names.
LB: The navigator, as I say, was Les More and I was Les Blakemore. So I think it was the skipper who called Les More, Dinty. Now I never know of the origin of the name Dinty but Dinty Les became. I then became Red because I had got ginger hair. The mid upper, Jimmy, was called Blondie because he was a very, very, blonde Geordie. Naturally, the Welshman automatically became Taffy. Now the engineer was Johnny Lasalle[?] and he was Johnny, no more than Johnny. The only exception was Dave Taylor[?], the bomber aimer and he, although he was called Dave generally by each of us in the crew, to me I liked the name, his middle name of Craig and was tempted to call him Craig but let’s say Dave he became and the skipper was Skipper George.
JF: We are just going to pause a second. We are resuming the interview with Les Blakemore. When you went up in an op’ how did you feel? Because you were up in the air for some time.
LB: Well, yes the ops were between five and six hours duration normally. It was a long time but I don’t think at any time we were scared at what we were doing because we’d been together for a little while and we’d got faith in each other and I think the attitude that we adopted was once we were in that aircraft we’d bonded and things were going to be OK. And I think it was that feeling that gave us the fortitude to meet each raid when it was announced without any particular worry. The targets, when they were announced, were unknown to us so each was just another target. Most of them were to Germany, most of them were in the industrial Ruhr, and apart from one or two odd ones such as I think my last one, was Heligoland they took the same form, all daylight, and apart from a couple of incidents when we had damage to the aircraft from something hitting the aircraft, which we found out later was a bomb, tore the front leading edge of the starboard tail plate and left the bent wire spinner of the bomb in the tail plate itself, which the ground crew fetched out and exhibited around the rest of the squadron. But I don’t think fright was part of our life. Apprehension, yes, but you got on with your job and because of that you knew everybody else was also doing his best and that was it. We were a crew. I can’t say more than that really. Had I got any feelings about the fact that I was part of a crew dropping bombs and that the resulting bombs would be killing non-combatants in the form of German or other nationalities of people that I knew nothing about? The answer was ‘I’m sorry but we’d already, as a country, been subject to that treatment by the Germans and therefore it was our job to eliminate that force as quickly as we could.’
JF: We are just going to pause a minute. We are resuming the recording with Mr Leslie ‒. Les [emphasis], I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to call him Leslie. Les Blakemore. Les, how did you feel when these bombing operations ended?
LB: Well, I suppose the first thing was relief that we’re still together as a crew. Pleasure that the war in our respect was successful although we realised that the period that we’d lived through that resulted once again in mountains of damage and terrible, terrible fatalities to most of the people round the world. So I suppose, with relief was also a sense of the price that had been paid for the conflict on both sides and therefore, I suppose, you didn’t accept your side purely as one of, not pleasure, but a sense of we were right because in your mind you were of conscious of the fact that they [emphasis] had also thought they were right and it was rather, I suppose, with mixed feelings, that the end of the war came to us. After the end of the ‒, what I call the European conflict, we were still looking to go to the Far East because the Japanese conflict was still on and we thought we were to go out there as a crew, maybe to India to take part in that, but that didn’t happen because of the Nagasaki and the other atom bomb drops but again those when they happened, a feeling of relief that that battle was over but again the feeling that the cost had been too much in the way of life that had been lost on again both sides of the conflict and that’s really the mixed feeling we were conscious of. Relief, yes.
JF: Now, before VE Day you started helping out with supplies to the starving Danish people, I think, wasn’t it?
LB: No, no, it was the Dutch. There were operations to The Hague where we had practiced low level flying and we were then asked to drop food at various locations and it was terrible to see the people rushing on to the dropping zone while we were still dropping it. They were so exhausted and robbed of life themselves and food was number one thing. They, they’d been starved and it was something we enjoyed doing because we knew it was an immediate help and it was the same with going into France. A couple of times Juvincourt to pick up twenty British men, who in some instances had been prisoners of war of the Germans and been made to make forced marches at the latter part of the war and were exhausted and again many of them in need of medical treatment but there was a coincidence. Our first visit to Juvincourt in France: The aircraft were going all round the peri’ track to where the ground crew had got these prisoners of war in groups and our aircraft stopped and I went to the rear door of the aircraft and opened it and a corporal stood looking up at me and the coincidence was, his name was George Beardsmore. He’d been at school with me and his father still worked for my father at the Vinculum in my home town. So that was absolutely amazing. Anyway, that was OK for us. We took off and landed. I think we had to go to Tangmere. It’s in my log. We can check that. And then fly back to Waterbeach and we did those trips to the, er, Brussels, or an airfield near Brussels, again a number of times to bring our lads back home and it was great to be doing something of that nature because, I won’t say it compensated, but it balanced the raids that we’d been on whilst the war was on.
JF: Les, after the war, what did you do then? Did you return to your job as a draughtsman?
LB: No, no. I’d left the drawing office to go to a production control post and whist I was on leave I’d had occasion to meet the directors of the company who enquired if I was of a mind to go back to the company after [emphasis] the war. I said I was. So they said “Well there will be a job here for you” and I was able to go back to Parkes because they helped my quick release from the air force by asking for locksmiths and I was given the quick release to be a locksmith but in point of fact, when I got to home, back to home, I was offered the job of a purchasing officer which had been a job that had been done by various people during the war, of whom the last two had been representatives of the company, sales representatives, and they wanted to go back to doing that particular job rather than the purchasing. And again my wife was also in the purchasing department which was something that we were both very happy to enjoy.
JF: How long did you stay at that job?
LB: I stayed in the job as purchasing officer until retirement in 1989, having completed, including war time, fifty one years. But by then so many things had happened. The company had increased ten-fold and we were now a number of manufacturing units in Willenhall, in Wolverhampton, Stirchley Birmingham. We’d got companies in South Africa, New Zealand and liaison for the materials and the components for manufacturing in Willenhall and other companies in this country all came under my supervision and it was therefore very interesting as a job because I was looking at the manufacturing of raw materials and components in other people’s factories that I was going to need to purchase. And it educated me to many aspects of life that otherwise I would not have had.
JF: Thank you very much Les. Just one little thing, do you keep in touch with any of your former comrades in the RAF?
LB: Unfortunately they are now all dead. The bomb aimer stayed on after the war with a permanent commission but died in Changi in the Far East with an illness. George, the skipper, went back to his family business bakery. They were bakers in Belfast. And there is another coincidental thing. ‘Cause as a purchasing officer I was a member of the Purchasing Officers Association and we used to visit other factories as a group of people in the Purchasing Officers Association and I had occasion to go with about twenty other buyers to Leicester to a typewriter company and when the visit was over we were all given refreshments and one of the other purchasing officers was a man from Northern Ireland and said he’d got a coincidental story. He’d been on holiday and met up with another family and their children enjoyed the holiday because of meeting people from the same area. When they got home, he was the buyer for a bus service in Northern Ireland and had occasion to get some more service from his suppliers so he rang up this one company, Gibsons’, and who should walk in but the man he’d spent some time on holiday with. And having finished his story I said well the other coincidence is that that man’s name was George Gibson and his son was Gary. I said and he was my skipper in the air force. And that was a double coincidence.
JF: That’s amazing.
LB: Yes, it was incredible.
JF: With that thank you very much Les for your time.
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABlakemoreL160504
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Leslie Blakemore
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:33:09 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Fisher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-04
Description
An account of the resource
Leslie Blakemore was born in Willenhall, near Wolverhampton and he joined the Royal Air Force in 1943. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 514 Squadron from RAF Waterbeach.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
514 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Waterbeach
Stirling
Wellington
wireless operator
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/235/3378/AConacherG170411.2.mp3
e612302f57e8a4a63c3d121033230c2c
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
Conacher, Geoff
Geoffrey Conacher
Geoff Conacher
G Conacher
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Conacher (419799 Royal Australian Air Force) and a course photograph. He flew operations as a pilot with 622 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Geoff Conacher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Conacher, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: Ok. We’re off. So the microphone is just up there.
GC: Right.
DM: So, I don’t know exactly how you want to do this.
GC: No. I don’t know what, what you want really.
DM: I just want a story from where to go. So starting on maybe why you joined up and when you joined up and so the reasoning behind it. And then what happened to you.
GC: Oh, I see. I see.
DM: Maybe that’s a good start.
GC: Yeah. Well I could talk for a while on that I guess. Well, I joined up mainly because — well the war was on and if you didn’t join up the army called you up and that was it. So I had a [pause] I always wanted to join the air force. I thought I’d join the air force. I knew that eighteen was coming up and I’d be called up so and I told my mother and father that, ‘If you don’t sign these papers I’ll finish up in the army.’ But they wouldn’t sign the papers. They didn’t want me to go overseas so they didn’t want me to fly. So, I did finish up in the army for about, oh it must have been about eight months I think before I could get out and get into the air force which I went in to in November 1942. Went down to Somers where the ITS was. Number 1, I think it was. Number 1 ITS. And did the three months course down there and was fortunate enough to be categorised as suitable for pilot training. And then I went to Western Junction in Tasmania and learned to fly Tiger Moths there.
DM: Ok.
GC: I was just, I was just turned nineteen then ‘cause I was in the army for most of my eighteenth year. Yeah, and so that all sort of went ok. Went well and I managed a solo and then the required seven hours I think it was. Or seven and a half hours tuition. And then when we graduated from SFTS as they called it — no. Not SFTS. EFTS. Elementary Flying Training School I was posted to Point Cook here in Victoria. Where it was number 1 SFTS and we flew multi engine, two-engined Oxfords down there and learned to fly those and graduated in July, I think it was, of 1943. And was fortunate enough to be posted to embarkation depot which meant you were going overseas and we went to [pause] went to England and went across. Went across to America actually by ship. American ship. USS Mount Vernon I think it was. And that took about two or three weeks. And then we went by train across to the east coast of America in, to Massachusetts. A place called Camp Myles Standish. Unfortunately on the train journey across I contracted scarlet fever and when I lobbed there I was put straight into hospital. I was the first or second of what was an epidemic that went right through the, through the camp and which upset everybody who was looking forward to going on leave to New York which didn’t, didn’t happen for most of them. But for those that did get scarlet fever we served our three weeks in hospital. Then we came out and went on leave to New York so —
DM: Right.
GC: It worked all right for us. We were, we were the main cause of other people missing out. But anyway, then we went by, by ship across the Atlantic on the Aquitania. USS Aquitania. No. Not USS — SS Aquitania and landed at Greenock in Scotland. And from there we travelled down to Brighton on the south coast where we were domiciled. All Australians when they arrived, initially they were, they were going to Bournemouth but then they changed it. Due to some enemy action they changed it to Brighton and so we all went to Brighton and stayed in either the Grand or the Metropole Hotel.
DM: Very flash hotels.
GC: Which were lovely hotels.
DM: Nice.
GC: Right on the, right on the waterfront. And we were there for oh [pause] see the trouble was when you went to England the weather got crook. At that time in the year — November, December, January. And of course all the training starts to bank up because they can’t fly. But anyway we eventually got back in to the air. It was about three months afterwards though since we arrived. After we arrived. And we did our training there which was mainly on [pause] we went on Oxfords again and did a course there. And then we went to OTU which was Operational Training Unit on to, on to Wellington bombers. And did our training there. It was whilst I was there my navigator who — we selected our own crews. They put you in, in a big hangar with umpteen aircrew and said, ‘Well now find yourselves a crew.’ So that went on and anyway it turns out that the little navigator that I got was English. They were all Englishmen. He, he obviously well didn’t make the grade. I didn’t have anything to do with it but the leaders, the navigation leader said, ‘He’s just not up to scratch so we’re going to remove him. So they took him away and I had to wait about six weeks before I got another navigator. And that put me all back right through the [pause] all the fellas I’d trained with, they all went ahead.
DM: Right.
GC: And so it was upsetting at the time. But anyway, to offset that I managed to meet a girl who made some sort of an impression on me and I must have done the same to her because we married within six months.
DM: Crikey. Yeah.
GC: And in ’44 that was. Late ’44. And so when I did get training again, when I did get a new navigator we got through there went on to our next training school which was over in Yorkshire. Which was, they called it a Heavy Conversion Unit. We went on to Halifaxes. Learned to fly Halifaxes. They were four-engined aircraft and from there we were posted to a squadron. Or they did another little course in between called Lancaster Finishing School but that was only about ten hours of flying and then I went to the squadron and it wasn’t until January 1945 that I got to the squadron whereas most of the fellows that I trained with they were, they were operational in November.
DM: Ok.
GC: But because of my holdup — but anyway that’s beside the point I suppose. But so I got, I was operational. I had a bit of bad luck on my first trip which — it was the custom to do what they used to call a second dickie. When a new pilot went [pause] and somehow or other I didn’t do one. I just went straight on to operations and had a bit of bad luck. Not through enemy action but just through mechanical problems and the aircraft finished up catching fire and we had to bale out.
DM: Crikey.
GC: So that was [pause] that caused a bit of an upheaval of course and we got back to the squadron about. We were posted missing but that was only because we didn’t get back in time. And we got back about two or three days later and flew the same. We baled out in liberated France.
DM: Ok.
GC: So we flew back to, we knew we were across the border and then we got out there so that was alright.
DM: So what sort of aircraft was that?
GC: Lancasters.
DM: Lancaster. Right.
GC: Yes. So that was a Lancaster squadron. 622 Squadron. And so then I just kept on. Well that was [unclear] they sent us on survivors leave which was the general practice. And that was a few days leave and we came back and we went operational again of course. I finished up doing another — I think I did fourteen. Fourteen or fifteen trips. And war finished for which we were all truly thankful.
DM: Very happy.
GC: Yeah. And so and then of course we, when the war finished we flew for a few days we were flying across to Europe and flying back POWs from, from France. The Americans were flying them out to France and then we were flying them from a place called Juvincourt in France back to aerodromes in Kent mainly where we unloaded them. And we did, I did about eight of those I think. Which was, you know was very rewarding.
DM: It would be. Those guys.
GC: To see those guys who had been POWs for up to five years. Some of the English army fellas had. And they just couldn’t believe it, you know. I don’t think they were all that impressed with all these young looking kids that were flying them [laughs] that were flying them over there. Because we were all about, you know, twenty one.
DM: That’s right.
GC: Twenty two. That sort of age. But they — to see the smiles on their faces when they got to England was just incredible yeah.
DM: [unclear]
GC: Yeah. And then, you know, we went on leave of course. That was one long leave for months until we got ships to bring us home. I came home. I think the war finished in May and we, we all left for Australia in the October I think. We got back in November.
DM: Quite a long time.
GC: Yeah. We got back in November. But of course those of us that were married it didn’t matter whether we were, but anyway the wives were not allowed to travel with you. We had to leave them behind and it was six months after that before they came out.
DM: Right. They came separately. Yeah.
GC: And so then when that happened of course we were getting back to Civvy Street. Back to living life as whichever way we found it. Yeah.
DM: To normality.
GC: Yeah.
DM: So what the base that you flew from?
GC: Mildenhall.
DM: Mildenhall. Whereabouts is that?
GC: Mildenhall’s near Cambridge. Newmarket. Closer to Newmarket. Yeah. Suffolk.
DM: There’s a flat bit there of course.
GC: Yes. It’s all very flat. Yeah. Yeah. I think they, what do they call it? The Fens, don’t they?
DM: Yeah, I think so.
GC: Yeah.
DM: So was that a proper RAF base? Or was it —
GC: Yeah.
DM: It was.
GC: It was a permanent RAF base.
DM: Yeah.
GC: It was built it was quite interesting really. It was built in about 1935 and was, and was opened by the [pause] the, well it was Goering anyway that opened it. And he was, he was chief of the German air force.
DM: Oh right.
GC: Luftwaffe. So and —
DM: That’s a claim to fame.
GC: Yes. Yes. And it was also the start of the Melbourne Centenary Air Race which was a race from England to Australia in 1934 or ’35 to celebrate the [pause] the — Melbourne was a hundred years old so it was the hundredth anniversary of Melbourne.
DM: Right.
GC: They flew from London to Australia. The race was won by a couple of Englishmen. Black and Scott. And they flew in a — it was like an early [pause] early Mosquito type of aircraft. A Comet.
DM: Oh yes. I know the Comet.
GC: Yeah. The Comet. And I think it was about two days and twenty hours it took them to and they won the race.
DM: Right.
GC: Of course a bit slow compared to what they do now.
DM: So there would have been a fair few squadrons at Mildenhall together would there not?
GC: Only two.
DM: Only two.
GC: Only two at Mildenhall. There was 15 Squadron and 622 Squadron.
DM: So you never flew the Stirling because that was what they originally had.
GC: No. I didn’t fly the Stirling. Yeah. That’s right. They did at Mildenhall.
DM: Yeah.
GC: They were, they did have Stirlings and then they converted to Lancasters I think in about ‘43 I think it was.
DM: Ok.
GC: They all, they all converted from Stirlings. So they all had —
DM: Yeah. They gave them away.
GC: They flew throughout the war but Stirlings didn’t have, they had a bit of a height problem. They couldn’t get up. Beautiful aircraft. People who flew them said they were just a lovely aircraft to fly. But I can’t imagine it being better than a Lancaster.
DM: No. Certainly the Lancaster has the reputation as the best. So when you found a crew what sort of a process was it that you — I mean how did you get on? How did you connect with people?
GC: Well we were — course you stood around with other pilots, we were. Because they were pilots and, ‘Who are we going to get? Do you know anybody?’ ‘No I don’t know anybody.’ So you’re just sort of standing there and looking around didnt quite knowing how to go about it.
DM: Like a dance almost.
GC: Yeah. And then these, these couple of young blokes came up to me and they said, ‘Have you got a crew skip?’ So I said, ‘No. I haven’t got a crew. I haven’t got anybody.’ They said, ‘Well we’re a couple of gunners. We’d come with you,’ you know. Or, ‘We’ll go with you.’ And I said, ‘ Oh well we’ll see about that,’ but we’ll, you know. I met them and so and then they said, ‘Well we know a bloke who’s a navigator,’ or a bloke who’s a bomb aimer. I forget which. Anyway they rustled around and found these fellows and brought them up and we finished up getting, getting a crew and apart from the navigator that I said we lost, unfortunately the wireless operator when we got to a squadron or just before we got to the squadron actually and we were using oxygen, oxygen masks, he had a problem with a rash. He used to get a rash all around his mouth.
DM: Oh so he was allergic to the rubber.
GC: Allergic to it.
DM: Right. Yeah.
GC: So they, you know they had to scrub him which was very sad. He was an officer too. A young officer. He’d been commissioned of course and so he had to go but anyway we got another one and away we went. Yeah.
DM: Ok. So I guess the training you did together was fairly limited then, so you’d done virtually all your training as individuals and then you gather at the end.
GC: Well, yes you do. You, you, we formed up as a crew in [pause] I think it would have been May. May I think it would have been in 1943 and we flew together in training until the January before we went to a squadron?
DM: Right. Ok.
GC: Yeah. So, and so and you probably did a fair bit of flying in those.
DM: So a lot of training flights.
GC: A lot of training flights. Yeah.
DM: So by the time you got on operations you knew each other pretty well.
GC: Oh yeah. Yes. We did. Yeah. And I’ve got, there’s only one of them left. The flight engineer who came to us. Flight engineers joined the crew only when you got into four-engined aircraft. And he was only a young bloke and he’s still alive. He’s —
DM: Ok.
GC: He’s ninety, ninety one I think he must be. Yeah. Ninety one. Lives in Manchester and we still are in contact with one another.
DM: Ok. So you kept in contact with all of them over that.
GC: Well I tried to. Yes. I tried to. I went across. We went back to England in 1956. We had a couple of children then and my wife’s parents hadn’t seen them of course. So we took them back to England and we were going to stay for, oh you know, a while. Twelve months or a couple of years or whatever. It didn’t work out anyway. My English wife — all she wanted to do was get back to Australia.
DM: [laughs] right.
GC: As quick as she could. And that particular year, in the December I think it was or the November, the Suez Crisis came up and she couldn’t get out of there quick enough because she thought there’d be another war.
DM: Yes. That’s right.
GC: So anyway —
DM: So have you don’t any flying since those days?
GC: No.
DM: No.
GC: No. I didn’t do any flying. I just went back. I worked in the bank. In a savings bank in Victoria before the war or early in the war. When I turned sixteen I suppose it was. Yeah. And I went back to the bank. Stayed there for four or five years and so and then I resigned. I thought, you know, I can do better than this. I can make more money doing something else.
DM: Right.
GC: But I fiddled around and went into retail. General stores in the country. [unclear] Port Welshpool down here. Victoria. But I didn’t, didn’t make any fortunes.
DM: Right.
GC: I went to work for a living and sold, sold biscuits with Arnotts Biscuit Company for about nine years. And then I switched over to wine. And we sold wine in Victoria for Seppelts.
DM: Ok. And is that why you live in Wine View Street or is [laughs] that accidental?
GC: No. It’s just sheer coincidence. Yeah.
DM: Right.
GC: And I’m still very interested in wine.
DM: Right. Ok. So when you joined the air force and you said you would prefer that to the army. Was that the principal reason? That you just didn’t want to be in the army or was there something else that attracted you to the air force?
GC: Well it wasn’t, I wasn’t sort of, you know, very keen to be a flyer.
DM: Right.
GC: It wasn’t that. It was just that I thought that, I thought the army was a pretty uncouth sort of outfit.
DM: You’re quite correct, I think [laughs]
GC: And that being, being in the air force, you know, you wore shoes and wore respectable clothing. So I guess it was that that influenced most of us to join the air force. There were some that were, you know, really wanted to fly.
DM: Yeah.
GC: But as far as I was concerned you had to do something in the war and I thought well you might as well choose what you like. You think you’d like.
DM: That’s right.
GC: And that was the air force. Which, I was very happy in the air force — it was. The whole, the whole period, you know for nearly four years I suppose it was. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I know we, you know, and of course I enjoyed all the more because the war finished early and I didn’t have to complete a tour or try and complete a tour. So it was, it was a very happy part of my life. Yeah.
DM: Which parts of Europe did you fly to on the operations you did?
GC: Mainly, mainly Germany.
DM: Right.
GC: Pretty well. I didn’t do many into France because that was, that was sort of after D-Day which was June the 6th ’44 and I didn’t get to the squadron until the end of the year. And so it was mainly the Ruhr.
DM: Right.
GC: And places further east.
DM: Ok.
GC: I didn’t do the infamous Dresden raid because I was on leave.
DM: Right.
GC: That particular time. We used to get, you’d fly, you’d be operational for six weeks and then you would get six days leave.
DM: Ok.
GC: So it happened that my six days leave was up and I went. When I came back I heard all about, about Dresden.
DM: Yeah. So even at that point people talked about it a bit.
GC: There was a bit of talk about it. Yeah. There was a bit of talk about it and you know I feel that at that part of the, that time in the war there was a quite a lot of feeling amongst some pilots anyway that they [pause] it was becoming almost abhorrent to them, you know. To go over and drop all these bombs on and there was no, there was no, well there may have been an attempt to say this is the aiming point and what it is but it was just an exercise in, as far as we were concerned in obliteration.
DM: Pure destruction. Yeah.
GC: Yeah. And that, that got to a lot of the fellows you know. They –
DM: Yeah.
GC: I know I had quite good friends that, after the war it played on their minds and to the extent that they eventually they didn’t deny it because it happened but they, they never talked about the war. They didn’t, you know, so —
DM: Right.
GC: And a couple of them had DFCs but they wouldn’t, wouldn’t face them. Wouldn’t acknowledge them even.
DM; Right
GC: So it was, it did [pause] but you know. It was still the air force and you were, you were, you did what you were told.
DM: Yeah. That’s right.
GC: Yeah.
DM: The rules of the game.
GC: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: Right. So mostly over Germany. Ok. I guess that last few months of the war they were concentrating back on the German cities.
GC: Yes, they were. They were. Especially in the Ruhr, you know. Oil plants. Synthetic oil plants in, in the Ruhr. Gelsenkirchen. Oh I forget the name of them all. And occasionally there would be something else. You know. We did a raid. A night raid I remember on Potsdam.
DM: Ok. Yeah.
GC: And I don’t know what that was for. Why they picked Potsdam but anyway they did.
DM: There were no raids down into Italy by that time were there? Or —
GC: No. No. They’d all finished. Yeah. They’d all finished. That would have been in ’43 I think they were going down there.
DM: Right.
GC: Yeah. I think ’43.
DM: And I guess when you went on leave because you were married at that stage you went to your wife.
GC: Yes.
DM: While these other guys –
GC: Oh they all went home to their –
DM: Because they were all English I guess –
GC: Yeah and they would, they had their homes.
DM: Yeah.
GC: A couple of them were married fellows, but four of them weren’t. Three or four of them I suppose. And they used to go home. Have their leave at home and then come back.
DM: Yeah.
GC: We didn’t go off on leave together.
DM: Right.
GC: Because it was circumstances. Yeah. I was married and that’s where I went on leave. To Wolverhampton where I was married and where Alice lived. And I was there for [pause] ‘cause we got weeks and weeks and weeks of leave, you know while we were waiting for ships.
DM: Yeah.
GC: And I spent a lot of time in Wolverhampton. Yeah.
DM: Ok. So where was your favourite place in England apart from –? Would Brighton be a sort of highlight?
GC: Well, you know, Brighton always, always had an attraction for me yeah. But certainly, you know, down, down the south of England but of course you got, you know we were posted to Operational Training Unit was a place in, in [pause] called Hixon which was in Staffordshire.
DM: Ok.
GC: Not far out of Stafford and it was from there that I got to Wolverhampton and met my first wife. Yeah.
DM: Ok. So —
GC: They used to have, they used to have a dance at the Civic Hall in Wolverhampton every Thursday night and aircrew came from far and wide to this, to this dance which was, had a reputation and was one to be looked forward to so —
DM: Ok. Was there much competition between army and air force?
GC: Not a lot.
DM: No.
GC: Not a lot. I didn’t strike it anyway. The army was evident but not [pause] and Americans of course. They were [pause] they could be dominant in an area. But no, I never really, we certainly didn’t, never got into fisticuffs or anything like that.
DM: Not like that.
GC: It was like a reputedly did here in Melbourne between the Americans and the —
DM: Yeah.
GC: And the Australians.
DM: There was a little bit of history there.
GC: Yeah. But no, nothing like that.
DM: Ok. So generally everybody got on fairly well under wartime conditions.
GC: Yes. I think so. Yeah. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience, you know. From mainly because I was fortunate in that I met this girl and got to live with an English family.
DM: Yeah. You got to know people.
GC: And spent time with them and you just got such an understanding of the nature and the calibre of the English person. They were just incredible. Just accepted everything that was dished out to them without [pause] well that’s the way it is, you know. That’s the war. It was, it was a great experience. Yes. So, that’s, you know.
DM: I think I’ve run out of questions.
GC: You’ve run out of questions. Oh well. Yeah, well that’s alright.
DM: I don’t know enough about it though. I see you’ve got a model up on the [unclear]
GC: I had, it’s been for years. Yeah. There’s a couple up there I think. But isn’t that a nice painting?
DM: Yes. My dad had that one.
GC: Did he?
DM: Yeah.
GC: Yeah. That’s Cheshire.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Signed. Autographed. Signed. Signed by Cheshire.
DM: I’m not sure if his was signed.
GC: Yeah.
DM: But it had the same colour.
GC: Had the same. Yeah. Yeah. Was your dad in the air force?
DM: Yeah he was on Lancasters as well.
GC: Oh was he?
DM: He was a gunner.
GC: Maybe I’ll just —
DM: Oh right.
GC: Stop the recording.
[recording paused]
GC: We had to take some of these aircraft, not very many but we had one on the squadron I think where they had a hole cut in the floor and a .5 machine gun used to be mounted on this.
DM: Yeah.
GC: And we, you had to take a spare gunner if you happened to be allotted that aircraft. And this particular trip, which was our furthest, we got that aircraft. Q-Queenie. And the, the gunner was a fellow named Edwards. Flight Sergeant Edwards. Didn’t know him really at all, you know. We just, we were allotted him and he turned up at briefing and that was our first trip and it was his last trip.
DM: Oh right.
GC: Which I thought was most unfair. The flying commander to sort of work it that way that surely [pause] but anyway he came with us and we ran in to trouble with an oil leak which we didn’t know where it was coming from. It was coming from an engine. From the port inner engine. But I kept saying to the flight, the flight engineer, you know, ‘Is everything alright?’ He said, well the revs are this, this and that and the other. He said, ‘I don’t know where the oil is leaking from.’ And because we didn’t have the experience, you know. Perhaps I should have known but I didn’t and it turned out that it was coming from the constant speed unit which is a motor type arrangement which governs the pitch on your propeller.
DM: Oh yeah.
GC: But I didn’t know that at that time. I couldn’t work out where the oil was coming from. And it got to such a state that we had to turn back. We were only, we weren’t that far from the target but the outside of the aircraft where the turrets were covered in oil. So we decided we’d have to turn back and we’d feather, we’d feather the engine. As soon as we touched the feathering button the engine just was, you know, the propelling part of it just ran up to four thousand revs a minute and we couldn’t control it in any way.
DM: Right.
GC: So and obviously there was, we thought it was going to overheat. It was going to get hot and with all this oil around. So — and it became uncontrollable, it was – the vibration was so bad that I couldn’t control it. Couldn’t do anything about it. Anyway, we got back to, as I said over liberated territory and we got out. But the Flight Sergeant Edwards wouldn’t jump. This is what the crew tell me.
DM: Right.
GC: Because he was lined up with them to go but he kept stepping back and saying, ‘No, you go.’ Because they were going out the back door and I must admit when you stand at the back door of a Lancaster in flight you’d swear that if you jump out you’ll smash into the tail plane.
DM: Right.
GC: And he must have had that in his head plus the fact that the recommended drill was to – if you had one of these .5 machine guns that you released the gun and went out the bottom.
DM: Right.
GC: They couldn’t release it for some reason or other. I don’t know what the problem was but they couldn’t. He couldn’t release the guns so of course he kept going back to the door. And he wouldn’t jump. I didn’t know anything about this until [pause] well until we got down to the ground. The drill is of course that you, you keep in communication with the pilot.
DM: Yeah.
GC: You plug in to, and he must have not done that. He must have come back to the .5 machine gun again to try and of course from, when you turn around in your seat and look down the back of the aircraft you couldn’t see down there because it was down the step that the main spar ran across and you couldn’t see. And I didn’t know he was there. When I got out I called up, you know, ‘Anybody here?’ ‘Anybody here?’ And I knew there was nobody there because I knew the others had gone. I’d seen them go. So I got out and he was still in there.
DM: Right.
GC: And but he hadn’t plugged in. I didn’t know he was there. Nor could I see him. And he did jump eventually but his parachute was on fire.
DM: Oh dear.
GC: When he jumped. Yeah. So that was a really sad occasion.
DM: Yeah. On his last trip
GC: On his last trip. Yeah. His last trip. He’d just got married. And only a young bloke like we were all young.
DM: Yeah. That’s right.
GC: He was, he was only in his early twenties I think. And we were over, went over to England again in 2012 and we were touring around through France and the area that we baled out in. He’s in [pause] buried in a cemetery in Belgium. Cemetery, [unclear] Mille, Mille, M I L L E.
DM: Yeah. It could be. Yeah.
GC: So anyway we went to the cemetery and found it. Found it. I had the engineer was with me and we found his grave in the War Cemetery there. So, you know it was all sad. That was sixty years ago. You know, not sixty but fifty years after it happened.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Anyway that’s war.
DM: That’s right. So the reason for that machine gun was because of the night fighters that had the cannon that fired up.
GC: That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: To combat that.
GC: It was supposed to help combat that.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Not that we saw any of those up-firing machine gun cannons that they were using but that was the idea.
DM: Yeah.
GC: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: Yeah. I hadn’t recognised that somehow. I’ll have to look up again to see what his extra trips were.
GC: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: I did record that.
GC: Oh did you. Yeah.
DM: So you’re happy with that?
GC: Yes. That’s alright. Yeah.
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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AConacherG170411
PConacherG1701
Title
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Interview with Geoffrey Conacher
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:41:18 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Donald McNaughton
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-11
Description
An account of the resource
Geoffrey Conacher grew up in Australia and after a few months in the army he joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942. After training he flew 14 operations as a pilot with 622 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down and he bailed out over liberated France.
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
France
Great Britain
United States
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
622 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
crewing up
final resting place
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Mildenhall
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/247/3395/ADorricottR151007.1.mp3
e12adc3c848f00f113ea1854c2c0d76f
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
Dorricott, Leonard William
Leonard Dorricott
Len Dorricott
L W Dorricott
Description
An account of the resource
72 items. An oral history interview with Rosemary Dorricott about her husband Flying Officer Leonard William Dorricott DFM (1923-2014, 1230753, 1230708 Royal Air Force). Leonard Dorricott was a navigator with 460 and 576 Squadrons. He flew 34 operations including Operation Manna, Dodge and Exodus. He was one of the crew who flew in Lancaster AR-G -George, now preserved in the Australian War Memorial. He was a keen amateur photographer and the collection contains his photographs, logbook and papers. It also contains A Dorricott’s First World War Diary, and photographs of Leonard Dorricott’s log book being reunited with the Lancaster at the Australian War Memorial.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Dorricott and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-07
2015-11-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dorricott, LW
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JG: Ok. So it is just coming up on twenty to eleven on the 7th of October 2015. I’m at the home of Mrs Rosemary Dorricott and she is going to talk to us from the International Bomber Command Centre. I’m James Greenhalgh from the University of Lincoln.
RD: Childhood memories 1939 to ‘45. The spring and summer of ‘39 saw the end of our halcyon days. The spring was warm and heralded an early summer. I had my sixth birthday party in the garden that April. One of my friends brought me a pretty tin full of chocolate finger biscuits. Something I remembered all through the war years during austere rationing. I went to a party at a friend’s house. There was a young sailor there who gave me a sailor doll. I wonder what happened to him for the war broke out in the September of that year. My father went to London for an operation where he died. He suffered from the results of poison gas from the First World War. Butlin’s holiday camp was commandeered as a training ship for the Royal Navy renamed HMS Royal Arthur. This was a target for enemy bombs and a very bad raid close to where we lived made us make the decision to go to Skegness where Jo, my sister was due to go to Skegness Grammar School in September 1940. I left my lovely village school and the local garage where we bought palm toffee and where my mother took her best aluminium saucepans to help the war effort. We went on our bicycles to look for somewhere to live in Skegness and a terrible thunderstorm greeted us. We sheltered in a little Norman church, St Clement’s Church, where we eventually joined the choir and my sister Jo played the pumped up organ. My sister Jo was married there. The little bungalow we found was just the right for our needs. I went to the junior school then and later moved to the grammar school. Early 1940 the government decided that the children who could be sent abroad should be evacuated to Australia or Canada for the duration of the war. We had arranged to go to my mother’s friend, Jean, in British Columbia. The ship that went before we were due to sail on was torpedoed and all lives lost. All sailings after that were cancelled. Life had lost some of its charm during those war years but we came through and enjoyed our childhood in spite of its limitations. We were all in the same boat whoever you were. The war years passed without too much incidents. There was the odd air raid and I lost two friends in the bombing. This touched me deeply. As I have said we were all in it together and we had to get on with as normal life as possible. The maroon rockets would go off and the lifeboat would go out on a rescue mission. This happened often. Some poor soul shot down at sea or a ship torpedoed. One raid when my mother was shopping happened without warning and my mother dived under a nearby hedge for shelter. So did a little old lady and when the raid was over found her boots had gone. Blown off her feet. She was unhurt. We children waiting anxiously at home watched as my mother came cycling home as if nothing had happened. We blacked out our windows and put tape criss-crossed on them to prevent too much shattering of glass. The call from the air raid warden was, ‘Put that light out,’ should he see a chink of light showing. Another call was, ‘Dig for victory,’ to go grow produce where we could to help the rationing. The merchant navy who brought so much of our supplies through dangerous seas should be saluted. They took a heavy toll. Another call was, ‘Dangerous talk costs lives,’ so people had to be aware. We went to school in our gas masks, a fashion of the day. Cardboard boxes with string attached containing the gas mask to be taken everywhere we went. There was air raid shelters in the school playground where we were given horlicks tablets during a raid and shelters at the side of the road. We had identity cards and ration books. School proceeded as normal with the headmaster breaking into lessons to announce the latest news. Romantic songs were sung on the radio. Vera Lynn, Anne Shelton and many others. Big bands. The Squadronaires, the RAF band akin to Glenn Miller. ITMA was on the radio with Tommy Handley, Children’s hour with Uncle Mac. Wandering with Nomad, a nature programme where children took part. Henry Hall and his guest night, In Town Tonight, Monday night at 8 o’clock, a quiz show. Lunchtime Workers Playtime for those working in factories. Variety acts with the stars of the day. Comedy acts with Tommy Trinder, Arthur Askey, Max Miller, The Crazy Gang and many others and of course Gracie Fields. I still think it was the golden age of broadcasting. Of course there was the serious side to it too. And it was 1945, the war was over and we had to adjust. Many people lost husbands and fathers, brothers and sons. Also sisters, daughters and wives. Have I got the right? That’s right. Something they had to come to terms with so we weren’t the only family to lose a father. On VE day everyone gathered on the sea front. On the Parade Cinema steps was a crowd of sailors from HMS Royal Arthur. It was a still May evening. A lone sailor sang a Vera Lynn song. Beautiful over the night air. There was not a dry eye anywhere. London and the industrial cities suffered really badly from air raids. The blitz in London where so much of the east end and dockyards were destroyed. My aunt and uncle were bombed out twice and another uncle who worked in the London County Council offices was trying, with his colleagues, to get children from London and evacuated to the countryside as fast as they could. He’d lost his right arm in the First World War and re-adjusted to make a successful career in education. The operating theatre in London where my father went for his operation in September 1939, the month war broke out, was evacuated to the suburbs, to Barkingside. He died during this operation and was buried in the local churchyard. During the war my mother arranged for the grave to be tended. Soon after we lost contact and after the war we went to visit his grave only to find that the church had been bombed, the records lost and the location of his grave could not be found. The graves had been opened up to take victims of the blitz. Remembering the rationing we had dried milk, dried egg which was ok scrambled. A few fresh eggs were allowed. Butter, margarine, sugar, tea, coffee, extra sugar if you made your own jam and meat were all hard to come by and the allocated amounts very small. To help us deal with this the BBC broadcast a cookery programme with Grandma Buggins and it was from these recipes that carrot cake was made and is to this day. My friend had a recipe for substitute chocolate fudge made from cocoa powder and dried milk. It was good for we children who had very few sweets for so long. They were rationed too. We had clothing coupons. We lived at the seaside but were unable to enjoy the beach as it was mined and cordoned off against invasion. The hotels and boarding houses had the army billeted on them so the town was full of servicemen. Sometime during the war the large enemy bombers were replaced by remote controlled guided missiles. Doodlebugs. Advanced technology at that time. I remember the recognisable sound as they whizzed through the air then suddenly silence and somewhere there would be an explosion. They were nerve wracking. Land girls worked on the farms. They helped produce the food the nation needed. They were not all as glamorous as those depicted on TV. Some were. But strong for the job they had to do. Prisoners of war also worked on the farms and some stayed after the war. My aunt had a dairy farm. We children would stay there during the summer holidays. Italian prisoners of war were allocated to her. They worked so hard and had very little food. One piece of fat bacon and bread. My aunt sent hot cocoa to keep them going and in return they made us little baskets. They’d nothing else to give. We went to the harvest field and rode on the backs of beautiful shire horses as they pulled the large orange harvest wagons. At times like these the war seemed a long, long way away. At home we slept in a metal shelter erected in our bedroom issued by the war office that had a strong metal top and meshed metal sides to keep us safe should a bomb hit our home. We also had one that was dug out of the ground in the garden. This turned out to be useless as it kept filling up with water. One night during a raid, lots of noise and bright lights seen even through the blackout curtains. Mother looked to see what was happening. ‘Don’t look,’ she said. We couldn’t help but see. A plane had been shot down, on fire and some poor soul in flames. We didn’t know if it was ours or theirs. This was the reality of war and touched us from time to time. We knew fighting was going on across the sea on the continent but as children it was difficult for us to see or comprehend the depth of what this meant. We watched and -
[clock starts chiming]
Prayed for our bombers as they flew out at night and wished them a safe return. My sister Jo was four years older than me. She joined the GTC a prelude to being called up into the forces if necessary.
JG: Er Rosemary.
RD: She was fourteen.
JG: Rosemary, do you want to just [laughs] just give it a second ‘cause it’s going to happen –
RD: Do you want to close the door?
JG: It’s going to have all that on it. Actually we probably should shouldn’t we? Do you want to just give it, I’m just pausing this.
[machine pause]
JG: The tape was paused. We’re restarting from the previous paragraph.
RD: One night during a raid lots of noise and bright lights seen even through the blackout curtains. Mother looked to see what was happening. ‘Don’t look,’ she said. We couldn’t help but see. A plane had been shot down, on fire and some poor soul in flames. We didn’t know if it ours or theirs. This was the reality of war and touched us from time to time. We knew fighting was going on across the sea on the continent but as children it was difficult for us to comprehend or see the depth of what this meant. We watched and prayed for our bombers as they flew at night and wished them a safe return. My sister Jo was four years older than me. She joined the GTC, a prelude to being called up into the forces if necessary. She was fourteen. Uncle Syd was a major in the Home Guard. Uncle Jack produced the food for the nation as a farmer. So did Auntie Iris. My two cousins, Pat and Tony joined the Royal Navy, Pat as a Wren and Tony in the Fleet Air Arm on aircraft carriers. Both were commissioned officers and looked splendid in their uniforms. Mother took on an insurance round travelling on her bike to the neighbouring villages and most people did their bit on air raid duty. As for me I just went to school and did, as did my sister Jo. I was too young for anything else. One incident I must add. Every day I would go home for lunch from school. On the way back one day the sirens went and as I rushed along gas mask bobbing up and down on my back I looked up to see a dogfight going on. That is an enemy plane and one of ours locked in combat and this made me rush even faster. Although we were, there were air raid shelters at the side of the road, I saw an old man going into one and felt it was safer to carry on to school. I dived into the first shelter I came to in the school playground just as my mother arrived. She’d followed me so bravely through the raid just to make sure I was safe. So ends my recollections of my war in wartime Britain and it was not as bad as many people had and in a way we got off lightly compared. We had each other come what may, sink or swim, and we were so lucky. Our children are very interested to know about this time in history as are my grandchildren and yes my great grandchildren even. Through them this story will still live on, a fitting conclusion to my personal story and for those who fought and gave their lives to keep us free. My husband who died at Christmas 2014 aged ninety one was in Bomber Command navigating Lancaster bombers. My great granddaughter aged three says, ‘Grandad Len. Grandad Len,’ whenever she sees a plane. Memoirs recorded 2015. Rosemary Dorricott born 19th of April 1933.
JG: That’s marvellous. Before we go on to the next stuff is it alright if I ask you some questions about some of that? Would that be ok?
RD: Yes.
JG: Stuff I’m interested in. Where was it you were living? You mentioned that you moved or -
RD: Skegness.
JG: So you were living in Skegness.
RD: Skegness, because my sister was going to Skegness Grammar School so it was an ideal place to move to.
JG: So you mentioned air raids and I wondered if you might tell me a little bit more about, about them. What they were, what they were like perhaps.
RD: Well, I don’t think we really took a lot of notice. We just dived under the nearest, and just put our hands over our ears and hoped they wouldn’t attack us, you know. We didn’t really, you know you could hear bombs dropping but you just hoped the next one wasn’t coming near you but we hadn’t that many raids. Not like they had in the Midlands or we had in London. I mean they had it all the time. We just had the odd ones, odd raids, not a lot.
JG: Did you have a particular routine if there was a raid when you were at home?
RD: Oh we just dived. We had this Morrison, this shelter. I can’t remember if it was a Morrison or an Anderson. There were two different ones and we just used to get in there and that was it. We’d stay there and hope for the best and if we were outside we’d run in, you know. We’d get in as quickly as we could as soon as we heard the sirens go and it was a lovely feeling when the all clear went which was one high pitched long tone. [laughs]
JG: Now the other thing you mentioned was the blackout. Can you tell me what the blackout was like?
RD: Well we used to get very dark curtains, you know. Black material and covered over the windows with that. I remember my father doing that just before he went for his operation and we blacked out the curtains at the window so that you couldn’t see any light at all when the light was on inside and they also did this criss-crossing of tape over the windows to make sure that only small bits of glass would come through rather than really shattering should a bomb hit you or something nearby shattered the glass so that’s what we did there with the windows.
JG: And did, did it sort of change what you did, did it, did the blackout inhibit what you could do?
RD: Well, no, not really because that was at night. You only had that at night when you had to have your lights on but I mean during the day you would, we just went and carried on as normal as you did before the war, you know, you carried on as normal. Of course there was restrictions but you got used to that but you just lived a normal life. We played with our friends and we did all the things that children normally do.
JG: And the other thing that you mentioned was the air raid warden and I wondered if you had memories of air raid wardens that -
RD: Oh yes.
JG: You could share.
RD: They used to come around and if they saw a little chink just showing they used to say, ‘Put that light out.’ I remember that voice [laughs] very very vividly.
JG: Excellent. Right, so let’s then move on to yeah you also mentioned some of, some of the popular music of the time.
RD: Yes.
JG: And I was interested in, you mentioned Vera Lynn a couple of times, now did you listen, did you listen to Vera Lynn on the radio or what?
RD: Oh we heard Vera Lynn on the radio a lot yes and of course she was doing, they had these mid-day concerts you know for the, they used to have Workers Playtime and there were all these artists were on there, the variety acts and things like that to keep the spirits up of the people working in munition factories.
JG: Ok. That’s fascinating. Right so do you want to, what was, what sort of, what was rationing like? You talked a lot about what the food there so that seems -
RD: Well you could grow food in your garden. I mean there was fruit and potatoes and vegetables so there was lots of thing you could grow in your garden. People even dug up their front lawns to grow food to help the rationing along and we used to, we got innovation. As I said, Grandma Buggins on the radio. She was giving out these recipes that came from the War Office, you know. People from that. Or was it Lord, I can’t remember, was it Lord Woolton? If you look it up I could find out who was, who was in charge of the food. Well it was food and fisheries I think it was, or something. Ministry of Food and Fisheries. I think that’s what it was and he was from there and he was doing all, trying to help people make good, nice recipes out of what they had and it was amazing. I mean you used to get a little bit of butter and a little bit margarine and people used to mix that up to make it go a bit further but, and we used to always have our sweet ration and we’d eat the lot in one go. It was there for a month and then we’d say well we’ll enjoy it, we won’t get a little bit each. You know, we will enjoy it. What little bit we had.
JG: I also wondered, the other thing I wondered was, you talked about, talking about your experience of air raids, do you remember how you felt during air raids? Was it, you know how you, how you felt when you heard the siren or during the raids or -
RD: Well you knew what was coming. Aeroplanes. And you could always tell the German, the enemy aeroplanes because they had a drone. It was a sort of [imitates engine noise] whereas our planes were just one long and that was the difference. You knew, you knew that they were there. They were coming but it was a bit like a bad air raid, er a bad thunderstorm. You know you were like oh lightning you know and all that sort of thing how children are frightened of that. It was a bit like that. Like very bad thunderstorms. That’s how you felt about it and then you got used to, I mean it was a bit scary at first but you didn’t know quite what to expect but as the war went on you were sort of, it became a bit of the norm and we were very lucky. Very lucky living where we were.
JG: Did, so you said that you often used the Morrison shelter in the house.
RD: Yes.
JG: And you didn’t use the Anderson shelter.
RD: Oh we didn’t use the one outside -
JG: ‘Cause it was full of water.
RD: ‘Cause it kept filling up with water.
JG: Did you ever use public shelters?
RD: No. I don’t think we ever did because we used to either go to school or somewhere like that. Not that I can remember. I don’t think I can remember. We might have done. I don’t know. Its little things lost you know in the past. You know, you can’t remember.
JG: And that then leads me to the question do you remember the bombing of Hull because that would be close to you?
RD: Yes it was close but I don’t think, with communication, like it was then, you weren’t really aware of it and we were far enough away for it to not affect us. Our, you know our parents well I only had my mother then but the parents they probably were aware of it more than we were.
JG: Sure.
RD: Because I was only a little girl. I mean I was only six when the war broke out so dolls and things like that were the most important things in my little life.
JG: Ok. So, I think you’ve got some, so let’s, moving on to some of this other stuff that you’ve got.
RD: That’s all Len, all mine, this is Len’s. This from Len. Do you want that bit?
JG: Yeah. Sure. Absolutely.
RD: Flight lieutenant L.W. Dorricott DFM. Len joined the air force aged seventeen as a volunteer. He was accepted at seventeen and three quarters after basic training in this country. He was sent to Canada and the University of Miami, Florida where he gained his commission as a navigator. He flew in Lancaster bombers on his return to England. He was attached to several squadrons. The one that had the most impact was 460 squadron, an Australian squadron that was based in Binbrook, Lincolnshire. The affection he had for this squadron was because the plane he did several sorties in was G for George now housed in the Canberra War Museum. A gift by our government to the Australian government in recognition of that they did. It lives on and I hope to gift his logbook to be kept side by side with his beloved G for George and the Australian people will share in this gift. Len was on several missions. One was the dropping of supplies to the starving Dutch people in occupied Holland where they flew at two hundred feet or less so that the supplies would reach their targets in good condition. As it was nearing the end of the war an agreement was made for hostilities to stop whilst this was taking place. Len said as they flew so low they could see the soldiers with their rifles on the ground and hoped the ceasefire message had got through. People were waving and standing on rooftops cheering and waving flags. This has been cherished and remembered by the Dutch people to this day and the seventieth anniversary of this time was commemorated by the planting of four thousand bulbs gifted and specially grown by them for this occasion. They were planted in front in a form of a mosaic showing a Lancaster and two parachutes which would show in the spring when they bloomed. Len and I were at the ceremony on the east lawn of Lincoln Cathedral. Sadly Len passed away before he could see them bloom but I was there with my daughter as were many old veterans and their families with so many stories. It was magnificent. The name of this mission was Manna from Heaven and was one of the proudest moments in his wartime career. Another of his proud moments was the repatriation of twenty four prisoners of war. This was called Operation Exodus. Apart from this Len did not talk much about his wartime experiences and it was only when the Bomber Command War Memorial in Hyde Park and the Memorial Stone was laid in Lincoln Cathedral that he took an active interest. He was presented, along with other veterans, with his Bomber Command clasp in front of the only two flying last Lancasters. One the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and the other from Canada which came to tour this country. A very great honour. This was at the Coningsby. The home of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and todays RAF. The other parts of his wartime missions he kept to himself and how he felt. He was awarded the DFM but we never knew what for. For bringing the plane back safely was all he would say. He lived to the grand old age of ninety one and had a successful career in, ‘Civvy Street’ and a brilliant hobby in photography. His interest in this began during the service career and flourished from them on. He survived triple heart bypass and a repaired aneurism after which he lived a further twenty one years leading an active and interesting life right to the end. He died on the 22nd of December 2014. His funeral was a celebration of his life. The crematorium filled to overflowing with a lovely service by the vicar and a reading of the Australian prayer dedicated to all 460 squadron personnel who had passed away. It was all very moving and afterwards we made our way to the Dambusters public house and RAF museum where those who could make it were treated to a hot buffet and an exhibition of Len’s prints. This public house is in Scampton, home of the famous Dambusters squadron and todays Red Arrows. At 4.15pm the landlord of this inn arranged for two of the Red Arrow team to do a flypast. They were practising anyway and they finished with the Pass for Fallen Heroes. A fitting end to the wonderful life of my husband, Len. The family flowers only were in the form of the 460 squadron badge, “Strike and Return,” and donations were made to the Bomber Command Memorial Trust. The funeral ended to the strings of Nimrod as he went on his way. We thought a befitting finale to his life until the Red Arrows. That’s that.
JG: Well done. Do you want to read me the other bit that you read me earlier on?
RD: Oh here.
JG: Yeah that would be lovely thanks. So you started off -
RD: Was that one?
JG: Well you started off with the from the you started I think you started right at the start which was part of your own childhood memories and then -
RD: Yes. Oh, yes.
JG: And then talked about the day at the, the day when the Canadians brought Vera over.
RD: Oh dear. Where have I, I can never find it when you want it.
JG: I think it was at the front possibly.
RD: Yeah. Somewhere here. [pause] Childhood memories.
JG: Yeah, I’ve got them.
RD: And also at the tarmac.
JG: Yes please. Yeah.
RD: Yeah.
JG: That was lovely.
RD: We stood, childhood memories, we stood in the garden in silence and waited as dusk drew near and the heavy throbbing of engines broke into the tranquillity of a summer’s night. It was wartime. A time of austerity and uncertainty but the beautiful summer’s air belied the horrors of what war could bring. Those heavy engines roared over our heads as they gradually rose in to the night sky to their deadly destinations. It was hard to believe those beautiful graceful machines could be the bearers of destruction but that was war and the means of our salvation. We thought of those young men going into the unknown whose mission it was to successfully accomplish the task they so bravely took on. We counted each majestic machine, heavy with their bomb load and said a prayer for each one and then the summer’s night returned to its tranquil peacefulness as if there had been no disruption. It was dawn before we heard the first sounds of aircraft returning. The sounds had changed. Some with spluttering engines as they limped home. Large gaps appeared in the order of their flight and we knew as we counted them back that some would not return. Dedicated to the Lancaster bomber, Bomber Command. World War 2. 1939 to ‘45. August the 8th 2014. Over seventy years later I stood on the tarmac at Coningsby with my veteran aircrew husband and my family. It was a day to commemorate those airmen who flew on their missions during the war. Coningsby is the home of today’s air force and also the base for the Bomber Command Memorial Flight, City of Lincoln Lancaster bomber together with the Hurricane and Spitfire. These were joined by the only other flying Lancaster that had come all the way over from Canada to tour this country and the day was made more special and memorable by their presence as the two Lancs sat side by side on the tarmac. We were gathered there together with many other veteran airmen to receive their well-deserved clasps in recognition of the service by Bomber Command. The summer weather had been lovely and we hoped this would continue for this special day but the British summer lived up to its reputation and the heavens opened so the planned flight of two veteran aircraft was unable to take place. They continued to sit side by side on the tarmac. Seated in front of them were the veteran airmen. One by one they were called to receive their clasps. A short synopsis was made of the wartime exploits of each one. Then they were photographed in front of the planes. Those who could stood. Others in wheelchairs. We were able to talk to and meet the crews of the two Lancs. A very great honour and it was so moving to see the light in the eyes of those old airmen, some infirm but that sparkle of adventure was still there. It was a privilege and an honour to share this day with them. A day I will treasure and remember for the rest of my days. Rosemary Dorricott, wife of Flight Lieutenant Leonard William Dorricott DFM.
JG: And did you also say that you had, there was something after that that you had -
RD: Well, Lincoln Spires.
JG: No. It was the, I think it was from the funeral. I think you said you’d got something said that was said.
RD: Oh yes. Yes I have that one. See I’m not sure if I’ve brought the right book here through.
JG: I think it might have been directly after what you were just reading.
RD: I think I brought the wrong book through.
[pause]
RD: Can I just -
JG: Oh yeah. We’ll just pause. We’ll just pause now.
[pause]
JG: Restarting the recording.
RD: Len, my husband. A quiet man, a gifted man who performed courageous acts during the Second World War. Hardly more than a child he trained and volunteered for the RAF and so started his adventures through life. Bomber Command took men of great bravery for the mammoth tasks they undertook and Len was one of them. Gaining a DFM for his courage. This determination took him through his life with artistic gifts in photography particularly with the bromoil branch of this. He gained a degree in engineering [MI McKee?] and was principal engineer specialising in the performance of gas turbines. He lectured and judged. He demonstrated his favourite bromoils as well as other forms of photography and exhibited profusely. Many an accolade he received for these feats. Len did not stay that adventurous teenager. Like all of us old age has seen him take a more peaceful and restful existence with cryptic crosswords, his continuous love of books, his weekly visits to the Camera Club and Friday lunchtime visits to the Dambusters Public House in Scampton with his great pal Richard. Bomber Command Memorial occasions have taken a great part of his life recently and he is now receiving great recognition for what he and fellow RAF Bomber crews did during the war. Much deserved. And not because of all this I love and cherish him for the man he is. My Len. Rosemary. August 2014.
JG: That’s lovely. So let’s, if you don’t mind, I just want to get some more background about Len and stuff that you knew about him when he was joining the RAF and stuff. Is that ok?
RD: Well. What do you want to know?
JG: Well, if you don’t, you know, I just wondered if he ever talked about how he came to be in the RAF.
RD: Oh he always wanted to be in the RAF. He volunteered as soon as he could. He was seventeen. I know they didn’t take him until he was seventeen and three quarters but he really wanted to be a pilot but they wanted navigators so he took that course instead but I always think he was a bit frustrated as he wanted to be a pilot but then again he might have been in, on a Spitfire or something like that and then I probably wouldn’t have had him all this time. So, that, in one way I’m glad he wasn’t a pilot. Mind you he might have piloted a bomber you know. You don’t know.
JG: And you were telling me earlier on about his, how he trained. Where he trained and I wonder if you might just tell us some more about that.
RD: All I know is that from what he, the letters he wrote home were very interesting. They’ve got it in the archives. They took that. So it’s all in there. All his letters home. Very interesting. Mostly about the amount of food he’d like to have if he could. You know as a young man, a young boy. His mother sending him sweets and stuff like that. It’s on there.
JG: And so where, so he spent a lot of time with, was it 460?
RD: Pardon?
JG: Was it 460 did you say?
RD: Well 460 squadron was one of them.
JG: Yeah.
RD: But his logbook will tell you. He’s got loads of entries in there. He was with several. 460 was the one that he was, because of his plane being in the Canberra War Museum of course, that took his heart because he’d, you know flown so many sorties in that but if you want to see his logbook I’ve got a copy of it.
JG: Well we can, we’ll just stick just -
RD: Yes.
JG: Stick to chatting for now.
RD: It will tell you what other squadrons he’s been in that’s all.
JG: That’s ok. We can look up that. That’s fine.
RD: Yes we can find that.
JG: So did you, you mentioned that he was, he was, he talked about Operation Manna.
RD: Yes.
JG: And I wondered if you might say a bit more about that. The sort of stuff he told you about it.
RD: Well he didn’t talk very much. Len was a very quiet sort of man. Didn’t divulge very much but that was something that he said. It was lovely to see them standing there and the people waving and you know he said it was wonderful to see and he said that was the most marvellous part of the war that he was helping somebody. I think the rest of it, the reason he didn’t say very much about it was because he never knew quite where those bombs were hitting and you never knew quite what had gone on. You’d done your job and if you thought too much about it you couldn’t have gone on the next time, you know and I think they all felt like that and they all felt, but he, when they had been on a mission they probably would wind down by going down to the pub or the mess or somewhere like that whereas he would get his camera and go out taking photographs. That was his way of winding down with likeminded people that he knew.
JG: And just going back to you actually you mentioned that you often saw the bombers going off.
RD: Yes.
JG: What, you know, how did you, how did feel? I know you were only a child but how did you, how did you -
RD: Well -
JG: What did you get the sense that people felt about it at the time?
RD: Well you just knew they were going over. They were ours. You felt safe. As soon as you heard a Lancaster bomber you knew, you were, you felt safe. Just the fact they were there. Didn’t realise what they were going to but we knew they were going somewhere and that my mother was saying a prayer so we said one too and, but the only thing that really brought it home to me was when one of, this girl, a school friend, she was at school one day and she wasn’t there not the next and it turned out that a crippled Lanc had landed on their farmhouse and the family were killed so that really brought it home that these aircraft that were going out were coming back, a lot of them crippled but you still didn’t get the depth of it until you were a bit older. I mean six, seven, eight you know you’re not, you’re still playing with dolls aren’t you?
JG: So you would have been, you would have been twelve at the end of the war would you?
RD: I was. I was twelve in the April as May was the VE day.
JG: So do you think that the idea that there was, does it seem to you that the idea that there was, that Britain did have a bomber squadron was important to people during the war?
RD: Oh yes I definitely think so. We were, so much of the industrial areas were being bombed out they wanted something to give them back a bit of what they’d delivered because they didn’t bother about who was living in those tenements in London that were bombed out. Little babies and children that were being killed and when we discovered my father’s grave had been opened up to put victims of the bombing we, you couldn’t help but be well I think he would have loved that to think that his grave had been opened up to help victims because at least he died before all that happened although he’d been in the First World War and suffered greatly. He was in the London Scottish regiments and they were, went over in the First World War, they went over and they were greeted with all this poisoned gas. The Scottish regiments did get a lot of that.
JG: So what have you, did you, sorry let me start again because I just tried to ask you two questions at the same time.
RD: [Coughing] sorry.
JG: I just wondered first of all what have you made of all the commemorations and the Memorial in London and stuff.
RD: Oh I think it’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful and it was about time it was recognised because they did, I mean there’s been so much said about [coughing] there’s been so much said about you know, they shouldn’t have done it. They shouldn’t have bombed, you know, all the Ruhr and all that sort of thing and that Bomber Command and Harris was really, oh I can’t think of the word ostracised because of it which it wasn’t him it was Winston Churchill that decided on the bombing missions and everything didn’t he? And so I think that they deserved it. They started it. As each, as somebody from Bomber Command said, ‘Well they started it,’ and I mean they did. They bombed London homes. It was dreadful. And even Coventry Cathedral and things like that. So war is an ugly thing and there’s no way you can say it isn’t so that’s what happened. We lived through it and we hoped it would make life better but at the moment I’m beginning to wonder if it did. People have forgotten. That’s why I think this is wonderful to keep the spirit of what the youth of that generation did to preserve this country.
JG: Did, did you get a sense of what Len thought about this? The sort of belated commemoration.
RD: Oh yes. He thought it was about time too. He thought it was wonderful. He was very pleased about it. You know he was a great, he thought, really when we went when the stone was in the cathedral when that was first done. How many years ago? We went to that about, quite a few years ago. When we went to that and Hudson, what was his name? Hudson. He’s written a book. He was about ninety then. I don’t think he’s around anymore but he was there and you know there were quite a few old veterans there then and of course I can imagine a lot of them have gone now but he was there at that and he was thrilled to bits. Absolutely thrilled to bits to be there although he was very quiet and didn’t talk much about it and didn’t join Associations or anything like that but deep down I think he was extremely proud of being in Bomber Command.
JG: Why do you think he wasn’t interested in joining Associations and whatnot?
RD: Because I think at one time, you know he wanted to forget it. I think a lot of them did, you know. If you dwelt on it you were sort of probably wouldn’t get on and make new careers in ‘Civvy Street’ would you? You know, without, I mean he went straight ahead and got a good ‘Civvy Street’ career which if you dwelt on all the things that you’d been doing you’d never do anything would you? So that was the only way people did it was put it at the back of his mind, of your mind and as he always said and I’ve been thinking it since I’ve lost him, ‘You’ve just got to get on with it,’ he used to say, You’ve just got to get on with it,’ ‘cause he lost two sons and he said. ‘You’ve just got to get on with it.’
JG: Do you think, it’s hard to say, do you think that he, that the, the commemoration, the inauguration of the new monument in London and things -
RD: Yes.
JG: Do you think that that, do you think that that helps some of the guys start to feel a bit more pride in it? Or -
RD: Well I think he had the pride in it deep down that he’d done something for his country but the fact that you know that he lost so many friends. I mean he lost the people that had gone, he never talked about that but there were people that had gone and you know you don’t think about things like that. He was as proud of being part of Bomber Command as all of them are but but he was always just didn’t talk about it. I mean deep down probably felt as proud as punch and glad he did it but there was no sort of oh, dreading it, dreading the thought of it, you know, that he’d done it. The fact was he was quite proud of the fact he’d done it but just saddened by the loss of life.
JG: Ok. I’m just going to pause again. Just pausing.
[machine pause]
RD: Come up. You know you suddenly remember something.
JG: Yeah. Why don’t you just tell me that story again that you were just telling me there about the, about the planes going overhead for the -
RD: Well playing in the garden one day, my sister and I, a summer evening, we suddenly looked up. We saw these aeroplanes coming over and we thought, ‘Oh lovely,’ you know. Three, three together in formation. Three in the front, three behind and then mother said, ‘Come in quick,’ and she grabbed us both, pulled us in just as we heard the scattering of bullets hitting the roof and the one, the first ones were the enemy and the second one behind were our Spitfires shooting at them. Gosh we were, got over that one by the skin of our teeth.
JG: That’s marvellous.
RD: You don’t realise the, when you’re only six and seven years old, you know you don’t realise the, how the depth and the, oh what’s the word I want? The severity of what you’re living through. It doesn’t register. It’s just day by day as a child you know you just enjoy the sun shines, the grass is green, the butterflies are on the flowers, you know and all that sort of thing.
JG: Did you find that your daily life was, you know was the day to day? Was the war always there or was it actually -
RD: Well it was actually, how can I say? I can’t say we were thinking about it all the time or anything like that but you just knew when the sirens went or the rockets for the lifeboat to go out you know and things like that but you just had the, knew you couldn’t just go out and go and spend a penny at the shop for some sweets or anything like that. You just couldn’t get anything like that. It was lovely after the war when you got bananas and oranges again.
JG: Do you, do you remember there being, you know like you watch television and you watch things that were about the Second World War and you see that they always had lots of posters and things up. Was there actually like in Skegness because obviously outside of London at this point, outside of London in somewhere like Skegness, was there sort of the material signs that the war was on or was it, was it -
RD: Oh well of course because there were soldiers at the front, in the, billeted as I’ve already mentioned. There were billeted on the front. You got the sailors at Butlin’s Holiday Camp as was which was now HMS Royal Arthur, so they were all in the town and they were all around and about. People, blackouts and streetlights weren’t on, you know, things like that. There’s a song about that isn’t there when the lights go on around all over the world. That was at the end of the war. There was a song about that but there were no streetlights. Everything was dark at night. You know you had a torch but you couldn’t really use it because any little light could be seen from above so you had to, you had that sort of awareness that things were different. You hadn’t the sort of freedom like you had, you know, to quite the extent but then again our world, our personal world had changed with the death of my father which was in 1939. Just coincident, coincidentally it was exactly the same month so we sort of got a double whammy really there. War broke out and my father died.
JG: Just, I think, going back to what you were saying about the blackout did you, you said you had heavy blackout curtains.
RD: Curtains yes.
JG: Yeah.
RD: At the window.
JG: Did you do anything else to enforce the blackout like use particular rooms or -
RD: No I think we just, every room, every window in the house was blacked out. Awful. [laughs]
JG: Sorry.
RD: Happens to me [laughs]
JG: That’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Somebody’ll ask me one day what happened at that particular moment on the tape and I’ll say I got a bit of humbug stuck in my filling.
RD: Advertisement for the humbug firm. And when they read what I’ve written they’ll say, ‘Oh humbug.’ [laughs]
JG: Ah yes. Exactly. Exactly.
RD: Appropriate.
JG: They’ll do a word search. Humbug. What was I asking you? Oh I was just asking you what it was sort of, what was it like?
RD: Well, every room was blacked out. You just blacked out everywhere and you didn’t put lights on unless necessary because you didn’t want to chance anything. You had the radio on. We just had the radio then. We used to listen to that. Sit in front of the fire with books, you know. It was, in a way, it was, something’s been lost in today’s world because we just used to sit and draw or just sit and read books or conversation. Chat. Make jokes, play games, you know it was, we used to toast, toast bread on the fire, you know and things like that and we used to get hot potatoes and -
JG: And do you think, I mean do you think like what’s, what’s caused that change? Why is, why is it so different?
RD: Technology. And you can’t help but advance technology. As I’ve mentioned in my thing about the doodlebug. They were advanced technology at the time and Germany had a lot of advanced technology as you’ve probably found out and, but you can’t do anything about change and somebody’s going to do even if somebody if it’s not done by a certain batch of people somebody else is going to start looking into things like computers and the computer world so there’s nothing you could do to stop it and in a lot of ways I think it’s been a big advantage but in some ways, I think, it’s been too easy communication so that if anybody wants to cause trouble they can and there’s not really very much that they can do about it.
JG: No. Sure.
RD: But I mean I’ve got mixed feelings about it really. I mean I’m not computer friendly because Len wasn’t and we didn’t need it. You know, we’ve been retired a long time and if you’ve done it for jobs that would be different. I mean twenty five years of being retired technology had advanced no end in that time. I mean they were only just starting out when we left.
JG: Yeah. Well, I was about ten so -
RD: But when you think about it -
JG: Just a little boy. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
RD: So we’ve missed out on the working world of technology, modern technology but then we have the television, we’ve got the DVDs and things like that which as I’ve got them there.
JG: Yeah. Yeah
RD: And CDs and things like that. Easy communication is wonderful really if it’s used in the right way.
JG: Yeah, course.
RD: But of course everything has a good side and a bad side and if anybody wants to behave badly they will.
JG: Yeah you did say earlier on that you wondered whether some of the lessons of the Second World War had been forgotten. I wonder what you mean by that? Just -
RD: Well what I meant by the lessons of the Second World War that war doesn’t solve anything but if you have one war there’s always going to have another one. Somebody else disagrees with somebody else over religion or politics or something like that. It’ll always happen and animals only fight for food or for territory. If anybody invades their territory they’ll defend it but the man seems to be bent on war. Very warlike individual. I think they give, make difficulties to start wars. I think that happens a lot.
JG: Perhaps. Difficult to say.
RD: Pardon?
JG: It’s difficult to say.
RD: It is difficult to say but I think man is very very warlike. Always has been. Since the beginning of time.
JG: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
RD: You’ve got to go back through history haven’t you? Are you all right?
JG: Yeah sorry I’m just, I’m just very very bunged up. I’ve got bad sinuses at the moment.
RD: Oh no.
JG: And it’s, so -
RD: My friend Richard does.
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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ADorricottR151007
Title
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Interview with Rosemary Dorricott
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:59:19 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Jim Greenhalgh
Date
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2015-10-07
Description
An account of the resource
Rosemary Dorricott is the widow of Leonard William Dorricott DFM. During the war years she was a young child in Skegness. She was six years old when war broke out. She recalls the air raids on the town and the rationing and blackouts that became a way of life for the population. The war particularly touched her life when a school friend was not at school one day and she learned that a stricken Lancaster had crashed into the farmhouse and the family had been killed. She often heard the Lancasters as they flew overhead and would say a prayer for them. On VE day she listened as a lone sailor sang a Vera Lynn song on the steps of the cinema.
Leonard, her husband, was a navigator with 460 Squadron based in Binbrook. She was with him when he was presented with his Bomber Command clasp in front of the two Lancasters at RAF Coningsby.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
460 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
Distinguished Flying Medal
entertainment
faith
home front
memorial
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/264/3412/AGrayLW170301.1.mp3
8141028f5d068b9ddb3bbcb25f8c5b0d
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
Gray, Lloyd William
Lloyd William Gray
Lloyd W Gray
L W Gray
L Gray
Bill Gray
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Lloyd William "Bill" Gray (428691 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Gray, LW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LWG: Anyway look I’m in a mess because my wife just recently died and that leaves one in one hell of a mess of course and I haven’t been able to redress the place as it is, so excuse that.
RG: Right.
LWG: Tell me then, I want to know, why I’m little confused is that my eldest brother’s eldest son is Robert Gray.
RG: Oh truly.
LWG: And when you ring I thought he was the one that had been addressing me if I seemed a bit offhand because I thought he was having a shot at me. [laughs]
RG: Okay, no you didn’t, I didn’t take that wat at all. Yeah actually I am sorry with the name and the spot I would be [unclear] as well the correct way both of us, so yeah okay, okay I see that point.
LWG: You don’t look anything like him I can tell you —
RG: He’s a very lucky man, a very lucky man. [laughs]
Other: I’ve just got some kind of admin type stuff to do to start. What year were you born Bill?
LWG: Tell me before we start that I’d be intrigued to know how you got on to me.
RG: Okay what it is we it’s the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln there setting up an archive —
LWG: In England?
RG: Yeah, yeah in Lincoln.
LD: It’s the University of Lincoln.
RG: That’s running it.
LWG: Right.
RG: So what they’re doing is there putting up a, Lucy’s actually got a there’s a sheet there that tells you a bit about it, but basically it’s a museum archive for Bomber Command, so there collecting right across the world interviews with people like yourself, veterans, just to capture the stories, capture the whole story as much as we can before it’s all too late. Now how they got on to you was we are directed by a woman in Sydney, Annette Gitteritz [?], she was told about you by someone else here in The Grange, I don’t know who that was she just said somebody else here in The Grange mentioned to her that you were a Bomber Command veteran and that’s how she got on to you and she got your details, that’s the best I know Bill. We just get our records would you go talk to this person.
LWG: Well, I’ve had a busy morning already, the postie came and gave me that —
RG: It’s one of those awards yes.
LD: Oh it’s another one?
LWG: Well I, I haven’t got every, all my so called medals and so on, one reason they contacted me and said, ‘Oh well we’ll try and rouse that for you.’ And that arrived only by the post this morning.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: So I haven’t opened it yet.
LD: Just to interrupt can you just do the intro on the —
RG: Yeah I just need to do an intro for the recording Bill. This is a recording with Bill Gray in his at his home in Deakin, ACT, on 1st March, 2017, interviewers are Lucy Davison and Rob Gray.
LD: The name’s William Lloyd Gray.
RG: Lloyd William. Sorry his full name is Lloyd William Gray.
LD: Okay. All right I just need to do some a bit of an admin here. Where were you based Bill?
LWG: I was in 3 Group and that was at Mildenhall.
LD: Mildenhall yeah, no worries.
LWG: Think that’s Suffolk isn’t it?
RG: Somewhere in that area.
LD: And did you only fly Lancasters?
LWG: Oh in operations yes.
LD: Yes, yes, no worries. Okay do you have a pen Rob?
LWG: No you’d only fly those things one at a time. [laughs]
LD: Now do you —
LWG: Plus I was a flight commander, a flight commander of 15 Squadron, RAF.
LD: Okay, so I can fill in all that. Are you okay that your name is associated with the record or do you want to remain anonymous?
LWG: Oh I’ve got nothing to hide.
LD: That’s good no worries.
LWG: Depends on what you’re going to do with it or use it for.
LD: So you’re Lloyd William Gray.
LWG: Lloyd [spells it out] I was told by my folks that I was called that because of Lloyd George.
RG: Oh yes.
LWG: Thank God they didn’t put the George in.
RG: Yes. [laughs]
LWG: I’ve never used Lloyd don’t like it.
LD: Can you just sign this one.
LWG: Well what I am signing?
LD: You’re just saying that Lincoln University can use the audio record that we have here.
RG: For research purposes.
LWG: Just there?
LD: Yes. Thank you.
LWG: That’ll do.
LD: Okay, not a problem.
LWG: I was born in 1923 which makes me too old for these things now I would have thought.
LD: The only other thing is if you have any documents that you want to donate to the university, do you have any documents or anything that you want to donate to the university?
LWG: Oh I’ve actually got my log book there what did I do with it?
LD: Just if there are there’s another form to sign to you know say ‘cos we would just take copies of them and there’s another form to sign but we can sort that one out later, yeah we can sort that one out later, no worries. All right. So I read up on you a bit —
LWG: Anyway where’s, where’s my log book that’s interesting I went and got it a minute ago and I put it down somewhere and I’m probably sitting on it. [laughs] Probably put it down when you rang the bell there it’ll come up, it’s easily identified, here we are that’s it.
RG: Yeah that is it yes.
LD: That’s not like other log books.
RG: No it’s different it’s a pilot’s log book we haven’t seen a pilot’s one before. All the people we’ve interviewed with one exception have all been navigators.
LWG: Navigators?
RG: Yes for some reason we’ve only interviewed one other pilot and he didn’t have his log book he’d already donated it.
LD: Oh.
LWG: When we get right into this I’ll tell you about my navigators I had three in all.
LD: Sorry.
LWG: Not at the same time though.
LD: Can I jump in again Rob please. So are you okay for us to take photographs of your log book and send to the university?
LWG: Well probably as we go along let me sort all that out.
LD: Yeah no worries.
LWG: I am surprised that you contacted me anyway and I must confess I was dreading it very likely because I thought about my brother’s son [laughs] I thought it was [unclear] taking the mickey. [laughs].
LD: No, no not your brother’s son.
RG: With the name thing you said you never liked Lloyd for Lloyd George, well so my father’s family emigrated to Australia in 1925 they came in on a ship called “The Barradine” and dad was almost born at sea and they were gonna name him Barradine that would have been the worst thing possible I would think. [laughs].
LD: Anyway if we can get, we’ll sort out all the other stuff afterwards, but like I said I, I read up on you a bit and you’re really a local boy aren’t you from what I read you were born in Goulburn and grew up in Queanbeyan is that right?
LWG: Yes that’s true, if you go back far enough, I’ve had a very complicated life really and I suppose if you want to know it all of course it’ll come out anyway not that it’s anything to be ashamed of. My dad was a policeman and I was born in Goulburn because there was no hospital, you could be born in Australia in 1923 closer than my grand my mother’s mother and father lived in Goulburn so they took me over to Goulburn to live.
LD: Oh so your parents were actually living in Queanbeyan?
LWG: No, oh no, in those days I’ll tell you where, I was born and my dad was then, I told you he was a policeman, that’s where you stay and move on as you get promoted and so on. I was born when they were at a place called Daysdale you would have never have heard of that it’s near Corowa, that’s New South Wales. And from them he went to, er, now let me think where did we go to Leyton, from Daysdale to Leeton to Jellico [?] which is south of there as well, Jellico [?] to Culcairn, Culcairn we went then from Culcairn to Crookwell, Crookwell to Kuma, Kuma[?] to Queanbeyan, and there I finished my schooling by riding a bike from the police station in Queanbeyan to Civey [?] every day. And got the leaving certificate.
LD: That’s a good long ride every morning.
LWG: It used to take us thirty five minutes and we’d be hanging on behind a bus [laughs] or a truck used to sit on. Do you know Queanbeyan?
LD: Yes.
LWG: Do you know where you cross the road there’s a bridge, a bridge side and so on we used to hang on there because there’s a downhill.
LD: Yes.
RG: Yes.
LWG: So that means if you took off from there you got your speed up quickly on your bike.
RG: Indeed.
LWG: And then we used to sit on sit on in behind Quadlings bike, you ever head of Quadlings?
RG: No, no.
LWG: Well they owned it, anyway he used to hate us doing that he used to look in his rear vision mirror. We went to school the four of us, two in, I had a great mate called Freddie Greentree, I don’t know whether you know Greentree’s Café, Queanbeyan?
RG: No.
LD: Mmm, a long time ago aye.
LWG: Oh yes everything’s a long time ago now.
LD: Yes.
LWG: We used to sit up the top there and as the bus came down, down, going downhill we’d peddle like mad get behind the bus and you’d catch your wheel right up the back you know and then means you’re in the draw of the bus —
RG: Yep you’re in the slipstream.
LWG: And of course eventually the ultimate did happen it wasn’t me, but Freddie hit the back and it threw him off and broke his leg and things such as that. There’s so much that you know you, I can talk about which goes through my mind which will be useless in a sense although that presents you the sort of person to you.
LD: Well that’s exactly it and this background kind of really is important because it shows the kind of you know the, it’s shows the people who are behind all this you know, you’re not just a pilot there’s a person behind this and you know and it’s important I think. Anyway what kind of work did you do, did you work before you joined the Air Force or did you join directly from school?
LWG: Er, well I suppose waiting for, well work I suppose, ‘cos then war had started then, and my brother was, I was born into a wonderful family in actual fact. My eldest brother was R. R. Gray and I don’t know whether you remember the name if you ever got a refund from the tax department it would have been signed by R. R. Gray.
RG: Okay.
LWG: I don’t suppose it rings a bill, but anyway Ron he became a deputy commissioner of in Sydney, but he was in records section in the tax department so as I came up to the end of the schooling of course he got me in at the tax department.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: So I joined that and I was working there for oh how long was I there? Six months or something like that.
RG: Was it in Canberra or in Sydney?
LWG: Here.
RG: In Canberra here.
LWG: I was a despatch clerk and that meant I licked the stamps [laughs], and I used to get have them [unclear] was always bleeding [laughs] and mother used to go [unclear]
LD: They didn’t get you a little sponge? [laughs]
LWG: Well they did and I thought that’s ridiculous because that have you ever tasted the sponge when you, you know you’ve got a sheet of stamps, you’re not sending one letter out you’re sending out so they [unclear] got their share of it. [laughs] So I was there for about six months when I and next big thing that happened is I turned eighteen, ‘cos I wanted, I always wanted to fly aeroplanes of course. And when I was eighteen I got my dad to walk me down to the oh the town clerk in town in Queanbeyan and joined up there and they, I had a, eventually had a medical, a big medical down in Sydney, Palmer and Pluckett Streets [?] you’re making me think way back a long time now of course, but if you want to get a format of what I’m about you probably need to know these things.
RG: It helps, it all adds up.
LWG: And I passed the test there, that was one hell of a test incidentally. Always tell the story about the way they tested you Palmer and Pluckett Streets down in Woolamaloo, if you know Woolamaloo?
RG: I do I was in the Navy I was a guard and I —
LWG: Were you? Good.
RG: So I know Woolamaloo well.
LWG: What were you doing in?
RG: I was in weapons electronics.
LWG: Ah.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: Did you have an association with Harmon?
RG: No, never got posted to Harmon no, no, no, never got posted to either of those.
LWG: They put Harmon in whilst I was, we were in Queanbeyan incidentally.
RG: Ah it would have done ‘cos it was during the war wasn’t it, the early stages of the war yeah that’s right.
LWG: We used to have a lot of sailors coming in —
RG: Villconnan Transmitting Station [?] as well —
LWG: Villconnan was receiving, I’ve forgotten which one was receiving —
RG: Bombshore was receiving I think that was transmitting Villconnan yeah, yeah.
LWG: So.
RG: So medical was seemed a bit rigorous —
LWG: They did it down at Plank Street in Sydney, I remember I was there all day walking around with underpants, I can’t remember whether we did, I didn’t think we had underpants in those days [laughs] all day.
RG: You said the hearing the test, you said the way they tested the hearing —
LWG: Oh yeah that was, that was corny, I even laughed because everything was very serious you know, they put you in a, open a door and I stood there as everyone else was ‘cos there was a queue and there was a bloke standing at the far end of that room with the door, the window open and all the noise was coming from Woolamaloo, Woolamaloo then was a busy place is still is.
RG: Yeah absolutely.
LWG: It was busy because not because of trucks it was busy because of horses drawing the feed.
RG: Ah.
LD: Ah, ah.
RG: Yep.
LWG: And there was a lot of noise you know cracking of whips and all sorts, so it was unbelievable hearing test and the bloke at the window would say twenty-two [whisper] he’d whisper it, [laughs], and I would say twenty-two. [laughs]
RG: Very scientific. [laughs]
LWG: I remember on one occasion I should have [unclear] and he said, ‘Speak up I can’t hear you.’ [Raucous laughter]
LD: Funny.
LWG: It’s funny that, that I did a lot during the war but I’ve lived with it ever since incidentally you never got away from it because every time I put my head on pillow I’m thinking about the war or part some part of it ‘cos I was always in it, and a bit unusual as well because I turned eighteen and immediately I was called up into the Army.
RG: Right okay.
LWG: Because when I joined up with the, they accepted me into the Air Force incidentally except there was a ten months waiting list and did the whole thing but in the course of that they called me into the Army and I ended up being the defenders of Sydney ‘cos I was up on North Head.
RG: What unit were you with, sort of militia unit or?
LWG: 110th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment.
RG: Right okay.
LD: I’m sorry but just for the tape for the future they had conscription in Australia then?
LWG: Yes, yes.
LD: Just to be clear for the record that’s all.
RG: Yeah, yeah. So sorry North Head did you say?
LWG: North Head. Actually I had to be trained of course and so on.
RG: What were you doing in the battery?
LWG: Gunner—
RG: [unclear] or something.
LWG: Now actually it suited me because it was to do with the air because it was a Bofors Gun, do you know what a Bofors Gun is?
RG: Yes yeah, we had a lot of those on the ships, same guns hardly changed still using them into the ‘80’s yeah.
LWG: Well I went this 110th Light Anti-Aircraft tour of duties, and they took me first in the Army, took me first to the showground where I got my Army hat and uniform which is a story in itself, to get the uniform they used to, they had a big long counter and there were blokes there serving, serving you with your uniform and they didn’t come up to the measuring tape or something, he’d say, ‘Oh he’s a thirty-six’ or whatever.’ I remember I the first weekend after getting my uniform they gave us that weekend off and thought that was strange wasn’t it gave you a weekend’s leave which means I came back to Queanbeyan changed trains at Goulburn and we got here late, well early in the morning, my folks were still in bed and I used to creep in, did this a number of times. So on this occasion creeped in and knocked on the door and folks were still in bed, I walked in and my mother looked at me and she cried and she said, ‘What have they done to you?’ ‘Cos I could walk with the uniform they gave me and I put it on I could walk in that take three steps before it moved, before it started moving. [laughter] Sounds stupid but it was a fact.
RG: Oh yeah, yeah.
LWG: And of course she spent the whole weekend, which is of course why they gave us leave, she spent the weekend with the sewing machine sewing the uniform. [laughs] Unbelievable.
RG: So where did you go for your training with the Army, you were kitted out at the showground?
LWG: There was, you know where the racecourse is?
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: Well next to that was another racecourse do you know what that was?
RG: No.
LWG: Kensington.
RG: Ah.
LWG: Kensington Racecourse and they’d taken that over by the Army so they took us to Kensington Racecourse where this regiment was. I was a gunner I wasn’t a private I was a gunner.
RG: A gunner yes artillery yeah.
LWG: [unclear] All that’s incidentally, I’m in a mess I understand that, most of that though is because, um, I don’t know how to take all this, if you want to, wanting I’ll be talk, telling, giving my story for the UA.
LD: Oh yes.
RG: Oh yes.
LWG: You know the UA? Military and they’d been interviewing me about that and I thought that’s how you came by —
RG: Ah it might have been actually, it might have been someone through UA yeah, yeah.
LWG: Could have been. Anyway they’ve been doing a lot of research on my history, anyway to quickly go over the top of it they trained us in, Percy Lamb, Percy was at school with me, he also did the riding to Cirry [?] and so on, and Freddie Greentree did, there was four of us used to do that, and he was called up the same time as I was and we both went into this Bofor Gun regiment, and ‘cos I’ve got to think back about all these things.
RG: So you did your initial training at with —
LWG: We went in mainly with a lot of old blokes and so on, some were young, and Freddie, and Freddie Greentree and myself stood out in one particular way we could read and write.
LD: Ah yes, yes.
LWG: Most old people couldn’t read and a lot of them anyway.
LD: Yes we’ve heard that before.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: Which is amazing isn’t it.
RG: It is actually.
LWG: Because of that he and I picked things up quickly, Freddie and I, and because we did and the Army we found was completely useless they were learning themselves ‘cos was early in the war, and Freddie and I eventually became, no not Freddie, Percy Lamb.
RG: Percy yeah.
LWG: Freddie Greentree, not Freddie Greentree, Percy Lamb, Percy and I. Percy and I became well we were best friends anyway, he was a bigger man Percy than I was I’ve always been a little squirt as they call it, and eventually we became bombardiers which is equivalent of corporal and we became instructors.
RG: ‘Cos how long would have you been in the Army by then for God’s sake not long?
LWG: Not very long no. I think I was only I can’t remember how long about six months I think.
RG: Oh wow.
LWG: And I’ve got a huge ringing in my ears ‘cos we ended up eventually in North Head, and you know what’s up in North Head?
RG: There’s a quarantine station.
LWG: Right on the head was a big coastal —
RG: Oh battery, coastal battery.
LWG: What was that —
RG: Nine point two inch I think they had.
LWG: Nine point something.
RG: Nine point two yeah, yeah, big, they were a bloody big gun those ones yeah.
LWG: Ah.
RG: I doubt they were naval guns.
LWG: And we didn’t know it in that we put in our Bofor Gun we established it there and put a bag —
RG: Sandbag.
LWG: Sandbag.
RG: Yep.
LWG: Protection around it filled it with the stuff which we were levelling the garden, the heads, and we built this high protection around it, now what was I gonna say about that?
RG: What, what your ears.
LWG: They had to shoot eventually, they shot, can’t remember if it was one or two, if you stand beside a big gun and they put a shell in it ‘cos you know how it’s done I suppose or may be longer and then they shoot it, we’d just finished building this wall around our Bofor Gun, knocking it down and putting it in place by bricks you know, and we’d worked pretty hard on that levelled it off and so on, and it shot once or twice I can’t remember, once or twice now, but you could watch the shell come out of the end of the big gun, oh it came up out of the ground it was on a lift and we didn’t know we had that, I didn’t know.
RG: Bit of a shock when it fired.
LWG: So we were there it just said that we were having a shoot today and the next thing you saw was this blasted big thing and they shot it and to my surprise we stood just beside it and, and to my surprise you could see the shell come out of the end of the bow and you could watch it all the way, and we could see them taking a tug boat —
RG: For the target.
LWG: The target, splashed in the water didn’t hit it, it was close but it hit the water, but this huge concussion.
RG: Concussion.
LWG: And both my ears are screaming now and can’t do anything about it.
RG: Didn’t put you out for aircrew service at all though?
LWG: I didn’t tell them about that.
RG: I thought that might have been the case. [laughs]
LWG: [unclear]
RG: Oh yeah they’d have knocked you back on that wouldn’t they. Did it ever cause you any problems with you know communication with the aircraft with the headsets?
LWG: Well I came through that.
LD: So once you left the Army ‘cos my little record says that basically you were discharged from the Army and you joined the Air Force the next day —
LWG: Well that’s the work we just waved goodbye they didn’t want us to go, and they promised us we’d become sergeants immediately [laughter] and they were going to send us to officers training.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: That’s Percy and myself.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: ‘Cos we were —
RG: ‘Cos you were educated.
LWG: In actual fact we were a week there, in the [unclear] we couldn’t comprehend most other kids couldn’t read or write.
RG: Yeah we interviewed a bloke in Wogga [?] a couple of weeks ago and he said exactly the same thing that, that the guys he was in with in the Army most of them were illiterate yeah, yeah, he was in the Army first as well.
GWG: Illiterate sounds a bad word but it wasn’t their fault.
RG: No, no.
LWG: [unclear]
RG: Yes, yes, absolutely.
LD: So once you joined the Air Force did you, did you go to an ITS immediately, or did you have to wait for that to happen, or how did that work?
LWG: We were up in North Head protecting Sydney. [laughs]
LD: Trying to hit the targets pulled by tug boat.
LWG: Gosh I’ve gotta think back so far, ‘cos the Army was unbelievable —
LD: Doesn’t matter if you can’t remember.
LWG: Mmm?
LD: Doesn’t matter if you can’t remember it’s a long time ago.
LWG: Oh yeah but it was very interesting. I gave a list of towns where I’ve lived and at this stage, the first I’d been in the way of travel was the place which is five miles in distance and a million miles from Care [?], do you know where that is?
RG: No.
LWG: That’s Manley.
RG: Oh of course yes.
LD: Yes of course.
LWG: And we had gone, my family and I, had gone to Manley a number of times and so we knew about Manley, and so whilst I was up on the Head incidentally we went up there just at the time when the submarines came into.
RG: Yes, yes, yes.
LWG: Into Sydney Harbour, and so everyone was on edge then.
RG: Do you remember —
LWG: We had, we were a group that went was servicing that Bofor Gun of course but we only had one rifle amongst us and we only had one clip of bullets so you had to be precious with those.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: And I don’t know whether, I used to get as scared as hell so did the rest of us because North Head is populated by thousands probably of bandicoots and at night of course you’d be on duty minding the gun on your own and you’d hear this rustling and we were expecting the Japanese at this stage.
LD: Yes, well when you had the Japanese fleet of subs in the harbour, yeah.
LWG: And um,
RG: It’s probably lucky you only had five bullets or there’d been a lot of dead bandicoots. [laughs]
LWG: There certainly would have been, when you hear guns going off all night because —
RG: There’s all the shooting down in the harbour itself wasn’t there.
LWG: Well we know what was happening there it was all of us up there on North Head.
RG: Oh really okay yeah you’re centuries firing at —
LWG: Oh well yeah they get nervous.
RG: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LWG: There was one bloke, we were in tents, there was one bloke there I can’t remember his name, late at night he’d all of sudden sit upright and scream his head off and that used to put you on edge. [laughs]
RG: So so when you say the Air Force came back and said we want you, so where did you do your initial Air Force training?
LWG: At Greatfield Park [?] we went in there.
RG: Oh yes yeah.
LWG: We went in there I think it was course thirty-two.
LD: That’s the same as Burt Adams.
RG: Yeah but,
LWG: Adam?
RG: Burt Adams, navigator, he’s the chap out at Wogga we interviewed a couple of weeks ago he was in thirty-two course as well.
LWG: Really.
RG: Yeah, yeah, pretty sure it was thirty-two.
LD: He said he started off in thirty-two until he became ill.
RG: He had a bad run he got appendicitis and got taken off the course and put on the next course and then and then he got put on the next one and you know yeah he had a bit of a rough trot on that.
LD: But he started on thirty-two course.
LWG: Ah. Well it’s interesting every time I went to a new place or moved on as we did I immediately joined forces with a special bloke and each time was fortunate enough to, to hook up as very close mates, we weren’t gay and all that sort of garbage, I don’t understand that.
RG: I think this happened in the services I did the same thing you’d join a new ship and you’d always be beaten and there’d be one bloke who’d was your special oppo and often he would be posted away to a different ships or whatever and you’d probably never see them again but you’d find someone else who’d be yeah.
LWG: We were all together for quite some time and he’s in the War Museum over here incidentally his story.
RG: Who’s that?
LWG: Colin Flockhart [?].
RG: Flossard?
LWG: Flockhart.
RG: Flockhart.
LWG: Colin Flockhart. His sister is a resident here.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: Allison Aitken, she’s, she married —
LD: Is Colin still with us?
LWG: Colin no, he was killed, I think most of the blokes, my close friends were, would build up as we moved on of course we all went over you know that’ll come out in due course.
LD: So was Percy in the same, was he in 32 Course with you as well?
LWG: Yeah.
LD: Oh good.
LWG: But he did, he, we went to Bradfield Park, Bradfield Park was an ITS they called it an Initial Training School and you couldn’t I personally at school I did use to reasonably well at school I always had the ambition of being top of every class I always came second.
LD: That’s pretty good still.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: What was I gonna say then, ah, I hooked up with when I went to ITS, the first bloke I met was this Colin Flockhart, and we became great mates he was a wonderful fella and he would have been one of those blokes that was always coming first, [laughs], but he and I followed one another over to England sadly he was killed over, oh, it’s really is becoming dull this day. That’s my diary lets have that.
RG: Yeah sure.
LWG: This incidentally is a cover, we all bought one of those ‘cos there was one of the ground staff was making these.
RG: Oh.
LWG: She would walk around all these people who had got this book, we all bought one and it’s done its work ‘cos it protected the book.
RG: Yeah, yeah, [unclear] was sitting there —
LWG: Now what was I going to tell you, what was I —
LD: You were saying —
LWG: Oh this has got a list of everything you need to know here, what I flew, where I was, that’s all the places I was at, and you can have a look at that if you like.
RG: Yes I will thank you.
LWG: ‘Cos I need glasses on.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Bill did you do any of your training overseas, you know some people were sent to places like Canada and Rhodesia and stuff to do their training?
LWG: No, let’s catch up, we did split in this course, some went elsewhere and so on, but that’ll tell you where I went. The first place was —
RG: Temora [?].
LD: Temora [?].
LWG: Yeah once we got out of ITS that was Bradfield Park we went to Temora [?], [unclear] that was —
LD: Yeah but, yeah there’s a —
LWG: That was Avro Ansoms.
LD: Yeah there’s a bunker there still a communications bunker, a World War Two communications bunker there still.
LWG: I wouldn’t be surprised.
LD: That place on the coast yeah.
RG: South Australia?
LD: Oh no I’m not.
LWG: That’s South Australia.
RG: You’re thinking of someplace else.
LD: Maraputa [?].
RG: Maraputa [?] you’re thinking of.
LD: Yeah sorry.
LWG: I got my wings in Mallala [?] went to Temora first after Bradfield Park, then went to Temora.
RG: Was Temora was for single engine flying or and then multi engine at Mallala?
LWG: No that, they were Tiger Moths.
RG: So single engine.
LWG: Yeah single engine.
RG: Yeah, Temora, so Mallala that —
LWG: Mallala was Avro Ansoms, we were going, we all wanted to fly Spitfires.
RG: Of course yeah.
LD: They had other uses for those Spitfires —
LWG: But in actual fact one would discover when you got to England wasn’t the Spitfire that won the war it was the Hurricane.
RG: The Hurricane yeah, yeah.
LWG: Hurricane was much more adaptable.
RG: Spitfires had the glory though didn’t they?
LWG: Oh god yeah they had a new one out every couple of weeks and so on.
RG: A good looking aircraft.
LWG: Mmm?
RG: A good looking aircraft.
LWG: Oh yes, well they won that race.
RG: Yeah they did, yeah.
LWG: England to Australia, fascinating.
LD: Bill did you have any trouble qualifying as a pilot did you pass everything easily and you said you always liked to try to come first?
LWG: Not easy no, this was something new, it was, I’d only been, I always wanted to be I tell you what I always wanted to be I wanted to be when I was early life I wanted to be firstly I wanted to be a lion tamer.
LD: Of course. [laughs]
LWG: Lion tamer where did I go from there, [laughs].
LD: A lion tamer to flying a Lancaster it’s a bit of a leap isn’t it?
LWG: Actually I learnt a lot lion taming it was good, I had an, we had an Alsatian dog we used to put him on the, on a chain and put the chain on the clothes line and he would chase up and down, used to make a hell of a lot of noise.
LD: Oh yes, yes, yes.
LWG: But he was a lovely dog and I used to tame him I used to crack I had a whip, crack it and he’d look at me with [unclear] but anyway I wanted to be a lion tamer, but then I always wanted to be a pilot wanted to fly used to read books [unclear] have you ever heard of that.
LD: No.
LWG: So I always wanted to be a pilot.
LD: Well that’s good that you were then.
LWG: And the first flight I had we were at Crookwell, I think it was Crookwell, and someone came in with a DH type of aircraft and [unclear] well the pilot came in, came in and was talking my dad he wanted to take people for joy rides but dad being the policeman there he had to give his permission and he, the pilot was pulling out his [unclear] I’d like to had a trip and the pilot there was talking to my father used me as the lever [laughs] so eventually —
RG: How old were you then do you reckon?
LWG: Six or something like that, it was a De Havilland landed about three miles out of Crookwell and he agreed to take my mother, and my brother I think Ron, anyway I think four of us went up in this aircraft we got into a bit of a cabin it had a hole in the back I remember through that I could see the pilot I didn’t see much of the ground ‘cos I was watching him I remember, but anyway that was my first trip in an aeroplane thought it was wonderful. Then I used to build up, my big job in the home was cutting the wood and in those days you didn’t cut, you didn’t get a little box and I used to position them so as I could sit in the middle of them, that had wings on so on and I used to fly that. [laughs]
LD: The dog may have been quite relieved about this change in vocation I think?
LWG: Who’s that?
LD: The dog he may have been a bit relieved about the change in vocation.
LWG: Oh it was a lovely dog.
RG: So just going back to the training, so Temora first, then Mallala —
LWG: Mallala we got our wings at Mallala.
RG: And that was Ansoms yes?
LWG: Avro Ansoms yeah. Do you remember you won’t remember any of this, during whilst we were there or it was just before we got to Mallala, a bloke was I don’t know whether it was a Mallala either, but he was in an Ansom and another aeroplane landed on top of him.
RG: That was at Wogga or here in [unclear].
LWG: Yes it was here —
RG: Funny the top one the crew on the bottom were killed —
LWG: A photograph —
RG: And the top guy —
LWG: He landed them both together —
RG: But he had the engines on the bottom one ‘cos his engines stopped and he used his control surfaces and they gave him his wings and they damn well should have. [laughs]
LD: I’ve seen a photograph of that it’s just unbelievable.
RG: I think it was Wogga or here in Quinty.
LWG: Here in Quinty it was singles.
RG: Ah it must have been Wogga then or may be Temora. So that was the end of your flying training?
LWG: Oh no, gosh no.
RG: In Australia I mean.
LWG: That’s getting your wings, we got our wings of Mallala and I’ve got photo of that there was about sixty of us came out on this Course 32 and you had, I don’t know but I don’t remember how many hours we’d had when we got our wings and then they brought us back to Sydney or took us or sent us home and then took us to Bradfield Park again. Bradfield Park, we weren’t there very long but then they took us down to the harbour put us on the “Mount Vernon” [?] I think it was the name of the ship.
RG: Yes, yes, “Mount Vernon”.
LWG: That’ll tell you because it’s got a better memory than I have, that left we didn’t know where we were going, they told us we were going, of course all this was happening at the time the Japanese were —
RG: Yeah ‘cos this was the —
LWG: It was twelfth —
RG: 12th August ’43, even had U-boats down here at that point.
LWG: Oh yeah. They bunged us into this “Mount Vernon” used to be called the “Old Washington” it was an American ship and you always know when you are in, in with the Yanks, they used to have one thing they always be doing and say over the tanoy, ‘Now here this.’
RG: Yeah, they still do it. [laughs]
LWG: Do they.
RG: They still do it, they do though yeah.
LWG: This is Jo. Come in Jo.
Jo: Oh hello you’re busy I’ll come back later.
LWG: Alright I shall see you a little later on, okay sweetheart, thanks. She’s upstairs lovely girl yeah, she become, she was great friend of my wife’s.
LD: Ah that’s good.
RG: So “Mount Vernon” where did you go?
LWG: Ah “Mount Vernon”, they put us in the “Mount Vernon” we thought we were going to go north but instead of turning left they turned right, and we were on for a fortnight roughly I think —
RG: Ah yeah exactly fourteen days.
LWG: Took us over to San Francisco.
LD: So did you go via New Zealand?
LWG: Ah in that direction but no we didn’t stop.
LD: Okay, so you stopped, so you —
LWG: Went direct to America yeah.
LD: Okay, and, and you —
LWG: And they took us from the boat.
LD: San Francisco.
LWG: We passed out of [unclear] watch him — [laughs]
LD: He couldn’t swim over.
RG: I couldn’t swim anyway [laughs], I never even passed my swimming test in the Navy believe it or not but I still got to warrant officer anyway.
LWG: They put us on to a, on to a train at San Francisco we were on that for how long?
RG: Four days.
LWG: Four or five days.
RG: Yes.
LWG: Took us across America.
LD: These the Pullman carriages.
LWG: Yeah, Negro, there was one Negro waiter on each carriage. We were always we couldn’t understand how they used to treat the Negros, I couldn’t understand the Negros that they formed big battalions out here there were lots of them, you’d think that the way they used to treat them they wouldn’t force them to become soldiers.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: Anyway they took us we went as far as Massachusetts, I think it was Massachusetts this Camp Miles Standish [?]
LD: Ah that’s where Ken went.
LWG: That was an embarkation place not far from Boston and we were there for some time. Ah —
LD: Was it in the winter when you were there?
LWG: We were only there for —
RG: No it’s summer, summer, August.
LWG: Summer.
RG: Actually you were there for a while you were there for —
LWG: I was there for six weeks.
RG: Yeah, yeah, you left on October more ten weeks or so.
LWG: Colin Flockhart, who was my great friend we were together all this time of course, and we parted there because we were supposed to be there for ten days I think and eventually we were there for —
RG: It was about ten weeks.
LWG: Ten weeks.
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: ‘Cos every time they were going to move the next day some of them would come up with an injection they gave us to test us, we had, one of the blokes got scarlet fever so we all had to be tested.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yes ‘cos it’s so contagious.
LWG: I was a positive which meant that I had come in contact with it apparently this is what they told us. Colin Flockhart hadn’t he didn’t get the red dot.
RG: So he got moved out first.
LWG: So he went out first, he, he came over on the “Aquitania” I think it was.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: But we went down eventually they put us on to, went into this room in trucks, huge room, big pavilion and had doors on it and I didn’t catch on at the time, none of us did didn’t know where the hell we were they didn’t tell us, but it proved to be the side of the “Queen Mary”.
RG: Ah.
LD: Ah.
LWG: It was against the wharf and all the blokes were [unclear] and there were, I don’t know how many there were of us about a hundred I suppose, but there was sixteen thousand Yanks going on there as well.
RG: A huge number of troops.
LWG: And all the activity was there and they put us in this room and when we got in there I thought it was a big building I’d gone into it proved to be this ship.
RG: “The Queen Mary”.
LWG: They put us somewhere downstairs wherever it was and it sailed out, we passed the Statue of Liberty and so on, didn’t tell us where we going all that sort of thing.
RG: Did you sail in convoy or unescorted?
LWG: We were going in convoy.
RG: Right okay.
LWG: But the convoys speed was four knots that was open to U-boats and so on so as soon as we got passed the Statue of Liberty I remember “Queen Mary” we took off.
RG: Yeah she did thirty odd knots.
LWG: Yeah, altogether different.
RG: Did they, ‘cos we had Lucy’s uncle was a tail gunner who was killed and but he went over on the “Queen Mary” was the “Queen Mary” wasn’t it?
LD: “Elizabeth”
RG: “Elizabeth” but they used them as anti-submarine lookouts, did they do that with you guys at all?
LWG: [unclear]
RG: As anti-submarine lookouts they used them, they used the airmen as lookouts for periscopes and submarines and so forth.
LWG: Oh no.
RG: No they didn’t do that with you guys.
LD: Was the ship very crowded?
LWG: Yeah there were sixteen thousand Yanks on it.
LD: Were you guys hot bunking?
LWG: Hot, hot —
LD: Hot bunking no.
LWG: What’s that?
LD: I have heard of you know basically that the ships were so crowded that at times you know basically people would leave the bunks somebody else just comes into it directly that there weren’t enough bunks for people to have separately.
LWG: Oh no, actually I think on the “Queen Mary” I think we, we laid down on the ground, we were down like the fourth, we were underneath the water level anyway. And they kept you busy by putting you in a queue, you had to queue, join the queue you’d find the end of the queue and you’d spend all day going around for your meals.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: It used to take that long. And we were on it for five days.
RG: It doesn’t say here actually how long you were on the “Queen Mary” but it would have been about four days or so, five days.
LWG: Yeah, we went to Liverpool I think.
LD: You arrived in Liverpool, and where, and before you actually sent to an ITU and everything where did you stay?
LWG: You should be able to tell me, we all went to the same place when we got to Liverpool —
LD: I’ve heard Brighton or Bournemouth.
LWG: They put us on a boat, a train and took us down to Brighton.
LD: You went to Brighton —
LWG: And Colin Flockhart was there, he had the bed next to him reserved. [laughs]
RG: They put you in one of those hotels in the seafront?
LWG: “The Grand Hotel” I started the other one was “The Metropole”.
RG: “Metropole” yeah.
LD: That’s where Ken stayed “The Metropole”.
LWG: I didn’t get “The Metropole” until later on I went into “The Grand”. And incidentally when we got our wings we all became sergeants except one he happened to be the, his name was Tom Hughes, he was the grandchild of, er —
RG: Not Billy Hughes?
LWG: The premier, the prime minster.
RG: Billy Hughes.
LD: No the present —
LWG: The prime minister, what’s his name?
RG: The president?
LWG: Yes the president.
RG: Oh, oh, oh Turnbull.
LWG: Turnbull yes.
RG: Ah this is Great Britain, oh okay.
LWG: You go back you find, and he incidentally he obviously came from a special family because he was the only one amongst us all —
RG: Who got a commission.
LWG: Got a commission. [laughs] And he never ate with us either what’s more he used to when we were being trained at Mallala, I remembered you’d see him occasionally during the course of the day but he didn’t chase the mice and so on like the rest of us did.
RG: So he just kept himself away.
LWG: He always stayed in a hotel.
LD: Oh.
LWG: And that’s not I’m up to belittling I wouldn’t have minded doing it myself.
RG: Oh no, but you know yeah.
LWG: But then he was favoured he came with us in the boat to, the boats as well, but he, he came on, he broke away from where I was he went over on the “Aquitania” sent to Britain, England.
RG: Then from Brighton you went on to somewhere in Wales, 29 AFTS, Griff Pidard?
LWG: Clyffe Pypard.
LD: So what OTU was that?
RG: That’s 29 AFTS.
LWG: Didn’t do anything, I remember I taxied a Tiger Moth somewhere, Colin Flockhart had to hang on to the wing if I remember, but we, we then had to be, things started to move of course and we had to wait for our opportunities, we had a lot to learn. We had to learn to fly but by the time I could fly a Tiger Moth before the Avro Ansom which was [unclear] they’d been civilian training if you like just to how to fly an aeroplane used to have to learn to fly a little bit more than what they taught.
RG: So at 29 AFTS did you, what did you fly there was it Oxfords?
LWG: I went on to, eventually I went on to oh what’s the name?
RG: Oxford?
LWG: Yeah, Morris Oxford, not a Morris Oxford.
LD: That’s a car. [laughs]
LWG: It’s got another name, something Oxford, the Oxford and it was a very nice aircraft and a little bit more elite than the Avro Ansom.
RG: Was it a twin engine?
LWG: Twin yeah,.
RG: Twin yeah.
LWG: Oh we were destined for bombers then, well we were when we finished at Mallala in actual fact, I don’t know of anyone who went on to Tigers.
RG: Coastal Command?
LWG: And I’m thinking about it these days I’m pleased they, that’s, that was playing with toys compared with what we were doing.
RG: Yeah, yeah absolutely. So was this the Oxford at, that was in Wales wasn’t it Clyffe Pypard?
LWG: Clyffe Pipard, er well it was all, I never actually knew I knew where the pubs were [laughs] I don’t well that’s about the only time we didn’t know anyone and you’re kept busy, the amazing thing is and they didn’t say this when I went to Bradfield Park, we, we had to do air frames and learn about aeroplanes and the air and wings and all that sort of thing, but god that was the best schooling you’ll ever get, they started, the first thing they did they got us all in we all had to write out our wills, because that’s was happening of course everyone, and all the blokes, Colin Flockhart, and all the others [unclear] and the fact that I wasn’t touch wood about that I suppose that’s plain fortunate.
RG: And then?
LWG: Anywhere where are we up to?
RG: Well that was 29 AFTS and then it says here you went back to Brighton for a while only about three weeks in Brighton, and then you went on to 23 AHU at Hednesford.
LWG: At where?
RG: Hednesford.
LWG: Hednesford. Oh we were, there we, there we split up, Colin Flockhart he went on and I had to wait, they took me and, this is all [unclear] Actually I’ve had someone else doing my story and I ought to just give you that because I did all the research for that, that’s the third eye that’s —
RG: Mmm. It would be good to get hold of that but —
LWG: Anyway —
RG: So AHU is it?
LWG: We went from the Oxford which was a nice aircraft to fly but it was still a training type of aircraft and then ah, then we went on to Wellingtons. Where we were when we got —
RG: It said here you went from to Brighton to Hednesford, Hednesford and then to Wheaton Aston 21 AFU.
LWG: What’s after that?
RG: And then after that is reserve flight at Purton, and then ATU, 30 ATU at Hixon.
LWG: It must have been Hixon where I, I think where I was when we got our crew.
LD: Yes I was wondering about that crewing up experience.
RG: You must have done that before you got on to the Wellingtons.
LWG: It’s all so long ago now.
LD: Excuse me Bill where’s the toilet?
LWG: Oh yes sorry, in there third door shut there that’s the toilet.
LD: Thank you.
LWG: Or if you’d rather be more further away from us you go into that bedroom down there, be right there I think. There’s a light switch on your left hand side.
LD: Thank you.
RG: So would have crewed up for the Wellington though wouldn’t you?
LWG: Yeah now, we’ve got to guess the stage how I got my crew was interesting, er, let’s have that.
RG: Yeah sure.
LWG: Get my glasses what did I do with them?
RG: I did see them actually, there we are.
LWG: I’ve got them there have I?
RG: Oh no there’s a pair there, there broken ones.
LWG: Well you can help me.
LD: How?
LWG: My glasses, there probably in the bathroom are they?
LD: Oh okay I’ll have a look.
LWG: What have I done with them probably in my darn pocket.
LD: Not in the bathroom.
LWG: Oh it’s all right.
RG: In your pocket? [laughs]
LWG: There’s the aircraft I flew.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: Oxfords, we went on to Wellingtons, then we were on to Lancs, then on the Lancaster Mark 2 that had radial engines, then eventually we ended up with that got on to the Mark 3, 4, 5 I think.
RG: They had the Merlins didn’t they?
LWG: And they were Merlins a lot of difference mainly because the 2 the Lanc 2 had the Hercules and that was radial so it was good next to the ground.
RG: But not high at altitude.
LWG: Not high.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: But the 2’s with the Merlin engines lovely aeroplane, it was a lovely aeroplane, but the Merlin was wonderful as well the Merlin.
RG: Your crew was it a mixed RAF, RAAF, RCAF?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Did you have one crew all the way through Bill or did it, did you?
LWG: Am not sure about that mainly the navigator was, I got my first navigator and towards [unclear] We all got to, no it must have been, confused where was I when we got our?
RG: It doesn’t matter Bill when you got the crew it will be in here anyway.
LWG: Give me my thoughts though, slow down.
RG: Do you want that open page again with the —
LWG: I’d be lost without this thing. Should have done my own research shouldn’t I?
RG: Ah. [looking through book]
LWG: Ah 30 ATU Hixon we were Staffordshire, and I started off with one, two, three, four, five crew.
RG: That’s a crew for a Wellington isn’t it five?
LWG: Yeah we were at Hixon and they, I’ve forgotten how many there were of us I think there might have been twelve, twelve pilots, twelve navigators and so on, and put us all in a room together ridiculous, and said [unclear]. Met another great mate his name was a nickname of course his name was Danny because his name was Daniel Carne and I think one thing that was outstanding was that he was, he had been a professional snooker player.
RG: Ahh, he’d have been handy in the pubs [laughs]
LWG: Yeah, I loved snooker as well not as though I was all that good then, but he used to use me as the wall that is he’d bounce off me because, we, he and I met one another in the snooker room of course.
RG: Right yeah.
LWG: And we both had a game and he’d say you can break so I would break and then he’d sink them all.
RG: Clear the table [laughs], so he was in your crew was he your first crew?
LWG: He was just like another bloke I met later on who was a cricketer, Keith Miller, Keith Miller, he just looked like Keith Miller slicked back hair.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: And he and I became great mates and I was always having to put up with him and his girlfriends because he attracted all the girls.
RG: Yes.
LWG: You know and so on. But he was a great bloke we got to know one another very well over the snooker table he taught me how to play snooker properly and so on and —
RG: So crewing up you just in that room and you just found —
LWG: Well they put us in there were twelve pilots as I was saying all the ones along, and they said, ‘Right oh sort yourselves out into crews.’ Which I thought was ridiculous, and I said to Danny I said, ‘This is ridiculous come on we’ll go have a game of snooker.’ And we did, he said ‘Good idea.’ And we went next door away from this group that were all milling around trying to make friends and so on which was just plain ridiculous, and after a while there was a knock on the door and what anyway, well there’d be twelve blokes came in and they had formed themselves into the crews but they needed a pilot, they said ‘We’re looking for a pilot, two pilots.’ So we, I said ‘Well.’ To Danny I said, ‘Well god this that’ll suit us I suppose so we’ll toss.’ [laughs] And I tossed and that way I got my crew and he got the others, and I had one, two, three, four, five people, one of them was an older bloke, Sergeant Lake he was to be the navigator and he didn’t want to go to war his wife didn’t want him to go to war and he had a lot of trouble.
LD: Yes.
LWG: Eventually the crew came up, he came with us and we started training and so on and he showed his true form and the crew came up to me one day and said, ‘We’ve had enough of George I think your let’s see if we can find another navigator.’ So I asked the CO whoever it was because we’d been doing a bit of work together, I said, ‘I think we’ve [unclear] a problem.’ I thought, he said, ‘Oh you’re lucky we’ve got another navigator here who’s looking for a crew.’ His name was Steve Tinkler and was Steve Tinkler navigator, Steve Tinkler, pas de deux [?] because he’d already done one —
RG: One tour.
LWG: One, what used to be called?
RG: One tour of operation.
LWG: Tour yeah, and he wore glasses, proved to be a bit of a drunk used to have to put him together [unclear] [laughs] He was a great bloke, but he was older, and he was a genius.
RG: Was he AAF or RAF?
LWG: He was RAF, he came from Ireland, lovely bloke had glasses, and mumbled a bit and so on, but he was, he proved to be, he was great with G, you know what G is?
RG: Yep, yep.
LWG: He used to be able to, he got that down to a fine art and now you should be able to turn here because you’ll turn onto the runway or something he was so good —
RG: Precise.
LWG: Advanced, and I was lucky to get him. So he did another tour with us twenty-four he finished his second tour, and then I got another —
RG: So when you say he was older he was only a couple of years older?
LWG: Yeah, but he was, oh he would have been in his forties may be I suppose.
RG: Oh he was in his forties okay.
LWG: Could have been, I never asked, I never asked him. And I remember we’d just changed and I got another, there was another bloke on Mildenhall Station looking for a new crew he was an Indian, Stanley Berry and he’d done some, I’d forgotten how many he’d done, he might have done six or seven or whatever it was trips himself with somebody, with somebody else and I lost him eventually not didn’t lose he did his twenty-four, and we went on our, I remember when he left we went to, where did we go where we went missing? That’ll all come out anyway. That’s the time we got lost at Stockholm, got caught in a storm and we were reported as missing they lost contact with us and so on, and Steve Tinkler was getting nervous ‘cos he used to listen to what was happening and they weren’t hearing from me and they were trying to contact someone, so they assumed we’d been shot down so he gathered all the gear and he robbed my wardrobe I remember and he’d gone didn’t want to wait, he’d gone by the time we got back and I lost contact with him then.
LD: Were you able to get your belongings back?
LWG: Ah, I didn’t know what he’d took he’d ransacked the thing, that was a terrible thing you know he and I, he was a great bloke, I used to put him to bed every night because he’d, he’d go into the mess and drinking he used to put twelve whiskeys on the table and he’d drink and then I’d grab him and take him home and put him to bed.
RG: Twelve whiskeys that’s reasonable enough yeah. So, so he was your first navigator or the first one was the chap who wasn’t up to it.
LWG: First one was George Lake.
RG: Yeah, and then —
LWG: Oh, George we eventually dropped him and he joined another crew and in actual fact my crew didn’t tell me about this until later on.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: He followed us with another crew and was shot down the first —
RG: First trip?
LWG: The first trip.
RG: So how many trips did you do?
LWG: Twenty-nine.
RG: Twenty-nine.
LD: And was that all with 15 Squadron?
LWG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah. And they were all in Lancasters?
LWG: Oh yeah.
LD: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: I, I, we did which is unusual, we did, I did more daylights than —
RG: Oh okay.
LD: Right.
LWG: I did some which day trips, I had, I was good at formation flying and stuff, and I always believed first I was leading the squadron, then on a couple of occasions I led the whole raid, we used to do that in formation.
RG: Any particular trips stand out for you?
LWG: Oh yeah, there all here, one was the one I just mentioned where we got lost which will come up in due course.
LD: So were you with that trip where you got lost over Stockholm were you able to get back to Britain or did you go down over Europe?
LWG: No well I got back, we lost contact. We were chased by [unclear] lights, runway lights going on and off we was at, we were within, right up here, Heligoland, terrible weather and so on we recorded. Anyway we got back and I didn’t, I hadn’t, we’d been chased by the Germans of course and I kept quiet and I was over, we got back to the squadron before they knew I was, that we were coming back, anyway that’ll all come out one way or another. Er, so long ago now really dragged us back, that’s why you’d be better probably taking what —
RG: Well look we will do that, we will take it them as well, yeah.
LWG: Later on. You can see that, can you see that one —
RG: On the top there?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: They haven’t put it into a book form yet there doing that.
LD: ‘Cos we can copy that and return it to you.
LWG: Well you can do that, but there, there’s a few things that I want to change in there although definitely take them, I don’t like to lose contact with these things.
LD: Oh no I understand that entirely absolutely.
RG: Oh yeah this is lovely.
LWG: There’s a few things that I want to change in there anyway but more or less that tells you about what I’m telling you now.
LD: So were you or any of your crew injured during your ops?
LWG: Not to [unclear] the aircraft [unclear] we used to bring it back US and so on flak and whatever, but no we, none of us actually came to any harm in the air.
LD: Fortunate with that. Did you, were you was the aircraft ever so injured that you know you were damaged that you were coming back on one or two engines that kind of thing?
LWG: Oh yeah. Never did I have to come back on one or two for that matter, come back you’d lose an engine but usually you’d lose them for other reasons. You’re always being attacked of course and had holes all over you and so on and they’d have to patch it up, but I was lucky we didn’t get hit personally but the aircraft was many times.
LD: Were you more concerned about doing the daylight raids then the night time raids or did that not make much difference for you?
LWG: Oh they were both difficult if because leading the raid for instance you had to make a lot of decisions it wasn’t all according to orders and you had to make decisions and so on. We used to be going up and the Yanks were coming back in daylight, and at night time one of the big things that was always pretty difficult and you’re always being shot at and all that sort of thing, but at night time was like they draw the curtains down because everything was in the dark you didn’t have lights on.
LD: The time that you got lost over Stockholm, ‘cos I haven’t, I had heard that you know Stockholm didn’t have blackouts were you able, you said there was a bad storm, were you able to see any lights in Sweden to help you navigate home?
LWG: We was very lucky as a matter of fact because we were lost well and truly, the navigational equipment, like G and all that sort of thing went US and we lost our way and we were in, it was a bad storm that they hadn’t predicted. They sent five of us there to, what were we doing? Oh we were mine laying and we had to find exactly where we were to drop the mines in the right spot it was in this area of the water that the Germans were using all the time and we had to be certain of what we were doing, and everything went US with the aircraft when I took off. ‘Cos they sent in, they sent a hundred I think it was a hundred off as a diversion, for the five of us and I was sent from 15 Squadron the others came from different squadrons and the five of us were the ones that were doing, what they were looking for was to drop these mines, ‘cos the Germans were moving their ships with stores and so on up to Caterech [?] and so on up to Russian.
RG: You see right up in the Baltic, it was in the Baltic.
LWG: And we ran into, to start with, we left, we ran into this storm and it was very thick they were flying blind as we used to say and G and so on didn’t work when you got anywhere near Germany ‘cos they used to jam all that. And we got lost and, what happened, how did I do this, I decided to go low ‘cos we’d been doing that from probably twenty thousand feet or something, and so I dived down broke, broke cloud and I was over a big city with all the lights on.
RG: So you were over Sweden?
LWG: Yeah we were over, oh what’s the name?
RG: Stockholm
LWG: Stockholm yeah, and we thought that was so and it proved to be that but we’d been blown a long way out of our area and so on running short of fuel, on the way back everyone else had gone home because they’d sent a hundred over Heligoland to side track the Germans.
RG: Yeah.
LWG: And, oh god what happened, as I was flying back towards England it started to clear and I could see the ground well you couldn’t see the ground ‘cos it was dark and so on, but we did come back over an area where I knew there were Germans had night fighters and so on, and I noticed just in front of me the lights came on and go off which meant that was one coming one of the fighters being sent off, that happened six times when I thought I’m gonna have to do something now so I thought well I’m going to do the opposite of what they would do and as blind as I am I’ll get down on the deck. I couldn’t see the deck at all ‘cos it was dark but guessed the best area as far as the height was concerned the altimeter told me that and as I was flying over these lights kept going on they came on six times and they’d sent six fighters off and they didn’t catch up with me until I could see the searchlights in England.
RG: Right.
LWG: When one attacked —
RG: Were you still down low at that point?
LWG: No well I was lowish but I wasn’t real low. I didn’t you couldn’t tell it was just black you couldn’t tell how high you were and my altimeter I’d never [unclear] you couldn’t read it because of the storm the barometer changed.
RG: Ah massive change to the air pressure, yep. So you were —
LWG: Anyway I started and I had to do what they used to call a corkscrew so and I was good at doing I used to teach them how to do the corkscrew, that meant you didn’t do things finally you had to be in desperate situations and I used to teach that to the rest of crew in 15 Squadron, got a few bods coming along ‘cos they all did the same thing corkscrew was something that would help them out of trouble. Anyway we were doing that and I threw them off into the dark and I must have been flying a hundred feet at that stage ‘cos you couldn’t see the ground it was a bit of a worry, but eventually we came through that and ‘cos we were something like an hour late or something they’d written us off.
RG: You must have been dead low on fuel?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: If you were an hour late.
LWG: Yes we were.
LD: Were you able to land at your at Mildenhall or did you have to land elsewhere?
LWG: That’s where Steve or John, ‘cos we’d been described as missing.
RG: Did you ever have to come down in another field, another airfield?
LWG: Yeah. I remember coming down once on a Yankeedrome, they had, oh let me, what was the name of the aircraft they were flying?
RG: A 710, Liberator, Liberator?
LWG: You what?
RG: The Liberator.
LWG: Liberator, Liberator. And we had to be diverted once and we landed there, we all looked like a bunch of kids incidentally, and they grouped around us when we got to that place and we went into the bar and they were saying, ‘There only bloody kids.’
RG: Were they, were they older though?
LWG: Oh yeah, no they were all older blokes.
RG: Oh okay.
LWG: Oh interesting, we landed there and they were trying to work out what they would do with us anyway one of them offered to show me one of the Liberators and we went over and they used to carry cookies as you know, used to carry about twenty thousand pounds of bombs huge [unclear], and we went and had a look at these Liberators, and they said, ‘come and have a tour bombed up ready to go.’ [telephone ringing in background]
LD: So do you remember carrying the tall boys or the grand slams.
LWG: No, no we didn’t do that. Well they were using them because they wanted to penetrate the pens at Heligoland but they never did it you know. Oh incidentally, I remember leading the crew and I had to position the formation and we were, what was it, three thousand [unclear] daylight, we went to Heligoland and, oh god, I’ll have to study my old book again to find out what we did.
LD: So when you finished your tour Bill —
LWG: I didn’t finish a tour.
LD: You didn’t?
LWG: No.
LD: Oh okay.
LWG: They called the war off. [laughs]
RG: How, how, how many were you expected to do in a tour?
LWG: Thirty.
RG: Thirty okay. You know if that varied over —
LWG: It was automatic but all things went through but thirty was the deal. We all wanted to do that ‘cos the whole crew wanted to do that ‘cos we were senior people at that stage.
LD: So when they called the war off were you involved in missions over Europe you know dropping food and bring POW’s back and so on?
LWG: Yeah we dropped some food, actually we dropped food because I, they gave me the job of flying over our drome where we were to find out what height we should do it from.
LD: Oh yes, yes.
LWG: And I did that for them but I never actually, did I drop, I might have done one trip with food otherwise I did a number of trips on bringing prisoners of war back.
LD: Right okay.
LWG: Used to go to a place called Reims and oh this is a bit of tale might tell you a little later on. Used to go to Reims.
RG: Where were you when, what’s your memory of VE Day what was, what happened to you on VE Day when they called the war off do you remember how you thought about it or what you did?
LWG: What did I think, well you were relieved, but I didn’t throw my hat in the air and those sort of things. I was very involved at the end on Mildenhall, but no what they did is they just pulled the sheet from underneath your feet and you were of no use to anybody from then on you had to find your own way. Poms wanted us to go back to redress the country and so on, British were good, some of the Australians were bad, a lot of idiots amongst them as well.
LD: So were you involved with Tiger Force, or the preparations for Tiger Force were you involved in that in any way?
LWG: Oh no I think no, trying to think what was they called the ones supposed to deal with used to go pick up drop a flare?
RG: Oh Pathfinders.
LWG: Pathfinders. I wasn’t in the Pathfinder group but I was doing their work for them.
LD: Oh okay. What sort of work were you doing for them?
LWG: Just leading, we used to be in front of everybody.
LD: Oh okay.
LWG: I remember Pathfinders, I was leading I’ve forgotten which troop that was towards the end anyway I was, had everyone formatting on me and five of these Pathfinders came up and they took a wrong turn I think we bombed as a consequence I heard later on we bombed a prisoner of war camp or something, I’d forgotten about that.
LD: Yeah.
LWG: 5 Group were supposedly the elite of the bombing group but they got the pick of the troops.
RG: Pick of the crews and so forth yeah.
LD: When you were doing the day time raids you must have been involved with some precision bombing were you?
LWG: Precision.
LD: Yes.
LWG: Well none of it was haphazard I can tell you that. [laughs]
LD: Some of it was perhaps more precision than others, but were you involved in any particular raids for very special targets?
LWG: Well they were all special targets. Oh yeah, we used to go out in hundred or two hundred lots and so on and, oh, if you didn’t of course you‘d have Gerrys all over you share the weight a bit, and they were firing those oh what is they called, the V2’s, V1’s.
RG: Was you involved in the raids at Pienemunde at all?
LWG: Pienemunde.
RG: Did you do those at all?
LWG: Yeah I think I was on Pienemunde I forgot.
RG: It’ll be in here in the log —
LWG: No we knew Pienemunde, we, I can’t remember, we certainly did it whether I was on airstrips or not now, but that’s why that books important to me, forgetting things.
RG: Yeah.
LD: It’s not surprising it’s all so long ago. So once they called the war off were you, did it take long for you to get back to Australia or were you floating around Britain for a while wondering what to do?
LWG: No I was, took us back to Brighton.
LD: Yeah.
LWG: And we were lost souls then, no we were there for some time, came back on the, what was the name of the ship, I went through it around the world.
RG: “Stirling Castle”.
LWG: “Stirling Castle” yeah. Came back through the Suez.
LD: Had a bit of a Cooks tour didn’t you?
LWG: Yeah all the way round.
RG: And you did do a Cooks tour of Germany the cities after war I know it’s in here in your log you did one of the Cooks tour trips after the war.
LWG: What’s it got in there?
RG: You did Operation Exodus ones which was the prisoners, and a Cooks tour of Germany from your base at Dover to —
LWG: Yeah I was, I was a senior bod in Mildenhall and we were given the opportunity of taking the ground staff and aircrew around anywhere we wanted to go in Germany and that we called a Cooks tour, Baedeker and yes we did that. I did that in fact it was interesting, Molly and I, Molly was my wife, Molly and I went back to England and we took a trip down the Rhine. [telephone ringing] Excuse me I’ve got to take this. She’s took over from my accountancy I built up in Batumba [?], she was my secretary.
LD: I was wondering what you did after the war?
LWG: Another story altogether.
LD: Did you have trouble finding work when you came back?
LWG: Oh well, that’s a different story you’ll find that I’ve had a very full life one way or another, it didn’t stop with the war anyway.
RG: Well I’m just going to photograph your log book page by page so we’ve just got a record of that if that’s all right?
LWG: Yeah I think that’s all right. I didn’t make any extra secret thoughts or anything like that in the corner I just used to, I was too young, didn’t realise what I should have done, because I had an actually an amazing story to tell, can’t do it now forget things, and my brother Ron comes into that and oh lot of things happened during my life.
RG: Did Ron serve during the war as well?
LWG: No wouldn’t let him go, he, he became the commissioner of —
RG: Oh he was a reserved occupation.
LWG: Yeah, he was very wise, he used, he had signed your refund cheques [laughs] but that was not a big deal.
RG: I was always going to get a refund cheque.
LD: So when you came back to Australia if you became an accountant you must have gone back to study is that right?
LWG: Yeah, um, I have to think about this, I was working in the tax department when I turned eighteen, when I turned eighteen I was called into the Army and I had joined up into the Air Force, and after the ten months when I got into a course and started and when I came back I was still acceptable, pardon me, to the tax.
LD: Yes, yes.
LWG: But I had to do my studies which I did mainly by teaching myself, asked for all the accountancy work and they told me, oh when I came back I was a very sick boy I ended up spending totally six years in Concord Hospital I got a bad touch of the flu in London, got sick, got pleurisy, I was sick when they brought me home in the boat, and I spent six years in Concord Hospital.
LD: Oh my lord.
LWG: In three goes. And eventually they sacked me if you like or whatever, and in the meantime I had studied accountancy and I passed that and got qualified as an accountant here in theory and I was called back to the tax department and I came back here and Ron told me that you’ll never get anywhere if you came to Katumba to Canberra so we’ll send you down to Sydney, so I went down to the tax department in Sydney, so what street was that? Elizabeth Street.
LD: Yes.
LWG: And I was there for years and till eventually I got sick and I was gonna die and all sorts of things because I contacted tuberculosis, so I was in hospital for six years about and they told me I’d never work again.
LD: Oh right, yeah.
LWG: Eventually they, um, now what do I do with this, anyway I decided I would try for work, oh I got married [laughs].
LD: I figured Molly came into it somewhere.
LWG: Yeah I married Molly she was my nurse at Concord Hospital.
LD: Oh that’s so sweet.
LWG: Yeah she was a beauty. So she spent her time nursing me there which I, and I got to the stage where I was getting well, she was myself actually, until I was told they couldn’t do anymore for me anyway and we decided to get married which we did and I decided. They said the best thing you could do is get up in the mountains clean air and so on.
LD: Yes, yes.
LWG: I’d been the yardstick in sense for people in Concord, I got onto a lot of equipment and I refused they wanted to take my lungs out and all sorts of things.
LD: Oh.
LWG: I refused on that we decided we’d try and right it ourselves and we did eventually.
LD: That was probably a good decision.
LWG: I taught myself to, I had got the infection up here on my right lobe, I taught myself they said you’ll never, I had a haemorrhage, they said they’ll never cure that because you can’t stop yourself from moving it, so despite the fact you had to stop moving using that the only way we can do that is take your lung out.
LD: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: I saw what that meant and I saw people getting around despite this because they took all your ribs out, so I said no I’ll do it myself, took me a year, I controlled my ribs sitting very I used to get them to force me to use my stomach.
LD: Yes
LWG: And the lower lobes kept this one as steady as I could.
LD: Goodness
LWG: And it took me a year and they said, took me, you know those scans, ever had a scan?
LD: Yes, yes, I have indeed.
LWG: I had the first scan it was brought to Concord, and they used me as a guinea pig, and they put me in a room all by myself, near the hospital labs, heard this thing clanking, getting closer, and closer and closer and trying out a lot of bad stuff whatever. Wasn’t even aware of that, I became a guinea pig. Anyway after a year they said that cavity has healed itself, the best thing you can do is get up in the mountains so Molly and I got married we went up to live in Katumba [?].
LD: Oh that’s remarkable —
LWG: The best thing I ever did —
LD: Remarkable tenacity.
LWG: Beg your pardon.
LD: Remarkable tenacity.
LWG: And I hung my shield up took me six months to get my first customer basically built up the biggest accounting practice in the mountains and eventually, I had a wonderful secretary, in fact she just rang me, she took over I gave her the practice, she got her accountancy qualifications and she’s running the practice now, she rings me up every day if she’s got a problem, it was her she rang earlier.
LD: Oh that’s wonderful. Did you and Molly have, well yes you obviously had children you spoke to me about them.
LWG: Two children, boy and a girl.
LD: Do they live nearby?
LWG: One lives in [unclear] and Janet is [unclear]
LD: Oh that’s good.
LWG: And they’ve both got kids and so on so it’s all gone rather well.
LD: It’s a remarkable life you’ve led you know, especially this you know this section in Bomber Command you know you said when you went to the American base they were surprised how young you were you know when you look at those bomber crews they were you know they were —
LWG: Well we were only kids we hadn’t done anything in life.
LD: Yeah, I look at my son sometimes, my youngest son you know and I can’t even imagine him doing that, I just I can’t wrap my head around the level of you know skill and —
RG: Responsibility.
LD: Yeah amazing responsibility involved with lads that was so young it’s, it’s a remarkable thing that you all did it really is and yeah it’s, it’s you know.
LWG: There were thousands of us doing it of course.
LD: Yeah, it is important that it is remembered and acknowledged, it’s very important.
LWG: Of course the Yanks were a different thing altogether, interesting the Yanks do things better than we do, Australians I’ve got no time for in total sense, not real smart.
RG: Us Australians?
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Yeah I agreed.
LWG: The Poms were good but they had sense and did it according to oil, if you know what I mean by that because they do things according to what they were told and —
RG: What they were supposed to do.
LWG: The Yanks were different altogether they were freelancers, oh yeah they would do everything because they would pay for it number one, they wouldn’t do it on the yardstick they’d do it properly and I admired the Yanks they were great in their way. The Poms were good, the Australians they were caught short.
RG: Sloppy is that what you mean.
LWG: Yeah, not that they weren’t sincere and so on they were doing that but I don’t know how you’d describe it.
RG: Cut corners a bit or?
LWG: No they certainly weren’t better. The Poms showed us how to do it, the Yanks would do it, and in between the Australians towed it along and that wasn’t wrong. Incidentally Colin Flockhart he was killed and Rolly Wall was and everybody was killed around I was lucky and that not to be killed.
LD: What happened to your friend Percy, your school friend Percy?
LWG: We finished, they wanted us to stay in the Army because what I told you everyone, most of the people we went in with couldn’t read or write and which means they were taken from an area there was nothing wrong with them in a sense but they wanted us to stay. Used to do stupid things they weren’t Australians are good but not the ants pants that we think we are.
RG: Take unnecessary risks?
LWG: Oh?
RG: Take unnecessary risks?
LWG: Oh no, no, oh some of them might have done that no I didn’t mean it that way no, I’ll get into areas where I’m very critical. The worst thing I decided to do was to move out of Katumba and come here to Canberra and I keep saying oh what a terrible place this is, and it’s not the place the city of Canberra’s wonderful but it is, it has everything here just the people who live in it I’m sorry I’m not throwing this at you but I wouldn’t give you five bob and the rest of my family live here and their part of the deal, this working as a public servant is for the [unclear] not for real people in my book, well you can see the decisions they make, or don’t make, or shouldn’t make.
RG: Well Bill thanks a lot, you know, we’ve got a lot of good stuff. Your, you’re a Knight of the Order of Leopold, Belgium.
LWG: I saw you turn that up.
RG: Sorry,
LWG: No —
RG: Yeah, yeah, I photographed the yeah it’s here a Knight of, when did you receive that the Knighthood from the Belgium, the Belgium Knighthood?
LWG: There was two of us on 15 Squadron well he might have been on 622 there was another squadron and he did twenty-nine the same as I did and the routine was that at thirty you got the DFC and so on, he and I only got to do twenty-nine and the CO said that I’m handicapped here because the routine is you know thirty, and I didn’t do thirty I only did twenty-nine, succeeded twenty-nine. So, and they gave me, what’s it called?
RG: It’s the Chevalier —
LWG: Chevalier, Order of Leopold.
RG: Yeah something like that.
LD: The Belgium Croix de Guerre.
LWG: Croix de Guerre yeah.
RG: Order of Leopold, Croix de Guerre with palm [?] It’s in relation to Croix de Guerre 1940 for courage and bravery da, da, da.
LD: And the Belgium Knight of the Order of Leopold.
LWG: Where did you get that from?
LD: The Internet Bill, the internet you’re famous. [laughs]
LWG: No I’m not. It’s interesting the DFC was, I was ready to, I hated the tax of course didn’t like public service but I suppose I lost my faith in human nature when I see what happens in public service in Sydney I got fed up of that. So I applied to and they were advertising for TAA so I got called up for TAA, but because of my health problem I got called into the Concord Hospital at the same time.
LD: So did you ever fly as a civilian pilot?
LWG: Yeah a little bit you might have—
RG: Yeah a little bit there’s a stuff about Cessna’s and things.
LWG: Things didn’t stop there but I was part owner of a Tiger, what did we buy, a Tiger Moth.
RG: All right.
LWG: I never [background noise] down here you can look there and you see you know where Seven Cross is there’s a big store —
RG: A big tower —
LWG: A big tower beside it, if you imagine that as cloud just looks like exactly like the cloud that was over when I landed on and I landed on Woodbridge, we had to break cloud I had to dive into this and then I came underneath ‘cos underneath that was an area where you could see ground and I broke cloud underneath and as I was coming down there was a Flying Fortress coming straight for me, how we missed one another I’ll never know, he crashed they were killed they were all burnt to death I suppose ‘cos they were burnt, I managed to stay within this little cell, what did I do, anyway a very hazardous trip doing steep turns, I only had three or was it two engines or something I’ve forgotten now, yeah this plane was coming straight for me and I flew it down and we just missed one another, they told me to taxi up the end of the runway when I got down.
RG: So you came down with FIDO on that one?
LWG: Yeah, FIDO had the cloud, that was what —
RG: Oh that was what —
LWG: FIDO had pushed everything up and gave you this little area if you could get in to it.
RG: So they’d done that to get you down?
LWG: Oh no not only me.
RG: And the rest of the stream.
LWG: There was I think three or four then, a lot of the aerodromes had FIDO we didn’t have it Mildenhall.
RG: I think Bert said they didn’t have it at Waddington as well.
LD: That’s right yeah.
LWG: As soon as we landed they had to sell the aircraft put us straight into a bus and drove us out of there to get us away from the place took us straight all the way back to Mildenhall.
RG: Woodbridge did you say Woodbridge yeah?
LWG: There was three I think the other two I can’t remember their names but Woodbridge was the one that was operating that day. I could see it, I could see it for miles in front of me ‘cos I was above cloud and there was this tower and that’s why —
RG: Oh I see pushed the cloud up —
LWG: Yeah.
RG: Ah okay.
LWG: Just looked if you —
RG: Yeah, yeah.
LWG: You see that you can imagine that as being a cloud —
RG: So it was a beacon as well as —
LWG: Well it was because it was daylight, well it forced all of the air up until it looked like —
RG: A tower.
LWG: A three story building and it just looks like that.
RG: Wow.
LWG: And I, what I did I found I aimed for the bottom of it and broke into that area and it was clear only in that area.
RG: Yeah it would have been quite small actually you’d have been doing really tight turns.
LWG: Doing steep turns all the time.
RG: Did you have any trouble the last chap we interviewed he finished his tour and was sent to training command at Wigsley and he said one night they had a couple of MM110 night fighters came back with the bomber streams in ’45 and couldn’t do anything they peeled off when they got into England they attacked Wigsley and they attacked Waddington. Did you ever have any problems with intruders coming back into the after a raid back into the —
LWG: What day or night?
RG: Night.
LWG: No I don’t think that happened I think he’s having you on, we certainly didn’t run into that, but then at the same time we were running into late in the, in the war itself as I said when the war finished I was still on squadron we were going and picking POW’s and bringing them back. We went to Reims.
RG: You had an overnight stopover in Reims didn’t you on one trip?
LWG: Yeah, and we went somewhere, we went to café we had no money and the Yanks saw us to that they’d shout us, we went out we were looking for somewhere, it came dark it was night and we couldn’t find any, what did we do, we had landed at a place called, that’ll tell me, Juvincourt, Juvincourt, [?] that’s right and there were two hundred aeroplanes sitting on this drome we decided as a crew, we decided oh let’s go out and we’ll hitchhike into Reims, ‘cos they told us Reims wasn’t far away which we did, and I think a Yank pulled up in one of his jeeps and we all hopped on and when we got in there we found that was full of Yanks it was evening, so we went into, had no money or nothing, went into a a French café I suppose it was a café it was interesting there was a big huge marquee tent you see which I associate with that and we went and got into this café or whatever it was and the Yanks were in there and they shouted at us ‘cos we had no money and so on and we came out of there and we wondered what we’d do, oh, I suppose I should show you that, I’ll take it —
RG: Put that back on the cradle —
LWG: I’ll show you, I only brought that one through there more or less, I’m lying because I got caught in a landslide.
RG: Oh
LWG: Down near Wellington.
LD: Oh, that’s enough to make you lay.
LWG: They want to take my legs off told them no.
RG: [whispers] Turn it off.
LD: Oh sorry
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AGrayLW170301
Title
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Interview with Bill Gray
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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
Format
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02:06:45 audio recording
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Pending review
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Rob Gray
Lucy Davidson
Date
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2017-03-01
Description
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Bill Gray was born and grew up in Australia and volunteered for the Air Force. After training, he flew 29 operations as an air gunner with 15 squadron from RAF Mildenhall. He returned to Australia after the war but contracted tuberculosis. He was hospitalised for six years, during that time he studied as an accountant, and met and married Molly who had nursed him at the hospital. After recovering he opened his own accountancy practice which he ran until his retirement.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
15 Squadron
3 Group
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
crewing up
FIDO
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Hixon
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Woodbridge
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/3459/PLambAM1702.2.jpg
5bb20bc0ccac9b450bc8f96ec8e8496b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/3459/AMcPhersonLambA150726.1.mp3
5e35283fa31ed4090662324faaffc571
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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Lamb, Alexander
Alexander McPherson Lamb
Alexander M Lamb
Alexander Lamb
A M Lamb
A Lamb
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Alexander McPherson Lamb (b. 1925, 1827673 Royal Air Force), his decorations, album and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 15 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alexander Lamb and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-25
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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Lamb
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BB: Good morning Alistair, and thank you for letting me come into your home. I am representing the International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln and we’re doing an oral history of Bomber Command veterans. So this interview is being held with Mr Alexander McPherson Lamb in his home in Stirling. Would you like to tell us your story? Thank you.
AML: Well, I joined the RAF in — I think it was March. I’m not quite sure now unclear] I think it was March. And I volunteered for aircrew. I was a junior clerk in the civil service. War Department. And I joined the RAF in, I think it was March. March ’44 I think it would be. I can’t remember.
[background chat]
BB: Sorry Alistair.
AML: That’s alright. You start again? Or is it alright?
BB: No. Just carry on.
AML: You’ve stopped it.
BB: Yeah. Just carry on. Yeah.
AML: And I think it was March ’44. And I volunteered as an air gunner. Had my attestation and medical and whatnot initially in Edinburgh prior to that. And I think I actually joined in March ’44. Yeah. March ’44 was when I actually joined. Went down to London to Aircrew Reception Centre in London where we were sort of needles stuck in us and examined and —
BB: Was that the one in St John’s Wood?
AML: Pardon?
BB: St John’s Wood.
AML: St John’s Wood. Yes. St John’s Wood. Then we went from there overnight by train to Bridgnorth.
BB: In Wales.
AML: I can’t remember the number of the OTU. Of the thing it was. Bridgnorth anyway. I can’t remember where, what it was actually called. It would be RAF. I can’t remember what Bridgnorth was. I’ve got it somewhere. Maybe get it in my logbook.
BB: Ok. We’ll look at that later.
AML: And then did our initial training there. March, gunnery, various things. Air force law. The usual jazz that you get when you join up first of all. And after that we were then [pause] I can’t remember how long we were there. I’d need to look up my logbook again. We then went to gunnery school which was at Stormy Down in Wales.
BB: Right.
AML: Number 7.
BB: That’s right. Number 7 Air Gunner’s School.
AML: At Stormy Down’s in Wales. Near, near Porthcawl. A lovely — it was a good station and I enjoyed it very much. We flew in Ansons there.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We did our gunnery in Ansons there. We passed out. It would be in 28th I think. 28th of July or June, I’m not quite sure, ’44. And then came home on leave. From that we went back to Market Harborough. OTU. 14 OTU Market Harborough.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Where we spent the first three weeks more or less meeting people. Knowing about, meeting guys. All the crews that were there. And you were allowed a month, a fortnight or three weeks to what was called crew up. There was no compunction. You picked your own crew over a period of time and that. Then you went in a huge hangar and I don’t know who it would be, the CO or somebody said, ‘Who are the people who have got full crews?’ And they all went to one side. The last of us were left. If you didn’t have a full crew you were then left and there would be other spare people left as well.
BB: Right.
AML: And they would then say, ‘Well here’s a spare pilot.’ ‘Here’s a spare navigator.’ ‘Here’s a spare gunner.’ Would you all like to, ‘Would you like to crew up?’ And basically that’s how you crewed up.
BB: Which was all very sensible really because you got to know people that you could trust and you liked and you got on well with.
AML: That’s right. That’s right.
BB: So there was method in their madness.
AML: Oh there was. The usual thing as you do in all these things when you join up first. There’s always somebody who knows something about everything. And they said, ‘Oh look for a warrant officer pilot because he’ll have a lot of flying experience. Don’t look for a young flying officer who’s got none.’ Or a young sergeant pilot. A general thing.
BB: Very sensible.
AML: It didn’t matter. You just picked who you found. You took a like to somebody even before you know their qualifications. If you liked them you liked them you know.
BB: Yes.
AML: We picked a warrant officer pilot and when we went in to be crewed up we were told well he’s been posted somewhere else. We were then left standing until this lone sergeant pilot arrived. We didn’t know he was French and they said, ‘Well here’s a pilot needing somebody. What about a crew?’ And I must have been looked at and he said, ‘What would you like to ask?’ I said, ‘Well we’ll take up then.’ So that’s how we got crewed up.
BB: So you had this French, a French airman.
AML: Very very much French actually.
BB: French pilot.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Who was kind of left.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Was he in the French Air Force or was he in the RAF?
AML: He was in the French Air Force initially I think.
BB: Right.
AML: He came from — maybe this is more or less rubbish to you.
BB: No. No. Carry on.
AML: He came from France when the Germans invaded. I forget where it was. It was down in the south of France. Not as far as they were but it was quite far down. Near Bordeaux I think he was.
BB: Right. Southern France. In Vichy France.
AML: Aye. And he escaped and came back to this country and because he had very little English at that time he was put in a reserved occupation building aircraft. He was punching wing ribs out for an Auster aircraft in Leicester.
BB: Oh I see. Right.
AML: That’s where he was sent to. And he got so fed up with it he said the only way you could get out of a reserved occupation during the war was if you were volunteered for submarines or aircrew.
BB: I see. Right. They were so short on both.
AML: So he volunteered for aircrew and did his training, I understand with the French Air Force and the French training him. Probably the RAF but under the auspices of the French.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And then in the usual way the wheels worked somebody said, ‘What’s this guy with a Scottish, with an English name doing in the French Air Force?’ Jack was then humped out of one into the other and we got him at OTU. His language was quite a problem for a while but we got to know about it. We then went on to Wellingtons at OTU at Market Harborough. And, I don’t know, I can’t remember the dates at Market Harborough. I need to look up my logbook.
BB: That’s ok.
AML: But you can fill them in after. I think we went to Market Harborough in ’44 some time. I can’t remember when. August ’44. I need to look at my logbook. You’ll see it in the logbook.
BB: Yes.
AML: ’44. Market Harborough I think. And we left there and when we did our stint we did a hundred and ten, about a hundred and ten hours on Wellingtons at Market Harborough. The reason we did so many is another story I wouldn’t bore you with. Anyway, and we then went home on leave and came back as a crew to — what did I say it was? Heavy conversion. 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit.
BB: 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley.
AML: Wigsley. Wiglsey.
BB: Yes.
AML: Flying Stirlings.
BB: Yes. How did you find the Stirling?
AML: I liked the Stirling very much indeed. I was very taken with the Stirling. Very very strong aircraft. Very robust aircraft. Plenty of room in it. Because you know how tremendous.
BB: Yes.
AML: I got extra flying time. We used to carry on till the [unclear] you see.
BB: It was a long way off the ground. I remember. And I see you have a model here too which shows the size of it.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Compared to the same scale.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: That you have a Wellington or a Lancaster.
AML: Aye. It was wingspan. You know the story. The wingspans were reduced to get it in to the hangar.
BB: Yes. That’s right.
AML: Which didn’t do it any good at all.
BB: No. Not good at all. No.
AML: It was literally a Sunderland wing.
BB: Yeah. Oh I see.
AML: You see.
BB: Made by Short’s of course.
AML: But ninety nine feet which made it very manoeuvrable but it couldn’t get much higher than —
BB: Couldn’t get the height.
AML: Sixteen thousand and there.
BB: Which made it very vulnerable to flak and fighters.
AML: Very vulnerable to flak. Yeah. Yeah. Same types of turret I had in the Lanc of course. Exactly the same. Anyway —
BB: Yes. Frazer and Nash turret.
AML: Went from there to the same OTU, same conversion. We went to, joined Lancs at that unit. We were then, we went over to Lancs at the same place. 14 OTU.
BB: 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit.
AML: Conversion Unit.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We went on to —
BB: 15 Squadron.
AML: No. Not at that time.
BB: Ok.
AML: We were then posted when we finished that course. I forget how long. I don’t remember how long. It wasn’t terribly long. We then went to 15 Squadron at Mildenhall in March ’45.
BB: That’s right.
AML: More or less a year after we joined. March. I joined a year ’45. And the first thing we did when we got there we were sent to Feltwell to do a GH bombing course.
BB: Gosh that must have been interesting.
AML: It was only about a fortnight’s course I think. A beautiful little airfield. I think it was Harvards they had there. It was a fighter. I think. I can’t remember.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But it was a very nice peacetime ‘drome. A lovely place. I liked Feltwell for the short time we were there.
BB: So that was fighter affiliation.
AML: No. We simply did GH bombing training.
BB: Just bombing training. Ok.
AML: For the navigator’s really.
BB: Yeah.
AML: The navigators and bomb aimers. This type of GH bombing. I can’t remember.
BB: Yes. That would meant that you would have two yellow stripes on your tail when you qualified to be a bombing leader.
AML: Aye. GH leader. Some of —
BB: Yeah.
AML: Some of the aircraft had yellow striped on the tail.
BB: Yeah. That’s right.
AML: Some hadn’t. It was a means of identification.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Then we came back from there just more or less overnight to RAF Mildenhall itself. Where we were originally. And we were there at RAF Mildenhall until we left in — when would it be? When did we leave Mildenhall?
BB: Mildenhall.
AML: ’46 I think we left Mildenhall.
BB: 20th of August ’46 I think you mentioned before.
AML: Yeah. They moved. They moved to Wyton. The squadron moved to Wyton.
BB: Did you go with them to Wyton?
AML: We went to Wyton. Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: And the crew, the whole crew went to it. That was the last trip my skipper did. He was then posted as an instructor.
BB: Right. He was screened.
AML: Aye.
BB: And went off to an OTU.
AML: Aye and of course by that time everybody was getting broken up because ’46 the demobbing was taking its toll and people were coming and going. And new people were coming in and sort of general get togethers what was disappearing quickly because you were losing people left, right and middle. And as I say I was fortunate. I stayed flying until I was demobbed which was quite lucky for me.
BB: Yes. Yes. That’s right.
AML: Because 15 was a peacetime squadron. So that’s why I think.
BB: Yes. So with that pretty well organised.
AML: Pre-war squadron.
BB: Yes.
AML: That’s why we were probably kept as such. 44 and 15 and some of the others, 7 were all peacetime squadrons.
BB: All the wartime squadrons were disbanded.
AML: That’s right. Yeah. Were all disbanded.
BB: The peacetime squadrons were re-kept.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And some of the wartime ones were re-kept.
AML: Yeah well —
BB: Like 617 for example.
AML: We had Tuddenham. We talked about Tuddenham.
BB: Tuddenham. Yes.
AML: Just across the road from us.
BB: Yeah. Yes.
AML: A case of wheels up, wheels down, landing.
BB: Yes.
AML: Then we stayed there until we were posted. As I say we were posted to Wyton. Wyton, a beautiful station. A peacetime.
BB: Yes. I’ve been to Wyton. Yes.
AML: A very modern peacetime station.
BB: Yes.
AML: A lovely station. And I was there until I was demobbed.
BB: Yes.
AML: We did a lot of stuff after the war. Immediately after the war, before the war actually ended in Japan. We brought liberated prisoners of war back. We did supply dropping to the Dutch.
BB: Yes.
AML: I got a medal from the Dutch government for that. We did three trips of supply dropping to the Dutch and I think we did three trips for bringing prisoners of war back but I think we came in to —
BB: Yeah.
AML: Westcott.
BB: Westcott. Yes.
AML: I think so.
BB: In Bucks.
AML: Oh my memory’s not as good as it used to be I’m afraid.
BB: So — that’s ok. So how many actual operations did you do? You came in late in the war.
AML: I came in very late. I didn’t join —
BB: Did you do six or five or —?
AML: I did, I did, the crew did six and I did five.
BB: Ok.
AML: I took food poisoning.
BB: Oh right. So you did your five ops. And —
AML: Four daylights and one. Four daylights and one night.
BB: Ok.
AML: Kiel was a night op. And I understand that the war was still on this time — these supply drops trips and prisoner of war would have been turn ups. I don’t think they were actually given as that.
BB: No.
AML: And somebody said to us, ‘Oh you could, in a push, count them as ops,’ but I never ever did that.
BB: No. No.
AML: I didn’t do. But that was —
BB: No.
AML: That was on.
BB: But in terms of bombing German or French targets. Yes. Yes.
AML: Actual bombing Germany itself.
BB: Yes. As target. Yes. Yes.
AML: I did four daylights.
BB: Four daylights.
AML: Munster, Bocholt, Heligoland, Kiel and Bremen.
BB: And Bremen. And Bremen was your last one.
AML: Last one we did.
BB: Yeah. And did you, did you drop — did you have a chance to drop those big bombs?
AML: No. Not at that time.
BB: The Tallboys. No.
AML: 15 Squadron wasn’t doing that.
BB: No. No.
AML: It was a specialised.
BB: Yes. 617. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: 617.
BB: Yes.
AML: Was a specialised squadron for that.
BB: So you dropped the normal, you had a normal cookie and the normal other ones. Yeah.
AML: That’s right. A normal cookie.
BB: Normal load. Yeah.
AML: Or an eight thousand pounder double cookie sometimes.
BB: Right.
AML: And I’ve got to know, I think about a fourteen thousand pounds was about the standard bomb load we had.
BB: Bomb load. Right.
AML: Sixteen hundred gallons of gas. Fuel.
BB: Yeah.
AML: It’s in my logbook. You’ll see it there. Yes. Then 15 Squadron became a sort of — well we were doing a lot of training. Long range navigation exercises. Things like that. Then we started to convert to get the Lancaster ones, the ones they were using for the ten ton bomb.
BB: Yes.
AML: I forget why it was. Like B1 specials I think they were called.
BB: B1 specials. They took the nose turret off and —
AML: The top turret off.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And bomb doors off.
BB: And the bomb doors off to take the Tallboys.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Yes.
AML: We dropped those. We called it Operation Farge I think it was called. We did the dropping of these bombs on the U-boat pens at Farge.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: Because they didn’t know when the war ended exactly what damage was being done with the Halifax that did this. Then we did — oh what was the operation? There was a point but I can’t remember. Where we bombed [pause] ships in the English Channel to see what would happen to bombs.
BB: Oh to see what the damage —
AML: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Would be —
AML: We flew then at a certain height and we dropped a stick of bombs. I think they were five hundred pounders. And then if and when we went to hit a boat [laughs] It was HMS Firefly. I think it was. It was an ex-mine sweeper. They then stopped the bombing and the navy went aboard the board and put a real bomb in where our bomb had struck or where somebody’s bomb had struck.
BB: Yes.
AML: And then detonated that bomb from a launch so they could then say that an aircraft at eighteen thousand feet dropped a five hundred pound bomb going into number two engine room would do X amount of damage.
BB: X amount of damage. Yes.
AML: This is what we did. We did some research on that.
BB: It was to see what the actual damage was.
AML: That’s right. That’s right.
BB: To a vessel being hit by a bomb of that kind.
AML: That’s right. That was to give them —
BB: So they could either improve the munition.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Or just to see the damage.
AML: It was to give them a general – they didn’t physically know, you know, but now they could actually do it. So we did quite a bit of that.
BB: Right.
AML: And then we got, we were lucky enough to get a trip to Italy.
BB: You went to Italy to bring back POWs.
AML: No. To bring back guys on leave as well.
BB: Oh ok. Right.
AML: I think it was a reward. The squadron got a reward. The squadrons got a reward.
BB: A chance to go and get some oranges and stuff like that.
AML: That’s right.
BB: From Italy. Yes.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And some wine no doubt.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Excellent.
AML: I think we landed at Blackbushe.
BB: Blackbushe right.
AML: Coming back. Aye.
BB: And did your crew all survive the war?
AML: Yes. Yes.
BB: Do you keep in touch with them at all?
No. They’re all away now. My skipper died. I’ve been to see my skipper. My navigator and I went to see my skipper in Australia. I went on my own once and he came with me the next time.
BB: Right.
AML: And he’d been over here. Funnily enough I’ve just had a phone call from Australia saying they’re coming across for my eightieth — for my ninetieth birthday.
BB: Oh that’s nice. That’s good. That’s very nice. Now just to remind me. When were born again. What’s your date of birth?
AML: 1925.
BB: Pardon?
AML: 5.9 ’25.
BB: 5.9 ’25. And that was in Stirling.
AML: Stirling.
BB: Yeah.
AML: In this house.
BB: In this house. Right. Ok.
AML: I’ve lived here ever since.
BB: So you’ve lived in here.
AML: Ever since.
BB: Ever since.
AML: No desire to move.
BB: No. And you were with the civil service before you —
AML: Yeah.
BB: Before you went and when you came back from the war that’s what you did.
AML: I was —what do you call that? I worked in the War Department as a boy messenger initially.
BB: Ok.
AML: For a few months until I then got a junior clerks job. And when I left I was a clerk. What they called temporary clerks because there was no establishment at that time, I understand. During the war.
BB: And that was in —
AML: Stirling.
BB: In Stirling.
AML: [unclear] in Stirling.
BB: Oh in the military side of it there.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Ok. Ok. And so they didn’t [pause] was that a reserved occupation in that sense?
AML: Probably it might have been. I don’t think so. Anyway —
BB: Because you volunteered for air crew.
AML: Aye.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But what happened then I understand. I don’t know maybe you shouldn’t quote this but I think, I think the people who had gone out had to get their jobs back. You know, after the war.
BB: Yes. They had to be kept for them yeah.
AML: And I went back in. And realise there would be no things like that. I then transferred to what were called the Department of Health and Social Security I think we called it.
BB: Ok.
AML: National Insurance, I think. In Stirling. I was still a temporary clerk.
BB: After, after the war.
AML: Yeah. After the war.
BB: Ok.
AML: And I was there when I had to sit the civil service exam.
BB: Right.
AML: If I wanted to become established. That was the only way you could keep it.
BB: Yeah.
AML: So I sat the civil service exam, passed it and was posted on a permanent, as a permanent civil servant to Elgin.
BB: Elgin. Right.
AML: Elgin. And I was in Elgin for seven — nine months. Then I got back to Stirling. Well I got back to Alloa.
BB: Yes.
AML: And then I got from Alloa to Stirling.
BB: Right.
AML: I was in Stirling until I was demobbed.
BB: Right.
AML: And became a HEO, acting HEO and I was that until I came out. Where did I come out? ’48. Would it have been 1984 ’85 ’86? I can’t remember.
BB: That’s when you retired.
AML: When I was sixty.
BB: Sixty.
AML: In my grade, at that time, you had to go. At your age.
BB: Right. You couldn’t, you couldn’t negotiate.
AML: You couldn’t stay on. Now you can go on forever I understand.
BB: Right. Ok. And you went to school in Stirling.
AML: Went to school.
BB: What? The High school?
AML: Riverside.
BB: Riverside. And that’s where you, did you get your school certificate there?
AML: Yeah. Well I got — I left at fourteen.
BB: Yeah.
AML: As most people did in those days. .
BB: Yeah.
AML: I think I got what they called was it a day school or—? I can’t remember actually.
BB: Yeah. But you had, but you had enough to qualify for aircrew.
AML: Well, I don’t think it really mattered what scholastic abilities you had if you passed.
BB: Passed their test.
AML: The sort of general assessment test.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Well there were –
AML: Yeah — there were quite a few lads, that’s the wrong word, who were plumbers or joiners who had, you know.
BB: Done apprenticeships the same.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And they went too. Yeah.
BB: Right. Ok. And your mother. Your parents lived in this house.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And obviously that was a great worry to your mother. Going off flying bombers.
AML: Yeah. Yeah. My father died.
BB: Rear gunners position in the bomber at that. The most dangerous position in the aircraft.
AML: My father died. I think in ’40. 1940.
BB: Oh right. Ok.
AML: He was a regular serving soldier prior to that.
BB: What? In the army.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Ok.
AML: A twenty eight year man I think he was.
BB: Did he die in the war? Or did he —?
AML: No. No. He was out of the war. He came out the forces in 1924.
BB: Oh. Ok. So must have been a boy soldier and worked his way up and all that.
AML: Yeah. He joined the Seaforth Highlanders when he was eighteen.
BB: Ok.
AML: I think.
BB: Ok. And these are his medals on the wall.
AML: That’s right. Then after, after the Sudan campaign. Kitchener’s Sudan campaign.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He came back to Egypt.
BB: Right.
AML: In fact I’ve got a letter there written when he was in Egypt. He lost a sister during the terrible flu epidemic. I remember that was in the letter.
BB: I see he’s got the Egyptian Medal.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And the First World War.
AML: Yeah.
BB: War and Victory Medal and looks like —
AML: He’s got a Long Service Meritorious Medal.
BB: Long Service Medals and Meritorious Medal. Yes.
AML: He also has the Russian Order of Saint Stanislaus as well.
BB: Oh right. Ok. Interesting. So he served in the first, he had been a combat soldier.
AML: A regular serving soldier.
BB: In those campaigns.
AML: He was —
BB: How much did his military service influence you in, you know in going into the RAF?
AML: No. I don’t think so. Terribly much.
BB: No. No.
AML: I was never really army orientated.
BB: No. I didn’t mean the army. Just the whole military culture was in the family.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: Yeah. That’s good.
AML: My cousin was killed at Dunkirk.
BB: Was he? Yes. What was he in?
AML: He was in the Royal Artillery.
BB: Royal Artillery. So he’s buried in France.
AML: Somewhere in France.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I don’t know where.
BB: Exactly where. No. Oh dear. Ok.
AML: Research to that.
BB: Right.
AML: And all my other cousins were in the forces during the war.
BB: Yes.
AML: You know. In various bits.
BB: Yes. But no brothers and sisters.
AML: No.
BB: No.
BB: But you remember your cousins were in the armed forces during the war. Did you ever meet up in Stirling? On leave and things.
AML: No.
BB: No.
AML: I never met them at all.
BB: Never met them at all.
AML: No. It just so happened that, you know —
BB: What was leave like? Did you get regular leave or did it — haphazard? Or —
AML: When you were flying on operations you got I think every seventh week was a leave week. I can’t really remember.
BB: Right.
AML: You got quite a bit of leave. We were quite fortunate. I think, I think it was every seventh week. I can’t remember to be quite —
BB: Yeah. But you did get regular leave.
AML: We got regular leave. Better than most people.
BB: Yes.
AML: Better than most people. Yes.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Yes we did. Aye. Aye.
BB: I’ve heard that before from other veterans.
AML: Yeah. And we always got our [unclear], you know. Of course. I’m talking from an NCO point of view.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I don’t know remember what the officers got. They would get the same as us.
BB: Right.
AML: But that’s, that’s their —
BB: Were you made up to flight sergeant before?
AML: After a year I was —
BB: You were a warrant officer weren’t you?
AML: I was, after a year I got my flight sergeant.
BB: Yeah. You went in as a, sorry, you must have joined as an LAC.
AML: Oh I think I was an AC2. I don’t know —
BB: Sorry, AC2.
AML: An AC2 I think.
BB: And then gone through your training.
AML: Training.
BB: And then you would have got your sergeant’s stripes.
AML: Sergeant. That’s right and then I got my flight sergeant.
BB: Now, was that before you went to OUT? Sergeant. To be sergeant.
AML: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Ah huh. When everybody went to OTU they were all aircrew by that.
BB: Yes.
AML: They were all qualified aircrew.
BB: Ok. Ok. So once you got your wings you made a sergeant.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And then you got your flight sergeant.
AML: Yes.
BB: And then you got your warrant officer.
AML: Warrant yeah.
BB: That’s very good.
AML: I got my warrant officer last. I told you. After nine months.
BB: Yes.
AML: You could take, you could take your flight sergeant after nine months.
BB: Yes.
AML: And your W after a year.
BB: Yes.
AML: But Tom said, ‘Oh no you should do it the other way around. You get more money.’ But you don’t get it you know.
BB: And was that was that on a selection basis or a board?
AML: No. It was automatic.
BB: Was it automatic?
AML: Yeah.
BB: Oh I see.
AML: Unless you really had been a bad boy or something.
BB: A bad boy. That’s right.
AML: As far as I can understand it virtually just came through on station, a station order, you know.
BB: Routine orders. Yes. That’s it.
AML: Follow through on flight sergeants.
BB: Right.
AML: In fact I’ve got the papers of my father.
BB: Right.
AML: The same way.
BB: Yes.
AML: In the army way back.
BB: So it was, it was on a good record and on time.
AML: That’s right. Yeah.
BB: Ok. That’s fine.
AML: And I got my warrant officer the same way.
BB: Yes.
AML: The warrant officer was slightly different. I can remember. I think you went in front of the CO.
BB: Yes.
AML: Or your squadron CO.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And he asked you a few questions. Blah blah blah. He knew of you. He knew of you of course by this time anyway.
BB: Yes, of course he did.
AML: And he would say ok.
BB: And he would have had your flight commander’s report and all the rest of it. Yeah.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: And so you got your Tate and Lyle’s on your, on your sleeve.
AML: Aye. I’ve got a picture. Over there.
BB: Yes.
AML: Over there.
BB: Yes. Yeah. Got your Tate and Lyle’s.
AML: My Tate and Lyle’s. Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Yeah.
BB: That’s great. Now tell me about, tell me about, I’m going to ask you certain aspects of Bomber Command and you can say well did you know about these things or not. There was a lot of, there was a lot of problem with venereal disease in Bomber Command. So much so that the Bomber Command chief medical officer went to see Bomber Harris and —
AML: In his book yes. It’s in the book. Aye.
BB: Was there any instances of that on your squadron that you knew? I mean it’s not something that somebody would brag, talk about.
AML: No. No. I don’t think, I don’t remember.
BB: No.
AML: I don’t remember.
BB: The medical officer didn’t give the talks and all that kind of thing.
AML: No.
BB: No.
AML: No. We got a very terrible talk. A horrible talk at ITW. At —
BB: Initial Training Wing. Right.
AML: At Aircrew Reception Centre.
BB: Oh right.
AML: Most of us didn’t know the first thing they were talking about. That’s how innocent we all were.
BB: So naive and young then.
AML: Oh absolutely. People don’t believe it. We were really.
BB: Yes.
AML: You got an odd guy who’d been a bit of a man of the world sort of style.
BB: Aye. No.
AML: But the rest of us we knew what women were and all the rest of it.
BB: Ok.
AML: But that was it.
BB: Alright. That’s fine.
AML: No it was —
BB: No. It was fine.
AML: It was a sort of movie. I mean they actually, you know.
BB: You grew up very quickly no doubt.
AML: Yeah. It was an American made movie.
BB: Right.
AML: About how they met and this guy goes with this lassie and all the rest of it.
BB: Right.
AML: And then graphic pictures of your [laughs]
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Thingummy.
BB: All the aftermath of all of that yeah.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But to scare you as well and to give you information.
AML: Aye. It did. I never ever met anyone to my knowledge.
BB: No. No. Ok. Well as I said it’s nothing you would sort of say, hey. You know. But the other thing I want to talk about is LMF. Lack of moral fibre. Did you have any knowledge or —
AML: I never met anybody of LMF.
BB: No. Anybody on your squadron or the station that —
AML: Our first navigator.
BB: That you know.
AML: Our first navigator. We’d had a long protracted training at OTU because we kept losing people.
BB: Right.
AML: We lost two navigators at OTU.
BB: What? They were scrubbed?
AML: Aye. Scrubbed.
BB: Yeah.
AML: The first one just suddenly packed up his nav bag one night and said, ‘I’m not having any more of this.’ And disappeared. That’s the last we saw of him.
BB: Right.
AML: I don’t think it was LMF. It was just a case of —
BB: Just got out of it.
AML: I mean he was fully qualified to be a navigator.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And then the next thing what happened to me was much the same. Two navigators on the trot and of course —
BB: That would have delayed you graduating from OTU.
AML: Yeah. Of course the pundits said to us, ‘Oh you’ll get a lot of hours in Wellingtons you’ll finish up in the Far East in Wellingtons.’ This sort of thing. You know. That’s what happened to us. That’s why we were held up first of all.
BB: Right. Ok. And the other and the other issue was morale generally. Because at your time with, in Bomber Command it was towards the end. Was morale fairly high?
AML: Oh aye. Very high. Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Yeah. I mean the losses had, the losses in Bomber Command were horrendous.
AML: Oh aye I’d be the first to admit that. It was unfortunate of course. People getting killed the last day of the war.
BB: Yes.
AML: That happened.
BB: Yes.
AML: But we didn’t have the colossal losses they had in —
BB: 1943.
AML: 1943/44.
BB: 1944. Early ’44. Yeah.
AML: Oh No. No. No.
BB: The Battle of the Ruhr. The Battle of Berlin.
AML: That’s right. That’s right. That’s when the chop rate—
BB: Were more or less gone
AML: That’s when the chop rate were really something to —
BB: But German night fighters were still flying.
AML: Oh yeah.
BB: When they got the fuel.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And the flak was just –
AML: Yeah. Flak was, your biggest worry was flak.
BB: Did you ever get to see any of the German jets?
AML: Yes.
BB: The Luftwaffe jets.
AML: Yes. I saw a 163 in actual action. It’s all in my logbook.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And we went to [pause] the last raid of the war we did. I saw a 163 way below us [schwoooo noise]
BB: That was the Bremen. Bremen.
AML: Bremen.
BB: Yes.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. But no —
BB: It didn’t, it didn’t attack or —
AML: No. It had come up — I think 5 Group went to Hamburg the same day.
BB: Right.
AML: And —
BB: Of course you were in 4 Group.
AML: I was in 3 Group.
BB: Sorry. 3 Group.
AML: Some of the things I’m telling you now is on reflection. I mean I would need to really, you know think what exactly it was what it was on reflection I can remember.
BB: Right.
AML: Because I don’t want to line shoot to you under any circumstance. No. That was, that was, I saw a 16. I saw, I saw 262s in Germany after the war.
BB: After the war. On the ground.
AML: We were over in France.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I saw them there.
BB: Yeah.
AML: They were certainly a very terrible aeroplane. Wonderful.
BB: Right. Now. Dropping the food parcels and other things to the Dutch. That must have been very rewarding.
AML: Oh very. Great. Great.
BB: Because the Dutch were starving at that stage.
AML: The great thing about it was you were allowed to fly low.
BB: Yes.
AML: Down to two hundred or less. Three hundred feet. In fact lower. My skipper took us down to about twenty eight feet some of the time. We were so low. Because he wanted to low fly and I used to say I’m getting water in to the tail turret [laughs] We flew low over —
BB: You did three of those you said.
AML: Pardon?
BB: You did three trips.
AML: We did three trips.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Yeah. Yeah
BB: And then the other humanitarian thing was bringing the POWs back.
AML: That’s correct. Bringing prisoners of war back. Yeah.
BB: From Italy and Germany.
AML: Yeah. The Americans were flying them from either lower or upper Silesia and we were picking them up at Juvincourt.
BB: Right.
AML: And I can remember I think the station was run by Germans as far as I can remember. Nearly all the German people seemed to be able to do the menial tasks there.
BB: Yes. Right.
AML: And then we, the Japanese war was still on of course.
BB: Yes. Of course.
AML: We were bringing them back from Germany at that time. Yeah.
BB: And they, they were obviously very pleased to get, be getting home.
AML: Oh yeah. Yeah.
BB: How many could you get in a Lancaster?
AML: I think I can remember off hand. It was either thirty or twenty six. I can’t honestly remember.
BB: And they all sat on the floor.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Or wherever they could.
AML: Yeah. They used to say in the air force you know this is a rubbish and that’s rubbish. I never saw organisation so wonderful as supply dropping and the prisoners of war. When we, when we went out to bring the prisoners of war back I can remember I was given a bag and in it was discs. And on the disc was a stencilled number one, two, three, four, five, six.
BB: Yeah. Whatever yeah.
AML: And on the fuselage someone had stencilled numbers inside the fuselage. And the idea was that I gave you a number five disc and you went in and the other gunner would say, ‘There’s number five. Sit there.’ And he sat on the floor.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: At number five.
BB: So it was like a boarding, a boarding pass today.
AML: It was really.
BB: Yes.
AML: A very highly organised.
BB: Everybody had their place they had to sit.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And this would have been worked on a centre of gravity basis in the aircraft presumably.
AML: It must have been. Although it was some of the, some of the crew wanted to see land and of course they moved about, you know.
BB: Right.
AML: And I said, ‘Now don’t move about.’ You know.
BB: And did you ever go on any Cook’s Tours as well to look at the German cities that had been bombed.
AML: Yes. I did the Cook’s Tours as well. Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You’ll see the places we went to.
BB: Yes. That must have been quite sobering.
AML: We took, we took ground crew with us.
BB: Yes. Yes. Ground crew and the ground crew and the people from ops and the WAAFs.
AML: That’s right. Aye.
BB: And so on. Yeah.
AML: Took them with us. Aye.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I forget where we went.
BB: Ok.
AML: You’ll see it.
BB: Did bomber Harris ever come to see you at the station?
AML: I think he did. As I told you, I think, yesterday.
BB: Yes.
AML: I can’t honestly remember but I’m almost certain somebody told me he did — I can’t, I would be wrong to tell you.
BB: No. No. He did go around.
AML: I’d be wrong to tell you. Yeah.
BB: How was he perceived by the guys on the squadron? Was he just, was he just Harris and that was it or –
AML: Oh aye. He was —
BB: Or did they actually —
AML: He was a good leader.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He did a lot for aircrew. He, again this is all —
BB: Yes.
AML: Sort of —
BB: Your own opinion. Yes.
AML: General talk.
BB: Right. Right.
AML: I don’t know how true or how bad it is.
BB: Right.
AML: But I understand he was the person who wanted every aircrew be commissioned. Or everybody LACs.
BB: Right.
AML: And I mean no different. He wanted all crews to be the same because they were all taking the same risks.
BB: Right.
AML: It couldn’t have worked that way.
BB: No.
AML: But that was the idea.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Most pilots of four engine aircraft were commissioned.
BB: Yeah. Or warrant officers.
AML: Or some —
BB: Yeah.
AML: We had two ome sergeant pilots.
BB: Yeah. A lot of sergeant pilots.
AML: They blotted their copy book but were so good they stayed as they were.
BB: Yeah.
AML: If you came on a squadron it was possible to be still a sergeant. Might have been a flight sergeant by the time he got to bomber, to thingummybob.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But there was. You’ll see on the crew list there.
BB: Yeah. Sergeants.
AML: Sergeants. Aye.
BB: And and and then you came out – what in ’47.
AML: I came out in ’47. I think it was ’47.
BB: ’47. You know the war had been finished a while so you had all that civilian.
AML: Flying.
BB: Flying. And you had obviously bringing back prisoners of war still at that time.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Some weren’t being released until late.
AML: Yeah. Yeah. We converted on to Lincolns before I came out.
BB: That’s right. Because they were —
AML: Tiger Force.
BB: Tiger Force. That’s right, they’re the ones that were going to go to Japan but didn’t happen because they dropped the atomic bomb.
AML: No. Just as well.
BB: Yes. And so you didn’t consider staying in as a regular? Transferring to the regular air force after the war.
AML: Yes and no. But then somebody said, ‘Well, ok you stay in.’ Who the hell wants a gunner when the war’s finished? I’d have to re-muster probably.
BB: Well it had them in the Lincolns so you would have been a very experienced air gunner if you’d stayed on the Lincolns.
AML: Ah. No. I mean they were on the Lincolns. Ok
BB: They’d probably give you a job on ops or something like that.
AML: I didn’t – Unless I was flying I wasn’t interested.
BB: No. Ok. So you weren’t tempted. One because you had this very good job in Civvy Street which was being held for you.
AML: Well that’s right.
BB: Yeah.
AML: At that time it wasn’t such a good job. Just a normal clerk’s job.
BB: But it was a regular job.
AML: But I had a job to come back to.
BB: It was a regular job.
AML: Plus the fact my mother was living alone.
BB: Yes. Exactly. Here.
AML: Here.
BB: Right.
AML: And I thought well what am I going to do?
BB: Yeah. That’s right.
AML: Funnily enough I met quite a few chaps who I’d served with in the squadron who had stayed on and signed on and finished up at Lossiemouth.
BB: Oh yes.
AML: And when I went to Elgin. My first posting with the civil service at Elgin.
BB: That’s very close to Lossiemouth.
AML: I met one of these guys, one or two guys in the pub. They said, ‘You should go back in again. The money’s good.’ And I half thought of going back.
BB: Yeah. Because you could have re-mustered.
AML: Oh well.
BB: Because they, you were, once they awarded your brevet.
AML: Yeah.
BB: You wore it forever.
AML: You wore it. Yeah.
BB: Unless you did something really wrong.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And they took it away from you.
AML: Yeah. Oh no.
BB: But you know I —
AML: They couldn’t take your brevet off you.
BB: But when I was a reservist I was one for thirty three years. When I first joined as APO, acting pilot officer up at Kinloss and other stations you had these old hairies as we used to call them. Who still had their —
AML: That’s right.
BB: You know, wartime brevets on.
AML: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But they’d been re-mustered as ops clerks.
AML: Did you never, did you never fly at all Bruce?
BB: In Nimrods.
AML: Oh Nimrods.
BB: I used to fly in the Nimrods.
AML: What as? Not as aircrew though.
BB: No. I was —
AML: I thought you said the technical. Aye.
BB: Well I was in intelligence so I was there to look at things. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: No. I never thought much about that.
BB: No. No. But they were a great bunch. And of course the Nimrod is a multi crew aircraft.
AML: That’s right.
BB: So it had kinships to Bomber Command.
AML: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
BB: You know. You had your crew.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And you know everybody stuck together and —
AML: Oh you could read each other like a book.
BB: Oh yes. And of course we had to brief those crews much the same. And it hasn’t changed. You know, they’d all come to briefing. They’d sit down. The wing commander would stand up. Or the group captain would stand up. The curtains would be drawn.
AML: That’s it.
BB: Just like that.
AML: Aye.
BB: And they would either go [groan] another Atlantic trip or another Mediterranean trip or wherever it was. And all the plot would be up there. Where everything was.
AML: Isn’t it funny that you found out about your crew in many ways? Our wireless operator thought he was the greatest wireless operator in the world.
BB: And was he?
AML: I don’t know. But anyway we had an exercise we did occasionally to go out to the North Sea or out to the Atlantic to — navigation really .
BB: Yeah. Nav ex.
AML: To find a weather ship.
BB: A weather ship.
AML: Or a destroyer. Or something.
BB: Yeah.
AML: I can’t remember all the details. And you had to signal and of course he was in the astrodome and of course aldis they had in the Navy you see —
BB: The aldis lamp.
AML: Aye.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I always remember he couldn’t read so he said to send up, ‘Please send slowly.’ [laughs] He couldn’t read the navy. You know, they were, they were tremendous. You know.
BB: Yeah, that’s right.
AML: I’ll always remember that.
BB: That’s right.
AML: And my skipper. He hated, he didn’t like landing in the half light and it used to annoy my navigator furiously because you were coming back and I’ m talking about, this is basically after the war. Of course during the war you were restricted what you could and couldn’t do. A long cross country you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Our navigator was a great one for food. He was desperate for food. And he would say, ‘I’ve packed up my nav bag. You’re alright. You’ll be over the fields in ten minutes.’ And Jack would say, ‘I want a dog leg.’ And he would get a fury, ‘What the hell are you on about?’
BB: I want to eat my sandwiches.
AML: ‘I want to land in the dark.’ And I said why do you like landing in the dark?’ He said, ‘What I can’t see doesn’t bother me.’ [laughs]
BB: Yeah. Well that’s very true.
AML: Yeah. That was him.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He liked to land in the dark. Yeah.
BB: That’s good. That’s right. And then of course when they came back from their trips in the Nimrod, just like in Bomber Command, we would sit down and debrief them.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And they used to hate that.
AML: Aye. Aye.
BB: Because they wanted to get away to their bed or get their breakfast.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Or whatever.
AML: The trouble with that was with your egg. We got an egg with everything.
BB: Yeah. But you really had to be very strict with them and say, ‘No. Let’s get this done and then you can go.’
AML: You had to get an egg with everything.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And the favourite was, ‘I’ll have his egg if he’s not coming back’
BB: if you’re not coming back.
AML: This sort of thing.
BB: And of course you must have seen even even at that late stage of the war, bomber offensive, you must have seen vacant chairs at breakfast and —
AML: Aye well —
BB: Guys that didn’t, that went out and didn’t come back.
AML: Funny. We were very fortunate on 15. I don’t think the time I was on it we had a very heavy —
BB: Casualty rate.
AML: Casualty rate. Funnily enough one of the chaps in the Aircrew Association was on 15. A hell of a nice bloke. He was shot down in France. I didn’t know him in the squadron but he was shot down in France. Had quite a rough time getting out. Eventually captured and became a prisoner of war.
BB: Right.
AML: And was on The Long March.
BB: Right. Ok.
AML: He was on the same squadron as I was. 15.
BB: Right. That must have been.
AML: Quite a lucky squadron. 15.
BB: That wasn’t great.
AML: I don’t think we had colossal losses on 15. I don’t know why or how. I don’t remember saying oh —
BB: What about, what about losses at OTU? HCU. There must have been crashes there.
AML: They were quite high. Yeah. Those. Somebody said to me after, of course, please understand I’m talking fifty sixty years ago.
BB: Yeah. I understand.
AML: Somebody said there was almost a crash every day at OTU. Now, I couldn’t ascertain that or confirm that. I don’t know.
BB: Well —
AML: But there were certainly one or two crashes when we were at OTU.
BB: I know that my late uncle was killed as an OTU. Instructing.
AML: Yeah.
BB: At Westcott. Number 11 OTU.
AML: Yeah. And we had one or two hairy do’s at OTU.
BB: And we paid, we paid tribute to him a couple years ago and all the guys at OTUs. And I did my research and something like eight thousand aircrew killed at OTU in Bomber Command. And just in Bomber Command.
AML: Probably would be. Well the chop —
BB: From collisions or bad landings.
AML: The chop rate on Wellingtons was quite high.
BB: Yeah. One in ten.
AML: They were second hand aircraft at OTU.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: I mean they weren’t, aircraft had been sent to OTU. You know.
BB: Yes.
AML: So we understand. I don’t know.
BB: And they went didn’t they? Yeah. Well there were, yeah. Well you take the Whitleys. They were front line aircraft.
AML: That’s right.
They were relegated to the OTUs.
AML: That’s right. Yeah.
BB: You know you went on the Whitleys.
AML: Well, they certainly were.
BB: And the Wellingtons as well.
AML: Wellingtons at OTU.
BB: And the Stirlings of course at the Heavy Conversion Unit.
AML: Aye. Heavy Conversion. Stirlings. Aye. Aye.
BB: Because they didn’t, they —
AML: They took them off.
BB: You either went to a Heavy Conversion and then on to a Lancaster Finishing School but you —
AML: I don’t know why we did that.
BB: Didn’t do that.
AML: This is the thing. Quite a lot of people — had to believe, hard to believe I was on Stirlings. Most of them went from OTU to Lanc Finishing School.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And that was it. I don’t know why we went on. I don’t know. Just the way the system worked.
BB: The system worked. Yeah.
AML: We went, they went on to to that and we weren’t really long on Stirlings.
BB: No.
AML: But we were on Stirlings anyway.
BB: But it gave the heavy, it gave you the heavy, it gave the crew the sort of heavy experience that they needed.
AML: Aye. I liked the Stirling very much indeed.
BB: It looked a very roomy aircraft.
AML: It was a very roomy aircraft. Just like a big Sunderland.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Really is.
BB: Yes.
AML: And I liked it.
BB: A Sunderland with wheels.
AML: Yeah. I didn’t care much for the Lincoln.
BB: Well it was a kind of a hybrid wasn’t it? You know.
AML: A hybrid. I didn’t care much for Lincolns.
BB: We’ll add a bit of this and add a bit of that.
AML: We had a twenty millimetre cannon on a Lincoln.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: And a lot of trouble with them and a lot of trouble —
BB: They used them in, against the terrorists in Malaysia.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: The Australian Lincolns anyway.
AML: We never did that and I think latterly the two turrets that took the twenty millimetres out the turrets. I can’t remember honestly but I flew in the tail of a Lincoln all the time. I flew first, initially I flew as an air gunner instructor and for a while the rule was flying that when we first got Lincolns they were nearly all ex-instructors that were in the top turrets.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: Because the bloody cannon recoiled across your head. If you moved out the road the, rotated, you could get your head taken off easily.
BB: Right. Right.
AML: These are things you remember yet you couldn’t put down on paper and say this is the God’s truth. You know.
BB: No. No. No. No. I know.
AML: It’s just the things I remember. It’s difficult.
BB: Well Alistair thank you very much for for telling us your story and we do appreciate it very much. And I’ll now terminate the interview. And I’ll have a look at your logbooks and other bits and pieces if I may.
AML: Aye. Aye. Sure. Sure.
BB: Yeah. Thank you.
AML: A lot of that stuff of course you’ll probably be able to edit out. You won’t use it all will you?
BB: No. No I don’t think so.
AML: No.
BB: And also thank you for signing the sheets and the other forms that I’ve asked you to sign. Thank you very much. So —
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: So —
AML: I think you’ll find that most aircrew don’t really talk very much about it to other people unless it’s aircrew people.
BB: Right.
AML: And you can always find out somebody immediately they start saying, for example that I was told to bale out, and the crew – the nineteen crew baled out, you know someone makes a mistake.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You know right away that they’re actually line shooters. Ahat they said, you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You can’t really.
BB: No.
AML: Well we never did that, you know. Like on our squadrons, we cleaned our guns, well a lot – we didn’t do that on our squadron. I depended on the gunnery.
BB: The armourers used to do that.
AML: Yeah.
BB: But mind you had to be able to clear blockages in the aircraft.
AML: Oh yeah. Sit down, blindfold, sit down blindfold.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And all that sort of thing.
BB: Right.
AML: But each squadron had its own different thing that depended how the CO looked at a particular item.
BB: Right.
AML: He might say, ‘Well I want you to do this,’ and you did it.
BB: What about dinghy drills and things like that.
AML: We did that as well. Yeah.
BB: Was that a regular thing?
AML: I don’t think so. No. We went to [pause] now where did we go? When we were at OTU we went to the Leicester Baths.
BB: Yes.
AML: And the baths were blacked out.
BB: Sure.
AML: And you got in first of all and they said, ‘Right this is your dinghy drill.’ There were RAF instructors I’m sure there. We all went up in one of these big huge big gareys. These big trucks they had with maybe four or five crews. Or three crews anyway. And we wondered why these guys were all dashing to go in such a hurry, you and saying, ‘You’re bloody keen,’ but we didn’t realise that if you went in first you got dry flying kit. If you went in second you put a dirty, you put a wet flying kit on.
BB: Ok right.
AML: You put the flying kit on you see.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And you had to use this and you had to jump in the dinghy with the lights out.
BB: Yeah.
AML: That’s why you had a whistle.
BB: Sure. Because it was dark. Simulating Bomber Command.
AML: The whistle was supposed to, aye. That’s why the aircrew used whistles.
BB: Whistles.
AML: Every aircrew whistled you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And you did this. Then they turned the dinghy upside down.
BB: You had to right it.
AML: You’ve got to right the dinghy again.
BB: Right.
AML: Exactly.
BB: And it was a five man dinghy. Or a seven man dinghy.
AML: Five man dinghy. Something like that.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: These are the sort of things you remember. That was one of the things. Why were they in such a hurry to get in? Because that was —
BB: What about using the parachute? Did you have any training?
AML: No.
BB: On how to do that?
AML: No. Never had any training on the parachute training at all.
BB: It was just there it is. Count. One. Two. Three. And pull the string.
AML: That’s right. That’s right. I think basically the reason would be that if you had to do a parachute jump and something had happened you wouldn’t jump in an emergency.
BB: No.
AML: You know you may be frightened to do that.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And that’s very good wisdom. Yes. Because —
AML: I think probably. I don’t know.
BB: If it’s your first time to go anyway.
AML: These are things that have come up in reflection when you were talking to a pupil.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Maybe that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You know.
BB: Ok.
AML: I don’t think there was any sort of written down about that. But we did do a bit of, of what I can remember now, we were in a hangar and we seemed to get a harness on.
BB: Oh yeah and swing a bit.
AML: And you jumped and you swung down and landed.
BB: Yeah. Just tell you how to land.
AML: Close your knees and this sort of thing, you know.
BB: Yeah. And what about parades and drills? Did you do squadron parades?
AML: Air crew are notorious for not wanting drills you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We really were a rough shower. I mean we were really were. I mean we got away with murder. I mean I must admit.
BB: Well I can assure you they haven’t changed.
AML: Yeah. If we could get away with it we got away with it.
BB: Yeah.
AML: I’m not going to bore you to tears of course, I hope.
BB: No.
AML: One of the great things you would probably know — after the war things changed of course dramatically as you can well imagine. And they had, I think it was a Friday. I can’t remember. The whole airfield shut down. And you had to participate in organised games.
BB: Oh yes.
AML: The whole station. WAAF. Everybody had to go on organised games. And it was organised in as much as they came around the gunnery section and said, ‘Right. Who’s all going to be play football?’ ‘Who’s all going to play rugby?’ ‘Who’s all going to play netball?’ You know. This sort of thing. It was all down. Your name was put down.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I, when you’re out in your —
BB: Your PT kit.
AML: Your PT kit and your fancy [unclear] You went down to the front of the hangars and somebody would, I can’t remember, maybe the station would detail all the crews. Who’s going to be?’ And I hated sport. I hated sport. I never was fit. My father was a football referee and all that. I had no time for sport. I still don’t have time for sport. Anyway, I thought well this is bloody terrible.
BB: So what did you do? How did you get out of that?
AML: Well —
BB: Stay in the goal and hope nobody came near it.
AML: No. Well it was quite regular. You had to be back at a certain time. And I thought how can I bloody get out of this thing and I happened to hear one day to hear oh he said there’s flying. I said how do you get in to Waddington, or how do you get to so and so. Oh we’re flying. And I thought so I said to skipper, ‘Did you hear that?’ Because he hated sport too. And I said, ‘Can you no volunteer us to fly crews up?’ And he always wanted somebody in the tail, we all, so that would be a good idea. We got away with that for, however, we didn’t get away, they said right. I said, ‘Well what’s the least supervised job you could get?’ Cross country running.
BB: Go away and hide somewhere.
AML: So we used to run in to the pub [laughs] we used to put a pound note in our shoe.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And around the nearest pub and sit in the pub and then come running back.
BB: Running back. I see.
AML: We got caught out because when the squadron sports came on.
BB: Yeah.
AML: They couldn’t get relay through. The three mile relay run. They couldn’t get, the skipper said, well the CO said, ‘All those who did cross country running can do it.’ We nearly got killed doing this ruddy thing after. You know.
BB: Never mind. Ok.
AML: We were found out, you know.
BB: Right.
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AMcPhersonLambA150726
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Interview with Alexander Lamb. 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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Sound
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eng
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00:47:13 audio recording
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Pending review
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Bruce Blanche
Date
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2015-07-26
Description
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Alexander Lamb grew up in Scotland and worked in the civil service before he joined the Royal Air Force. He flew five operations as an air gunner with 15 Squadron.
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Wales--Bridgend
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Julie Williams
11 OTU
14 OTU
15 Squadron
1654 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lincoln
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Feltwell
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wyton
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/317/3474/APorteousB161102.1.mp3
80867f55350bb6d512266a1b71d81dc6
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Title
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Porteous, Bob
Bryson Porteous
B Porteous
Description
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One oral history interview with Bryson "Bob" Porteous (441356 Royal Australian Air Force).
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-11-02
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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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Porteous, B
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BG: OK, so I’ll introduce us just the way they suggest. Which is, this Interview is, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Bob Porteous and the interviewer, interviewee is myself Barry Green and its taking place at Bob’s home, Meadow Springs Estate in Mandurah. So, first of all Bob, um, you, you’ve signed the agreement?
BP: Yep.
BG: And so the mainly the focus of this is your experience in Bomber Command but if, to set the background, [clock chime] where did you grow up?
BP: Born in Kalgoorlie, grew up in, er, William Street in Perth, Customs House in William Street in Perth. Then, er, my mother divorced the old man because he was infe— infidelity and then she married a Lawrence Povey of Povey’s Furniture Manufacturers and we lived in North Perth. And I did all my schooling in North Perth School, state school, and then Perth Boys’ School and, because the old man was an abusive drunk, I went bush. Did a few things in the, er, bush, came back and he — first thing that Seth [?] asked me what was I doing after a couple of years in the bush? And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ll go and enlist or something or other on Monday.’ Of course that was on the Thursday and I said, he said to me, ‘What about tomorrow?’ Being a Friday. So, I said, ‘OK.’ And Friday morning I went into the A and A [?] House I think it was then and enlisted, and I was the last person on my course, and we went to England.
BG: What, what year was that?
BP: It was 1942 and, er, luckily he unknowingly gave me a good, good thing, because everyone who enlisted on the Monday they went to Rhodesia to train and then they went up to the desert and they are either still in the desert or they became POWs in France, in Italy. So, his words about when I should enlist actually served a good purpose.
BG: Right. So, what happened from there?
BP: Trained at Cloncar [?]. I have a friend here. He’s in the next room. He’s an ex-padre and we always have fun and games over the fact that he’s a padre and I tell him that I spent more time in chapel than he did. And he wanted to know why. And I said we were billeted in, in a chapel. So I sent three months in a chapel. [laugh]
BG: So, this is when you were training as a navigator?
BP: As a navi— no, I was just training as an airman then and we were then sent to Mount Gambier. That was a navigation school and, er, gave, given the choice of going Point — to other places, Evans Head and all the rest of it, and we had a lot of air cadets fresh, fresh out of school, who all wanted to go to Port Pirie because it was nearer to Perth, but we being a few old heads we said, ‘No. We’ll go to Evans Head.’ So, according to the Air Services and all the rest of it, we, well I, went to Port Pirie and all the other boys went to Evans Head. They went up to the islands and they’re still up there.
BG: So, from there you were — at what stage did you first get into an aircraft?
BP: A trainer or a real one?
BG: Well, the trainer, yep.
BP: The trainer was, oh, about three or four months after I enlisted and we had great fun and games because three of us were training as navigators and we had three, er, navs and a pilot to train in an old Anson and they drew straws as to who was going into the first leg of this triangular course and I lost, and consequently I drew the nav table, and I opened the nav drawer to put my charts in it and found that the chap who had it before had been sick in it [laugh] so consequently the pilot, when we returned, he complained to — and the chap they found out who had been the person who had been sick and he had the job for the next couple of weeks of examining all aircraft every morning before they took off to find out that they were fit, besides his ordinary work. [laugh]
BG: So, how long did you spend there before getting into, er, operations?
BP: It took three, five, six months of actual training before we were graduated as navigators and got a weeks’ leave and then we went to Melbourne and we were billeted in the embassy. Gee, a cold bloody hole that was [laugh] and then came the day we were issued with our, um, woolly flying gear, which was no indication we were going to England but that was no indication in the Services of the gear that they issued you, er, meant that you went there because I have known people being sent to the tropics with their woolly flying gear. Any rate, we were on this boat and we were told we were going to Vancouver because we had some EA air cadets, EATS cadets, who were to be trained in Calgary. So, after twenty-odd days on the ship we pulled into Panama. The next thing we know we go through the canal and we land in Boston. And, er the OC troops on the ship says, ‘We want volunteers to take these air cadets to Calgary.’ So they numbered us all off and he said, ‘Alright, everyone on — with a two in their number is a volunteer.’ So, I had a free trip according to the CPR railways to Calgary with these four hundred-odd cadets. Consequently when I got back to Fort Hamilton in New York all the rest of the chaps who’d travelled on the boat from Melbourne they, had been shipped to England. Unfortunately that ship was torpedoed and they were lost in the North Atlantic. So twenty-two of us had an extra couple of weeks in New York where I was fortunate enough to be billeted with a millionaire. [cough] His name was Mendenhall which was a — not an excuse — was a bit of a blow because the final drome that we had in England was Mildenhall so I had to think to whom I was talking and what about I was talking as to what was the name of the place, whether it was Mendenhall or Mildenhall. [laugh] Any rate, we, er, oh —
BG: So, how did you find New York? How long were you there for?
BP: A couple of weeks. They knew absolutely nothing. They were dead bloody hopeless. My opinion of the Yanks and their learning ability is zero from what they knew. Lofty and I were walking down Fifth Avenue dressed in our RAAF uniforms and a couple of cops pulled us up, thought that we were Austrians [emphasis]. They couldn’t bloody well read.
BG: Yep.
BP: ‘You come from Australia?’ They had said, ‘I thought, oh, that’s a little island in San Francisco Bay?’ Alcatraz. And things like that they were bloody hopeless [emphasis] as far as geography and things like that were concerned and the more I learned about them during the war the, the less I thought about them. [clears throat]
BG: Right, so from New York ship across the —
BP: Ah, as there were only twenty-two of us we were put on the Queen Mary, QM1. We had seventeen thousand Yankees, a regiment of them, on the boat going over and they — everyone had to do a job. So they said, ‘Twenty-two Australians. What on earth will we to do with you?’ So they gave us submarine watch on the bridge. It took — we were two hours on, one hour off. It — where we were billeted down on the boat I was Blue C4. It took twenty minutes to — from there up to the bridge, you spent two hours on bridge watch, then twenty minutes back, which gave you twenty minutes time to go to the toilet and that and you had twenty minutes to come back again so we told the first officer, ‘What’s the use of giving us an hour off to go and do that? We might as well stay up on the bridge.’ So, he agreed the thing. So the first officer and Captain Bisset (he was the captain of the Mary at the time) — so we used to do navigation exercises so I’ve navigated the Queen Mary. [laugh]
BG: Right. You’d more time to think about that.
BP: Yeah. Well, so, er, navigation exercises for five days. The twenty-two of us we navigated the Mary across to Greenock in Scotland.
BG: Right. Go on.
BP: Got, got to Scotland and we were then sent down to, mm, Padgate. That was a PDRC outside Warrington, and of course mum had always told us if you go anywhere do see as much as you can of the place. So, one thing and another, the first thing we did was when we put our gear down and all the rest of it, ‘What’s the time? Let’s go into town.’ We wanted to see town so during every spare moment my friend and I we visited whatever we could. So, over the whole of my tour in England, I visited most of England in one time and another. Any rate, we went to Warrington. We used to go in there and come down to the coffee shop, which was opposite the railway station, have our tea in there. Actually it wasn’t coffee. It was a bun, sticky bun and tea, and so when the train pulled up we hopped, raced across the road and hopped into the train because we didn’t have to pay for it, being servicemen, Australian ex-servicemen, Australian servicemen. Only this happened to be — we did that on the Wednesday and the Thursday. On the Friday we did the same thing only the train happened to be special train going to Manchester. So, the first time I went to Manchester was by mistake. [laugh]
BG: So your first operational unit when you got to the UK —
BP: [cough] It all depends what you call operations because when we were on, um, at Bruntingthorpe we were on Wellingtons at the time and we were given the job of annoying, under Operation Annoy, and annoy the German air flak gunners on the Friesian Islands and all up and down the coast. It was our job to fly up and down just out of range, toss window out the chute and all the rest of it, and annoy the German gunners. So, they didn’t call that operational but we were two crews still hut [?] we flew H-Howard and another crew flew, Bert’s flew M-Mike and we, er, did the first twelve trips alright and came the thirteenth one and we got down to the briefing room and found out that the silly looking operations officer there had made a balls up of the things and we were listed to fly M-Mike and Bert and his boys flew H-Howard. So when we came back after the raid they told us that it was OK to land but beware of the burning plane in the funnels. That was Bert and his crew in our plane. So that was my first experience of Bomber Command and their misdeeds.
BG: So, you, you were up in the, you went up in the wrong plane basically but as it turned out the best plane to be in?
BP: Yes.
BG: And this — what squadron was that?
BP: That was on Heavy Conversion Unit, HCU, before we even got on the squadron so we thought to ourselves if we can do things like that before we got on the squadron what do we do when we get on the squadron and we went to — I was posted — actually, I went to the ablutions hut one morning and had a shower and a shave and all the rest of it and someone stole my navigation watch. So the crew was delayed a couple of days while we faced a court of enquiry as to how and why and where I’d lost my watch. When we got on the squadron we found out that the crew that had taken our place were, um, had been in this particular hall and we were delayed on entering because they were cleaning the, their gear out. They had, er, taken off the previous night and hadn’t come back. So, could have been us.
BG: Yep.
BP: Any rate I was on 622 up at Mildenhall and being a base drome, three other aerodromes around the place, and a couple of [unclear] squadrons on the drome we got the dirty work. Why should they go out to one of the satellite dromes and give their information and all their rest of it to someone else. So, being new chums on the drome we got the, er dirty work of doing things around the place. So as far as operations work my work on operations was very limited and — [cough]
BG: So, getting back to your — this was your first operations and your, your log books. Tell us more about that.
BP: The things that we did with the odd jobs around the place and my six [unclear] for instance, they got us on a special trip. We supposedly flew an admiral and a commodore with their aides. In actual fact was all they wanted was a Lancaster to fly to Gibraltar because the officer, secret service officer down there said, ‘Alright, we’ll do a trip over to Tangier.’ And when we went to Tangier we had a chappie there who was another, er, secret officer, who gave us a tour of the town whilst they left, whilst we had left the plane on the drome, which we were not supposed to do but he, being a wing commander — alright, he says, ‘Leave the plane there and go into town.’ You don’t disobey the wing commander so we did. When we came to take off we found out the plane was heavy. We had flown from England to Gib, taken off and flown into Tangier. By then we should have only had, oh, probably a half a petrol load. But that plane was fully loaded. We found out of course when we landed at Gib we were heavy in the landing and of course you don’t land a heavy Lancaster the same way as you do one that’s half empty, so they had to tell us we had a full load on board, but they didn’t tell us what the load was. Turned out to be seven tons of gold [clears throat] so in actual fact it had been a gold smuggle. They wanted the gold that had accumulated from Africa into Fez and Tangier and then taken to Gibraltar to pay for he lend lease of the British war effort so it’s one of those little things and yet it’s not in my log book. When I have been to Canberra to talk to my old veterans over there I found out that their log books do not agree actually with what they did. One chap has had twenty trips written into his log book that he never did. I mean, he said twenty-five trips, you know, he actually did but he’s listed as forty-five trips. The other twenty-five, where did they come from? The same as my log book. I do not have it to be able to verify it, but I have seen a copy of the records and the records that, that have been obtained from the — Canberra and all the rest of it do not agree with my memory of the log books. So, knowing a few things that have happened during the war and that, the log, the record keeping of the Air Force or Air Ministry and that is up the balls up.
BG: So were you mostly flying as the one crew or was the crew —
BP: We — a chap Quinn and crew, the same crew all the time and, er, luckily we kept it al— always. They were mainly things that, um, other crews around the place — we were very disappointed over the fact that we didn’t do more trips, operations, than the, that the others but we were listed as the “bunnies” round the place doing the odd jobs. So, they put us on things like, um, gardening and Operation Manna, Operation Exodus bringing back ex- ex-POWs from France, from Juvencourt and that and we had the job of Operation Python, bringing back, taking people out to Italy and bringing them back from there. So, shall we say I was not a fully operational man. I did my work with 622 but the thing was after the VE Day they wanted people to fly with Operation — what was it? Out to Australia, out to Okinawa — I can’t think of it.
BG: The, the nuclear thing or —
BP: Yeah. They wanted us to go out to, um, Okina— join up with a crew, not that crew, but to join up with 460 Squadron to go to Okinawa and fly and bomb Japan and — what’s the hell name of that?
BG: Do you mind if I keep going because, you know this will be edited? So, I’m trying to think the name of the place.
BP: I’m trying to think of the name of the thing that we all joined. [clears throat]
BG: As in a —
BP: Well, it’s a well-known thing that all the Australians in England were given the opportunity of joining 460 Squadron to come out here and we trained for a couple of months, low level work, heavy loads and things like that to fly out to Okinawa and bomb Japan.
BG: Right. So this was after —
BP: After VE Day.
BG: After VE day, right.
BP: When VJ Day came along the — we had a Wing Commander Swan. We were being briefed to take off the next morning when the chappie came in with the wireless thing and showed him and said Japan had surrendered. He said [slight laugh] — he threw the message down on the table and he said, ‘I don’t know what you buggers are going to do but I’m going in the mess and get drunk.’ He said, ‘Anyone who wants to go into town go and see the adjutant.’ [laugh] So we all shot through to London for V, VJ Day.
BG: So how long were you in England?
BG: ’45.
BP: ’45. And we got on board this ship, the Orion, SS Orion, which set out to reclaim its record to Australia but had broke down in the Bay of Biscay and unfortunately the, er, one of the insurer’s representatives had found us at Southampton and as we had surplus Sterling money on us got us to insure our kit bags and that and, er, I said OK and I had a couple of pounds so I insured my kitbag. Any rate we went back to Southampton and they sent us on a train up to Millom [?] in Scotland. They reopened an old drome at Millom and instead of sending us on leave as they should have done. So we stayed at Millom for about a fortnight and they promptly found out that we were causing too much damage to their turkey flocks because, being Australian and that, we were very expert of killing sheep and skinning them and also ringing turkey necks so consequently they sent us on leave in London and we finally left England on the Durban Castle and then —
BG: This is after VE Day?
BP: After VJ Day.
BG: After VJ Day.
BP: And it was not until I arrived back in Australia that I learned that my flying kit bag had gone missing for which actually I had insured and got forty pound, yeah, Australia was still in the Sterling bracket, I got forty pounds insurance money for the kit bag, but the thing was I lost my log book.
BG: Ah, right back then.
BP: Yeah. So that’s where it is.
BG: So any, any particular missions that you went on? You’ve mentioned a few. Any others that sort of come to mind?
BP: Actually no because we just did — we dropped people over in France and things like that so we didn’t do actually bombing missions or mine a harbour or two or something like that but the war was nearly over by the time we had so all my actual war experience was on 622 but I still, we still had to fly.
BG: So you were flying over, over enemy territory in Europe?
BP: All the time, yeah. We, even though they had, the Air Force had a lot of planes and crews doing nothing they put on tourist trips where we had to fly people, ground crew and interested parties on the drome, we flew them to places like Normandy and the, um, the bomb sites and things like that, and also up and down the Rhine to see how the bridges that we, that had been bombed and things like that. So, er, I cannot claim to have done very much bombing experience.
BG: So, you said you did some mining, mine laying. What, what was involved in that?
BP: Oh, that was on Hamburg Harbour and, um, one place we did bomb was Hamburg but that was just a mass raid and everything like that because, er, later on the experience that the padre (he is an ex-serviceman padre) and when I told him when I was examining the window and told him, you know, it looks nice and bright this scene of a burning town and told him that it looked like Hamburg and that and he said, we bombed that and he said, ‘Yes. I had a job of clearing it up afterwards.’ They sent him over as a padre in that place so he and I don’t exactly get on well together. [laugh]
BG: Right.
BP: I’m trying to think of that name [beep sound] and I forget what the American, New Zealand squadron was to represent them.
BG: Yep. I’m just trying to get the name. I can’t help you there. I’ll put that in the back and it might pop out a bit later. So did you cop much — had any mechanical problems on your flights?
BP: I don’t know about mechanical problems, the only time we got shot at properly we were on supposedly on a safe [emphasis] trip dropping food to the Dutch. We were to fly in over a racecourse, I think it was this first time, and drop food. Lancasters had all the food up in the bomb bays in the open top coffins. And, er, sometimes the drop bars would come high up and the food would drop and sometimes the whole of the assembly would drop, and you could see a, an incendiary container hit a cow, or something like that and everyone had cow meat for lunch. And when we came back the ground crew they said we were very lucky. They counted we had ninety-seven bullet holes in our plane and luckily underneath the navigator’s seat was one of these incendiary containers that hadn’t fallen off, and in the bottom of it was half a dozen dents from bullets, where the bullets had struck. So the worst raid that we had was supposed to have been the safest because we had four of those. [clock starts chiming] We got shot up the first time. The second time I think we had a couple of bullet holes in the wings but nothing as near as bad as that so, um, that did count as one of our operations.
BG: Right. So how many was in the crew?
BP: Seven.
BG: Do you remember them all? Do you remember names? Do you want to mention names or not?
BP: Oh, Frank Quinn. He got married over there. A chap, Nobby Clarke, was the bomb aimer, and we had Bill Day as the tail gunner, Chick [?] Anderson as mid upper gunner and — I forget the name of the wireless operator. That was one of the things that as, er, Bert and his boys, before he bought it the — I was in the crew, I was in his crew and when they had a pretty good night in the mess his navigator got too, too well liquored up and he cycled across the paddock instead of going down the roadway and went, went over a creek, which was by then was frozen and the ice broke and he went into the water, and he went into the hut and other than getting dry or anything, he went to bed as he was and he got pneumonia and died. So the replacement chap was a friend of the other crew so we changed crews so the crew that had Bert and his crew, which I was originally on, was the crew that bought it. So the new crew was Frank. So, I outlived that one all right. [clears throat]
BG: A cat of nine lives.
BP: And a few more. [laugh] [clears throat]
BG: So, the mechanics of the aircraft. Pretty reliable? You didn’t have too many —
BP: They were very, very good. We lost, um, two motors one night on doing something or other and they gave us — they said they were no good, that they — we’d have to get another plane because they had no engines to fix it up so they sent us to, the duty crew, took us to Lindholme and Lindholme had a, a warehouse and alongside the warehouse had been a hut site for two dozen huts with their concrete floors and the air strip. And so went in and, er, signed for the new aircraft and the chap said, ‘Oh. That one there,’ he says, ‘You can have that one.’ So, okeydoke, and when we took it, when we looked at where we had to go to get to the strip, it was over these concrete bases, and he said — we complained or Frank complained that every time we went over a bump the wings, you know, fluttered and all the rest of it, and he rang up on the radio and said that it was a horrible bloody ride, and the chap said, ‘The wings stayed on,’ he said, ‘That’s part of the test.’ So, okeydoke, so we had a new aircraft we had to take up and test out so, um, apart from that, the loss of two motors things, otherwise things were OK. The only accident that we saw occur was one where we were doing low level flying around two hundred feet in Britain in dusk. That is not recognised as being very healthy and, er, this particular time I, being a pretty good navigator, I was in the lead and the others had to follow. We had our tail plane, er, painted so that they recognised who was the lead navigator. And so I was in front and the rest were following me and the chap at the rear, his, one of his motors caught alight and he said, ‘Bail out.’ And at two hundred feet bailing out at that height it’s a no-no and they couldn’t find out where he landed and it was a week later they found out that he had landed in a farmer’s silage pit, so he drowned in a load of shit.
BG: Not nice.
BP: Not nice. [clears throat]
BG: So, tell us more about the navigation. What, what you had to work with. So, were you good at maths at school is that why you went down that path or —
BP: Actually, I was colour blind and I did, when I was at ITS, I had to go into town once a week or twice a week and that, and see a Dr Rardon [?] and have my eyes tested, and all the other things that he did, and I found out when I got back to navigation school that all our maps were orange not red. So, consequently, being red colour blind didn’t affect me. So all the lines on our radar maps were either black or orange so as you — they were big, not semi-circles, eclipses [emphasis] with the radar stations that were bases in England so you had, er, diverging lines going out over the continent, so you had to do your cross, T-crosses, where they crossed and so it was the further you went from England the worse it got. There was no such thing as accurate map reading. The only thing it was that we had a new invention. They called in H2S. It was a radar dome in the bottom of the aircraft which gave you an excellent view of things like rivers or lakes or, um, coastlines and things like that. The only catch was that the Germans knew when you operated that they could trace the signal so if you turned your H2S on you were liable to be to be shot at. And of course they had just developed the German night fighter with up firing guns so consequently they lost a lot. So they did not like you using H2S too frequently. The only other time that we had trouble, one place we were at, that they had, um, war-time huts. They were ordinary, just about cardboard, you know, hard cardboard and that —
BG: Right.
BP: [cough] And a couple of the chaps had been to the mess this night and they’d come in the rear door and they had left the, er, outside door open because they had a door, you know, a light lock on the two doors at each end and, er, they’d hear this plane buzzing round the place and this silly little chap went down and opened both doors and stood in the door way. ‘What’s going on?’ Of course, the chap came down and shot him. [slight laugh]So, we — there were twenty of us in the hut and we had to claim baggage insurance on the baggage insurance, go down to the warehouse and claim new baggage.
BG: So, in terms of your navigation, did you use D-Beam, inter-directional beacon? Did you track on VHF transmitters or anything like that?
BP: No. Dead reckoning all the way because they were just — you were so, so scarce on navigation aids it was dead reckoning. Unless you were good you’d had it. [clears throat]
BG: So, I mentioned I worked on the Becker navigation which I understand came out of Loran. Did you have any experience with that?
BP: No. We didn’t on that. The Pathfinder Force boys were the ones that got Loran. They wanted, everybody in Pathfinders wanted it, and they were busy making Pathfinder Force a regular thing, so we just did not get it because it wasn’t available.
BG: Right. Right. So, do you want to perhaps describe your, your job from — so prior to the, um, mission you’d be — tell, tell us what you’d be given and the process you’d go through. You’d have some time to plan your course before you went out or what?
BP: We didn’t have much time. They’d take you down to briefing around about 4 o’clock and you’d be given what, where you were going that night and they’d tell you what routes you had too and they would say what the expected winds were. And never rely on the Met men. They were bloody hopeless. They were worse, they were worse than the people we have at present. And they would tell you it would be a nice fine night and of course there’s be 10/10 dense bloody cloud and then you’d have the opposite. So, you know, you’re going to have a bumpy ride tonight and it would be a clear, clear fighter moon night. So you just didn’t know what was going.
BG: So, on the overcast nights, um, your dead reckoning’s pretty challenging I would think?
BP: Yes. Oh, you had to, you had to be on the ball, what you were, and of course the thing was that if it was a clear night you could actually see [emphasis] people. Of course the odd person didn’t switch their lights off and things like that. They were bloody hopeless. You were supposed to go with no navigation lights, nothing, and yet you could see half a dozen lights around the place. You knew, you knew that you were somewhere right because you had someone following you. Whether you were in the wrong place you had half a dozen people in the wrong place.
BG: So the missions that you were on were mostly not bombing missions so you were a lone aircraft. You weren’t part of —
BP: Part of three or four people, planes that went out.
BG: Right, so in most cases there would be, you wouldn’t be a single aircraft going out?
BP: No. Very rarely were we ever single.
BG: So you kept in visual contact with the other aircraft or —
BP: Tried not to. [laugh]
BG: Tried not to. Right.
BP: Because of the reason, the fact of the enemy could see the other aircraft and have a go at him and they could also, also see us so it was a case of beware, get out.
BG: Yep. Did you encounter German fighters much or
BP: No. We were lucky in that regard that we didn’t. We, once we had a few stray shells come. Where from, we hadn’t clue. We were flying, you know, I wouldn’t say it was dense cloud. It was very misty, foggy and things like that a couple of stray bullets came up through the — well, they weren’t bullets. They were blody fifty millimeter shells or something like that. Yeah, they tore holes in the fuselage sort of thing. But uneventful.
BG: Do you want to have your cuppa?
BP: Oh, yeah. You can shut it off for a while.
BG: At the end of the war, did you come back by ship?
BP: Yep. We came back by the Durban Castle. That was the ship that the, after the war, the steward murdered someone, some girl, and pushed her out the port hole.
BG: Life was cheap in those days. [laugh]
BP: Yeah. We had an ENSA party on board and, er, we were coming down the Red Sea. Nice clear night, nice and smooth, the moon was out and things like that, and the ENSA party was on the front deck. They were, um, doing Service songs and Service skits and things like that. The Dominion Monarch pulled up alongside of us. They had the, er, Maori Battalion on board. So there they are, the two ships, within ten yards of each other, doing twenty-odd knots down the Red Sea and the ENSA party having a whale of a time and come midnight [coughing]. You talk too much and you get a tickle in your throat.
BG: Right. [pause] So, do you want to call it quits with that? Have you had enough?
BP: No. I’m just going to finish off there. [pause] So, it was on New Year’s Eve, this New Year’s Eve party, and it came to the end of the party at midnight and there was a hoot on the hooter from both the ships and the Maori battalion gave us the haka. It’s a sound that you, a scene that, I’ll never forget. The two ships, the moonlight and where we were in the Red Sea and the haka being — one of those, one of those things that you would never ever forget. And that’s the thing that war always reminds me of, the finish of the war.
BG: Yep, yep. Then you came back to Perth?
BP: Yes. The old man was still alive. So, I told mum, ‘Alright. He’s alive.’ So I went and joined 37 Squadron, where we used to fly up and down to Japan and, er, we served BCOF in Japan where there was a few points to the Philippines and that and we used to fly up to New Guinea, New Britain, [unclear] round Australia. Even flew politicians around from bloody Canberra to Melbourne or Sydney and back. Don’t ask me about that.
BG: So, how long were you in the Air Force after the war?
BP: Three years. [clears throat] And one of those things, I met a girl. Her husband used to work for the manager. He was where they had a B and B up in Noarlunga and he used to be manager of CSR in Fiji and he had this B and B and they were looking for someone to make up a four for bridge. They used to hold a bridge night each Tuesday night. So they found Norma and her husband had been up in New Guinea during the war. He got killed. So, er, I finally met her. So the four, two of us lived for four years. She suddenly dropped [clears throat] dead one day. She was the second fiancée of mine to die. The first one was by a flying bomb in England. We used to — it’s a funny thing. I was on the, on the squadron and all the rest of it. Bomber squadron. We used to go on leave to Croydon which was the middle of flying bomb alley. Over the road from us on the thirteenth green from us was a flak battery. They used to fire across the roof of the house at the bombs as they came up the Thames valley and Faye and I used to go to the local pub two hundred yards down the road. Been to an English pub?
BG: No.
BP: Smoke, smoke and more bloody smoke and all the rest of it and of course one thing is I don’t smoke. So, I said, ‘Better get out of here. You know, too much smoke and all the rest of it. Come for a walk down the road.’ ‘I want to talk to the girls.’ ‘Talk to the girls, alright.’ So I went down the road and I only got a hundred yards down the road when a flying bomb flattened the pub. So instead of going on leave I went to a burial party.
BG: Bad lot.
BP: One of those things yeah.
BG: So you got back to Western Australia. So, you said you sent the rest of your life in Western Australia?
BP: Yeah. Oh, sent a few years in Sydney. Then, er, mum wanted me to come home and I said I wouldn’t come home until Seth [?] died. Of course he died on the operation table from something or other. So, I managed to get through uni and that ultimo and came over here and I joined the BP refinery and they were wanting people to manage the place so they sent a few of us over to Grangemouth to learn how to run a refinery. You should have heard mum, ‘You’re away for fifteen bloody years and all the rest of it. You come home for a fortnight and you go to London for six months.’ [laugh] She was not amused.
BG: So I guess your engineering experience through the Air Force would have been invaluable in your later life?
BP: [clears throat] Well, I was their emergency controller. By day I did nothing. All, all the time I did nothing but if the siren went and there was an emergency I was in charge of the place. So people had to do what I told them. I didn’t have to know names. All I knew was what people could do, so I said, ‘You do it.’ And of course they couldn’t argue about it because I could tell them what to do.
BG: Yep. So getting back to your time — so you were always RAF crews. They didn’t mix crews up of Air Forces?
BP: Well, we had a Scottish engineer. He was from Glasgow. His family were in, er, Coventry when it got bombed. That was the reason why he was a very good — he joined the Air, he joined the RAF. When we used to go to France on Operation Exodus and other such things, rather than wear the RAF uniform, we used to outfit him with the blue RAAF uniform. We were WOs at the time so we also gave him a WO badge. He was only a sergeant, flight sergeant, in the RAF but he was a WO in the RAAF. [laugh]
BG: Right. So in the week typically how many missions during the —
BP: Two, three but of course during the off times, in the summer time, they used to send all the spare bods out to the farmers to pick peas and dig potatoes and you name it and we were veg— I wouldn’t say we were vegetarians, we were gardeners. [laugh]
BG: Right. So that was part of the job.
BP: Part of the job. I’ve got some photos if you were here long enough to show of me doing things like that.
BP: Recreation. Now, that’s censorable. [laugh] No. I knew Faye but I was a good boy. For recreation we used to go to London. Of course, thing was we used to be paid what? Thirty bob a day then. And we had an odds incidental form, Form 1257. You got paid three pence for a bloody hair cut or three pence a week because you didn’t — a hard living allowance or you didn’t have a batman or things like that, so every three months we used to get this sheet which was about another thirty pound. So, every month we had about forty pound to spend and every third month we had about sixty and so we used to go to London and spend it.
BG: So, it wasn’t a bad life if you survived.
BP: If you survived it was a good life because I used to go to wherever I was. I’ve seen more places in England than a lot of English people purely because they iss— as we were RAAF people we were allowed a rail pass to anywhere in Britain.
BG: Right, right.
BP: The RAF or the English people could only go to their home town. We went to anywhere so go down to the pay clerk and say you were on leave, for your leave warrant, and coupons and that. ‘Where are you going this week?’ We had a map. ‘Oh we’ll go there.’ [laugh] Been over cotton mills and steel works, you name it, and all the rest of it. I’ve been from Plymouth up to Lossiemouth and things like this. We had bags of fun.
BG: Well, it’s been great talking to you Bob and I really appreciate you taking the time.
BP: Well, if you had a couple more days to talk I’d tell you what I really did. [laugh]
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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APorteousB161102
Title
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Interview with Bob Porteous
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:52:20 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Barry Green
Date
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2016-11-02
Description
An account of the resource
Flight Sergeant Bob Porteous grew up in Australia and after spending time in the bush he joined the Royal Australian Air Force. After training and spending time in the United States, he travelled to Scotland on the Queen Mary. He flew operations as a navigator with 622 Squadron from RAF Mildenhall. On one occasion he describes a secret operation to Gibraltar and Tangier on a Lancaster that brought back gold. He also explains his role as navigator and equipment such as H2S.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Great Britain
Morocco
United States
Gibraltar
England--Leicestershire
England--Suffolk
Morocco--Tangier
North Africa
Temporal Coverage
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1942
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
622 Squadron
aircrew
Cook’s tour
entertainment
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Mildenhall
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/329/3489/PSmithNG1701.1.jpg
4468b6f3352faded13c6188715151f2b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/329/3489/ASmithNG161203.2.mp3
7eaf605fe11d56646d7146cefca804e4
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
Smith, Norman George
Norman Smith
Norman G Smith
N G Smith
N Smith
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview and a video interview with Norman George Smith (b. 1924, 427226 Royal Australian Air Force). He flew 10 operations as a pilot on 463 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, NG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RB: Now Norman have you got any questions for me?
NS: No, not really.
RB: Okay, well I’ll read this interview heading that I’ve got and then perhaps answer any questions you might have. This is an interview being conducted by the International Bomber Command Centre, and I am Ron Baron and I’m talking to Norman George Smith.
NS: That’s right, correct.
RB: And I’m in Western Australia, and also present is Kathy, Norman’s daughter, the date is 3rd December, 2016.
NS: Correct.
RB: Now can you tell me where you were born and when you were born?
NS: 1924, er, in Perth, then spent a bit of time Armadale afterwards.
RB: Right, can you tell me a little bit about your family, your parents, brothers and sisters?
NS: Roy my brother was the next one down, then had sisters, two sisters.
RB: And their names?
NS: Their names [coughs], what the hell were their names, Kathy?
KY: Lynne and Beattie.
NS: And Beattie that’s right, yeah Beattie. Lynne I always forget her.
RB: Lynne and Beattie
NS: She’s named after my mother.
RB: What did your father do what work?
NS: He was what they call a bush boss, he goes into the forest and worked out which trees to fall and made sure that the people picking up trees to take them to landing [unclear] were doing the right thing, picking up the right trees what I suppose had fallen down.
RB: Let’s go on to your schooling now, what age did you start school?
NS: When I was six at Whittaker’s Mill, I just lived about a couple of hundred yards from the school and in Whittaker’s Mill.
RB: And how long were you there at what age did you leave?
NS: That place there would be about eleven, eleven or twelve I think it’d be, and then we went down to Perth, but by this time I’d become a assistant in the timber mill workshop [coughs] and no more school.
RB: You didn’t like school?
NS: Well I wasn’t [unclear], wasn’t too bad at times I suppose but was too much fiddling around.
RB: When you were in the mill what sort of work did you do?
NS: Engineering, and whenever there was a [coughs] trouble in the mill itself at the weekend the engineer and myself as offsider picked up the bearings in the mill and all that sort of thing and we had a pretty good time together.
RB: What sort of wages did you get then, what sort of pay?
NS: Pay?
RB: Yeah.
NS: Oh gosh I’ve forgotten what pay it was but it was pretty good and I remember working at the mill, when I worked in the mill before I went to Perth and it was pretty good. We used to have, sometimes I used to work with the blacksmith and other times they’d be down in the mill itself and do a bit clearing out on the benches.
RB: What sort of hobbies did you have then? Did you enjoy —
NS: Swimming I did a mainly going [unclear] up and down the creeks looking for junies [?] there a sort of a prawn but in the water the white mermaid there only about two inches long, three inches, four inches some the big ones, a bit dirty they’d be about —
RB: Did you eat them? Were they tasty?
NS: Oh yes of course they are yeah, put them in water and boil them up like you do a prawn and there, there just like a prawn that’s all, there in the water, in the rainwater creeks not in the salt.
RB: As you got older did you have any other jobs?
NS: No I don’t think I did really, er none that I, none that I had pay for, might do a bit of self, self, self work, but Roy and I, Roy my brother we’d go off to the bush hunt around for kangaroos and things. Chop a bit of wood on a fallen tree that’s why what happened one day when I went to chop a bit of wood off the end of a tree and instead of hitting the wood straight away I got tangled in a bit of bush the back of the axe and it swung up like that and Roy was standing on the tree and it swung up to him and cut the back of his knee, and had to carry him down to the schoolteacher’s house, the schoolteacher took him away and took him down to Pinjarra to get fixed up, but saved his leg anyway.
RB: When did you become interested in flying?
NS: Oh that’s when I rescued a boy that was in the swimming at the bottom of the falls, out in the middle and he got a cramp but he started to sink and why [unclear] having a bit of a sunbake on the rocks decided so we dived in and grabbed hold of him but he pretty near drowned the two of us, had hold of me around the neck but anyway I got him, got him to the side and he was all right and took him home eventually didn’t seem any, he apologised to me said he was sorry sort of thing. His family reckoned I was pretty good saving him and they invited me down to Perth for holiday that’s when I went down to Perth and the first morning I when I went outside the house had a look out and overlooking the airfield heard the Tiger Moth flying away, suddenly flying away and that’s what I was going to do that’s me fly an aircraft and, er, all the books I’d been reading and monthly magazine learn how to fly a plane and I knew, pretty well knew there and then how to fly the plane and well, well eventually anyway I joined the Air Cadets and well I was going around Air Cadets, Air Cadets in Perth but I was pretty, I was gonna be an aircraft pilot anyway.
RB: When the war came, how old were you when the war started?
NS: Er, I wasn’t, I wasn’t eighteen yet. Eventually I turned eighteen and that’s when I joined the actual Air Force itself that was, that was just after my eighteenth birthday.
RB: Where did you go for your initial training?
NS: Clontarf, that was, no flying but what do you call it an ex school where all the pupils were women and I checked out, waiting for the cleaners to clean up the place, most of the pupils I think had shit on the floor, they cleaned up the place for us anyway and took us in from the tents we were in tents for about a fortnight, took us inside gave us a bedroom.
RB: How long were you there?
NS: Oh, about a month, two months, then we went off to Cunderdin then, where the Tiger Moths were that was what we had after.
RB: What was your first posting then from Clontarf?
NS: Clontarf, after, after, Merredin, yes down to Merredin.
RB: And what did you do there?
NS: That’s where we started to fly planes, and had a pretty good time chasing bloody emus in the planes making out we were gonna shoot them yeah yeah, on the beach firing at people in boats, little boats, make out we were going to shoot ‘em, dive on ‘em —
RB: What sort of aircraft were they?
NS: Tiger Moths, yeah, DH82A, but they were really good planes Tiger Moths.
RB: How long were you there?
NS: Oh, went up, from there we went to Cunderdin where we started really learn how to fly and it was pretty good become pilots eventually had to go to Geraldton, after Geraldton, I, I was up near [unclear] but I came back to Geraldton I knew the place you know, I knew all the corners and all the little, quite a few little huts they had two beds in ‘em, where people should go in when there’s any bombs, bombs coming over, instead of that we were using them as little beds to put the women in while we sort of cuddled up to them.
RB: How did you feel when you first went solo?
NS: I went solo eventually, and by that time I did pretty good because the chap that’s teaching me how to fly and everything apparently I was pretty good on doing the loop de loop, loop de loop, and he used to boast about me to all the other teachers and that in the mess, and I didn’t realise this but he used to keep me pretty near on the same thing all the time and I got fed up with him and complained to [coughs] to the head office. And the chap there he said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, ‘Well listen I can’t carry on being learnt anymore about the aircraft so I don’t think I can fly anymore you better take me down off this course.’ And they said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because the bloody teacher there keeps on telling me to do the same thing over and over again.’ And er, anyway they promised me a well they would fix that up, and then they gave me another teacher so okay I settled in quite well and became quite good. But apparently I still had the plane, not the plane the people that looked after me they realised that my first teacher that I wanted to get out of all he was doing was boasting about how I could fly loop de loop and anyway.
RB: And that was still in Tiger Moths?
NS: In Tiger Moths oh yeah, that’s all they had here in Australia at the time.
RB: Did you make any mates while you were there?
NS: Any what?
RB: Any friends, mates?
NS: Oh one or two, Bill, Bill was one, Bill Adam, he was the main one. There was only about one because quite a few of them didn’t come from Western Australia they came from Eastern States, but I got along pretty well the new teachers.
RB: Did you have any troubles there any problems?
NS: No only, only thinking that the Japanese were looking after, tearing after me one night when I was on guard duty and I heard these footsteps, and I said, ‘Okay halt or else I shall fire.’ And this was about three o’clock one morning and I still heard these footsteps so I let go of the rifle and bang, three o’clock in the morning woke the whole school up, and turned out it was aircraft hangars that looked the rooves, the rooves were false never went up to the roof about three or four feet from the roof then up to the roof they had can canvas and of course when the breeze blew it shook the bloody canvas and sounded as though somebody was walking around, and ‘cos I, when I let the rifle go off the CO didn’t like it much not being woken at that time in the morning three o’clock but, er. He said I did the right thing, but at that time it was wrong shooting at that time in the morning waking everybody up, but that was one of the times when I did the right thing but at the wrong time.
RB: When you were at Geraldton did you fly any other aircraft?
NS: Not there, not in Australia, no, no Tiger Moths that’s all we had, and then I got my wings went over to England, over first to America then to England, but got to England that’s when I started on other aircraft to fly.
RB: How did you get, how did you get to the UK from Australia when you were?
NS: By boat, boat to America that was in the coast of America, got that end I went ashore then they took us to an air, a big Air Force base just outside Boston and that’s when I, we were having a meal one day, three of us, three fellas and myself having this meal some ladies next door to us one of them come over and said, ‘You come from Australia?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s right, Australians.’ And she said, ‘Coming from Australia’ She said. ‘How did you learn to talk English?’ It showed you how much they knew about Australia in those days, but as it was I tried to explain to her and away she went she was quite happy about it. But, you can have some fun —
RB: And then you went by ship from the USA to the UK?
NS: Went from USA to America to Australia —
RB: To the UK?
NS: In the UK yeah, and then started doing a bit of flying when we go to the UK.
RB: So what was the first posting in the UK then? What aircraft were you flying? This would be in 1943 when you arrived.
NS: I’m just trying to think what aircraft we were flying then, flying first. Ansons, yeah Ansons that’s right, Anson Bombers we started flying them. And then went produced up that little bit further and started taking [unclear] Ansons, what’s the other ones.
RB: When you got onto your first squadron what squadron was that?
NS: Er, that was 463.
RB: And the aircraft type you flew there?
NS: They, they were, 463 now what were they flying, they were flying, they were flying Stirlings, Stirling aircraft, so we started flying Stirlings and then the next thing we know we were equipped with Lancaster Bombers
RB: And which squadron were you flying with the Lancasters?
NS: ER, 463, and the only time I got changed, when the war finished in Europe because we after 463 to 467 and waited for our ground crew to go out by boat they had to they were going to Japan. Actually we did that we made [unclear] to go out but funnily enough the Yanks dropped their silly little bomb and finished the whole show and there was no more bombing it simmered down.
RB: Did you do any other flights before you came back to the UK?
NS: Oh we, a few times, a few times we got out to Germany and France to pick up ex bomb, ex people that were captured by the Germans.
RB: Prisoners of war?
NS: Prisoners of war you see and taking them home and I put a sign on the side of the aircraft where the door was I decided to tell them welcome aboard curvaceous hostesses about and as soon as they got inside the aircraft they said, ‘Where’s the hostesses?’ I said, ‘You’ll have to put up with that bomb aimer today.’ He was in charge of them all, I hadn’t, I don’t know, working on the Lancasters.
RB: Did you enjoy flying the Lancaster?
NS: Yes, definitely, beautiful plane, it was one of the best planes I’ve ever flown in I reckon, but there’s Boddingtons, oh quite a few different planes, and, but the Lancaster was the best.
RB: When you were flying operations from Waddington did you have any incidents when you were over Germany?
NS: A few times, over Germany, actually ran out of petrol just about one day we were going to get home but ‘cos we went way out of place we went up over one of the didn’t matter what it was some other country up that way that wasn’t in the war and as I was going along I could see these aircraft, not aircraft, bombers big rockets going off and they followed us they were about two mile away at the time and turns about that, I said to the navigator, ‘Look at them because better alter the course’ I said, ‘We’re going the wrong way.’ And anyway after we come over The Channel, he said, ‘We better bale out get everything out and dive down to the North Sea’, and I said, ‘Well I’m not going to do that too bloody cold out there to get under water so I’m going to try and make England.’ And we made it only just not to our home base another aircraft, another aerodrome and the engineer there checked the bloody petrol down, and he said, ‘We shouldn’t have even it was empty, the tank was empty.’ Which means that we just managed to make it, but they filled me up with petrol, and the next couple of days we were there for a couple of days it turned out it was an American place and they treated us pretty well, we charged them a pound each to come round and have a look over the aircraft, we got quite a bit there was a lot of beer bought, all, all our money we had, all of it we got paid, but we spent most of the money on drink, and we’d all had a booze up.
RB: So when you finished bringing the prisoners of war back to the UK you were finished then, when did you get back to Australia?
NS: Well that Christmas, we got after the war finished in Europe we got back to Australia and as I landed all my family were there to welcome me back home. ‘Oh come on, welcome home, welcome home.’ And my dad was the last one he shook hands with me and he said, ‘It’s good to see you home, good luck Norm.’ And he said, ‘But I’ll tell you why, you better not tell me that you’re not, you’re not a boy anymore you’re a man.’ He said, ‘You’re smoking.’ And I said, ‘Yes dad.’ And he said, ‘Well you had to learn that in the Air Force.’ And I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘When I made the cigarettes for you there was five for you and one for me.’ I said, he said, ‘It’s the same with the beer, you used to drink my beer.’ When it was Fosters, Fosters. He said, ‘I allowed you to drink the bottle empty.’ And he said, ‘Pretty good beer wasn’t it?’ I said, ‘Oh yes pretty well.’
RB: So when you left the Air Force what jobs did you have?
NS: Oh crickey, dozens. I went up to [unclear] oh by that time I’d got rid of my wife, I married in England, I married a girl in England before I left and she arrived back in Australia two or three months later. On a boat what they called the bride, the bride ship because all the, all the women on it were brides come out to all the Australian soldiers they’d married and she did mine was the same. I think that she played naughty and one of the [unclear] and went farming and she started playing up a bit till eventually I caught her one night having a naughty with a boyfriend and so I told her that she better come, she told me to go and see her boyfriend and tell him to come for breakfast he’d run away, but he wasn’t running away at all, he just went away, left the place, left his pay behind a fortnight’s pay left that behind, and told her that he’d gone so she come back to me and said would I stop with her and I said, ‘Well okay.’ I said, ‘But don’t expect me to be a good boy a good man to you.’ I said, ‘He’s ruined everything.’ Anyway she put up with me for a bit, had a daughter, looked after young Kathy, Kathy was the youngest one, Kathy was about eight years, about eight years between the kids, and anyway she turned to me one night and had a couple of naughties with me and the next thing I know Kathy arrived.
RB: So now you’re retired and they're looking after you.
NS: Yes.
RB: That’s good.
NS: That’s right.
RB: Yes.
NS: Then Kathy and I went one day to see the ex-wife where she was living with a chap at a farm and she was living with him, and then she goes into hospital and the next thing I know she dies, so that get rid of her. I finally got another woman and finished up marrying her and then she damn well died on me too.
RB: Well Norman thank you very much for talking to me and doing this really appreciate it.
NS: Hopefully I remembered all, my memory is not so good as it used to be but at a hundred and, I’m heading towards a hundred I’m ninety-two years old at the moment, but actually I’m ninety-three in three months, March I turn ninety-three.
RB: Well I do appreciate it and I’m sure they will when we get, we get this back home, thank you very much.
NS: Well if there’s any question you want to know?
RB: I think you’ve covered everything I think you can remember, yeah that’s great I’m going to turn this off now.
NS: Righty oh.
[Background conversation over tea and cake.]
RB: I’m going to put this back on.
KY: Frank were you ever up at Metheringham? Dad was actually at Metheringham in the beginning and then he was sent down to Waddington later but his initial training and flights were in Metheringham.
F: Scampton, and Skellingthorpe all round there.
KY: So that area of Lincolnshire that’s the central area was there other major bases through England?
F: No this was the main base, Bomber Command was divided into several groups, we were 5 Group was we had our own pathfinders and we had the Dambuster squadron, [unclear] we had our own pathfinders and we developed the ground, ground marking of the targets as well, by Cheshire, Wing, Group Captain Cheshire the last six months of the war.
RB: That was with Lancasters again was it?
F: Yes.
RB: Did they use any other aircraft for that?
NS: Er, no, they Mosquitoes, Mosquitoes were used.
RB: Mosquitoes.
NS: Mosquitoes were used extensively by the pathfinders and also for um [unclear]. That was one of the planes I was looking for.
RB: What the Oxford?
NS: Couldn’t remember what plane it was.
RB: Have you still got your log book Frank?
F: Yeah got it here.
RB: Oh okay. So what’s gonna go, go in a museum somewhere.
[General background conversation]
KY: Unfortunately dad has his flying jacket the nice big thick furry lined one — it was left on the farm it was left on the back of the door. Unfortunately it got left there.
RB: That was in December 1944.
NS: That’s right yeah.
RB: Did your flying take the same sort of route that.
F: Much the same.
RB: Start with the Tiger Moth and Anson and Oxford.
F: Oxford, then Wellington, then Stirling, and then Lancasters.
RB: Yeah, yeah.
F: Virtually the same.
NS: Tiger Moth —
F: Great plane, great plane.
[General background conversation]
RB: How did you find the conversion from single engines, to twins, and then to multis?
F: The only single engine was the Tiger Moth that’s all it was very simple to fly.
RB: Yeah Norman says that.
F: But the Anson was quite good the funny bit about the Anson was made by the same people that made the Lancaster, there was still a bit of a fear that when you crossed the fence in a Lancaster there was still the same feeling as the Anson, it was built under the aircraft the same sort of buzz in the same way.
NS: Did you ever fly Stirlings?
F: Oh I flew bloody Stirlings.
NS: Bloody things —
F: Terrible plane, the back of the Stirling was like a big truck, like a big truck with a wing on the top [unclear].
RB: They were just hard to fly were they?
F: No they were terrible things to taxi because you had to have your foot outside foot here and you had to brake as well because to taxi you’ve got to put you’ve got to use your foot and brake at the same time and you just didn’t have enough hands for it, if the wind was blowing — And then you run out the air.
NS: Not enough air.
RB: Oh right, the air always. Did you guys ever bomb in Stirlings?
F: No, no, no, only practice bombing that’s all.
NS: When I was in the Air Force the best place every day was in the officer’s mess [laughs] down a few beers.
F: That’s right yeah. We had a before you start the Stirlings in the morning you had to turn them over by hand because the oil could run down into the sill at the bottom there get a little oil on top if you start it it would blow the cylinder head off all had to be turned over, turned over by hand before you start.
RB: You guys didn’t do that you had ground crew.
F: Funny enough we used to do exactly the same thing with the Shackletons which is a much later aeroplane but based on the —
NS: What still hand start them?
F: No, no, no turn them over because the oil used to collect.
NS: What stay in the bottom?
F: Yeah. We had a rather nasty accident to a nice young little WAAF when we were on Stirlings because the little WAAF’s used to be delivering things around the aerodrome at night in little Ford 10 vans and they got off [unclear] but the girls were not supposed to drive under the aircraft but they found that they could drive under the outside engine of the Stirling ‘cos the engine was very high and keep under it a couple of Lancasters came in one night the girl was three months out of training school and of course in the night you wouldn’t tell the difference between the Stirling and the Lancaster in the dark and she was driving under the outside engine and took the top off her head.
Oooh.
F: Only a kid out of drivers’ school.
KY: My mum was a driver but in the Army and she was English and she grew up in County Durham up in the North, and she was down driving at the same base where dad was, I think there might be a picture in there of mum and couple of others who she was friends with.
[Pause]
NS: There’s a photo taken in 2004 when we went to Coningsby and that’s where Bull Creek no that’s Coningsby, that’s the, that was Mickey the Moocher then. That’s a copy of Frank’s plane, is that right Frank?
F: Yeah.
NS: So that’s the Lanc he used to fly and that’s a replica, they made a replica of it. That’s at Coningsby [coughing] [unclear].
F: About ten or twelve years ago I had a phone call from the secretary of the 56 Squadron asking me did I have a current picture of Mickey the Moocher because on one of the next conversions of the Lancaster they were going to become Mickey the Moocher and they wanted it, I didn’t have any black and white photographs and I went down to the local library and found a Walt Disney book, and I realised Mickey’s, Mickey’s mouth always the same colour, always the same.
NS: Oh yes Walt Disney was amazing.
F: So they converted them, and when we were going to England with [unclear] I rang them up and they said, ‘Yeah come up, come up, come up.’ [unclear] We were walking [unclear].
NS: Is she still alive, and who’s the young fella?
Other: He was the one that was taking us around wasn’t he?
NS: He was the tour guide was he?
Other: After that he was flying.
F: He was flying the old AC4.
NS: So he can fly Lancasters?
F: Oh yes. He was, like we had we sat down, we had a wonderful time, we were allowed to go inside the Lancaster I think if someone could have but today she was only a test flight.
NS: Was it the brand new one.
F: No this is the one at Coningsby the one that flies every year.
NS: There’s only one or two, one in Canada and one in England, is that right Ron?
F: This was the one in Coningsby and you see they change the nose over every four years for various reasons and it just happened that Mickey the Moocher was right over there.
NS: How appropriate was that.
F: We were the only crew that flew the old Mickey.
Other: The young chap there he was the one that flew it afterwards, you know take it over.
NS: No he must be in the Air Force.
Other: We even corresponded.
F: A couple of years or so hoping he would come out to Australia and see us but he never did.
NS: Well Ron, Lincoln was on the news the other night, last night or the night before they had a big show on on TV.
RB: There’s two sections, you’ve got the memorial itself which overlooks Lincoln, and then you’ve got an archive which is actually in the University and the recording is for the archive, and they are hoping to put basically they call it our life story of air crew, Frank and Norman, from the time they were born right the way through flying different types of aeroplanes until they actually flew their Lancs and did the business as it was.
F: So you really haven’t been able to do that?
RB: Not with Frank but I’ve done it with Norman.
NS: You want to ask Frank if he wants to go and do that you genuinely want to write down your name and particulars so I can keep it on my notebook and email if you’ve got an email address.
KY: Frank have you been inside the Lancaster that’s up in Bull Creek Museum.
F: Yeah I’ve been in it but not for a long time no.
KY: We put dad in it about a month ago.
F: Oh yeah.
KY: And there was a lot of climbing over.
[general background conversation]
KY: There were a couple of places where even I struggled to get through and I had to virtually crawl through to get up to sit in his seat.
NS: No they were, they were a difficult aircraft to get out of [unclear] —
F: The pilots we sat on the parachute and we had full hardness, the rear gunner had the same so all the rear gunner had to do was to turn it to a side where and he could do it hydraulic by hand and get about six foot off the ground and open his doors and put his knees and go straight backwards so he could very quickly get out, we used to practice that actually and we’d play catchy catchy when he fell down just for fun. [laughs]
KY: ‘Cos dad said he didn’t remember there being that many things hurdles that he had to get through —
NS: Well you didn’t, you didn’t notice it when you’re twenty years of age.
KY: No I suppose not.
NS: No you’d be bouncing through the air. [laughs]
F: There all, there all parts of the aircraft, other aircraft have the same thing now —
RB: Name and address, website, er email.
NS: So Ron if you, if you want to put this interview together ask Frank if he’d be prepared to go in there on his own and you two talk. What do you think Kath would that be all right? [unclear]. Is that all right Frank?
F: Yeah okay yeah.
NS: ‘Cos otherwise we’re interrupting as, I’ll take it in thee and we can stay out here Kath is that all right? The bomb aimer forgot to put the switch on.
RB: Sorry Norman go on.
NS: The bomb aimer rang me up and told me we were over the target, but we didn’t bomb the target, I said, ‘Why not?’ He said ‘Well I forgot to put the switch on probably. No I didn’t did I’ Made him go back again and have another go. The air officer commanding wasn’t very happy about me doing that because [unclear]. Told me off about it I never did it again.
[general background conversation]
Other: Now Norman’s just told Ron about the time remember I told you in the car, the bomber didn’t release and he had to come back round the stream and redo it? Did that ever happen to you?
F: No I don’t think so.
Other: So the bombs always went off when they were meant to. ‘Cos he got in big trouble and got told off.
NS: I did the wrong thing.
Other: That’s easy to do.
NS: Well we survived.
[general background conversation]
NS: We had two Australians you know.
Other: Well where your two Aussies, yourself and who else?
NS: Warrant officer.
Other: So you were an Aussie and he was an Aussie and the rest were Poms were they?
NS: Yes.
Other: May be that’s what they did back then Frank, just had a couple of Aussies and the rest were Poms. These are all copies of your log book and everything.
NS: Oh yes.
Other: Yeah, they there are, there’s these incendiaries that he dropped. Didn’t you say that you had one of those stuck?
NS: We had one of the big ones, I think it was that one.
Other: The big cookies there. He had one stuck in his bomb bay and you had to do it freehand didn’t you?
NS: [unclear]
Other: Yes, you guys want to stay here, Norman I’ll come back out here with you.
RB: I’ll put your log book back in my bag when you go home, okay.
Other: That was a disaster, never mind. I could get this opportunity now just one on one. [muffled noise]
RB: It won’t take long Frank, just a brief —
Other: Linda could you turn the music off please there just going to do some interviewing.
RB: How do you pronounce your surname Frank?
F: Moritz or can be Morris, MOR ok.
Other: I’ll leave it with you.
RB: Thank you John. Have you got a small table that I can put in front?
Other: Oh for the thing to go on. There you go, turn that around that way.
RB: That’s great thank you.
Other: No worries. Put that aircon on for you?
RB: Are you comfortable.
F: No it’s all right.
RB: No you’re comfortable. No we’re fine John, John we’re fine.
F: Bits about our family Moritz had been in Australia since 1837 actually we were one of the early settlers in various parts and I’ve relatives all over Australia now.
RB: Right.
F: We were part of some Irish family because the original route to come over —
Dublin Core
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ASmithNG161203
Title
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Interview with Norman George Smith
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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
Format
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00:55:57 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Ron Barron
Date
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2016-12-03
Description
An account of the resource
Norman George Smith grew up in Western Australia. After leaving school he became an assistant in a timber mill workshop before volunteering for the Australian Air Force at the age of eighteen. He flew operations as a pilot with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington. He returned back to Australia at the end of the war and recalls how he was welcomed home by his family. He also talks about how his first wife arrived from England, and his subsequent family life.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
pilot
RAF Waddington
Stirling
Tiger Moth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/PSouthwellDE1603.1.jpg
14aae2a01070e096fa9c00a5c57a4ace
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/ASouthwellDE160424.2.mp3
bd5f88b470f50c82d0fece440095f478
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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Southwell, Don
Donald Edward Southwell
Donald E Southwell
Donald Southwell
D E Southwell
D Southwell
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Donald Edward "Don" Southwell (b. 1924 - 2019, 423987 Royal Australian Air Force), documents including a navigation chart, and six photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 and 467 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Don Southwell and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-24
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Southwell, DE
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DES: [unclear] have you?
AP: My little question sheet.
DES: Oh, good, [unclear] you should have given it to me before.
AP: No, no, no.
DES: [laughs]
AP: So what I do, uhm, because of this little adapter, if I unplug it, the careful tuned thing dies and it gets embarrassing cause it never works. So, instead I have to plug in earphones, so that I can check cause this is a little splitter. I can plug in earphones so that I can listen to it, because if I just try on the speaker, it goes out the earphones so, anyway. It works now, that’ the most important thing, I’ve had a couple of interviews where I had to use the little microphone built in here cause I never know if this thing’s working. Very very [unclear].
DES: I didn’t know there was a mike in those. See, I use one of those all the time. [unclear]
AP: Well, some of them, some of them do, so there is actually a little camera up here, there is a little microphone there, so it is like for web cam, is not for very good quality and it picks up all the noise that’s around, this seems to be more, uhm, localised to adjust your voice, which [unclear] in the recording. I did one of those with a bloke, uhm, Jack Bell, who, he was shot down in Libya, uhm, he’s 98, he was shot down in Libya in 1942 and spent the rest of the war as prisoner, ’43, very early [unclear].
DES: Ah, prisoner.
AP: 42 [unclear]
DES: In Germany?
AP: Uhm, in Italy and then in Germany.
DES: Ah.
AP: Uhm, and the house next door was actually being demolished at the time we did the interview. In the background you can hear a little bit of it, but not very much. So, for a twenty dollar E-bay special, they are pretty good. Anyway, if you are comfortable and ready to [unclear]
DES: Yeah.
AP: All this is, as you know, IBCC interview, uhm, basically we just have a chat. Uhm, I’ve got a sort of list of questions to get us started, but basically I’ll let you run and we go wherever we go and then we might come back and fill in gaps, all that sort of stuff.
DES: You edit it. Yeah.
AP: Yeah, uhm, we just go until one of us begs for mercy basically. I know what you are like, so it could be for a while [laughs].
DES: No, no, no, it’s not right. No, I, whenever this comes up and I’m in a group, I know the people who’ve got all the interesting stories. I’ve been doing this since Australia all over.
AP: No, I.
DES: Down in, [unclear] I’m gonna write him a letter too, but, uh, Ian McNamara and uh he was, uhm, I was all, I did directing, at, down there, I got the, we got this bloke and got this bloke, got that bloke, got that bloke, he’s gonna get all interesting blokes, you know, I knew [unclear] too long [laughs] and they didn’t want me [laughs] Yeah.
AP: Very good. Anyway, uhm, so, look, the shortest interview I’ve done went from forty five minutes long to three and a half hours or so, you know, whenever we get, we get, it’s quite ok. As I said, there’s a list of questions to sort to start of, so
DES: Forty five minutes, [unclear]
AP: That’s very short one, that was very hard because I had to keep asking questions to. Uhm, my favourite one.
DES: You’d might have to do that.
AP: We’ll see what happens when I ask the first question, that’s always the same question I start with and once the opening response went for about ten words, the longest one has been an hour and fifty before I had to say anything else. Which
DES: [unclear]
AP: It’s astonishing, it’s really really good. Anyway, so, uhm, I start off with a little spiel, so, kick off with that now, just to sort of set the time and the place, uh, so, we are recording and it looks good. So, this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Don Southwell, who was a 463 Squadron navigator at the tail end of World War Two. Interview is taking place at Don’s home in St Ives in Sydney, it’s the 24th of April, I should know that, it’s their [unclear] day, my name is Adam Purcell. Uhm, so, as usual, Don, we will start with the normal question, can you tell me something of your early life, growing up, what you did before the war.
DES: Yes, I can certainly do that. Ehm, I was born in Croydon, in New South Wales, in number 10, Hardidge [?] Street as a matter of fact and I was the third child of my mother Cathy. Ehm, I had my brother Brian, my sister and myself, we were four years between each of us and we lived in Croydon, in Sydney. My father died when I was thirty, when he was thirty five and my mother brought us all up to the [unclear], my, I went to school in [unclear] High school and I had, oh I had a job when I left high school. I was, uhm, my first job was at, uhm, RKO Radio Pictures and I was there for about eighteen months and uhm, my mother thought that this picture business wasn’t the sort of place that [laughs] her son should be spending his career in. So, she started to work on various people and I finished up with a job at the MLC. At the MLC, at this particular stage, they only took you with the leaving certificate. My mum couldn’t afford to keep me on the leaving, so, while my brother and sister went to Fort Street High School and did the leaving, uhm, my mum couldn’t afford it. Anyway, we, I went to RKO Radio Pictures and we, uhm, I lasted there and, uhm, I got the job at the MLC and my sister actually worked and that’s how I probably had a little bit of influence and they didn’t want to appoint me first of all but I reached the stage where there weren’t getting many men in because of the war and the war had started and this was in 1941. And so, uhm, I was very fortunate to get that job because I remind there laws about 90 and that’s not a jag either, this is quite true and I [unclear], I have to write, yeah, uh, I was there for eighteen months and the war came and I’d already enlisted, I’d already joined the air training corps, it was 24 Squadron at Ashfield and under control of squadron leader Whitehurst and he had the grads there and we did all the courses for the air training corps and I was also an ARP warden on my bike and I had an ARP band on my arm, patrolling the streets at night to make sure the people were keeping to the blackout rules. I used to sit in those, sit at the top of the town hall at Ashfield and looking for [laughs] Japanese planes coming over. We didn’t get any Japanese planes but we had to report all things that were going in there and then I got the call up for the army. Because I was eighteen the army called me up and because I was in the air force, I had already been in the air training corps it didn’t make any difference so I went up to the infantry training battalion at Dubbo in central New South Wales and, uhm, I was there for about three weeks, while the rifle regiment came in on a motorbike and looking for [unclear] and took me back to the, you know, the orderly room, I was put on a train to Sydney, I was discharged from the army and sent down to Woolloomooloo. In Woolloomooloo was the air force, uhm, recruiting depot and there we did the medical tests and so forth and I was then posted off and I to number nine Glebe Island [?], which is a wharf in Sydney, I went in as an aircrew, I was called, the air force had so many people for aircrew that they couldn’t cope with them at a particular time and they made us air crew guards and I served for three months in Sydney, there’s an aircrew guard, some of them got posted all the way from New South Wales but I was fortunate enough, I caught number nine Glebe Island, where we guarded little beds, belonged to the air force and so forth and we also did jobs working on the wharves and I was part of the secret war people talk about, that the wharfies continually being out on strike and so forth and they asked the, they sent one of us down to do various jobs on the wharves because later all the supplies were going up to New Guinea, was on a ship called the Marino and it belonged under contract to the air force and now, the wharfies were pilfering stuff from this convoys that were going up to the, the trips up in New Guinea, they were pilfering stuff there and so we had a, we were put, what do you call it? A revolver, a Smith and Wesson revolver around their waists and I did stay for one night, I’d be inside the wharf for one day, inside the wharf in the stores where they had all the stuff there laying. We had a guard on the door, a guard on the, uhm, where the crane came down and picked the, uhm, supplies up, one on top on board the ship and one down in the hold. And we virtually stopped the pilfering in the, but there was a great war against the wharfies in those particular days but a very interesting book has been written about the secret war and it’s not only happened there, but it happened in the army and all around the place. So, that was just a little side set up, while I was waiting to go to aircrew. I was then called up to number 2 ITS in Bradfield Park, to go and do my initial training school and, uhm, so began my career in the air force. Then, do you want me to go further?
AP: Yeah, can you keep going as [unclear].
DES: I’m in the air force then, ok.
AP: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Absolutely.
DES: We’re in Bradfield Park and Bradfield Park was the centre of two ITS and we did the normal parades on the [unclear] rid marches, uhm, we did cross country runs, we did all sorts of subjects that were pertinent to air crew and so forth, meteorology, all that sort of business and we, uhm, that took us about three weeks to do that and then I was categorised as a pilot. Cause I wanted to be a pilot because my brother was a pilot and so they made me a pilot. They sent me off to number 8, I think it is number 8, EFTS at Narrandera and so began my career, started my career as a pilot. The time limit for getting through, through the school was you had to go solo in twelve hours, now came twelve hours and I hadn’t gone solo and the, uhm, my instructor said; ‘Come on, Don, we gotta get you through this’ and we were operating from a little satellite area, outside of Narrandera, he said you gotta go up and go solo today [laughs]. So, I worked out all what I had to do in the circuit and so forth and I went up on the, took off, made a nice take off but I got the wind changed and then [laughs], I didn’t know the wind had changed and I’m doing the circuit on the basis of when I took off, I did the left-hand circuit and so forth and coming, all of a sudden there is a Tiger Moth coming up beside me, it was my instructor and he was pointing down to the wind sock and I didn’t know what he was talking about, you know, so I didn’t, I just went up and landed, I did a beautiful crosswind landing, it was a good crosswind landing but that’s the last time I, I think I lasted for another half an hour or so flying and then they decided that I, you know, I hadn’t gone in twelve hours, didn’t look like it, so they scrubbed me, I was scrubbed and that was a terrible thing to happen to me, to be scrubbed, I wanted so much to be like my brother who could fly before the war. And, so, uh, I was then, I thought, oh, I’ll have it now the air crew but they transferred me. The boy that got a B in mathematics 1 and mathematics 2, the intermediate, they transferred me to embarkation depot as a navigator and so, but I, and then I stayed at the, I came from Narrandera back to Sydney and I stayed there at the embarkation depot and uhm, just as on the side, we used to, get my [unclear] at Burwood, that was a [unclear] about twenty minute train ride from Chatswood, we used to have a night down, tucked down under the barbed wire, get down a lady game driver, was not a lady game driver this near, walk up to take off, picked to be kept, seen the fiver air crew, when I say we there were a lot of fellows doing this, and we get, I get the train to Han, I spend the night at Ham (or Han), get out of bed at about five o’clock, then come back and up [unclear] at five o’clock ready for parade. And so that, that didn’t go on for long of course, but I did my, that was our waiting game but of course, we were going overseas an therefore we couldn’t leave Australia until we were nineteen, that was a government rule, they just couldn’t, you couldn’t leave, you couldn’t get out, be transferred out of Australia unless you were nineteen. So, I kept going, I was before I turned nineteen, I went to embarkation depot, so I kept [unclear] just about every day reminding them that I was, I’ll be nineteen on the seventeenth of April. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were bound on a train up to, from Central Railway, we went up to Queensland and transferred to Kalinga and the army came, was a big army came and we slept in tents, oh, by the way, the train trip was terrible, we were in, we had to sit up or some fellows were sitting up, lying down on in the luggage racks upstairs but we had a terrible trip that night, that train, they put us like cattle in there, and so we got up to Brisbane to Kalinga and we had to wait there for our ship and that was somewhere around the first or second of July in 1943, ’43, yeah ’43, and we uhm, one night we had the cars or the truck all arrived and took us down to the boat, was the Noordam, was the United States army transport going back to San Francisco, empty or as empty, except for us air force, because they’ve been bringing all those hundreds of thousands of American troops over to Australia for the Pacific War and uhm, so uhm, we set sail from Brisbane heading or Morton Bay and then shortly about two or three hours out from Brisbane we [unclear] and we wonder what we were doing because of the Japanese submarines and all that sort of thing and it was the, only about three or four days before, or, yeah must have been before, we have to because the Japanese had sunk the hospital ship, the, the, the, the, because they sunk one of their hospital ships and we had two minutes of silence we expected to be torpedoed [unclear] and we headed on our way to, I think it took us about eighteen days to get to San Francisco and never been past Hornsby, past Wollongong, never seen the Blue Mountains, I hadn’t been out to the parks to the, in the [unclear] and to Dubbo in the army and, uhm, here I was, just coming into San Francisco harbour and so I made sure I was at the front of the ship and I never left that ship till about two o’clock in the afternoon, we came by, saw the Golden Gate bridge [unclear] I was nineteen years of age and we heard the, we saw the [unclear] prison and the San Francisco bridge and we landed at Oakland and from there we were put on a train and sent up to, up the uhm, West Coast of America, uh, to Vancouver, where we switched trains for our trip on Canadian national Railways, was a steam, was an old-burner train and we went to, went on our way through the Canadian Rockies to Edmonton and slightly north of Calgary at and the thing that strikes us, was the difference in travelling in Australia in the cattle trucks, where we had, uhm, they weren’t there for our Americans in those days but they were there for Americans were waiting on us, we had sleepers, everything was laid on, the Canadian people, the Canadian government were fantastic, and here we were, we were only leading aircraftsmen, we weren’t even sergeants, and so anyway, we got to Edmonton, I went to the, uhm, manning depot, manning depot and I have a big photo in my home here of the, uhm, on one of our parades, you can pick me out in the [unclear], we had the morning [unclear], you can pick out the Australians because of their blue uniforms, all the rest wore khaki, was in summertime, but anyway, you could pick us out, pick me out with the manning depot and then I was transferred from there, which was just across the road, really, to number 2 AOS Edmonton, that’s where I did my navigation course. My first trip on navigation course was a real, [laugh], was a real did last as far as I was concerned but I’ll tell you about it. We, uhm, I had a, uhm, another navigator, we were flying Avro Ansons and, well, just digress slightly on our Avro Ansons and then poor our navigator had to wind the wheels of the Anson, Avro Anson up, a hundred and forty-nine times to get the wheels up, that was their job for, just straight on take-off. Anyway, we went on from this first navigation trip, I had a second navigator with me, who was supposed to be giving me fixes and that sort of thing and I got lost and so while I was suggesting we do, the pilots by the way were all civilians, they were not in the air force, they were under civilian contract and that was [unclear] Canada and, uhm, Maxi Titlebomb his name was and he suggested we get out and have a look at the railway sign [laughs] so we went down to the railway station and were at a sort of place called Wetaskiwin, not far out of Edmonton, but it was Wetaskiwin so I proceeded to [unclear] I knew where I was, I got me air plucked for Wetaskiwin and went up and we continued on our course, I expected to be scrubbed straight off on that score but I wasn’t, no, they didn’t, was the best thing that ever happened to me because I made a mistake on my first trip, you were never, the navigators rule was never to drop your air plot and I dropped me air plot because if you kept your air plot [unclear] end your life to get a position, make some sort of, where you think it was but you, you’d always got the opportunity to do that and, so a navigator never had to, should never drop his air plot. But anyway I finished up, was about six months course, was about six months and we, incidentally we had to, people talk about the weather these days, it was forty degrees, one night it was forty degrees below zero, now was in Fahrenheit was thirty-two degrees and so was seventy-two degrees of frost. We had to warm the aircraft up in the hangers before we went out and we had winds, sometimes we had headwinds where we were going backwards up in the north part of Canada [laughs], you know, very, very frightening for a nineteen year old [laughs] that didn’t know a lot about navigation, but we got through all of it and we, I finished up with a reasonable max coming out of my course, I was always better at the air plot than I was, I always had trouble with my theory things, wasn’t very good on the theory but I was, even if I say so I was reasonable as a navigator. And so we got our wings there and was around December 1943 and I haven’t been out to find many [unclear] since I came across my fellows book called Navigator Brothers the other day and I wrote to the author, because in there was a photo of one of the group that was having their passing air parade, cause a big deal the passing air parade, the Canadians really put on all their pomp and ceremony for their passing air parade. The, uhm, uh, yes, we got our wings and we proceeded then to go to, uhm, to uhm, we’d being posted to Montreal [unclear] I just had a thought, we went to Montreal and we had to wait a bit to go over to England and, you know, during my stay in Montreal, we stayed at a place called the Sheen, we were sent off for six weeks up to a ski lodge, so they didn’t have a boat to take us over to England so they sent us, was about thirty of us, we were all sent up to a ski lodge, luxurious place for, you know, a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, we learned to ski, we learned to use the tennis rackets on the feet to walk in the snow, we learned to ice skate, to do all sorts of things, it was wonderful. Anyway, we got back from, we went back to the Sheen and I found out that my brother, was, uhm, who was a pilot in the Middle East and an instructor at Lichfield, which would probably entirely they said to be Bomber Command.
AP: Absolutely.
DES: But he, uh, I found out he was coming over on his way home to Australia having completed his tour, he was transferred back to Australia but on his way he had to go, he was [unclear] to fly back with a brand new Liberator and Bryan was in New York with his crew, but they’d been flying Liberators although a lot of these fellows who did this were Lancaster pilots, cause there’s two hundred of them eventually, and then Bryan and I we shared a room in Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York for a couple of days. Then he went on his way home or to California, I should say, where he did three months before he flew off back to Australia, If you like I might talk about that later on. But, then I went back to Montreal and we then got advised that a ship was waiting for us in Halifax, so we did a night trip to Halifax from Montreal and we joined the maiden [?] vessel called, the maiden [?] vessel called the Andes, was a flat bottom boat, a, yeah, a 20000-tonner I suppose, but it was very fast and on that boat we had a complete Canadian armoured division, were ten thousand fellows with their tanks and about a hundred aircrew, [unclear] pilots joining there, there were navigators, there were wireless operators, there was bomb aimers, all been trained in Canada and sending us all over and so we went over there on our own, we didn’t go in a convoy, we went on our own, took us about seven days, we went up towards the North Pole and [unclear] in Liverpool but we didn’t have any, uhm, we didn’t have any [unclear] things happening to us except that we, was a [unclear] taking more than seven days but it was a fast trip was what we did and we weren’t allowed about decks at night time, so, at night time you couldn’t go up on deck no matter what it was because people had a habit of lighting cigarettes and submarines could catch you but some of these, the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, they were too fast for the submarines so they, we zig-zagged all the way across and we arrived in Liverpool and uhm, we uhm, got, we arrived nearly as the morning met by the salvation army, they gave us food and so forth, we went in the big tunnel out of Liverpool and came down to, went down to Brighton PDRC and that’s where I started my first, uhm, flying, my first events in England.
AP: What did you?
DES: Now.
AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there?
DES: When?
AP: As a nineteen year old Australian, you are now in wartime England. What?
DES: What I thought of it? Well, uhm, when I first got there I, we went by train down to, we skirted to London, we went to, Brighton was a lovely place but, we were, there was the IFF that had taken over the uhm, the uhm, the Metropole and the, the Metropole and the, the two big hotels, I have just forgotten their names but it was where Margaret Thatcher was blown up later on, she escaped the bombing near in Brighton some years later but we went straight down so, we didn’t see much of the, uhm, the countryside. We were billeted out from the hotels, the [unclear] were billeted out in homes quite near the hotel but we didn’t see any great, you know, people had their coupons, that sort of thing and I saw a lot of it after on my first leave to London, then was when I, you know, realised how terrible things were but there in Brighton, where we were, all the beaches were, they’re all pebble stones not sand all the beaches were mined so you couldn’t go there. If anybody knows Brighton as the Brighton pier, and then it had been chopped in half purposely and the bottom half was used by the air force to, but we used to go and gonna get paid there, we used to go and collect the money on a Thursday or whatever it was, and so uhm, we didn’t see, uhm, in all fairness, you know, I didn’t see, you know, it was, I wouldn’t say, you know, nasty looking, you know, there wasn’t, there was no visible damage that I saw down in Brighton but, my mother and father both came out from England in 1912 so I had relations to go to in England and so I was, uhm, my first leave I had when I went to, I went to a place called Maidstone where my mother was born and uhm, I went to see uncle Ted and auntie Gladys who became [unclear] mother while I was there and I stayed with them and they had a big two story home. He was the general manager of Fremlin’s Brewery, which was a big brewery [laughs] in London and Maidstone, and was a white, the emblem was a white elephant on all the London busses and he was the general manager of this [unclear] and so naturally I was well looked after. If they wanted some meat, if they wanted a steak or some, which was very rare, she takes it, make sure you keep the uniform on and we’ll go down to the butchers today and she, he’s my cousin from Australia you know and they’d toss out some special food for us. But uhm, they seemed to live pretty well you know I think they were, you had to be careful with petrol rationing and that sort of thing but in the group that I sort of as, you know, these people were part of, put in mind, you know, reasonably well off as people and, but she was a real mother to me, she used to take me round on, I always used to go there on leave but she used to take me round and onto, show me the Rochester cathedral or Ramsgate, where my mother used to go and swim as she was a kid and so forth, you know, and I’ve met all my relations but I, I don’t have any, it’s only when later on I went down when I was in the middle of the buzz bombs and the V2 rockets that I realised, you know, how terrible that, uh, what the Germans had done to our people here in London and, you know, when you see streets that are just completely, [unclear] smashed, it was quite something but generally speaking I can’t say that I, you know, I go shopping in London and I, one of the girls there I used to take out, Elisabeth Fulligan, she was a solicitors clerk in London and I used to see her every now and then when I was on leave but I generally speaking, you know, the, I go into a restaurant but we might have a bit difficulty in getting decent sort of stuff but, you know, I can always get eggs and bacon or some I think we had horse meat at some places in London but I didn’t know we were eating horse meat until somebody told us but. Uh, all I can say is about, the people there were marvellous [unclear] and if I can just get back, the people in Canada I missed them, I spent a lot of time when I was in Canada doing my course, one of the fellows on my course was Harry Thompson and he was a Canadian, he lived in 1065 107 Street and we used to go to weekends there and you know, they couldn’t do, his parents and their friends had us all out to their places and we go, they take us to their places and, you know, you can never pay for them, they , it was fantastic in what they did for us and I had, as I say, I had relations in England and they are all the same and I, I think that I was fortunate in that I had relations to go and stay with, all our on the other side of that I missed seeing a lot of England, I used to go down on leave to Wesperdale [?] , good to be when I was there, I was enjoying myself immensely you know, I didn’t drink beer, I drank cider and that was worse. I can always remember going to a Rotary club meeting in Maidstone and they introduced me to a sergeants household and I had to get up and say who I was and I didn’t drink beer and I thought I’d have some cider and I think I was silly as anything because I didn’t realise cider was, I any, I didn’t know much about the air force and before we finished I’d like to speak about to something about the air force that I would like to say but I answered that question there and that’s about the best I can do about the people and the conditions and that sort of thing.
AP: So.
DES: Except that I had a good time.
AP: Well, that’s the important thing.
DES: When I was on leave that was, all my leave [unclear], that’s when you notice these things.
AP: So, from Brighton, where did you go next?
DES: Oh, ok, from Brighton my first port of call was, I think it was 29 OTU, operational training unit at Bruntingthorpe, which was near Leicester and that’s, no, I’m sorry, that’s not where I went, I went to the advanced flying unit in Freugh in Scotland. There’s a good story about Freugh and that’s where we did our first lot of real navigation. We did all trips, day trips out to the Mull of Kintyre, we’re up right in the north of Scotland, no the north, but half way of Scotland, and we were doing all these trips. You went over pretty close to Ireland, we’re doing all these marvellous trips, you know, that’s where we really learned to be navigators, really into, we got our wings in Canada, but this where we really did the real thing and there we spent, West Freugh is near Stranraer and Stranraer was the main port of call when you go over to Northern Ireland and now we are on the maps, normal maps, you can find them on google now but on the normal maps you buy, you will never see West Freugh, I’ve asked many a Scottish bloke about West Freugh but they can never find West Freugh, they can only assume it was probably a farm of some sort but they had especially for that, they made it [unclear] because it was flying, we’re on Avro Ansons again, we were flying Avro Ansons there at West Freugh, they’re a two-engine aircraft, and they had two navigators on board and then we, uhm, so, I think from a point of view of a AF advanced flying unit, by the way, it was number 4 [unclear] which is [unclear], we stayed there about, uhm, oh, we didn’t stay there long, we stayed there from July ’44 to the end of July, early July, 5th of July to the 21st of July and that’s where we did our AFU advanced flying unit . Now, from there, we graduated from there and we were only doing cross country trips and that sort of thing from there. From there we went to 29 OTU at Bruntingthorpe and that’s where what we called crewed up and that’s where we, uhm, we’re all pilots, navigators, wireless operators, correct me if I’m wrong, there was, we didn’t have any engineers cause we didn’t have engineers at that stage we had two air gunners, not certain about if we had all, and the wireless operator and so we all, where we were, we were put in a big room and we were told to find yourself a pilot, navigators find yourself a pilot sort of, so, all was a real PR job, you know, we’d all yeah and there might have been a few drinks [unclear] around too as I say but they all, we were all supposed to be friendly and you wanted to find out if you, you wanted to find you’ll gonna have a team that you could work together with and I, I don’t know how I picked my pilot but I [unclear] [unclear] from [unclear] and was slightly older than me, he’s a big man and he had the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, he was a, he had a grape, not a vineyard, well it was a vineyard but he had dried fruits in [unclear] and now was to sitting behind a big bomber and we had to carry a full bomb load and with his hands gave him a great confidence. But I’ll get back to the Bruntingthorpe now, but we, we got together and we finished up with whatever we had to do and we all then did various cross country fighter affiliation where they send up and you get up in the air find another fighter plane to come and meet you and then attack you and all that sort of thing and all various subjects pertaining to air, Gee, H2S, all that sort of thing and we we’ve been introduced to, that was our navigational aids, air positioning indication, that was another thing we learned all about but that was, an hour on Wellingtons, Wellington bomber, well, they were bombers in the early stage, they were being used for training at this stage now and uhm, the uhm, and so we, when they thought the pilot was satisfactory, off we went then to, let me see, we went to, from to HCU which was the heavy conversion unit and that was our introduction to four-engine aircraft and we caught the Sterling, now said and the, uhm, we were there for a short time, that was just, this was mainly the, the pilot getting used to and the navigator, we were doing more, more uhm, things that we had done before, you know, were dropping bombs and packed us bombs and we were doing long, uhm, long cross countries, uhm, you know, five hours, two hours, that sort of thing and uhm, we, uhm, we’d be when the pilot was satisfactory trained, we were showed off to what we called the Lank finishing skill, it was the Lancaster finishing skill and we were introduced to Lancasters and the, from and that was once again, we all did our own thing with the pilot and he just had to become a professional on that particular type of aircraft and from there we were sent to the squadron. Which was Waddington, which was just a few miles away and, and that was when we started our operational flying.
AP: So, what was your first thought of the Lancaster when you first [unclear]?
DES: Oh, after being on the Sterling [laugh], after being on the Sterling it was marvellous, uhm, yeah, with, uh, yeah because [unclear], the carry under the Lancaster, you know, this was probably the best aircraft that had ever been produced at that time for the duration of the war uh, but everything was, when you are a new pilot on the squadron, you usually get the [unclear] aircraft, but some of them, some of had been there for a while had their own aircraft made sure that they kept their own aircraft, we were not allowed to do this, I was on my first start, we were on one particular type of Lancaster and but everything was so modern and up-to-date, you know for us the Gee was, the navigational instruments were all spot on, you know, we never, I don’t know who did the, to this day I don’t know who did all the mechanics and the [unclear], our aircraft was already, it was one of the ground crew base but, you never saw them at work, at least I never saw them at work, unless something really went wrong but yeah, the gap at the back steps of the Lancaster and to walk along the, yeah, it’s try I suppose when I first went up there, you wonder, Gee, where am I going, you had to walk over a big spare but then again I had my own room, well, area, it was just a small area with a black curtain around it but I had a nice desk, had the astro[unclear] up on top which would flashed the various maps down on the and the stars onto the table, everything was spot on and you know, we came to expect, we’re on a Lancaster, we’re on the best we had and that was the feeling that I had, that I was very, very fortunate, you know, some people like the Halifax , you know, but, you know, they say, I love the Halifax and so forth but we just happened to, uh, it had such a good reputation and such a wonderful aircraft and could carry so many more bombs than anyone else. Uh, you know, I think that, uhm, that was my feeling about my first, but I was amazed, really. I was in awe. Yeah.
AP: So, you then go to Waddington from, what’s it, I think, I saw Skellingthorpe in [unclear]?
DES: Yes, I did, I went to Skellingthorpe I thought that was after. I went to Waddington [unclear].
AP: [laughs]
DES: No we didn’t get to Skellingthorpe.
AP: You didn’t get to Skellingthorpe? [unclear] after.
DES: No, we went to Skellingthorpe after the war finished. We went to Skellingthorpe and we were all transferred to Skellingthorpe and we were, uhm, we had our final passing air parade in August, August 1945. We had our passing air parade.
AP: So, alright, we will get back to Waddington then.
DES: Yeah, get back to Waddington.
AP: Yeah [laughs]. Uhm, where and how did you live on the Squadron at Waddington?
DES: Oh, well now, Waddington was a permanent station in England, a permanent RAF station. It was, it had been there for many years and it consisted of what you would call apartment-type of accommodation, it was brick, big brick flats and in that we’d all, the officers, my pilot now was a flight sergeant right through but as soon as he went to the Squadron, he got his commission and that was the rule then he got his commission. And so he went to the officer’s mess and they had their own specific area and we had our own, we were in dormitories and, uhm, I had, I sort of, well, I was a flight sergeant a lot of that time but I was regarded as a bit senior, not senior but, I seemed to be the one that organises for when and what we are doing outside out of the, you know, for our recreation cause my pilot didn’t smoke or drink and that is marvellous, [unclear] didn’t smoke or drink, he was young too but, but he was a great one for, uhm. He was really wrapped in aircraft, which he should be I know, no, but he gathered at the end of the runway if we weren’t flying a particular day on the squadron he’d go off at the end of the runway and watch them all take off and that sort of thing, he was, he was a wonderful bloke and then he took a great interest in everything, but he. My brother was the same, he would do all that sort of thing, you know, they’re really wrapped but others might be doing something else, but, we used to, well, there were various things we could do, I used to take them down to the, we used to go down to The Horse and Jockey, which is still there, the hotel, but it was a hotel in the , you know, we could go and have something to eat down there, or we’d have a few [unclear], play darts, [unclear] balls and that sort of thing and there a lot of our lot, we had pushbikes and we could pushbike down to the Horse & Jockey and that was in the little town of Waddington, was only a little place and uhm, uh, a lot of our time was spent going around and then we’d have, every six weeks we’d have leave. But, sticking to Waddington, uhm, you know, we had a lot to do, we had dances, the west [unclear] we would have dances all night, yeah, we’re all, uh, I reckon that we were all well looked after and they really were, I’ve recently been back to the Horse & Jockey, and, you know, they are so pleased to see you and they were like that in England. Most, I think of most of them were, I’m not being a snob but I think most of them were pretty good party fellows, there were not a lot of drunks, gave me a favorite to drinks, we had a, we had right a bite back and a [unclear] who used to stop us every now and then and say: ‘Aye, aye, aye!’ but they wouldn’t do anything to us. They were quite, uhm, quite pleasant. But I’ve really found that the people there, I didn’t get involved in anything much outside [unclear] leave I had relations to go to [unclear] wonderful, cause I had my mother’s side and my father’s side so I had relations of both so [unclear] he was from, my father was from Maryport in Cumberland, right up in the north and I have been there a few times since. I met my grandfather that I had never seen and a bit quite of the other relations but the grandfather was the closest, he was a tenner and there was gaslight, there was no electricity, was gaslight, and he, I had to sleep with him, he had no other accommodation there was I think he had a family gone but there wasn’t a very big place and I had forgotten he had, I was [unclear] he was one of six brothers, my father was one of six brothers but later on I found out that my grandmother had fourteen kids so that meant we, in the last few years I’ve been chasing up all these people we’ve met, since I didn’t know we had but sticking to the, uhm, on the Squadron, yeah, we, uhm, I don’t think I had much more [unclear] than I, I had just a normal [unclear], I used to go to church at the Lincoln Cathedral every now and then, I used to go to Southwell. In case you don’t know that Southwell was six miles south out of Newark in Robin Hood territory and it’s a cathedral, it’s got a cathedral so it’s a city, it’s only a small place but it’s a city of Southwell, although they call it Southwell, and so I went there a few times, I was made very welcome and incidentally the Southwells in Australia is one of the biggest families in Australia but, and I am connected with them but they’re in Canberra and they, their offshoots are all, uhm, there is an enormous lot of them, probably the biggest family in Australia, the Southwells. You might, [unclear], but the government gave them a grant in the bicentenary they have their big reunion in Canberra, so there must be some truth in there.
AP: So, you mentioned The Horse & Jockey earlier. Uhm, if you walk into the Horse & Jockey, in wartime, what’s there, what does it look like and what’s going on?
DES: Looks like an old English pub.
AP: Yeah? Funny that.
DES: Yeah, a bit out [unclear] cause I went back a few months again and I hardly knew the place, it had been changed around, they moved a lot of the chimneys out, but I can’t remember getting to a reunion in 1995 at the Horse & Jockey and they had an upstairs everybody could go and we had a great get together that day which was been back on Channel 9 and I was lady in the singing of all the wartime songs in Waddington but it was a real meeting place down, there was another pub we tried [unclear] plus I didn’t drink much but I went to that, oh, I was drinking as at that stage I hadn’t started to drink but that’s another story. My brother, I didn’t mind, now I never drink in our family and my brother on his way back he came up to see me in Montreal at one stage and he said: ‘Would you like a beer?’ And I said: ‘Oh no, I will have a lemonade’. And he said: ‘I will have a beer’. I said, oh, so I didn’t say anything to him. And when since I got back to Montreal, I’ve had a beer and I’ve been drinking beer ever since [laughs]. But, you know, Canada was a funny place for beer because it’s a, they don’t sell beer in a, in those days they didn’t sell beer in a hotel, you had to go into a place that was especially designed and sit down and have a beer but you put salt into the beer to get the gas out of, it was so gassy, that’s another story. But, the Horse & Jockey now, I gonna say now because honestly I’ve forgotten what it was there like but now they have a lot of dart boards around, we played darts and we played balls outside, it was fun, uhm, but it was just, you know, there were members of the public, you know, the people that were working there, we would fraternise with them, they were all friendly with, so, it was generally, it was nice, actually it wasn’t a bad place to go and have a [unclear] and a [unclear]. No, I wouldn’t say that, [unclear] we were [unclear] but more recollections of the Horse & Jockey that was, I said, the crew kept together, I kept the crew together, we were all there together, it was the whole other six of us, there as, that didn’t mean, there was no worry about that but I would like to add that I had [unclear] to my place in about 1950 or 60 and he [unclear] smoked. So, [laughs], [unclear] it’s been a change, he remained a bachelor all his life. But he was wonderful fellow and he was another one, as I say he was very, very keen on, what he did, he took on the training course after the war in [unclear] and he was, he got a medal for that, an RFD or doing something like that, royal returned forces, no, not returned, what’s it, returned something forces decoration? Not returned forces. Anyway, as an RFD, as a, there’s a post normal or medal, but he, he got one of those. But he was a great fellow and he brought us home safely.
AP: [unclear] Alright.
DES: But I had a lot of confidence in him, as I was saying, earlier on, [unclear] blessed hands, they were bigger than mine, I got the tiniest hands you’ve ever seen, mine, my wife’s gloves won’t fit me, you know, they’re my hands, my hands are so tiny, but, yeah, he was, yeah, that’s about it, [unclear].
AP: Yeah, we’re going alright still. So, a little bit more about this daily life in Waddington. The Sergeants Mess, what was that like, what sort of things happened there?
DES: Oh yeah, the Sergeants Mess. Yeah, well, we spend a bit of time there, no, after a trip we do was going to the mess and there’s a lot of, a lot of untoward things went on in the Sergeants Mess and some of the other persons over there, a bit longer than I was, tell some wonderful stories about bringing a donkey into the mess and there’s the Officers Mess and all sort of that. But, we, uhm, I can’t recall, my memory is not that good for the Sergeants Mess. I can, I know what it was like but it was not a place that, you know, we all met there at various stages and had our lunch there and our dinner there and all that sort of thing but, uhm, this never stayed in my mind as being rather relevant to me, I don’t know why but I know we ate there and had our meals there and you know the ordering officer would come round and say: ‘Any complaints?’ [Laughs] Every day in the evening we had our meal there, the ordering officer would come round and say, quite often it was one of the, one of your pilots that, [laughs] you know, was his turn to come over from the officers mess and say: ‘Any complaints?’ What’s the officer, orderly officer, any complaints, I don’t know, that I had many complaints, no, I can’t help, I can’t recall a lot about the Sergeants Mess.
AP: Did 463 and 467 Squadron eat in, did they have their own officer’s mess [unclear]?
DES: No, we were all together, they had their own, the two were there together.
AP: So it was more [unclear] Waddington.
DES: yeah, yeah, yeah. Was Waddington, yeah. Yeah, when we went back to Waddington in, when we went to the Officers Mess there was just one place, yeah, there was only one place, there was 463 and 467, yeah, we got to know each other 463 and 467, as you know 467 was the first Australian Squadron, first Squadron on, uhm ,first was their own Squadron, they were formed in about 1941, something like that and then after they got a big bigger, we wanted to have another Squadron, so 463 grew out of [unclear]? Yeah, [unclear], grew out of [unclear], is it about November or December? ‘43, would that be right? 47 might have been ’42, I think it was ’43.
AP: Yeah, ’43.
DES: Yeah, it was ’43, I think. And so that’s how 463 was. Uhm, and that was under Wing Commander Rollo Kingswood-Smith, who send me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And I was only a young bloke who only shaved about four days a week and I was on, and they sent me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And then later on of course, I’m going ahead of fifty years I became the secretary of 463 Squadron, Rollo was, he is the patron at present, no, he is the patron, I think but he was and he came up to me, oh, I did know him a bit afterwards so. He came up to me and looked at me and said: ‘Oh, Don, you’ve done your shave today’. And days before he died, he said to me: ‘Don, you had your shave today’ and I reminded him when I came back from England but I became quite a good friend of Rollo, when I finished, cause he is really very, very good, he always [unclear], you know, he was a flight commander, no he was a CO, or was a flight commander, whatever he was, he wasn’t a station commander, because that was different from, but he was, he was a 463 commanding officer but he did his trips at the time, he never, he always did his trips, so, he could have quite easily have said, No, I’m going tonight or something like that, but Rollo would always do his trips and never fail. And he was always very good with his, I know, with his writing to people for, you know, lost their and lost their sons and but I believe he was a very strict, he was a very, very strict man, as I say, he was quite different in late years, well, he was, you knew where you stood with him but, and I think he had to be to be the commanding officer at that particular, and we had all walks of life in our, uh, in the air force.
AP: Did 463 Squadron have any superstitions or hoodoos or anything that you are aware of of [unclear]?
DES: Not that I am aware of, I always used to carry my RAF, I had no RAF scarf, always carry my RAF scarf, had to go back one night to get it, but, which I had forgotten, I had to get back but that was only a personal deal I don’t think I was really superstitious about I had to carry my RAF scarf, it was a scarf, it wasn’t a tie, it was a scarf, I didn’t see many of them, I still got mine on my top drawer beside my bed I’ve got my Royal Air Force scarf. I also had my Royal Air Force [unclear] [laughs].
AP: [laughs]
DES: Some [unclear].
AP: We were talking about off tape before we started. Very good. So, you flew nine operations [unclear].
DES: I did nine operations, yep.
AP: Do any of them particularly stand out?
DES: Yeah, was a couple I can have. The trip, uhm, I did to Pilsen. We took off, was a long trip, Pilsen was in Czechoslovakia and it was a long trip and not, we had a couple of hours and now one of our engines went and the skipper said to me: ‘Do you think we can make it?, and I said: ‘Yes, I think so. I think we can take a few short cuts [unclear] we might be able to make it, we don’t tell anybody whatever’. And he said, [skimming through pages of a book], yeah, the uhm, I said: ‘I think I could make it’ and I did a few calculations and even though I say [unclear] I reckon I did a pretty well navigation so I think that was that day because you know you had to be careful if you gonna take any short cuts it couldn’t stand out we were on a track that you were given and as long as you stayed four miles or five miles out of the side of the track you are fairly safe because that’s where all the other aircraft were going, and we were tossing out the silver paper, the Window, that made look as if there are more aircraft out and that sort of thing. But we had to be careful if we went out of it, you could be picked off by the German radar, so you had to be a little bit careful. So, anyway, we got there on time, uhm, we uhm, and uhm, so that was a long trip that I got a bit of praise for by my skipper in the briefing that we went back to and that was about uhm, eight hours and we bombed on three engines. We were diverted when we got back cause we didn’t have much fuel left, uhm, we landed at Boscombe Down that particular night and, uhm, then the next day went back to, uhm, to, uhm, Waddington but uhm, yeah, it was that. And one other night we went to [unclear]. I was in a couple of thousand bomber raids, daylight, we were over Essen and Dortmund and I, we bombed through a cloud there and this was, you realised we were getting towards the end of the war and the master bomber was down below the clouds and he’d come up the cloud, drop the target indicators and go back down again and see how they went and he turned on the RT, the radio telephone and he turned into [unclear] TI by ten seconds or something like that, you know, and he’d be conducting the whole operation from down below. And, so we were just, we just dropped bombs, we didn’t see where they go, we just dropped them on top of the cloud, and that was on the Krupp works at Essen and Dortmund and. But there was another one I was going to mention and we went to [unclear], and uhm, which is just south of Hamburg and the wind changed that particular night and the whole force was all over north-western Europe, we got a little blown away but well, I got a little bit off course, I got to say this, I got a bit off course and we were chased by the German jetfighters, the 263 I think it is? The 263, something like that, the 263? But, we went into a cork, we did have, we were well-trained, went straight away and went into the corkscrew and we did all that, and, cause they can only stay up for about ten minutes and so they, you know, you, if you did your corkscrew properly, probably you were safe so we got out of that but that was, we were picked off there because I got a bit off course. And then I went to uhm, smaller refineries, Bohlen, I went to Bohlen, that was out near Leipzig, for people that might know where Leipzig is, a lot of these synthetic oil refineries were in Eastern Germany and, uhm, we’re at the crossing of the Rhine when the British army were, uhm, crossing the Rhine, uh, we were given the job of bombing Wesel, we were given the job of bombing Wesel and, uhm, which we did and I think it was only, it was only our, you know, our group went that particular night but the British army were on one side of the river and the German side, the Germans were on the other side, and we bombed the other side but we were given a certain time because the British were going into the water at a certain time to go over and I took it with the loss of one life, I think it was in, General Montgomery, Field Marshall Montgomery, he, send the message back to, they brought it over to the loudspeakers the next day on parade, do you want something to eat?
AP: No, thank you.
DES: It was on parade and we were on parade and they read out a message from Montgomery to say how wonderful it was and we did a wonderful job bla, bla, bla, yeah, and uh, yeah that was interesting because you can, if you go to Wesel afterwards it’s quite, you know, I’ve seen some photos of it lately and I think they have rebuilt most of, most of the place. And lastly we did the last operation of the war which was on Tonsberg, which was in the southern part of Norway and we approached it from the North, so it was a long crossing over the North Sea, this was the last operation of the war, on Anzac Day, and with the, we came down the coast, I was coming down from Norway, with Sweden on the left hand side and Sweden was all beautifully lit up, all lit up and the other side was all black, blacked up there was the, Norway which was under the control of the Germans, anyway, we, uhm, that was the last operation of the war and we, uhm, that was bombed successfully but on, if I check forward about fifty years, I was at a funeral and, uhm, of a lady who was of Norwegian birth and the ex-consul of Norway was there and I went and spoke to him and I said: ‘I’ve never been to Norway except on the air’. And he said: ’When were you there?’ I said: ‘Oh, I was there on the 25th of April 1945’ and he said: ‘Well, your aim was pretty good that night’. [laughs] Not at all, so I thought we did pretty well. He said yes. He said, but some of your bombers did bomb the shipyards, some of them went astray and they bombed some of the civilians and he said that all the people of Norway, the war was coming to an end, the 8th of May was the end of the war, the war was coming to an end, they are all thrilled, all happy because everybody knew the armistice was coming on that particular day and he said, now, all the people in the rest of Norway, he said, we were burying our dead and he was very nice about the whole thing and, you know, he is, I got him down as a likely speaker for whoever wants someone to speak about it but, they were very understanding and. So I must really go to France these days, you know, the people in France they were terribly bombed, you know, was, they are thanking you and thanking you and we did an enormous lot of damage but they realised that we had to, that we had to do that for, uhm, sake of winning the war.
AP: So, you mentioned that Messerschmitt, or the jetfighter.
DES: Jetfighter, yeah.
AP: And the corkscrew. So, you are the navigator. You hear corkscrew port go. What happens next?
DES: I have been difficult. Well, we gotta a set of pattern what you got to do the, if the plane’s coming in from the port, you corkscrew port go the rear gunner or whatever the hillside part will do his corkscrew and he’d go down fifteen hundred and he’d turn and he’d go up fifteen hundred feet and it’s quite a ring morale to do but you fly, if you do it properly you fly, you know, a certain course even [unclear] and so, you know, it didn’t do much damage to our [unclear] we didn’t have to make much allowance for an hour in our navigation, if you had to corkscrew port, you, you could just sort of forget about it and just there’s, as long as you weren’t [unclear] too long but generally speaking you flew a net course for this business, all designed to and it was very successful the corkscrew but I, I think we did this about three times I suppose.
AP: What does it feel like?
DES: Oh, I don’t mind, don’t forget we are nineteen years of age there, this was just, this was just wonderful, trusting the aircraft. Oh, of course you were worried a bit about where you were being shot down that goes into it, but generally speaking the corkscrew never, we thought if we did the corkscrew port we would be safe. You’ve got that feeling in your mind that you’d do that, I always remember Redge Boys [?] he was our hero, he was [unclear], he was our navigation leader at Waddington and Redge he did two tours and he said he never believed himself that he’d ever be shot down and he tried to, he despite the fact that the pilot was the chief, he always made sure the crew were all, you know, positive about what we were doing, they were all, they were always convinced that they were gonna get through this. They had this positive attitude that they, you know, and I think it helped, while you’re up there, [unclear], I tried to adopt that attitude that, you know, we all wanted to get home and see the people and I want to get home but, I must admit that, when we were on a bombing run, I used to see, a navigator didn’t have his parachute on, he, you couldn’t work on a desk when, cause we had a chest parachute that fitted on a harness on your chest and you had it sitting beside you. Now, uh, if I was to leave there at my desk, I’d always put my parachute on and I would go, if we were on a bombing run, I would remember the course you got to steer after we dropped our bombs and I’d turn the light out and I’d go up and stand behind the pilot, and watch all the, what was going on and I could then pop down to the rear gunner, near the rear gunner and say, could I have a look at the pilot [laughs] and you’d see the fires and all that sort of thing in the background. But, you know, I felt as if I wanted to be part of the thing so I wanted to see what was going on. Cause everyone else could see what was going on except the wireless operator and what’s the name because we were sitting [unclear] bomb’s gone, you’d have to wait a while, while the photo was taken, away was given course 270 and off we go. And, yeah.
AP: Yes, that’s unusual, most, uhm, most navigators I have spoken to would, you know come up and have a look [unclear] take the head and go, no, don’t ask me to do that [unclear].
DES: Oh, now, that’s, that’s another story. Well, that is. After, a lot of people don’t know about this. But after the war we disarmed, the war had finished and we were disarming with all our, [unclear] disarmed and we had to get rid of all the bombs on the station. So, what they did was we’d [unclear] might have been a couple of weeks, I could look that up but that’s been a couple of weeks, we flew out of Waddington with four bomb loads, headed to the North Sea, about two and a half hours and straight course out, dropped our bombs, they were dropped safe, they weren’ dropped armed but they were dropped safe, and there, I know what the Greenies [?] had signed out because they knew all these thousands of bombs now there was really thousands of us, there was not only our Squadron but every other Squadron was doing this. We go out there and then we come back and if you were above the cloud, we used to have a lot of fun with the pilot with going over the cloud, as if you were low flying. We had some lovely time so, but what I’m coming to is I thought this particular dive [?] was navigation record, no had Gee operator, [unclear], I didn’t done any, I didn’t have to do any strict navigation set up, I, cause I had near position indicators which told me, anyway, we, I thought I’d like to get into the rear turret and I saw [unclear] was the rear gunner and he could come up and sit in the navigation seat and I’d coming in here for a couple of hours, you know. So I trotted off down to the and the [unclear] showed me what to do and [unclear] I couldn’t have gone out of there, couldn’t have gotten there faster, was scared stiff, you know I’d never been because you’re away from the tires of the aircraft, when you are sitting back behind you, so, you are sitting out in the open. You know, you’re away from the aircraft so you feel like it and I think [unclear] having to sit [unclear] on our trip to sit in this thing, you know, you’d be, mind you, these, while our air gunners had had the experience of flying they knew what they’d, you know, they’d got used to it I suppose but me as a person I was scared stiff, I was more scared stiff getting into, getting out of that turret than I was, say, sitting out there in the navigation and bombs, looking down and looking at bombs going off and [unclear] I was scared stiff on that trip. And I had the greatest of admiration for our rear gunner out there, how they could [unclear], and [unclear] you know, I’m not necessarily claustrophobic but I thought oh, Jeez, I couldn’t do this. And I realised how well off I was, because the navigator was lucky I reckon because, as I say, on a ten hour trip you’d have, you had to get a fix every ten minutes or so and, you know, you no sooner that you’d got your fix, you’d plotted it, as you got your fix, you plotted it, you’d make the necessary course, the course change and so forth so If you had to make any change and it took time and the time went quickly this was what the beauty was the pilot was the same, he may be sitting around looking, you know, sitting out on the front [unclear] putting on a [unclear] every now and then, yeah, most of the time but he, and but the navigator had to do and the wireless op was something similar to, he had a lot of work to do, he had to keep the schedules and report back and we had our jobs and our logs don’t forget, as soon as we got back, were handed in to the navigation leader and you were marked as if you were at school and you get 60 percent, or 50 percent or 75. And uhm, you know but this is why we had, oh I must say this as a navigator, that we had marvellous navigator, the navigators were, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, they were wonderfully trained, they, don’t forget, they took as about eighteen months to get into operations, the Americans, I understand can get in as navigating, get in about six weeks training, you know, and that’s not exaggerating, I believe as I say, because some of the B-24s out of Darwin carried, the Americans carried Australian navigators if you look up your history, which is not widely spoken about, but we were well trained and, as I say, we strictly [unclear], we knew our work was big marked anyhow so you had to be, you really gave you a greater incentive to be [unclear] but above all, you know, a ten hour trip might have seemed by far, you know, then, yeah.
AP: VE-day.
DES: Ah, VE-Day. This is all vivid with me, I had wonderful times on VE-day but VE-Day I did three trips to France bringing home, I think it was on VE-Day, yeah, it was on VE-Day, I don’t know if it was three or two we didn’t the next day, you know I did three trips of bringing home prisoners of war, we’d go over in Juvincourt in France and load up twenty five, it was called Operation Exodus and we were out, we load up to twenty five British war, British prisoners of war, they’d been, some of them had been there since Dunkirk in 1940 and the first load we carried, oh, they sit, the twenty five of them sat in the fuselage of the Lancaster on cushions, not seatbelts, uhm, they just had to hang on and [laughs] they just had to sit there and there were thousands of them, we brought out prisoners of war with this Operation exodus by the way, but they were, uhm, It was a wonderful experience, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, you flew these guys out, they’d been prisoners of war all these years and they, uhm, the first load I carried they were all Sikhs, they were Indians the first lot we carried out. The next load we carried were all obviously from England and it seemed to be most obvious, I made sure that I went down and I got them to come up gradually when the white cliffs of Dover came, got them, and we ferried them up but it was nice and orderly and hear the tears was rolling down their cheeks, you know, was absolutely wonderful to see the, uhm, and they all shook hands when we, uhm, they all shook hands when they got off the aircraft and that was what I did on VE-Day. Now, shortly after VE-Day we had a lot of celebrations and I, you know, I can always remember smoking a cigar, having a few beers, I was Mister Churchill at one stage, you know, was a lot of hilarity and joyness and it was a wonderful feeling, they, you know, all the station was all together and we were all having, officers, ordinary, you know, the airmen, we were all together having a and they’d put on some wonderful [unclear] there and at that particular time and that’s my, I worked on the VE-Day there and we were so glad we were doing, and the guy that wrote our 463-467 book, Nobby Blundell he was a, uhm, he was a fitter, he was a fitter, uhm, an engineer and on a ground staff and he wrote our books incidentally, all the books on 464-647 fisher [?] books were all written by Nobby did a magnificent job but the uhm, was great the, uhm, he managed to, you know, get, gives us all the particulars that we wanted to know, I don’t know, and he was all of our flying set up, all of the, he’d used the, [unclear], is that called, the evidence of our doing your trip, he used to get all these information from the [unclear], he spend years on doing this and so we were forever grateful and he did this but, uhm, getting back to VE-Day, I was more than, more than pleased with what was happening and then of course we had to start thinking about what was gonna happen as it was after VE-Day.
AP: Uhm, how did you get back to Australia?
DES: Ah, that’s a good [unclear], you’ve got some good questions. They are very good, you know, [unclear], we uhm, the uhm, oh I made two efforts to get away. We were disbanded by the way, we were disbanded in August at, uhm, Skellingthorpe, I think it was Skellingthorpe, we’d moved to Skellingthorpe from the Squadron and they formed a Tiger Force for people that were gonna go out to fight the Japanese and uhm, we uhm, managed to particular Tiger Force the uhm, [unclear] you know just asking [unclear].
AP: How did you go home?
DES: How did you go home, yeah. Lost my train of thought. At my age you can.
AP: That’s one. That’s the first one in [unclear]
DES: No, I forget.
AP: Off you go.
DES: Oh, good. [laughs] I know you can scrub that out, yeah, but getting home. Yeah, but I wanted to mention about, we disbanded and then we were transferred to Brighton to wait for a boat and the [unclear] came along. Now, a lot of people in the Air Force know what happened there, there was virtually no, [unclear] but the conditions on the [unclear] which is the [unclear] boat, there was no P&O those days, [unclear] made all the newspapers that a lot of the trips walked off the ship at Southampton because of the conditions, I didn’t want to go twenty five days or so we gotta go and we went back through the canal and [unclear], well we didn’t stop, well we stopped in a few places, the uhm, it was, the, in Brighton we went from, we’d gone onto the ship on the [unclear], we’d got onto the ship and we sailed eventually, we sailed to half of it and wouldn’t you believe we broke down in the Bay of Biscay and the war was over, there was no submarines or so, the war had finished at this time, this was in August or September 1945 [unclear] and we, in between time we had been flying, we’d been doing, taking stuff out to drop the bombs and we’d been doing fighter affiliation and all, we then found work for us to do. Anyway, we set sail out of Southampton and we broke down, and we were flying the black flag, anyone knows it’s out of control and so we eventually we got, we slipped back to Southampton, the first time I have ever been sick was on that bay because we just it [unclear] and happened [unclear] it was about 20000 tons and was their luxury ship when the [unclear] luxury could have been made into a troop ship and we went back to Southampton we were sent then up to Millham. Now Millham is right up near West Freugh, up near Stranraer, right up on the North-West of England and [unclear] us all up to, it was the middle of winter. And we were in Nissen huts and we had to try and keep warm and they had to heat us there but ran out of coal, they couldn’t get, we were rationed the coal, so we smarty Australians [unclear], there was the coal, we got into the coal, [unclear] and pinched the coal, I caught a couple of sometime [unclear] about but we had to go and pinch coal to keep warm. And uhm, we eventually went from there, we were there about a week I suppose and then they found another boat for us which was the Durban Castle, it was a [unclear] ship which went from London, used to go from London to Cape Town and that was a nice ship was made up of air, the complement of going home was a lot of air force people, we had New Zealanders coming home uhm, was quite an interesting lot of people that were on board but we were in [unclear], I was a warrant officer then I’d got up to warrant officer and there under the normal chain, six months of flight sergeant, twelve months of, uh, sorry, six months of sergeant, four months of flight sergeant, then you’re put and made a warrant officer, that was the RAAF and so we’d became warrant officers and then was commission if you got a commission. And the uhm, we uhm, [pauses] [unclear] yeah, yeah, we’re back, we’re off from and, yeah, we were now on the Durban Castle, we’re on the, I forgot, the Durban Castle and the Durban Castle and we had a lot of, we pulled into Gibraltar, can remember Gibraltar, the conditions on the boat were good, the food was good, I put on a stain on the way back because, you know, we put a lot of potatoes, they had a lot of stuff [unclear] but they fed us well, it was a full ship really, but we picked up people on the way, we went to Gibraltar but that was to drop off somebody who was sick so we didn’t pull in, it was just off Gibraltar and we could see the place and if anybody is interested they oughta go to Gibraltar, it is one of the most interesting places to go there. Uh, you don’t expect to see what you see, so we, Gibraltar just a night, we dropped these people off and then we went to Taranto in Italy, in the heel of Italy and there we picked up the New Zealand war brides, that had married a lot of the New Zealanders, who were fighting in Italy, they’d either gone home or [unclear], but the war brides were on their own and so we picked up the war brides and that filled the boat a bit more and then we went from Italy to the Canal, went through the canal, and they wouldn’t let us off the boat in the canal and, you know, none of us would have been through the Suez Canal and so, that was working of course and so was [unclear] to Port Tewfik, Tewfik? No, Port Said, we went to Port Said and they, one of the guys in that was with me at the time, was called [unclear] and he had a DCM, Distinguished Conduct Medal which he had earned in the Middle East but he was in the Air Force, he was, he was a gunner in the Air Force but and he’d been to Port Said, you know, he knew all about this place and we had to get to Port, [mimics the gunners voice] so there was a ladder down at the back of the ship and so a few of us got out of the bumboats as they called them [unclear] and we went ashore, we went ashore, we didn’t take any notice of them people [unclear] we, most of the people were doing this but they were not supposed to. And so we were wondering around the town and the Arabs tried to come and sell us something, dirty postcards on sale [laughs], you know, and we were looking, [unclear] got out, went off and he hit one of these blokes, he hit one of these blokes, you know, because he was trying to do something wrong or I don’t know what it was but he knew what he can get away with, he slapped him on the face [unclear] we gonna get caught [unclear] being in a riot, anyway we got back to our ship alright and went up the gangway this time, no one said anything so. We went through the canal which was a great experience to go through and see how that operates, I’ve never been through the Panama but a lot of our fellows went through the Panama, which I would have liked to have done, uhm, then we went into Aden, and then we, that was near Yemen, and that was in Yemen where you nearly got a lot of troubles and then we went to, uhm, Perth, we went straight across the Indian Ocean to Perth and that’s where we dropped of the Perth blacks [?] and I remember carrying, not carrying but helping a bloke who’d had too much to drink in Kings Park and we were gonna miss the boat, cause you had to be up to Perth and the boat was at Freemantle, we had to get back by train and we had to get him back so [unclear] helped him back but he was not used to Australian beer cause the British beer was pretty, uh, pretty weak and this Australian beer was pretty, you know, pretty [unclear] anyway we got back, we came around the [unclear] to Melbourne, and was Melbourne we got off the boat and went to, uhm, went on the train, went on the train to Sydney, I don’t recall, must have been the train of the time, we sat up but we didn’t have sleepers, and no, we went up to Sydney and the Vietnam blokes all complain that they didn’t get a welcome home. Well, none of us got a welcome home but we were quite happy, cause we arrived at Central Station on platform number one, my mother and sister were there to meet me, they took me home and then a week later I was to report at Bradfield Park, I went to Bradfield Park, they gave me a dischargement home and I went back to work.
AP: That was it.
DES: That was it.
AP: Did you have any issues settling down again? [unclear]?
DES: No, no, no, I had no issues. The only thing is for a while so I went straight back to my job that I left at the MLC and I had been there eighteen months, for eighteen months so I didn’t know much about the business and so I got into, when I went to, I applied when I went back, this is in early 1946 I uhm went back to the MLC and they put me on, they had to put me on that was the law, they had to put you back on staff and they sent me to a department where I was the only fellow with a hundred and forty girls. I’d been in the Air Force all this time with fellows, we had the well WAAF around but generally speaking you weren’t used to mixing around with women, you know, and they put me there for, they put me there for a purpose, of course, and they put next to me the girl that spoke the most [laughs] she was a real gossip, she spoke the most, Shirley Reed, and Shirley, and I, the first two weeks I didn’t hardly, apart from doing my work I didn’t say anything but not because I didn’t [unclear], I was just out, I don’t know what to do, you know, I was just doing my work but I thought, and I wasn’t that good at conversation at that particular time [unclear] we had lunch at our desk in those days, we bought some sandwiches and had lunch at our desks, she kicked the chair from underneath me, I was leaning back and she kicked the chair it was dangerous, she kicked the chair, I went down under the [unclear], well, everybody laughed and I laughed and from that time on I was married [?] [laughs]. I was in that department for about two years and I was still the only fellow. And I have great memories of that, of that two years because I was single, I went to so many birthday parties and twenty-first birthday parties, to weddings, I talked to get a few other girls, my wife was one of them and well, became one of them and I went to work for her in the department and I made [unclear] she came to England for four years and then came back and I married her then but I don’t, was I was then move to, I went again they sent me to Tasmania to open up the office in Tasmania in Launceston and then I was there for two years and then I, they did that in those days, don’t do it nowadays, then I was sent to, I was in Sydney for a while and then I was posted to Adelaide in 1960 and I, I was in charge of the collector branch there in Adelaide and we had two children there, Dave and Jane and that was another wonderful experience and then. I’ve got to say something about the air force, don’t let me forget.
AP: [unclear] of course.
DES: But, we had, Adelaide was a wonderful place to bring children up, I became a fan of the, I was a rugby person, rugby union, I became a fan of Australian rules when I first went to Adelaide I was, uhm, every Monday we had lunch with a group in the industry, in the life insurance industry and I didn’t have much to, I didn’t have much to talk about because I didn’t know anything about the Australian rules, for all they talked about were the teams that played at the weekend so I thought, oh, the best thing for me to do was to join those, if we were gonna have, [unclear], I’d better join them, better go out with them, so, they were members, a few of them were members of the Stirling football club, Aussie [?] rules club, and, no, The Double Blues, I can sing you the song if you want me to sing it, but they are The Double Blues and I became quite a rugby, an Australian rules fan, I’m not forgetting me rugby cause I’m a rugby person still but the, I used to, family, it was a family setup, we’d go out on a Saturday and we’d go, we’d have the radio would be on at the eleven o’clock match and then we’d go on, we’d have lunch or something then we’d go up to see the afternoon, the main game in the afternoon and then we’d finish there we’d go and buy some beer and some food and we'd watch the replay of that game and then we’d watch the replay of the main game in Melbourne, that was our Saturday but all the kids were all around at home that particular day and they’d come to the game in Adelaide, then they got so much free bottle they could pick up and the kids used to go and pick it up and make a lot of money on a Saturday [laughs] and but I became quite a fan of that we won the premiership four weeks running and that was my introduction to Australian rules, what a wonderful thing to be, but it’s a wonderful game and I love Australian rules and I do follow the Swans, uhm, but I don’t go out and see nowadays, I don’t go and see the rugby except on [unclear] occasions again I go and watch the rugby but. And in Tasmania I played rugby union and my [unclear] was the president of the North Tasmanian rugby union, we had three teams and I played in one of the teams and, uhm, that was in Launceston and, oh I forgot, New Zealand. I was in, I was two and a half years in New Zealand and I was there for the Springbok Tour in 1956 and I saw quite a bit of the football there, I used to go to the football in those days but New Zealand was another great place to be I was married there but I came back to Sydney, married Dorothy and then came back to New Zealand when she came back, she came back to work at the MLC for twelve months and, uh, and then we came back to, and I had a wonderful time because I have got relations there In New Zealand, so, I had places I had to go, so, I’ve seen every city in New Zealand except Gisborne and I don’t know why I’m saying that but, uhm, it was a wonderful place for me and it was a good place to, uhm, yeah it was a good, I was the, I joined the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and I played tennis and I became the treasurer of the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and so I fitted into the New Zealand mob, cause New Zealanders by and large as a group don’t like Australians, you know, but they do like, when they meet individually we’re all great, you know, we might talk about the Anzac business but they have really odd, that’s only my observation of course, they don’t’ really and I’m a, I regularly go to funerals in New Zealand at the moment but you know I’m a great fan of New Zealand and they as a group, they are jealous of Australians, I think, cause we’re so big.
AP: Ok, could be something.
DES: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, worked with a few kiwis, anyway. Uhm, yeah, you were gonna say something [unclear].
DES: I was gonna say, I do a lot of this, you know, I’m gonna plug in for the Bomber Command Commemorative Day and I’ve been involved with 463-467 Squadron Association, I’ve been involved with, uh, the Bomber Command Commemorative Day Foundation but that’s just a little aside. Uh, I’m doing this really because [clears throat] I owe the Air Force something. [sighs] When my, when memoires bring us [unclear] when I went away on the Air Force, I didn’t know anything, I was a real greenhorn, I was a green eighteen, didn’t know anything cause mum, you know, we were never allowed to play cards on a Sunday as I’d never, we never had cards in the house, mum didn’t, mum was a bit, she was an Anglican and uh, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t an [unclear] or anything either but a [unclear] drink she might have been, we never had but grog in the place, I tried to have [unclear] sherry sometimes [laughs] she went [mimics and astonished expression] when she heard, she was a great mother by, a great mother by the way but our mum, I’m trying to get the message over that I didn’t know a lot about the world until I went to the Air Force and the Air Force made me and I feel I gotta make some contribution to the Air Force and the same thing applies to the office MLC, that they to me were absolutely marvellous and I only retired from there about two years ago when I, I retired in ‘84, I went back to do a job for three months, to set up the database, helped set up the database in the MLC and now twenty five years later I’m still there with two, with another guy, it was five of us who stayed on for a while, but then, three had died and two of us are still left. But the MLC were, they, you know, I was on a, I tell you I was on a two and half percent mortgage for a time at the MLC, and they didn’t pay as much as probably some of the other companies but you know, I never, you felt you had a real, uhm, you know, they never sacked anybody except if you pinched money [laughs] and that, it remarks the office that didn’t happen but the MLC were wonderful to me, the Air Force and the MLC were wonderful to me and a lot of my friends are not jealous of me but they would have loved to have had a job like I’ve got, working with the MLC until I was just on ninety and, uhm, and I was doing every bit as good a job as I was as the people beside me that I was working, I was doing all computer work and this sort of thing. Oh, when I say computer work, it wasn’t on a main frame but it was, was all the stuff was all set up for us to do but I did some work on the telephones and that sort of thing but there was a lot of sixty plus, sixty five plus fellows that could, they some of the companies could, instead of putting them off, give them extra time, you know, keep them employed on a, say, five days, four days, three days, because, you know, I was bored stiff for a while when I first retired and when I got this [unclear], I was a bit two-minded about going back and doing this and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made and so there for that, this is not wartime setup but the MLC they could have paid when I was in the Air Force but I was getting more money in the Air Force than I was in the MLC [laughs] so I didn’t much from it but. Had I not been in the aircrew I would have probably cause we were paid extra in the aircrew, not a lot but we were paid extra. And, yeah, so that was, I have a lot to thank the Air Force for and that’s why I’m doing, I do this work now with volunteering with doing various things on Bomber Command Association and the 463 business, anything to do with the Air Force I like doing, you know, and I meet a lot of nice people.
AP: Good. Final question. Uhm, what do you think the legacy of Bomber Command is and how you want to see it remembered?
DES: Uh, well, I don’t think we will ever see another Bomber Command, in these days we will never see another Bomber Command because the days of the, uhm, what do we call them? The, you know, the things that fly on their own? You’ll never see another Lancaster bomber bombing places, you will see atom bombs or, not atom bombs, but these other sort of, what do you call the little?
AP: Drones. Yeah.
Des: The drones, you see, just here in one of our Squadrons here now, the 462 Squadron in Adelaide, they are mixed up in drones, you see, and so, you know, I’m very proud of, uhm, joining and taking part in Bomber Command. I think they did a magnificent job; they’d had a rough trot until 1942, when they weren’t hitting their targets, [unclear] as things got better, they did the, I’m fully happy with all what the Bomber Command did. I think the world of Air Marshal Harris and I get, I get annoyed sometimes when people who want to criticize him. You know, every year I get a message from Melbourne about Dresden [laughs], which, you know, which annoys me, more than anything else, because Dresden deserved what they got, you know, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, London, Liverpool, Coventry, they all got a similar treatment and I don’t think, you know, there was a lot about Dresden that, and I’m sorry I brought that up but we know that there were a lot of people operating in Dresden which were military, they were hidden, slightly like the people today are putting, uh, children and some of these in where real targets are and there were definitely a lot of things in Dresden that deserved to be bombed and, you know, we’re at war, we had to do our best to do that but I’m quite proud of what we did in Bomber Command and I’m very, I think I finished my speech at the reflections at the Bomber Command thing in Canberra a few years ago and I was very proud and fine with Bomber Command and but I don’t think we will see another Bomber Command type of people, there will never be a group like us ever again, so I don’t’ think there is any future, but it will be done by the drones, what it’s gotta be done I think will be done by the drones and then that creates a bit of loss of life to civilians but I’m afraid when you are fighting a war it’s just, you know, it’s just the way it goes. Uhm, I don’t know, of [unclear].
AP: How do you want to see it remembered?
DES: How will I remember it?
AP: Yeah, how do you want to see it remembered, how do you want Bomber Command to be remembered.
DES: Oh, [unclear], oh, I just like the people here today to and that’s what we’re in the business with the Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation, we want the children of our people to carry on and thank the people of, like the 5000 who died, not us particularly but, ah yeah, the 5000 Australian airmen we hope you’ll remember them, you might forget them, as I hope you won’t forget the Vietnam people and the people who went to Korea and the people who went to [unclear]. We do remember them and I pray that they remember them on Anzac Day, uhm, but I think that, uhm, I would like to and I am amazed at, uh, the young people today that we have come into their [unclear] up to about four or five years ago and never heard of some of the things of their fathers and grandfathers had done. And I’m amazed by the number of people who came out of the woodwork to find out more about now and it’s up to us now, cause we are talking here now, it’s up to us to make sure that we get the message out to the younger people that their living today because of the sacrifice that the people made, that died over in the Bomber Command raids and that sort of thing, that they would be, uhm, might be leading a different sort of life, that they, uh, if it hadn’t been for the actions and the deeds of those who fought in Bomber Command. But I’d like them to think nicely of us and I think most of them do. I get, not amazed, but I’m really interested and pray that today for instance I’ve been talking to people that were involved and had involvements, you know, a lot of them didn’t know to a certain extent what things we’d done and how we’d helped shorten the war and that sort of thing, cause we did really and I suppose dropping the atom bomb bought us to and I’ve got no objections to the atom bomb being dropped either, it probably saved a lot of lives too. It’s a terrible thing but once, if I can say again, I’m amazed at the young people that are so interested and yet there are some families that they are not interested at all, not interested at all and parts of families, including my own, now, some of mine are not that interested, my son is and but, and I think [unclear] but one of my grandchildren is very interested. It’s on the other side but that’s their decision, we probably haven’t got the message over to them which is [unclear] and I am disappointed when I speak to some of my friends who don’t want to talk about it, it’s not boasting about these [unclear], people should know that these sort of things went on, that these, because of their actions, they’ve had fifty, sixty, seventy years of freedom here, even in Australia which might never have happened if those people hadn’t made the sacrifices that they did and volunteered and don’t forget, all the aircrew in Australia were volunteers, there was no, no one was conscripted, they were all volunteers. Yeah.
AP: Oh well, that’s the end of my questions. So.
DES: Well, that’s good. Yeah.
AP: You’ve done very well.
DES: [unclear] How long was that?
AP: That was one hour forty two.
DES: That was alright, well, that was [unclear]
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ASouthwellDE160424
Title
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Interview with Don Southwell
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:42:57 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-04-24
Description
An account of the resource
Don Southwell grew up in Australia and worked for RKO Radio Pictures and as an Air Raid Precautions Warden before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. After training in Australia and Canada, he flew nine operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington. He describes crewing up and everyday military life at the station, and gives accounts of his operations and being chased by Me 262s over Hamburg. He remembers ferrying liberated prisoners of war as part of Operation Exodus.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
New South Wales
Alberta--Edmonton
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Brighton
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leipzig
New South Wales--Sydney
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Sussex
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
29 OTU
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
fear
Lancaster
Me 262
memorial
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/347/3515/PWatsonPHC1701.2.jpg
1a6dd5111450a588dbfdd0228f3bae68
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/347/3515/AWatsonPHC170123.1.mp3
73879fdb831b3fe83b9751209444c0e4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Watson, Peter
Peter Henry Clifford Watson
Peter H C Watson
P H C Watson
P Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Peter Henry Clifford Watson (182029 Royal Air Force), his log book and a photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 101 and 115 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-23
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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Watson, PHC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: OK [pause] OK, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MacCartney and the interviewee is Peter Watson. The interview is taking place at Mr Watson’s home in Clontarf, New South Wales on the 23rd of January 2017. Peter, you mentioned you were born in 1924 but I don’t know quite where. Where was it?
PW: I was born in South Wales, a very — in a little village near Cardiff.
JM: Right, and did you do all your education in Wales?
PW: I did part of it in Wales and then I went to King’s School, Worcester for four years. That’s a cathedral school in Worcester.
JM: Right and does that mean you were part of the choir there?
PW: I was. Well, yes, a little bit. I was what? I used to sing in the choir.
JM: Right, right and was that the, the latter part of your education?
PW: Er, well actually when the war started they evacuated the whole school to North Wales for one year and then they brought us back to Worcester, and then I finished my, er, matriculation in 1941, and left the school there and then started a training to become an engineer until I was old enough to fly.
JM: Right, OK, and so that was until 1943?
PW: ’43.
JM: When you enlisted?
PW: Yes.
JM: And whereabouts did you do your enlistment?
PW: We did it in London.
JM: Ah, the London Recruitment Centre?
PW: Yes.
JM: Right, OK.
PW: There were about a hundred of us in the, in the one intake and, er, I might mention every one of us wanted to be a pilot. We all wanted to fly Spitfires and shoot down Germans, and get Victoria Crosses, and then end up with a romance with the group captain’s daughter but it didn’t happen that way [slight laugh]. And after a couple days we were told, whether we liked it or not, we had to be trained as air gunners because there was a surplus of pilots and a shortage of air gunners, and that was the last thing we wanted, but we volunteered to do what we were told and that’s what we did.
JM: Yes, indeed and where did you do that? After you, you had your recruitment in London and then after that where did you go?
PW: Yes. We went to, I went to Bridlington in Yorkshire, just for ground training then flying training started at Stormy Down at South Wales for several weeks. And then we went to a thing called an OTU, um, Operating Training Unit, in Tilsbury [?] near Sal— , near Sal— near, er, oh dear, North Wales anyhow. And then we crewed-up and then finally went to a four — four-engine — you were trained on two-engine aircraft, then you finally became a crew member and a seven member crew was formed at the, er, four-engine training centre in Lincolnshire.
JM: Right.
PW: And then because we — when we were sent to our first squadron, er, it was known as a special duties squadron because we carried an eighth member of a crew. Instead or seven, we had eight. The eighth member being a German-speaking person, who had radio equipment, who was carried on board our planes to interfere with the German night fighter system.
JM: Right, so this is 101 Squadron?
PW: 101 Squadron.
JM: And this is in February ’44.
PW: Yes. Ludford Magna.
JM: Yes, yes and because that had the ABC equipment, um, is that right?
PW: Airborne Cigar.
JM: Yes, so that was, um, so you, you were in part of those flights there then?
PW: Yes, I did, I did I think it was thirteen or fourteen flights from Ludford Magna and then we were selected to go and form a new squadron, essentially with Polish airmen, at a place called Faldingworth, about twelve miles away, and we finished the rest of our tour with 300 Squadron.
PM: Right, so, um, how long, how — in the 300, 300 Squadron is the Polish Squadron is it?
PW: Yes.
PM: So how long were you in that squadron for?
PW: I think, I think it was about three months between the time that we’d — I think we’d done, I’m not sure, about fourteen or fifteen at Ludford Magna before we went to Faldingworth and we ended up doing the balance of thirty three trips with, with 300 Squadron.
PM: Right, OK. And so that took you through then to 1945?
PW: Well after, after we had finished our tour we had to be grounded for six months and I was selected for some reason or other to, to go to 460 Australian Squadron at Binbrook, in a non- non-operational unit, because they were doing a special — they were trying to introduce radar operated rear turrets in Lancasters and Halifaxes and’ um, I was part of that study to introduce that and it was called Operation Village Inn. But after that, after six months, I got orders to go back on operations so I went down to Number 3 Group in, in, um, Cambridge, and I forget the county’s name of Cambridge but it was Cambridge, and I did two daylight trips with, with 115 Squadron and then the war ended and then we went on to, er, taking food to Holland and then bringing back prisoners of war from France and Italy.
JM: Right, so that was all part of 115?
PW: Yes.
JM: Yes, right. So 115 was probably what? From about May, May ’45 was it?
PW: Yes, yes, 115, September ’45 until, er, September ’46.
JM: Right.
PW: And then, um, funnily enough I went to Leconfield for a two-week training course where your, your father was but by then it was just a post-war training and they were doing training for gunnery leaders, and then I was promoted to gunnery leader of Number 15 Squadron at Wyton. And that’s where I stayed until I was demobbed but I was a flight lieutenant by then. But then at the end, as a post-war economy measure, every war-time officer was reduced in rank from flight lieutenant to flying officer [slight laugh] so I was finally discharged as a flying officer.
JM: Mm, OK. So that was a little thumbnail sketch of, of your service there.
PW: Yes.
JM: Perhaps we’ll go back and, um, just take a look at each of those three sort of postings. What? You said you had about fifteen missions in 101, um, was that more over Ger— over Germany particularly or —
PW: Yes, essentially Germany and then —
JM: And was your, was your plane dropping bombs as well as jamming or —
PW: Oh yes. We were essentially a bomber but we just carried this extra man and we were honour bound never to talk to him about his job, even though he ate and slept with us, we were honour bound not to because of the secrecy but the aircraft were very obviously — you could tell which aircraft they were because they had big aerials forward of the mid-upper turret and, you know, they could pick us off easily and what we didn’t know at the time was that the Germans were able to hone in on our equipment. We didn’t know this until after the war. They were able to hone in on our equipment and pick us off and, er, hence our losses at 101 were much higher than the average. In fact, I think it was Nuremburg, which was the worst of all the night flights, when we lost 108 aircraft, 96 over Germany and I think twelve over England afterwards and, er, it was, it was a dreadful night but there we are. But yes, that was it.
JM: So, um, that meant, obviously, you were going into some pretty densely populated areas I presume?
PW: Yes, yes, yes. Places like Nuremburg, Munich, Augsburg, Schweinfurt, Brunswick, Berlin. I didn’t do Berlin but Berlin was one of the very populous, very common areas. Hamburg in particular, Kiel canal, where, incidentally we went to bomb the martialling yards but, er, accidentally dropped our bombs a little bit away and it, it landed on the German battleship the Admiral Von Scheer and sunk it. So, I mean how lucky were we? And when I say ‘we’ — the squadron. One of the planes from the squadron dropped its bombs in the wrong spot and sank the Von Scheer.
JM: It wasn’t your actual plane?
PW: No.
JM: Right, OK, well so instead of getting a bit of a bollocking they would — there was a bit of a cheer I suspect.
PW: Yes. Yes.
OK. Yes. Yes. So, um, OK. Then when you moved from 101 to 300 did your whole crew move together?
PW: Yes, yes.
JM: So your whole seven stayed together.
PW: The eighth member stayed at 101.
JM: Eight. OK and was your crew, were all of those eight people, er, English or did you have any other —
PW: We had one Canadian.
JM: One Canadian.
PW: Yes and our special operator later on was, was an Aussie, yes, called Beutel, B E U T E L, Graham Buetel. Yes.
JM: Aha and then in your — you had a number of missions in the Polish Squadron? What sort of — was the emphasis — was there any particular action?
PW: We were just, we were just part of the main force but we didn’t leave 101 Squadron at Ludford Magna until two weeks after D-Day, and D-Day was a particularly interesting project for us because we, we were put onto a special flight to try and imitate a naval fleet going from Dover to Calais to try and make the Germans think that that was where the invasion was going to take place, and we went round in, in sort of square circles for about six or eight hours to try to imitate — dropping window stuff to make the Germans think that that might have been where the invasion was taking place. Whether it succeeded we never found out.
JM: So that was still part of 101?
PW: No, er, that was part of 101 and it was the last but one I think before we left, yes.
JM: Right OK and then in, um, Polish Squadron just normal —
PW: Just normal.
JM: Normal routine flights there. Day and night or just —
PW: No, all night stuff and we took a lot of Polish people as extras on flights prior to them taking over the — on their own flights. You see, the Ger— the Polish airmen were complete for one air— for a particular aircraft. It would all be Polish, but before they did that we used to take them as second dickies and things like that, to get them trained and also to control them because they were a very uncontrollable lot, in the sense that their, their hatred for Germany was so great that there were rumours, and I think it happened, that after bombing in Germany they would go down at ground level and try and shoot at all the searchlights with the rear gunners but that was the sort of emotion that existed on that station and it was very prevalent.
JM: Yes so —
PW: But mostly I think of my flying is with 101 because that’s when the dramas started and I did have a couple of dramas.
JM: As in?
PW: Well, I was extremely lucky. In the first flight that we made we got attacked by a Focke-Wulf 190 over the, over the target, and we got hit a little bit and we hit him a little bit and he came back for a second attack on us. We fired at him again and we saw him — well, we saw him going past at the side of us after he flew to one side and another aircraft watching from the other side, flying parallel with us, saw the pilot bail out, so we were unofficially given the credit of having destroyed him, and it was a particularly nasty experience because we also got, we were hit in many places but none of us were personally hurt and we, we thought after that flight we wouldn’t last more than two or three more flights because it was so horrendous, you know. But then the second night, that was at a place called Schweinfurt. And we went to bomb Schweinfurt because they had a lot of production of ball bearings at factories which they needed for the for U-boats, and the U-boats were giving curry in the Atlantic at the time, and they thought if we could bomb the ball bearing factories the U-boats couldn’t go to sea and they couldn’t sink our ships. That was the sort of theory. But the second night was a night where I’ll always remember because over the target we were coned by searchlights. There would have been fifty of them at least and, er, an explosive, a shell, blew, blew us underneath us whilst we were on our bombing run and it completely destroyed all our hydraulics, and also we were hit with another bomb dropping from an aircraft above and we had about six feet of our wing tip broken off. And luckily our pilot, who was wonderful, managed to keep us stable and fortunately all our engines were OK, but we ended up with our bomb doors open with, with some incendiaries that we couldn’t release and, and we couldn’t come back and land normally. We had to come back and belly land because we had no wheels to put down, we had no flaps and we didn’t know even whether we’d make it because we, when we hit the ground we had all these incendiaries on board, but fortunately they dropped off and went off like fireworks while we skidded on the ground for about half a mile and then finally came to a stop, but we, we never thought that we would survive that night but we did. And, do you know, one of the first people to turn up afterwards while we waited for a crew wagon to pick us up was the Salvation Army canteen and they offered us cups of tea and cigarettes. Oh, they were wonderful and, er, but the emotional part of that is that I had to go into hospital for a short while and while I was there my crew went off with another gunner in my place and they never came back. Well they came back but they crash landed and were all killed so there was I, on my own, and the thing that, I suppose emotionally, and I never forget and it’s still with me, er, we shared a Nissan hut with two crews, our crew and another crew, so after my crew disappeared I was the only the one there with the other eight members of another crew. Two days later they disappeared so I was one, one person in a room of sixteen, in the middle of winter with nothing else to do, and the emotion, and knowing that all your crew were dead. And, er, you didn’t have group therapists in those days. You just had to put up with it and that’s sort of stuck with me ever since [sniff] mm.
JM: Goodness me and, and then they expected you to go off and just happily join a new crew and get on with it.
PW: Well, once, once you were — you were seen as a jinx. If you were a survivor of a dead crew nobody wanted you, er, but there were so many times when crews needed other people that I was eventually put with another crew and within a few days we were all good mates and I, we spent the rest of our tour as a crew very happily. Yes.
JM: And is that the crew — and that crew was also all —
PW: They were all English.
JM: English. Which crew was it that the —
PW: Well the pilot of my first crew was a Sergeant Roy Dixon and, er, I didn’t know until later that the night that he died his commission came through as a pilot officer. He was just a sergeant before and he also got the Distinguished Flying Medal. And I have a photograph here of our aircraft when it landed I could give to you if you like.
JM: That would be very interesting to see that.
PW: Incidentally, in the photograph because of security reasons they ob— obliterated the two aerials.
JM: Of course yes, yes.
PW: Yes. That was, er, that was life but it was tough because our losses and, in fact, at Nuremburg we lost five aircraft. That’s a lot of aircraft in one squadron.
JM: That’s a lot. That’s a huge amount, yes. At least from all those subse— those first two missions were the first two that really —
PW: Blooded us.
JM: Yes, well and truly, and then from there on in you, you and your crew stayed intact for the rest of the course of the — all your other subsequent missions, which is so pleasing given such a horrendous, horrendous start for you. Yes indeed. And, um, and then on that basis I guess nothing compared with those early experiences from 300 and 115 really?
PW: No, no, no, they were much easier. I mean, you couldn’t go on and you couldn’t get away with what we got away with there more than once I’m sure, but, er, and luckily by the time we landed from the flight, because we were flying with our bomb doors open and no flaps and so forth we landed when, after everyone else had gone, had landed. Sometimes, or very often, when you got back to your aerodrome there were twenty other aircraft waiting to land and you hung around for perhaps an hour before it was your turn to land but by the time we got home we were about an hour late —
JM: You were a straggler.
PW: And we went straight in but we weren’t allowed to land on the runway. We had to land on the grass which really was good because it was wet and soaking and —
JW: Made it slippery [unclear]
JM: And flame-wise it was good and we didn’t — we anticipated we might blow up because of the bombs we still had on board but they dropped off instantly, fortunately, and by the time we came to a halt — and I don’t think there was much left in the petrol tanks [slight laugh]. But on our first trip I might have mentioned that the — when we were attacked he hit one of our fuel tanks and set it on fire but we were able to extinguish it with an extinguisher system that they had in the aircraft, which is wonderful. And one of the big, one of the big loss reasons — there were two reasons we lost a lot of aircraft, one was collisions, because when you had seven or eight hundred aircraft all going within half an hour of bombing a place you had to be more, more careful than ever of bumping into anyone else and the only times you could see them was when it was moonlight. Other times, all you could see was the red, red exhausts. The exhausts of the Merlin engines are red hot and the only thing, that’s the only thing you could see on a flying, plane flying alongside you, but you had the rear gunner, the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator and the bomb aimer all looking because they didn’t have anything else to do until they got to the targets, you see. I mean, the bombers would — the air gunners were looking for fighters but the others were also looking for fighters but as well to make sure you weren’t bumping into any aircraft and we had a couple of near misses. But that was the way things were.
JM: That’s right. Right and with, with this crew, um, you stayed together right through in 300 and 115. Did you stay together for the post-war stuff as well?
PW: Yes. Yes. The war finished in, well in May and then in August we were going to go out of the Far East because Japan was still, still active in the Far East but then in August of that year the war ended in Japan, so we never went but we were kept as a squadron. The Air Force kept a fairly strong force of Lancasters and Halifaxes for at least two years and one of the reasons, probably never written in history, but England was frightened of Russia coming west and we, I think the Government, decided we’d better stay powerful, so I didn’t get de-mobbed for two years after the war had finished. But by then of course I was a gunnery leader in 15 Squadron but we had very, very little to do and very boring in the end.
JM: Yes, so you were actually doing what? Training flights or —
PW: Training flights and things like that. And, er, when the immediate war finished in Europe though we were quite busy. We would fly to France and pick up released prisoners of war. The Americans flew them from wherever in Germany, and Italy, and around there to France and then the Royal Air Force used the Lancs and Halifaxes to fly them back to England. And I, I think we had seventy thousand prisoners we managed to get back. Then after that we flew out to Italy to bring similar prisoners of war who’d been stuck in Italy. We flew them back to England. And we loved those trips because we’d never been abroad and it was the first time we’d flown into a place where it was really hot weather and we could buy apricots and peaches. [laugh]
JM: Because again you were flying in, in spring summer sort of by this stage so —
PW: Yes and really the gunners were really only like only flight lieutenants, yes.
JM: Because you actually had no —
PW: Nothing to do except being sort of stewards for the people and of course it was very uncomfortable where they could sit down in the aircraft wherever they could find a spot.
JM: Well that’s right because I presume they tried to put as many people as possible onto those flights to maximise the, the value of each trip so to speak.
PW: Yes. That’s right. It took about five or six hours to get from Italy back to England and that’s a long time for people not in very good condition.
JM: Well because a lot of them would have had injuries, um, sickness and being in prisoner of war camps they would have been in pretty poor shape generally I would assume.
PW: And, er, quite a lot of them had been originally before the war out in India and they were on their way back to Europe in 1940, ‘41 I guess, and they got caught in North Africa and from there they were taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to Italy, so some of them hadn’t seen England since 1935.
JM: Goodness me.
PW: Yes and there was one, there was one old tough old fella there and we put him up in the nose so he could see the white cliffs of Dover and we flew — he started crying. He couldn’t, couldn’t resist. It was very emotional.
JM: He couldn’t not [emphasis].
PW: No.
JM: Goodness me. When you went did you — was it like a day trip for you in as much in that you went straight back in, loaded the servicemen, and then flew straight back out again or did you fly in and have a day off?
PW: Oh we always had a day off.
JM: Day off, right, OK. So you actually got to see the immediate surrounds of the airfields where you flew in then?
PW: Yes, yes.
JM: What memories do you — any particular experiences that stand out there?
PW: [laugh] Funnily enough, funnily enough, um, the first time we went in it was a place called Pomigliano and it was very much a basic aerodrome, and on the end of the runway was a local road, and when we went in the first time we saw a horse and cart [slight laugh] going across just as we were going in and we missed him fortunately. That’s one thing I remember. The other thing was that, you know, being young and, and flippant, we were only what? 19 or 20 years old. We all liked to smile at the local girls but they all had to be chaperoned and, er, they would always have a mother or father or a brother with them so we had to be very careful there. The other thing is that the fruit that we had never seen before, oh it was beautiful and, er, also, you wouldn’t believe it, but even then the, the Italians were flogging watches, you know, wrist watches, and we’d never seen, we’d never seen this sort of post-war stuff that the Italians were doing and, er, funnily enough, and I suppose it’s OK to say this, but our navigator had a girlfriend and he bought her a watch, and because of customs finding out, he put the watch inside a condom and then put it inside an oil filter in the aircraft until we’d got back to base. So whether, whether he got oil in the watch I don’t know but that was one of the funny things that happened. You were asking for unusual memories and that was one of them [slight laugh]
JM: Yes, gosh that’s — it would have been interesting to know whether he got it out in one piece or not undamaged. Yes and so you had those flights and then subsequent to that you had the Manna flights as well?
PW: Yes.
JM: And how many runs would you have done?
PW: I think we only did only about three.
JM: Right.
PW: Yes, and the first time we went over we had to come back because the airfield or the — I think it was a sports ground, where it had been arranged that we should go and drop, it was full of people and we realised that we would, we’d be bombing people with tins of flour and potatoes and things like that, so we came back and waited until the Germans cleared the thing and then we went in and dropped the food. We weren’t very accurate because we’d never been trained and one lot went into the greenhouses. That didn’t appeal to them very much. But you saw people on, on the roof tops waving sheets and clothes and things just to welcome us because we had to go in at ground level. And one thing that I remember one of the last trips we made was on the VE, er, VE night when there was to be a big celebration in the, in the mess, have a party to celebrate the end of the war, and we had flown so low that we evidently hit the branch of a tree because when we got back we found our bomb door, when we opened it, had a big scar in it and it was a piece of tree in it and so our ground crew were very upset because they were going to miss the party because they had to repair it overnight [slight laugh]. Isn’t it funny how you remember these little things.
JM: Yes, absolutely. And so were your trips there all to the same place in — when you were doing these drops?
PW: Yes.
JM: Which was where?
PW: It was Juvincourt in France and Pomigliano which is virtually I think Naples, in Italy. Yeah, they were was the only two places we went.
JM: The Manna drops I’m talking about.
PW: Oh, the Manna drops. No, I think, I think two were to The Hague. I think one was Amsterdam or Rotterdam. It’s very vague now, yes. I have a photograph of, of stuff being dropped whilst we were doing training in England. We did train for a few days to know how to do it and I’ve got a photograph if it’s any use to you.
JM: Yes, we’ll have a look at that afterwards. Thank you. That would be very interesting. And so then, um, with 115 I believe there were a couple of notable planes in that squadron. Were you ever, um, did you ever hear, were you ever close to any of those pl— notable planes or just —
PW: Well, it was an unusual squadron, um, because with the development of radar we were able to, we were able to go and bomb and have the bombs released from a ground station instead of ourselves and we were able then — I think our last trip, I think it was to Hamburg or somewhere and we were able to bomb half a mile from the front line British troops, and there was a bridge or something they wanted bombed and, and, er, I can tell you now. Can you just pause for a second? [pause] To The Hague and one to Rotterdam. That is food dropping. Then we went to Juvincourt to pick up prisoners, ex-prisoners or war, two trips there, and the last was to Brussels and then we went to Eng— to Europe after, to Italy, Operation Dodge it was called. We went to — oh, Bari but it was actually I think it was Pomigliano. Bari is, is the capital of — it’s on the Adriatic side of Italy. And, er, after that that was the end of our really useful work.
JM: But you were saying about [unclear] the, um, with the bombing with the — from the ground the — that’s using the G coordinates is it?
PW: It was called, um, it was called G2 I think. We flew in formation of three and, er, only one of the aircraft had the equipment on board and as soon as he dropped his bombs we, we dropped visually on his bombs. We saw his going. We knew they were due to go and as soon as he felt his go he pressed a button and we would release ours.
JM: Right and which —
PW: Hamburg I think it was.
JM: Hamburg. [background noise of pages turning] I’m trying to think back. ’45.
PW: Yes. 115. Just April ’45. Just one month before the end of the war. ‘Intense accurate heavy flak,’ I notice here. So that was at Bremen, not Hamburg, I beg your pardon.
JM: Right.
PW: Bremen and we were damaged by flak. It was very, very accurate. But sometimes, you know, you’d feel a bump then — well we didn’t knew where it came from but when you got back home you might find a few holes in your fuselage and, er, on one occasion, it’s rather amusing, the only bloke who got damaged was our bomb aimer and he got, he got damaged. He got a piece of shrapnel into his bottom [slight laugh], not seriously, but he was the only one who was hurt. But frostbite was a problem for the gunners and that was what put me into hospital, um, when they went off with another gunner. It was at Ludford Magna. I’d got a lot pain. It wasn’t severe but it was enough to stop me because you had to be one hundred per cent fit before they’d allow you to fly. If there was anything slightly wrong with you they used one of the spares to take your place. Particularly important was the breathing because, you see, up at above ten thousand feet you had to go onto oxygen, and one of the reasons why the losses were so great with rear gunners was it took so long to get out of a turret, if you had to get out quickly, because if he was on oxygen he’d have to disconnect, then find a bottle of, a bottle of portable oxygen, connect that up then [emphasis] get out of his — and what? He had four pairs of gloves on and, and trying to get out was hopeless. I would say two or three minutes at the earliest he could need to try to get out a rear turret and in the meantime, of course, by then it could be too late. And on that trip to Augsburg that I mentioned we got hit, as well as damaging our hydraulics, er, the bottom floor of the aircraft was blown out and the rear door, which we used for getting in and out of it, was blown out as well so how we, how we got back I don’t know to this day. And he, and Sergeant Roy Dixon, our pilot, he was all of twenty years old. You know, when you think of it —
JM: Amazing, amazing.
PW: So I, so I have a lucky star.
JM: You have indeed and were you a mid-upper gunner most of the time?
PW: Most of the time I was mid upper, on a few trips I was rear gunner. Most of the time I was mid- upper, yes, yes.
JM: So you would have been able to —
PW: Oh that’s an easier place to get in and out of. It doesn’t quite get so bitterly cold because you got a little bit of heat coming back. The people at the front were warmed by the engines. They had a warming system and so forth but the, the rear gunner was the coldest of all.
JM: That’s right.
PW: And I might mention one of the big losses was that the Germans introduced a very clever idea, instead of firing from wing guns, they put a forty millimetre cannon into the fuselage pointing upwards, forty-five degrees, and they would come up underneath and fire at us, and a forty mill— cannon you only need a few things to set the petrol on fire and that would be the end of the aircraft but, you see, we couldn’t see them because we couldn’t look down. The Americans had a belly gunner but we didn’t. We had nothing. We were blind. That’s right.
JM: So that’s why quite a lot of losses were due to that experience.
PW: Yes.
JM: Yes and with, um, your crew after the war did you maintain contact?
PW: No, no. Well you see we came out to Australia two years after I retired from the — well I was demobbed from the RAF and, er, they were all scattered all over the place. We sent Christmas cards but they eventually disappeared. I never kept up after I left, left England in May ’49.
JM: May ’49.
PW: With a three month old baby.
JM: Right. OK.
PW: And when we got on board, on board the migrant ship, the people at the top of the gangway they said, ‘OK Mr Watson you go down that end of the ship and Mrs Watson and the baby you go up that end.’ So three weeks of the trip we were separated. Of course we met during the day but at night — but of course instead of two people in the cabin we had four because they were — anyway we were very lucky to have got that migrant ship, very lucky.
JM: And that was May ’49, so coming, stepping back a little bit, so you were demobbed in, um, ’47 so between, er, from the time you were demobbed did you work or —
PW: Yes, I went back to the company that was training me as an engineer.
JM: Where was that?
PW: In Cardiff.
JM: Cardiff right.
PW: Yes and [slight laugh] I was earning, I was earning five shillings a week, would you believe it. It’s one of those things, like an apprenticeship. I think they called it an articled pupillage? Anyhow, my boss was a wonderful man because in the meantime I had fallen in love with a lovely girl and wanted to get married but on going back to getting back to getting fifteen shillings a week or five shillings a week I couldn’t do that and he smiled at me and said, ‘Look, you get married and I’ll see that you’re alright.’ And he did [slight laugh] and I was with that girl for fifty-eight years and she died in 2004.
JM: Right, right.
PW: Yes and her best friend had lost her husband, and she and her late husband, and Audrey my wife and I had been friends for forty years, and when Audrey died Ruth, the other, the widow, and I got together and we’re together now. And it’s been twelve very happy years.
JM: Very good.
PW: And that’s her there.
JW: That’s her there. That’s right. And so you got married and then made the decision to come to Australia. What prompted that decision?
PW: Er, well first of all I had developed asthma. I’d had a little bit of it as a kid but it came, it came back as a post-war thing I think and somebody said, ‘Why don’t you go to a warm climate?’ Not, not only that I was in an industry that was going to be nationalised, and everyone was very depressed, and even in 1949 rationing was still on. You still had to ration petrol and that sort of thing. And Audrey, my wife, had an uncle, who was very prominent in Australia, and he came to London on a conference and while he was there he came down to see his sister, who was my — was Audrey’s mother, and said, ‘Look if you come to Australia I can assure you we can get you a job and we need new migrants.’ That’s how it all started and never looked back.
JM: Never looked back. No, so obviously —
PW: And our three-month old baby is now sixty-seven and we produced as Aussie but she died in a car accident when she was sixteen. It’s one of those awful things that you have to put up with. So that’s my story as an air gunner.
JM: Yes and that’s — and when you came, when you migrated did you come here to Sidney?
PW: No, sorry, we migrated to Perth.
JM: Perth right.
PW: Yes. We were there for seven years and then I got a job with Caltex Oil as an engineer and I was there for thirty-two years. Not in Perth but a couple of years after I joined them, er, they promoted me to a manager of an installation in Adelaide, and so we moved to Adelaide and we were there for ten years, and after penny died ( she was killed in Adelaide) the company said, ‘Why don’t you come to Sidney and start again.’ And my wife was a very plucky mother and she was fretting terribly and though she resisted coming she knew it was the best thing to do, so we did it, and that was 1967 and we’ve been here ever since.
JM: And did you come here to Contagh or — straight away?
PW: No we were three months in — the company had a flat in Martin Place, Martin, no not Martin. Oh I forget the name of it. Anyhow, Win—
JM: Oh, OK.
PW: And we were there —
JM: Market Street.
PW: Market Street. That’s it, yes. Right opposite the park.
JM: A brilliant park there.
PW: Yes and whilst we were there Audrey was looking for a place. She was the searcher for a place to come and live and she was offered this place and it had been on the market for five months because, as you can appreciate, young people can’t afford to live here and old people don’t want it because it’s so steep but at the time you buy you never think you’re going to get old, do you? So anyhow we bought this place for, would you believe, thirty-five thousand dollars [laugh] but that’s how things were.
JM: That’s how things were back then. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right, yes. So right and as I say — well you just stayed with Caltex through to, until you finished?
PW: Well, I was sort of given a package. When computers came in and they wanted to get rid of numbers and all the oldies, I was fifty-nine by then, they said, ‘Would you please go.’ Sort of thing.
PW: So I retired from there and I started a business of my own which I’m still running.
JM: Oh OK, right. Oh very good, very good, and that’s just a sort of consultancy business I presume?
PW: Yes, yes. It’s to do with finance broking, yes, but for twelve years, the first twelve years after I retired, I actually had a pump agency for an American company and I eventually sold that and with the proceeds I started a broking company ,which I’m still running.
JM: Still running. Goodness me. And going right back to the very beginning when you enlisted, way back in ’43, what was the decision, was there any decision in particular that directed you to Air Force rather than Navy or Army?
PW: Yes, yes. I’d always, you know, wanted to fly and so you vol— put your name down as a volunteer and I guess they kept your name on until you were old enough to be called up. And, and they said, ‘Are you still keen?’ And I said, ‘yes’ and I went up to Birmingham for a test, a medical test, and back to Cardiff and they said, ‘You’re fit enough. We’ll call you up next week.’ And they did [laugh]. It was a great disappointed when we were told we had no choice.
JM: To be an air gunner.
PW: Nobody wanted to be an air gunner. They called it the lowest form of animal life in air crew. But still there we are.
JM: And what — you said you’d always wanted to fly. What was the attraction, of just being —
PW: Well I think, um, the Battle of Britain and the success of our, of our planes then inspired young people like myself and, you know, you were going through the romantic age of what do you want to be when you know you’ve got to go? And Air Force was more appealing than the Army or the Navy. Yes, my sister went into the Navy. Ruth, my partner, she was a WREN. Yes, so we were all in it. And, er, actually we were, before that, in 1941, it’s the only time that Cardiff ever got bombed badly. A few times, I remember there was one bad raid and I was stuck in Cardiff while the raid was on but it was OK. But then I had to walk back to my little village, which was seven miles away, in the dark because the power, all the power had gone off. When I got there I found all the windows and doors of my house had been blown in and what had happened was that a stray bomb, because I mean who would want to bomb a little village, a stray bomb the Germans had dropped about a hundred yards on the other side of the road, on the golf course that we faced, and it had blew it all in but my family had gone to the back of the house into an air raid shelter that they had there and they survived. But we had to evac— evacuate our house because it was unliveable until it was repaired. So we went down to a place called Llanelli, which is about fifty or hundred miles west of there, put up with some friends and eventually got back into our house.
JM: Right. And your family had built the air raid shelter in the garden?
PW: They actually converted the back veranda with steel and stuff and, you know, and when the raid was on it as only my mum and my sister. I was in Cardiff, and my eldest sister, and my elder sister sorry, and my two sisters and my mother and another cousin, who was expecting a baby, but she lived in London and came back to Cardiff, came down to Cardiff to have her baby because she thought it was safer and she ran into — but they survived.
PM: Yes, yes but even in Cardiff though and out, and I appreciate that you’re saying your village was seven miles out of Cardiff, but even then the, um, the normal procedure was to build some sort of — at that time was to build an air — some sort of shelter?
PW: Something safe. I think the main thing was with those sort of things was that falling beams from your house or your roof. You know, I mean, you hear of people hiding under the dining room table because that was protected but, um, and some people put an air raid shelter in their, in their garden, and the Government provided a galvanised iron sort of thing. It was a very easy thing to do but it was the safe, the safest thing you could do.
JM: Mm, yes. So that would have — that was just another sort of —
PW: And it was the only bomb that had ever dropped in the village. Because, you know, I would imagine the like, having the experience later on, you sometimes had the odd bomb that didn’t drop off and you went and released it and it didn’t matter where it fell so long as you got rid of it. So I think that’s probably what happened. But of course the local press said that they were after the, you know, they put all the experienced people have said, ‘Oh yes, well they knew something we didn’t.’ It was wonderful.
JM: Oh dear yes, yes, but as you say that was the only time that Cardiff was actually —
PW: Heavily, severely bombed as a city. Other times it had bits and pieces blown, er, thrown at it but this was the Baedeker [?] raid but it wasn’t successful in the sense that it wasn’t concentrated, it was spread out, but what had happened was that they — it had effected the power supply and everything was in dark and, you know, in January that’s really dark and when I had to walk home seven miles in complete darkness —
JM: And that was January ’43 was it or ‘42?
PW: ’43,
JM: ’43, yes.
PW: Sorry no, ’41, yeah, two years before I went — I was only a school boy.
JM: Right, right, so ’41. Mm, gosh. So that was a very, much of a little bit of a taste of what London was experiencing and all the other cities in England , so —
PW: Yes, yes. I think what had happened was that they stopped bombing London. I think they thought they couldn’t do any more with London and I think they were going to concentrate on shipping ports to try and starve England. That was — they really wanted to starve us into submission, you see, with their U-boats and they were very successful and very close to succeeding I think at times. But anyhow Cardiff is a port, you see. Cardiff is very much like Newport, our Newport here. They produce steel, they produce coal and about the same size but there you are.
JM: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes, and in terms — you mentioned you didn’t maintain any contacts, er, long term ongoing contacts with your former crew members.
PW: No.
JM: Did you, were you aware of any associations, um, to link up with, you know, in Australia here at any time? Did you became a member of RSL or join in and then subsequently — about the only other organisation would have been the Odd Bods Association because you came here to Sidney in ‘67 I think so —
PW: Oh I’d been in the RSL right from day one and of course I joined 460 Squadron old boys here because although I didn’t operate from 460 I was sent to the Squadron and we used their aircraft for training on this thing called Village Inn. Yes, and actually for me it was six months of very easy living because I didn’t have to fly on operations. By then I was an officer and you were in — and Binbrook was a peacetime built ‘drome so the facilities were very, very good.
JM: Yes, so that was sort of a, a far more peaceful, less stressful, sort of period of time for you rather than the stress of the tour?
PW: Oh there was no stress at all whatsoever. In fact it was very easy living. That was the intention to try and defuse you and, you know, so — by the way my second pilot, who I joined after the raid when Roy Dixon was killed, we kept an association afterwards and he, he left Bomber Command and went into the Fleet Air Arm, and finally he was retired, and he came to my wedding in 1946, er, and but then he went out to North Africa doing something with the shipping company. We kept on for a little while but we’ve lost — I’d have liked to have kept — I regret now that I didn’t.
JM: But communication back then is not what it is today.
PW: No, I think that’s right.
JM: I mean between — only being able to post letters that took weeks to, to get anywhere and you couldn’t make phone calls back then because they cost so much money between Australia and, and the UK and, er, not everyone had a phone back then you know so —
PW: But I always felt though I’d like to have kept in touch with Roy Dixon’s family, you know, but, um, I mean I was — although I was in hospital I wasn’t serious in hospital but I was just not fit enough for flying because of this frostbite thing but, um, when Roy was killed in Norfolk he was able to be buried back in his home, near Doncaster I think it was, and but they wouldn’t allow me to go to his funeral because of the, ‘Oh, why you? Why are you alive and my son is dead?’ Sort of thing. I can understand that and of course you also had the problem with people who couldn’t take, couldn’t take it and they refused to fly after their first two or three missions. Their nerves went. And they were very, very severley treated by the Air Force. They were branded LMF, called lack of moral fibre, and they were sent off nasty jobs and got rid of.
JM: Very difficult times.
PW: Oh very difficult. I think fear, fear kept you together and, and doing the right thing by your mates, you know, kept you together.
JM: And I think, from what I understand, that’s what they used that glue to keep those crews together to, to ensure that moral support within the crew all the time.
PW: Well, one of the things that I haven’t mentioned but it is significant is, how do you choose your crew? And the simple answer is that, er, when you were, when you were — during training and you’d finished, everyone was ready to be put together as a crew, they put you all into a hangar one afternoon and there was probably hundreds of us, after we’d finished our training, the pilots, navigators, bomb aimers and so on and they said, ‘Listen boys you’ve got to form yourself into crews. Go and have a yarn with each other and see if you can match up friendships.’ And that’s all it was and it was the most successful system the Air Force had ever used because you were then with people who’d picked you or you picked them and, you mean, you might see one bloke and say, ‘I like that bloke. I wonder if he needs an air gunner.’ Or a pilot might say, ‘Have you got a crew yet?’ If he liked the look of you and I said, ‘No’ or ‘Yes’ and that’s how it went, and you ended up with seven crew, seven members of the crew. One or two of them might have been officers but it didn’t matter. You were all crew together.
JM: Yes, that’s an interesting approach to the way —
PW: Some didn’t like it. It was a very sensible thing to do.
JM: Yes, well I guess it was from the point of view that they knew they were going to keep the crews together so it was important for the crews to each like each other.
PW: Yes, exactly, yeah. And that also built a camaraderie I suppose so you never let your crew down. You were always aware that without you they could be in trouble and each one, perhaps less with wireless operators and bomb aimers, but with pilots and navigators — well, if they didn’t have a good navigator you were in trouble because you’d get picked off. If you didn’t have a good air gunners who picked up enemy aircraft when you should be shooting at him, you know, you realise how important each job was. And, er, and also I found that we were attacked many times but if they find out that you, if you fired at them quickly they would leave you alone because it was awful for them to come in from behind with — you’ve got four guns in the rear turret and two in the mid-upper and you’re firing bout twelve rounds a minute and he’s got to fly into that to shoot at you so he never came in behind you, he came in on a curve. Now, if, if you saw him coming in on a curve and you timed it right and then you turned the same way as he was going he couldn’t get around to shoot you, so if you, if you kept your nerve and did the corkscrew at the right time he’d never get you. Interesting.
JM: Very interesting.
PW: But of course doing a corkscrew when you’re in several hundred aircraft, right?
JM: It was a little bit difficult.
PW: Collision was awful.
JM: Yes. Again comes back to the skill of the pilot and to the lesser extent the navigator.
PW: And more often as not he still had his load on board, his bombs. Never mind. I don’t know how many tons, I suppose four or five tons. I’ve no idea but it was a very heavy load.
JM: It was a very heavy load to take but Lancasters and Hallies were all carrying at that time.
PW: Your husband would be on Hallies I would think?
JM: Not my husband, my father.
PW: Pardon.
JM: My father.
PW: Your father rather.
JM: On Hallies yes. So, yes. So that’s some amazing memories that you’ve shared with me now. I really appreciate your time and, um, your thoughts.
PW: Well, thank you very much.
JM: But there’s probably time to wrap up at this stage. I presume there’s nothing else that you, no particular thoughts that you want to mention. Any other things that you — you mention you do speeches for Probus Clubs so was there anything from those speeches we haven’t covered or —
PW: No I think what we’ve covered is what, what formed my thing. A lot of people ask questions because they had parents or uncles or brothers who said, ‘Did you know Sergeant Jones, so and so.’ You know. But it was a big force, the bomber force, we didn’t — but there we are. I’ve had a very lucky life, very lucky, and lucky in that sense, you know, but and also I was one of the luckiest — we’re not recording now are we?
PM: Yes.
PW: Oh. Well it doesn’t matter but, er, one of the fortunate things was that during the depression of 1935 to ‘38, ‘39 my father retained his job, which was pretty good in those days, which enabled me to be given a decent education and that’s held me in good stead all my life. And that’s why I, one felt that with the education that I had, to have to be an air gunner was a bit degrading because, you know, we were all pipe-dreaming at the time about it. As I said before we wanted to fly Spitfires, the glamour of that, being shot at [laugh].
JM: Yes, indeed, indeed.
PW: But we made wonderful friendships and some of the bravery of some of those fellas was quite incredible. You’ve probably read about it all.
JM: Did any of the — your pilot wasn’t awarded any, um, given any award for bringing that plane home in the way he did?
PW: Yes. He was awarded the DFM but he didn’t know it until he died, you know, when he died it was the same day that his commission came through. So he got the DFM not the DFC. DFM is for non-commissioned, DFC was for commissioned. I got a Polish, Polish award. I forget what it was called now, something, er, but I never bothered with it but it was just some sort of service medal, you know, but there you are.
JM: Very good. Aright well I think we’ll wrap it up if you’re happy with that?
PW: Yes. What’s the time?
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWatsonPHC170123, PWatsonPHC1701
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Watson
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
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01:05:04 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jean Macartney
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-23
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Watson was born in South Wales and joined the Royal Air Force in 1943. He wanted to be a pilot but there was a surplus of pilots so he became an air gunner. He crewed-up and flew with 101 Squadron initially, a special duties squadron, and he explains they took an extra crew member who had radio equipment, Airborne Cigar, to interfere with German systems. He describes the first two flights being memorable; on the first night his aircraft was shot by a Focke-Wulf. On the second night, during a bombing trip to Schweinfurt the aircraft was coned by searchlights and was badly damaged by a shell and bomb being dropped from above. He also describes the squadron’s role in D-Day. He later transferred to 300 squadron, a Polish Squadron, to help train the Polish crews. He completed 33 operations. He describes the Operation Manna drops and Operation Exodus, picking up prisoners of war. He was eventually de-mobbed in 1947, by which time he was a Flight Lieutenant gunnery leader. He talks about the discomforts of flying but also the camaraderie of the crews and his distress at losing a crew. They didn’t return when they went on a flight without him. After being de-mobbed Peter returned to a job in engineering but emigrated to Australia in 1949 with his wife and baby.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Kiel Canal
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
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
101 Squadron
115 Squadron
15 Squadron
300 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
crewing up
fear
Fw 190
Gee
grief
military ethos
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
radar
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Wyton
searchlight
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/3574/LSandersDS1869292v1.2.pdf
c6d8981948ad019c01c5ab80b2140bb0
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
Sanders, David
D S Sanders
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. The collection contains an oral history interview with Sergeant David Stuart Sanders (1925 - 2022, 1869292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, engineering documentation, operation schedules, a personal record of all his operations, a Dalton computer, a number of target and reconnaissance photographs. David Saunders was a flight engineer on 619 Squadron and 189 Squadron at RAF Strubby and RAF Fulbeck in 1944-45.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Sanders and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sanders, DS
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
David Sanders's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and, flight engineers
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Wales
Belgium--Brussels
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Flensburg
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Munich
Germany--Sassnitz
Germany--Steinfurt (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Netherlands--Veere
Norway--Bergen
Norway--Tønsberg
Poland--Gdynia
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-10-06
1944-10-11
1944-10-14
1944-10-15
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-10-30
1944-11-21
1944-11-22
1944-11-26
1944-11-27
1944-12-09
1944-12-12
1944-12-18
1944-12-19
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-03-03
1945-03-04
1945-03-05
1945-03-06
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-12
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-20
1945-03-21
1945-03-22
1945-03-23
1945-03-24
1945-04-23
1945-04-25
1945-04-26
1945-05-06
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten logbook
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
LSandersDS1869292v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the operational career of flight engineer David Sanders from 5 July 1944 to 29 May 1945. He joined 619 Squadron at RAF Strubby on 28 September 1944, from where he flew Lancasters on two daylight and three night time operations before being transferred to 189 Squadron at RAF Fulbeck in November 1944. From 21 November 1944 he flew a further four daylight and 14 night time operations, again in Lancasters. The majority of the targets his operations were over Germany, plus two to Poland, two to the Netherlands, and two Norway: Bergen, Bohlen, Braunschweig, Bremen, Dortmund, Flensburg, Gdynia, Hamburg, Heimbach, Karlsruhe, Lutzkendorf, Munich, Police, Sassnitz, Steinfurt, Tønsberg, Veere. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Carter and Flight Lieutenant Barron. Later log book entries are about Operation Exodus (Brussels).
1661 HCU
189 Squadron
619 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Bardney
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Fulbeck
RAF St Athan
RAF Strubby
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/3632/PWoodC1601.1.jpg
e6b2e00e8424a1959078b6e0bbf67556
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/183/3632/AWoodC160325.2.mp3
46024566658ed36fd321770c6bf3a020
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
Wood, Colin
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Colin Wood (1922 - 2021, 1451225 Royal Air Force), his log book, service record and seven photographs including pictures of some of his crew. Colin Wood trained in Canada and flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. His crew were:
428289 - Andy A Anderson, pilot
1593692 - D Evans, flight engineer
1451225 - Colin Wood, navigator
1564707 - G H McElhone, bomb aimer
1873924 - P Thomas Tobin, wireless operator
1584474 - Vernon R Grogan, mid upper gunner
1595586 - R O Day, rear gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Colin Wood 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
2016-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wood, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: Right. This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre. I’m with Warrant Officer Colin Wood, a navigator on 106 and 83 Squadrons and we’re at his home in Sheffield on Friday the 25th of March. Colin, I know we’re in Sheffield. Are you from Sheffield originally?
CW: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah. Born, born locally.
CW: Born and bred.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Brothers. Sisters.
CW: Yeah. Brother. He was in the air force. He was down as a pilot, to train as a pilot and then they were short of coppersmiths and they commandeered him to be a coppersmith. So, but he finished up on training as a pilot in South Africa. So he got something. By the time he’d done he’d more or less run out of time.
GR: Right. Yeah.
CW: Too late.
GR: Any other brothers or sisters or just that?
CW: No.
GR: And what did, what did your mum and dad do? Were they —
CW: They were, they worked in the steelworks. Well, not my mother [laughs]
GR: No. Yeah.
CW: And, yeah.
GR: So, yeah. So you went to school in Sheffield.
CW: Yes.
GR: And I think you were telling me earlier on before we switched the recorder on that when you decided to join the RAF or volunteered was it, was there five? Five members of your class.
CW: Yes. Yes. The local school. Sharrow Lane School. And we had the top boy in Sheffield. I should mention that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And he became a pilot and unfortunately he was the only who was [pause] didn’t manage it.
GR: He didn’t get back. Did you decide, did you know all the, did you know each other?
CW: Oh yeah. Yeah.
GR: And had you all got together and said —
CW: No. No. Everybody was diff, everybody by themselves decided. Well, you was either the army or navy and I didn’t fancy. I used to play as a kid at being a wounded soldier. After the First World War.
GR: Right.
CW: And so I thought I don’t fancy that very much. I think if, if I happen to be lucky and a natural pilot I could take, I could take my turn as a natural pilot.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So I thought I’ll have a go at that. And that more or less decided that.
GR: Right. So what year would this be?
CW: Eh?
GR: When your class.
CW: When I, when I went to volunteer in the local Sheffield reception area it would be ’41.
GR: 19 yeah and —
CW: And then I went somewhere down south and met up again with some officers who quizzed me and all that. Then they gave me two shilling. Which was the king’s two shilling which in the First World War was one shilling.
GR: Was the king’s shilling. Yeah.
CW: And we got a rise to two shilling and, and then I was sent home then and I was [pause] they said they’d nowhere to train us. So that was it. I just had to wait ‘til, ‘til there was room to train us.
GR: Yeah. How long did you spend at home?
CW: I was, well probably six months while they found somewhere to train us.
GR: And what, what would you have been doing? Did you go back to school or —
CW: No. I went back to work.
GR: You went back, oh right. So we’ll backtrack. So when you said there’s five members of your class.
CW: Oh yes.
GR: They’d all left the class.
CW: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: It was just that we were all together and as it happened we all joined up separately.
GR: Yeah. So what work was you doing?
CW: Plumbing.
GR: Plumbing.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Oh so you weren’t in Sheffield’s steel industry like your dad.
CW: No. No.
GR: No.
CW: I didn’t fancy being inside like that. No.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Sooner be outside somewhere.
GR: Because what age would you have left school?
CW: Fourteen.
GR: Fourteen. And then gone into a plumbing apprenticeship or —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Exactly.
GR: And then as war broke out would you have been eighteen to volunteer or — ?
CW: The call up age when I was eighteen was nineteen. So at nineteen I would have been called up anyway.
GR: Yes.
CW: So I was eighteen and I knew I could take my pick and and choice. So that’s why I volunteered. Well, other things. But I decided to. To join up. Yeah.
GR: So at eighteen you could volunteer.
CW: Yes.
GR: And if you’d have said, and if this is just something just to clarify actually for a lot of people. So at eighteen obviously the Royal Air Force and I think the Submarine Service were voluntary.
CW: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: So, at the age of eighteen you could have volunteered for any of them two. Plus —
CW: Yeah.
GR: The army.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So if you wanted to go into the army at eighteen you could have said, ‘I want to go,’ and if you hadn’t have volunteered at the age of eighteen when you got to nineteen, on your nineteenth birthday you would have been called up. Is that right?
CW: No. Because the air force at the time said you belong to us.
GR: Yeah.
CW: You can’t go in the Merchant Navy.
GR: No. What I mean is if you hadn’t have volunteered.
CW: Yeah.
GR: For the RAF.
CW: Oh, I’d have been —
GR: So if you’d have done nothing.
CW: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: At the age of nineteen.
CW: I’d have been called up.
GR: Conscription.
CW: Yeah.
GR: In World War Two.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And you would have been said, right.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You’re off to the army. You’re off to the navy. Or whatever.
CW: Exactly. Yeah.
GR: I’ve got it. Yeah. So, volunteered for the Royal Air Force.
CW: Yeah.
GR: But then you waited six months. Went back and did some work.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And then what happened? What was, what —?
CW: Well –
GR: When you were finally called up for training.
CW: Yes. I was sent to, with a railway warrant to Lord’s Cricket Ground where I think the others, everybody went there.
GR: That’s right.
CW: To London.
GR: Yes. Yeah.
CW: Yeah. And lived in a big posh house there.
GR: Very nice. Wouldn’t do that these days would we down there?
CW: No.
GR: And I think, was it like two weeks of square bashing and something or —
CW: We were there about a month.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then I went to south coast. ITW.
GR: Yeah.
CW: I remember it now.
GR: Yeah. Training centre. And did you know at the time where you was going to be doing your training?
CW: No. No. No. I didn’t know what I was going to be. There were like four or five trades.
GR: Yeah.
CW: That, we were never in any way directed to one or the other. We all did the same training at ITW.
GR: Right. Yeah. Initial. Yeah. Initial training.
CW: Yeah.
GR: What, what did you want to be? Had you got — pilot?
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So after ITW did they then come to you and say —
CW: No. They estimated what kind of — I did fly a plane after I’d done ITW. I went to learn to fly a plane.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Which was a Tiger Moth. Which was the only way to travel really. It’s wonderful.
GR: I bet.
CW: And loop the loop and falling leaf and all that. It was lovely. And, you know at that age.
GR: Yeah.
CW: To just do that. And anyway after, they assessed us I suppose at that time. What I was like handling a plane and taking off and landing.
GR: Yeah.
CW: I suppose they put a mark down to what I was doing. How I was doing. And then I went back just [pause] I forget, I went to a holding unit in Manchester. A park there. Heaton Park.
GR: Heaton Park. Yeah.
CW: And I stayed there. Then I was sent to another place near Birmingham and playing at football and somebody broke my leg [laughs] So that put me in hospital for a while. And then, but then I got three weeks sick leave which was the usual and then, and then I still had to hang about until, until I was sent off to Canada. I went back to Heaton Park and from Heaton Park, Liverpool.
GR: Yeah.
CW: In the world’s worst boat. French ship called the Louis Pasteur, which pitched and tossed and never went flat.
GR: Oh dear.
CW: And everybody on board, including the captain I think, was sick.
GR: How did you feel about the fact that you would be doing your training in Canada?
CW: Well. We didn’t get to Canada because they’d got some, not a disease but some ailment in the camp we should have gone to so that, so the Americans in three or four days we got time arranged for us to go to one of their camps in Massachusetts. So we landed at New York and then disembarked from the Louis Pasteur, went across the river in a, in a ferry for some reason to get ready to go to north of, in America.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And somebody started singing there, “On Ilkley Moor bar t’at,” and everybody joined in. They were Welsh and Irish.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And everything. So I don’t know what Americans thought when they heard all the Yorkshire language being spoke. So then we went to near Massachusetts. Camp Myles Standish, who was a famous, was he an Indian fighter or something?
GR: Don’t know.
CW: Yeah.
GR: I don’t know.
CW: Yeah. And they called this camp after him.
GR: After him. Yeah.
CW: And so we spent three or four weeks there. And then we moved then onto the place we should have gone to in Canada. I can’t, I can’t remember where it was now.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then I went out to Rivers. Canadian Number 1 Navigation School. Just about a hundred mile west of Winnipeg.
GR: Yeah. I’m just looking in Colin’s logbook and it’s number, yeah Number 1 Canadian Navigation School, Rivers, Manitoba. And I think your first flight there was on July the 8th 1943.
CW: Was it?
GR: Yeah. Duty — first navigator. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So obviously you settled in Canada and from what I’ve spoke to other gentleman obviously training in Canada with no food shortages and —
CW: Exactly. Yeah.
GR: Was good.
CW: Yes. Good.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: How long did training last?
CW: Five months.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So —
GR: As, as, yeah navigation.
CW: I must say the last day was the best of all because some wise guy said while we’re going to be here five months. Every month payday, every payday we should all put money in a kitty and have a big booze up when it, when it’s all over and have a big meal.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Which we did.
GR: Well, I presume there was no shortages.
CW: No.
GR: No. No.
CW: No.
GR: So freshly qualified as a navigator when did you actually return to the UK?
CW: I’ll tell you when. It was, the middle day was the 28th of November across the, seven days across the Atlantic because it was my twenty first birthday [laughs]
GR: I see.
CW: And I was in this hammock.
GR: So you spent, spent your twenty first birthday.
CW: Yeah. In —
GR: On the North Atlantic
CW: Exactly. In the middle of the Atlantic. Hoping there were no submarines about.
GR: What ship were you on? Do you remember the ship coming back?
CW: Yeah. The Mauritania.
GR: Oh. The Mauritania.
CW: Yeah. Beautiful.
GR: Famous ship. Yes. Yeah.
CW: Yeah. Nobody sick there.
GR: No.
CW: Beautiful. Yeah.
GR: Because I think at one time that held a record for crossing the Atlantic. It was quite a fast ship wasn’t it?
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Big ship.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah. So I was going to say. So back to England and I’m just looking in your logbook and around February 1944 you were in Scotland.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah. Near Stranraer.
GR: Yeah.
CW: I forget what —
GR: Yeah.
CW: I don’t know what you called it now.
GR: Can’t pronounce it to be honest. West Freugh.
CW: West Freugh. Freugh.
GR: West Freugh.
CW: West Freugh.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So this was for further training.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
CW: We were flying still on [pause] bloody hell I’ve forgotten was what plane it was.
GR: Ansons.
CW: Ansons. That’s right. Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You hadn’t crewed up by then had you?
CW: No.
GR: This was all.
CW: No. No.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: No. No.
GR: Just further training. And progressing into April you were then at 29 OTU.
CW: Yeah. I’m not sure where that was. Oh. Bitteswell.
GR: Bitteswell.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: And there were about four. Four different places. Why they didn’t do it there. We kept moving on to other places.
GR: Yes.
CW: But there we are.
GR: And with a regular crew by then or —
CW: No.
GR: No. You were still —
CW: No. No. We, we’d never seen anybody who wasn’t training as a navigator at that time.
GR: Right.
CW: And then eventually we were taken in to a big hangar. Which happened to everybody. And they said they were, I don’t remember the number now but same number of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, rear gunners, wireless ops.
GR: And just told you to get on with it.
CW: And they said, ‘When you come out you’ll all be in a crew.’
GR: Tell me a bit about that then.
CW: Well, I don’t know. I finished up with an Australian pilot. A super, super guy.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Well they all were actually.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Aussies. I liked them.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And yes. And we picked up as I say a wireless op.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And rear gunner.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And bomb aimer.
GR: Bomb aimer. Mid-upper.
CW: He was a Scot.
GR: Yeah. Can you remember all the nationalities then? How many Australians were there? Just the pilot or —
CW: Just the pilot. Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah. Yes. He was a super bloke really.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And that was, was that Flying Officer Anderson?
CW: Well, he was sergeant. A flight sergeant then.
GR: Flight sergeant then.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yes. So crewed up.
CW: Yeah.
GR: What happened next?
CW: And then we went training. Still training.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Still training. Can’t remember where we went to really.
GR: Would it have been Heavy Conversion Unit?
CW: Yeah.
GR: To convert on to the four-engine bombers. Syerston.
CW: No. I think we went somewhere before that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: That was to go on to Stirlings.
GR: Winthorpe.
CW: Winthorpe was still training on —
GR: Yeah.
CW: Ansons I think.
GR: Yeah. Just checking the logbook.
CW: Oh Halifax.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Halifaxes.
GR: Stirlings.
CW: Oh. Was it?
GR: Yeah.
CW: But first was Halifaxes.
GR: Right.
CW: Which were still twin-engine for the pilot so he didn’t need the other two crew members.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: The flight engineer. He didn’t really need him because he was quite used to two engines anyway.
GR: Yeah.
CW: But when he stepped up to the next.
GR: That.
CW: Four engine.
GR: Yeah.
CW: He needed help to look after feeding in of petrol.
GR: And obviously that’s what Winthorpe would have been.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Because you were on Stirlings by then.
CW: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
GR: And Flight Sergeant Anderson was a pilot officer by then.
CW: Yes. Yeah. He stepped up. Yeah. Deserved it. Yeah.
GR: And then obviously after, yeah Heavy Conversion Unit, you did I think it’s about a week at 5 LFS at Syerston.
CW: Oh.
GR: Just a week there. On Lancasters.
CW: Oh yeah.
GR: At Number 5 Lancaster Finishing School.
CW: That’s right.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: When did you find out which operational base you would go to? How did that come about?
CW: They just said, ‘You’re going to 106 at Metheringham.’
GR: Yeah. So —
CW: And we went and there were two other crews landed at about the same day I think.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And we were all put in the same Nissen hut.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And we wondered, I wondered how we were all going to go on. If we were going to be as lucky as them or what. And then both, all three pilots made a flight with an experienced crew.
GR: Yes.
CW: And one of them, one of the other two pilots did not come back. So then we expected a new pilot to arrive to take over this old crew but they didn’t. They just took them and the disappeared. Took them off the station altogether.
GR: Right.
CW: Which, it was a bit surprising but I suppose that’s how they did it.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then we thought well who’d be first because our pilot was Albert Andrew Anderson and duly first on anything but he wasn’t.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And this other crew went and they never came back.
GR: So they went on the first operation.
CW: Yes.
GR: And didn’t come back.
CW: Yeah. The pilot came back from his original flight.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And he took his own crew and then we never heard again.
GR: So, of the three crews that landed.
CW: Yeah before a month was out we were —
GR: Just you.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Just you. Ok. And I am looking at your logbook again. You, you did your first training flight at Metheringham on the 12th of September and within two weeks you were flying on your first operation.
CW: Well, I’ve not really looked into that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. I’m just looking at the logbook again.
CW: Oh. Ok.
GR: 12th of September.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You’d arrived at Metheringham. Well, less than two weeks. The 23rd of September.
CW: Yeah.
GR: You were off to the Dortmund Ems Canal.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So what was the first operation like if you don’t mind me asking? You know, you’d done your training.
CW: Yes. Well we knew what we were in for because we’d experienced what had happened to others.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So we just hoped and prayed. Yeah.
GR: Because as a navigator did you go to a pre-op meeting?
CW: No.
GR: You didn’t have to plan the route out or anything like that?
CW: No.
GR: No.
CW: No.
GR: Right.
CW: No. I think everyone was, it’s wherever in Bomber Command I think the same happened. A briefing.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And a big screen across the, a big atlas or a map.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Or a chart probably. And a red line zigzagging across. Zigzagged because they didn’t want Germans to dead reckon ahead on our first track and say oh they must be going in that direction.
GR: Sounds like it. Yeah.
CW: So we dodged.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Dodged different. It made a bit more hard work.
GR: Yeah.
CW: But not much.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And so that’s how we set off on each flight.
GR: Yeah. And what was the first one like? You said, yeah you just prayed and hoped.
CW: Well.
GR: And did it go off alright at the Dortmund Ems because obviously the Dortmund ems canal over the years was a well-known target.
CW: Well I went five times in all. So, yeah but but I don’t think we ever did any damage to be honest. It was such a massive.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Thing. And I think 617 Squadron eventually dropped one of theirs.
GR: Big Tallboy.
CW: Yes
GR: Grand Slam
CW: Yeah.
GR: Bombs.
CW: Down. Just where it wanted to be. Right alongside it.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Which uprooted everything. Which was a big route for everything made in the Ruhr to get to the north coast.
GR: Yeah.
CW: To go on this canal.
GR: On the canal. Yeah.
CW: So if we could knock it out then they would be sending things by road.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And rail. Which took longer and cost more.
GR: I think Bomber Command first started bombing the Dortmund Ems Canal in 1940.
CW: Yeah. Well, there wasn’t, that meant they weren’t able to damage.
GR: No.
CW: That concrete was such that, you know, one bomb.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Just wouldn’t matter.
GR: And then you’d done within four days you’d done two more ops to Karlsruhe and Kaiserslautern.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And then —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Running into October 1944 I notice you went to the submarine pens at Bergen.
CW: Yeah. In Norway. Yes.
GR: Yeah.
CW: To try and help the navy really.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Damage the submarines if possible.
GR: Yeah. And I think again that was another one that 617 with their big bombs —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Went to —
CW: Were able to do.
GR: After you. Yeah. So how did the operations go? Oh yeah. I’m just looking again. Dortmund Ems. Dortmund Ems.
CW: Yeah. Well, actually apart from being there it was quite a good one for, for us because it was a short one.
GR: Yeah.
CW: It was just, only just the other side of Holland.
GR: Yes.
CW: And so you weren’t shattered or anything.
GR: Yeah.
CW: By a long distance or anything.
GR: Yeah. Yes. Because I’m looking again in the logbook and the Dortmund Ems Canal Roundtrip was four hours fifteen minutes.
CW: Yeah. That’s pretty good.
GR: Unlike on the 22nd of November you went to Trondheim and you were in the air eleven hours twenty five minutes.
CW: Yeah. Trondheim. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. So —
CW: Well that’s, on saying that well I think that I told you that the Met men got the wind velocity wrong. Totally wrong. It turned out to be, on my first check after ten minutes when you take a radar fix you could work out a wind velocity which to me, it was to me a hundred mile an hour and I think they had forecast twenty or twenty five or something like that. And we were a bit, a little bit worried and we then realised our wireless operator got a message saying the time to be there had been brought forward because they’d heard, someone must have phoned, called them up. Breaking radio silence really which I’d never heard of and to tell them that we were going to be there maybe an hour too soon. With the wind velocity being so high and we were not accounting for it. We were thinking we were going to be in twenty mile an hour.
GR: And you were in —
CW: And we were in a hundred so, so they brought it forward so it didn’t make any difference of getting there.
GR: So in theory, I don’t know, the cruising speed of a Lancaster.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Normally two hundred miles an hour.
CW: I think somebody went wrong totally because the main bomb aimer eventually you couldn’t mark the target. The Germans set up smoke flares.
GR: Yes.
CW: And, and I think that when they tried to mark the target the wind was so much that these were carried away and they were never left long enough on the ground to be able to say come in and bomb.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So they said, ‘Sorry,’ but he said, ‘Sorry boys, just return to base. Return to base.’
GR: Right.
CW: So on the way back we, we were travelling at eighty mile an hour instead of our usual one eighty because of the head wind.
GR: Yeah. So you got, you got to the target quickly but it took a long time to get back home.
CW: Exactly. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. So —
CW: Yeah. But we went, we were then because I think petrol was going very low and we were detailed to go to Lossiemouth.
GR: Right. Diverted on the way back.
CW: Yes.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. I’m just checking again. Yeah. So moving on into early, early 1945 you were called up for Pathfinder duty.
CW: Yeah.
GR: How did that come about if you don’t mind asking?
CW: I think we got lucky.
GR: You got lucky. Taken off operations.
CW: No. I mean, no, I mean we got lucky by getting to the targets on time which was vital really.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So to start with the bomber when dropping bombs we got I think a three or four minute allowance but Pathfinders was one minute.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So you’d sort of got to work a bit harder to get there.
GR: Yeah.
CW: On time.
GR: So, I know they did a bit of extra training didn’t they?
CW: Yes.
GR: Which you had. Yeah.
CW: We went to [pause] I forget.
GR: Yeah. And it doesn’t make a note. Oh Coningsby. 83 Squadron, Pathfinder Force, Coningsby.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So a couple of months and then you were back on operations and it looks as though you went to Leipzig on your first Pathfinder trip.
CW: Oh.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So did you find the two squadrons different or, I mean I presume you’ve still got the same crew.
CW: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Same crew. Yeah.
GR: So just flying the same plane.
CW: Yeah.
GR: But from a different base.
CW: Yeah. Just —
GR: Yeah.
CW: Different base. Well, we linked with 97 Squadron. So we were like one squadron really I think.
GR: Yeah.
CW: We both went into the briefing. Both squadrons. And however many, however many planes that were sent.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So we were like one big squadron but but no we weren’t.
GR: Yeah.
CW: We were two separate squadrons but we worked as one.
GR: As a — yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Any extra pressure being the Pathfinder navigator?
CW: No. I just did —
GR: Because the Pathfinders, I presume the Pathfinders went in first to mark.
CW: Yeah.
GR: The target.
CW: No.
GR: Then bomb.
CW: We dropped flares —
GR: Yeah.
CW: That hung in the sky whilst Mosquitoes guys who didn’t have as much radar didn’t, I don’t think they had any radar so they weren’t sure to get there because they didn’t have room for radar I think. And so if they saw our flares going down they could be, they could easily get within like ten mile of the target. So they’d soon see the flares and they could be on the job straight away and marking out for the main force coming probably nine minutes later.
GR: Yeah. That’s good. And then that’s going towards the end of the war. Where were you? Where were you when the war finished?
CW: Still at Coningsby.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: And I think you’d flown your last operation on the, or your last bombing operation on the 18th of April.
CW: Was it?
GR: Yeah.
CW: Oh.
GR: Yeah. So and then in May you did a couple of prisoner of war pickups. Operation Exodus.
CW: Yes. Yeah. We were glad to be able to do that.
GR: Yeah. A lot of crews have said that.
CW: It was the first time they said you can’t take your parachutes with you. Not that we were bothered about that.
GR: Yeah.
CW: But no parachutes for them. Prisoners of war just released. Probably I think there were sixteen came in and sat just down the fuselage. Anywhere they could really.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: And then the pilot would ask them up and we were like over the sea, or the North Sea or whatever and just had a look.
GR: Yeah.
CW: What it was like. And then they would just sit down there. Back in the fuselage.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And we’d land them at some place.
GR: Dunsford.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Dunsford. Yeah.
CW: And —
GR: My father in law who’d been a prisoner of war for five years. He flew back on a Lancaster.
CW: Oh.
GR: It could have been you.
CW: It well could have been. Aye. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. He’d been captured at Dunkirk. And flew back.
CW: Oh blimey. That was early enough wasn’t it?
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: To be captured.
GR: So, and then the last entry in the logbook in May which is absolutely fantastic. 31st of May. A tour of German cities.
CW: Yeah. We took a guy with a camera.
GR: Right.
CW: And he took photographs and he gave us some. One or two each.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And they were [pause] oh it was just shocking to look down really and thought we’d done all that.
GR: Yes. Because obviously I’m looking and it was obviously in daylight. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
GR: So no. Proof of, proof of what Bomber Command did and the success of Bomber Command.
CW: Yes.
GR: And so —
CW: Yeah.
GR: So, how else did, how long did you stay in the RAF for Colin?
CW: I think it were about five years in all.
GR: Oh yeah. So you weren’t —
CW: I didn’t stay on. No.
GR: Well, most of them, most people would have come out 1946 but if you stayed a bit longer. I’m looking. So [pause] so demobbed. Back home to Sheffield.
CW: That’s right.
GR: And what did you do with the rest of your life?
CW: Well, I can, I can put it on camera now that one of the flights in there.
GR: Yeah.
CW: Was a cross country flight and my wife and I had got married. I was only twenty one and we got married and she came to Coningsby. She went to the cobblers and he put her up to sleep in his house and his shop, and then one day I said, ‘Well I shan’t be seeing you tonight because we’ve got this flight on.’ And she said, ‘Well, why can’t I come? [laughs] I said, ‘Not really.’ But anyway, she did. So we smuggled.
GR: You smuggled your wife on to a Lancaster.
CW: Yeah. And then she, and then we took off. Yeah. And then she said, Andy, said to her, the pilot said when we were coming back when the exercise was over kind of, he said, ‘What, was it, what did you think? Was it —’ She said, ‘Well it wasn’t very exciting was it?’ So he said to the gunner, he said, ‘Give me a corkscrew.’ Which he did. And she just went aaaahhh. So I switched the microphone on and they all heard her.
GR: Yeah.
CW: And then when we came back and we got in the van to come back and there was one, well what can I say? A typical, ‘Hello there, how are you and all that darling,’ and he saw her get in the van, and he said ‘Oh. And where have you come from?’ So she said, ‘Oh I’ve been flying.’ He said, ‘Oh jolly good show. Jolly good show.’ He really thought, yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CW: So —
GR: So you were demobbed from the RAF. You and your wife back to Sheffield.
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Did you go back to plumbing or —
CW: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. And that was the end of the wartime experiences.
CW: Yeah. That’s the war. Yeah.
GR: Ok. Thank you. Thank you Colin.
CW: Ok.
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 Colin Wood
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gary Rushbrooke
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.
Format
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00:35:06 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWoodC160325
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-25
Description
An account of the resource
Colin Wood grew up in Sheffield and worked as a plumber until he volunteered for the RAF. He trained in Canada and flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron from RAF Metheringham. On arrival at the station his pilot and three others made their flight with an experienced crew but only the pilot returned. Colin and his crew were later posted to 83 Squadron Pathfinders.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943-07-08
1944-02
1945
106 Squadron
83 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Coningsby
RAF Metheringham
RAF Syerston
RAF West Freugh
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/357/5519/PGrimesS1502.2.jpg
2f8c2b7688ba7d1fbece6737ceb4d3a8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/357/5519/AGrimesS151121.2.mp3
3cd700983bd130668fad69444d64890e
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
Grimes, Syd
Syd Grimes
S V Grimes
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Sydney Grimes (173865, 1271597 Royal Air Force) a photograph, and his logbook. After training as a wireless operator/ air gunner he completed a tour on 106 Squadron at RAF Syerston. After a period as an instructor he joined 617 Squadron for his second tour where he took part in the attacks on the Tirpitz.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Grimes and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-21
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. 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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Grimes, SV
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SJ: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is myself Sue Johnstone and the interviewee is Sid Grimes. The interview is taking place at Mr Grimes’ home in Mildenhall in Suffolk on the 21st of November 2015.
AG: I was born in a little village called Great Wakering near Southend on Sea, five miles from Southend on Sea and I lived there until I joined the Air Force. I was educated at the village school and also for part of the time at Southend Municipal College. When war broke out I was seventeen and eh my father was a Thames bargeman. I didn’t particularly want to go in the Navy although he would have preferred me to. My my brother went in the Navy, I didn’t want to go in the Army and I thought if I go in the Air Force and volunteered as a wireless operator. At that time I was working for EK Cole Ltd,Echo Radio and I thought if I knew something about the technology of radio I would be doing a more interesting job than as a clerk. So I joined the Air Force. I wasn’t accepted for training immediately because there was a real backlog of training. But I volunteered for wireless operator aircrew and I was called up in 1940. I trained at Blackpool, Yatesbury, Eventon,Madeley and all sorts of places as wireless operator. Eventually I ended up as a sergeant wireless operator at Cottesmore in Rutland. ‘Is this alright?’
SJ: This is absolutely fine, this is fantastic.
AG: Eh, I then met my first pilot a man called Stevens, a Welshman always known as Steve eh and the four others of the crew, so. And eh we trained on Wellingtons until he was eh, he was,treated as a bomber pilot then. We then moved to a conversion unit where we flew Manchesters and Lancasters. Having passed out then we went to a place called Syerston near Newark. Now this 106 Squadron was Guy Gibsons’ Squadron, but he must have known that I was coming because he left the two days before. [laughs] No I don’t know if it was two days but a few days before. So I joined 617 Squadron [think he meant 106] and by that time we had picked up a mid upper gunner and a flight engineer, to the Wellington crew so we were now seven. And I did a tour with 106 Squadron until September 1943. Now that was almost entirely the Battle of the Ruhr. but it did include places like Hamburg and Berlin, one or two other places just outside the Ruhr. So having completed a tour of operations which was a real dodgy period. We had some very heavy losses in the Battle of the Ruhr. In fact my crew was only the second one to finish a tour while I was there. And a lot of people came and went fairly quickly so. I do not know how many losses 617, 106 Squadron had in that period. But we were only the second one to finish. I then went to a place called Balderton just outside Newark which was eh, the residue of the Five Lancaster Finishing School, Five Group Lancaster Finishing School. And eh an interesting thing happened to me there because we hadn’t got any pupils to train then, they were coming in a couple of weeks time and we were getting the place ready. A wing commander arrived, Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire and eh he had been operating in Four Group up in Yorkshire on Halifax’s. And when he came to take over 617 Squadron the AOC said, ‘you had better go and learn to fly a Lancaster.’ So he eh hummed and had and said. ‘Well I have been flying Halifaxs for two years.’ But he said ‘No you go and learn it.’ So he came, he hadn’t got a clue so I went with him and four others. And we became, and I am very proud to tell you, I have in my log book. Four times I flew with him while he learnt to fly a Lancaster. [laugh]. I then went from there to the permanent base for Five Lancaster School of eh, Lancaster Group, School at Syerston again. And I stayed there instructing until I done a foolish thing. I was engaged to be married and I saw in orders that there was a course for RT speech unit, at Stanmore. And I thought if I went to Stanmore, Iris was nursing at Leightonstone, Whipps Cross Hospital, Leightonstone. I would undoubtedly get a couple of days before I reported back. So I did this RT speech course, but I was quite good at it actually and of the six of us I got chosen to form this RT speech unit.
SJ: Brilliant.
AG: At Scampton, so I went there and very foolishly I had to do the same lecture four times a day seven days a week.
SJ: How’s that?
AG: And I met a man called Barney Gumbley, a New Zealander and we sat chat. Chatting in the mess one day and he said. ‘I am going back on ops, are you interested?’ I said. ‘Can we go tomorrow?’ [laugh]. So he said. ‘Well I have got an interview for Pathfinders and an interview for 617 have you any preference?’ I said was, Pathfinders was Eight Group and eh I quite like Five Group, I like the people in it. So I said ‘I’d rather go to 617.’ He said ‘It is a good job you said that, for the rest of us want to go there too.’ [laugh]. Anyway about ten days later I got a phone call to say. ‘There is a van picking you up at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’ I said. ‘Where are we going?’ He said. ‘We are going to Woodhall Spa to joing 617 Squadron.’ So of I went in this van and eh the mess, the Officers Mess, was eh ‘oh dear, oh dear’ I can’t think of it.
SJ: What Woodhall Spa?
AG: At Woodhall Spa, it was the Officers Mess eh.
SJ: Was it the Petwood?
AG: Petwood.
SJ: Petwood Hotel.
AG: Petwood hotel and eh it dropped me there and I reported at the desk which had, [unclear] which had got a WAAF on it. And she said ‘Oh yes we’ve got a room for you.’ So of I went to this room, Barney Gumley was told I was here but he was up at the flight which was about a mile and a half away. He came down and introduced me to the rest of the crew, but no one thought about booking me in.[laugh]. And I did the two ops to the Tirpitz at Tromso before they suddenly realised I wasn’t on the squadron. [laugh] By that time I had done two trips.
SJ: Then they checked you in.
AG: They checked me in they thought I had better be legitimate. So I, I was with 617 from the September ’44 through ‘til April 1945. We had been flying the Barnes Wallis Tall Boy bomb which was 12000 pounds. And then he came up with a much bigger invention, the Grand Slam which was 22000 pounds. In order to accommodate the big bomb they had to take the bomb doors off, and they took the mid upper turret off, and they took all the armour plating out. They really did a modified Lancaster which only took a crew of five. Took all the wireless equipment out except for a VHF transmitter,RT. So I was surplus so I said to the flight commander. ‘ I have only got three more trips to do can I fly in the astrodome as a fighter observer or something like that?’ He said. ‘Under no circumstances, we are trying to find reasons for loosing weight.’ And he said. ‘You want to go and fly.’ He wouldn’t let me and the crew got shot down on the very next trip. So they got hit by and anti aircraft shell on the port wing and it shot it completely away. So they were on the bombing run at that time which was the dicey part of the trip. Because eh, the special bomb sight that we had, we had to fly straight and level. It was gyroscopically controlled, so you had to fly very accurately with height, speed and all the outside temperatures. And all that kind of thing which you fed in to this computer. So they was, the squadron flew in what was called a gaggle. A geese gaggle you know? The way that they fly in the sky.
SJ: A formation.
AG: A formation, and that gaggle when you were stepped sideways and up and down in a very large box. It was designed so that the whole squadron, twenty of us could bomb without impeding each other, all on the same bombing run. You were actually converging you see, so all the bombs had gone before you actually hit each other. It was a very clever little devise and this anti aircraft shell shot their port wing off so that it. It just spiralled in [unclear], and it was spiralling so quickly, if anybody was still alive in the aircraft eh they couldn’t have got out anyway. And of course the bomb went off as soon as it hit the ground. Because as they were on the bombing run the bomb aimer had already fused it.
SJ: Eh, you don’t remember which aircraft it was?
AG: Yes it is in, I flew with them. ‘Just sit down my dear.’ You can put it off for a bit.
SJ: I was going to pause it for a second.
AG: YZL, PD117 The number of the aircraft was PD117.[pause]
SJ: That looks like a well looked through log book.
AG: Just to prove Wing Commander Cheshire.
SJ: Yes that’s where he had gone to. That is local flying that was part of his training. [laugh]
AG: That’s right, I always say that he was my pupil.
SJ: [laugh] that’s brilliant. So what happened next, you were moved to 617 you were there for a six months.
AG: Yes and I done seventeen trips.
SJ: Seventeen trips.
AG: I got three more to do.[pause] ‘I will just have a cough sweet.’
SJ: That is no problem, that’s fine.
AG: [pause while uwrapping sweet] ‘Will you stay for some lunch?’
SJ: Oh, might do if that’s all right, yeah.
AG: I have got a beef casserole.
SJ: Lovely, that sounds fantastic.
AG: Right, I will heat it up in a minute.
SJ: [Laughs]
AG: ‘Sorry, I was, what was I saying —.
SJ: You were saying about 617 Squadron when you left.
AG: Yes I went to 9 Squadron who was the other squadron that had the tallboys, they didn’t have the grand slam, so that they still needed wireless operators. So I went over to 9 Squadron about three weeks before the end of the war. After we, I then had to make a decision, I was asked did I want to go to the far east against Japan. By that time I was married.
SJ: When did you get married?
AG: I got married the month before I joined 617, Iris never knew I had volunteered to go back.
SJ: Did you ever tell her.
AG: I have since, she was indignant. [laugh]. But I always said she was in a more dangerous situation as a nurse in Whipps Cross Hospital near the docks.
SJ: Was she always a nurse then?
AG: I didn’t say how I met her, did I?
SJ: You didn’t no.
AG: Can I digress?
SJ: Yes that will be fantastic to know.
AG: She was born in Woodford. But before the war they moved down to a little village called Rochford just outside Southend. And she wanted to be a nurse but they wouldn’t take her until she was seventeen. So she came to Echo as a copy typist. I was one of the senior, not senior clerks but I was, I was fairly well up. I had been there three years. And I met her and I liked the look of her and so after I went in the Air Force I kept in touch with her. And you know, I’d spent about no more than about ten days in her company, up to the time we got married. Because when I came on leave we always went to see a London show but that was about the only time we could get of. ’Forgive me sucking the sweet.’
SJ: Oh no it’s fine, not to worry.
AG: And that is how I met her. So I decided I didn’t want to go to the Far East I thought that having done about forty six trips, I didn’t , the neck had gone out too far. So I got posted to 50 Squadron at a place called Sturgate which was up near, in North Lincolnshire. And we were then flying; first of all we were flying prisoners of war from Brussels to England, in the Lancasters. We used to take, I think it was twenty or twenty four depending on what kit they got in the Lancaster fuselage sitting on the floor But they didn’t mind that as long as they were coming to England. After we got all the POWs back we then started bringing people back from leave from Italy. And we used to fly to Naples and pick up about twenty Air Force or Army people at a place call Pernicano, which is just outside Naples. Eh after a time they decided that was going to stop because shipping was available to bring them back in larger quantities anyway. And the Mediterranean was open so they stopped doing it. So I then got posted to do a code and cipher course down at a place called Compton Bassett near Calne in Wiltshire. And having passed that course I got posted to Germany ostensibly to be the CO of a small mobile signals unit. Which was one officer, one sergeant, one corporal and about ten men. When I got there I was told it was based at a place called Stade[?] between Cookshaven and Haverg. So I arrived at Stade[?] and the CO said. ‘Oh I am glad to see you’ he said. ‘I lost my adjutant about two weeks ago you are my new adjutant.’ I said. ‘No I have a mobile signals regiment.’ He said. ‘No I closed that down yesterday and you are my new adjutant.’ But I said. ‘I know something about flying but I know nothing about anything else.’ He said. ‘I’ll teach you.’[laugh] and he became a very good friend of mine. We did all sorts of things together, we got up very early in the morning sometimes at dawn and went and shoot deer. Quite unofficial we hadn’t got a license from the Military Government or anything and it ended up in a very humorous story. We had this, there weren’t very many of us, these base signals on your radar unit, refurbished these units to be sent round to the aerodromes and various places including Berlin. So there were only about fifteen of us I suppose. And we were having dinner or preparing to have dinner one night and we had got deer for dinner. This happened, Military Government people and ourselves we didn’t mingle sociably ‘cause there was nothing else. So they arrived about four o’clock and didn’t look like moving. So the CO said to me ‘What do we do?’ I said ‘Well as they are the guests of our mess this evening you had better invite them to dinner. And as they are our guests they won’t be able to do anything about it.’ So they sat down to dinner with us and ate deer. And they did let us know that they were aware of it. I think they had been told off, they had a [unclear] [laugh]. Well that, I ended up demobilised in August 1946 and I got reinstatement rights if I went back to Echo, but I was offered a short service commission of two years. But if I had taken that it would have meant in all probability the Air Force would have been reducing in size so much that I would have then been demobilised. And I wouldn’t have had reinstatement rights, having been in what was the regular Air Force for two years. So eh I went back to Echo. And so as I say I didn’t know anything about being an adjutant and certainly nothing about earning my living in civvy street. But I was fortunate, the man who interviewed me was the deputy chief accountant of EK Cole Ltd. And he knew because I had told him that I was keen on cricket because he was interviewing me in depth. He said ‘That’s a good thing I am a life member of Lancashire.’ So he took me on his staff and he taught me accountancy. I did take a correspondence course was meeker compared with what he told me. So I was never able to be a chartered accountant because I didn’t take articles. I was earning my living, by that time I was increasing my family.
SJ: How many children have you got?
AG: I’ve got three, two of them became nurses and one, the boy went into insurance.
SJ: You had two girls and a boy.
AG: I am proud of them all.
SJ: Oh yeah I don’t blame you.
AG: So I was in the deputy chief accountants department. Then he got promoted to be the chief accountant and then he became promoted to eh; financial secretary and accountant to a number of subsidiaries. So as he went up my situation went up with him.
SJ: You went up as well, did you enjoy that?
AG: I couldn’t have been an accountant in a professional office because that would have been dull. That would have been checking, checking, checking, checking. What I liked about being in industry, I was always in a place that was making things and you could go there and see it all happening. It was accountancy, it was very important accountancy, but eh —.
SJ: Very different from your RAF days though?
AG: Yes very much so. I was an active member of the 617 Squadron Association and we went to a number of reunions in Canada, Australia, New Zealand eh France as a unit, we’ve gone and made friends wherever we went. I haven’t been to the last couple number of places because Iris became, eh unreliable, she was unsteady. I couldn’t take her onto aircraft and coaches and things like that. She came to, she came to Australia and New Zealand and to Canada but the —, When we went to France and Germany and the Netherlands we went by coach and ferry, she hates flying.
SJ: [laughs]
AG: ‘Now where have I got to?’ Eventually we got taken over, first by Pye from Cambridge and then Phillips who are Dutch of course. But the British office was at Croydon and eh I became the financial accountant, financial director in a number of subsidiaries around the group. But I ended up, I always wanted to be somewhere near Southend because my parents were still alive. And I owed a lot to my parents, I didn’t want to move right out of their orbit. And I then went to Canvey Island to a components factory. First of all as the financial director and then as the managing director. And from there I went back to Southend as the eh; managing director of Echo Instruments which made instrumentation for industry. Then I retired.
SJ: How long have you been retired now?
AG: I retired when I was, I retired finally when I was sixty three. I first retired at sixty one when I left Canvey. And I only had been retired for about three months when my boss at Cambridge rang me up and said. ‘I am in trouble, can you help me?’ I said. ‘Well, help you in what sense?’ He said. ‘Can you come back and do a job looking after a subsidiary until I find a, a permanent managing director?’ So I did and I stayed two years.
SJ: [laugh] Why not?
AG: But it was a good period for me because I was drawing full pension and then I was drawing full salary so it made a nest egg for me when I did retire.
SJ: So it was worth it then?
AG: Yes; well I stayed in Shoeburyness just outside Southend until twelve years ago. But one of my daughters lived in West Row which is just to the West of Milden Hall and another one lived in Barton Mills.
SJ: I was going to ask why you moved up this way?
AG: Well my son was in Kent and the journey from Shoeburyness up to here was one hundred and ten miles. And when I got to eighty I decided that that was too far. So we moved up here to a place just the other side of Mildenhall, Brickcone Hall[?] and eh, it was too large but we loved it. And then Iris had trouble keeping her balance, damaged her hip. So I decided we had to be on the same floor so we moved here. Which was a retirement bungalow which suited us down to the ground.
SJ: And it is a lovely complex, it really is nice.
AG: It is, I sit here and we have mallard ducks and swans on the river and I watch them and they come and look at me and squawk.
SJ: [laugh] And you sit and look at them?
AG: I try, I do, if Iris was here with me I’d love it. But she is only two miles away.
SJ: That is not far. How long has she been in the care home?
AG: Since January, so eleven months. But she is happy there and she is safe. You see I had her home here at first after she came out of hospital eh, but I couldn’t look after her during the day and the night. And I was getting totally exhausted because every time she moved I woke up. So we decided that my savings would go to the wall and I would put her in the care home. And she is in a lovely little care home. She is well cared for and she is safe, so —.
SJ: Does she like it there?
AG: At first she missed us all because she saw the family every day. Well now I go in about five days out of the seven and the two girls go once. Because Rosalind is a practice nurse in Bury so ,
SJ: That is not far away?
AG: No. And she is married to a Canadian who eh and they go backwards and forwards. I think they have a permanent passage booked on aircraft [laugh]. And eh Jill has got four sons and five grandsons, my great grandsons, so we are largely together. And my son comes up —.
SJ: He is the link end.
AG: Yes. He comes up for a week about every six weeks, because he has retired now.
SJ: Has he got any family?
AG: No; he married a lady who was seven years older than him and it never happened, so —.
SJ: That is quite a big family you got then, grandkids and great grandkids.
AG: Yes, I am a very lucky man. Having survived the war I look round and think, ‘This family wouldn’t have survived if I had bought it.’
SJ: I know, yeah.
AG: Well they might have done, Iris might have married someone else, but.
SJ: It would have been different though.
AG: They wouldn’t have had my genes.
SJ: No exactly [laugh]
AG: I’ll heat the —.
SJ: I shall put this on pause shall I?
AG: Since I retired, lived in Shoeburyness, Mildenhall and here there has been a resurgent of interest in 617. And also strangely in Pye Cambridge. And I have been recruited, to say to do this kind of interview for Pye Cambridge. Because they are making a record of the activities of Pye in Cambridge, because it has been there ever since it was formed.
SJ: So they are getting a history together of that part of Pye?
AG: There is a historical museum which is bringing all these records together. So they are doing what you are doing and making recordings and eh —.
SJ: It is great it needs doing. I mean how do you feel about the project? How do you feel about the Bomber Command Archive project?
AG: Lets say this. After I have had a session like this or with John Nichol . Or with other things the squadron seems to send to me. Eh, like the Cambridge stamp centre and signing things happened. Undoubtedly I have a disturbed couple of nights. Because it has brought it all back. But then the family encourage me and I totally accept the fact, if people like me didn’t say what this was like. The written word is not necessarily understood. But I think if they hear peoples voice as you are doing now, it might stop wars happening. I thank my lucky stars, that my son didn’t ever have to go through the trauma of a six years war. It was, don’t get me wrong. I think it was necessary. Hitler wouldn’t have got stopped in any other way. And I think in a way Hitler getting stopped, Mussolini and Stalin also got stopped. Because the consequences of the nuclear bomb was so dreadful that it stopped. And I don’t think there would have been a nuclear bomb if it hadn’t have been for the war, ‘cause the money would not have been found.
SJ: Yeah.
AG: Do I sound too serious?
SJ: No. I completely agree with you. Lessons need to be learnt from the past, don’t they?
AG: I think those of us who went through it. Have kind of a duty to make sure these subsequent generations knew what it was like.
SJ: Do you feel this generation and future generations will understand how it was?
AG: It’s difficult to say. But John Nichol tells me his book had a huge print and he has sold a lot of copies. So that if it get put into houses and families and people must have been buying it to read at home. It didn’t all go to libraries.
SJ: No not at all.
AG: The younger people eh, might well have learnt from it. And the BBC have done a number of programmes about the Air Force and the war in general. The Navy, all those aspects have been fired[?] some of it must have sunk in.
SJ: Yes you would like to think so.
AG: Yeah. And I think we have a duty to make sure that it became available. But it is not something that I enjoy.
SJ: Yes I completely understand, yeah.
AG: Because, well my family were fortunate. My brother was in the Navy, he was on the Arctic Convoys on HMS London, and eh —.
SJ: What was your brothers’ name?
AG: Kenneth, Kenneth George. And he, he went in the Navy. Largely because of my father I think. My father was Thames Bargeman. There’s Thames barges on the wall.
SJ: Yeah, I noticed them when I came in, yeah.
AG: My father was a Freeman of the River Thames. And he was on Thames barges and then on Thames tugs.
SJ: Did your father have military background?
AG: No, in the First World War he was a barge captain. And he, he used to load ammunition at Woolwich Arsenal, and take it over to France to a place called St Valerie.
SJ: He had a very important job.
AG: He used to take it across the channel. Through all those minefields and what have you.
SJ: Very risky.
AG: Yes it was. And at the end of the war he was presented with the Maritime Medal.
SJ: Oh brilliant.
AG: But you know the chances that he took as a civilian. He should have got much more than that.
SJ: I know. What was you fathers name?
AG: George, George David. He lived until he was ninety four, the last six years with us at Shoebury.
SJ: You mentioned your brother. Did you have any more brothers or sisters?
AG: No just the brother. My mother had twins which were still born, my brother and I —. They really were, they were extremely poor in a sense. Because in the shipping slump of 1931, 32 the barges were laid up all over the East Coast. And he just got on care and maintenance pay which was hardly anything. And with that he was trying to run himself on the barge, tied up to a buoy and the family at home. So his savings gradually went. So he had to, he had a break down eventually about 1934. And he stayed on the water in a sense because he became the hand in an oyster dredger on the river Roch at Rochford. And he did that eh, about eight months in the year. Then he was unemployed for the rest of the year. So he dispersed his savings looking after his family really. So I did have a very big moral obligation to my parents who were the salt of the earth.
SJ: Yes they sound like they were, which was great. I think that generation they were, weren’t they?
AG: They were family minded.
SJ: They were mm.
AG: They, [pause] I don’t think they bought themselves a Christmas present. Where my brother and I always had one.
SJ: Yeah, what were your family Christmases like?
AG: The family, my father had one, two, three. Three daughters, three sisters and two brothers. And one of the aunts was a school teacher and she took a fatherly interest. So silly isn’t it, she was an aunt, she couldn’t take a fatherly interest [laugh]. An aunt interest in my brother and I. And he won an open scholarship, a total scholarship to Clarks College when he was thirteen.
SJ: Oh brilliant.
AG: It was the only one on offer in the whole of the area, and he won it. He went to Clarks College. By the time I got to and I was four years younger. By the time I got to the age when I was sitting exams. They couldn’t afford for me to be another drain on the family finances. So eh, I went to work at Ecko.
SJ: How old were you when you started there?
AG: I was fourteen.
SJ: Fourteen mmm. How did you feel about working, starting work so young?
AG: It was the common thing.
SJ: It was mmm.
AG: I was on the, I was at the village and I stayed at the village. I was only at the municipal college for a short time and I was working and doing it evenings. But the village, I was almost. Hardly any of us did further education but my family believed in it. So I did further education and my brother was good example to me that he had won an open scholarship.
SJ: That was brilliant.
AG: But the village had a tradition of going to work at fourteen.
SJ: Yeah. But they did didn’t they? I mean they is eighteen now when they leave school. It is a big difference these days.
AG: But I would say this about the great working school; it was first class. And they had dedicated people. We had two Welshmen who were school masters there and they gave up their Saturdays for sport. They never let us go to a fixture without one of them being there. You know it was —. After school they’d, we would go into the playground and get a matting wicket and play cricket. And they always did it in a —. I look at teachers these days and I think to myself. ‘You should have lived with those people, you would have learned an awful lot.’ They believed in the welfare of their students. Where as now they seem to want —. [Interruption]. ‘Come in.’ [shout]
SJ: Shall I put this on?
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 Syd Grimes
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AGrimesS151121
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sue Johnstone
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-21
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:54:01 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Sydney Grimes grew up near Southend and joined the RAF as a wireless operator in 1940. He flew a total of 41 operations - 24 operations with 106 Squadron and 17 operations with 617 Squadron. He then served on 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney for 2 months and 50 Squadron at RAF Sturgate for 3 months, where he assisted on the return of prisoners of war in Operation Dodge. After demobilisation he returned to his old company and retired as the managing director.
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--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hugh Donnelly
Richard James
106 Squadron
50 Squadron
617 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crewing up
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Manchester
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Balderton
RAF Bardney
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Scampton
RAF Sturgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Woodhall Spa
Tallboy
Tirpitz
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/357/5770/LGrimesS1271597v1.1.pdf
f78de867933d06f442ab2845bafcbb34
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
Grimes, Syd
Syd Grimes
S V Grimes
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Sydney Grimes (173865, 1271597 Royal Air Force) a photograph, and his logbook. After training as a wireless operator/ air gunner he completed a tour on 106 Squadron at RAF Syerston. After a period as an instructor he joined 617 Squadron for his second tour where he took part in the attacks on the Tirpitz.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Grimes and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-21
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Grimes, SV
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
Sydney Grimes' observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGrimesS1271597v1
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Air Force observer's and air gunner's flying log book for Sydney Grimes, wireless operator, covering the period from 2 July 1942 to 22 August 1945. Detailing training, operations flown, instructional duties and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Evanton, RAF Madley, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Wigsley, RAF Syerston, RAF Balderton, RAF Scampton, RAF Winthorpe, RAF Woodhall Spa, RAF Bardney and RAF Sturgate. Aircraft flown in were Dominie, Proctor, Botha, Wellington, Anson, Manchester, Halifax and Lancaster. He flew a total of 41 operations, 24 night operations with 106 squadron and 15 daylight and 2 night operations with 617 squadron. Targets were, Kiel, Frankfurt, Spezia, Pilsen, Stettin, Duisburg, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Essen, Wuppertal, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Turin, Hamburg, Berlin, Tromso, Urft Dam, Ijmuiden, Politz, Rotterdam, Oslo Fjord, Emden, Koln, Poortershaven, Viesleble [Bielefeld] viaduct and Ladbergen. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Stephens and Flight Lieutenant Gumbley.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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.
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Scotland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Herefordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bielefeld
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Ladbergen
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--La Spezia
Italy--Turin
Netherlands--Ijmuiden
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Norway--Tromsø
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Germany--Düsseldorf
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Urft Dam
Atlantic Ocean--Oslofjorden
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1943-04-04
1943-04-05
1943-04-10
1943-04-11
1943-04-13
1943-04-14
1943-04-16
1943-04-17
1943-04-18
1943-04-19
1943-04-20
1943-04-21
1943-05-12
1943-05-13
1943-05-14
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-05-29
1943-05-30
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-03
1943-07-04
1943-07-08
1943-07-09
1943-07-12
1943-07-13
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-08-23
1943-08-24
1944-10-29
1944-11-12
1944-12-08
1944-12-11
1944-12-15
1944-12-21
1944-12-22
1944-12-29
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-01
1945-02-03
1945-02-06
1945-02-08
1945-02-14
1945-02-22
1945-02-24
1945-03-13
1945-03-14
1945-05-12
1945-06-25
1945-07-09
1945-08-07
1945-08-11
1945-08-20
1945-08-22
106 Squadron
14 OTU
1654 HCU
1661 HCU
1668 HCU
50 Squadron
617 Squadron
9 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Botha
Cook’s tour
Dominie
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Manchester
Operation Catechism (12 November 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Balderton
RAF Bardney
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Evanton
RAF Madley
RAF Scampton
RAF Sturgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Woodhall Spa
Tallboy
Tirpitz
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/247/7275/LDorricottLW1230753v1.2.pdf
0caaa4b6a9f9d25985df7879bb5cccef
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
Dorricott, Leonard William
Leonard Dorricott
Len Dorricott
L W Dorricott
Description
An account of the resource
72 items. An oral history interview with Rosemary Dorricott about her husband Flying Officer Leonard William Dorricott DFM (1923-2014, 1230753, 1230708 Royal Air Force). Leonard Dorricott was a navigator with 460 and 576 Squadrons. He flew 34 operations including Operation Manna, Dodge and Exodus. He was one of the crew who flew in Lancaster AR-G -George, now preserved in the Australian War Memorial. He was a keen amateur photographer and the collection contains his photographs, logbook and papers. It also contains A Dorricott’s First World War Diary, and photographs of Leonard Dorricott’s log book being reunited with the Lancaster at the Australian War Memorial.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Dorricott and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-07
2015-11-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dorricott, LW
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Leonard Dorricott's observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Canadian Air Force observer's and air gunner's flying log book for Sergeant Leonard Dorricott from 27 November 1942 to 21 January 1946. Detailing training schedule, instructional duties and operations flown. Trained in Miami, Florida and served at RAF Bobbington (aka RAF Halfpenny Green), RAF Whitchurch (aka RAF Tilstock), RAF Lindholme, RAF Breighton, RAF Bottesford, RAF Swinderby, RAF Binbrook and RAF Fiskerton. Aircraft flown were Anson, Commodore, Oxford, Harrow, Whitley, Halifax and Lancaster. He carried out a total of 32 operations on two tours with 460 and 576 Squadrons as a navigator on the following targets in Germany and Italy: Berlin, Bochum, Cologne, Cuxhaven, Dortmund, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Krefeld, Leverkusen, Lutzkendorf, Mulheim, Mönchengladbach, Munich, Nordhausen, Nuremberg, Oberhausen, Plauen, Stuttgart, Turin and Wuppertal. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Henderson, Flight Lieutenant Strachan, Flying Officer Crofts and Flight Lieutenant Halnan. The operations are annotated and the log book includes maps and newspaper cuttings. It also includes Operation Manna, Exodus, Dodge and Cooks tours.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LDorricottLW1230753v1
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1943-04-27
1943-04-28
1943-04-30
1943-05-01
1943-05-04
1943-05-05
1943-05-12
1943-05-13
1943-05-14
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-14
1943-06-15
1943-06-16
1943-06-17
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-12
1943-07-13
1943-07-29
1943-07-30
1943-08-02
1943-08-03
1943-08-07
1943-08-08
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-22
1943-08-23
1943-08-24
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-06
1943-09-07
1943-09-29
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-07
1943-10-18
1945-04-03
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-10
1945-04-11
1945-04-14
1945-05-02
1945-05-04
1945-05-11
1945-06-18
1945-07-09
1945-08-16
1945-08-20
1945-10-01
1945-10-10
1945-10-25
1945-10-26
1945-11-20
1945-11-26
1945-11-30
1945-12-08
1946-01-04
1946-01-14
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
United States
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Yorkshire
Florida--Miami
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Cuxhaven
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia)
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Plauen
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wettin
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--Turin
Italy--Po River Valley
Florida
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
1656 HCU
1660 HCU
1668 HCU
460 Squadron
576 Squadron
61 Squadron
81 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Commodore
Cook’s tour
Halifax
Harrow
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
mine laying
navigator
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Binbrook
RAF Bottesford
RAF Breighton
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Lindholme
RAF Sturgate
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tilstock
RAF Waddington
training
Whitley